if not here, where

 Cosmos and cross — way

Emerging from itself to

Itself within/out

a word wakened by lips that perish

 In prison this morning, Milosz: 

          Meaning

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.  
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up, 
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world? 
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, 
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other? 
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? 
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish, 
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, 
And calls out, protests, screams.

—Poem by Cheslaw Milosz, 1911-2004

The men gave great insight concerning null and zero and word and meaning.

As though a graduate seminar on mathematics and philosophy.

We, grateful students. 

fools such as i

Such as it is. 

 A mendicant (from Latin: mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. In principle, mendicant religious orders own little property, either individually or collectively, and in many instances members have taken a vow of poverty, in order that all their time and energy could be expended on practicing their respective faith, preaching and serving society.

Mendicancy is a form of asceticism, especially in Western Christianity. In Eastern Christianity, some ascetics are referred to as Fools for Christ, whereby they spurn the convention of society in pursuit of living a more wholly Christian life. —wikipedia

So it is. 

the runner finished 44th in Paris

                            (for Rebecca)

Back home, she was doused

in petrol, her body burnt,

died four days later --

there is something in the mind

that heart cannot ease or cool

the limits of ai

 I suppose young men

get tired of gaming screen deaths --

go for live targets

let's not pretend

 The sorrow of school

shooting -- we know what to do,

what has to be done

are you asking me

dogen said we're already enlightened

francis showed christ dwelling within

god 

how do we continually evade who 

and what we are

hyphen words not wholeness

 Dogen said we’re al-

ready enlightened; Jesus 

said God is within —

What is it we don’t get a-

bout our inner life

332

There are choices to be made. And we want to trust our leaders to make a good choice. 

There are serious and severe doubts that the leader of Israel made the honorable choice in hostage release negotiations.

Nor do we have any sympathy for executioners who kill innocent hostages.

At the funeral on Monday, Goldberg-Polin’s parents led a procession of thousands of mourners. Their shirts were torn––a symbol of mourning in the Jewish tradition––and they wore stickers reading “332,” the number of days that their son spent as a captive in Gaza before he was found dead. 

(—the New Yorker, Grief and Fury in Israel! By Ruth Margalit, September 3, 2024)

It is unseemly to merely contend that war is terrible. It is.

It is dishonest to say blithely there’s no way to avoid conflict. There is.

Our contentiousness and dishonesty are lamentable — but they aren’t our defining fundamental nature. That nature is fluid and formative and yearning for the wholeness it is being urged to accommodate.

Let there be no rest for the unfinished!

insist

I like the clarification.

The Insistence of God presents the provocative idea that God does not exist, God insists, while God's existence is a human responsibility, which may or may not happen. For John D. Caputo, God's existence is haunted by "perhaps," which does not signify indecisiveness but an openness to risk, to the unforeseeable. Perhaps constitutes a theology of what is to come and what we cannot see coming. Responding to current critics of continental philosophy, Caputo explores the materiality of perhaps and the promise of the world. He shows how perhaps can become a new theology of the gaps God opens. 

(From description of The Insistence of God, A Theology of Perhaps by John D. Caputo, Indiana University Press)

It is a good distinction.

Really.

I insist. 

As must God.

prompt

Write something on God

I write — ‘s o m e t h i n g’ — on paper

Paper being God

chicanery

Looked at Threads. At X.

Can't tell any more what's real --

Won't look, not again

many are disturbed by being disturbed

I’ve been thinking of trying the intent of this prayer: 

“Let nothing disturb you”

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,

All things are passing away:

God never changes.

Patience obtains all things

Whoever has God lacks nothing;

God alone suffices.          

 (St. Teresa of Avila)

There’s something more than important here to be considered. 

we are held in place by what links us.

 Smart aleck Foyan in 11th century probably was right. That doesn't make him less annoying.

If people with a potential for enlightenment are willing to see in this way, they must investigate most deeply and examine most closely; all of a sudden they will gain mastery of it and have no further doubt.

The reason you do not understand is just because you are taken away by random thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Since you want to learn business, you fall in love with things you see and fondly pursue things you read; over time, you get continuously involved. How can you manage to work on enlightenment then?

Foyan (1067–1120)

And he, presumably, did not know about, nor have,  a smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

Still, distractions and random thoughts crowd our consciousness, turning our attention away from that which might better nourish and comfort our well-being.

Dead hostages are found in tunnel in Gaza. (I let that sink in.)

I suspect not much has changed in the telling of atrocities from ancient Babylonia to contemporary Middle East. Nor from Atlanta Georgia to Dallas Texas. The violence, antipathy, and (if I might say it), ignorance prevails and is pernicious.

It makes me wonder what Foyan was pointing to -- that we are veering off from enlightenment.? What is this 'enlightenment'?

No easy answer here. Not from me.

But perhaps...

Is enlightenment the foundational reservoir of dynamic wholeness that undergirds all of existence? 

As I write this, Doris sends this:

                             

                                             Photo : Eli Campbell

 

 

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII

 

Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move alongside our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

 

 

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

 

Pure attention, the essence of the powers !
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?

 

 

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work.  It is Earth who gives. 

 

 

 Rainer Maria Rilke ~In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

This, yes!

Prosit! 

a life, lived among birds and forests and fields

I'm busy folding and packing away my summer whites.

It is nominally ('in name only; officially though perhaps not in reality') innominate ('anonymous') autumn. My tennis racquets and golf shoes, straw fedora and briar pipe, boating shorts and tom collins glasses -- all put away, spit-spot, de rigeur, done. 

We read from Dead Man's Float by Jim Harrison at Friday Evening Conversation. Our friend in the Philippines thought he'd want to read more by Harrison.

HARRISON

It’s the origin of the thinking behind The Theory and Practice of Rivers. In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life, as Rilke would have it. In Sundog, Strang says a dam doesn’t stop a river, it just controls the flow. Technically speaking, you can’t stop one at all. 

(--The Paris Review, Jim Harrison, The Art of Fiction No. 104, Interviewed by Jim Fergus ISSUE 107, SUMMER 1988)

Saw the film adaptation Legends of the Fall (1994) of Harrison's 1979 novella of the same name. I think I'll prefer to read the novella. 

One of his poems:

Old Man

An old man is a spindly junk pile.

He is so brittle he can fall

through himself top to bottom.

No mirror is needed to see the layers

of detritus, some years clogged with it.

The red bloody layer of auto deaths

of dad and sister. Deaths piled like cordwood

at the cabin, the body 190 pounds of ravaged

nerve ends from disease. The junk pile is without

sympathy for itself. A life is a life,

lived among birds and forests and fields.

It knew many dogs, a few bears and wolves.

Some women said they wanted to murder him

but what is there worth murdering?

The body, of course, the criminal body

doing this and that. Some will look

for miraculous gold nuggets in the junk

and find a piece of fool’s gold in the empty

cans of menudo, a Mexican tripe stew. 

(--poem by Jim Harrison) 

Cool air blows through wohnküche sliding door. I don't go into prison this morning. I give them a break 

Cats and dog fed. Day-old coffee heated and sipped. House quiet. 

Mariners breakfast behind Lasell Island out on Penobscot Bay before crossing water back to Rockport Harbor with pictures and stories, then scuttling to load car disembarking with hundreds of thousands down turnpike out of Maine to darker environs south through Massachusetts.

The rest of us Maine residents wave and bid adieu, happy to have served as temporary hosts to their temporary sojourn in this lovely state.

Harrison died in 2016. That's it. We all do.

no sir

 I will

Not comment

boo

 Have it gone

Ghost sentence

Haunting page

truth be told

 Words creep

Through this space

I have no control 

it might not seem a big deal

I prefer the words

Eventual Truth -- Taoist

Way -- to God or Lord

yes, you are, am i

Water and mountains, says Dōgen, are places formed by the wise Water and mountains, says Dōgen, are places formed by the wise

ndrei)

perhaps could be said

'no other as other is'

both still redounding 

one and many, you and me

travelling through many selves