I cannot remember my name
Tell me yours
That’s it, that's it
Call me by your name
I will answer you
Saturday, November 09, 2024
the holy breath knows
Reading the after-incident reports about this recent election, one thing comes clear.
No one has the inside track on truth.
It seems the 2020 election was rigged and crooked; the 2024 version was pure as driven snow.
No one conceded the 2020 presidential election, welcomed his successor, or attended the winner's inauguration.
Badmouthing, insulting, veiled threats, and outright unseemly language about opponents was de-rigueur from one candidate. Worry about authoritative, fascist, strong-man retaliation, and threatened democracy from the other.
Fear, grievance, mockery, and shadow-cultivation prevailed.
The door is wide open for the winner to do anything he wants to do -- legal or illegal -- thanks to both majority rule and Supreme Court blanket executive immunity.
Many people are nervous, emotionally on edge, and (when the shock clears) angry about their neighbors and the choice made by them.
In conclusion: There are foolish folks who prefer their own way over others and all the riches and benefits they can possibly attain. Nothing wrong with that. Except ... except ... there's very little grace in domineering, deprecating, and diminishing others.
The retrieval of grace will, possibly and probably, prove a strenuous task to accomplish.
This does not daunt me.
There's little honor, they say, among thieves or folks of severely questionable character.
But grace, as it is spiritually intuited, is our foundational breath.
And we continue to breathe.
And, if so --
May the wisdom and sustenance of the Holy Breath be with you, your loved ones, and those who do not yet know better.
recalling what once we said about meetingbrook
Posting on Events and Update about Saskia's Healing Respite Sails, I happened on an old Hermitage Update posted 5May2007, seventeen years ago. I like the wording. I bring it forward here:
Sails: Everybody gets to go sailing with Saskia on Penobscot Bay. That's a given. Even without asking. You might just be shanghaied by her. Keep your wits about you.
· Some final words: We have called ourselves mono, that is, monastics of no other. We intend a life of prayer and mindfulness, practicing between traditions what the designation mono stands for. It stands for the gift given all creation and existence -- the gift of wholeness -- a gift very often not seen, heard, or understood.
We feel called. We do our life and this practice of mindful service with the realization that each person is gift, and each invitation to love and serve one/an/other is gift. We are each of us invited to dwell within a true dwelling place.
Some hold that true dwelling place to be What Is Itself...or...God. Our focus as meetingbrook monastics includes both expressions -- namely, Buddha-Mind and Christ-Consciousness. Some do not use the word God but nevertheless long for What Is Itself. However it is worded for you, we feel this reality to be no other. Hence: monastics of no other
For us, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a place where each is invited to presence herself or himself. What is no other to us is gift. What Buddhists call Bodhichitta, (unconditional loving-kindness and compassion), and Christians call Agape, (love that promotes overall well-being, the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, and humanity for one another as well as God) -- is what we attempt to practice, engage, and embody. (The Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, and a Cosmotheandric spirituality which is all-inclusive, are both ways that are Vorbild (i.e. the pattern before us) and Schwer (i.e. difficult). Still, humbly, we practice.
Meetingbrook is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, (that is, a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation). It is a daily practice. It is hospitality. It is an integral conversation between silence and word. It is an engaged interaction with all our brothers and sisters. It looks to, and listens for, all sentient beings. It quietly and reverently seeks to attend the source mystery of life. This source mystery of life is what some call God, and some call What Is Taking Place, Here, Now! We try to pay attention to how each person and being expresses their view. We trust in inclusive sharing of each path, each trail along that path, each step on the trail. This is what a Laura of Hermits is for us -- It is a common viewing of each trail and each pathway leading each of us home.
In conclusion: We are grateful for all the blessings and wonderful folks we've been privileged to meet these dozen years. Come visit. Grace us with your presence. You are integrally within the sound of what is taking place. We listen for you. Let's listen together!
What else is there?
Just you.
Just us.
Just everyone.
And all of it.
As it is!
With love,
, Cesco
, Mu-ge
,
and all who grace Meetingbrook,
5 May 2007
Friday, November 08, 2024
quod ipse dixit
I still have time
To write something
Before midnight
Before tomorrow
When no one will read
Ever again, last lines
Fallen soundless
Outside of eyeshot
Off to blindside
So I write
Having nothing to say —
The perfect complement
releasing bow line, midships, stern
That brief orange
On horizon
Fades to slate gray
Quickly forgetting
Promise of beauty
I will face this day
And every day
Given what presents
Itself — see there —
Small white stretch
Of clouds off over
Atlantic Ocean
Where ships set sail
Dock lines drawn up
Splayed on deck
Unattached, uncoiled
No longer holding on
Thursday, November 07, 2024
my soul to keep
Now I lay me down to sleep.
While awakening from delusion is sudden,
The transformation of an unenlightened person
Into an enlightened person is gradual.
Tsung-mi (780-841)
I’ll probably die before I wake.
No telling what I’ve missed.
No telling what I’ll miss.
moving on, still here
No one has ever seen god
Because there is no god to be seen
Caputo says god does not exist
God insists
God stays within
The inner dwelling of all matter
If you want to see god
Look at earth, stars, deep dark cosmos
There is no there there
Here is all there is
Lowe’s delivery truck heads east on road
Black pickup heads west up hill
What is within, what we don’t see
Goes off within to their destinations
And the road is once again empty
And I am once again alone
With the Alone
As is and most likely ought to be
The road goes nowhere
It remains on earth as earth
within earthen
Soul, pulsating soil, loving gaze
joining the dance
At end of day, compline.
Can poets (can men in television)
Be saved? It is not easy
To believe in unknowable justice
Or pray in the name of a love
Whose name one's forgotten: libera
Me, libera C (dear C)
And all poor s-o-b's who never
Do anything properly, spare
Us in the youngest day when all are
Shaken awake, facts are facts,
(And I shall know exactly what happened
Today between noon and three)
That we, too, may come to the picnic
With nothing to hide, join the dance
As it moves in perichoresis,
Turns about the abiding tree.
(from poem, Horae Canonicae: Compline, by W.H. Auden0
Blessing | |
Noctem quiétam et finem perféctum * concedat nobis Dóminus omnipotens. R. Amen. | May Almighty God grant us a peaceful night and a happy ending. R. Amen. |
Short reading | |
Brothers: Sóbrii estóte, et vigiláte: † quia adversárius vester diábolus tamquam leo rúgiens círcuit, quærens quem dévoret:* cui resistite forts in fide. Tu autem, Dómine, miserére nobis. R. God bless you. | Brothers, be sober and vigilant, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, walks around, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him with the strength of faith. And you, Lord, have mercy on us. |
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
der ganze anblick, oder alles andere ist trostlosigkeit*
The first day after the election is gone by. Everyone either weaves an analysis of what happened or weeps with fear for what will come.
I drink water and eat tapioca pudding.
You see, no matter how much government attempts to control rights and freedoms, they don't.
My freedom dwells within me. My rights are the heart and mind active within.
No fool or sage can make me feel anything that I do not already generate within my life-sphere.
I wish us inner freedom and integral wisdom. No one, no one, can take that away. It belongs to you.
About the election -- I sorrow the choice of Mr Trump. He seems to be an odd choice by an odd assortment of people. But, as their choice, they will have to live with him. As for me -- I prefer intelligent conversation and thoughtful reading.
Politics and political leaders are not very interesting.
Individual people and their real actual lives are interesting.
Let's speak with one another.
A personal, philosophical, poetic, and creative articulation and activation of what is to be here and now.
...
* "Whole sight, or all the rest is desolation." (John Fowles, in novel Daniel Martin.)
excuse me, is this my stop
I think my heart is wanting to stop
this does not disturb me, it is ordinary
that at a certain age things get gone, gone,
and stop
what we think is less important than what we are
Former Senator says on msnbc: Donald Trump knows America better than any of us, grievance and anger.
There's so much to think about here.
- First, there is a new president-elect.
- Second, it is Donald Trump.
- Thirdly, for as long as he keeps his feet under him, we will be subject to the vicissitudes, ironies, and whatever trammeling control Mr. Trump and his cohorts lay on the country and individuals living therein.
Of course, now ungrieved and splayed of his constricted theatrical angry rhetoric, he might just loosen up and ease into the presidency with equanimity and compassionate leadership.
There is a lot to take in here.
And plenty of time to do so.
For those who enjoy quoting scripture:
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?
Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil.
-- Jeremiah 13:23, NKJV
as morning arrives
Breathing in
I know
I am
Breathing in
Breathing out
I know
I am
Breathing out
Dwelling in this
present moment
I know
This is
A wonderful
Moment
(Thich Nhat Hanh)
https://youtu.be/fOkphTWkY1Q?si=kdiUITzTE32k5ssW
He says: Without the muck there would not be the lotus.
Reality as it is
The here and the now
(If you long for what is true,
what is called -- the kingdom of God.)
Even as, for many, mourning arrives.
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
widerspruchsfreiheit
do not immolate yourself
if your choice isn't chosen
instead buy a banana muffin
extra large coffee and consider
how lovely absurdity can be
when no preference is actualized
when no-choice is wonderful choice
ah -- principled non-contradiction!
Monday, November 04, 2024
get your rest, wake up tomorrow
Some worry the world
will end tomorrow.
Some feel it rebegins.
Me?
I sense we will learn
The mystical sense of life —
Pure gift
No repayment
Joy without obligation
relata
Rupert Spira in talk titled “What is Reality” used McGilchrist’s phrasing, “ The relationship comes before the relata “.
Here is McGilchrist’s thought:
I take it that there is something that is not just the contents of my mind – that, for example, you exist. There is an infinitely vast, complex, multifaceted, whatever-it-is-that-exists-apart-from-ourselves. The only world that any of us can know, then, is what comes into being in the never-ending encounter between us and this whatever-it-is. What is more, both parties evolve and are changed through the encounter: it is how we and it become more fully what we are. The process is both reciprocal and creative. Think of it as like a true and close relationship between two conscious beings: neither is of course ‘made up’ by the other, but both are to some extent, perhaps to a great extent, ‘made’ what they are through their relationship.
The relationship comes before the relata – the ‘things’ that are supposed to be related. What we mean by the word ‘and’ is not just additive, but creative.
There is no one absolute truth about the world that results from this process, but there are certainly truths: some things we believe will be truer than others. The nature of the attention we bring to bear is of critical importance here. A maximally open, patient, and attentive response to whatever-it-is is better at disclosing or discerning reality than a response that is peremptory, insensitive, or – above all – shrouded in dogma.
Reading | Ontology
Dr. Iain McGilchrist | 2021-11-21)
Jude sent Spira, Spira sent McGilchrist, all three send me to pondering.
A trinity of Monday evening.
And https://youtu.be/mHzarUO6HFs?si=4v6Dez68KGz0EZtU
if you are feeling poorly
If you wonder
Why the weight of
Oppressive worry
The weight of resonance
From everything that’s ever
Happened
Is still vibrating
Through our atmosphere
Through our minds —
Nothing ends
It all circles, returns, re-loops
A cyclone of history
You are not crazy
You are a ligament of
History tying present
With past, a resonating
repetition bringing back around
What never went away
So, stay alert and strong
All the villains are circling,
All the saviors looming
Earth has seen it all
Staying underfoot, our steps
Have ground to make passage
It is our hearts and minds
Needing courage, wit, and grace
To withstand and forge through
The chaos
The devilish poseurs
The dark times overshadowing
the real issue with abortion
In prison today
(Along with laughter)
Talk about abortion
(Which isn’t funny)
Then the back and forth
In Lawrence of Arabia
Of whether or not
“It is written” around the
Saving and then the killing
Of young Arab man from desert
sand storm then shooting of tribal
member.
We read “Pocket Catechism”
(Poem by Li-Young Lee, )
Deciding that “not-being, born”
Is too large a thought for
Abortion moral system or politics.
(Not that the poet is saying that)
Rather, saying with Lee:
“God bless the child that’s
Got his own”
Thinking the main issue
(Our surmise)
Is fear of not-being
Born
you get what you need
They sang that you can’t always
get what you want
But if you try
Sometime
You just might find …
Sunday, November 03, 2024
look out, what is within, sees
Be happy
Vote
If your candidate doesn't win, then
Be happy
Happiness dwells
nowhere else
but within you
la présence inexistante concerne tout
Time has changed.
More light in the morning, less in evening.
From Psalm 66:
Que Dieu ait pitié de nous et qu’il nous bénisse ! Qu’il fasse briller sur nous son visage, et qu’il ait pitié de nous,
Afin que vos voies soient connues par toute la terre, et que toutes les nations aient part à votre salut !
Que les peuples vous louent, ô Dieu ; que les peuples vous louent tous !(— dupuis Psaume 66)
Translated:
2 May God have mercy on us, and bless us: may he cause the light of his countenance to shine upon us, and may he have mercy on us.
3 That we may know thy way upon earth: thy salvation in all nations.
4 Let people confess to thee, O God: let all people give praise to thee.
(--Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)
La présence inexistante concerne tout.
(Inexistent presence concerns everything.)
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