Even while moving.
Have patience. Wait until the mud settles and the water is clear. Remain unmoving until right action arises by itself. ~ Lao Tzu
There’s nowhere to go.
We’re already there.
There where here is.
red sky morning light
neighbor throws firewood in truck
deer hide one more day —
everything now slow pace —
world becomes monastery
At my Thursday post
Thanksgiving volunteer
With gratitude
It has to do with corporeality, not spirituality.
Any gratitude is embodied realization.
It is characteristic that John twice employs the expression “he gave thanks”(6:11,23) instead of the verb “blessed” (Mark 6:41) in the account of the miracleof the feeding of the five thousand, thus probably alluding to early Christian interpretations of the communal meal as thanksgiving (εὐχαριστεῖν). This miraculous feeding story also has a striking ecclesiological background as well as literal and motivic affinities to the Pauline and Lucan traditions of the Lord's Supper. John uses the same verbs [λαμβάνειν, εὐχαριστεῖν, (δια)-διδόναι] and the noun bread (ἄρτος) that occur in the relevant Pauline and Lucan Texts. There are also etymologically (κλᾶν/κλάσμα) or semantically (σῶμα/σάρξ) related terms which link not only the miracle of feeding the five thousand but also the Bread of Life speech (v. 51) with very early traditions regarding Christological interpretation of the communal meal…
(—The Philosophical-Religious Hybridity in John 6 and Its Reception in the Commentaries of Origen and John, by Athanasios Despotis, Academia)
Do not be mistaken.
Bread, water, body, reality.
I read this twice.
Then a third time.
[I]n nature nothing exists alone.
-- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)
It feels true.
A phrasing that turns, dances, then sits down beside you, as though nothing else matters, nothing more true.
When you think about it —
Man becomes what he believes himself to be. Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or mind.
—Nisargadatta Maharaj
There’s not that much worth thinking about.
Except what is actually here.
Sardiner backs away from berth, turns in empty harbor, half speed ahead crossing sun-splotched water and disappears behind USCGC Abbie Burgess at Coast Guard station at end of Tillson Ave in Rockland.
“Who needs a master’s degree to boil water?” (-line in Colum McCann novel)
Captain of Kingfisher (1243750) sprays down deck of lobster boat as she drifts and turns in float-stripped marina.
No degree needed to haul catch or lift boat to the hard in late November.
Nor to sit and watch what wharf and tide let come before you.
In a nutshell.
We are finding it is nearly impossible to heal isolated individuals inside of a culture as unhealthy and unhealed as the USA, and inside any version of Christianity that supports exclusion and superiority. Individuals who remain inside of an incoherent and unsafe universe soon fall back into anger, fear, and narcissism. I sadly say this after 46 years of giving retreats, conferences, and initiation rites all over the world. Only people who went on to develop a contemplative mind could finally grow and benefit from the message that they heard.
(—from Richard Rohr email, A Great Story, 23nov21)
Our small story.
Looking to see from where it fell.
Standing one either side of fence surrounding tennis court at snow bowl, neighbor and I talk about Emmet Fox and Thomas Aquinas about this very topic found in quote after coming home.
Emptiness is effectively
the absence of you.
And where there is
the absence of ‘you’,
there shines
the presence of God.
(~ Mooji)
My neighbor was quoting someone (Emmet Fox) saying “the only real presence is God — all the rest is but shadow.”
Good fences make good neighborly conversation.
Don’t stop.
Nothing stops you from being a Gnani here and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of impersonal being It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state
(-- Nisargadatta)
It is naturally true.
"I hope more and more to become a person who can live in the world as it is, whatever that is. That’s what I hope for.” (—Elizabeth Gilbert)
To dwell where you are in the world as it is.
Where hope bows and gives everything over to surrender.
Feast of Cecilia
With gratitude to Gounod —
Death of Kennedy
Her crime, burying martyrs
Ours, years ago in Dallas
