not finding fault, not fleeing

Here is the reason we practice.

And this:

I often say that there should be just two words over the door of our temple in Santa Fe: Show up! Yes, suffering is present. We cannot deny it. There are 65.3 million refugees in the world today, only eleven countries are free from conflict, and climate change is turning forests into deserts. Economic injustice is driving people into greater and greater poverty. Racism and sexism remain rampant. 

But understand, wise hope doesn’t mean denying these realities. It means facing them, addressing them, and remembering what else is present, like the shifts in our values that recognize and move us to address suffering right now. “Do not find fault with the present,” says Zen Master Keizan. He invites us to see it, not flee it!

The Czech statesman Václav Havel said, “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” We can’t know, but we can trust that there will be movement, there will be change. And that we will be part of it. We move forward in our day and get out the vote, or sit at the bedside of a dying patient, or teach that third grade class.

(--from, Yes, We Can Have Hope, BY JOAN HALIFAX| OCTOBER 18, 2018 )

Saturday Morning Practice -- Mainers, New Yorkers, Marylander (via phone).

If we learn to trust what is happening before us and within us -- not finding fault, not fleeing -- we begin to learn what faith is.

Seeing what is there.

Moving through whatever fear might arise.

Listening to the healing sound of what is here, hearing into the silent revelation of things being exactly what they are.

merely told

Stories
are neither true
nor false — they
are merely told

The telling narrative
is it’s own truth
neither connected
nor disconnected

with
what
really
happened

like this

Where did the time go?

Such a silly question.

Every moment in life is absolute in itself. That's all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this.            — Charlotte Joko Beck

There’s no time now; and nothing like this.

as thanksgiving goes

It’s 10 degrees outside.

Find warmth, my brothers and sisters, find warmth!

The night is advancing.

nowhere else

I remember where I was when president Kennedy was shot and killed.

I was right here.

Then, now, and always.

his superlative slog

 As it is, this poem, saying it so well:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)                            

                      Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886 

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! 

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Listen carefully and hear the  — c r o a k — echoing all day long from the odd one’s bog wallowing in his superlative slog.

no thank you

I agree with her:

In a single day, POTUS turns a blind eye to the barbaric murder of journalist and we learn that he tried to order DOJ to go after his political adversaries. Is there no depth to which he will not sink? We can’t let him drag America down with him. 

(—@SallyQYates, 11/20/18, 20:14)

I cannot imagine he will be allowed to continue his destruction of decency and democracy.

What a disaster he is for this country at this time!

Instead:

Ant. Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace. 

CONCLUDING PRAYER
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, you have given your followers an example of gentleness and humility, a task that is easy, a burden that is light. Accept the prayers and work of this day, and give us the rest that will strengthen us to render more faithful service to you who live and reign for ever and ever. – Amen.

(—from Compline) 

a particle of love

A man I know has died. His wife had been reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace to him all summer. In the last week she had whittled the novel down to the final 20 pages. They remain.

He died yesterday morning.

They’d just gotten to, she wrote, Prince Andrei’s death and Pierre’s experience on the battlefield and his thoughts on death.

I find this excerpt:

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
- Leo Tolstoy -  (from War and Peace, thoughts of Prince Andrei)

Nor had we finished reading Charles W. Eliot’s John Gilley, One of the Forgotten Millions (1899).

We left Mr. Gilley on Baker Island.

six from saturday hospice

1.

Practice

A hearing presence
Is what I heard —
She might have said healing


2.

Going,

End-room is
Vacuumed is
Room end


3.

Smart phone

Rings on table
Of man nearing death
— no one answers


4.

Wordless

Pink doggy at head of bed
White Minerva in unclutching hand
Just watching, only being held


5.

Gone

She’s left the room
I sit with who she’s been
Where she was


6.

Not now

When it happens
It will
H will happen