theopoiesis gets rendered as God-making or becoming divine.

Creation is just occurring.

Just now.

And justice is its poet.

Creation is a poem.

          (Ernesto Cardinal, Cosmic Canticle)

Why is “making” considered a sacred activity for gods and mortals alike? Making something out of nothing. Making something in the image of something else. Creators making creatures while creatures in turn make their creators. Making out, making up, making and remaking worlds in one’s image and likeness. In shapes and songs, paintings and poems, dreams and crafts. From the beginning to the end of time. One great game of holy imagination played with hands, mouths, ears and eyes. With bodies and souls. Art as divine-human interplay, again and again.

Theopoetics names how the divine (theos) manifests itself as making (poiesis). The term dates back to the early centuries, meaning both the making human of the divine and the making divine of humanity. As the poet scholar, Ephrem of Syria, wrote: “He gave us divinity, we gave Him humanity.” Or as Athanasius said in the fourth century: “God became human so that the human could become divine.” Catherine Keller puts it succinctly: “The term theopoetics finds its ancestor in the ancient Greek theopoiesis. As poeisis means making or creation, so theopoiesis gets rendered as God-making or becoming divine.”1

Theopoetics carries an attendant claim that first creation calls for second creation— re-creation or creation again (ana): a double act where humanity and divinity collaborate in the coming of the Kingdom. This play of recreation goes by the name of “ana-theism.”

(—from  GOD MAKING: AN ESSAY IN THEOPOETIC IMAGINATION, For Bill Richardson SJ, in Memoriam, by Richard Kearney, 2017)

When we complain about God we are complaining about ourselves. 

When we pray, (if prayer retains any elasticity for us), we are construction workers laying foundation for spiritual, corporeal, rational and imaginative living quarters to be habituated by us, our progeny, and all our relations.

God is coming to be in our becoming what God is coming to be.

you don’t say

During Friday Evening Conversation the thought arose: “How different are we?”

This morning the thought arises: “We’re no different.”

different

1 of 2

adjective

dif·​fer·​ent ˈdi-f(ə-)rənt  

ˈdi-fərnt

1

: partly or totally unlike in nature, form, or quality : DISSIMILAR

could hardly be more different

—often followed by from, than, or chiefly British to

small, neat hand, very different from the captain's tottery characters R. L. Stevensonvastly different in size than it was twenty-five years ago N. M. Puseya very different situation to the … one under which we live Sir Winston Churchill

2

: not the same: such as

a

: DISTINCT

different age groups

b

: VARIOUS

different members of the class

c

: ANOTHER

switched to a different TV program

3

: UNUSUAL, SPECIAL

she was different and superior

differentness noun

 Is it different than or different from?: Usage Guide 

Numerous commentators have condemned different than in spite of its use since the 17th century by many of the best-known names in English literature. It is nevertheless standard and is even recommended in many handbooks when followed by a clause, because insisting on from in such instances often produces clumsy or wordy formulations. Different from, the generally safe choice, is more common especially when it is followed by a noun or pronoun.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/different

Being “no different” means that MU arrives in our perspective vision and becomes the cardboard paper towel holder through which our particular viewing of the world takes shape and place.

What do we see when we look through?

MU has the quality of undoing.

Sort of like saying, “Unask that question!” Or,  “Unsay those words!” Or even, “unthink that thought”, “untake that stance”, “uninterpret that interpretation.”

And there we stand, or sit, or walk around in circles. We are left in the uncertainty and ignorance of not-knowing. 

Why is that?

Because we don’t…

Know …

Hardly ever, mostly always, seldom without dissonance and a residual bafflement’s interior command to stand down, stand back, stand still!

And there we stand.

Or sit.

Maybe turn or twirl in circles.

And here’s the thing — there’s nothing wrong with that after-action, after-thought, after-all.

Being “no-different” is a deep realization.

It makes all the distinctions, realizations, explanations, and opinions we might have become a bowl of pistachios.

One by one, shells opened, ready to be devoured. 

And we are…devoured.

To the last molecule.

Taken in.

Disappeared.

Finally seen… MU…more.

And all is as it is

Like monastery bells after Lauds tolling in themselves, for thee, to see, what-is-there, what-is-here.

the narrow hearth of a peasant's hut

Where do you live? 

“It is, therefore, a great source of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be possible to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his. From boyhood I have dwelt on foreign soil and I know with what grief sometimes the mind takes leave of the narrow hearth of a peasant's hut, and I know too how frankly it afterwards disdains marble firesides and panelled halls.”

(― Hugh of Saint Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts)

The incarcerated man, his first visit to meetingbrook conversations, asked for his survey "what, for you, is the simplest thing?"

I answered, "this."

I'd like to think it is where and how I live.  

Whereas, "to think" means to look into and through, to listen carefully and caringly, and to allow what is there to be there, as it is, with attending attentive presence nearby.

we are one, in the field, of emptiness

all die

some wrote songs

friend in prison

is telling

he tried to take

his life

when life is insane

you exhale

come closer to death

but

didn't

die

lives 

now telling 

me

to be a person of one’s word

Count me in

Brook flowing strong

Bridge remains unreassembled

Still, we cross to other side

nur einmal bitte

 I know why

We do not see

Transcendent God

We are not

Looking

Really

Looking with

Everything at

Itself

Take this to

Heart — there

Unseeing apprehends

Nothing other

Once being

Only one

every pain and warning sign

 Michelob ultra empty can

Marlboro mint empty pack

Roadside on Barnestown

Thrown, no doubt, from cars

The profligacy of mindless tossing

Who are these people

From littering alcohol and tobacco

To polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans

To pornography of the mind and spirit

To power sluttiness of corporate profits —

I pick them up

And put one in redemption bag

One in trash for dump

Cast my vote for decency and sanity

Then sit in silence and stillness breathing

Noting every pain and warning sign

De-escalation and defenestration

As ground rises to stop the falling

Ending what we cannot sustain or fix

We disappear

Not to be

Seen nor

Heard

From

Again

the ability to keep their leaves yearlong and with special healing powers

Co-monastic brings sprig of  green into room down from mountain during zoom class with student at Charleston Correctional Facility as we talk about Carl Gustave Jung, Keiji Nishitani, Jean Gebser, and Juan Ramon Jimenez. 

It was a day of responses to challenges that determine the staying power on democracy, civilization, and decency in our midst. 

We look for light to move through darkness.

 While the jury was handing down its verdict in the case of Stewart Rhodes, who said on tape that he would “hang f*ckin’ Pelosi from the lamppost,” Speaker Pelosi was lighting the Capitol Christmas tree with fourth-grader Catcuce Micco Tiger, who is a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and has ancestry from the Seminole Tribe of Florida and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. 

Tiger won the role of youth tree lighter with an essay sharing the Cherokee origin story for evergreen trees. “After creating all plants and animals,” Pelosi explained, “our Creator asked them to fast, pray, and stay awake for seven nights. But at the end, only a few were awake. The trees that stayed awake were rewarded with the ability to keep their leaves yearlong and with special healing powers. It is a story of faith and gratitude—of hope enduring through the dark night.”

“And,” Pelosi added, “it is hope that we celebrate each holiday season—that through the cold and dark winter, spring will someday come.”  

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who defended the Capitol against the Oath Keepers on January 6, heard the jury’s verdict, then watched the tree lighting.

Heather Cox Richardson, 29nov2022  

As dawn quietly presents itself for our consideration.

One inch at a time. 

nothing else is

 “Trust no one,” is what the incarcerated man said.

A zen practitioner might say, “Trust? MU! One.”

Only One Is; “nothing else” is.

There is so much to unlearn.

i am this one

 Three poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez, first two translated by Robert Bly:

1.

Oceans

  I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                    And nothing
happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...

    --Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

2.

I Am Not I

I am not I.
              I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

 

 3

New Voice

Whose is this voice? Whence sounds

this voice, celestial and silvery,

which with delicate leaf pierces lightly

the iron silence of my pain!

   Tell me, blue whiteness of the lily,

tell me, light of the morning star,

tell me, coolness of water flowing at evening,

what do you know of this good and simple voice?

   …Voice that bids me turn my eyes, sad

and joyful, upon what golden crystal of glory

in which the angel sings his alleluia!

   …That is from no mouth or lute that there is,

that has come from out of no story…

Whose, whose are you, voice that are not your own?

(Poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez, 1881-1958)

προανάκρουσμα είναι διαχρονικό*

 What are you doing?

      I’m waiting.

Waiting for what?

      I don’t know.

Well, look out for yourself.

      I am.

(Looking precedes

essence and existence)

Will I see you again?

      No! 

*(prelude is 

timeless)