No God, no matter.
If so, this is not-
being written.
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Friday, June 26, 2020
by way of
I asked God
what's new?
God said
I am through.
With what,
I asked?
I am through,
God said again --
it's my name,
my name is
"through."
Thursday, June 25, 2020
a very different and ultimately dangerous world
Where do you live?
Are you a liar? Or are you a truth-teller? And what do you hear? Are you listening?
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. (-H.L Mencken)
I live somewhere that is a good shelter. I am not homeless in the current understanding of homelessness. There are many who suffer that difficulty.
The attempt to tell and dwell in truth is a curious effort. So, one prays. To whom one prays, or for what, is also a curiosity.
To pray is to build your own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within your house. To pray is to recognize that it is not your house at all. To keep praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is everybody’s home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different and ultimately dangerous world, It is a world that makes the merely physical world seem anemic, illusory, and relative. The word "real" takes on a new meaning, and we find ourselves judging with utterly new scales, weights, and standards. Be careful of such house-builders, for their loyalties will lie in very different directions. They will be very different kinds of citizens, and the state will not so easily depend on their salute. That is the politics of prayer. And that is probably why truly spiritual people are always a threat to politicians of any sort. They want our allegiance, and we can no longer give it, our house is too big.
(p.4, What the Mystics Know, by Richard Rohr, c. 2015)
What was once a moral/ethical conundrum -- how to behave vis-a-vis the good -- has become a more crass street consideration practiced even in the highest eschelons of corporations, institutions, or governments -- namely, how to get away with illegal acts or dastardly deeds no matter how wrong they are and how much harm they cause.
We no longer might be a "faithful" nation. Sure, there are a plethora of churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques. There are many "believers." There's a difference.
We are no longer living in an agnostic or atheistic culture. Something else is occurring.
Ana-theistic inquiry arises to reside alongside theism and atheism.
Has the passing of the old God paved the way for a new kind of religious project, a more responsible way to seek, sound, and love the things we call divine? Has the suspension of dogmatic certainties and presumptions opened a space in which we can encounter religious wonder anew? Situated at the split between theism and atheism, we now have the opportunity to respond in deeper, freer ways to things we cannot fathom or prove.
Distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney calls this condition ana-theos, or God after God-a moment of creative "not knowing" that signifies a break with former sureties and invites us to forge new meanings from the most ancient of wisdoms. Anatheism refers to an inaugural event that lies at the heart of every great religion, a wager between hospitality and hostility to the stranger, the other—the sense of something "more." By analyzing the roots of our own anatheistic moment, Kearney shows not only how a return to God is possible for those who seek it but also how a more liberating faith can be born.
Kearney begins by locating a turn toward sacred secularity in contemporary philosophy, focusing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. He then marks "epiphanies" in the modernist masterpieces of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Kearney concludes with a discussion of the role of theism and atheism in conflict and peace, confronting the distinction between sacramental and sacrificial belief or the God who gives life and the God who takes it away. Accepting that we can never be sure about God, he argues, is the only way to rediscover a hidden holiness in life and to reclaim an everyday divinity.
(--Columbia University Press, re. Anatheism, Returning to God After God, by Richard Kearney, c.2009)
We watched the series City on a Hill. The antiphonal immorality of both the bad guys and the good guys sent us into a reflection about the carryings-on in Washington DC federal administration and congress, yielding a sobering but equanimous observation that criminal acts and injustice on both sides are to be expected, self-serving cover-ups and blatant arrogance of being superior to any rules or oversight is
the new daily bread.
According to the moral standards most of us accept and live by, morality generally permits us to refrain from promoting the good of others and instead engage in non-harmful projects of our own choice.1 This aspect of so called "ordinary morality" has turned out to be very difficult to justify. Recently, though, various authors, including Bernard Williams and Samuel Scheffler, have proposed moral theories that would vindicate this aspect of ordinary morality, at least in part.2 Those theories are Integrity Theories. They are generated by treating as a default some moral theory, like consequentialism, that demands. that we do a great deal of good. The theory is then modified so as to make room for individuals to pursue the projects they value most deeply, and perhaps their trivial inter ests as well-i.e., so as to respect individual integrity. The result is (allegedly) a theory that contains agent-centered prerogatives to pursue one's projects and interests rather than the agent-neutral good.
Thus described, Integrity Theories don't fully vindicate every aspect ordinary morality; in fact, they don't even vindicate every ordinary aspect of agent-centered prerogatives. Those prerogatives, as ordinary conceived, are not only prerogatives to pursue our projects and interests, but other non-harmful courses of action as well-e.g., lazing on the couch and doing nothing. Still, Integrity Theories can take us a certain distance toward a vindication of ordinary morality by explaining why we can pursue our own projects and interests rather than the greater good.
(-- Rajczi, Alex. “Integrity and Ordinary Morality.” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, 2007, pp. 15–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20464351. Accessed 25 June 2020.)
We are being left to our own dwelling places, relative and absolute.
We are becoming spiritually homeless wanderers along an unrecognizable path in a foreign land.
Looking around, listening to voices from near and far, it is clear there are very few icons and whisperers worthy of attention and devotion.
We are on our own.
Strangers in a strange land.
Where do you live?
Where do we live?
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
observant care, where no-one else is
What is always new is unchanging.
In the same way is death resurrection. Not two events. One. Over and over.
Hymn
Lord God and Maker of all things,
Creation is upheld by you.
While all must change and know decay,
You are unchanging, always new.
Stanbrook Abbey Hymnal, (—from hymn, sext, Monday, 22june2020)
Each of us is form and emptiness. Emptinesss inside, emptiness outside. Between inside and outside, the form both containing and separating inside from outside.
When our form breaks and dies, the inside is the outside, outside is the inside.
Where do “we” go? Nowhere!
This new reality is unchanging. It is always a new reality. The more a thing changes the more it becomes itself.
The “itself” is what is, and only what is. Whatever is not itself is illusion.
Is this unchanging new the actual process of God? What God is? Not some anthropomorphic being deciding whether to parcel out reward or punishment, demanding fealty and adulation, the great surveillance camera in the sky.
But, rather, God is unchanging always new unmoving movement through and through. That which is barrier-less emptiness, boundary-less open space within which we, in uninterrupted manifesting appearance, live and breathe and have our being.
This is it. And this. And this. And this.
It is said we long for God. Of course we do. Why? Because there is nothing else. And no-one wants what is not, because if we got what is not we would not be, not actually, not really. What is not is not who or what we are.
We say we want God.
We want what is. We want what is without the false and illusory facsimile that masquerades and beckons us out of the sanity of revealing stillness moving silently within itself throughout.
It is good.
No matter what happens. At core, at observant care, we feel, we know, it is good, it is all good.
You are already there.
Be where you are, as you are, becoming.
Love...
God
Where no-one else is.
Monday, June 22, 2020
frightening presence
When my father died
The feared intruder entered the house
I was never sure about this entrance
Now I think it was the illusory belief
Someone had died — the frightening presence
No separation, merely open space that all is.
Belief has lingered a long time and is a long
Time gone.
Intrusion vacated. Alone unfearing peace
This anniversary
no reaching for metaphor
It sure smells
Dead animal in wall
Attorney General and SDNY
Decomposition from inside
Sunday, June 21, 2020
breakthrough
I know God's name
God's name is
"through"
God lives in
open space
There, I've said it --
Now are you
through with me
thanks dad
my father moved through dooms of love
by E. E. Cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots
and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.
Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin
joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice
keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.
Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain
septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is
proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark
his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.
My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am
though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath
and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all.
light comes up
Buddha is in stillness
Christ in silence
You and I between these two
As one, alone, can be
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