numberless reality

One

Two

Three

Two

One

north

Yes!

us you near

Birthday Haiku 

            (for Saskia)

Earth knows when spring comes

Flowers break through edge of soil

Feeding beauty light

          /12june19

Thank you for your light to all of us you near!

With love,

R+P+C+B

may be enlightened

A professional basketball player hurts his leg. Commentators speculate how it will affect a four year 140 million contract.

A friend has been given three months to live. Over rhubarb pie and water he tells us the story of his life. His wife looks tired and sad.

Monks in France chant Lauds this feast of Barnabas.

It rains.

Everything matters.

Consequently, that brilliant lamp which was lit for the sake of our salvation should always shine in us. For we have the lamp of the heavenly commandment and spiritual grace, to which David referred: Your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Solomon also says this about it: For the command of the law is a lamp. 

Therefore, we must not hide this lamp of law and faith. Rather, we must set it up in the Church, as on a lamp-stand, for the salvation of many, so that we may enjoy the light of truth itself and all believers may be enlightened. 

Second reading, (From a treatise on the Gospel of Saint Matthew by Saint Chromatius, bishop. Office of Readings, Feast of St Barnabas, Apostle)

Nothing -- the place where no separate thing can be -- attends the light of truth itself.

In this solitude resides the sound of earth transforming itself.

As once and forever, what we call the incarnation, is transforming itself in never ceasing manifestation.

If itself is now what we've called God, let each being become itself by being nothing other than what is emerging through this creation.

Such is

the law, the dharma

a lamp guiding

through darkness

אֶשְׁכָּר — gift, present

If you are sitting by window, light breeze mixed with tire sound, bird song, beep from answering machine, breathing dog on rug with scattered seed husks from under feeder, weightless thought with eyesight scanning room, book titles that sit and wait for dust to be brushed off.

There is an unhurried inevitability. 

I am a visitor here.

There is no place I call my own other than reverie without purpose.

Japan and Argentina are nil-nil at end of women’s World Cup match. Auburn scores 13 runs in first inning over Carolina in college baseball. Judiciary committee gavels hearing into mueller report. Helicopter crashes into 7th Avenue Manhattan.

On hospice Saturday night I sit with woman who, at end of string of breath, does not drop it as cna’s moisten mouth and model hand washing leaving room.

Like the confluence of great rivers, our lives are a series of different moments, joining together to give the im- pression of one continuous flow. We move from cause to effect, event to event, one point to another, one state of existence to another—which gives an outward impression that our lives are one continuous and unified movement. In reality, they are not. The river of yes- terday is not the same as the river of today. It is like the sages say: “We can’t step into the same river twice.” 

Each moment is born and dies. And in a very real way, we are born and die with it. There is a beauty to all this impermanence. In Japan, people cele- brate the brief but abundant blooming   .of the cherry blossoms each spring. In Idaho, outside the cabin where I teach, blue flax flowers live for a single day. Why do such flowers appear so much more magnificent than plastic ones? The fragility, the brevity, and the uncertainty of their lives captivate us, invite us into beauty, wonder, and gratitude.
[...]
(Excerpt from: "The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully" by Frank Ostaseski)

It is Monday. Passing thought of trip to Canada has passed and gone. No desire to go anywhere. Put differently, where I am is enough. The stillness of every movement. The curious emptiness of any intention. Buddha on wood zabuton. Christ on bronze cross. Green on everything growing across mountain.

I am born and die in this quiet and radical revelation of ordinary reality.

Bicycle wizzes down barnestown road. 

If someone were to ask what to do in the face of sorrow, anger, or frustration — say, in the face of death and accompanying turmoil with family difficulties — I would not be much help. 

Daniel Berrigan, in Consequences, Truth And... wrote these words: “the point at which one can do nothing — the point of truth.”

I feel near that point.

Moreover, it feels like אֶשְׁכָּר (eshkar) — gift, present.

As if — the gift is present, the present is gift.

What we are...

For and with —

One another.

sunflower seed casings on back

Clink clink clink clink clink

Spoon against metal bowl —

Morning food for border collie 

manifesting what is interconnecting

When we say "Come Holy Spirit" we invite something unseen but in its being experienced.

In this being experienced, what we call the Holy Spirit is the unexplainable cooperative interrelationality that appears between one and the other in the moment of felt need and realized connection.

In essence, it is that which allows us to feel our being in the presence of other beings, a feeling relationality of well-being and gratitude in the midst of whatever is happening -- a trust that all is well and all shall be well.

It is hidden undifferentiated suchness coming to be where once we thought emptiness was impossible.

Here, today, emptiness reveals our true nature as one-another.

This, from introduction to todays feast from DivineOffice.org:

Last Sunday of the Easter Season, Pentecost, Solemnity 

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together…” [1]Acts 2:1-6 

Pentecost Sunday is one of the principal celebrations in the liturgical life of the Church. It marks the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the end of Eastertide, and it falls 50 days after the Resurrection of Our Lord. 

In ancient Jewish tradition, Pentecost was ‘the feast of weeks’ where Israelites offered ‘first fruits’ to God in thanksgiving of the full harvest which was to come. Also traditionally, Jewish Pentecost came to honor the day Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai. On that day, God spoke to His chosen race through Moses with thunder, lightning and trumpet blasts, guiding his people with the Law of the Ten Commandments. [2][3] 

Christian Pentecost, with the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, builds on the Old Law but brings new meaning to it. In this Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is trumpeted and the New Law is Great News; Christ has been crowned in Heaven and he desires for us to join Him. He gives us the birth of the Church and shows us how to be united in faith. Modeling Jesus Christ and aligning with God’s Spirit produces in us rich fruits including; “…charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity.” In these twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit, we are shown how to live in union with God and with our brothers and sisters. [4][5][6] 

Written by Sarah Ciotti. https://divineoffice.org, 

 Let's get more fruits into our typical diet!

not going beyond

Looking into mirror
The narcissist
Seeing only himself

Is surprised
Mirror no longer
Shows anything

Outside itself

For narcissist
Reflection is lost
In flat surface

Forgetting
We are only what
Present abounds

Not fixed nor final