what is
body of Christ
that (we can)
see it
If you ask what it is like with mystical spirituality, try this:
semper agens, semper quietus, colligens et non egens, portans et implens et protegens,
creans et nutriens, perficiens, quaerens, cum nihil desit tibi.
(--From the Confessions of Augustine, Book I, Chapter 4
(always working, yet ever at rest; gathering, yet needing nothing;
sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all things.
We look for what we already have.
Seldom recognizing.
Always close at hand.
Tonight Bobby Kennedy will be shot. Two months ago Martin Luther King was shot. In six months Thomas Merton will die under curious and suspect circumstances.
It is 1968. Assassinations are difficult truths. America breaks. Lives change. Skepticism deepens.
Mr. Kennedy will die early after midnight at 1:44AM on June 6.
The trauma of 1968 sits deep within the bodies of those living through the shocks and deceits of public executions and murky lies following.
But this is what it costs to be alive.
We know and do not know what takes place everyday in the world of power, politics, and pretense.
Edna st Vincent Millay wrote:
Lament
Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI'll make you little jackets;I'll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There'll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo make a pretty noise with.Life must go on,And the dead be forgotten;Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why.
As is
justice forgotten.
I wonder...
Why?
Reading Rohr, he says the task is not separation from evil but absorption and transformation of evil within oneself. (Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, 2007)
It's an annoying aspect of Christian mystagogy.
Incarnational spirituality.
depression is
correct view
of current state
of world
as troubling as
depression is
the mindset
declination
is more stark
more wanting
more frightening
to behold
nevertheless
we keep on looking
and stay willing to
suffer through
We will get over
Vile points of view by cowards —
Dark clouds drop torrents
Yes
Is that your answer
No, it’s my question
What is your answer
Yes
So, your question and answer are the same
There’s a black hole 58 million light years away from our Milky Way galaxy
At foot of mountain birds chant morning praise
In both places at once
Falling into dense emptiness and birdsong
This morning practice
All this time. Off on our own. Distancing.
I’m not sure I want to near again.
The desolate woodland. The vast sea.
We move on. We are migrants. Mendicants.
There it is, again, there it is, sliding in alongside bamboo shade, morning sun.
Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning -- already gone --
thus should one regard one's self.
― Ikkyu
Now that it is June I have to try to remember who I was before my father and mother were born.
I recall a glass of orange juice, back stoop, chain link fences, portioned backyards.
The milk box, the clanking bottles, under bedroom window.
Backyard, DeSoto with whitewalls, sun slanting into alley from street with horse drawn vegetable wagon.
Silent ghosts pass under window walking into these words.
Do you speak with the dead?
Do you pray?
Do you despair of the living?
Hold your answer.
Think a while.
Don’t give it away blithely.
Yes
It is June
Changing
Everything
May passes
Spring has
Three weeks
Left
If you
Think about it
Your life
Is juggle ball
Somewhere in
Swoop and fell
Arc oohs & ahs
Launch & descent
Of course
I love you
Sans doute
As I drop
Bit by bit
Withdrawing
Little by little
Disappearing
Where will
Anything be
Found
Once lost
If there is
Nothing but
God, where
Is everything
Now that
It has
All gone
Away
We
Remember
Honor and
Pray for
All dead
And deadened
By
War
Injustice
Cynicism and
Ignorance
. . .
There’s no understanding trinity.
Except as some contemporary Three-In-One-Oikeó.
What is it that “houses” itself where I am?
The final three models of incarnational theology are all instances of incarnational soteriology. The first instance of this model, and the third model overall, is incarnational soteriology through the indwelling of Christ. This model is exemplified in Paul’s words to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) Christ is not enfleshed in me, Christ lives in me. There is no generation [ginomai] of flesh [sarx] when one lives by faith. Instead, by faith, Christ lives in me, Christ lives in my flesh.26 A Trinitarian understanding allows us to appreciate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers in a similar way. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16) Through the Spirit, God dwells, or “houses” [oikeo] in you. Paul’s usage of temple language makes an important point in regard to incarnational theology since the Bible consistently portrays God dwelling in the temple found in Eden, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, in the person of Jesus Christ, and in (as here) the Spirit-filled believer.27
(—from, Christ is the only incarnation: Appropriate use of incarnation language, Sean McGever, ETS Far West Region Meeting April 2018, p.6)
I have an address, wear shoes and knee brace when taking a walk, the rap-tat-tat of hiking sticks, listening to book in my ears, gaze between ground and mountains and pond beyond beaver lodge. I move through. Any place I’ve been I’m no longer there. I’m a movement of consciousness through place and space going nowhere.
A temporary house.
Housing and being housed.
Today is celebrated Trinity. Someone called it Non Sequitur Sunday.
Anything said about it really doesn’t follow. (Ya folla?) It stays where it is pronounced.
Maybe we have to MU any pronouncing.
Unsay. Unask. Neti-neti (not this-not that).
Rather, becoming a passageway, and not being in the way.
There
It is
Again
Invoker bird
Begins
Chant
Goes back
Into
Silence
And day-
Break
Beyond hill
Is no
Longer
Dark
Just so
It begins
Again
Earth
turns to
Morning
We look
Through
Three windows
Love
Us
Here