If I drop my beliefs, what remains?
A nice old temple against a green mountain;
A white cloud opens and closes
Its two brushwood doors.
All I have is a water bottle and a staff
And don’t care if time passes or not.
--Daegak Euchon (1055-1101) dailyzen
Once I was encouraged to ask for absolution.
Now I ask of the absolute resolute encouragement.
Soon, I pray, I will have nothing but courage to absolve the absolute.
According to the sudden teaching,
all things are nothing
but the one mind of suchness,
wherein all discriminations have utterly ceased.
-- Treatise on the Five Teachings. (dailyzen)
I consulted with God. God said "Look at those lovely leaves, red and gold. And look at the millions and millions of chestnuts dropping to mountain ground. And look up at the billions of stars in pre-moon sky."
The small waves pushed by breeze at slipway on pond. The happy dog greeting Rivian driver. The darkness of the evening walk after dropping off borrowed car.
And God said, "Do you think I would encourage those who love me in these things to choose a man such as is running to become president to actually become president?"
And God once again became silent.
And God was disappointed to think that those who claim to love God would think that such a man actually cared for them and actually cared for God.
But God knows that the ways of humans, their deceit and their foolish followings, must be allowed slack reins for the ride they choose.
Why?
God is no controller. Despite what social media posters two thousand years ago posted in their book of books. Despite what contemporary social media and main street media post and pontificate about during this theater of the absurd prelude to civilization's singularity postlude of artificial intelligence and political artifice of self-aggrandizing conclave of "Habemus Sapum."
My cat looks up at me. October leaves smother the ground outside screen door. They know it is time to fall.
And fall they do.
Letting go.
Arriving at ground-earth.
As the story tells it, so did Adam, so did Eve.
Adam -- A well-known Hebrew name, Adam means "son of the red Earth." Its meaning comes from the Hebrew word adamah meaning "earth," from which Adam is said to be formed.
Eve -- Eve /iːv/ is an English given name for a female, derived from the Latin name Eva, in turn originating with the Hebrew חַוָּה (Chavah/Havah – chavah, to breathe, and chayah, to live, or to give life).
There's so much of which we are unaware.
And the unaware continue to want power to promulgate their unawareness.
We say, parenthetically, we wish to live a life of prayer.
What is prayer but a plea that what-is reveal itself again and again before our eyes, within our minds, through our hearts.
Between these parentheses we dwell for a time in a place with an accompanying group of individuals with whom we are recommended to love and respect -- each one of them.
Each one of us is a parenthesis within a greater parenthesis.
We are included.
Set in a dwelling place necessary for our thriving and nurturance.
My prayer today -- let us not forget where we are, who we are, why we are. This!
And of those who have forgotten?
Let's remember "this."
As in: "Do this in memory of me."
Just as we have forgotten "Being" -- we are forgetting "word" and "God."
In my religious tradition there has been a struggle to come to terms with the distinction between "many" and "all."
Is it "all of you"? Or is it "many of you"?
I prefer to think "all of you". I prefer to think "the many that are you."
From a 2011 article about "Eucharistic Prayer I":
Current Translation
The day before he suffered he took bread in his sacred hands and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said:
TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT IT; THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.
When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT; THIS IS THE CUP OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT. IT WILL BE SHED FOR YOU AND FOR ALL SO THAT SINS MAY BE FORGIVEN. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.
Latin Original
Qui, pridie quam paterétur, accépit panem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas, et elevates óculis in caelum ad te Deum Patrem suum omnipoténtem, tibi grátias agens benedíxit, fregit, dedítgue discípulis suis, dicens: ACCÍPITE ET MANDUCÁTE EX HOC OMNES: HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM, QUOD PRO VOBIS TRADÉTUR.
Símili modo, postquam cenátum est, accípiens et hunc praeclárum cálicem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas, item tibi grátias agens benedíxit, dedítque discípulis suis, dicens: ACCÍPITE ET BÍBITE EX EO OMNES: HIC EST ENIM CALIX SÁNGUINIS MEI, NOVI ET AETÉRNI TESTAMÉNTI, QUI PRO VOBIS ET PRO MULTIS EFFUNDÉTUR IN REMISSIÓNEM PECCATÓRUM. HOC FÁCITE IN MEAN COMMEMORATIÓNEM.
New Translation
On the day before he was to suffer he took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT: FOR THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.
In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands, and once more giving you thanks, he said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT: FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT, WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.
It has been a while since I have attended in person a Catholic mass. But when I did, many years ago, from altar boy years at St A's on Bay Parkway, through following times of Franciscan studies, and years of retreats at Trappist monastery -- I listened to the words. (These days I listen to the Offices de chaque jour, from Abbaye Sainte Madeleine du Barroux in France)
Words.
That originary place where original energy resides and emerges through into an outer flow of movement and manifestation.
Words are not meant to be co-opted into lies and deceit. Not by politicians. Not by those who would constrict and contract meaning into narrow spaces to be used by narrow minds to influence an unattending and unrealizing following uninterested in a fuller consciousness.
Words are the passing wind that whispers into all hearing receptors willing to listen.
Like memory, longing to be incorporated.
A dwelling in the open with all.
As it is.
As-is wholly-possible.
With verition.
Verition
—from Jean Gebser's Ever-Present Origin
•
Aperspectivity is the "veriition," the "awaring in truth" of
the whole and consequently of its spiritual
manifestation, the diaphainon, inasmuch as the whole is
perceptible only as transparency wherein origin, also
containing the entire future, is time-free present.
•
To attain this consciously, without abandoning the
"earlier" consciousness structures, is to overcome
rationality in favor of arationality, and to break forth
from mentality into diaphaneity (EPO 412).
https://www.academia.edu/17563075/Gebser_Verition_and_Metaphysics_The_Integral_Skeptic
When Doris and Chris
Arrive at Tuesday evening
Something good happens
Thought occurred during Tuesday Evening Conversation that the common denominator to each of the Ten Commandments is the phrase “there is no other.”
There's something comforting about this.
Not a single soul
Knows why he is born
Or his real dwelling place;
We go back to our origin,
And become earth again.
Ikkyu (1394-1481)
Not much else to say.
When I heard it, when I picked up my beads this morning, it mattered.
…et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
“...and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”
(—fragment of prayer Ave Maria, Hail Mary)
The womb is named “Jesus.”
And if the womb is named Jesus, then what begins in the womb and comes through the womb is called “Christ.”
Makes you wonder — how does a Christ come to be?
By being born.
Being, born.
Have we forgotten this? Or simply never noticed it before?
The womb is named Jesus. What is carried through the womb is Christ itself.
To be christian is to be born.
Again,
To be, born, is Christ-reality, mattering.
If this is true, if this is what-is, it is given to us to become what we are.
Now…
And at the hour of our death —
Amen!