Solitude with cat.

Mu-ge stretches on black daybed cover in kitchen. There's no more cut wood. There is Irish music on "Thistle and Shamrock."

I cannot get used to war.

THE MIRROR

Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,

these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,

our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.

Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.

Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Life and Death, c.1998)

Same and different, the Zen Master said, exist only in the mind. The mind with fondness for war is not easy to understand. The mind making excuses for war is hard to listen to. Those who say, "We're all the same!" are as difficult to listen to as those saying, "We're all different."

DIVINE CONTEMPLATION
Who in this mortal life would see
The Light that is beyond all light,
Beholds it best by faring forth
Into the darkness of the Night.
(from "The Cherubinic Wanderer," by Angelus Silesius, 1624-1677)

It is quite a dance twirling between birth and death, light and dark, something and nothing. I cannot help wondering what it is I do not yet comprehend about myself and fellow humankind that we so easily put to death and cause to be annihilated those animals and humans getting in the way of our craving minds.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. (- Paul Valery)

Mu-ge is on watch. The sounds in the walls will soon begin.

Solitude is like that.

Charlotte and John play guitar earlier and sing. One goes; one stays sitting in silence.

Looking out at harbor, a glaze of white falling snow. In right hand pane of lower window, reflection of fire back across the room.

This message is not just
For the rich and noble
The thousand flowers
And the hundred grasses
All have spring within them
Profound people in later days
Who read the sutras
Do not ask the way to the
Great road of enlightenment.
Stop! Stop!
Why do you have to wander the south?
The site of enlightenment is right
Under your feet.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

News brought through shop is of a man who summers across harbor, he has a type of cancer; will we keep him in prayer? Another man from nearby is separated from wife and child; he's been seen and doesn't look good, (says the bearer of news), thinks he is hiding -- maybe drinking?

An emigre says this country is beginning to unravel the lies and distortions surrounding the war against Iraq, bad economic policy, and perhaps the deeply disturbing atmosphere of intimidation and fear will begin to lift -- won't it? Commissions are being formed, special investigations begin, newspapers and magazines are emboldened raising questions and expressing opinions -- truth will out?

Open your ears, O God, to my prayer,
and do not hide when I call on you:
turn to me and answer me.
My thoughts are distracted and I am disturbed
by the voice of my enemy and the oppression of the wicked.

They let loose their wickedness on me,
they persecute me in their anger.
My heart is tied in a knot
and the terrors of death lie upon me;
fear and trembling cover me;
terror holds me tight.

I said, "Will no-one give me wings like a dove?
I shall fly away and rest.
I shall flee far away
and remain all alone.
I shall wait for him who will save me
from the stormy wind and the tempest?"
-- Psalm 54 (55)

Snow blows dusk into harbor. Tide rises, lowers, ebbs, turns again. Turning hidden beyond storm clouds, full moon is somewhere else seen.

If enlightenment were to be of anyone's concern, it could be looked for embedded in each person's life and situation.
If we were to wish to fly away and rest we could turn around right where we are -- far away and absolutely near where our thinking thought we were -- recognizing the place as origin -- remaining, all, alone.

Psalmist words for us: O God -- Turn to me as we to thee.

In turning is the return -- whether turning toward or away -- it is in the return to origin we find what we are looking for.

Loss only prepares in us what we are reluctant to acknowledge.

What is that?

If we look under our feet, what is seen...?

A locked church sent him into the shop.

His brother dies and is not found for over two weeks. He takes a friend into his house the night before he learns of his brother. The needy friend reminds him of his brother. Why do we pray?

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

We stumble into one another's presence.

We pray to recognize each in each.

Power is passing.

When the fury of emotion appears before us or within us -- bow head, be submissive, surrender to the passing enormity that cannot be controlled -- only let go,

Creaking to the post office
on my rusty bike
I saw one purple iris
wild in the wet green
of the rice field.
I wanted to send it to you.
I can only tell you
it was there.
(-- Maura O'Halloran, in Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, The Zen Journal and Letters of Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran)

At Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation we pronounced questions that accompany us on spiritual path. Eight silences speak the same number of questions.

Encircling the middle, interest ("inter"= between; "esse"= to be) in what is asked.

What is asking is what is answering.

In silence, listening with one another, and speaking.

It was there.

In Boothbay the man about to turn 80 said over soup and sandwich, "You know what it's like to experience the futility of life?" With his eyes he anticipated a yes. I said yes.

When silent illumination is complete,
The lotus will blossom,
The dreamer will awaken.
The hundred rivers flow to the ocean,
The thousand mountains
Face the loftiest peak.
Like the goose preferring milk to water,
Like a busy bee gathering pollen,
When Silent Illumination
Reaches the ultimate,
I carry on the original tradition.
This practice is called Silent Illumination.
It penetrates from the deepest to the highest.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)

Lighting fire this morning I thought about the realities of solitary life. It's not so much being alone that characterizes a solitary life. It's more a willingness to be irrelevant.

The supreme support for a person who has just died is the depth of our own practice and the strength of our positive, compassionate intention. If through our practice we are familiar with the nature of mind and can rest undistracted in that state, then meditating on behalf of our deceased friend will "show" him the truth of his own nature. As Padmasambhava said:
"As soon as our body has separated into mind and matter, in the gap before it has been encased once again in the net of a future body, the mind along with its magical display has no concrete material support. For as long as it lacks such a material basis we are independent and we can recognize. This power to attain stability by just recognizing the nature of mind is like a torch which in one instant can clear away the darkness of eons."
(p.189, in Facing Death and Finding Hope, A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying, by Christine Longaker)

Irrelevant, I light fire in the morning; and in the afternoon break ice by dock in harbor alongside Sam and Susan's dory.

To be irrelevant is to love to be unknown.

Just recognizing.

Enough for now.

Fire sparks at end of day in shop fireplace. At Hermitage, woodstove in cabin easily warms interior now that temperature has neared +20. Kitchen woodstove cheers the house.

Silvery moon hangs high in the sky.
I ride a tiny boat in the vast and misty sea.
Moon and sea forgotten;
I forget that I have forgotten.
And before the window
I sit quietly in meditation until midnight.
- Jakushitsu (1290 - 1368)

Maybe for only Sunday Evening Practice tonight.

Chris read from William James at Saturday's Poetry, Tea, and Literature. I find this today:
Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs: --

1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance;

2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;

3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof -- be that spirit "God" or "law" -- is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.

Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics: --

4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.

5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.
(p.475, Lecture XX Conclusions, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, A Study in Human Nature Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902)

It occurs to me writing someone in the Midwest that all we can do is try to see what is being seen:
As a practitioner of Buddhism I subscribe to the middle way. As a Christian I've always believed Christ was the center, at center, of everything in creation -- literally in the middle of everything. So, the middle is a good place to be aware of -- but it takes practice for me.
If I were looking with an open heart, I'd be looking through that middle reality existing at core and between you and me. If I were aware of what I was looking at and through, I'd be ok.

Darkness is ending. It is February. The sun warms.

Hugh C. writes, "Hello Liam O' hAlpin," and sends the following:
IMBOLG or BRIDGID'S DAY
Imbolg (Feb 1) is "a solemn and joyful time: the ending of darkness after
the 'seed of light' which began at the Solstice [which] gradually pushes
its way into the air." It is also the time when first-born lambs emerge and
the hours of daylight increase. Imbolg is called St. Bridget's Day and she
is still known as Mary of the Gael. She is invoked with Mary (spelled Muire
in Gaelic) in birthing or in lighting the fires or in the evening by
"smooring" or putting ashes on, the fire. She is petitioned with prayers to
protect the house and the household throughout the night. According to
legend she was the midwife and wet-nurse to Jesus and as such was invoked
during childbirth. Above all doorways it used to be the custom to place a
Brigid's Cross (the off-centered cross symbolizing also the wheel of life).
It was traditionally woven with rushes (reeds) on the eve of Imbolg. In
times gone by the response to a greeting such as "Dia agat" was "Brid agus
Muire agat" (breejus mwirragut).

Women in the Highlands of Scotland invoked St. Brigid with the prayer
Come, thou Brigid, handmaid calm
Hasten the butter on the cream
See impatient Peter
waiting the buttered bannock
Come Mary Mother mild
Hasten the butter on the cream
See Paul and John and Jesus
Waiting the gracious butter.

Brigid was Abbess of Kildare and is the patron saint, not only of birth and
milking and churning, but also of poets, smiths and healers. In these forms
she is the continuation of the "tripartite goddess: the young girl, the muse
of the poets; the matron, whose skill...also shapes the material world; and
the crone, the old woman, whose wisdom enables her to heal those who ask her
for help." Cormac's Glossary (10th century) says that Brighid [was] a
poetess, daughter of the Dagda. She is the female sage, woman of wisdom, or
Brighid the Goddess, whom poets venerated because [she was] very great and
famous for her protecting care. She was therefore called "Goddess of Poets".
Her sisters were Brighid the female physician, and Brighid the female smith;
among all Irishmen, a goddess was called "Brighid." According to Eric
Partridge, the etymologist, her name is akin to the Sanskrit "brhati",
meaning lofty and hence powerful.
(Quotes are from "The Celtic Year" by Shirley Toulson and "The Encyclopedia
of Celtic Wisdom" by Caitlin Matthews.)

It cheers there are such women and men about who are willing to look and to see.

For each and all of us this day: Assurance of safety, a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections!

And may we see and find ourselves a middle way.

Mythos, from muthos, "tale," has as much to do with silence as it does with telling.

Even if "You Have to Say Something," as Dainin Katagiri Roshi's book is titled, we sometimes have to look beyond the usual choices for a response.

Robert Pirsig suggests a way to think outside ordinary duality:
Yes and no ... this or that ... one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is computer memory which stores all its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros, that's all.

Because we're unaccustomed to it, we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.

Mu means "no thing.'' Like "Quality'' it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.'' It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question'' is what it says.

Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. When the Zen monk Joshu was asked whether a dog had a Buddha nature he said "Mu,'' meaning that if he answered either way he was answering incorrectly. The Buddha nature cannot be captured by yes or no questions.

That mu exists in the natural world investigated by science is evident. It's just that, as usual, we're trained not to see it by our heritage.
(- p.320, Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

If Pirsig suggests 'heritage' trains us 'not to see' -- perhaps 'hermitage' invites us to see.

This hermitage was here first
Only then, the world.
When the world crumbles,
This hermitage will not be destroyed.
The host inside the hermitage
Is present everywhere.
The moon shines on the eternal void;
The wind whistles through
Ten thousand openings.
- Shiwu (1347)

Hermitage, for this view, might be seeing what is core and care of what is. That anything is at all, is itself invitation to look into it. It is the inner view that helps develop vision for how to respond to outer necessities -- like food, clothing, shelter, human interaction with one another, with created matter, and with the unknown which surrounds and interpenetrates this existence.

Hermitage is practicing seeing, saying, and serving. This in a silence that permeates both wordless and wording presence.

Jesus found he had to say something.
And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away. (from Luke 4:21-30)

There's something both musical and mythical about "passing through the midst of them" and disappearing.

The best place to find and lose oneself is in the midst of where we are. To be there, wherever we are, is to learn telling silence.

We are only passing visitors here.

This hermitage was here first.

As each with each in silence.

This is the nature of conversation.

"The tension between solitude and communion has existed at nearly every stage of the history of spirituality." (p.43, in article "Mending Broken Connections: A Process Spirituality," by Kathleen R. Fischer, in Chicago Studies, April 1987).

This morning at prison Joe comes in half way through the conversation. In one hand crumpled paper, stapler in the other. He sits down. After 5 minutes he nods, says "That's what I needed, to calm in this environment. I just put 40 staples into one paper while putting up with annoying interruptions." There's laughter. He's smiling as he leaves.

We talked of the Latin "Hoc" in the Christian rite of consecration. Ryan asked at end, "You know what the answer is?" Then he answered, "Faith in this."

One who gives rise to the awakened mind should know that what is called a self or person, a living being or a life span, is not so in essence but only in concept. That names self, person, living being, or life span are names only. Subhuti, you should know that all things of the world are like this, and you should have confidence in their essence without names.
- Diamond Sutra

Around fireplace Peter, Tommy, and Gale are trying to decide whether female energy would change the imbalance of power and violence in today's militaristic approach to problems. Their words approach stalemate.

When any part of the whole appropriates to itself what belongs to the whole, that's when trouble shows its face, that's when difficulty arises. Whether male/female, patriarchal/matriarchal, liberal/conservative, left/right, right/wrong -- or any myriad either/or opinion -- when we fragment the whole for purposes of determining superiority/inferiority, we lose the sense of whatever grace resides at origin.

"Religion is only man telling God what God ought to be," says Tommy before he launches into his song "Treebird" accompanying himself on small acoustical guitar that hangs out by the dog's water bowl. He sings, "The bird may find that flying is a good thing to know." (The bird didn't want to fly, he explains.)

We sit for Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue with Nasr's book on the Heart of Islam.

Saskia says the piece about Islam's encompassing and taking in all the other religions -- is something for her to think about. Gale, Tommy, Lloyd, Patricia, Dick, Saskia and I encircled the text with open listening. We wondered what is actually asked of us by surrender?

After everyone leaves and departure nears, Saskia rubs lotion on her hands. Bakery is closed. Lights all out but for remaining one over refrigerator. Car warms in frigid parking lot.

She says when asked, "The nature of conversation is listening deeply and speaking from one's heart."

This practice of conversation is a lovely one.

This (Hoc) is the body we recognize in the pronouncing words celebrating the solitude and communion of gratefulness. No matter how it is ritualized, one thing does not become something else -- rather, each thing or person is recognized as itself.

"This," Nancy said as we drove from prison, "is Meetingbrook's presenting practice."

This is the nature of conversation.

Sometimes we each feel like an orphan.

Susan liked what Will said. The connection between matter and mater (L. 'mother'). We wondered whether 'mother consciousness' would make our attention to matter more loving and caring.

Subhuti, do not think that when one gives rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind one needs to see all objects of mind as nonexistent, cut off from life. Please do not think in that way. One who gives rise to the awakened mind does not deny objects or say that they are nonexistent.
- Diamond Sutra

It is more the task of losing the limiting liabilities of matter -- not eliminating matter itself. Many have held that a descent into matter is a degradation of spirit. Many long only for spirit, to be rid of body, to step away from matter with the accompanying belief in its inferiority, sinfulness, and crass barriers and boundaries.

Redeeming creation is not shunting away what is created. It is more about returning creation and matter to original state -- that which it is at origin -- its center fullness. The original 'what-is-ness' of matter resides within everything in creation.

Perhaps to redeem is to remind a thing of its original wholeness.

Will spoke of Integral Yoga, Sri Aurabindo, as his path. He spoke of the path of knowing (jnana), of devotion (bhatki), and of works (karma) -- each of which flows into the other as they find fullness.

What did the words of that song say? -- "When we awake we will remember everything."

We think we are what is holding together all that is. But if we let go, 'what-is itself' will hold us all together in divine embrace upholding.

Mother of God -- mothering God!

No orphan.

Maybe it isn't.

Is each fact true? Each fact is itself alongside others. Yet, one thing is not the other. Or is it?

Cream of Wheat with banana, blueberries, and vanilla Stonyfield yogurt.

Arvo Part's 'Magnificat' plays. It serves this morning as a prelude to surrendering interest in politics, presidential race, and postscripts to deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as report issued in England following investigation of former arms inspector's suicide last year. Each fact stands alone.

Jen said last evening it is best to let the low level, dark resonances of others' negative thoughts pass by noting, 'these are not mine.' Richard retells story of rescuing dog while thin ice held him aloft. Shunryu Suzuki's Not Always So suggests when breathing and activity are in harmony, when mind and body are clear and still together -- we are free, liberated, to engage everything and everyone without fear. Lloyd, John, and Saskia bravely step over threshold engaging question of inseparable experience.

Purifying our self direction,
Our emotions, and behaviors
In all endeavors, one grows
In understanding of the Way.
But our individual abilities vary
And the exalted Way has many
Different rules.
To students of Tao,
This sincere forewarning:
Only with a clear, honest spirit
Can we begin meaningful learning.
With an unsullied heart we may
Even move the immortals.
Debasing the Way,
Not even a heaven forgives us.
- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

The Way opens before us. Each true step -- and we traverse infinite time and space in each instant and inch of geography. Each false step -- and we fall into the morass of deception imprisoned in the very space encircling us. Who can tell which step we have just taken? Who foretells the next step we take?

Sitting in cabin just before sunrise this morning, glancing out along fallen stone wall below floor level windows, gray squirrel steps across stones, right to left, on way to ground seed under bird feeders near overturned dinghy.

Chanting through expanding billows of worded breath, we sing:
Blessed be the name of the Lord, from this day hence, and forever. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Ah-ah-ah-amen.

If we want truth, a Zen Master said, only drop opinions.

Even Thomas Aquinas found straw the equivalent to his Summa Theologica. It was his final opinion on his life's work.

Practicing no opinion -- Wednesday opens.

Standing alone.

Maybe it is.

Coast Guard cutter Tackle breaks harbor ice. Floes, 8 to 10 inches thick and yards long, drift with outgoing tide down channels.

Priscilla said her husband seemed to be able to hear an individual's spirit speaking when he talked with that person. He'd write a poem or story. She brings in his writings and some of her artwork. Do we ever understand what we are seeing or saying? These writings will visit to see if they find their own context, even context in another's view.

Isn't that our prayer?

Prayer
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that
(Poem: "Prayer," by Galway Kinnell, from A New Selected Poems, c.2001)

A woman from France and man with either Middle Eastern or Middle European accent speak by fireplace over lemon tea bread, apfel kuchen, and pain chocolat.

Today -- longing for a hermit's solitude.

The shade of noble trees
Spreads in all directions
Below the trees a tiny
Hut is perfectly secluded
Beyond the sound of cart
Or horse or sign of human tracks
All day behind my door
I sit alone cross-legged.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

Talk of Turkey, India, Greece, France, and England.

Ice is gone to open bay. I am gone to the sound intersecting mute origination and silent attentiveness.

Whatever 'what is' is, only and but, that.

Light at end of day climbs over Wayfarer roof. Remaining large floes inch slowly through water as stillness ebbs. The man's healing shoulder and wrapped arm rests under red sweater.

...This is, I think,
what holiness is:
the natural world,
where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind
there's a hermit's cave
full of light,

full of snow,
full of concentration.
I've knelt there,
and so have you,

Hanging on
to what you love,
to what is lovely. ...
-- (from poem, "At the Lake," by Mary Oliver)

Prayer drifts alongside whatever happens.

Dawn light creates silhouette limbs in dooryard east.

Living alone
In the shade
Of a remote mountain,
I have you for my companion
Now the storm has passed,
Moon of the winter night.
- Saigyo

Stitching cuffs on flannel pants as water steams under frost-lined kitchen window.

Joy in waking in darkness watching daybreak yawn through below zero temperature.

Bald and Ragged Mountains hold themselves still and inseparate from cold.

We will bow to their fidelity, turning onto Barnestown, driving Downeast.

Grateful to be doing so.

What is it humans fear?

"This is what the prophets discovered. History is a nightmare. There are more scandals, more acts of corruption, than are dreamed of in philosophy." (p.181, Heschel.)

Is it form we fear? Or emptiness?
Don't make two, don't make one. That's that.

And when That is seen in its
Immanence and transcendence
Then the ties that have bound the
Heart are loosened, the doubts
Of the mind vanish, and the law
Of karma works no more.
- Mundaka Upanishad

Then there is three.

For Hegel, it was not a mere fancy or a game with the number three when his circling thought advanced in both small things and great in triplesteps (or a triangular movement). Behind it lay the basic insight -- which has never been forgotten since that time -- that I cannot state the truth absolutely clearly and distinctly merely in one sentence, but really need three, dialectically affirming, denying, surpassing: this is how it is, and yet not so, in fact there is more to it. And so on. In this sense truth lies in the totality, not in the individual steps, theses, propositions or elements of which it is made up. (pp.30-31, in Does God Exist? An Answer for today, by Hans Kung, c.1978)

Not one country, not one religion -- is truer or better than another. Forms fall apart. And out of emptiness emerge new ways of seeing.

At Sunday Evening Practice, reading from The Prophets An Invitation, by Abraham Heschel. He ends chapter nine saying, "The enmity between the nations will turn to friendship. They will live together when they worship together."

Jory said when we sit in the cold zendo and walk on the cold floor we are following the vision of the prophets.
We worship in spirit and truth. Each one, and the other, and the whole of us.

This is how it is. And yet, not so. In fact there is more to it.

There is no need to fear. We have only to engage, transform, and re-emerge through each event as who we are in the presence of one another.

Each is what is true. In that spirit, the best of life goes on.

Worshipful.

A poem, short story, or essay -- the good ones -- put you there. They serve self-remembering.

At end it can be said, "O, I didn't know that about myself. Thanks for showing me."

The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is nothing but the doctrine of One Mind. This Mind is originally perfect and vastly illuminating. It is clear and pure, containing nothing, not even a fine dust. There is neither delusion nor enlightenment, neither birth nor death, neither saints nor sinners. Sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same fundamental nature. There are no two natures to distinguish them. This is why Bodhidharma came from the west to teach the Ch'an method of "direct pointing" to the original true Mind.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing (1586)

Reading this afternoon from False Papers by Andre Aciman, The keeper of sheep, by Fernando Pessoa, Fire in the Earth by David Whyte, Self-Remembering by Robert Earl Burton, some Rumi, and poems self published by an insurance man named Paul M. from the Hartford area. Lloyd said some things about the 4th Way and seeing the connections, beginning to understand, to feel.

As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
(from 1 Corinthians 12)

When we look at each other, when we listen to each other, we are ready to say, "O, yes, I didn't know that about my self. Thank you for showing me."

All this so that the members may have the same care for one another.

Tommy comes in at end. Two women afterwards -- buy jams -- remembering her father worked with and helped build the chapel with Trappists from which the jams.

She is moved by this self remembering.

As each is.

An Irish visitor thinks we've not even begun to comprehend the incomprehensibility of God.

"Think of DNA," he says, "the squiggly structure of life itself, as insight into the original fire-burst of God in this existence."

We sit in cold shop, pre-fire, while in next town hundreds gather for memorial service. Our conversation is a different service -- words for others who've died in far away places in the unceasing war humanity has with itself.

God, some say, is saying life differently than our words. God, they say, is the impulse not-to-speak that sets in center of each and every being that exists along our way.

Not-to-speak, but given-to-love.

I will place my laws in their minds
and I will write them upon their hearts;
I will be their God
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach their fellow citizens
or their brothers, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for all shall know me, from least to greatest.
I will forgive their evildoing,
and their sins I will remember no more.
(from Jeremiah 31)

A God who forgives and forgets -- no wonder we can't find that God!

Religions with scriptures about a silent God, a Word made Flesh who remains silent when asked, "What is truth?"

The rest of us talk and talk, wording everything we can, explain, argue, defend, rationalize, attempt to convey feelings, try to present thought in a communicable manner. And like the pop song we shrug and protest, "It's only words, but words are all I have, to take your heart away." (The BeeGees)

Good friends, my teaching
Of the Dharma takes
Meditation and wisdom
As its basis.
Never under any
Circumstances say that
Meditation and wisdom
Are different;
They are one unity,
Not two things.
Meditation itself is the
Substance of wisdom;
Wisdom itself is the
Function of meditation
- Hui-neng

So much of meditation is silent. As is wisdom. The substance and function of wisdom and meditation are not two things.

And when we speak, when we dare open heart, mind, and mouth to say something to another, we risk everything precious. Still, we must open our mouths, we must say something.

The heart, one author said, is a lonely hunter.

I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you all that the Father has told me.
(John 15:15)

It seems we have been made known. If we have been made known, all that is needed to be known, how is it we do not seem to know one another?

Is our barrier that we remember sin? Is our boundary that we retain tightly the evil we do one to another?

Let go! Forget about it! Find freedom in the close relatedness each hunts for -- by seeing in, through, and with God's sight.

Let our hearts be broken and taken away. Whether in joy or sorrow, let hearts flash open, as the heart of God is openness. Let pour out everything held there -- until empty -- and sacred. God's way and our way -- are not two ways. God's heart and our heart -- are not two things.

When all is revealed in sacred opening -- all know.

As we move in this meditation, through this wisdom -- in quiet -- we learn how to speak with each other.

Here is where the incomprehensible, forgiving and forgetting, comes to know and love itself -- in, and through, and with.

Daylight.

If extinguished candles are fragrant flowers colored by each one's loving prayer, a wonderland of seeding ground awaits eyes of passersby there.

Fields we saw
Blooming with
So many different flowers,
Frost-withered now
To a single hue.
- Saigyo

Sprinkling overnight snow -- this muted chiaroscuro-- at service to memorial this Thursday.

Even the young gone beyond leave children of their elders, who play in snowy drift of memory when daylight bows to passing night.

Around this Mandala, this sacred spot,
May the flames that transmute Samsara into Nirvana arise.
(from Dedication Puja, Ven. Sangharashita)

Christ-light -- hard working wisdom!

Hosmer Pond, thick with solid ice, was epiclesis tonight.

When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of the sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.
- Liu I-Ming

A wide round circle of luminaries, candles in sand inside bags, on snowy ice under new moon white sharp stars. Inside the enormous circle of over 205 luminaries, an inner figure -- a heart of 35 luminaries -- lay within the still and silent cold of Wednesday night.

Car lights turn off. No one on pond. No one there when two people walk out to edge of circle lights. Stand and look. Wonder. Walk without words the edge of circle all around. Turn and bow in direction of house high on hill overlooking pond. Turn and bow to heart inside circle. Wander back off ice to car; drive off.

The word "epiclesis" is Greek for "invocation" in the sense of calling upon or naming a person. The implication of such naming is, of course, that the person called upon become actively involved in or present to the person or thing upon which he [or she] was invoked. It is not surprising, then, that long before the term was ever employed to refer to a specific part of the anaphora, epiclesis referred to the entire prayer. In time, however, epiclesis came to refer to that petition to the Father to send the Holy Spirit which usually follows the anamnesis.
(http://www.saintstephens.on.ca/Essay/KF/The%20Epiclesis.htm)

Anamnesis, (an'-am-nee'-sis) from ana, again; and mimneeskein, to put in mind; recollectio, recordatio, remembrance.
Plato called anamnesis, 'soul-memory.'

The stark emptiness of the ice and candles. The vacancy of the visit. The fullness of the experience of love set for her in glowing memory.

Whoever created the testimony had gone. The invocation, the putting in mind of the young woman whose dwelling has changed from hilltop to beyond our telling, was laid out with exquisite juxtaposition: form was emptiness, emptiness form in beautifully frozen heart-light within circle-wholeness.

Anaphora, Late Latin, from Greek, from anapherein, to bring back: ana-, ana- + pherein, to carry; a-naph-o-ra: The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.

We invoke light of 'hard working wisdom' -- Amilia Sophia.
We recollect sterling stillness of ice pond memorial.
We carry back silence of pristine star eyes from distances beyond thought.

It is all we can do to pause, walk about, watch attentively, and pray her on her way.

This is -- indeed -- a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe.

Someone, earlier in evening conversation, said, "Love is always counterbalance to whatever weight is borne."

Do questions and answers travel in pairs?

Suicide bomb in Iraq kills twenty. American ordinance in Afghanistan kills eleven villagers, four children. Car accident at routes 1 and 52 kills high school student. Throughout world men vie for positions of power -- for who will decide what bombs go where, and who will die, and who will profit from death.

Reflecting on another death, a friend writes:
Perhaps we must surrender (and I don't say submit--that seems different somehow, cowering) to what is, to I Am, and say, "I don't know why, Lord--and I don't need to know."

So many tragedies, so many questions! Do answers accompany questions? Or are we orphans and parents of orphans because 'answer' refuses to reveal itself?

No, tragedies do not cancel each other out as they succeed one another. On the contrary, they multiply and accumulate, becoming more unjust with every blow. True, every man [and woman] suffers alone -- yet his suffering is never limited to himself. Suffering begets suffering ever sharper, deeper and more harrowing. In other words, Job's anguish, however similar to Abraham's, however reminiscent of Abraham's, cannot be explained by it. The fact that Job's torments had a precedent does not imply that they have a meaning. In this respect, Jewish tradition differs from the Buddhist concept: to insert individual anguish into cosmic anguish does not resolve, but on the contrary, aggravates the problem. Therein lies its universality. Every individual is both beginning and end; that is why he deserves an answer, not a consolation, unless the consolation itself becomes an answer. (pp. 235-236, Wiesel)

In Warsaw Ghetto, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the emotional desert of contemporary consciousness -- 'answer' hides and seeks shelter from ravages of inane bombardment from occupying forces wanting to take control of what is not theirs.

In Wiesel's portrait of Job he writes: I prefer to think that the Book's true ending was lost. That Job died without having repented, without having humiliated himself; that he succumbed to his grief an uncompromising and whole man. It seems rather odd that the Midrash, so prodigal in legends at the beginning of the drama, becomes so sparing in its epilogue; it probably troubled the rabbinical storytellers. The third act of a play is usually a kind of apotheosis; this one is pale, disappointing. The fighter has turned into a lamb. A sad metamorphosis, inexplicable in literary terms. (p.247)

Wiesel wonders if God's true victory lay in forcing Job to welcome happiness -- to agree to go back to living as before.

Do we? Go on living? Doing the next thing asked of us? Not forgetting, no, but carrying on -- even without understanding, acceptance, or surrender? And doesn't that -- temporary solution -- tire soon enough? And do we not, tired and defeated, rise day after day -- as if in celebration of the unknown presence life constantly asks us to engage?

At the end of his struggle, which Job recognized as being lost in advance -- for how can man hope to defeat God? -- Job discovered a novel method to persevere in his resistance: he pretended to abdicate before he even engaged his battle.

Had he remained firm, had he discussed the divine arguments point by point, one would conclude that he had to concede defeat in the face of his interlocutor's rhetorical superiority. But he said yes to God, immediately. He did not hesitate or procrastinate, nor did he point out the slightest contradiction. Therefore we know that in spite or perhaps because of appearances, Job continued to interrogate God. By repenting sins he did not commit, by justifying a sorrow he did not deserve, he communicates to us that he did not believe in his own confessions; they were nothing but decoys. Job personified man's eternal quest for justice and truth -- he did not choose resignation. This he did not suffer in vain; thanks to him, we know that it is given to man to transform divine injustice into human justice and compassion.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a legendary man, a just and generous man who, in his solitude and despair, found the courage to stand up to God. And to force Him to look at His creation. And to speak to those men who sometimes succeed, in spite of Him and of themselves, in achieving triumphs over Him, triumphs that are grave and disquieting.

What remains of Job? A fable? A shadow? Not even the shadow of a shadow. An example, perhaps.
(pp. 248-249, chapter titled, "Job: Our Contemporary," in Messengers Of God,, Biblical Portraits and Legends, by Elie Wiesel, c. 1976)

Are we ever, really, completely defeated by the troubling and sorrowful things occurring in our way?

Is there a partnering answer to this question?

Luke said last night -- "Suicide disturbs, sends shocks and ripples to those left behind."

Wondering if it's a winter shower,
I wake in my bed
And hear them:
The leaves that
Couldn't withstand the storm.
- Saigyo

A young person, recent high school graduate from town, died. The word 'suicide' is spoken. A leaf that couldn't withstand the storm.

...India's spiritual traditions are all in agreement that the human being, though unable to intellectually know Reality in its nakedness, can become it in its different dimensions of totality. (Feuerstein, p.191)

There is a longing to change form. There is a longing to step out of the 'motions' we go through. When 'e-motions' are disturbed, it is a longing to move out of the motions that seem so containing. Whether school, church, family, relationship, or cultural box -- there is a longing to be out of the form, out of the motions.

For each of us suffering the fear of form, the disturbance of motions, there is a deeper longing we feel, a deeper way of supporting each other through these difficulties. Learning liberation, what it is, and how it serves -- is one way to begin. .

Liberation is a simple switch of identity. Prior to liberation -- from the unenlightened perspective -- there is the thought of being a human being. Upon liberation, or enlightenment, this thought ceases. The Self knows itself to be the eternal Self, not a specific individual inhabiting a particular point in space and time. (p.193, in Wholeness or Transcendence? - Ancient Lessons For The Emerging Global Civilization, by Georg Feuerstein, c. 1992)

Our hearts break, hearing of the loss and sorrow, the individual and family.

There is a need to re-learn our wholeness.

We pray the leaf finds itself in the heart of serene seed poising itself to enter new ground supported by whole trees in whole forests wandered through by whole-hearted individuals who see, hear, touch, and delight in the new creation unfolding in our midst. The fact is we are whole -- however felt the brokenness and fractured places we call our self -- we are no-other than the whole.

Suicide is painful. It calls the whole into question. Still, we are all there -- the one who has entered death ahead of us, and we, who now grieve and continue in motion down river until our own flowing out and falling into the Whole.

Our faith is in the liberation, given with grace, to each one fallen.

We long to wake, wake in our beds, to the sounds of water tumbling with joy, to the budding leafy presence of one and all.

What is this?

This is work that is alive,
Effervescent, free, liberated,
Gloriously enlightened,
True, and great.
Do you think it can be attained
By people who shut the door
And sit quietly with blank minds?
- Liu I-Ming

No.

Still, today we sit quietly with blank minds. (Maybe not so.)

Still, today we sit watching mind empty itself into quiet.

This -- this practice of sitting walking sitting, this work remembering what is alive within and surrounding us -- this is our 3rd Saturday Mindfulness Retreat.

At 1st Interreligious Dialogue Friday Evening Conversation, Nancy, Patricia, Saskia, and I read opening words of The Heart of Islam, Enduring values for Humanity, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Imagine, surrendering into God, greeting God, facing God each way we turn!

At Prison Conversation earlier Charlie, Ryan, Saskia, and I read from A Passion for Truth by Abraham Heschel, then laugh and puzzle at the Irish folktale "The Man Who Had No Story."

The joy is conversation. With each other. Alone in silence.

Turning with one another.

Facing God.

Dangerously cold. All life seeks inner shelter.

Jesus told each one not to tell anyone what had happened. Some saw. Some walked. Some were healed of various infirmities.

Why not tell?

Because they didn't understand what had occurred?

John said at the shop at Laura Conversation he was troubled by miracles. The fire was dying and the room getting cold. Temperature was well below zero outside. And the wind.

They didn't understand that the miracle did not come from outside them. Nor did it come from inside them. And they certainly didn't understand who Jesus was as he was with them.

Robert said the real miracle was chocolate icing. Or maybe flour. Saskia suggested the whole cake. Dirk was opting for the course miracles take. Su Sane thought the real miracle might be or not be a miracle.

If you ask into something with prayer, you enter the question. Su Sane said questions and answers traveled in pairs.

There we are. In frozen temperatures inhospitable to human flesh, the matter is settled.

It is not a matter of perspective nor perception. The view itself -- the view is God. All is ordinary, all is miracle.

Awareness of what is seeing itself is question entered, answer lived.

Jesus needed no belief -- not his own, not anyone else's.

True faith is one's own being lived graciously and gratefully. This is thank you, you're welcome, even for the little nephew in Charlotte's story who prayed to catch a fish, didn't, and remembered to say thank you.

It's eleven below zero. Without wind.

Barge towed by tug heads out bay. Tide high. The dredging is done.

Do not remain in the dualistic state;
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace
Of this and that, right and wrong,
The Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One,
Do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
Nothing in the world can offend,
And when a thing can no longer offend,
It ceases to exist in the old way.
- Seng Ts?an (d. 606)

Paul Krugman in Commonwealth Club talk and New York Times column today ("The Awful Truth") wonders, "Are people finally willing to admit the obvious?"

It's coldest tonight, they say, than has been in ten years.

Those who wonder about such things wonder whether what is happening in our country is more dangerous than they can remember.

"Listen, all people, and I shall speak;
I will bear witness against you,
O nations:
As Divine Presence, Eternal Flame of Love,

Shall I not find fault with what
you call holy,
these offerings of greed and war
that are before me always?

Your lies and deceitful ways,
your greed for power and wealth
are spawned by darkness;

Have you forgotten that we are to be
One in Love and Truth,
that all of life is Sacred Gift?

I know every creature, every plant,
every mineral;

I know you -- your every need
and your fears;

The Earth and all that is in it
belongs to the Whole, to be
tended by all in co-operation
with Love.

Shall I accept your proud and
boasting hearts,
the oppression, the injustices
brought about
through your fearful deeds?

Never shall I accept such burnt offerings!

Rather, offer to the Beloved a gift
of thanksgiving
with grateful hearts;

For what other return can you make
for all that Love offers to you?

My friends, search for the still voice
that dwells in the Silence.
(Psalm 50, pp. 97-98, in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, c.1996 by Nan C. Merrill)

What's worth their wonder is the worry something is irreparably changing.

Are we forgetting a grateful heart?

Is it hidden away in the silence?

That all of life is Sacred Gift?

The thought cheers -- to remember grateful heart in silence as sacred gift.

Joanie is pale in muted light of hospital room. She fell down her stairs.

Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,
One path entering the wooded hill:
The monk has gone off, locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

Two Tibetan monks stop in shop for hot chocolate. Dawa bows, leaves Kata over joined hands, prayer flags, and incense. Holly and Charlotte sit by fire with them. These monks, their bare arms not far from bitter cold. "Buddha was wrong," says Wang Chen, laughing as he points showing Karl his bare left arm, "he didn't know Maine cold."

In her hospital room there is a small buildup of ice inside the window. The room is quite warm. She is tired and weary. I say goodnight.

In workroom of bookshop a trickle of water runs inside tank of toilet so that below zero cold will not freeze pipe coming up from shallow travel below parking lot.

At his baptism with John, Jesus felt water trickle down head to shoulders and arms. God was water caressing offspring.

"Listen to him," water said. Just then, right there, water found sound refreshing and gentle, and began to flow on with restored resolve.

Our Savior came to be baptized, so that through the cleansing waters of baptism he might restore the old man to new life, heal our sinful nature, and clothe us with unfailing holiness. (Antiphon, Canticle of Mary, Evening Prayer I, Baptism Of The Lord, in Christian Prayer)

If our nature is sinful, that is, torn and frayed from its original wholeness, old man water was healing, and being healed by, new life revealed in the river.

John's words were heard and hands touched this new life -- many heard and felt the open mind, heart, and heavens -- as water found its way.

Jesus went on from that day.

A lonely trickle of water flows.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9:30am conversation on The Many Faces of Death.

.....

Sea smoke rises from Penobscot Bay.

What if it were true that the very air we look through is the spirit of God? The air we breath?

Would our perspective change?

Acts at random,
In ignorance of
The constant, bode ill.
Knowing the constant
Gives perspective;
This perspective is impartial.
Impartiality is the highest nobility;
The highest nobility is divine,
And the divine is the Way.
This Way is everlasting,
Not endangered by physical death.
- Tao-te Ching

What is constant?
In the question is the answer -- 'What Is!'

Do we look for God in vain because God is what is looking through, God is what is looked through?

The Way is constant. We either enter it and disappear; or we run around it, exhaust ourselves, and fall bitter, defeated, and seemingly wayless.

Seemingly -- because there is only the Way. What falls defeated is the false self whose belief posits itself outside and away from what is alone truth.

What is alone truth is this.

This is where we are -- each and every one of us.

We are each alone truth -- non-separate, intimate, sacred, and ordinary.

Some ask, "Where is God?"

Look around. Look through what is between the one looking and that which is seen. Now, forget who we think is looking and what we think is the object we look at.

In the looking itself, what is seen through, is what is itself seen.

The ego, what we think we are, cannot see God and live.

We live in seeing what God is seeing.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through 9Jan04. We will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9am conversation on death and dying.

.....

Very cold night in Maine.

Right at the moment of dropping off,
Deliberation and discussion
Are one thousand or
Ten thousand miles away.
- Hongzhi (1091-1157)

Snow-making machines at Snow Bowl. Wind rattles rusting chime outside room.

Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.
When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.
Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
(Mark 6: 45-52, New International Version (NIV))

What's there to understand? Bread stretched itself to 5 thousand mouths. Water buoyed itself under human feet. He was alone on land.

It's not that miracles are incomprehensible. It's more that for some reason we believe that everything isn't possible.

Everything is possible.

Machines make snow. Rusting iron ore makes music for the wind. Filament holds fragile fingers together and light glows in that touch.

Soon we'll remember a time when not everyone told the truth. Lies will be preserved in museums, many in presidential libraries, others in bait and tackle backrooms in fishing towns in Atlantic Provinces.

It's just me, Jesus says, lighten up.

Anybody got coffee on the fire?

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through 9Jan04. We will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9am conversation on death and dying.

.....

Blessings of Epiphany!

Shining through.

After sitting through unheated cabin cold, we chant Lauds. This morning prayer of Epiphany is punctuated by sun coming over clouds, through windows, to where we sit on zabutons, breath visible in every syllable:

Father of light, unchanging God,
today you reveal to men [and women] of faith
the resplendent fact of the Word made flesh.
Your light is strong,
your love is near;
draw us beyond the limits which the world imposes,
to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
(Alternative Prayer, Morning Prayer, Solemnity of Epiphany, in Christian Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours)

It is the 'Alternative Prayer' and it captures something important for us this feast. The words -- draw us beyond the limits which the world imposes,
to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete. -- tell us the emphasis we look for in this new year.

We will begin a new Friday Evening Conversation entitled, Interreligious Dialogue: Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways. The hour-long conversation, along with regular audio-video resource presentations, will focus on Hinduism (and other India-based spiritual belief systems), Judaism, Islam, Far East, Native, Pagan, and various contemplative and meditative forms attempting to express what the heart longs for in open forum.

Caroline's "story stick" leans against a cabin wall. On it are inscribed symbols of the various world religions. It resides in the chapel/zendo to remind how varied, diverse, and pluralistic is the thinking and prayer of humankind.

If we are ever to embody the kindness and peace longed for in our world, we'll have to learn how to unveil and practice peace between ways of seeing and living life.

A joyfulness comes with sunlight across cabin floor. Joy accompanies this inchoate, and now newly worded, theme of Meetingbrook.

Parents, angels, shepherds, wise men and women, kings, and the rest of us -- all -- are in the presence of 'the resplendent fact of the Word made flesh.'

Epiphany, appearance and recognition, is crucial for heart-peace and world-peace.

Draw us, indeed, beyond the limits which this world imposes, to the life where your [and our] Spirit makes all life complete!

This is the bond between us -- to move through this Word and world -- finding all life whole.

Then going home an alternative way.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04. (Will inform if closed additional days.)
.....

Tibetan prayer flags wave on cabin porch.

Snow besieges my plank door
I crowd the stove at night.
Although this form exists
It seems as if it doesn’t.
I have no idea where the
Months have gone
Every time I turn around
Another year on earth is over.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)

Mu-ge, Sando, and Cesco snooze in kitchen.

When we walk the earth, each step is prayer. When wind crosses Sally's to Sue's, prayer floats the distance. When seated in silence, prayer settles into form of stillness.

Prayer is holiness longing for itself -- no exceptions.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04.

.....

Greydusk.

Not much to offer you,
Just a lotus flower floating
In a small jar of water.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Lectio and conversation with David, Pam, Sean, and Quinn after walking across pond following long dawn sit in cabin. Peripatetic inquiry into nature of archetypes of 'father' and 'mother.'

Ice and wet snow under drizzle and returning footsteps.

"Let's live here," says last line in Karl's favorite movie.

Holiness burrows beneath knowledge and emotion, travels beyond repetition and misalliance.

Tea finished, cup washed, wood platform for Mary candle next.

Longing commences.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04.

Before dawn, 4:55am.

"Open" flag creaks at corner of cabin.

No apple tree in Sally's small field.

The sun rises; the sun sets.
Watch it and see.
River and moon
Pine trees and wind,
All old poems to me.
Who needs words for the New Year!
- Tao Kai (1065-1123)

Bowing on length of rug after sitting. Solitary candle lets go flame to wisp smoke.

Apple tree arrives on Sally's land, yes, now silhouette in dawn light behind Hosmer Pond's Melvin Heights.

Nothing doing. Hear, hear. Here, here. There, there. Happy Nooo Year!

Mary's solemnity -- God has a mother.

Jesus' holy name -- Christ sacred everywhere present.

Touch what is loving -- we each are meant to be the loving touch of "What Is"!

This dream called 2004!

Marying what is, we are mothering all of creation, the inexplicable wholeness of God within which each one of us is a perspective.

Is this what is dawning?

It is final day of year.

While we still have half a mind we continue to climb the road.

I enjoy my lifelong path
Between misty vines and rocky cave
In the wilds there's room to spare
And time to accompany clouds
The road doesn't reach the world
Only the mindless can climb
I sit alone nights on a couch of stone
And the round moon comes up
Cold Mountain
- Han Shan

While we still have firewood we light match and consider the paper thoughts holding our plans

Like Smoke From Our Campfire

All those plans for fame and fortune, honor and glory,
where are they now?
Drifted away like smoke from our campfire, dissipated
into the thin, night air,
the fire deserted and gone down to a few ashy coals,
almost out.
And all of those who sat around the fire: gone away too
into oblivion.

While we still have feet we walk Rockport harbor.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.
Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.
Drunk on music,
who needs wine?
Come on,
Sweetheart,
let's go dancing
while we've
still got feet.
(Poems: "Like Smoke From Our Campfire" and "Tomorrow," by David Budbill. Writer's Almanac®with Garrison Keillor.)

While we still see before us an alternate way we continue to dream.

Then Herod called the magi secretly and
ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance. He sent them to
Bethlehem and said, "Go and search diligently for the child. When you
have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage."
After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star
that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped
over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the
star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their
treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And
having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for
their country by another way. (Matthew2: 9-12)

Nothing ends, not really. And nothing begins, not so to speak. What really happens is we call to each other in a land of fog and mist listening for the sound of a familiar voice.

Sometimes we hear a voice -- faintly recognizable, barely audible, vaguely familiar. Listening closer and more carefully in this foreign land where once we dwelt in childlike openness, the voice seems to both fade further away and nestle more intimately close at same time.

All movement stops. There is only watchful gaze listening in deepening silence for what seems no longer there.

Fog thickens. Mist dampens. All sound disappears.

What is listening there, alone, and profoundly in love?

What is!
Listening there.
Alone.
And...
Profoundly in love.

Let's go!

Vespers of Thomas Becket this evening.

What annoys most is someone getting away with doing wrong, especially when it is not us.

History allows public apology, change of mind, and semblance of penance to cover what, in the first instance, is blatant and willful wrongdoing.

In poet T.S. Eliot's play about Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (1118-1170), a line is recited by the chorus: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." (T.S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral).

Becket was murdered 29Dec1170 by emissaries of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral as Vespers was taking place.

On Sunday 21May1172, Henry performed a ceremony of public penance at Avranches cathedral.

He was the king. He got away, they say, with murder.

Another king, Herod, had young boys murdered in Judea. He was attempting to forestall and pre-empt the possibility of a threat to his rule.

Murder and mayhem are tools used by the powerful to cement their power by eliminating whatever is perceived to be in the way of preserving that power.

There are those who feel perversion of power is the only way power can be held on to.
The alternative point of view is that genuine power goes its own way, continually relinquished by renunciate individuals who understand that kingdom, power, and glory belong elsewhere than in the hands of anyone grabbing at and grasping on to it.

Innocence is unknowing.

Ignorance is something else -- more like knowing and ignoring what is known. Repentance is more easily believed when innocence is realized, "I didn't know what I was doing."

Something more cynical occurs when ignorance uses cunning to achieve its objective, then demurs with false theatricality, "I didn't know the gun was loaded -- even after the first dozen shots I fired."

We have history to instruct us.

For the lot of us unfamiliar with the lessons of history, there is prayer:
Oh Good Jesus, for the sake of Thomas forgive us our trespasses, be present in our house, our gate and at his shrine and keep us safe from fell death. Restore to us our customary piety and keep us from straying in mind and body. ( -- Responsory XII From the Office of Matins for St Thomas' Day, Sarum Rite)

Still, it is annoying to watch kings and other incipient wrong-doing leaders get away with murder.

'Fell death' drips poisonous from untruth spoken ignorantly. Such lies stray from safe and sane life in God.

Let us pray for innocence, and reluctance to stray in mind and body!

Stay with us, Thomas, Vespers is finished, and night is upon us!

Mind what you are doing.

The preacher on television says, "Holiness is having the same mind as God; being of one mind with God."

The waistband on two pair of boxer shorts bought at Reny's is printed round with "Change Daily, Change Daily, Change Daily." The sticker taken from them says further, "If in doubt, Change Daily."

Time for a walk in the world outside
And a look at who I am
Originally I had no cares
And I am seeking nothing special
Even for my guests I have nothing
To offer except these white stones
And this clear spring water.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

If we think God’s mind is fixed and final, unchanging and static -- we need to go shopping for underwear. God's mind -- (with apologies for speculating in public) -- is not a thing that is found as exclusive property in text or tribunal claiming, as might a law firm, to be sole guardian of God's rights.

God's mind is in stones and spring water, orange rising sun and white ground snow. There, as well as in the faces of Jay, John, Harold, Martin-&-Judith, Susan, Carter-&-Lola, Joanie, Bill, Sylvia, Jeff, Sam-&-Susan, Karl-&-Pop, Max and William and Dad, and those who walked through shop yesterday whose names I did not hear.

Harold said it as we looked for Micmac book of prayers and chants -- that Spirit is beyond smaller than quark, and has no valence. Thus, immeasurable, and present everywhere. Of itself, non-separate, indecipherable.

With his eyes on mine he quietly described Native American mind on Spirit. As he did the thought occurs -- Spirit is completely within itself -- with no outside. Harold nodded. He smiled when someone behind him said they couldn’t hear him with his low and quiet way of speaking, and quoted a Medicine man who told him to speak only to the one before you, only as loud for them to hear, for only the duration of saying what you are saying.

If a Zen practitioner were standing there she might say that God's mind is no mind -- that everything is finger pointing to the moon. Most commentators make the distinction that the finger is not the moon. But yesterday's Zen smile might have spoken alongside Harold saying that the intent of the person, the finger, and the moon are not three things -- they are the joy of learning, each alongside each in complimentarity. The mind of God is the intent, the finger, and the moon. It is also the ground the pointer and pointee share, as well as the teller of the story and the hearer in relational moment of co-presence.

Martin played his new flute for me. Sylvia read about enchantment and asked where my Irish connection with myth, fantasy, and folklore resided. She made me remember times teaching and studying. The fire lowered, night cooled, upstairs guests gone, day at bookshop/bakery waning. Saskia and Sando were on the road returning home.

The preacher is right. Holiness is having the same mind as God. All day long God shared mind -- from every element (however infinitesimally sub-microscopic) to every face (however shaped and formed by thought, history, and feeling). Being of one mind with God is not difficult/not easy. It is neither of the two. It is one with each.

One mind with God merely is. This mind sees the holy family we are.

Gray squirrel climbs to windowsill. Neighbor's dog barks.

The world is still -- in our seeing, in the mind of the sacred infant and holy old one born and passing each day -- here with us.

No cares. Nothing special. Change daily.

God with us.

Is?

An ordinary day.

Each day. Christmas. Stephen. John. Holy Innocents. Thomas. The family of holy everydayness.

A wandering monk was climbing a mountain alongside a stream, on his way to the Zen monastery at the top, when he noticed a vegetable leaf floating downstream from the direction of the monastery. He thought, "It is just a single leaf, but any place that would waste it cannot be very good," and he turned to go back down the mountain. Just then he saw a lone monk come running down the path, chasing after the floating leaf. Immediately the wandering monk decided to enroll in the monastery at the top of the mountain.
- Hsueh-feng I-ts'un (822-908)

Tommy's brother John visits from Boston area. He tells what someone told him about the secret of life: "The secret of life is to be in the right place at the right time with your particular talents as often as possible." I tell him about the CBS show "Joan of Arcadia" on Friday evenings.

Guardini gives a take on Jesus' response to his mother at the wedding feast:
Then we read of the embarrassment about the failing wine-supply and of Mary's whisper to her Son.
But he only answers: What wouldst thou have me do, woman? My hour has not yet come." In other words, your request, based on a momentary need, can have no authority for me. Only the bidding of my Father in the given hour governs my actions -- no other.
(p.34, The Lord, by Romano Guardini)

In no time Jesus learns something, perhaps new for him, and undoubtedly, new for us. Along with Jesus we learn that responding to momentary need is indeed the will of the Father. Forget for the time being what we think is the large "Will of the Father." The will of God is right here, right now present before us. To hear its whisper and to do what is asked of us in the moment is fidelity to the will of God.

It is the "no other" that grasps attention. They are Guardini's words, but if the imaginary introspection applies to Jesus' developing consciousness, Jesus had the intuition and insight that "no other" is precisely the origination of God's voice. The will of God is the voice of God sounding through momentary needs and present realities.

Mary says it for Jesus, Mary says it for us: "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5)

Crackles from fireplace. Wind out of northwest. Cesco chews biscuit.

No looking elsewhere. No other place, no other voice will do.

Are we what we listen to?

God's ordinary voice.

Isn't that enough?

What does it mean to be selfless?

Reading Romano Guardini's book, The Lord. Initial pages have the feel of intuitive theological poetics grounded in scripture.

Jan Van Bragt, in an article titled "Contributions of Buddhism to Christianity," based on his lecture delivered at the Maryhill School of Theology in Manila on 4March1999, writes: "In a more neutral vein, we could say that in the past thirty years Buddhism has come to appear as a great challenge to Christianity."

Van Bragt goes on:
A challenge is something one has to face or confront, either in a negative way by trying to crush it, or in a positive way by struggling with it as with something that can bring out the best in oneself. The first Catholic theologian who became conscious of Buddhism as a challenge was probably Romano Guardini, who in his book 'Der Herr' (published in German around 1950) speaks of Buddhism as possibly the greatest challenge Christianity has ever faced. And he wrote: "Perhaps Buddha is the last religious genius with whom Christianity will have to reach an understanding. No one has yet drawn out his significance for Christianity."

Today, half a century on, we still cannot say that we have really "drawn out the significance of the Buddha for Christianity." This can only be done in a patient, ever deepening, dialogue; and this dialogue has only just begun. One immediate conclusion is, of course, that what I can present here is only a very tentative, provisional, and rather personal "balance sheet."

We must be conscious that admitting Buddhist contributions into Christianity means that Christianity will be "transformed" in the process. The American Whiteheadian theologian, John Cobb, who pleads for a "mutual transformation of Buddhism and Christianity," wrote, for example:
"A Christianity which has been transformed by the incorporation of the Buddhist insight into the nature of reality will be a very different Christianity from any we know now. A Buddhism that has incorporated Jesus Christ will be a very different Buddhism from any we now know." (-from Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism, c.1982)

Such a transformation supposes, of course, that we see Christianity not as an unchanging "thing" but as a dynamic historical reality that always develops. This may sound like a newfangled idea but is, in fact, nothing but a lucid recognition of historical realities. Church historians will tell us, for example, that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is rather different from the Christianity of the Middle Ages, although there is enough continuity (sameness) between the two to recognize both as the same Christianity. (--in Nanzan Bulletin 23 / 1999)

Nancy has found a house with several outbuildings off the grid 35 minutes away. Her parents come up to see it with her today.

Cesco took off across brook and over to Snowbowl twice last night. Mu-ge got out and refused to return, parking under keel of covered sailboat. At midnight they settled back in. It might have had to do with an insanity of warm rain along Christmas day shrouded in low fog.

Five American soldiers die in Iraq. Thousands die in Iran earthquake. A hermit nun inland writes, " I have been quite ill this past year and so have not been in touch save by prayer and the book you loaned to me." A psychiatrist writes, "I have come to my senses and decided that I am NOT moving." She'll stay in area, with hospice board and it's education.

I set a havaheart trap on kitchen roof for the squirrel boring into space between floors in stairwell. The snow flurries left an inch plus over everything. I cut wood for woodstove in kitchen.

Buddhism identifies as the fundamental enemy, and the cause of all human suffering, our blind clinging to our ego, the natural human tendency to self-centeredness and self-affirmation. It therefore directs all its strategies toward the eradication of that tendency. On the other hand, "modern Westerners" are often characterized as human beings in a double bind: as the possessors of an "insatiable ego," they are totally geared toward self-fulfillment and aggressive self-affirmation; on the other hand, however, as beings closed within themselves, they suffer from a profound loneliness.

It is then only natural to ask whether Christianity, that biggest influence on Western culture, would not be responsible for the development of that kind of human being. The answer cannot, of course, be a simple "yes." For it is clear enough that the Christians of the Middle Ages were a quite different breed of human beings. Still, some Buddhist thinkers tend to think that the Christian idea of the "person" is at least partially responsible for this development. [e.g. Keiji Nishitani in his book Religion and Nothingness, c.1982] The idea of the irreplaceable value of the individual person in God's eye -- no matter how valuable in other respects -- would confirm and sanctify the natural idea of the ego as a thing of ultimate reality and solidity (substantiality) by itself. (Jan Van Bragt, ibid)

Challenge is not condemnation. Nor is criticism severance of caring. To be confronted, however uncomfortable, is not cessation of relatedness.

Confronted with this interpretation, we could react angrily and say: that is nonsense! Is not the Christian central commandment that of selflessness (losing the self) love to God and neighbor -- which precisely presupposes a person who is not closed-in on himself but, on the contrary, open to God and neighbor? But the Buddhist partner could retort: you have the right idea, alright, in that admirable commandment, but that is not reflected in your philosophical and theological theory on the human person; and may be the reason why modern times were able to pervert the Christian idea of the person into that of a closed-in and self-sufficient individual. (Van Bragt)

It is worth the question. What is it that encloses human beings inside ourselves as separate selves? Is the theory of 'person' so identified with our belief system? How is it we reify and rigidify something so musical as 'that which sounds through?' We are invited to feel the passage through the 'person' of everything in creation. It is that for which we hollow ourselves out, becoming the instrument of passing sounds of earth, one another, God Itself.

Meetingbrook accepts the challenge of Buddhism and Christianity. We listen to the Buddha and we listen to the Christ. It is a conversation worth attending.

Some worry there is a relativizing of Jesus and Siddhartha -- that is not the issue. There is, however, a relatedness that is occurring -- and that is the issue. Even the Jesus some hold as the only Son of God, King of Kings, would listen and respond to someone questioning him. We must not forget the value of questioning. So too the Buddha, Prince of India, hears and responds to questions from another. It is a human quality -- (if not sometimes an annoyance) -- to question. Skepticism saves us from irreversible certitude. It is becoming a cultural holy war to impose certitude on matters that have a long way to go through unknowing. Unknowing is unsettling. The thought that selflessness is common to both Buddhist and Christian spirituality might unsettle some.

How is it we have become unquestioning and intolerant of other views, other ways of engaging the human questions we each have?

Belief, like breath, has to be experienced anew each moment of life.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

And release that breath -- to keep fresh the spirit that flows through each one of us.

Imagine being selfless!

Lord help us!

What is becoming human?

Becoming one's own child.

Now, word empties itself, becoming human.

The Eternal Word, born of the Father before time began, today emptied himself for our sake and became man. (Antiphon 3, Vespers of Christmas, Evening Prayer I)

Rain through fog this Christmas day. Woodstove smoke from chapel/zendo chimney. Before dawn, Cesco on next zabuton, light lifted from land with broken apple trees. His ears and eyes followed sung psalms circling cabin floor. "Joy is the fruit of love," said priest on Union Street at 9am Mass.

Cesco gets Christmas bone. Mu-ge gets Christmas olive loaf.

When Word empties Itself, there is nothing to be said, nothing to be done. Stillness embodies silence.

Christ is human becoming what is itself. Itself -- what is this?

This is the mystery, this is the miracle. This, this, is Christ the Lord.

What is itself is Christ.

Be kind to oneself!

On all days.

Now.

There is no place to go; I am here.

If today you hear God's voice,
harden not your hearts.
(Responsorial to Psalm 95)

Do not delay.

What sound is this?

What is your way before you?

It is a koan question. It asks -- before you come to be, what is your way?

But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet.
For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way before you. (Matthew 11:9,10)

It nears the time called birth. Candles, carols, and Christmas cheer beckon birth. Who is willing to go through?

The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness.

Utter emptiness has no image, upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear.
(- From Cultivating the Empty Field -- The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi, Taigen Dan Leighton with Yi Wu; dailyzen)

If not a thing exists, what is holding the flame? What is the sound of the carol? Whose birth is beckoned?

It is a curious time.

With no room at the inn, and the time of birth just here, where does beginning and ending begin and end?

What do we go out to see?

What is our way, the way we journey before and after before and after?

John, messenger, before our face -- prepare our way!

A loose sandal contemplates untrod ground.

Before us.

The way of Christ is the way of this, and this, and this.

People who really have their minds on the Way, in contrast, do not forget work on the fundamental no matter what they are doing. Yet if they still distinguish this work from ordinary activities even as they do them together, they will naturally be concerned about being distracted by activities and forgetting the meditation work. This is because of viewing things as outside the mind.

An ancient master said, "The mountains, the rivers, the whole earth, the entire array of phenomena are all oneself." If you can absorb the essence of this message, there are no activities outside of meditation: you dress in meditation and eat in meditation; you walk, stand, sit, and lie down in meditation; you perceive and cognize in meditation; you experience joy, anger, sadness, and happiness in meditation.

Yet even this is still in the sphere of accomplishment and is not true merging with the source of Zen.
(- From Dialogues in a Dream (1344), Muso (1275-1351) {Dailyzen})

At Mass this morning, the sentence, "Do this in memory of me."

Consecration begins and completes this realization of Christ's exchange with us.

Again. He is arriving again.

Is it now?

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

1.

The entire place is brightly
Illuminated and spiritually
Transformed,
Totally unobstructed
And clearly manifesting
Responsive interaction
Like box and lid or arrowpoints meeting.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091 - 1157)

A place for the time being -- is this what we, all of us, are invited to prepare this season? Looking at ourselves, looking at our world -- is God's gaze searching to see who we are and what we are doing?

Holly writes, sending poem from Virginia:

MOSAIC OF THE NATIVITY:
SERBIA, WINTER 1993

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking
I made them my joy
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

"We're descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?"

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

(Poem by Jane Kenyon)

2.

In another missive, D. invites a response:
D. writes to Meetingbrook:
I probably am not comfortable with what appears to be your placing Buddha alongside Jesus Christ as though they shared the same importance. I don't think they do, even though I have a great deal of respect for Buddhists and their approach to life, many aspects of which dove-tail with a Christian approach to life. In my understanding Jesus occupies a unique place in the universe and we are accountable to him alone, a fact it would be rash to ignore.

B. responds: Jesus is Jesus. Buddha is Buddha. D. is D. Bill is Bill. I appreciate the opinion you express. My Zen practice informs my opinion that each of us shares "the same importance." It is the miracle of the Incarnation -- God became human. With our dualistic minds we remain attached to the notion of keeping God "other." This is why it is so difficult to be Christian. It demands we embody the teachings of Jesus. Instead we seem to prefer to keep God in a distant heaven and deny the birth of Christ as human. The Zen saying, "It is better to see the face than hear the name," reminds me to see each as each and not make one face "just human" and another face "God Himself." It is a rare reality that allows each one to be each one.

D. writes: Or is your approach simply acknowledging contemplation as common to both without getting into the Creed or theology?

B. responds: Creeds and theology are good and valuable tools for us to help shape our thinking. But, you are right about our interest in the contemplative and meditative aspects of both traditions. Sitting in silent presence, and sharing the fruits of reflection -- these are things we each can share with one another as simple gift. Dogma, creed, and theological formulation often serve to point out to us differences and distances between us.

D. writes: I would be interested in your thoughts on this.

B. responds: "This, this, is Christ the Lord." This is our salvation -- Being with each other in Everydayness. It is not we who dare to equate Buddha or Jesus with anyone else. It is Jesus who dared to become human. Not many, I submit, accept Jesus -- his birth, life, death, and resurrection -- as Christ. The Christ-Reality is revealed in humankind. It is our prayer that we come to see clearly what is the gift of Christmas.

Grateful for the invitation and the response evoked, now prayer is the continual invitation. Is 'this' what is seen? Is 'this' what is held as true? I wonder. And pray.

3.

Meanwhile, the O Antiphons of Advent grace Vespers each evening:

December 17
O WISDOM, who came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: COME, and teach us the way of prudence. Amen. "O Sapientia..."

December 18
O LORD AND RULER of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the flame of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: COME, and redeem us with outstretched arms. Amen. "O Adonai..."

December 19
O ROOT OF JESSE, that stands for an ensign of the people, before whom the kings keep silence and unto whom the Gentiles shall make supplication: COME, to deliver us, and tarry not. Amen. "O Radix Jesse..."

December 20
O KEY OF DAVID, and Sceptre of the House of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens: COME, and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death. Amen. "O Clavis David..."

December 21
O DAWN OF THE EAST, brightness of light eternal, and Sun of Justice: COME, and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Amen. "O Oriens..."

December 22
O KING OF THE GENTILES and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: COME, and deliver man, whom you formed out of the dust of the earth. Amen. "O Rex..."

December 23
O EMMANUEL, God with us, Our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Saviour: COME to save us, O Lord our God. Amen. "O Emmanuel..."

(Scripture References:)
O Wisdom: Proverbs 1:20; 8; 9 and I Corinthians 1:30
O Lord and Ruler of the House of Israel: Exodus 3; Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:6
O Root of Jesse: Isaiah 11:10; Romans 15:12; Revelation 5:5
O Key of David: Isaiah 22:22; Revelation 3:7
O Dawn of the East (Dayspring): Luke 1:78, 79; Malachi 4:2
O King of the Gentiles (Nations): Revelation 15:3; Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 28:16; Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; Ephesians 2:20; I Peter 2:6
O Emmanuel: Isaiah 7:14; 8:8; Matthew 1:23; Haggai 2:7 (KJV)
[http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/s-oantiphons.html]

Can we hope to enter and embody this "O"?

4.

Jon, visiting this past week, returns after breakfast to Boston.

Solstice tomorrow. In Maine, the tip toward darkness slows and ceases. In pause of perusal, the planet is considering a change. 'Yes,' it thinks, 'enough! It is time to return light.'

Teach us, O sun, your natural gift! Teach us, O Son, your divine presence! The earth changes its way. For us, dwelling here, the invitation corresponds.

How deeply we wish war and violence to cease and turn back to peace and kindness. It is difficult to put one's faith and trust in murder, destruction, and unending violence against evil and evildoers. We must meditate on "begets, begets!" Cruel violence begets cruel violence. Loving kindness begets loving kindness.

The prophet Isaiah's words about a "Prince of Peace" evoke invitation and response. In this year 2003, in this season of Advent, twenty six hundred years later, we are still trying to grasp the 'this' koan of the Ancient Middle-East.

Where do we look for the response?

Right now -- who are we?

Who wants to know?

Venite, nunc!

Come, now!