ora pro nobis, ora cum nobis

 To pray is to enter the unknown. It is more than reciting prayers, 

The one who prays has no idea where prayer goes and whence it travels.

But return it does.

To earth.

To cosmic expanse.

And we are changed.

The one who prays becomes one in prayer.

à bientôt -- ce n'est pas un poème

I worry MAGA men 

    are drifting into misogyny 

        and headship fantasy

We'll need a fierce 

    and determined resistance 

        to the squirrelly

unpredictability 

    of our 

        impressionable 

incoming 

    MAGA 

        masculinity

dark though it is

Senator Chris Murphy says we’re heading for dystopia.

Joyce Vance writes about the not-so-stealth arrival of Project 2025 at the back door of the incoming administration.

Vance writes:

 The bottom line is that all of the pieces of Project 2025 that we’ve discussed for the last year are in play. We’ve known that here, even though Project 2025 seemed to fall off the radar screen after Trump's ersatz denial. Now it’s clear that all of the horribles are on the table, everything from the end of the Department of Education to the discontinuation of the weather warnings NOAA provides. In July, Roberts said on a podcast, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” If the left won’t “allow” the proponents of Project 2025 to have their way, they’re going to force it on us, and apparently, they’re willing to engage in bloodshed if Americans stand up for democracy. 

We are headed into a holiday week, and folks are still weary and demoralized from the election. But it’s time. It’s time to reengage and decide what role we’re going to play. Project 2025 isn’t about the best interests of the American people. It’s about a powerful president who can carry out the policies that people like Vought and Roberts have spent years crafting—whether we like them or not. Let’s pay attention.

—Joyce Vance, Substack,  Projrct 2025: It’s on (Predictably )

The United States voting citizenry elected Donald Trump  and his Project 2025 agenda — even though he deceptively claimed he knew nothing about it or anyone associated with it. Now he has put forward the name of one of its authors to lead the OMB which will be the primary administrator of Project 2025 going forward.

So it will be.

In other news, it rains this morning.

Cat stands on my chest.

Cool air blows through open window.

We’re coming to American Thanksgiving.

Poet W.S. Merwin gives us a version of the time. We conversed about it in prison Friday morning::

Thanks

          BY W. S. MERWIN

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is 

—Copyright Credit: W.S. Merwin, "Thanks" from Migration: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by W.S. Merwin. 

What kind of sardonic irony, (or, is it) veiled sincerity, are we facing here?

Cat kneads. Claws punctuate.

two minus one is no longer two

 Freedom takes imagination and intelligence.

Not everybody has what it takes. 

demands of study

 Reading wolfhart pannenberg earlier.

It takes some concentration to stay with a theologian and christologist.

I was happy when the tomato soup and sandwich were ready.

Which makes more sense — the man? Or the community’s faith-stories about the man?

monks, all is burning . . .

Looking over what I have been saying, surely I haven’t learned anything. 

In his early teachings, the Buddha identified “three poisons,” or three fires, or three negative qualities of the mind that cause most of our problems—and most of the problems in the world. The three poisons are: greed (raga, also translated as lust), hatred (dvesha, or anger), and delusion (moha, or ignorance). The three poisons are opposed by three wholesome, or positive attitudes essential to liberation: generosity (dana), lovingkindness (maitri, Pali: metta), and wisdom (prajna). Buddhist practice is directed toward the cultivation of these virtues and the reduction or destruction of the poisons; practitioners identify those thoughts that give rise to the three poisons and don’t dwell on them, while nurturing the thoughts that give rise to the three positive attitudes.

We don’t need to look far to see the three poisons at work. We see them every day in the news and in the streets, and if we pay attention, we can see them in our own mind and actions. The arising of these feelings may be outside our control—we don’t choose to be angry, for instance. But recognizing how greed, hatred, and delusion cause tremendous harm in the world can help us learn to manage them. Likewise, just as swallowing poison later causes sickness, nurturing these harmful attitudes leads to negative behaviors we will later regret.  

Though commonly referred to as poisons, the Buddha first introduced these mental attitudes as fires in the Fire Sermon (Adittapariyaya Sutta): “Monks, all is burning . . . Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion.” 

Fire is a central metaphor of Buddhism, typically as a negative quality of mind or consciousness. Putting out these fires is the goal of Buddhist practice. The word nirvana is derived from the extinguishing of fire. Sariputra, one of the Buddha’s chief disciples, was once asked, “What is nirvana?” He answered, “The destruction of greed, the destruction of anger, the destruction of delusion—this is nirvana.”

The three poisons are depicted at the center of the Wheel of Life (bhavachakra), a visual representation of the sorrows of samsara. Greed is depicted as a rooster, hatred as a snake, and delusion as a pig. Importantly, they literally feed off one another; each animal consuming the tail end of the other in a vicious cycle of delusion. The centrality of the three poisons demonstrates their role in powering the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, the escape from which is nirvana.

(—from, What are the three poisons? (Greed, hatred, and delusion), in Tricycle)

Do I even know where my cushion is? (Voice asks)

Uh…?

Find it! Sit on it! Become antidote! 

incremental graffiti

 And accumulated dreck becomes our political refuse.

Water dripping ceaselessly
Will fill the four seas.
Specks of dust
Not wiped away
Will become the
Five mountains.

—Shih Wang Ming (6th c)

I understand that radical acceptance is an option.

I’d have to be able to not be comatose and receive help up off this cement slab.

dr freud blushes

 Polygluttonous

guitar grifter

Banana

Bible-lyrics

A cartoon

Clownish

Caricature invades 

America’s Id 

did you hear the one about

It does seem funny

that such a man

will be president

…again

a quiet soundtrack

Reading Bart Ehrman's book, Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End, (c. 2023)

The dispute as to whether the Old Testament God was violent and vengeful but the New Testament God is not so. He wrestles with the subject matter of the Book of Revelation. He presents what is there, not what we think should or shouldn't be there.

So, too, care.

Boléro

BY KEITH LEONARD

From the kitchen, I catch the neighbor

cross the street to switch off my car’s interior lights.

He returns to his house without announcing the favor.

For the last three years, a friend has woken early

and walked the beach, combing for bottle caps

and frayed fishing line. She mentions this

only casually at lunch, after I’ve asked

what she did that morning.

Care has a quiet soundtrack: the sycamore’s

rustling leaves, your nails tracing my shoulder blades.

A melody that repeats—a bit like Ravel’s Boléro.

When it was first performed, a woman shouted,

Rubbish! from the balcony. She called Ravel

a madman. I think I understand. I wish I didn’t.

I’ve been taught that art must have conflict,

that reason must meet resistance. 

 

Source: Poetry (December 2023) (for audio)

When I was involved with agencies of "care" I'd blithely say that "Care is being-with in everydayness."

I taught staff in agencies caring for the profoundly mentally disabled, those abandoned and neglected, those requiring alternative or special education, or those dependent and abused. We'd wrestle with "care" -- other-care, self-care, Care-itself. We'd use poetry, theater, psychology, philosophy, social science, and personality preferences.

Leonard is right. Always conflict. Always resistance.

In prison yesterday one of the men, while reading about mind and rationality, gaps in time and breath, put down the text and wondered whether those with Down Syndrome had anything to do with, what he called, (I think) "originary brain" in contrast to rational brain. He wondered if the sweetness and affection so often displayed on the part of a Down syndrome person was the consequence of some original state of wisdom that hides behind-below-beyond our typical exercise of knowledge, reason, logic, and calculation.

A compelling 

meditation:

non-resistance,

conflict-less

being-with

one an-other

as care

just might

be

sounding through