saturday sitting sessihin solitary touching heart mind

We sat and breathed together four hours

Meditation retreat in hospice room

Walking meditation, silent chanting

Fingering beads, spine straight,

Looking at my life his life my life

Our life, her life, my missing the point

Bowing, touching hand, wishing well

And yes all will be just as well is

Saying goodnight to nurse telling

Woman just died as we each will

writing poem for poetry, tea, and thee

Old song, old test

I’d say, forgiving

The way she laughed 

About the chocolate chip

Cookie she’d just eaten

Or when I said I’d gained

Some weight, she looked

At me with cheerful disregard

Saying we don’t have to change that.

If I could keep her laughing

Everything would be alright

Checking boxes, no, nothing’s

Changed, I’m fine, thank you

Now that four years ago

I no longer have blond hair

We walk to end of counter

Can I read, with glasses, top line

V h t w (hesitate) p a

Another slide: q k s o g

Good, she says, returning to 

Our spot, # 132 above us

She used to walk 8 miles a day

When I tell her I walk 2. She’d 

Donated an organ to her son.

The walking was necessary.

I said good for both of them

As we went again to corner booth

She looked at me, looked at screen

Said this was you in 2011, want to

Leave that picture? Her colleague

Waiting behind her looked at me

Looked at screen, shook her head

When I said I didn’t look much different

We all smiled at one another. 

There was nothing left to say

It was just one of those things

I’ll get by as long as I have you

wfh/

19july19

broken shells on ground, skitterish birds, red squirrels, chipmunks

“The price of human suffering is very very high. I don't know what we're going to do." (hospice nurse, from, Stopping for Death, The Nurses of Wells Hospice, documentary, Kanopy)

nothing to say

one of those lookups

yesterday their anniversary

he holds a coffee cup

sharing prefix/suffix brook

evil

Here’s what Wikipedia says of evil:

One of the five paintings of Extermination of Evil portrays Sendan Kendatsuba, one of the eight guardians of Buddhist law, banishing evil.

Evil, in a general sense, is the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, though in everyday usage is often used more narrowly to denote profound wickedness. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal.^[1]

Evil can denote profound immorality,^[2] but typically not without some basis in the understanding of the human condition, where strife and suffering (cf. Hinduism) are the true roots of evil. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force.^[2] Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives.^[3] Elements that are commonly associated with personal forms of evil involve unbalanced behavior involving anger, revenge, fear, hatred, psychological trauma, expediency, selfishness, ignorance, destruction or neglect.^[4]

Evil is sometimes perceived as the dualistic antagonistic binary opposite to good,^[5] in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated.^[6] In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Nirvana.^[6] The philosophical questions regarding good and evil are subsumed into three major areas of study:^[7] Meta-ethics concerning the nature of good and evil, Normative ethics concerning how we ought to behave, and Applied ethics concerning particular moral issues. While the term is applied to events and conditions without agency, the forms of evil addressed in this article presume an evildoer or doers.

Some religions and philosophies deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people.

Etymology

The modern English word evil (Old English yfel) and its cognates such as the German Übel and Dutcheuvel are widely considered to come from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of *ubilaz, comparable to the Hittite huwapp- ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form *wap- and suffixed zero-grade form *up-elo-. Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel, ifel, ufel, Old Frisian evel(adjective and noun), Old Saxon ubil, Old High German ubil, and Gothic ubils.

The root meaning of the word is of obscure origin though shown^[8] to be akin to modern German Das Übel (although evil is normally translated as Das Böse) with the basic idea of transgressing.^[9

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil

Follow the link for a much more comprehensive treatment of evil in Wikipedia.

learn, face to face, something true and loving

Remembering Eric Garner. (d. 17july2014)
Remembering Freddie Gray.
Remembering Michael Brown.
Remembering Sandra Bland.
Remembering Tamir Rice.
Remembering Philando Castile.
Remembering Samuel DuBose.
Remembering Terence Crutcher.
Remembering Sylville K. Smith.
Remembering Walter Scott
And all those I can't remember or don't know.

Kevin: Oh, I don't want to do it. I'm a very emotional person when it comes, like, stuff like this. And crying is, like, hard not to do. 

Dave: Well, somebody got to cry for us all, you know. 

Kevin: Yeah, man. I think that's what I do a lot of the time. 

Dave: You crying for everybody? 

Kevin: I think I cry for, you know, everybody. Yeah. 

Dave: Thank you.

(from documentary, Copwatch, directed by Camilla Hall, 2017, on Kanopy) 

We note and have gratitude for:

Ramsey Orta
Kevin Moore
David Whitt
Jacob Crawford

We start out not even looking at one another. Then we watch one another. Soon, we fervently trust, we will see one another -- and learn, face to face, something true and loving.

...   ...   ...

(For background, cf Fearing For His Life, The Cost of Recording Police Brutality in The Verge, 13mar2019, by Chloé Cooper Jones) 

is, indeed, wrong

For many of us, outrage and incomprehension have run their course with this president. 

A new calculus emerges. Perhaps all that Trump says is wrong with America is, indeed, wrong.

Just because the messenger is thoroughly distasteful and reprehensible it doesn't mean that the message isn't true.

Trump is possibly right -- America is a dark and hateful place.

That, and the need to mistrust every agency currently operating in the government, along with the need to give credence only to proprietary corporate interests, becomes a dizzying and depressing prospect.

Thank God, some say,  Trump has arrived!

s l i p

Sitting silence, no one is saying anything. 

In this silence, all are gathered listening as presence with one another. 

We are between one another. 

An inter-presence. 

Can you feel it?

Silent listening inter-presence.

Yes?

Yes!

Unless you are the president of the United States.

Then "no" is the operative word.

No Blacks. No Puerto Ricans. No Palestinians. No Somalis.

Only white men.

Women, some women, are ok as long as they compliment white men.

It is 2019. The president tells four women to go back to the countries they came from.

Go back to Massachusetts. Go back to Michigan. Go back to Minnesota. Go back to New York City.

He doesn't mean country. He means go back to wherever it is that people of color, that women of color should hide themselves and not interfere with their white betters; those who bet that fear of difference will motivate votes for the man in the White House; those who delude themselves that because of their white skin color they are better than others.

Something has broken right in front of our eyes.

Is broken.

Its time to sweep up the broken pieces and place them in the dustbin.

Take then to the dump.

And drive out of that place of refuse, take a left turn, and return too affirmation.

Accepting what is coming to be.

A community of people attempting to become human.

Face to face.

Attending.

Silent listening inter-presence.

Grüß Gott...

some think it is an eternal battle

Yes, racist, misogynist, and cynical, he is that.

But that's not what will bring him down. What will finally toss him on the heap of disgrace is his failure to love the people he serves, failure to love his wider family, failure to love anything but his own mirror image and narrow understanding of his self.

Not only is he not great, his idea of America is small and pinched.

While his Christian backers have abandoned their original Christ for a pusillanimous president antithetical to all Christ-taught values, we are exhausted by the cynical efforts to raise Trump to the status of untouchable sovereign embodying the opposite of love.

Some think it is an eternal battle, exemplified and being waged in our time. 

Will love prevail over hate? Will unifying good find its way through divisive evil? Will the heart of America heal and rebound from the attack it is suffering? 

you don't say

Ordinary mind is the Buddha.

Zen is the everyday.

Is that why there are so few zen buddhists?