neither calling back nor saying goodbye

 Looking back my life

Seems bland and uneventful —

I walk and listen

what the pandemic teaches

 have we had it wrong?

is the cross compassion? if

we gaze, feeling, see?

divorce separates two, true marriage is triune

Will you marry me?

No! We can only marry 

what is between us

considering the zeitgeist

 I suspect it is

a miracle anything 

persists and survives

four years later, the state shrugs

Ledell Lee would say:

‘I'm an innocent man.’ Seems 

so. Still, we killed him

...

(cf. 4 Years After an Execution, a Different Man’s DNA Is Found on the Murder Weapon, by Heather Murphy, NYTimes, May 7, 2021)

offering

Incense in morning

Sun curls up from desk, there rise

Prayers offered for all

dearmad

To wander need not mean to err.

To think is to wander.

To do philosophy is to vagabond.

Homelessness is a hazard of reflective inquiry.

Words for "error" in most Indo-European languages originally meant "wander, go astray" (for example Greek plane in the New Testament, Old Norse villa, Lithuanian klaida, Sanskrit bhrama-), but Irish has dearmad "error," from dermat "a forgetting."

(—from etymology dictionary)

Sometimes forgetting is the unexpected dwelling of one seeking truth.

Truth — don’t leave home without it.

praesentem

Latin for "In a particular place" -- present.

prae-

                1. before; in front

sum

      1. I am

I am (right) in front of you.

...

This last sentence is what being present means.

It is often a struggle for each of us to be present -- in any of or all its implications.

We wonder if those who've died are still present.

The possibility is that they are, indeed, "still" "present."

The question is laid at our feet: Who sees anything that is still?

So, too, we wonder (even at or after our death) if we are "still here."

what a thought-provoking film might evoke about ethical thinking response

 Three things:

...

1. What comes at you

2. Is what you’ve got

3. To respond to and do what you’ve got to do.

...

Four types and non-rules:

1. Fact-based Ethics.

2. Reality-ground morality.

3, Beyond-principles agency.

4. Gotta-do activity.

...

Five points to ponder:

1. What is thrown at you is not your making.

2. What arrives at your feet was not your stepping choice.

3. What you’ve got to do is not a deliberate choice of options.

4. You are a response to a provoking stimulus.

5. Ethical standards and moral laws are non-applicable to the immediate demands of presenting-reality.

...

Conclusion:

1. Stay awake.

2. Don’t think; look.

3. Take choice-less action.

...

Note: (cf. film "I'm Your Woman," Amazon Original, 2020)

whoa, that’s going nowhere fast

 I can’t go faster

than the speed of light. I’ll just

sit here and think now

recalling coming out of anesthesia

 young woman with co-

vid sings song about Jesus

from deep memory

until things are seen whole, no one is

When she died forty 

years ago no one knew this

squirrel at feeder

,just look at them and sigh

 Mothers teach children

Tell the truth, respect tellers —

It’s a good teaching

simply stated

 That this country is

Mired in the lies of losing

Former president

Signals cynical

Stupidity continues

With republicans

not something we did

From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Sunday 2may21:

 Reflecting on trauma has made me think that much of the human race must have suffered from what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is heartbreaking to imagine, but it gives me much more sympathy for the human person caught in repeated cycles of historical violence.

Could this be what mythology means by “the sacred wound” and the church describes as “original sin,” which was not something we did, but the effects of something that was done to us? I believe it is.

If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows us what to do with our pain. Great religion shows us what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the traumatic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

(- in, What Do We Do with This Pain?)

quo vadis

 The given, or

The arrived at —

Which?

In 12th century

The scholar and the saint

Set terms of battle

Scripture and tradition, or

Thought and insight

Conformity or innovation?

They argued

Monk of mystical inspiration, against

Monk of incohating phenomenology

Robert, (remembering canonical convictions)

Peter

(not forgetting Heloise nuptial connection)

Received and handed on, 

Unveiling and asking into

Paraclete protecting or setting free?

In my dream, in Russia,

Carafe with round energetics, timorous 

We are trying to get somewhere 

Right here, or

(if not)

Ahead of us

spare change

 If you give yourself

To another, what remains?

Nothing worth counting

slicing through simile

 Woman brings soup to

COVID folks up back stairs — as

Man with edger cuts

off the machine

 My patience died try-

ing to breathe through thick obtuse

sludge cynicism

after dawn

 Solo concert done

Songbird enters silence gone

Offstage heart alight

addendum

 Coronavirus

Ain’t over, compañeros —

Don’t listen to fools

move along (now)

 pay

No

attention

(to me)

there’s 

Nothing

there

(to see)

sic et non

I have

Never

been

(happier) 

There is

Nothing 

more

(now)

to

compare

...   ...   ...

Footnote:

Abelard maintains that everything in the world apart from God and angels is either form, matter, or a composite of form and matter. The matter of something is that out of which it is made, whether it persists in the finished product (as bricks in a house) or is absorbed into it (as flour in bread). Ultimately, all material objects are composed of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water, but they do not retain their elemental forms in most combinations. In general, the form of a material object just is the configuration of its material parts: “We call the form strictly what comes from the composition of the parts.” The form of a statue, for example, is its shape, which is no more than the arrangement of its matter—the curve of the nose, the size of the eyes, and so on. Forms are therefore supervenient on matter, and have no ontological standing independent of it. This is not to deny that forms exist, but to provide a particular explanation of what it is for a form to inhere in a given subject, namely for that subject to have its matter configured in a certain way. For example, the inherence of shape in the statue just is the way in which its bronze is arranged. Hence material things are identical with what they are made of—with one exception: human beings, whose forms are their immaterial (and immortal) souls. Strictly speaking, since human souls are capable of existence in separation form the body, they are not forms after all, though they act as substantial forms as long as they are joined to the body.

(--on, Peter Abelard, (1079-1142), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)