andiamo

Silly to say

goodbye to

year

Rather say

no to 

fear

no different than the tyrants of the past

 No sugarcoating what happened in 1890 at Wounded Knee.

[Charles] Eastman concluded that the men who had destroyed the Sioux economy talked a lot about Christianity, but their actions had nothing to do with that generous religion. “I have not yet seen the meek inherit the earth, or the peacemakers receive high honor,” he noted. “Why do we find so much evil and wickedness practiced by the nations composed of professedly ‘Christian’ individuals?” For all their noble talk, such men were no different than the tyrants of the past, eager to take everything for themselves. “The pages of history are full of licensed murder and the plundering of weaker and less developed peoples, and obviously the world to-day has not outgrown this system,” Eastman mused.75

In the end, the Sioux doctor condemned the America he knew. He had given up his traditional way of life for a promise of a better world in which individuals strove for the good of all. Instead he had found prejudice and butchery in the name of economic progress. Bitterly, he pronounced his judgment on the society that had promised so much and delivered so little: “Behind the material and intellectual splendor of our civilization, primitive savagery and cruelty and lust hold sway, undiminished, and as it seems, unheeded. When I reduce civilization to its lowest terms, it becomes a system of life based upon trade. The dollar is the measure of value, and might still spells right; otherwise, why war?”76

(—final words of Heather Cox Richardson’s “Wounded Knee, Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, 2011)

No forgetting what we’ve become, turning into 2025. 

nίκο, βοήθησέ μας να ακούσουμε τη φωνή -- (nikos, help us hear the voice)

Here we have a valuable description of our spiritual situation at this time and turning of the year: 

 27. It is as though we had buried Someone we thought dead, and now hear him calling in the night: Help me! Heaving and panting, he raises the gravestone of our soul and body higher and still higher, breathing more freely at every moment.

(--Fourth Step, The Vision, in THE SAVIOURS OF GOD, Spiritual Exercises, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1922/23 -- published 1927, Translated by Kimon Friar

Do we hear the calling?

Can we feel the gravestone being raised?

Are we breathing more freely? 

mary, are the kids ready to travel

bombing Gaza

bombing Ukraine

in other news

christian leaders

say Jesus Christ

will not be

appearing on any

new years eve shows

rather, will be

lamenting the world

he tried to save

covered in dust and blood

stumbling out the town

as warmongers praise his name

misericordia de la tierra y de todos los que habitan en ella

 Yes

I suspect a spree of assassinations will occur in the next few months..

Hate, when unleashed, goes in many directions.

My name is greed. My name is influence. My name is MAGA/DOGE

I suspect that there will be an outbreak of sanity and αγάπη (agape) in the next few months..

Love, when unfettered, circles the world with kindness and compassion.

Our name is lleno de dios. Our name is Sierva del bien, Siervo del bien.

World is paused, world is poised, world is civil twilight near dawn.

We, you, me — all will have to choose, all will be the chosen, no escape.

You will find me here. You may shoot me. I will fall to ground. Bleed out.

Be happy with your assassinations. Be content with self sacrifice. Dream.

It has come to this. I will be dead. And you, you are tomorrow.

Que Dios tenga misericordia de la tierra y de todos los que habitan en ella.

calling off search

 I cannot say i have found God

That is too far a shore

But i have found sleep

Prayer leads me there at night

As words and chant drift

Through my fading consciousness

God sleeps within consciousness

Please forgive my slumber

I cannot do other

a lonely trickle of water flows

The well-kept empty house across the road has two outdoor lights, one in front, one on side, twenty-four hours a day, unoccupied now almost two years, the owner regularly pulls in, goes in, confirms security, goes home next door, and the house keeps its counsel. 

Quietness dwells there.

We keep watch over it. Unofficially. I imagine an order of contemplative monastics keep their vocation in the gray monastery, keeping silence, chanting psalms, contemplating the inexerable emergence of holy writ, holy acts, holy mind.

 Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,

One path entering the wooded hill: 

 

The monk has gone off, securing his pine door. 

 

From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.

--Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672) dialyzen

There are two earths.

One turns with financial wrangling, power generation, social experimentation, self-centered excess.

The alternate earth cultivates consciousness, looks into the unexamined, chooses silent colloquy with nothing there neither audiencing nor phoneticizing. 

It rains and drizzles all day. Foggy mist hangs between branches in lowering daylight. White truck and red car climb road towards Hope at top of hill. 

Suddenly, the lights on gray house are off. Nones is over and Vespers soon. Horarium is kept. The lights come back on. A signal of sorts to watchers.

There, lower right-center, just under neck of lamp, a single light, off across road, through drips and branches, as though some sanctuary light, the abode of stealth monastics in a dedicated yet desultory life of hidden prayer.

I can only sit here and glance.

I see no one.

No one sees me.

Neither cenobite nor eremite, just mysterious lights on fantastical monastery.

Keeping the hours.

Holding fast to the insubstantial soul.

Somber mist

Gone off

Lonely trickle

brail

 Yes

To what

I cannot

See 

Yes to 

All 

That

Is now 

Me

Yes to 

All 

Befuddling

Facts

The ways &

Acts of

All my

Kin

I’m willing 

To begin

Again to

Sinn

So needed

To regain

Yes, to

Sinn

To see

What actually

Is

Taking place

To feel

You there

To touch

Your face

looking both ways

 On this date in 1890, the massacre at Wounded Knee. The sorrow of it.

Today, the death of Jimmy Carter. The joy that such a decent man graced us.

The realization that this world we live in, this earth we live on, are both beyond comprehension — both the revelation of incomprehensibility.

yeah, its that kind of movie

 John McLane 

saves

Christmas again

phew

glad I got

to see it saved

again

the heart pulses on, developing a future -- froh and glücklich

From Merriam Webster: "Attacca" -- imperative verb, at· tac· ca əˈtäkə, -akə : attack at once  —used as a direction in music at the end of a movement to begin the next without pause. 

Attacca

--by Frank O’Hara

To take up where you left off!

without a breath of separation

your new movement is begun.

The heart pulses on, developing

a future. You do not rest

your lips, your ears, your fingers.

The field is full of daisies

and the sun is shining greenly.

It is a musical development,

taxing and inspired, before

the old love has echoed away.

To the eager suggestion of a new

face. It will be a great movement!

begun warmly and without a pause.

You have carried yourself to a new

world, put off the final applause. 

 

--From issue no. 79, The Paris Review, (Spring 1977)

 There is no recognizing the transition as listener. Only the conductor manages the slide through.

As in moment to moment so too from this life to whatever is beyond this life, attacca, no pause, no recognition one thing has ended another begun.

I fall asleep. I awake. It is a blink. Cat arrives on chest. Light through fog behind branches from road outside window. Hours later, it is noon. I will fetch another coffee. 

French nuns from Neumz allow free listen to their Gregorian chants of final Sunday liturgy. Credo plays. 

Are we moving through the shadowy end of something unbelievable? Is there a slide into a new time a new year? Will it be Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

O'Hara says for us:

It will be a great movement!

begun warmly and without a pause.

You have carried yourself to a new

world, put off the final applause. 

That sudden silence.

What will follow? 

unproctored examination

Asked

How to find God

Say

Don’t know

For extra credit

Sit down

Eyes four feet

Shuttering ground

If after twenty

Fifty minutes

You think I’ll 

Ask again, don’t —

In another room

Water, sip, don’t think

Look — (congratulations)

Cum laude, sic

vel 

graduale 

sive

subito

tonite they get their treats

 I sit by window and drink all day

One mineral water after another

Then well water made into seltzer

Green fruit juice at night with pills

This wagon ride of solitude

asylum and assonance

" I feel God is nature and nature is beauty"

             (--Vincent, in "At Eternity's Gate")

 

The turmoil in mind and heart.

Is this how God is?

Is this what God is?

How people wish

to never experience God --

settling for power and wealth

unwavering belief cloaking

divine unpredictability --

instead  (ah yes) (see it)  beauty, 

uncertainty & εικόνισμα creativity --

a sign whose form directly reflects 

the thing it signifies -- revealing Itself

trouble in patricide

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American History at Boston College, author of many books plus her daily Letters From An American, writes today that “Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans.”

Here it begins.

Get a good seat, buckle in, and hang on.

I’m not sure my heart cares about such buffoonery coming to theaters mid-January.

 Nevertheless, Richardson and Richard Rohr (CAC) are treasures.

Perhaps we might gather at the stern and sing together “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” at this our titanic time.

last stop

 Like subway train 

Barreling tracks bumping rails

This heart careens into

No station

parasamgate

Flurry of heartbeats

Arrhythmia pounding

Any minute now

If it is time to stop, I’m 

Not giving treats to cats

paintings of people

When artists converse...

 "And people will go to museums to see paintings of people, not to see people who were painted."            (--Gauguin to van Goth in film At Eternity's Gate.)

...distinctions are made.

the word, who is life -- this is our subject; out of the tomb

What is it I do not yet understand about "Word"?

Perhaps it is closest, deepest within.

These words, no matter with what religion associated, sound into my echoing emptiness. 

Something which has existed since the beginning,

that we have heard,

and we have seen with our own eyes;

that we have watched

and touched with our hands:

the Word, who is life –

this is our subject.

That life was made visible:

we saw it and we are giving our testimony,

telling you of the eternal life

which was with the Father and has been made visible to us.

What we have seen and heard

we are telling you

so that you too may be in union with us,

as we are in union

with the Father

and with his Son Jesus Christ.

We are writing this to you to make our own joy complete.

(1john1:1-4) 

And these:

On the first day of the week Mary of Magdala came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we don’t know where they have put him.’

  So Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple, running faster than Peter, reached the tomb first; he bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did not go in. Simon Peter who was following now came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground, and also the cloth that had been over his head; this was not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed. 

--John 20:2-8

It is radical understanding to consider living outside the tomb.

Years ago a woman I knew would, with concern, inquire after my health, wherefore and why death was so frequently in what I wrote.  It touched me, her solicitous inquiries. After a while, she stopped asking.

Being taken out of the tomb could, simply, be understood as emerging from the moribund deathliness of unenlightened roteness and sluggish conformity to scripted instruction.

What did the other disciple see that caused his belief -- and belief in what?

Perhaps he saw nothing there.

That the nothing there was everywhere.

To believe this revelation is to undergo profound disorientation and distress.

What we thought was there is no longer there alone but everywhere interconnected at once.

Is this something that Christic affirmation, or belief-in-Christ, subconciously groks?

What is written is written. What is read, or taken in, is often beyond our ken.

when something true is said

“Life is truly better when you're invisible and irrelevant.” (Comment found on website after story of TikTok star gunned down in Mexico.)

I’ll leave it there.

known only through participation and practice

Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for 27dec2024, from Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC):

The Divine in This and in Us

God’s presence with us—right here, right now—in an embodied way.   

Most religious people I’ve met—from sincere laypeople to priests and nuns—still imagine God to be elsewhere. Before we can take the “now” seriously, we must shift from thinking of God as “out there” to also knowing God “in here.” In fact, here is the best access point! Only inner experience can bring healing to the human-divine split.   

Transformation comes by realizing our union with God right here, right now—regardless of any performance or achievement on our part. That’s the core meaning of grace, and we have to  know this for ourselves. No one can do this knowing for us. I could say as many times as I want that God is not elsewhere and heaven is not later, but until someone comes to personally and regularly experience that, they will not believe it.  

Authentic Christianity overcame the “God-is-elsewhere” idea in at least two major and foundational ways. Through the incarnation, God in Jesus became flesh; God visibly moved in with the material world to help us overcome the illusion of separation (John 1:14). Secondly, God as Holy Spirit is precisely known as an indwelling and vitalizing presence. By itself, intellectual assent to these two truths does little. The incarnation and Indwelling Spirit are known only through participation and practice, as we actively draw upon such Infinite Sources. Think of it as a “use it or lose it” situation!  

Good theology helps us know that we can fully trust the “now” because of the incarnation and the Spirit within us. I hope it doesn’t shock anyone to hear me say this: it’s like making love. We can’t be fully intimate with someone through vague, amorphous energy; we need close, concrete, particular connections. That’s how our human brains are wired.  

Jesus teaches and is himself a message of now-ness, here-ness, concreteness, and this-ness. Virtually the only time Jesus talks about future time is when he tells us not to worry about it (see Matthew 6:25–34). Don’t worry about times and seasons, don’t worry about when God will return, don’t worry about tomorrow. Thinking about the future keeps us in our heads, far from presence—with God, with ourselves, and with each other. Jesus talks about the past in terms of forgiving it. Jesus tells us to hand the past over to the mercy and action of God. [1]  

The full and participatory meaning of Christmas is that this one universal mystery of divine incarnation is also intended for us and continues in us! It is not just about trusting the truth of the body of Jesus, but trusting its extension through the ongoing Body of Christ—which is an even bigger act of faith, hope, and love and which alone has the power to change history, society, and all relationships. To only hold a mental belief in Jesus as the “Child of God” has little or no effect in the real world. [2] 

https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-svhhly-tlkridklo-e/ 

What he said! 

on the feast of stephen

 The martyrs, they say, died rather than yield to what they considered not true.

For example, they saw and affirmed the kindness, love, and generosity of Jesus.

They preferred not to lie about their preference.

I prefer the silence that surrounds the Creator and Source of all this.

Would i die for this preference?

It seems a foolish question.

I am already dead.

Look around.

You don’t see me, do you?

empty space between two mountains

I’m not sure there’s a world out there. 

Sequestering today inside. 

I grow wary of things i cannot foresee.

I yawn. 

Heat cuts in. 

Green spring water bottle empty.

Even prayer doesn’t know it’s been said.

what of that

 The preachers of the gospel of prosperity must be reading some other novel about two thousand years ago. They're not reading the gospel accounts.

Then again, who wants to read about the price paid for what is considered 'truth' or 'God' or 'light'?

            Matthew 10:17-22

The Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Beware of men: they will hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.

  ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved.’

I imagine God, if there is a God, is curious about the human race. So many wars. So much corruptive business practices. So few upstanding generous and compassionate people in power. So many good folks not knowing how to combat the bruisers and belittlers hovering over them.

I think the stories about God in Judeo/Christian scriptures were written by projective psychological pathology masquerading as historic narrative and theological belief. Hear me out.

The Creator, let's call this the Source, is a mystery. No one knows our beginnings. No one can verify the stirrings of life, progression of animation, coming to be of intelligence, capability, and resourcefulness.

And the dilemmas, the ethical conundrums, the tensions about who should live, what is mine, and how contain the stranger and threat.

We project onto 'God' our difficult progression, dumping death and destruction into the 'will of god' and 'punishment for transgressions' and 'judgment for sin.' 

Good and evil are convenient categories. Light and dark and handy metaphors. The angels and the devil are compelling compositions.

Psalm 30(31):3-4,6,8,16-17

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Be a rock of refuge for me,

  a mighty stronghold to save me,

for you are my rock, my stronghold.

  For your name’s sake, lead me and guide me.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Into your hands I commend my spirit.

  It is you who will redeem me, Lord.

As for me, I trust in the Lord:

  let me be glad and rejoice in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

My life is in your hands, deliver me

  from the hands of those who hate me.

Let your face shine on your servant.

  Save me in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

And so, we pray. 

Why not?

We dwell so much in shadows of understanding, approximations of veracity, figments of uncertainty.

We are inclined to call these 'faith.'

And they might be.

To be a person of faith is not to glory in bright-eyed certainty. 

No.

Faith is a way wandering through not-knowing.

Perhaps a 'trust' that the awfulness experienced in the ragged world is not the underlying soulful world lurking just under our comprehension. Not there for the taking. Just out of reach.

Browning wrote: 

I, painting from myself and to myself, 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 

Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, 

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what's a heaven for? 

(--in, Andrea del Sarto, BY ROBERT BROWNING) 

Elsewhere, the proscription "do not judge" is good advice.

We'd screw up our evaluations and guesses as to what was benefit and what deficit.

Perhaps better to wander through -- unjudging and thus unjudged -- our forays through field and cobblestone town, proverbial Vincents in Arles besotted with shapes and color, seeking transfer to canvas as God might wish to portraiture creation to be held in transitory aperture for infinitesimal duration of human consciousness. 

We'd like to see.

We think we see.

But we are merely seen, glimpsed in passing, not framed, nor signed.

As Robert Lowell wrote in his poem Epilogue:

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.

Out window, there it is, evening star.

It hangs there. 

Twenty five million miles away. 

It holds my gaze. 

looking out into us

 Read the news today

(oh boy) -- so much distress, lies

and celebrity -- drowning 

in impertinence --

now, creative angelic

quiet looks into our eyes -- 

αλήθεια, αγάπη

αλήθεια, truth

is what matters most -- follows

αγάπη, love -- where

truth hides until spoken, when

love appears sounding itself

conversation is christ, now, listening response

Two people call same

Time, — what a revelation!

Massachusetts, Maine,

Vermont — conversation — comes

Miracle — new earth — λóγος 

who art in nada

 Faith is an absence

Of any certainty, gone

Into something else —

Imagine a day without

Anything special, nada

earth two, me too, sit to

 dwelling parallel 

universe, somewhere else I

celebrate Christmas

in this one, it is Wednesday

cat on lap, three spring waters

over miles in a text

 and so it came to 

be, and also with you -- ah

it begins to snow 

seating well in time

 kneeling rocking seat

brought down for zen retreat time

alongside arm chair

compatriots in silence

holding me up . . . time being

sandy claws

 Cats want their breakfast

I am able to do this

Ho ho open tin

ciao e buon maria natale

 She’d say “happy Mary christmas” and laugh

She was born on Christmas Day, loved to dance

Lived at other end of Pennsylvania, chain smoked

Ran city streets every morning, adopted a son

Then, cancer

I think of her today

Returning her words on this small craft advisory

15 degree wind-howl Wednesday morning fresh

White with yesterday's snow and fond recall — 

Happy Mary Christmas!

Dancing friend, children saver, poster framing 

across body, out window, city landscape, resting

leaping through cosmos

 I don’t know who I’ve been 

or where I’ve been or 

why I’ve been

My name is not Jesus.

Let’s begin again.

In middle of night

I will come to be

Born

the eve of creation

squirrels in ceiling

cold December night, furnace

cuts in, live, let live

past, and future

“[E]very saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

Looking up quote used by commentator after film on Joan of Arc (The Maiden) in the series on Saints, I come across this:

The line comes from [Oscar] Wilde’s 1893 play A Woman of No Importance and is spoken by Lord Illingworth, a character whose hedonistic dandyism puts him in the same category with Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Grey. These characters scoff at morality and live solely for pleasure. Their wit makes them funny and charming, but underneath they are seducers and corrupters who leave destruction in their wakes.

Here are Lord Illingworth’s words in their proper context:

LORD ILLINGWORTH      I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.

LADY HUNSTANTON      Now I am quite out of my depth. I usually am when Lord Illingworth says anything… I have a dim idea, dear Lord Illingworth, that you are always on the side of the sinners, and I know I always try to be on the side of the saints, but that is as far as I get…

LORD ILLINGWORTH      The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

LADY HUNSTANTON      Ah! that quite does for me. I haven’t a word to say. You and I, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, are behind the age. We can’t follow Lord Illingworth. Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2018/11/the-christian-quote-that-everyone-takes-out-of-context/ 

It is a good quote.

Glad to find it.

can’t think of anything i need

Sitting zazen, bow

Snow finished, sun emerges

Nine lessons, carols

coming to be

Christmas Eve arrives.

 Yes

We wonder

What is

Being 

Born

Creator is

Not yet

Here

Not yet

Here

Not yet

Here

Male and

Female

They 

Are

Being made 

Not yet 

Here

As we

Are

Coming to 

Be

in all imaginable directions

 In prison today, this:

          The Afterlife

                    by Billy Collins 

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,

or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey. 

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head. 

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other. 

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls. 

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.  

With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key, 

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere. 

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog. 

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow. 

(And some just smile, forever on)

(—by Billy Collins, in Questions about Angels)

We conversed about lending ego.

About high class spirituality — loving self and neighbor simultaneously. 

About the integrity of such a thing. 

if the head is rotten

 If the measure of a people is their capacity to both tell and receive truth, I’m afraid we are operating at half or below measure.

Perhaps, with effort, that could change.

While there’s little hope for the incoming chief executive, there’s some optimism for many of the citizens of the land.

A change would be nice.

extra. ord. in. air. (we)

 The 

First

And

Last word

Is

Being

Spoken

Speaking

(Us)

Without words

one minute at a time

 It’s cold

Outside

Feels like

Minus six

(Says weather

Site)

Hot

Wood stove

Churning

Furnace

Day of

Retuning

Light

knowledge that knows without a knower

 Be yond thinking.

Go ahead.

Subhuti asked: “Is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? Is it unimaginable and totally unique but nevertheless reaching the unreachable and attaining the unattainable?”

The Buddha replied, “Yes, Subhuti, it is exactly so. And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? It is because all its points of reference cannot be thought about but can be apprehended.

“One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure essence. Another is the simple awakening to reality. Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence of all things in the world. And another is luminous knowledge that knows without a knower.

“None of these points can sustain ordinary thought because they are not objects of subjects. They can’t be imagined or touched or approached in any way by any ordinary mode of consciousness, therefore, they are beyond thinking.”         Prajnaparamita Sutr

Beyond thinking is beyond thought

And still we are not yet thinking

As such, comes the not yet, slowly,

Yond, over there

of course i love you

 how else

can I 

still breathe

as darkness pauses, light steps out in front

light

light

light

(wondering)

what is

being

born

casus belli

War is where

Evil takes off 

Disguise

Blinds

Humans with

Lust for power

Giving them

Pain and death

In return

look on this and be comforted

 Power has

A way

Of corrupting

Itself

Do not

Fear another’s

Power …

to be free

We must

Learn

To read

t.b.w.y. (a late december greeting)

 Yes, 

The season is here

Let me see,

Let me see

It becomes

A different greeting —

“Truth be

With you”

Yes,

You

“Truth 

Be-with 

You”

he thought we should be grateful

 Vinny died in Vietnam 

This day in 1968.

 A friend

I salute you

That war is over —

You know this

Don’t you

Left handed

Sandlot player

Wearing

Catcher’s

Gear

no distance at all

 Night sky 

Venus 25 million miles away

In upper corner of window —

Right here in these eyes

augen, schweigen, nichts

 I looked

Zen

In the face—

It had

Nothing

To say

writhing toward wood stove to be sorn

 Presuming generosity

The zen fool was asked:

Why do you write?

He had no answer —

So he sat and thought

He saw words as fools do

Tires rolling along road

Yesing and splashing 

Toward town

Where they are used —

He had no use for words

So he fitted them to paper

Rolled the paper for firebox

Meeting match and kindling

Giving their lives for warmth

Disappearing into joy

as i see it

 Not going anywhere

Staying put

Rain stops

And sun crosses

wet road into

Neighbor’s yard

no ticket, besides, last bus has pulled away

 I’m glad there are optimists. I’m not one of them. 

I understand their brightside take on things.

Nor am I a pessimist. Though, Lord knows, it’s 

The prevailing gray tone these days. Pessimism 

Takes too much thought and analysis for me.

I’d rather glance then glance away, several times.

No, call me that sliver space between light and dark,

The end of exhalation and prior to inhalation —

The horizon where day and night stand still

Where dark and dawn circle one another.

If there is any love, I am grateful there is.

If rain is to fall throughout this night, so be it

if, today, you hear the voice, open your heart

 Where does a message go when deleted?

How long does a word hang around unsaid?

And if someone we’re to say, “”I love you,”

Do the words float off, an unhanded balloon 

Drifting directionless over ubiquitous need

Of immumerable souls thinking they hear

Something circling their inner depletion

Their thirsty listening for that which upholds

be brave

 If you’ve

Got nothing

To say,

Say it 

no answers on machine

 The machine had 70+ messages

it was time to cull

the "ok you fruit loops" lady's voice

which were the first four messages,

on machine for over a year

always complaining the recording

said "Leave a message and we'll get back"

as if the act of message-leaving would

ensure we'd get back from wherever we were.

Only her voice remained, she was gone,

finding out months after her death in (of 

all places) Florida, the research into her

whereabouts -- which comes up, who knows?

I press delete, four times, her voice erased

She never left a return number

maybe she didn't want to talk -- what was there 

to say -- advanced Parkinsons, confined to 

nursing homes, this estrangement, that one --

the wrinkled memory of brighter days at

bookshop, her buddhist practice, the dead

dog she kept in her car for months, the smell,

the depredation uncompanioning, sorrowing loss -- 

dust and dog hair coating & cushioning her floors.

All that, silenced now, no messages forthcoming

no messages extant, only these words telling

there once were messages, some jibes & joshing,

good enough laughter, then fade into unechoing

the way a voice will stop within unsaying memory

this, this . . . is christ. . . the lord

 Christ

Itself

Is

Prayer

Becoming

You

that which is becoming 自体

Let us

Pray

It is

Prayer 

Brings

Us to

That

Place, umwelt

That

Which is

Becoming

Christ 

You 

Wonder —

“What is

Prayer?”

I 

Am

Telling you

This

That which

Is 

Becoming

Itself

Is

Christ

Revealing 

You

To and as

Itself

自体

Jitai

the throes of elsewhere

 That surprising realization on the part of the protagonist in the novel about a residential facility for teens in Maine that the man she worked with was not interested, really, in the facility, his job, Maine, or anything else but finishing his doctorate, moving on to a real job, elsewhere.

Familiar.

When weekend came and everybody went home. When everybody leaves in the evening and you remain on duty.

When you realize that everyone has someplace else to be.

There’s something. Riveting. About the realization of the transitory. Everyone moving on. Plans. Goals. A future.

The moon is not up yet over to Bald Mountain.

I am a teenager in high school. I begin to sense that high school is a temporary passage. The athletes on scholarship would go on to be insurance salesmen and actuarial trainees. 

The nice girl met at a dance would go home to her mom and dad, brothers and sisters and the boy she liked from the neighborhood.

That all of them would marry, move to suburbs, have kids, and drive pontiacs and chevys, serve on church or town committees.

The sense of loneliness back then when the notion arose that this, this, wasn’t it, that there was something else, somewhere else, someone else that people were gravitating to, planning for, acting on.

It was surprising. My immature view of things. 

Then time passed.

I sat on a cushion. Breath came and went. 

Once it was “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” But that wasn’t true.

Then it became: “The more things change, the more they become themselves.”  Or, “The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself.”

Yes, that’s it — it becomes itself, the more it changes.

It had been a shock that things did not remain the same. A summer afternoon. A walk by the narrows with an Italian nurse. A blue jay on a branch.

Sitting on the ground in a schoolyard with a bevy of men and women in religious habits. The flash of connecting eyes. She leaves for Japan. Ten years pass. Spackling the walls of a house where folks lived in poverty. Body movement in improvisational theater at university workshop. Walking to school during school years with the tall girl from 70th street and being tongue tied to say anything at all. Walking down subway stairs. Different stops.

Moments of steadfast immediacy, a Parmenidean insistence on unchanging Being. And nearby, lurking, Heraclitus gesturing that it is going to change, will soon change, and any construct of shutterblink permanence would fade like an old Polaroid photo left outdoors and forgotten under sun and rain.

This, this, changes.

All of it. Changes.

Not that I became friends with time. With time passing. With place changing. With same and different.

You don’t have to like your traveling companions. You do, however, have to travel with them. And they will turn, and wave, goodbye. Both people and time.

And there you are. In the throes of elsewhere. The passing of time. Of places. Of those, you were, once, with.

still life

 Frosty night air

Dog pees just beyond tree

Moonlight . . . dooryard

crossing window

through coincidence 

of opposites

the continuous 

emerging center 

this full moon

attending the sacred/natural

There is a sacred space available to every creature without denominator, divisor, or religious affiliation.

Last night, I attended.

Then I closed the sanctuary drapes.

Having received the holy in its most natural appearance.

in the radiance of the spirit

Conscripted in old age wounded and enfeebled staring out at dawning civil twilight trusty stead in dooryard pointing toward road readied for ride into battle tilting black ridgeline with nameplate “now” its signal flag first wave into spiritual battle against eponymous foe fie fi fum rocinante fire-breathing work-truck stead ready to ride into absurdity to fillet the mighty fishy fellow looming largely orange over the near-winter brown morning earth.

By day the sun shines,
And the warrior in his armor shines.
By night the moon shines,
And the master shines in meditation.
But day and night
The one who is awake
Shines in the radiance of the spirit. 

—Buddha in the Dhammapada

 My meditation is in the zendo of my cluttered cell up over bird feeders this cold morning. The jikido keeps time. She understands the inner battle wanting to become likewise outer battle. But her job my job is to note the time and wait for enlightening cosmos fiery star to penetrate this slate gray melodramatic emptiness to brighten through this metaphoric dimness covering the land.

Bodhi-chitta, abbey/ashram* hermitage jikido cat, keeping watch

(* in early days of meetingbrook, departed community member david shippee (rest well, friend), thought we should be called the abbey/ashram)

solving the ‘mu’(king) kong-an zen annoyance

 No

I won’t

Capitulate

No

abc

Donation

To 

(Ha!) 

‘Library’

(Moat?) likely

A warehouse

For merchandise

Chief salesman

Lures

(Baaa baaa)

mag(a)-ites

To tithe and

Titillate

His mag(a)stic

(Gegasten) ego

We are

Downwind

Of an 

Awful stench

one way or the other

 yes

if you can

yes

if you can't

and if you 

aren't sure

…yes?

yes!

readying ourselves to emerge wholeheartedly

 I suppose it is possible that we don’t know what is really helpful or really hurtful. So much has to do with convention and liberation. (Cf Ajahn Chah (1918-1992) in Daily Zen)

Likewise, the swings and contortions of contemporary culture and politics arising from some basement of inarticulate blithering. It is like some poorly conceived “reality show” whose sole purpose is to hawk product and sell to our subconscious. It is a devastating inconvenience to try to punctuate exactly what is wrong with every sentence spoken every snark and cynical utterance mouthed.

I fear some maddened grammarian, some deranged connoisseur of correct communication will snap and attempt to mow down the errant weeds out of our front lawn of decency and democracy.

Politics and political chicanery have been substituted in and are replacing authentic and believable leadership. Madmen and delusional fabricators of falsity occupy the halls of power and the communication airways of silly propaganda.

There’s no hiding, no safe house to while away this next duration of silly and stupid.

There’s no meditation or sacred word that will cover our heads as this contamination and infecting virus pervades the very air needed to breathe.

The convention is we let the script unroll and speak our lines as good and dutiful citizens. The liberation is we see and say and act on what perverts decent community and compassion, becoming something we’ve left to others handle for us.

Satyagraha, our new intent.

Satyagrahi, our new marching orders and commission.

And a longer elaboration on satyagraha in britannica.com:

 https://www.britannica.com/topic/satyagraha-philosophy 

In prison yesterday we spoke of this satyagraha. The men feel that one remaining dignity available to them is to seek out truth and attempt to take up residence therein. 

They have taken up residence in authentic inquiry and respectful deep listening and loving speech. They pursue something deeper within yet greater than themselves.

They are a joy to join in conversation.

Where freedom resides.

When convention changes its clothes and steps out into dignity and respect.

at day’s end

 Tired.

For ten miles the mountains rise

Above the lake. The beauty of

Water and mountains is

Impossible to describe.

In the glow of evening

A traveler sits in front

Of an inn, sipping wine.

The moon shines above

A bamboo fence that descends to

The water. I chat with an

Old man about work and crops.

Maybe, when the years have come

When I can lay aside my

Cap and robe of office,

I can take a little boat

And come back to this place.

Chu His (1130-1200

Once anywhere, we never really leave.

Are we not everywhere we’ve ever been?

Like, for instance, tired?