What if creation were incarnation?
Hypostasis of before and beyond.
The union of divinity, humanity, and cosmos.
One thing.
What if it came about by and of itself?
Virgin.
Parthenogenic.
And we are the mythology of christogenesis.
Unitive regenerative love.
Would you think it worth your while to be what you are for the moment experiencing everything as itself being itself?
I would think
So.
As a child I was astounded there was news on the tv my father watched on Christmas night.
Today I am amazed there is Christmas amid all the news filling airways tonight.
That divinity is fully incarnated in humanity is an act of faith that only a mystic in dark direct unknowing experience could affirm.
It rains.
This day gives way.
It is worth following.
Yes!
The Christ-child is
Born
In you
To you —
For heaven’s sake —
Listen to his cries
Attend and celebrate —
Become what Christ is
Here and
Now
As it is
Within
(This
Christic Trinity)
Oneself, Yourself, Itself
Christ will be born to us.
"You don't believe in God," he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully. He fancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. "How does your poem end?" he asked, suddenly looking down. "Or was it the end?"
"I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come no more... come not at all, never, never!' And he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away."
"And the old man?"
"The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea."
(—from: THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. By Fydor Dostoevsky and translated by Constance Garnett. 1879)
But not until he is released from prison.
Our terrifying beliefs and ideas about some distant God, pinched morality, and personal privilege.
Let Christ be.
Released.
Everywhere.
By acts of love.
Unveiling truth.
America is surprised its top executive can do anything it wishes without accountability or consequence.
Each American will claim that privilege for themselves.
Forget the coronavirus —
The upcoming devastation will be spectacular.
It is Christmas Eve.
Manger? Bethlehem of mythic lore? Angels and shepherds?
Love your life.
Take small steps across kitchen.
Open fridge.
Breathe one breath at a time.
Of course there are very dodgy people wreaking havoc from their Florida quarters and elected chicanery.
They might even love their families.
The planet turns.
Saturn whisks away from Jupiter.
God hardly notices the foolishness of the vain and arrogant.
A dog barks somewhere down the road.
Through open window, across morning, winter shuffles it’s feet.
Live your own
Life.
Look for what is good.
See what is true.
Time is, they say, an illusion.
It’s still a good Invitatiry antiphon for 24December:
Today you will know the Lord is coming, and in the morning you will see [its] glory.
Try to see it this way.
No, do, see it this way.
There! Blessed be fictionalized yoda and every child and newborn since beginningless beginning to apparently rebegun endless transformation of known universe.
We go on doing what is given us to do.
We go on being what is given us to be.
Do the next thing!
Be the next possibility!
Brew coffee.
(Or tea...if you must.)
Make toast.
Rejoice.
For
Now
Is
What is
Given
Us
What’s a monk for during this time?
As monks, it is our duty and privilege to become attuned to the Lord's continual advent. For if it is true, as we believe, that one day the Lord will return once and for all to gather us all together and bring us home to the Father in the end time, we also know that his coming toward us is a relentless, already-happening reality. And we are meant to be experts-- experts at waiting, attentiveness; experts at emptiness, the emptiness that is constantly clearing a space for him. In Christ Jesus, our Emmanuel, God has made a giant leap towards us. Jesus our Lord is always drawing near. And attentiveness to his presence is the secret we were made for. (—from Abbey Diary, 23dec20, St. Joseph’s Abbey)
I’ll wait here.
To see.
My calendar says I am away on retreat at Trappist monastery today until sunday.
Then came COVID.
Silly thing, isn’t it, believing we are one place when, ipso facto, we are everyplace at once!
Tell me — where are you, really?
Last night two poems at Tuesday Evening Conversation:
1.
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year…..
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning…
(from “Little Gidding” by T.S.Eliot)
2.
"The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath”
(—Chelan Harkin, from her poetry book 'Susceptible to Light’j
Reading poems together is contemporary koan study honoring the premis we are one body living one life in the one verse (universe).
Like singers in a choir, we are brought in, and reserved back, in the performance of breathing beings appearing and disappearing for particular phrases and notes, phases and noticings.
Spirit, ruach, pneuma, prana, breath — this is the foundation of Being — no beginning, no end.
We, each so-called individual, are undulations of understanding, intimations of compassion, arising and falling, into and out of the magnificent in-breath and out-breath of dream-song, melodic-presence, and easing-divinity embracing with intimacy the incarnational christification of inchoate and unceasing creation.
World within, and
World without,
End
(MU!}
Amen!
Nothing comes between you and me. Nothing, that is, no barrier.
You may recall Simone Weil’s essay ‘Metaxu,’ in ‘Gravity and Grace’: ‘The essence of created things is to be intermediaries. They are intermediaries leading from one thing to the other, and there is no end to this. They are intermediaries leading to God. We have to experience them as such.’
In the definition provided in the Glossary of ‘The Intimate Universal’ (2016)— see below— Desmond provides a useful short definition of Metaxology. Based on his fourfold sense of being—-univocal, equivocal, dialectical, and metaxological—-he argues that all is in relation. The four senses don’t cancel each other out. In poems, the narrative moves from univocal to metaxological, from determined clarity to the full relativity of the between. In this definition Desmond indicates the narrative as moving through the senses to a truer account. The between, he says, is ‘open to the poetics of the trans-systematic.’ But the goal of the poetic narrative is not a dialectical whole. Though the narrative moves through the senses of being dialectically, it concludes on the threshold of an open whole. The poet nothing affirmeth, but the poem reveals the form of metaxological being.
The between is plurivocal. The popular American poet Mary Oliver had mastered the four senses of being so that her poems could flow in the patterns of the between. We see this flow, which concludes with an image of the ‘intimate universsl’—- ‘the family of things.’
(—from ,The Poem as Metaxu with a Poem by Mary Oliver,, by Tom D’Evelyn, April 4, 2020 in VoegelinView)
Let’s keep it this way.
Irish philosopher William Desmond writes about metaxology.
Wikipedia tries its hand to clarify it for us.
The potencies of being
Within the ethos there are seven potencies of being. This "enabling repertoire of self becoming" has the "character of an endowment", and is thus seen as a gift. The potencies are not a program to follow; they simply are all together the powers from which ethical selvings, expressed through particular senses of being, take their endowment. The seven potencies are:
(—from William Desmond, philosopher, Wikipedia)
Francis looks to Earth
for Incarnation,
Resurrection, and
Ascension.
This Solstice,
this Christmas
let's incarnate
Light
 |
Bronze of Francis from Upper Basilica in Assisi, (CAC, NM) |
assythment :
-- satisfaction for an injury done; compensation, reparation, indemnification.
You said they weren’t your kind of people. Manhattan, 1962, straggly sandlot baseball guys stepping into a party a subway ride from Brooklyn.
Nor were they mine, Vinnie. You were clearer.
Six years later in Vietnam five days before Christmas an explosion stepped into and torn through sent you back from Southeast Asia
A left handed catcher. A kind kid. A casualty of unconscionable war.
I think of you these 52 years later. In my dream I was suddenly aware that I had been in Vietnam, that I had been part of a unit of soldiers, a battlefield fellowship. As I opened my mouth to tell this arisen belief...I realized it wasn’t true. I hadn’t been a soldier. I’d not been in Vietnam. I stopped speaking.
This morning, back in silent breath, waking from dream, seeing calendar noting Vincent Thomas Daiello, (SGT.), died 12/20/1968, my dream turns to look at me, waiting for me to see it standing in green imagination.
If Vinnie was there, I was there. If men served, I was not absent to their service. If men died, I could not go on living the person I was. War changes everything.
This from Vietnam War Facts, Stats and Myths:
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.
2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam.
240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.
The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1961. He was with the 509th Radio Research Station. The Davis Station in Saigon was named for him.
Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years old.
The oldest man killed was 62 years old.
58,148 were killed in Vietnam, 75,000 severely disabled, 23,214 were 100% disabled, 5,283 lost limbs and 1,081 sustained multiple amputations.
Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21 years old.
11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old.
Of those killed, 17,539 were married.
The average age of the men killed: 23.1 years.
Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation.
They have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups.
Their personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent.
87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.
There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source: Veterans Administration Study).
Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison – only one-half of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes.
85% of Vietnam Veterans made successful transitions to civilian life.
97% of Vietnam Veterans were honorably discharged.
91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served.
74% say they would serve again, even knowing the outcome.
Many Still Missing
As of April 14, 2017, there are 1,611 Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War across Vietnam (1,258), Laos(297), Cambodia(49), and China(7).
Vietnam Combat Area Casualty File
The Statistics in the Combat Area Casualty File (CACF 11/93) show an average age of death much higher than that of news reports.
The average age of the 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years (Although 58,169 names are in the Nov. 93 database, only 58,148 have both event date and birth date. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of those who were listed as missing in action).
... ... ...
S
i
l
e
n
c
e
Nears our breath
Nears us
To everything
With everyone.