tonite they get their treats

 I sit by window and drink all day

One mineral water after another

Then well water made into seltzer

Green fruit juice at night with pills

This wagon ride of solitude

asylum and assonance

" I feel God is nature and nature is beauty"

             (--Vincent, in "At Eternity's Gate")

 

The turmoil in mind and heart.

Is this how God is?

Is this what God is?

How people wish

to never experience God --

settling for power and wealth

unwavering belief cloaking

divine unpredictability --

instead  (ah yes) (see it)  beauty, 

uncertainty & εικόνισμα creativity --

a sign whose form directly reflects 

the thing it signifies -- revealing Itself

trouble in patricide

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American History at Boston College, author of many books plus her daily Letters From An American, writes today that “Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans.”

Here it begins.

Get a good seat, buckle in, and hang on.

I’m not sure my heart cares about such buffoonery coming to theaters mid-January.

 Nevertheless, Richardson and Richard Rohr (CAC) are treasures.

Perhaps we might gather at the stern and sing together “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” at this our titanic time.

last stop

 Like subway train 

Barreling tracks bumping rails

This heart careens into

No station

parasamgate

Flurry of heartbeats

Arrhythmia pounding

Any minute now

If it is time to stop, I’m 

Not giving treats to cats

paintings of people

When artists converse...

 "And people will go to museums to see paintings of people, not to see people who were painted."            (--Gauguin to van Goth in film At Eternity's Gate.)

...distinctions are made.

the word, who is life -- this is our subject; out of the tomb

What is it I do not yet understand about "Word"?

Perhaps it is closest, deepest within.

These words, no matter with what religion associated, sound into my echoing emptiness. 

Something which has existed since the beginning,

that we have heard,

and we have seen with our own eyes;

that we have watched

and touched with our hands:

the Word, who is life –

this is our subject.

That life was made visible:

we saw it and we are giving our testimony,

telling you of the eternal life

which was with the Father and has been made visible to us.

What we have seen and heard

we are telling you

so that you too may be in union with us,

as we are in union

with the Father

and with his Son Jesus Christ.

We are writing this to you to make our own joy complete.

(1john1:1-4) 

And these:

On the first day of the week Mary of Magdala came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we don’t know where they have put him.’

  So Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple, running faster than Peter, reached the tomb first; he bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did not go in. Simon Peter who was following now came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground, and also the cloth that had been over his head; this was not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed. 

--John 20:2-8

It is radical understanding to consider living outside the tomb.

Years ago a woman I knew would, with concern, inquire after my health, wherefore and why death was so frequently in what I wrote.  It touched me, her solicitous inquiries. After a while, she stopped asking.

Being taken out of the tomb could, simply, be understood as emerging from the moribund deathliness of unenlightened roteness and sluggish conformity to scripted instruction.

What did the other disciple see that caused his belief -- and belief in what?

Perhaps he saw nothing there.

That the nothing there was everywhere.

To believe this revelation is to undergo profound disorientation and distress.

What we thought was there is no longer there alone but everywhere interconnected at once.

Is this something that Christic affirmation, or belief-in-Christ, subconciously groks?

What is written is written. What is read, or taken in, is often beyond our ken.

when something true is said

“Life is truly better when you're invisible and irrelevant.” (Comment found on website after story of TikTok star gunned down in Mexico.)

I’ll leave it there.

known only through participation and practice

Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for 27dec2024, from Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC):

The Divine in This and in Us

God’s presence with us—right here, right now—in an embodied way.   

Most religious people I’ve met—from sincere laypeople to priests and nuns—still imagine God to be elsewhere. Before we can take the “now” seriously, we must shift from thinking of God as “out there” to also knowing God “in here.” In fact, here is the best access point! Only inner experience can bring healing to the human-divine split.   

Transformation comes by realizing our union with God right here, right now—regardless of any performance or achievement on our part. That’s the core meaning of grace, and we have to  know this for ourselves. No one can do this knowing for us. I could say as many times as I want that God is not elsewhere and heaven is not later, but until someone comes to personally and regularly experience that, they will not believe it.  

Authentic Christianity overcame the “God-is-elsewhere” idea in at least two major and foundational ways. Through the incarnation, God in Jesus became flesh; God visibly moved in with the material world to help us overcome the illusion of separation (John 1:14). Secondly, God as Holy Spirit is precisely known as an indwelling and vitalizing presence. By itself, intellectual assent to these two truths does little. The incarnation and Indwelling Spirit are known only through participation and practice, as we actively draw upon such Infinite Sources. Think of it as a “use it or lose it” situation!  

Good theology helps us know that we can fully trust the “now” because of the incarnation and the Spirit within us. I hope it doesn’t shock anyone to hear me say this: it’s like making love. We can’t be fully intimate with someone through vague, amorphous energy; we need close, concrete, particular connections. That’s how our human brains are wired.  

Jesus teaches and is himself a message of now-ness, here-ness, concreteness, and this-ness. Virtually the only time Jesus talks about future time is when he tells us not to worry about it (see Matthew 6:25–34). Don’t worry about times and seasons, don’t worry about when God will return, don’t worry about tomorrow. Thinking about the future keeps us in our heads, far from presence—with God, with ourselves, and with each other. Jesus talks about the past in terms of forgiving it. Jesus tells us to hand the past over to the mercy and action of God. [1]  

The full and participatory meaning of Christmas is that this one universal mystery of divine incarnation is also intended for us and continues in us! It is not just about trusting the truth of the body of Jesus, but trusting its extension through the ongoing Body of Christ—which is an even bigger act of faith, hope, and love and which alone has the power to change history, society, and all relationships. To only hold a mental belief in Jesus as the “Child of God” has little or no effect in the real world. [2] 

https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-svhhly-tlkridklo-e/ 

What he said! 

on the feast of stephen

 The martyrs, they say, died rather than yield to what they considered not true.

For example, they saw and affirmed the kindness, love, and generosity of Jesus.

They preferred not to lie about their preference.

I prefer the silence that surrounds the Creator and Source of all this.

Would i die for this preference?

It seems a foolish question.

I am already dead.

Look around.

You don’t see me, do you?

empty space between two mountains

I’m not sure there’s a world out there. 

Sequestering today inside. 

I grow wary of things i cannot foresee.

I yawn. 

Heat cuts in. 

Green spring water bottle empty.

Even prayer doesn’t know it’s been said.

what of that

 The preachers of the gospel of prosperity must be reading some other novel about two thousand years ago. They're not reading the gospel accounts.

Then again, who wants to read about the price paid for what is considered 'truth' or 'God' or 'light'?

            Matthew 10:17-22

The Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Beware of men: they will hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.

  ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved.’

I imagine God, if there is a God, is curious about the human race. So many wars. So much corruptive business practices. So few upstanding generous and compassionate people in power. So many good folks not knowing how to combat the bruisers and belittlers hovering over them.

I think the stories about God in Judeo/Christian scriptures were written by projective psychological pathology masquerading as historic narrative and theological belief. Hear me out.

The Creator, let's call this the Source, is a mystery. No one knows our beginnings. No one can verify the stirrings of life, progression of animation, coming to be of intelligence, capability, and resourcefulness.

And the dilemmas, the ethical conundrums, the tensions about who should live, what is mine, and how contain the stranger and threat.

We project onto 'God' our difficult progression, dumping death and destruction into the 'will of god' and 'punishment for transgressions' and 'judgment for sin.' 

Good and evil are convenient categories. Light and dark and handy metaphors. The angels and the devil are compelling compositions.

Psalm 30(31):3-4,6,8,16-17

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Be a rock of refuge for me,

  a mighty stronghold to save me,

for you are my rock, my stronghold.

  For your name’s sake, lead me and guide me.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Into your hands I commend my spirit.

  It is you who will redeem me, Lord.

As for me, I trust in the Lord:

  let me be glad and rejoice in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

My life is in your hands, deliver me

  from the hands of those who hate me.

Let your face shine on your servant.

  Save me in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

And so, we pray. 

Why not?

We dwell so much in shadows of understanding, approximations of veracity, figments of uncertainty.

We are inclined to call these 'faith.'

And they might be.

To be a person of faith is not to glory in bright-eyed certainty. 

No.

Faith is a way wandering through not-knowing.

Perhaps a 'trust' that the awfulness experienced in the ragged world is not the underlying soulful world lurking just under our comprehension. Not there for the taking. Just out of reach.

Browning wrote: 

I, painting from myself and to myself, 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 

Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, 

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what's a heaven for? 

(--in, Andrea del Sarto, BY ROBERT BROWNING) 

Elsewhere, the proscription "do not judge" is good advice.

We'd screw up our evaluations and guesses as to what was benefit and what deficit.

Perhaps better to wander through -- unjudging and thus unjudged -- our forays through field and cobblestone town, proverbial Vincents in Arles besotted with shapes and color, seeking transfer to canvas as God might wish to portraiture creation to be held in transitory aperture for infinitesimal duration of human consciousness. 

We'd like to see.

We think we see.

But we are merely seen, glimpsed in passing, not framed, nor signed.

As Robert Lowell wrote in his poem Epilogue:

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.

Out window, there it is, evening star.

It hangs there. 

Twenty five million miles away. 

It holds my gaze. 

looking out into us

 Read the news today

(oh boy) -- so much distress, lies

and celebrity -- drowning 

in impertinence --

now, creative angelic

quiet looks into our eyes -- 

αλήθεια, αγάπη

αλήθεια, truth

is what matters most -- follows

αγάπη, love -- where

truth hides until spoken, when

love appears sounding itself

conversation is christ, now, listening response

Two people call same

Time, — what a revelation!

Massachusetts, Maine,

Vermont — conversation — comes

Miracle — new earth — λóγος 

who art in nada

 Faith is an absence

Of any certainty, gone

Into something else —

Imagine a day without

Anything special, nada

earth two, me too, sit to

 dwelling parallel 

universe, somewhere else I

celebrate Christmas

in this one, it is Wednesday

cat on lap, three spring waters

over miles in a text

 and so it came to 

be, and also with you -- ah

it begins to snow 

seating well in time

 kneeling rocking seat

brought down for zen retreat time

alongside arm chair

compatriots in silence

holding me up . . . time being

sandy claws

 Cats want their breakfast

I am able to do this

Ho ho open tin

ciao e buon maria natale

 She’d say “happy Mary christmas” and laugh

She was born on Christmas Day, loved to dance

Lived at other end of Pennsylvania, chain smoked

Ran city streets every morning, adopted a son

Then, cancer

I think of her today

Returning her words on this small craft advisory

15 degree wind-howl Wednesday morning fresh

White with yesterday's snow and fond recall — 

Happy Mary Christmas!

Dancing friend, children saver, poster framing 

across body, out window, city landscape, resting

leaping through cosmos

 I don’t know who I’ve been 

or where I’ve been or 

why I’ve been

My name is not Jesus.

Let’s begin again.

In middle of night

I will come to be

Born

the eve of creation

squirrels in ceiling

cold December night, furnace

cuts in, live, let live

past, and future

“[E]very saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

Looking up quote used by commentator after film on Joan of Arc (The Maiden) in the series on Saints, I come across this:

The line comes from [Oscar] Wilde’s 1893 play A Woman of No Importance and is spoken by Lord Illingworth, a character whose hedonistic dandyism puts him in the same category with Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Grey. These characters scoff at morality and live solely for pleasure. Their wit makes them funny and charming, but underneath they are seducers and corrupters who leave destruction in their wakes.

Here are Lord Illingworth’s words in their proper context:

LORD ILLINGWORTH      I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.

LADY HUNSTANTON      Now I am quite out of my depth. I usually am when Lord Illingworth says anything… I have a dim idea, dear Lord Illingworth, that you are always on the side of the sinners, and I know I always try to be on the side of the saints, but that is as far as I get…

LORD ILLINGWORTH      The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

LADY HUNSTANTON      Ah! that quite does for me. I haven’t a word to say. You and I, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, are behind the age. We can’t follow Lord Illingworth. Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2018/11/the-christian-quote-that-everyone-takes-out-of-context/ 

It is a good quote.

Glad to find it.

can’t think of anything i need

Sitting zazen, bow

Snow finished, sun emerges

Nine lessons, carols

coming to be

Christmas Eve arrives.

 Yes

We wonder

What is

Being 

Born

Creator is

Not yet

Here

Not yet

Here

Not yet

Here

Male and

Female

They 

Are

Being made 

Not yet 

Here

As we

Are

Coming to 

Be

in all imaginable directions

 In prison today, this:

          The Afterlife

                    by Billy Collins 

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,

or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey. 

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head. 

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other. 

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls. 

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.  

With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key, 

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere. 

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog. 

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow. 

(And some just smile, forever on)

(—by Billy Collins, in Questions about Angels)

We conversed about lending ego.

About high class spirituality — loving self and neighbor simultaneously. 

About the integrity of such a thing. 

if the head is rotten

 If the measure of a people is their capacity to both tell and receive truth, I’m afraid we are operating at half or below measure.

Perhaps, with effort, that could change.

While there’s little hope for the incoming chief executive, there’s some optimism for many of the citizens of the land.

A change would be nice.

extra. ord. in. air. (we)

 The 

First

And

Last word

Is

Being

Spoken

Speaking

(Us)

Without words

one minute at a time

 It’s cold

Outside

Feels like

Minus six

(Says weather

Site)

Hot

Wood stove

Churning

Furnace

Day of

Retuning

Light