I’d rather have Ascension Thursday on Thursday.
Call me old fashioned.
I’d prefer Epiphany on 6january.
I wish the Catholic Church wasn’t so in love with Sunday collections.
(High overhead nighttime plane travels northeast.)
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Friday, May 27, 2022
take, eat, and spew out
I know why they are common.
Mass shootings are very rare outside the United States. Why are they so common here? (-from, The GOP War on Civil Virtue, by Paul Krugman, NYT, 26may2022j
Because we see constant bickering
Because we had a president, who, along with his family, were con artists, poseurs, and unhappy people who mocked and slandered anyone who couldn’t make them richer or more powerful.
Because, whether you voted Red or Blue, you were lied to and told that elections are fraudulent and cheating was rife.
Because cynicism and constant accusation is normal discourse in social media, cable stations, congress, and tabloid journalism.
Because the Supreme Court has fallen to partisan petulance and political ideology from a fantasized height of thoughtful objective justice.
Because Catholic priests sexually abuse youth and adults.
Because Protestant Ministers sexually abuse youth and adults.
Because athletes get paid upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars to play an hour or two of each of their games with salaries and endorsements.
Because sexuality has become course, menacing, and raw in videos, songs, and film.
Because banks and stock market mavens and corporate executives make hundreds of thousands of dollars every hour while reading the headlines in newspapers telling of murders, fraudulent schemes, embezzlement and extortion.
Because police think that black men are ipso facto suspicious, dangerous, and expendable.
Because sexual or gender orientation is so upsetting an issue for folks unsure exactly why.
Because elected congressional representatives include among their ranks petty liars, deranged ideologues, and crass nihilists.
Because the senior senator from Kentucky is a jaded non-leader for whom the sole accomplishment is seizure of power and destruction of legislation needed to stabilize the country.
Because colleges and universities have become empty promises to those not already rich and secure.
Because religion has become a vacant building with ancient graffiti peeling from walls and broken spines of strewn texts.
Because our moral spine is broken.
Because the only plea is fund raising emails from every organization on earth.
Because when a corrupt autocrat invades another country every world leader starts to play chess and what-if and what-can-we-really-do over anguishing cups of coffee and fretful news conferences.
Because impotence is the new virtue.
Because we are evolving out of a once believed story of existence into a new tale told by a fool signifying nothing.
Because any tale-telling fool can buy an AR15 and slaughter children in classrooms, elderly Black grandmothers in grocery stores, worshippers in synagogues and churches, music revealers in nightspots or outdoor concerts, anyone congregating anywhere for any purpose, drone strikes on attendees at weddings in the Middle East, assassinations from balconies and on city streets, bombs at corner cafes in European towns.
Because we no longer know how to care.
Because we have not yet come to understand that love is not abusive control.
Because
Because
Because…
…Guns are the new scripture, the new body of Christ that we take, eat, and spew out at everyone, anyone…
Because
I am not immune, distant, nor exempt from each or any of every ’because’ above.
Perhaps, to hear, a different take, a different version, an aesthetic reprieve from complaint and toward a complementarity of concrescence.
Because
The Beatles
Aah
Because the world is round
It turns me on
Because the world is round
Aah
Because the wind is high
It blows my mind
Because the wind is high
Aah
Love is old, love is new
Love is all, love is you
Because the sky is blue
It makes me cry
Because the sky is blue
Aah
Written by: Mccartney, Lennon
Album: Love
Released: 2006
falling over
Looking out window, facing east, thinking of brothers and sisters suffering and dead, birdsong, wavering fresh green branching.
Psállite Dómino,
qui ascéndit super cælos cælórum ad Oriéntem,
allelúia.
Then there’s this:
Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed in the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, died on Thursday of a heart attack, said his nephew John Martinez.
Mr. Garcia, 50, had visited his wife’s memorial on Thursday morning to drop off flowers. When he got back home, he “pretty much just fell over,” Mr. Martinez said.
The couple had been married for 24 years and had four children, with the oldest 23 and the others teenagers.
Mr. Garcia had been stricken with grief after he lost his wife, Mr. Martinez said. “I’m really in shock right now,” he added
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/us/irma-garcia-husband-death-uvalde.html
Leonard Cohen helps us with this:
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
(cf Leonard Cohen)
(cf Jeff Buckley)
(cf Pentatonix)
Thursday, May 26, 2022
we’re going to continue to pray and meditate
Failure is simply failure.
In February, the St. Joseph’s community of around 45 monks admitted defeat at the hands of the I.P.A. hordes and voted to cease operations. At that moment, Isaac Keeley, O.C.S.O.—who had been running the brewery (and whom I profiled for America in 2019)—resigned because he couldn’t bear to dismantle what he had spent so many years building.
To wind down operations, the monastery appointed as his replacement William Dingwall, O.C.S.O., a 61-year-old monk from Toronto. “We tried really hard to make a go of it, but unfortunately it didn’t work out,” Father Dingwall told me. “But we’re not floored by it. We’re going to continue to pray and meditate.”
The last barrel has already been brewed. An auction of the equipment is expected to take place before the end of June. The monks hope that by the fall the brewery building will be empty and ready to harbor a different money-making business.
(-from, The only Trappist brewery in the U.S. is closing (and IPAs are to blame), America Magazine)
It's what we do.
Fail.
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
we know you can show us
(for the children and teachers, Uvalde, Texas)
When Buddha first speaks,
When Christ first appears — no one
hears or sees them — then,
Some children are heard singing:
Monday, May 23, 2022
stay with what you see
I’m no zen student
Yellow forsythia fall
To driveway tire ruts —
Neighbor drops off tulip spray,
Kind act, generous color
tofu wa-bohu
This is my life these days. It is a reset button on a device without connection or transmission.
And a beautiful morning, to boot.
Tohu wa-bohu or Tohu va-Vohu (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ ṯōhū wā-ḇōhū) is a Biblical Hebrew phrase found in the Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1:2) that describes the condition of the earth ('éretz) immediately before the creation of light in Genesis 1:3.
Numerous interpretations of this phrase are made by various theological sources. The King James Version translation of the phrase is "without form, and void", corresponding to Septuagint ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, "unseen and unformed". (-Wikipedia)
The trouble with appreciation of Shunryū Suzuki's Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is that original beginnings emanate from nothing.
Being without form and void is where true beginnings happen. Reset. Factory wipe. No backup to cloud. Stark and fresh 'Hello' 'Welcome' 'Willkommen' 'Üdvözöljük' 'ようこそ' 'Tervetuloa' 'स्वागत' 'ברוכים הבאים' 'καλως ΗΡΘΑΤΕ' 'yo dude.'
Just for an instant.
A millisecond of tabula rasa before any old download or new data occurs. A fresh look.
Who is ready for that?
Who wants to begin again? (Finnegan Begin Again?) Only when everything ends comes beginning again.
For no reason.
Unseen and unformed.
Love.
reflecting sunday evening practice
Times change, look at it
My ignorance overwhelms —
Singing bird outside
Tells of compassion, wisdom —
Don’t know — selflessness
Sunday, May 22, 2022
set my soul
The woman who, at her table, served fish chowder, would probably sing this in harmony. (A good Baptist would never let a good Offertory pass without oyster crackers and sliced demi-seeded baguette after returning from sawmill yard with salvaged burn-pile pieces.)
Benedícite gentes Dóminum Deum nostrum,
Bless our God, you nations
et obaudíte vocem laudis ejus:
and make the voice of his praise be heard.
qui pósuit ánimam meam ad vitam,
He has set my soul toward life,
et non dedit commovéri pedes meos:
and he has granted that my feet may not be shaken.
benedíctus Dóminus,
Blessed is God,
qui non amóvit deprecatiónem meam,
who has not removed my prayer,
et misericórdiam suam a me,
nor his mercy, from me.
Allelúia.
Alleluia.
(Offertorium, 22may2022)
Her mother’s Christian compositions playing from old Emerson victrola with cassette tape in side as errant mosquitoes flew on wrong side of door where daybed had struggled up front steps in true wonder of engineering angles and misdirectional pivoting by three uncredentialed surveyors.
Still, some good chowdah!
if you think about them, words will show up as they are
There must be
Some way
Out of here
No, there
Is only
Here
There’s
no there
There
(Thank
God for
Poets)
They know
Where their
Bread is
Buttered —
(I told the
Checkout lady
I first thought
The sign over
Her shoulder
Read “help us
Serve you
Butter”
She took
The time
to laugh
Continuing to
Scan strawberry-
Rhubarb pie in
Union
(Where we all
Should
Live
And find
Here)
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