sometimes, the light

stepping from barn, beyond skiff

shines chapel-zendo window

foggy light through night trees 

from snowbowl shed 

bienvenue

 Maine is really part of Canada 

We touch borders, love the sea

And are embarrassed by the same man

the chill of history

 Beware, 

O American

Caesar

It is

The Ides

Of March

Watch 

Your

Friends

my fallacy

 Everyone is

Writing

Opinion pieces

I have no

Opinion

Therefore

I am

Not

Writing

something runs across porch roof

 There is

Only

God

Here is

Only 

God

At window

Cat

Investigates

Finding

Nothing —

Returns

morning

 Be 

Still

 

Know

This

I 

Am

God

the time of thy visitation

 A.N. Whitehead was mentioned this morning.

This afternoon, this:

Whitehead’s ontology cannot be disjoined from his theory of feelings. The actual occasions ontologically constituting our experience are the elementary processes of concrescence of feelings constituting the stream of our experience, and they throw light on the what and the how of all actual occasions, including those that constitute lifeless material things. This amounts to the panexperientialist claim that the intrinsically related elementary constituents of all things in the universe, from stones to human beings, are experiential. Whitehead writes: “each actual entity is a throb of experience” (1929c [1985: 190]) and “apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (1929c [1985: 167])—an outrageous claim according to some, even when it is made clear that panexperientialism is not the same as panpsychism, because “consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness” (1929c [1985: 53]).

--Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 

Good word,  "concrescence" | kənˈkresəns | noun Biology --the coalescence or growing together of parts originally separate.

Is all "matter" capable of experience? (panexperientialism). Does everything material have an element of individual consciousness? (panpsychism).

Is there consideration here of the origin myth that infuses all of matter with divine and creative energy?

We then ask, what does it mean  to say that the universe might be conscious and capable of experience?

Is "democracy" too limited to human beings? Is "communism" too limited? Fascism? Socialism?

Is the environmental movement one step shy of finding a way for the earth, sky, water, and fire of this creation to be represented, not merely by opinion of researchers, but by direct communication with fellow sentient beings?

Have we been too narrow in our understanding? Too insular? Too unimaginative?

Jesus is quoted as saying in Luke 19, King James Version: 

37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen;

38 Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.

39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

40 And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

42 Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.

43 For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,

44 And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

This is not just about Jesus. This is pointing to something beyond our ordinary understanding.

We've long held that the story of Jesus was one of atoning for sin. But perhaps we've been obtuse. What if the "sin" Christians are so taken with has to do more with failure to understand the whole living universe we dwell upon and within? That we have carved out and ignored 98% of the existing, experiencing, conscious companions in this reality we blithely call the known universe?

That it is mostly unknown?

Unseen?

Unheard?

Unloved? 

a sacramental / refusal to multiply

 At prison this morning, this poem:

Backward Miracle 

    By Kay Ryan

Every once in a while

we need a

backward miracle

that will strip language,

make it hold for

a minute: just the

vessel with the

wine in it—

a sacramental

refusal to multiply,

reclaiming the

single loaf

and the single

fish thereby.

(from Poetry)

And these words by Jay McDaniel.

The seven of us, fully engaged, playfully insightful, and remarkably helpful.

as the day moves

 Birdseed is birdseed

mud is mud

warm porch is warm porch

now dusk

evening walk taken

door to porch closed

ever into the distance

Was researching MT & LXX (Masoretic Text & Greek Septuagint) with regard to translations of the Hebrew Bible and came upon the following:

One more point before I answer your question head-on. With respect to the page you linked on the significance of Mary's virginity. William Yarchin may think that he has discovered the real reason for the virgin birth, but Luke makes that clear in his gospel. It's not simply a question of the prophesy of Isaiah, it's a question of paternity: Jesus is the son of God like Adam is the son of God, because both have no other father. Whoever wrote that answer on the page you linked clearly has a cursory knowledge of marriage customs, but he's clearly only read the cliff-notes and not the ethnographic studies. The central issue in virginity is ultimately inheritance and who carries on the family line, not women being property or "damaged goods". I'm not saying bride price had no legal significance (but in its conception it is not about the woman being property, though it has become that in various cultures at various points in history), but that significance is completely dwarfed by the issue of inheritance and - in the gospels - paternity. If Mary is not a virgin, then there is little reason to believe (from a first-century standpoint) that her offspring is the Son of God. Whether or not the translation of נערה into Greek is accurate (and for all we know it may have been accurate for the usage of bilingual speakers in Alexandria at the time), the virginity of Mary in the gospels carries a theological significance far beyond the fulfillment of the prophesy of Isaiah.

--Stack Exchange; Biblical Hermeneutics 

Then the word נַעֲרָה in Isaiah: 

נַעֲרָה • (na'ará) f (plural indefinite נערות, masculine counterpart נער) [pattern: קַטְלָה] 

1. (dated) young woman servant, maid
2. (Jewish religious law) girl of a transitional age (usually between 12-13 years of age), capable of performing mitzvot, but ineligible for marriage
3. (Israeli civil law) girl under 17, ineligible for marriage

wiktionary

I'd been looking into book "The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions" by Kelley Coblentz Bautch, John C. Endres S.J., Angela Kim Harkins, Editors.

From Fortress Press website: 

At the origin of the Watchers tradition is the single enigmatic reference in Genesis 6 to the “sons of God” who had intercourse with human women, producing a race of giants upon the earth. That verse sparked a wealth of cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Here leading scholars explore the contours of the Watchers traditions through history, tracing their development through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings. This volume provides a lucid survey of current knowledge and interpretation of one of the most intriguing theological motifs of the Second Temple period.

Scholarship has its value in our thought. What is this? Why this? What might it mean?

What does it mean that Adam had no recognizible father? That Jesus had no recognizible father? Neither, other than what-is-called-God?

How do things or beings come to be of themselves? How does creation, the cosmos, all that is, come to be (according to the narrative of our founding mythology) by dint of the energy of the Logos issuing forth from Creator God, Father, Supreme Being?

And where is that utterance today?

What insufficiency forestalls corrective intervention into human flaw and depravity in the realms of war, abuse, cruelty, injustice, or suffering?

What rationale is posited to explain away the erstwhile benevolent divine from the dimension of everyday human discourse and intercourse?

Are we still dependent on the positing of heaven and hell as either reward or punishment for human behavior or mental fabrication?

Or...

Or are our stories obsolete? Have they devolved into obscure mentation? Are we currently bereft of stories but for psychological profiling and DSM-ing one another?

Has once faith handed its satchel over to current fear?

Is anyone watching?

And our stories and our storytellers -- who are they and where do they begin?

And, mirabile dictu -- will the story be one of cheer and quiet appreciation?

Christmas Mail

BY TED KOOSER

Cards in each mailbox,

angel, manger, star and lamb,

as the rural carrier,

driving the snowy roads,

hears from her bundles

the plaintive bleating of sheep,

the shuffle of sandals,

the clopping of camels.

At stop after stop,

she opens the little tin door

and places deep in the shadows

the shepherds and wise men,

the donkeys lank and weary,

the cow who chews and muses.

And from her Styrofoam cup,

white as a star and perched

on the dashboard, leading her

ever into the distance,

there is a hint of hazelnut,

and then a touch of myrrh.

 Poem copyright ©2012 by Ted Kooser, 

Or, Ach du meine Güte -- will it cause us to hesitate and speculate?

Abandoned Farmhouse

BY TED KOOSER

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

--poem by Ted Kooser, "Abandoned Farmhouse" from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1980

They say that careful listening is also participatory creation.

What do you see?