during soul-friend conversation

 He said: It’s like an opening occurs, we emerge, and we’re a part of this. Then, at end, another opening happens, we go through, and we’re not apart from this.

He said: So this guy suddenly becomes enlightened. Next day, he and his wife disagree on something, maybe dishes weren’t done, and they squabble, unpleasant things are said. Enlightenment? Squabble? What’s the difference?

So too, is occurs, time before birth, time after birth — time before death, time after death — what’s the difference?

MU!

We are a part of this.

We are not apart from this.

Can we emerge into this and, still, at final absorption, be no different than this, at the same instant?

(Distinguishing no distinction.)

There’s no knowing. So, don’t know.

Well, well, 

we’ll — look here — 

evening passes and morning comes, this lovely Juneteenth!

as spring’s work nears its end

let’s talk about elections

 You can cast your vote.

But we will count the votes. Yeah.

Right’s new strategy

we'll simply see

A time will come when this will change. 

You know, it’s funny, when it rains it pours / They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor. 

- 2Pac, “Keep Ya Head Up”

It will change because inane insanity is a tired way of living in the world.

It will change because decency will wear down indecency.

It will change because we will tire of hiding love and will become transparent.

“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love” 

(― Rabindranath Tagore)

We will tire of the ugliness of aggression, cynicism, and  unkindness.

Perhaps love is God is love.

We'll drop our fear.

We'll simply see.

ex-cloister

 Office of readings

Hemingway lobster boat sits

Outside channel buoy

103

 Harley trike pulls in

Of course I want one  — wait, wait —

It will pass, it will

one that got away

 At harbor balloon

Rises over masts and catch

Going it’s own way

lightheaded after finding essays written thirty years ago

 two minutes she says

water boiling, something in 

frying pan gurgling

truth is unhidden

What is hidden is not the unhidden. 

 The journalists Griffin and Moffitt both recognized the importance of Say’s original negatives. They agreed the photograph must be kept secret and never shown. This conspiracy of silence could only have been because they knew full well that the photographs undermined the accidental electrocution story.

(Ch17, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, by Hugh Turley and David Martin)

Truth cannot remain hidden forever.

Right?

snippet 2 (e)

 she said it Sunday

"the absolute is an un-

fussy energy" 

snippet 1 (t)

 she said it Friday

"the rules of a broken world" --

(go on, step through them)

it’s not a pill we need

 I have no suicidal thoughts

I doubt I have been born

The cable station tells me there’s  

a pill staving suicidal ideation

It’s good to know. My mind

Debates toast or sleeping in

Wonders if elections are passé 

Or democracy’s funeral has flowers.

Some hands swing cleavers,

Some minds are split

Right wing chicken wingers

Pronounce inanities with aplomb

As lefties anguish over lunch money

(feeling for billy club in back pocket)

If we can’t stand unified

Be the last one standing and smile

practicing zen

 drop all preferences

only do what is right, true --

only this alone

pledging allegiance to kindness

 It saddens that so

many do not feel the freedom

kindness offers all

the blind pettiness

of elected congressfolk

their obstructing sneer

so easy to see

the empty hearted dryness

power drains by scorn

call me by another name

Let’s just say ‘subdued’

That’s what it is — feeling— just

Under what is due

continuity between

Friend asks if I'm familiar with Vine Deloria.

I wasn't. 

 There are serious questions whether Indian tribes actually had any conception of religion or of a deity at all. Wherever we find Indians and whenever we inquire about their idea of God, they tell us that beneath the surface of the physical universe is a mysterious spiritual power which cannot be described in human images that must remain always the “Great Mystery.”20
 There are, on the other hand, many other entities with spiritual powers comparable to those generally attributed to one deity alone. So many in fact that they must simply be encountered and appeased, they cannot be counted. In addition all inanimate entities have spirit and personality so that the mountains, rivers, waterfalls, even the continents and the earth itself have intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to communicate ideas. 21

(--from, Commentary by Thomas J. Hoffman, "Vine and the Divine: Vine DeLoria Jr and the Holy, embedded quote from God is Red: A Native View of Religion, c.1972, by Vine Deloria Jr., in AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL 33:2 (2009) 103-112)

Then this by the Brussats:

God Is Red
A Native View of Religion
By Vine Deloria
Offers Native American spirituality as an alternative to Christianity.
Book Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

In the 30th anniversary edition of this controversial volume, Native American scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., offers readers a salutary overview of Native American spirituality as an alternative to Christianity. After tracing a brief history of the "Indian Movement" and making reference to novels, anthologies ,and books on Indian religion, this lawyer, who once attended the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock Island, Illinois, faults Christians for (1) their inability to think in terms of space (hence they do not have a good natural theology), (2) their cramped concepts of history focused on the story of the Jews and the life of Jesus, (3) their fear of death, (4) their failure to integrate faith into every aspect of life, (5) their lack of community, and (6) their internal dissension.

Deloria points to the religious hunger in America and sees interest in the occult as a manifestation of the search for a more refreshing and meaningful spirituality. The red man, he says, offers people a religion of community, reverence for the earth, continuity between death and life, a rich treasurehouse of myth and ritual, and a way of understanding the spirit of life on all continents. This edition of God Is Red includes new forewords by Leslie Marmon Silko and George E. Tinker.

Still so much to think about.

So much as yet unread.

as do you

There's probably less of a mystery why poverty endures so noticeably in America and elsewhere than we might suspect.

The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response. 

(--from, What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor, June 13, 2021, NYTimes, by Ezra Klein)

The poor are necessary.

Without the poor how would we continue as those not materially poor?

Why else do we saturate and cultivate advertisers, influencers, life coaches, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual counselors,  investment associates, lawyers, loan officers, priests, rabbis, imams, pastors, and facebook groups?

There are enough resources and enough money to clothe, feed, house, and provide goods and services to every person and family in the world.

Why, then, do so many suffer, do without, languish?

I'm afraid

I know

why.

As do

you.

where look

Where is God?

mysticism

noun

1. the beliefs, ideas, or mode of thought of mystics.

2. a doctrine of an immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend ordinary understanding, or of a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or ecstasy.

3. obscure thought or speculation.

(--dictionary.com)

Where are you looking? 

Look under your feet.

broken apart

 So much of contem-

porary culture and pol-

itics is both una-

ttractive and disheart-

ening. No, I cannot a-

bide cynicism

unitive

 If we were mystics

Everything hidden would out

The unseen be seen

13 june

 To everyone named

Anthony — find yourself, let

Your lost self be found