sitting alone together

Sitting with dying woman tonight, breathing for three hours at angle to bed, I visited all the dead who’ve passed through my life.

I thanked her at end for her life and the gift of recollection in her midst.

There were many visitors in our solitude and silence.

We parted good company.

Two dying creatures breathing together on a Saturday evening.

எந்த அர்த்தமும் இல்லை, பெயரும் இல்லை

 No meaning, no name* 

             (Kathy’s Song)

Update, update, update

Update

Update update update

You send so many interesting words

I will never go to India. I don’t have to.

You go there. You go there. You go there.

You are there. 

You were there. You were there. You were there.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence

A time of consequences 

Old friends

Always arriving

Where they are

….  ….  …

* எந்த அர்த்தமும் இல்லை, பெயரும் இல்லை

                Enta arttamum illai, peyarum illai.

allusion, need, sangfroid

Tell me, O Muse, about the news
That flows like raging river

Sing of arms and the man
The one doing all he can

To be Shiva the destroyer —
Ah, poor, you’re yuck, the bones

And sucking mud underfoot, as you
Traipse a bloody landscape,

Destroyers know success by deaths,
Crushed limbs under blasted rubble —

Muffled final breaths of innocent children,
Horror visited by vengeful slobs

Our eyes cannot take more of ignorance
Pity, pity, pity — the gaze so pitious

Looks on death passing by
Not pausing, not stopping —

O Adonai, Adonai —
Et tu, et tu? standing near, au voir 

winter weekend

Small children arrive

Sleepy eyed, parents

Carry in — safely here

ας είναι, (so be it)

So many worry that the president unabashedly does anything he wants, legal or illegal. 

I tell you, do not fret. 

We live in a country of laws. 

The House, Senate, and Court System will keep him well within the bounds of lawlessness. 

We should be grateful for them. 

They protect us.

what you are looking at

In prison this morning, looking at breath.

Soul as the coming and going of breath.

How do we claim “my soul”?

Our bodies are particular places of exchange.

Breath in, breath out.

Body and breath, body and soul, exchange and transfer.

“Soul” is the whole of atmospheric existence visiting and leaving, entering and departing, this place we call “me”.

The question is asked: “How is it with your soul?”

Before answering, look around. Do not stop looking.

What you see, what you are looking at, is how it is with your soul.

What do you see? Who is looking? What is reflecting back?

This is how it is with your soul.

This is how you are.

This is who you are.

How are you?

which way virtue

Donald Trump will be with us until he isn’t.

Until then, he is the president.

We owe it to him to treat him as such.

Even though he might decry and decline being treated with respect and reasonable expectation of dignity, civility, and mature leadership.

We show virtue this way.

existence is life itself, לחיים

Nothing is not the opposite of something. It is not where something goes when it ceases to be.

Nothing is that upon which something resides. Nothing is to something what is is to not.

As is my life upon that which does not exist. Non-existence is not the opposite of life. It is that from which life emerges and to which life returns.

Life is not the opposite of death. Birth is the opposite of death. Life has no opposite. It emerges from nothing and returns to it.

Life is nothing come about. Nothing is life latent. When we say God is nothing we are not negating God.

When we say I will die, we are not negating life. Life is death gone through. Everyone dies.

We do not see someone after they die because that someone is no longer someone.

They become life itself. Before death they lived a life. After death they no longer live a life, they become life itself.

Where do you look for someone who has died? Become dedicated to creation. Engage what is.

Anything in existence is life itself.  Look at the stone. Look at the tree. Look at the star.

Look there.

Here

I

am.

Look here. Do not cling to form as it was known. Do not cling to what you have known.

In the breeze. In the sneeze. In the barking dog. In the greeting kiss. In the parting hug.

Nothing to it.

Nothing at all.

לחיים

L'chayim!

To life!

السيد المسيح ، ارحم

Yelling at each other, democrat candidates roll frenzied dice in Nevada.

Mocking everybody, republican president struts impervious arrogance in Arizona.

In their homes, Americans are, alternately, amused and bemused.

Entertainment as denigration.

This is how we are today?

In his mountain hermitage in Egyptian desert the Orthodox eremite continuously prays for mercy and compassion.

He holds the world together.

He knows how Satan works to slash and sever, adding cruelty to anguish, prodding human discourse into vengeful, hurtful, malicious cynicism.

The monk prays:

السيد المسيح ، ارحم

alsyd almasih , 'arham

Lord Jesus, Christ, have mercy! 

How long can his prayer hold light in encroaching darkness?

foolishness

Stars and galaxies

So many —

What are we doing here?

flectamus genua

If I pray, Trump is holy.

If I do not pray, Trump is me.

If I am to be what is not yet here,
I must watch in silence what is right now here.

Holy Father Trump, teach us well!

Great Infidel Trump, show us what not to be.

Angel of compassion, slap us upside the head.

Angel of death, wait outside a little longer.

Holy Mother, allow us to mother, and be mothered by, this earth.

tramp, mendicant, eucharist, ordinário

Merton reminds of an antidote.

It’s right there in front of me. A way through the fatuous and over-stuffed life-style and rhetoric of our current dyspeptic gorgon monopolizing all attention.

A glance to the side where insignificance bows in reverential simplicity.

But the Franciscans, or at least St. Francis, reduced it to its logical limits, and at the same time invested it with a kind of simple thirteenth century lyricism which made it doubly attractive to me. 

However, the lyricism must be carefully distinguished from the real substance of the Franciscan vocation, which is that tremendous and heroic poverty, poverty of body and spirit which makes the Friar literally a tramp. For, after all, “mendicant” is only a fancy word for tramp, and if a Franciscan cannot be a tramp in this full and complete and total mystical sense, he is bound to be a little unhappy and dissatisfied. As soon as he acquires a lot of special articles for his use and comfort and becomes sedate and respectable and spiritually sedentary he will, no doubt, have an easy and pleasant time, but there will be always gnawing in his heart the nostalgia for that uncompromising destitution which alone can give him joy because it flings him headlong into the arms of God.

Without poverty, Franciscan lyricism sounds tinny and sentimental and raw and false. Its tone is sour, and all its harmonies are somewhat strained. 

(—Excerpt from: "The Seven Storey Mountain" by Thomas Merton, Part Three, One, Magnetic North)

 We are not worthy. We are worthy. We are not yet worthy. We are simply, originally and unendingly worthy.

With crumpled New York Times, can of grub, piece of bread, visage of delighted acceptance — as if at prayer — the moment of appreciation, a posture of the grateful beyond.

Worthiness without ownership, self without absorption, presence without preference.

A eucharist of silent everyday creation!

Ordinário....

La celebración.

third noble truth

No need to worry about the election.

Whoever wins will be president.

And morning will have coffee, evening will turn out lights, we will sleep and then morning will come again.

Forgive yourself and carry on.

Good God, lighten up our dear citizens!

The undesirable will drop away.

health tutorial with humor

John Oliver on Medicare for all.

and there they remain

I left my hiking sticks in Skowhegan. In a Walmart parking lot. After encircling the enormous footprint of the buildings of two large box stores.

They we’re leaning against the rear flank on the car by gas filler lid diagonal to front driver’s seat as I loaded the border collie into the back, settled him into crate with treats, went over to the other side to stow coat and hat and earphones and gloves behind drivers seat. The phone buzzed message that the audit was done and I am seven minutes away from the hospital. I would quickly close the hatch door, slide into front seat, get ready for the perseverating barking that accompanies every initial engine start and beginning acceleration.

Backed up. Straightened out. Shift into drive. Went off. Left them sliding (no doubt) to ground there next to fairgrounds by mounds of plowed snow on a sunny day.

Listening to Ram Das book on the Bhagavad Gita at next audit, ready for next walk, looking in back seat for sticks before letting dog out. Nothing. Alpert is talking about detachment. I am thinking about senility. The dog is barking at trees.

We go on.

No longer hiking.

Just walking.

Stickless.

May they find good hands with unhurting feet for their next incarnation!

έώρακεν (lasting effect), stir the sleepy dawn

Morning comes in Maine. No bombs. No rubble. No watching sky for machines of death dropping death and destruction on anything below.

Then, there’s Aleppo and Idlib.

Regime forces always do that. They would target a location with air raids and when people come to help any survivors, they would target the place again several minutes later. And a third time as well. 

Our house had been targeted repeatedly throughout the entire revolution, but with the help of my brothers we had always managed to fix it. The last time it was targeted it was destroyed completely, as was my house. 

Now, I have no plans for the future. We live day by day, here. I cannot even think of tomorrow. Just today another battle started a few hours ago, with non-stop air raids and artillery shelling, injuries constantly coming to the hospital in the city of Idlib, where I now work. 

My worst fear is for the future of Syria. Syria is turning into the worst possible thing a state can be: A failed state plus a dictatorship, combined under occupation. It cannot get any more evil than that.

 (from, A doctor in Idlib: 'It cannot get more evil than this' — by, Zakaria Zakaria, 13feb20)

Russia, Iran, Turkey, United States, the rest of the world — uncaring and cruel in active or passive stance to what occurs in Syria.

I call for immediate halt to bombings and killings.

My heart is ready, O Lord, my heart is ready!

Would that word alone would bring about or end what is done in the world.

This Monday in Maine.

to my rowing friend

We honor what is invisibly still with and within us!

We honor
What is
Invisibly

Still

With and
Within
Us

Visiting the place our departed dear one has visited.

Oarstroke by oarstroke.

a koan for our time

She wanted to know. She asked where her friend’s soul went after her death last night. We sat in the grand room of the Sussman House, an end of life hospice house. She volunteered. Me too. It was Saturday night. Our weekly talk. I sipped chicken broth. She held blue protective gloves in right hand. She’d been cleaning up the kitchen area.

Nowhere, I said.

She winced. I don’t believe that, she said.

We smiled the recognition of two tobogganners settling into the chute just before the drop down lever is pushed forward.

There’s no other place. There’s only this upon this upon this, all the way down and in, realm within realm, breath within breath, berth alongside berth, birth after birth, life as itself surrounding itself.

Leaving the body is only leaving the body. Body is where the appearance of life, particular life, manifests itself as distinctive expression, distinctive movement.

What we call death is the letting go of seeming separation.

Where does her friend go? Let’s say she enters the inseparate. What seemed to be apart is no longer apart.

Returning to the whole of what is without distinction or special notice, her friend enters what is here.

What is here is no where. Or, nowhere. Only here.

Can we hear what is not apparent as a separate presence?

Maybe what we call faith is surrendered attention to what is not yet fully present in and as our midst.

What is amidst is what is itself.

It is the realization of no-other in the midst of uncountable seeming others.

What do we hear in that gaze we give looking? Just the gaze? Just the looking?

...here

...now

...this!

Faith comes from hearing. Hearing, from listening. Listening, from silence. Silence, from presence. Presence, from nowhere else.

If we cease attempting to put someone someplace as something, what remains?

Nothing. Not the nothing of despairing failure we enact in our striving to accomplish something.

But the no-thing surrounding and surrendering the falling away of the thought we grasp at that “there” is what we want, need, and strive toward.

Here

Is

What Is.

There is no opposite to here — except in our belief that there is.

A koan for our time.