exhaling

Cosby is convicted.

Trump, not yet.

Jesus, the woman said, might not have died on the cross.

Paul Ryan fires the Catholic chaplain for praying that the poor also benefit from the tax gift to the wealthy and corporations.

North and South Korea leaders meet at 38th parallel and shake hands, each stepping over the line.

The original inspiration experience of root and holy reality remains available eternally and immediately to everyone everywhere.

Republicans will have to answer the judgement of history about their cynical blindness to the distortive and disreputable manipulation of the US constitution, representative governance, and due diligence for the proper carrying out of justice across the board.

Democrats will be remembered for their terminal diagnosis and hospice stay.

Inmates in prison meditate in silence.

A inmate from a class I taught dies suddenly from medical difficulty of an afternoon.

Black men and women are violently arrested and videos of the violence are watched by millions.

Millions who watch violence by serve and protect personnel don't know what to think of the trend.

American ordnance is used by Saudi Arabia in bombing of wedding party in Sana, Yemen, killing over 21 and wounding over 50 people.

In his poem, Elias — Variations on a Theme, by Thomas Merton, section IV:

Under the blunt pine
Elias becomes his own geography
(Supposing geography to be necessary at all),
Elias becomes his own wild bird, with God in the center,
His own wide field which nobody owns,
His own pattern, surrounding the Spirit
By which he is himself surrounded: 

For the free man';s road has neither beginning nor end.

April begins to exhale.

no stealing Itself

All commandments can be synthesized to one: You shall not steal.

How come?

Because stealing is basically and ultimately not necessary.

No one owns anything. Not really. Everything belongs to itself.

Hence, everyone participates in the shared existence of everything. Some call it communism, some compassion.

It is not about deserving, or being worthy, or earning what is here.

What is here is what-could-be-called God. God is here. Or, God is "Here." Call "God" whatever you wish. I say Here. I say Itself.

Here itself.

Everything belongs to itself.

The reason we are so harsh toward those who steal is because we know, in our deepest knowing, that you cannot steal what belongs to you.

You are itself.

That knowledge is too dangerous to be allowed into open forum.

So we agree to say, "You shall not steal.":

where are you

Everything Is Waiting for You

              BY 

DAVID WHYte

After Derek Mahon

 Your great mistake is to act the drama
 as if you were alone. As if life
 were a progressive and cunning crime
 with no witness to the tiny hidden
 transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
 the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
 even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
 the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
 out your solo voice. You must note
 the way the soap dish enables you,
 or the window latch grants you freedom.
 Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
 The stairs are your mentor of things
 to come, the doors have always been there
 to frighten you and invite you,
 and the tiny speaker in the phone
 is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
 conversation. The kettle is singing
 even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
 have left their arrogant aloofness and
 seen the good in you at last. All the birds
 and creatures of the world are unutterably
 themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

---

post hoc

when I die

if Jesus is there

welcoming me

I will know

then

what now is

then comes harmony of emptiness

one foot

then another --

walking path

each other

muddy

walking mountain

new trails

going nowhere

this, as it is

Vishnu is sleeping in the waters on a floating serpent.

He dreams the world.

Is the earth, the cosmos, the visible expression of an invisible reality sustaining everything with nothing other than mere creative awareness of what is true beyond belief?

Resurrect, reincarnate, revive, reconstitute, rebirth, reintegrate, reconcile, and realize.

Let stupidity, anger, greed, violence, and impertinance fall away. Let opinion, erroneous self expression, false belief and certainty about the unknown dissolve into fecund emptiness.

This, this, is Monday morning!

Let your prayers go drifting into space, the songwriter/poet wrote, you never know what will be coming down. Don't let the uncertainty turn you around. Go on and make a joyful sound.*

Vishnu's recitative is -- See me! Feel me! Touch me! Heal me!**

It is the gaze -- pure, simple, and loving -- that sees what is seeing and seen.

For with you is the well of life

and in your light shall we see light.  (Ps. 36)

Your eyes are the light through which the world is seen as it is -- as it is -- with awakening invitation surrounding everything.

And what will we see when the sleeper awakes?

This, we will see this, as it is!

...

* Jackson Browne
** The Who

it's complicated

It occurs to me that if we are not awake we will never know God.

Further, that when we wake up we'll understand God cannot be known.

Thus, it seems, it is better to be awake and nescient than asleep and ignorant.