saturday's O antiphon

Ant. O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.

yes

Sleeping dog

First morning returning light

His sweet breath on gray rug

solstice

nothing

but rain --

first winter night

friday's O antiphon

Ant. O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. (Vespers)

late and soon

“The world is too much with us; late and soon” (—Wordsworth).

Let planet tip and turn, returning light from darkening descent. It is time to look beyond posturing prancing and begin upclimbing ascent to clear and unambiguous truth in joy! She, mother of light, will point.

a scary story

Everyone knows what a rotten piece of fruit tastes like. But the third and fourth bites, when taken, signal it's not about enjoying the fruit -- no -- it's about what you want from the person watching who gave it to you.

The torpid men with rancid juice dripping down their jowls are watched by gnarly eyes of smarmy face looking out from wretched man temporarily occupying Oval Office in deficient decline toward terminal throes of ill-gotten reign of democracide and denigration.

What so proudly we hailed is in danger of dark decomposition and decompensation.

The chickens, so to speak, are coming back to Washington, to get another vote and more putrid fruit from desiccated hands of poseur president on brink of vacating completely the unstable office he sits in shadows within.

thursday O antiphon

Ant. O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel, controlling at your will the gate of heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.

just to maintain perspective

Observable universe

Visualization of the whole observable universe. The scale is such that the fine grains represent collections of large numbers of superclusters. The Virgo Supercluster—home of Milky Way—is marked at the center, but is too small to be seen.
Diameter	8.8×1026 m (28.5 Gpc or 93 Gly)[1]
Volume	4×1080 m3[2]
Mass (ordinary matter)	4.5 x 10 51 kg [3]
Density (of total energy)	9.9×10−27 kg/m3 (equivalent to 6 protons per cubic meter of space)[4]
Age	13.799±0.021 billion years[5]
Average temperature	2.72548 K[6]
Contents	Ordinary (baryonic) matter (4.9%) Dark matter (26.8%) Dark energy (68.3%) [7]

From Wikipedia:

The observable universe is a spherical region of the Universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth at the present time, because electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. There are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.^[8][9]Assuming the Universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe has a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer. Every location in the Universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth.

The word observable in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. Because no signals can travel faster than light, any object farther away from us than light could travel in the age of the Universe (estimated as of 2015 around 13.799±0.021 billion years^[5]) simply cannot be detected, as they have not reached us yet. Sometimes astrophysicists distinguish between the visible universe, which includes only signals emitted since recombination—and the observable universe, which includes signals since the beginning of the cosmological expansion (the Big Bang in traditional physical cosmology, the end of the inflationary epoch in modern cosmology).

According to calculations, the current comoving distance—proper distance, which takes into account that the universe has expanded since the light was emitted—to particles from which the cosmic microwave background radiation(CMBR) was emitted, which represent the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light-years), while the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years),^[10] about 2% larger. The radius of the observable universe is therefore estimated to be about 46.5 billion light-years^[11][12] and its diameter about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years, 8.8×10²³kilometres or 5.5×10²³ miles).^[13] The total mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be calculated using the critical density and the diameter of the observable universe to be about 1.5 × 10⁵³ kg.^[14] In November 2018, astronomers reported that the extragalactic background light (EBL) amounted to 4 × 10⁸⁴ photons.^[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

beyond belief

What if, taken in the light of modern physics (as far as it goes), we came to understand these words with visionary mind?

Canticle — Colossians 1:12-20
Christ the first-born of all creation and the first-born from the dead

Let us give thanks to the Father
for having made you worthy
to share the lot of the saints
in light.

He rescued us
from the power of darkness
and brought us
into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Through him we have redemption,
the forgiveness of our sins.

He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creatures.
In him everything in heaven and on earth was created,
things visible and invisible.

All were created through him;
all were created for him.
He is before all else that is.
In him everything continues in being.

It is he who is head of the body, the church!
he who is the beginning,
the first-born of the dead,
so that primacy may be his in everything.

It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in him
and, by means of him, to reconcile everything in his person,
both on earth and in the heavens,
making peace through the blood of his cross.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Ant. The Spirit of the Lord rests upon me; he has sent me to preach his joyful message to the poor.

READING Philippians 3:20b-21 vespers, 19dec18

...   ...   ...

Would we come to see the isomorphic interface between wording and physicality -- how each vibrational breath is, at origin, the inchoate inception, and real conception of what is to be, as it emerges from. emptiness into particularity, then returning to emptiness again?

And would our coming to see (and become) our particular emptiness between arrival and departure assist our time in this interim to be less contentious, combative, and filled with illusory belief in  accretion, acquisition,  or accumulation? 

The ethos of domination, control, and personal wealth rifles our human culture.

We do not yet see.

just so

Everything is quiet,
And the night is clear:
The perfect time to raise your pillow
And cultivate your mind. 

- Daegak Euchon (1055-1101) daily zen.com

wednesday's O antiphon

Ant. O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid

thank you vinnie

fiifty years ago 

today vinnie d

ended the Vietnam 

war by stepping

on the ground

in 1968

unleashing a grenade

so that everyone

might come to love

the beauty

of this left-handed

sandlot catcher

who knew who his

people were

with equipoise

we wake up sometimes

Deepak Chopra at MIT, his talk, "The Nature of Reality", December 2018.

Vivid and fascinating.

In it he quotes Wittgenstein:

“We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”  (― Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Mind me this --

Now, then, where are we?

rising light

What if “God” were to refer to the whole of reality without limit, the rising interconnectiveness of dawn’s light gathering everything into light itself?

And Paul’s words? The realization that, if one cuts oneself off from the healing wholeness, one believes in the wretched severance of a modern day fracture of division and loneliness fabricated by narrow thinking unenlightened individuals.

For this reason the Lord himself gave as the sign of our salvation, the one who was born of the Virgin, Emmanuel. It was the Lord himself who saved them, for of themselves they had no power to be saved. For this reason Paul speaks of the weakness of man, and says: I know that no good dwells in my flesh, meaning that the blessing of our salvation comes not from us but from God. Again, he says: I am a wretched man; who will free me from this body doomed to die? Then he speaks of a liberator, thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord. 

 (—from, Second reading, From a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop, Office of Readings, Wednesday)

The sign of our salvation is the rising of light within and without.

This light rises in the darkness. It does not eliminate darkness; it suffuses darkness.

Call this Christ, sunrise, awakened mind, or compassionate caring — we long for the reality.

Of course we differ over the formulation of the words, beliefs, creeds. But not the reality.

It is not of us.

It is given.

Face to face -- we receive, experience, and incarnate the reality.

It is late advent.

tuesday's O antiphon

Ant. O sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free. (Vespers)

primary education

Look at this.

No need to conclude anything.

Just look at this.

It will reveal to you everything you need to know.

monday's O antiphon

Ant. O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation. (Vespers)

not think at all

December 17th, 2018

From dawn to dusk
Spending the day
Gathering clay for my pottery:
Surely Buddha would not
Think this a trifling matter.

- Rengetsu (1791-1875), daily zen 

worry or optimism

Theres much lost to worry about.

So far, the independent judiciary has still not faltered, despite the GOP’s efforts to pack it with unqualified right-wing hacks. The special counsel and the U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York, as well as attorneys general in several states, are systematically investigating and prosecuting those who sold out America to enrich the criminal enterprise surrounding Donald Trump. And the press has begun to dig, dig, dig, especially as it comes to grips with the threat Trump poses to journalists and the First Amendment.  

Democracy will take its country back. After experiencing the corruption, brutality, and amorality of this regime, the people and their duly elected representatives will put in the safeguards to ensure that this nation never faces this kind of perfidy and darkness again. 

(—from, The Russians meddled in our Democracy, but they had All-American Help, by Carol Anderson, HuffPost, 13dec2018)

There’s much remaining to recommend optimism.

the highest standpoint of all comes into view

Sitting four hours with a one year old -- holding him, feeding him, rocking him in cradle, listening to lullabies from iPad, until, finally, he fell asleep, his harsh cough rousing momentarily, then settling back as I continually rocked cradle leaning over, watching his face, hands, Rocky Balboa arms shooting up by him over his head in victory salute, lowering again in slumber.

He shouldn't, they say, have lived this long with such brain deprivation.

The non-separative emptiness of the interrelation.

Emptiness is the teacher.

The traditional East has always held that solutions to practical problems are the only ones that can be worked out through theoretical reasoning at the level of consciousness. True thinking, which is “moral thinking,” i.e. finding answers to fundamental questions, such as the meaning of life, our responsibilities towards others, and so on, is existential thinking, and takes place in the context of particular circumstances, which are my own circumstances, my place in society, the people I know, the country I live in. Obviously, what I can do about the environment or racism, for instance, is not the same, whether I am a social worker, or a farmer, or the Prime Minister, and whether I am in the UK, or the US, or Brazil, or whatever. Reason works out answers by applying an intellectual grid of causes and effects on a representation of the general problem on the field of consciousness. Such representation is an abstraction which more often than not pro- vides an excellent description of the issues, but do not even begin to suggest solutions. Einstein famously said “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” and “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” In real life situations, there are specific problems which we encounter, and a need for a personal response to them: actions we should take and, possibly more often, actions we should refrain from. Critics of Nishitani have alleged that he does not provide a concrete ethical system comparable to what we find in Kant’s philosophy. For Bud- dhists both problems and answers are “contextualised” and, apart from the basic pre- cepts given to beginners, no Buddhist master will ever tell his/her disciples what they should do. Instead he/she shows them how to realise the mode of emptiness where they will find their own answers.  

Emptiness, then, is the teacher. Once fully appropriated, emptiness is experi- enced not only as a state of clarity where you are “enlightened” by all things, but also as a wellspring of goodwill toward all beings. Because Sartre did not extend nothingness to the self, he missed the experience of nothingness as spontaneous altruistic concern which would have transformed his existentialist philosophy into a genuine humanism. In the Buddhist mode of emptiness, I feel compassion toward all beings, I wish them well. It is only when, on the field of consciousness, I (i.e., my representation of myself) feel threatened that I may be resentful of others, and this is a state where no one enjoys dwelling. But when I (which is really non-I at that point) dwell in the mode of emptiness, I experience an all-embracing loving kindness and an unconditional wish to do what is good for others. I treat them with re- spect and reverence, not because they have “rights,” but because this is what I spontaneously want to do. “In religious Love or Compassion, the highest standpoint of all comes into view.” (Ibid, 281) 

(--from, THE FIELD OF EMPTINESS AS THE FIELD OF THE GREAT AFFIRMATION, The Kyoto School of Philosophy, Nick Bea)

It is that view, the one of love or compassion, the lullabies of embrace, that plunges us into the Great Affirmation -- this, this, is our body.

This, this, is 

What Is, Real!

Resplended resonance of Christmas lyric -- "What Child Is This?"