meeting no one, just wind turning head

 walking mountain trail

hard frozen ground frozen brook

dog sniffs air sniffs ground --

everything draws in -- the cold 

stumbles down pathway back home

we shall be released

He didn’t think the 2024 election was rigged.

His followers didn’t violently oppose the electoral vote count today.

Fake news recorded his prevailing votes by Congress.

God’s in his heaven and women have to have babies.

The felon president-to-be files suit after suit to obfuscate justice for his crimes.

And all is Right with the world.

Canada will not become America’s 51st state. But its leader is out.

There will be excruciatingly absurd executive orders and whipped puppy dog congressional ploys.

Monks and nuns will chant and pray heaven reveal itself in our midst.

Hell asserts it now has clearance to attend all meetings in Oval Office, House of Representatives, and Senate Floor.

God goes on vacation to a far away galaxy a long, long, distance from planet earth and the Milky Way.

Pizza parlors suspend making large pies and will focus only on antipasto.

Universities and education facilities will cease teaching fact and will offer degree concentrations on gaslighting and blanket denials.

Blackjack tables will begin payouts on any draws that exceed 21. It will be called the new economy and will apply only to followers of MAGA who sincerely believe they could have won had they been luckier.

Taxi drivers will demand $100 down payment upon entering cab if you are not wearing a red tie or a button reading “I’d let him touch me.”

UPS drivers will begin making left turns and miss their deadlines in the suburbs.

Dogs and cats will cease their friendliness with humans…unless the humans in their household begin to genuflect every time Fox News says the Majestic Holy Leader’s name.

….  …   …

I’ve been reading Immanent: Inside The Pentagon’s Hunt For UFOs, by Luis Elizondo, 2024.

It cheers me to think that what is hidden will be disclosed.

Both anomalous threats and rightwing posturing pique will become clearer.

I watch the incoming administration with keen interest.

Any day now, any day now, we shall be released.

of almost remembering

 Yes.

We’ll look at this in prison this morning:

                           Dark Matter

by Jack Myers.

I’ve lived my life as if I were my wife

packing for a trip—I’ll need this and that

and I can’t possibly do without that!

But now I’m about

what can be done without.

I just need a thin valise.

There’s no place on earth

where I can’t unpack in a flash

down to a final spark of consciousness.

No place where I can’t enter

the joyless rapture

of almost remembering

I’ll need this and I’ll need that,

hoping to weigh less than silence,

lighter than light.

—From The Memory of Water, published by New Issues Press. Copyright © 2011 by Jack Myers.

a terra-ist manifesto

 Weary of these times

I do not plant bomb, nor shoot

Machine gun, nor assasssinate

Anyone, nor off myself — i will

However, eat sweets drink seltzer

And admire trees and mountains

And plan to have ashes scattered

אבי געזונט * abi gezunt

Colum McCann is good company.

He, along with Richard Rohr, reminds me that my holiday season was different, again, this year.

My shikantaza recliner, the window altar, the silent house, the rising and the setting of the days, the ever-near and almost-gone breath that encircled room, body and movement of cosmos.

A new cosmology, new theology, new mythology. The ever-unfolding and enfolding story of source, engagement, manifestation, and recombination of this encircling being.

She was a fount of Irish knowledge, and Russian knowledge, and even Jewish knowledge at times, a Helicon indeed, with some Greek thrown in and a smidge of Latin. Thankfully she never had to see me in the diaper, the nappy, the winter gear, down by those Salley gardens my love and I did meet.

He tilts his coffee cup and sighs. Empty now, just a small rivulet making its way along the inside of the porcelain. All life slowed down to this. The drip. The drop. The snow white feet.

Slowly falling, falling slowly. Out the window now. Big white flurries against the glass. That was a story she loved so much too, snow general all over Ireland, Michael Furey singing at the window, poor Gabriel left alone, the descent of his last end.

He tilts the coffee cup one last time and allows the last drop to fall on the newspaper where he watches it slowly blot and spread. A bi gezunt, his mother would have said. She was always one for the ancient phrase. You have your health, what more do you want?

(—from novel,  Thirteen Ways of Looking, by Calum McCann, 2015)

And Rohr:

Father Richard Rohr summarizes a pattern of five stages of change that have taken place in religious and cultural institutions. He calls these stages the “Five M’s”: human, movement, machine, monument, and memory.  

It seems that many great things in history start with a single human being.  If a person says something full of life that names reality well, the message often moves to the second stage of becoming a  movement.  That’s the period of greatest energy. The church is at its greatest vitality as the “Jesus Movement,” and the institution is merely the vehicle for that movement. No single person can ever control the movement itself through any theology, doctrine, or dogma. We cannot control the blowing of the Spirit. The movement stage is always very exciting, creative, and also risky. 

It’s risky because God’s movement in history is larger than any denomination, any culture, or any tradition’s ability to verbalize it. We feel out of control in this stage, and yet why would anybody want it to be anything less? Would we respect and love a God that we could control? Would we really respect a church that presumed it could predict and contain God’s actions? I don’t think so, yet that’s what so much immature religion seems to want—control over God by worshiping and talking about God “correctly.” So, we move rather quickly out and beyond the risky movement stage to the machine stage. This is predictable and understandable, even if unfortunate in some ways. 

The institutional or  machine stage of a movement will necessarily be a  less-alive manifestation. This isn’t bad, although it’s always surprising for those who see church as an end in itself instead of merely a vehicle for the original vision. When we don’t realize a machine’s limited capacities, we try to make it into something more than it is. We make it a  monument, a closed system operating inside of its own, often self-serving, logic. By then, it’s very hard to take risks for God or for gospel values. 

Eventually this monument and its maintenance and self-preservation become ends in themselves. It’s easy just to step on board and worship at a monument without ever knowing why or longing for God ourselves. There’s no hint of knowing that we are chosen and beloved by God, who invites us to an inner journey. In this state, religion is merely an excuse to remain unconscious, holding on to a  memory of something that must once have been a great adventure. I’m afraid that Christianity is no longer life itself, but actually a substitute for life or, worse, an avoidance of life. The secret is to know how to keep in touch with the human and movement stages without being naïve about the necessity of some machines and the inevitability of those who love monuments. We must also be honest; all of us love monuments when they are monuments to our human, our movement, or our machine.   

(--The Vitality of Movements,  Sunday January 5, 2025, C.A.C.

I'm staying with the human, and the movement which moves -- inner to outer, within to without, resonance to absurdum. 

I first studied the Theater of the Absurd in 1964 reading and attending a conference on same at St John's College in NY . An English professor at Callicoon pointed me to it. The juxtaposition of classical language studies with the Franciscans and the insights of Martin Esslin on Absurdity remains a Do-si-do that still spins my consciousness these sixty-one years later.

For now, I'm healthy enough to sustain the centripedal and centrifugal force of this go-round. 

What more do I want?

. . .

• * abi gezunt! (Yid. אַבי געזונט): the first word is Slavic: compare Ukrainian aby (аби), Belarusian aby (абы) and Polish oby, both meaning "if only", "hopefully". The second word is Germanic, cognate to High German gesund. The phrase thus means "As long as you're healthy!"; often used as an ironic punchline to a joke. Wikipedia