Saturday, March 09, 2019

extra-diction

Face to face.
12  For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Version (KJV) 
I am known. 

Friday, March 08, 2019

no I but we

In prison today, we talk about the Shema, about the binary disease of judge/victim, about selfishness/altruism, about empire and secluding/excluding, and about Andy Weir's story The Egg

In final circle the suggestion that one summary of the conversation could be:
"No I, but we."
At evening conversation, the realization that mystics merely see -- no subject, no object.

Seeing.

With nothing to be seen. 

Thursday, March 07, 2019

by which we see

Is it possible that night approaches? Not just the lee side of the 24 hour clock, but the more expansive night, when good and light are overshadowed by the not-good and pervasive dark?
What work is impossible to do in the 'night'? Jesus stated that
night is coming, when no one can work. (John 9:4, ESV
The immediate context is that Jesus is healing a blind person. The first clause of the sentence is:
We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day
The person who sent Jesus was God the Father. In John 6:29 it records Jesus saying:
“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (ESV)
Which suggests that believing in God is ruled out, once the 'night' comes. However, in Luke 18:8 Jesus asks if the he will find faith on the earth when he comes. Which at least leaves the possibility of belief even when it is 'night'. 
What type of work is impossible in the 'night'? Does such impossibility preclude God's own action, such as in the impossible case of reconciling a sinner (Mark 10:27).

(--from Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange)

"Sin" is not the proprietary preoccupation and possession of religions and their spokesmen. "Sin" is the dissembling and deterioration of decency and decorum with the overt or mindless intent of harm and ill upon another or others. 

Once we emphasized offense against God.

Then we began to realize who God is, where God resides, and what is part of God.

Let's concede there is darkness within each of us.

Then let's turn attention to the light which shines through darkness.

By which we see. 

calvary, white house version

forgive us
Father

we know

what he
is

doing

Wednesday, March 06, 2019

indications

snow tracks, deer on deck

chewing yew tree --

as missing cat, banging door

holds out hope

flame cools making ash

Ash does not touch forehead

Icicles hang from roof

Time for repetition, hence

No ash but in wood stove

No flame sleeps dreams

Remembrance 

vivre dans la solitude ensemble

The Benedictine Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, for those so inclined, offers online office Gregorian chants that can be retrieved at leisure. In Latin, recorded live, tower bells, with footsteps entering and leaving, coughs and nose-blowing, bumps against wooden stalls, and a practice of markedly reverently slowing the ending Gloria Patri of each psalm.

As though there.

Throughout day and night.
Écoutez nos offices en direct  
« Il n’y a qu'un problème, un seul de par le monde : rendre aux hommes une signification spirituelle. Faire pleuvoir sur eux quelque chose qui ressemble à un chant grégorien. »  -- Saint-Exupéry.                     
For a hermitage 
at foot of Maine mountain,
a wonderful sound --
vivre dans la solitude ensemble 

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

streets

Finish David Frum's Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, (2018). It's where democracy has gone. It has turned down a shadowy alley. 

And Pete Hamill's Downtown: My Manhattan (2004). A poetic descriptive of places I've walked and watched. Hamill charms with his prose and memory. 

Reading transports.

Monday, March 04, 2019

the simplicity of the method.

If there is anything to say,
say it --

otherwise,
be silent:

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. 

When they're full, they worry about hunger. 
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. 

But sages don't consider the past. 

And they don't worry about the future. 
Nor do they cling to the present. 
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
--Bodhidharma



There are thousands upon thousands of students 

who have practised meditation and obtained its fruits. 
Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. 
If you can not find the truth right where you are, 
where else do you expect to find it? 

--Dogen

If there is anything
at all --

what
a miracle!

Sunday, March 03, 2019

we long to become, human-kind.

As a (m.o.n.o.) = (monastic of no other) I also acknowledge my Franciscan roots.

Perhaps I could add a  (f.o.n.a.)  = (Franciscan of no affiliation) to the alphabet soup following my nominal anonymous hiding (n.a.h).

Or, maybe, after the Italian academic distinction I humbly wear, (D. NeN) (dottore nulla e niente) = doctor of nothing and nil),

I might add (MU) = mostly unhere. Further descriptives of MU are found in wikipedia::
Some English translation equivalents of  or mu 無 are:
  • "no", "not", "nothing", or "without"[2]
  • nothing, not, nothingness, un-, is not, has not, not any[3]
  • [1] Nonexistence; nonbeing; not having; a lack of, without. [2] A negative. [3] Caused to be nonexistent. [4] Impossible; lacking reason or cause. [5] Pure human awareness, prior to experience or knowledge. This meaning is used especially by the Chan school. [6] The 'original nonbeing' from which being is produced in the Daode jing.[4]
 Words are both fascinating and frivolous. Acronyms are growing like metaphors in a field of corroding jargon, withering facts, and incommunicable utterance. We are left with mere letters, like vanity license plates on passing cars, a puzzling exercise decrypting semaphore and smoke signal during a time of diminishing communication and nonsense babbling.

Word that drops from language like petals from flower -- kotoba 言葉 -- word itself.

Or, extrapolated into our Western iconography, Itself emerging through breath as word into matter becoming what we long to become, human-kind.

glimpse

Morning arrives

Waking soon light through darkness --

After skim snow covers night