nightly routine

Thump, thump, thump with stick

'Pish, pish' to St. Bernard mix

And he does — back in

and the integrative tendencies of organisms

It sounds like an academic distinction -- duality vs polarity. 

It might turn out to be the crux of our current political struggle. 

Duality is characteristic of the mental structure to the same extent that polarity is a hallmark of the mythical structure. But duality differs in one essential respect from polarity: in polarity correspondences are valid. Every correspondence is a complement, a completion of the whole. 

 

Duality is the mental splitting and tearing apart of polarity, and, from the correspondences of polarity, duality abstracts and quantifies the oppositions or antitheses.… from duality only a deficient, because unstable, form of unity can be realized as the unification of opposites in a third aspect. 

(--Jean Gebser, [EPO 85, 86])

Duality intends a rupturing, a severing of what is connected, and a subsequent analysis as to which end of the split is better, richer, more worthy, and which end should be diminished, denigrated, or eliminated.

This mechanism of perception has long been with us. It represents a cutting off of one from another, a hierarchy of worth, and a categorization of those who belong from those who do not belong.

If I have any glimmer of understanding about holarchy and grace, I would want to further explore a world view that embraces and appreciates one as another, one within another, one an-other.

A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole. In this way, a holon can be considered a subsystem within a larger hierarchical system.^[1]

The holon represents a way to overcome the dichotomy between parts and wholes, as well as a way to account for both the self-assertive and the integrative tendencies of organisms.^[2] Holons are sometimes discussed in the context of self-organizing holarchic open (SOHO) systems.^[2][1]

The word holon (Greek: ὅλον) is a combination of the Greek holos (ὅλος) meaning 'whole', with the suffix -on which denotes a particle or part (as in proton and neutron). Holons are self-reliant units that possess a degree of independence and can handle contingencies without asking higher authorities for instructions (i.e., they have a degree of autonomy). These holons are also simultaneously subject to control from one or more of these higher authorities. The first property ensures that holons are stable forms that are able to withstand disturbances, while the latter property signifies that they are intermediate forms, providing a context for the proper functionality for the larger whole.  (wikipedia)

The whole belongs to no-one, thus, to every-one. This sense of belonging is not the sense of possession, as in real estate, or furniture, a financial portfolio, or a closet full of shirts.

The whole, it might be said, is where God is. Perhaps, better said, the whole is what God is.

So many have difficulty, in the traditional parlance, believing in God. This might be because so many of us dwell in the "parts." We dwell in the fragmentary conception of reality as bits and pieces that are best owned and traded, bolstering the concept of the economy variously navigated by different "classes" of society whose social class is predicated on wealth and possessions.

The very notion that there is a "whole" is a dubious consideration most think is better left to abstract thinkers, philosophers, and theologians. It is not meant for practical people, movers and shakers, or the common folk whose very livelihood is predicated on the bits and pieces of hourly wage or yearly salary minus the cost of housing, food, clothing, and distracting amusements.

No, they might say, the whole is a luxury most cannot afford to think about, unless it is packaged as some heavenly destination attained after a life of ethical and moral rectitude and strong faith in a God who will reward or punish based on your beliefs and actions.

Polarity suggests an interconnection. A spectrum of continuity. A realization that no one is out of the loop.

The notion of wholeness, where, it might be said, each being is everywhere and nowhere, can be unsettling to our dualistic thinking.

"Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation" -- is how John Fowles began his novel Daniel Martin. 

We live, perhaps, in a desolate time. We are so busy trying to serve the ego and be better than some perceived enemy. 

"I am better than you" it seems, is easier to say than "I see the best in you."

Our political theater, nightly, performs the same play with the same lines and the same intent -- to better the other.

To better the other rather than to become the other.

Wherein there is no other.

Just us. No one, no being, no thing left out.

The whole of it. 

tell me one

Quick surprise. 

It may seem that a koan is a device to discover something. More accurately, it is a sensibility of sudden and shocking aliveness that is marked by obstacles, nervousness, uncertainty. This is at the core of our being in the world, our existence moment to moment.

—Douglas Penick, “The Wall” tricycle

Stories that surprise wake us.

All else snoozes.

credo quia absurdum

 Perhaps the absurd

Is true measure of time — where 

truth can hear nothing

apologies to masahide’s burnt barn

Since my mind fell off

I now see nothing clearly

Not a sound is heard

the reverberation of rien

 I have

Nothing

To say

That’s why

You can’t

Hear me

The sound 

of nothing

Is your empty

Mind

Listen carefully —

Eh? No sound

rethinking the allusion

 Take Genesis — God

Did not punish apple bite

He sorrowed knowledge

Falling without wisdom — hence

It would take pure heart to pierce

when rhetoric gets real

 We need good words, kind

Words encouraging to all —

Listen, you’ll know them

and cat brings mouse from celler

 Orange juice, English

Muffin peanut butter, jam —

I love my morning

quoque qui scire volunt

  Yesterday, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was feted. He was a powerful Cistercian. As with all power, he was a fluctuating force in the medieval church.

Some references:

 Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. 

Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.

            (-- Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ([1840] 1841)   p. 324) 

• Sunt namque qui scire volunt eo fine tantum ut sciant; et turpis curiositas est. Et sunt qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi; et turpis vanitas est. ... Et sunt item qui scire volunt, ut scientiam suam vendant, verbi causa, pro pecunia, pro honoribus; et turpis quaestus est. Sed sunt quoque qui scire volunt, ut aedificent; et caritas est. Et item qui scire volunt, ut aedificentur; et prudentia est.
• To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity. (Translation from Alfred Howard Campbell Downes, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, translating Étienne Gilson's La théologie mystique de saint Bernard)
• Then you have some people who wish to know for the sake of knowing, and that is scandalous curiosity. (Translation from J. Van Herwaarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late-Medieval Religious Life)
• For there are some who want knowledge for the sole purpose of knowing, and this is unseemly curiosity. And there are some who seek knowledge in order to be known themselves; and this is unseemly vanity. ... And there are also those who seek knowledge in order to sell their knowledge, for example, for money or for honors; and this is unseemly quest for gain. But there are also those who seek knowledge in order to edify, and this is charity. And there are those who seek knowledge in order to be edified, and this is prudence. 

                    (Translation from Doctor Mellifluus, a 1953 papal encyclical) Sermones in Cantica XXXVI, Migne PL 183, col. 968-969)

 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux

When we learn to read, when we learn to think, we will, no doubt, both honor and criticize our oversized predecessors their use of intellect and questionable use of power.

But, for today, cheers, Bernard! 

There is, indeed, much to know.

preach, reach, teach, speech

 God's pronouns:

    he, she, they, we, this, this, this, these, yo, you, say heh

let's face it

I don't understand 

my stupidity, much less

your stupidity

the little search engine that couldn't

 I cannot look up

people I've known -- it is a

reminder empty

of experience, a flight

to no place, without visa

pious and profligate, pauper and potentate

If earth is earth, and poetry is poetry, then, why is earth not poetry?

Whoever wants to understand the poem, must go into the land of poetry Whoever wants to understand the poet, must go into the poet’s land

--Goethe, West-Östlicher Diwan, Motto (1819) 

For us, here, earth is the poet's land. 

The oversight we've made has been to relegate to a conceptual wasteland that which belongs to a tangible felt landscape of material earth with its spiritual underlay.

Propinquity. 

After recitation of the Qur’an, and perhaps calligraphy, poetry is probably the most important and popular of Islamic arts, and is certainly one of the most prominent and characteristic features of Muslim societies around the world, from the earliest days of Islam to the present day. The pride of place given to the art of poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia, the linguistic miracle of the Qur’an, with its rich imagery and intricate sonoral structures, the pithy and graphic language of the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet of Islam), the appreciation and patronage of poets and poetry by scholars and sultans alike, all contributed to the universal appreciation of poetry in the Muslim world. Pious and profligate, pauper and potentate, Peul and Philipino and everyone in between, loved and loves a good poem. This is especially true within the tradition of Sufism, which has produced most of the great poetry in every Islamic language, and tends to incorporate the best poetry composed outside of it anyway.6

Rare is the Sufi master who has not written a collection of poetry, and rarer still are gatherings of Sufis where some form of poetry is not recited or sung. The Senegalese Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba’s (d. 1927) impressive literary output (estimated at over 200 works) is nearly entirely composed of verse.7  Even the prose works of Sufism are studded with poetry: the influential Andalusian mystic Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) magnum opus, the Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (sometimes called “the Bible of Sufism”) contains over 1,428 original poetical pieces, comprising over 7,000 verses.8 And so, we can ask, why do Sufis write and recite so much poetry?

Why Poetry?

وي اإشارة معنى ما العبارة ح ّدت

In allusion there is meaning

not contained in plain expression.

Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Naẓm al-Sulūk

(--in The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of Presence: Meditations on Arabic Sufi Poetry Performance and Ritual in Contemporary Dakar , by Oludamini Ogunnaike, journal of Sufi studies 5 (2016) 58–97 

Allusive propinquity. The process of feeling oneself within something without naming what it is you are within. Merely the honoring of a substantive presence without shape, form, or name.

Had we not misspelled such a phenomena 'G o d' we might have spelled it 'E a r -- t h'. 

To be breathed-into, to be inspired, is to be here as terrestrial and cosmologic beings inseparate and inchoate.

Mirrors present no detached image. What is given is what is gotten. The earthen and the human are one within the other.

Is this why so many cannot abide true poetry? It is too close? Intimate? Of a piece?

"Pious and profligate, pauper and potentate . . . loved and loves a good poem." 

I'll second that. (Even though there is merely the one, the first, which has no two, no second.)

Waiting and listening.

As earth, for the human. 

the light that shines in matter, noli timeri

 Spiritmatter one

Word, one reality, one 

thought, one act, one yes

tale of two spiritual acts

 Neighbor splits wood, hum

Of machine floats up Barnestown 

As bells toll from France

not you grandmother’s rosary

prayer begins here

if you want to be present

consider prayer

holding together the human and the divine

Guess I'd never read Pelagius carefully.

There's this whole meditation on 'good' that surfaces time to time.

Pelagius had his view. Augustine, his. I, mine.

Manichaeism stressed that the spirit was God-created, while material substance was corrupt and evil. Theologian Gerald Bonner felt that Pelagius's purported views were in part an "over-reaction" to Manicheanism. Pelagius held that everything created by God was good, therefore, he "could not see" how God had made humans fallen creatures.^[14] The Pelagians accused Augustine of bringing Manichaeian theology into the Christian church, which Augustine himself denied.^[15]

The view that mankind can avoid sinning, and that humans can freely choose to obey God's commandments, is held to have stood at the core of Pelagian teaching. Pelagius stressed human autonomy and freedom of the will;^[16] an illustration of Pelagius' views on man's "moral ability" not to sin can be found in his Letter to Demetrias.^[17]

For Pelagius, "grace" consisted of the gift of free will, the Law of Moses, and the teachings of Jesus.^[18] According to Augustine, Pelagians saw baptism of infants as useless because they had no sin.^[19] Celestius, who was a disciple of Pelagius, also was to have denied original sin and the necessity of infant baptism for salvation.^{[20]. wikipedia}

The notion of projection, or 'reverse-think', is a popular contemporary political posturing that is (effectively) used by one of the presidential candidates in America. You accuse your opponent of what you have done, what you are doing, in a propagandistic effort to confuse, divert, and distract. There are many who believe this somersault rhetoric because, well, they are given to such beliefs.

The wrestling match between those who champion good-versus-evil continues. Some bray 'root out sin'. Some aver 'good is as right as rain'. Between and among these positions, sitting ringside, are wrestling fans who prefer the matches continue to conflagrate the debate with body-slams and mind-doubts that perpetuate the hard-fought history of salvation, redemption, ransom, and the shame of who killed the savior.

Somewhere, under the posturing rhetoric and theological treatises of both sides, there is a foundational reality that continues to elude us -- or, maybe not all of us, but those of us with my name and terrestrial profile.

As we rebuild Christianity from the bottom up, let’s start “in the beginning” with the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1. The first image in the Judeo-Christian Bible reveals a creative, compassionate God: “God’s Spirit hovered over the water” (Genesis 1:2). The word “hovered” is the same word used to describe a brood hen, lovingly watching over her young, warming the eggs and protecting the hatchlings. The Bible begins with clear hints of growth, development, and evolution. God is a dynamic creator, a verb more than a noun.

Looking at Creation in progress, “God saw that it was good” five times and “found it very good” after the sixth day (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). We all need to know that this wonderful thing called life is going somewhere and somewhere good. It is going someplace good because it came from goodness—a beginning of “original blessing” instead of “original sin.” Matthew Fox illustrated this rather well in his groundbreaking book, Original Blessing. [1]

For some reason, most Christian theology seems to start with Genesis 3—which features Adam and Eve—what Augustine would centuries later call “original sin.” When you start with the negative or with a problem, it’s not surprising that you end with Armageddon and Apocalypse. When you start with a punitive, critical, exclusionary God, it’s not surprising that you see the crucifixion as “substitutionary atonement” where Jesus takes the punishment that this angry God intended for us.

That is not what Franciscans and many other Christians believe. And this is not something the loving Abba of Jesus would do. Because the belief in substitutionary atonement is so common and so problematic, we will explore its alternative—at-one-ment—in depth later this year.

Why did Jesus come? Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity. It didn’t need changing. God has organically, inherently loved what God created from the moment God created it. Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.

As our image of God changes, our image of God’s creation, including ourselves, changes as well. Jesus shows us what it looks like for God to be incarnate in humanity. He holds together the human and the divine so that we might follow him and do the same.

Jesus shows us that the pattern of everything is death and resurrection. Jesus is the archetypal pattern for every life, including yours and mine. There will be suffering and death along with love, joy, and resurrection. Most of us are so resistant to accepting suffering that Jesus walked through it himself and said, “Follow me.” He showed us that on the other side of suffering is transformation. Love is stronger than death. The full, vibrant life that Jesus offers is big enough to include even its opposite: death. Unless a religion directly faces the issues of suffering and death, it is rather useless religion. Jesus holds these big questions front and center.

(--from Original Blessing, Wednesday, January 4, 2017, CAC, Richard Rohr)

My "...Mind", as the subway ads overhead read on the Sea Beach 'N' line train cars moving through Bensonhurst to Manhattan during high school years, "is a terrible thing to waste." (Over the years, it seems, the last two words of that subway car wisdom have fallen away, and, listening to our confreres and consoeurs, we are witnesses to just "a terrible thing.")

Jesus had a tough audience.

We are a tough audience.

We hear what we want to hear, rather than what is actually (liminally or subliminally) sounded.

Perhaps it does take a radical and profound silence to actually set the stage for what is to be sounded.

on viewing photographs longer than necessary

 Never liked photos

give me a caricature

pretending to seem

an ever beginning presence

 All these years, and then

Something begins to sneak in —

Cosmic Christ origin