Riding stationary cycle looking out dooryard window, reading seven threats to ethics, listening to Gregorian chant

When the master
Without a word raises his eyebrows
The posts and rafters
The cross beams and roof tree
Begin to smile
There is another place for conversing
Heart to heart
The full moon and the breeze
At the half-open window.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

No masters hereabouts. Only dog and cat, man and woman, snow and topfen kuchen after kohlrabi on rice. Evening becomes night, dog barks at door, let in, settles in as we too will do. It is January. Winter.

Lord, I do not puff myself up or stare about,
or walk among the great or seek wonders beyond me.
Truly calm and quiet I have made my spirit:
quiet as a weaned child in its mother's arms --
like an infant is my soul.
(from Psalm 130)

At shop, mother and daughter attend "Maybe Zen, Maybe Not" conversation. Joanie's daughter is up from New Jersey. They're packing up to return there. Joanie looks tired.

There were over 23 people for Sunday dinner over shop in harbour room. They had turkey.

Tide came in. Tide went out. As does Tuesday.

Driving snowy roads to Bangor, to Lincoln, cars off road in ditch in morning skid, in evening skid, roads greased with white.

Like a broken gong
Be still, be silent.
Know the stillness of freedom
Where there is no more striving.
- Dhammapada

Silenzio was the sign in video on Francis of Assisi. The tone of the twenty five minute paean little pious, but nice.

Tonight, readying sleep, every fact only a fact. Every sight just that, Every moment merely a prayer of passing presence.

Snow slows. Returning home, noodles, feta cheese, grape tomatoes.

Safety for all.

Notturno! Silenzio!

Grazie!

Presente!

Who'd have guessed neither church nor state would inspire the world in its need?

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. (C.S. Lewis)

Hard ground in dooryard. Cold air through barn. Fragrance from soup at practice climbs last step on stairs.

They will see the face of the Lord, and his name will be marked on their foreheads. There will be no more night: they will not need sunlight or lamp-light, because the Lord God himself will shine upon them. (Apocalypse 22:4-5)

Night quiets hillside. What light there is resides inside.

Up on.

Each.

Face.

God.

Watched "Control Room," the film about Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news agency. It made me wonder about the ability of all ordinary people to listen through the propaganda (both the US and Iraq versions) and hear literal truth, see factual reality in the theater of war.

The sage looks at the unity which
Belongs to all things,
And does not perceive where
They have suffered loss.
- Chuang Tzu

It is frustrating not to be able to discern truth -- it is so cleverly hidden.

At morning prayer I note the second half of the "Glory be" prayer:
...as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

I am repulsed by the mind that believes innocent lives are disposable. I detest the mind that pretends war is exactly what should put one political party again in the driver's seat. I sorrow at stupidity and laziness of mind that manipulates emotions and puts smiley-faces on human suffering in a time of war.

Why is it so hard to stop war criminals? Where has decent and just courage gone?

Theologians, politicians, educators, and religious leaders stumble on the issue of war, terror, and national patriotism. Their deference is ambivalence. I want no part of rationalization.

War is wrong. This war against Iraq was wrong. This war against terror is a wrongly used triumphal tool to advance political agendas too large to be detected. The country, as I see it, is in trouble.

Why are we so hesitant to see the problem? How is it so few men can cause so much suffering.

Pray for mystics! Write away for them. Import them if need be.

A poem:
Escaping for Sight
The mystic sees the world as it is;
"As-it-is" sees the world through mystics' eyes --
Close them. Open us. See ya...
(poem, wfh, of a Saturday objection seeking conscience)

The lovely is lovely. The unlovely is unlovely.

Our task is not to confuse them -- not to call the lovely unlovely and the unlovely lovely.

It is time to pray.

Time to see.

Film, "Three Days of the Condor," thirty years later, chills.

A soaring endlessly curving path,
every few miles we have to rest.
I look around for my friends.
They've vanished in the wooded hills.
Rain floods the pine trees
and flows hushed among the rocks.
There are silent words deep in hill water,
a long whistle over the summits.
When I look at South Mountain
the sun floats white through the mist.
A blue marsh is luminous and clear.
Green trees are heavy shadows, drifting.
When I am tired of being closed in,
suddenly I come upon a clearing,
and the mind is at peace.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

Oil. And games. Disregard of innocence.
What has changed?

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 87)

In prison, Pat and Joe talk about Holocaust and Slavery. They are alight with insight and passion.

I opt for insight and passion.

Damn the games.

Full mind intent!

Dwell between hope and guilt.

Avoid both.

Hold intention.

I finish application to satisfy the Nameless One we call God.

"Wait," the One says, "and see."

I gaze on myself in the stream's emerald flow
Or sit on a boulder by a cliff.
My mind, a lonely cloud, leans on nothing,
Needs nothing from the world and its endless events.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Who knows what God wants? Who knows anything about God? Or even if there is a God, or gods, or only our longing there might be one?

When we speak of Christ's priesthood, what else do we mean than the incarnation? Through this mystery, the Son of God, though himself ever remaining God, became a priest. (From a letter by Fulgentius of Ruspe, bishop)

The incarnation seems right. Here we are, all abodied, wondering why, and wherefore, whither, and what the hell?

The good fellow of Ruspe centers in on incarnation. We know of which he speaks. And we are all priests, being sound and body, with God as source.

A Native American prayer says we are the one we are waiting for.

We are ministers of earth. We try to honor, save, and resurrect that from which we come, on which we stand, to which we shall return.

Earth.

God.

(A pair of ducks.)

Waiting for, encircling, one and another.

(Just ducky, eh?)

Ritual is dress-up. At end of day, it is a conveyance for presence. People gather in a space for a recognized pattern of interaction. What comes through depends on those holding the space and time open.

Nature may be compared to a vast ocean. Thousands and millions of changes are taking place in it. Crocodiles and fish are essentially of the same substance as the water in which they live. People are crowded together with the myriad other things in the Great Changingness, and their nature is one with that of all other natural things. Knowing that I am of the same nature as all other natural things, I know that there is really no separate self, no separate personality, no absolute death and no absolute life.
- T'ien T'ung-Hsu (8th century A.D.)

Albert Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus" says the only serious philosophical question is that of suicide.
Richard Hugo in "Villager" says that "What's wrong will always be wrong." He says "No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations / too lovely to leave."
Camus with Sisyphus and Sophocles with Oedipus convey that all is well; we assume them happy.

The mystic sees the world as it is.

"As it is" sees the world through the mystic's eyes.

Everything, said Saskia at tonight's conversation, is paradox -- each view pointing to and from the corresponding point of view.

In this way we are held in the play of reverence.

A lovely ritual.

Icy wind on wharf in St. Andrews by the Sea drawn in across Passamaquoddy Bay.

Nowhere!
Not in the sky,
Nor in the midst of the sea,
Nor deep in the mountains,
Can you hide from your own mischief.
Not in the sky,
Nor in the midst of the ocean,
Nor deep in the mountains,
Nowhere
Can you hide from your own death.
- Dhammapada

What about that house on Queen Street?

An overnight. Waking to low tide.

Just enough imagination.

Morning muffin with coffee by Celtic cross facing Minister's Island.

Sorrowing a Canadian's death in America's war.

Freedom isn't a private possession. No one is completely free as long as someone somewhere is denied freedom.

For the awakened ones,
The sorrows of this world are over.
Though they possess finite bodies,
They remain united with the Infinite.
Their hearts know no anxiety.
They are said to be free even in this life.
- Shankara

Shankara is right. Still, the question remains: How does one person's freedom affect another's imprisonment?

I read today, finally, the article in a local paper a few months ago about the Special Management Unit (formerly, the Supermax) at the Maine State Prison. The article spoke about harsh treatment, some claim torture, suffered there.

Sunday Evening Practice at the hermitage was filled with strong quiet energy. After sitting, then chanting, we listened to a CD of a talk given by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee for 10 minutes at table. His talk was on Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. We wondered, after eating in silence Saskia's Siebenburger's Kraut, about the alchemical light in all matter. We pondered how even a small light taken into a dark place near a person closed inside a deeper darkness invites the light residing there within them into a communion of light.

It is wearying to be placed in the dark or kept in the dark by someone who has to keys to do so. (It is similar to receiving messages -- whether from parents or others -- saying "You are wrong!" Those who perpetuate such indictments weary the soul.) It is much more interesting, if not more difficult, to find what is right and light about a situation. It's something we can do -- attend to light.

Judy told that her husband had died last July. We remember Bob in prayer. She takes the Lee CD with her.

Freedom is like the thin membrane between worlds. If it shines authentically on one side, it conveys through to the other. Free individuals convey freedom, they extend light. Locked up individuals (in mind, or heart) convey dead end absence of energy.

What is outside us is inside us. What is inside us is outside us.

The answer to "How are we?" cannot be given without the corresponding question "How is the world?"

If we are the world, then if we practice peace and cultivate light, the world has the experience of peace and light.

No matter what the world or the other chooses to do with the experience, it is there for it, for them, for us, to ponder.

Our practice is the pondering of how the inside and the outside become no inside, no outside.

Only peace.

And light.

His faithfulness will be your armour and your shield.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day;
nor the plague that walks in the shadows,
nor the death that lays waste at noon.
(from Psalm 90, Compline)

We're all...right...because of someone like Dr. King.

Martin Luther King Jr, whose birthday we celebrate, was right. He brought light and freedom with his life.

All are better, know it or not, because of him.

Anything done in the name of war is now allowed. If it is done to make America safe, it is permitted. Nothing is as important as ensuring the United States is right and victorious in its never-ending crusade to exact revenge for 9/11. Maddened politicians and hair-triggered military are free to do anything they want, unchecked and immune from accountability. America is showing signs of ugly anger and arrogance.

Just as the pure crystal takes color from the object which is nearest to it, so the mind, when it is cleared of thought-waves, achieves sameness or identity with the object of its concentration.
- Patanjali

The object of concentration is mistrust and deception. Claiming to be trying to ferret out dangers to the safety, health, welfare, and security of the United States, it seems the powers of Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation are contributing to the undermining of law, decency, rights, and good will of the country and those in the world in any way getting in its way.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 -- Pakistani officials said Saturday that a U.S. missile strike intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri had missed its target but had killed 17 people, including six women and six children.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest near the remote village of Damadula, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Friday's attack took place. According to witnesses, the demonstrators shouted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf" -- referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- and the offices of at least one U.S.-backed aid organization were ransacked and set ablaze.
"Pakistanis Condemn U.S. Attack" By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, January 14, 2006; 7:51 PM)

It is a fools errand to fight fire with fire. Wisdom would prescribe a more thoughtful method of recognizing and reconciling hostility with actions aimed at relieving underlying causes so as to relieve overt antipathy. We are not innocent victims who were attacked for no purpose whatsoever -- we have a history, covert and overt, of imposing our will on reluctant targets. We target anyone in the world that appears to be in opposition to our vested interests. We are fast becoming the bully we've fought wars in the past to defeat. It is not an optimistic schizophrenia.

We do our single-minded defense of wealth, privilege, and power at a time when something new and vital longs to find its way into our midst.

An awareness of global oneness has begun to constellate. The idea of the unity of life, that "we are one," no longer belongs just to a spiritual or ecological fringe, but is becoming part of the mainstream. But this awareness is lacking an essential ingredient--it is still an idea, it is not fully alive. When it becomes alive the heart of the world will open and we will hear the song of the divine oneness of life.

The world has to awaken from its sleep of forgetfulness--it can no longer afford to forget its divinity. More than any pollution it is this forgetfulness that is killing the earth. Collectively we are dying--we have forgotten our purpose and a life-form that has forgotten its purpose cannot survive. Its fundamental reason for existence fades away. The awakening of the heart of the world can redeem what has been desecrated, heal what has been wounded, purify what has been polluted. The song of the world will remind us all why we are here and the whole of life will rejoice.
(-- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, in "The Awakening of the World")

We cannot allow horrors to be committed in our name. The blind fascination with war and heroic images of ridding the world of evildoers is crippling the spirit of truth and freedom. The world is full of good and evil, right and wrong -- and we are tasked with finding peace in the middle of antagonistic dualities. In the middle, not at some fantastical end that is reached by elimination of everything between the reality of life as it exists and some ideological utopia that doesn't and never will exist.

The coincidence of opposites and the harmony of opposites is grounded on the experience there is a middle path, a core resting place, that exists in the very center of all the contentious opposites encountered in life. It takes a special kind to dishonesty to convince people only you are right, powerful, knowledgeable, and empowered to bring about the world as you see it ought to be.

Be clear about one thing -- if we do not forbid our leaders to kill, plunder, and lie, then we earn the unenviable fruits of their dishonesty.

Once trust and reputation are lost, all that remains is brute force and deluded ideology.

We have to talk. We have to sort this out. We have to change the mind that leads us to destruction into a mind that sees the way into a sacred awareness that leads to authentic peace.

Do not be deceived.

Something is wrong.

We must pray, yes, for one another.

But more -- we need to change our mind. (God is not in our mind. We must attend first and foremost to God, as God is, in the world.)

Come back to earth.

Look around.

Ken, in prison, said, "I feel you," when we spoke to Lifetime Recovery Group about spirituality.

There is a point of correspondency between two views which is called the pivot of the Tao. As soon as one finds this pivot, he stands in the center of the ring of thought where he can respond without end to the changing views; without end to those affirming, and without end to those denying.
- Chuang Tzu

Matt, the chaplain, is resigning to go the New Hampshire.

There's a correspondency between Ken and Matt.

God is correspondency.

We breathe together.

It's a promise.

Pivot point.

There's no going back. Names and faces surface and fade again from a long ago life. No longer. You can look back. But no going. Which is a a great kindness.

Follow the truth of the way.
Reflect on it. Make it your own.
Live it.
It will always sustain you.
Do not turn away what is given you,
Nor reach out for what is given to others,
Lest you disturb your quietness.
- Dhammapada

Dripping rain from full gutters under kitchen roof. That's what religion is. If someone asked if I had religion, I'd open an umbrella. Religion is looking around at stillness inside kitchen. Spoon leans from soup bowl next to water glass work done resting empty.

Once I was somewhere else. That was long ago. It is hard to remember why I was not always here. Some other state. Some other work. Some other dissatisfaction.

No longer. Now. Here. Doing this. Aware of suffering, its cause, and path through.

Boots face each other on rug. No steps are taken. Slippers under desk do not shuffle. Feet are on chair across from another chair holding me up.

Religious life is the kindness of emptiness gone midnight sheltered under roof from torrential rain.

A leper came to him and pleaded on his knees: 'If you want to" he said "you can cure me". Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. "Of course I want to!" he said. "Be cured!" And the leprosy left him at once and he was cured. Jesus immediately sent him away and sternly ordered him, "Mind you say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering for your healing prescribed by Moses as evidence of your recovery". The man went away, but then started talking about it freely and telling the story everywhere, so that Jesus could no longer go openly into any town, but had to stay outside in places where nobody lived. Even so, people from all around would come to him.
Mark 1:40 - 45

Part of religion is staying in places nobody lives. Another part is saying no more than one should.

Learning to listen to thunder alongside mountain.

Leaving anyplace else for the nowhere right here.

Grateful for bread. For soup. For apfelkuchen with whipped cream. Or the love of God.

No place is as good as this place we are.

So it is.

Place yourself.

Go nowhere else. Humbly return to one's own profound heart.

Sufism is a path of love and also a journey to self-knowledge, of carrying the light of consciousness into the core of our being. The spiritual journey is always inward, a gradual process of self-discovery as you realize the real wonder of being human. The wayfarer makes the most difficult and courageous of journeys, turning away from the outer world of illusion, and turning back to God, not as an idea but as a living reality that exists within the heart. This is a journey of self-revelation, a painful process of leaving behind our illusory nature, the ego, and entering into the arena of our true Self. And as another hadith explicitly states, on this journey you have to "die before you die": before you can experience the innermost state of union with God, the ego has to be sacrificed; you have to be burnt, consumed by the fire of divine love.
(-- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Excerpt from Love is a Fire : the Sufi's Mystical Journey Home )

Once consumed by the innermost fire of sacred love, who remains to go anywhere else?

Gazing on the once-was, turning quietly, gently, returning to the only place remaining.

Who you are, as you are, where you are. Dissolving what is not you.

Each is invited into this humbling loving gift.

For this is each ordained.

Do this, mindfully!

As does the rain, itself!

We are invited to let silence.

Not every thing speaks to us. At times we can't hear some things. Nothing special. It is a decibel above or below our hearing range. It fades. Never makes it to our mind. Or heart. That's all.

From the passions arise worry,
and from worry arises fear.
Away with the passions, and no fear,
No worry.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Tonight we read three pieces prelude to conversation. The range of each was particular. Each reading (Sufi, Zen, Jewish) touched someone (at least). Not all for each.

It struck me that there is a temptation to find something wrong with the one that doesn't speak to you. It's nothing special, it's just what the mind does when looking for something to judge.

I'm learning how to listen carefully to each. If one falls outside my tuning frequency, I let it stay for a while outside my hearing. There's nothing wrong with the author, or the piece, or me. It is merely not a conversation I can have with what is presented.

I let it have silence.

No top one, two, three bottom.

I am often surrounded by silence.

I learn from what I don't hear.

At conversation a woman trashed religion.

She would not be dissuaded. No reason passed her certainty. She's convinced.

Her proof is spiritualism, channeled teachings she affirms.

After stopping at grocery store, we drive home, eat spaghetti, feel filling fall from tooth, watch part of film, get tired, climb stairs.

"How come there's no resistance?" Saskia asks, trying stationary bike.

What is there to resist?

Opinion or faith?

Either way, practice is that which fits between.

Early morning zafu.

Without knowing.

An open emptiness.

Back by brook, at bend by protruding root of oak tree cheering parade of tumbling mountain spill ahead of ice, the graves of three dogs and one cat, watched over by winged angel statue shouldering snow, hands cupped in perpetual prayer or gassho at its beginning or end. These dead animals converse with root and stone and earth in dawn assembly speaking of the day alighting and of the night gone by.

We do not hear what they say. Rumor has it, (borne by red squirrel passing up and back to ridge) they have been talking about snow.

Koto said, "I used to lay down on snow and stay as long as until called to something else. I would find the last mountain patch of snow in late spring and scratch at it and roll on back to sweeten my coat. I died in a snowstorm, the sight of it falling, the sounds of 'Ode to Joy' and my mistress' head in front seat of car. That was a good death."

Jitai said, "I would bound like a gazelle through snow, my Norwegian Elk ancestors proud of my young skill, like cousin kangaroo I'd boing boing boing through dooryard drifts. We'd have such fun, those squirrels and I, racing behind barn and over hill by runoff. How jubilant our roundy rounds. I couldn't keep up that one morning the yellow school bus ran over me as we tore across the road. That was great fun. Then I came back here."

Sando said, "The walks we had! Everywhere those fourteen years, and everywhere we drove. Such great times in snow and rain, in sunshine and icy paths. My paws would melt the granules on the path and I'd work the clumps gone solid between my pads...and she, my human friend, would hold my leg and pick them clean, and off we'd go again. The walks, the walks, the glorious walks, the walks across that life! And to spend my final day in their cabin chapel, surrounded by flowers, tennis balls, and incense, red squirrel peeking in window to see how things were going, and Cesco (always the thief) quietly stealing one of the balls -- what lovely play we'd had -- I wish I had just one more stick that he could take from my mouth, I loved the give and take!

Mini said, "I was too delicate for snow, except in my basket on kitchen bed looking up at cedar tree and Bald Mountain behind it. That year a herd of deer in deep snow would set their path in clearings high above by open rock. My baton paw conducting cold when I had to step outside. Your big doggy tails swinging overhead coming in from snow, begging for a swipe hello passing woodstove feeding tray. Then there was that night, and in that night (I was so tired) in front room, I let myself to sleep under window altar, in middle prayer of silence."

The whole race is a poet that writes down
The eccentric propositions of its fate".
(--from poem "Men Made Out Of Words" by Wallace Stevens)

The morning snows.

Cesco goes out to pee. Mu-Ge claws at boor to barn ready to go out again fortified with kibble feed. The fire warms from kitchen Elefos stove, as Saskia wipes snow from old border collie's back.

The trees and ice and tumbling waters -- the dogs and cats and passing squirrels -- never tire of their silence. Never tire of allowing one another their talk of what is happening.

Here is a proposition...

As eccentric as here is, here is our fate.

And we are poets writing here, as it is, again and (never repeating) again.

The dogs and cats, the trees and stones, the earth and sky -- all the falling flakes, fell wood, and silent gaze -- each human breath -- all written here, are writing here, here as here, "its."

The eccentric proposition of "its" fate.

Glory be to "its!"

Everything belongs!

Morning fire coaxes creaks in stovepipe.

Their conversation enlivens after cooling through the night. Blue daybreak and red sunrise mute behind gray cloud. It is Sunday morning. "Pause," the trees say, "consider your life. Listen to the Creating Sound in quiet awhile."

We are coming to our true inheritance of the world,
we are broadening our consciousness, ever seeking
a higher and higher unity; ever approaching nearer
to the one universal truth which is the All-comprehensive all embracing.
- Rabindranath Tagore ( 1861-1941)

Christian Church calendar is disjointed this time of year: When is Christmas? For Greek Orthodox? For Russians following Julian calendar? When is Epiphany? When Baptism of the Lord? On traditional dates or Sundays? For some it is the Great Christmas. One tradition (how recent?) the Sunday after Epiphany favors the liturgizing and baptizing of Jesus. I'm not sure it matters. We're only reflecting on narratives and stories and mysteries that transcend fixed appointments. Jesus is vagabond to our schedules and appointment books.

Water spoke to him. Water spoke to those quietly near him. Water speaks to Saskia in baptismal shower in next room.

Jesus stands zazen in the water.

"In whom," says water, "in whom I am," it continues, "well" (imagine, well) -- "pleased."

Entering new profound silence, water glides over body, saying nothing, falling to ground, entering earth, finding level truth. Resting there, going on.

He does not cry out or shout aloud,
or make his voice heard in the streets.
He does not break the crushed reed,
nor quench the wavering flame.

Faithfully he brings true justice;
he will neither waver, nor be crushed
until true justice is established on earth,
for the islands are awaiting his law.
(Isaiah 42: 2-3)

When innocence opens eyes, glancing this way and that, what is born is every new and included life, all in all.

Embracing all.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Susan coughs. She has bronchitis. Sam plays harmonica. Joanie does not, momentarily, talk about not moving to New Jersey. Myles takes wedge of bread to slather. Saskia wraps turkey burgers and puts into freezer. Priscilla doesn't get to see her artwork not yet hung over fireplace. She tells me she was given a snake potion by the local non-aleopathic doctor. (She worries about hissing.)

Mike leaves table-top book as donation. Dirk and wife leave out into sunny cold. I put Christmas circular letter from Connecticut aside after reading travelogue of forty years. Bernard stops in to say Fanny is feeling ok today. The green wet pine donated yesterday acts like homeland security to fire attempting to encroach from kindling.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.

They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?
- Dhammapada

Follow them where? Who goes? And where's to go?

The Doc has arrived and sits while the artist sketches. She sketches his words to her. He is telling her about original wholeness, Christness, pure reality. He tells about a question that arises: What would it be like if I were separate? (It's only an imagination, it's not true. That, he says, is the beginning of the ego. The mind grows curious with the question, and grows a fascination with twoness, of separation.)

Each psalm in Liturgy of the Hours ends with doxology:Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
"Amen" finishes the doxology. We say yes to wholeness, even when we feel fragmented. That's what faith is -- saying yes in the midst of myriads of no.

The Doc goes on: "The ego, in the immensity of the fear and guilt at imagining and attaching to separation, attempting to escape, projects the creation of the universe. You make the problem, then you project so that you don't have to own it. I project wars. The ego uses the body attempting to be whole again. It uses it for pleasure and attack. Only the heart and mind is interested in truth, in love. Not the ego. Ego creates sickness."

Gregorian chant sounds from the internet station from Spain.

The sun bounces off shrink-wrapped boats at Wayfarer across the harbour.

Time to get the trash to the transfer station.

Doc says we see the innocence of everyone. So, we forgive.

And...

go on.

Doug said the Dalai Lama's words on "attitude" stay with him after the course. He's got a lot of years to settle into. About 45 more in prison.

Will some understanding reveal itself to him?

Arise, shine out, for your light has come,
the glory of the Lord is rising on you,
though night still covers the earth
and darkness the peoples.
-- Isaiah 60:1

At shop tonight reading First Church of the Higher Elevations, by Peter Anderson, we speak afterward of the blackness between stars and the vast unreachable space within us. How we are breathing membranes between infinite expanses of inner and outer space.
How if the incarnation has any meaning for contemporary shrugs of religious indifference on one hand and zealous fundamentalist enthusiasm on the other it would have to be grounded on ordinary humanity and the sacred revelation manifesting itself within it and within its surroundings.

In short, our worst fear is being revealed -- namely, God has given us Itself. What shall we do with it?

Death and life are looked on
As but transformations;
The myriad creation is all of a kind,
There is a kinship through all.
- Huai Nan Tzu (2nd century B.C.)

The kinship is manifest.

We are kin. It is the twelfth day of Christmas. It is Epiphany. "It's me," God says, "do you recognize me?"

"Recognize you? Recognize you...?"

No, we don't. But give us time. It shouldn't take much longer. Have some tea while you wait. Here, sit by the fire. How has your day been? Some cake? I just have a few things to do. Can you stay a while?

(Are there really three wise men? Are there two? Is there one?)

Are we to understand you are not you any more?

Are we talking about what is...here...now?

Attitude: a) : a mental position with regard to a fact or state; b) : a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state.(Webster's)

Looking a little closer. Leaning in. Tilting head.

"Say, aren't you...?

(Waiting. Waiting.)

Yes, I am.

(Doug?)

What is the corrective in convergence?

Sorry times invite correctives of clear sight and aware action. When reason becomes corrupt, intuitive spirit must emerge innocence.

We grow frightened by official belief. The State, the Church, the Corporate Offices, the Dead Certain opinions of otherwise ordinary people -- the behavior of arrogant power frightens us.

It is true that power and wealth are sorry substitutes for authentic compassion and kindness. We dwell in sorry times.

The wholeness of life has, from of old,
Been made manifest in its parts;
Clarity has been made manifest in heaven,
Firmness in earth,
Purity in the spirit,
If rim and spoke and hub were not,
Where would be the chariot?
Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants
If they once have heard the stone
Growing in a cliff?
- Lao Tzu

Midcoast Maine this morning begins mute gray-brown. Snow begins falling gently past kitchen window, sputtering like Make and Brake one lung engine in dawn harbour. Cat pleads to be sent out again to prowl his nation-yard. (To be rid of the melodrama, I open door to barn.) Of a sudden snow is full throttle. The brown hill gone white.

In one of the psalms one of us -- either with us or on our behalf -- said to him, I shall be filled when your glory appears. But he and the Father are one, and whoever sees him sees the Father also, so the Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory. He will bring us back, he will show us his face and we shall be saved; we shall be filled, and he will be sufficient for us.
Until this comes to pass, until he gives us the sight of what will completely satisfy us, until we drink -- drink our fill of him, the fountain of life -- while we wander about, apart from him but strong in faith, while we hunger and thirst for justice, longing with a desire too deep for words for the beautiful vision of God, let us fervently and devotedly celebrate the anniversary of his birth in the form of a servant.
We cannot yet contemplate the fact that he was begotten by the Father before the dawn, so let us hold on to the fact that he was born of the Virgin in the night. We do not yet understand how his name endures before the sun, so let us acknowledge his tabernacle placed in the sun.
Since we do not, as yet, gaze upon the Only Son inseparably united with His Father, let us remember the Bridegroom coming out of his bride-chamber. Since we are not yet ready for the banquet of our Father, let us acknowledge the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(from A sermon of St Augustine, Office of Readings, Thursday, 5Jan06, Eve of The Epiphany)

So many of us seem to be "wandering about, apart" yet "longing...for the beautiful vision of God." It is curious we have not fallen together into a common prayer for such unity vision. (It is not, as we once thought a vision of looking at God. It is, rather, the vision of looking as God.)

At Wednesday Evening Laura Soul-Friend Conversation at the bookshop, Paul smiled mischievously at the diversity of the ten of us gathered, saying: "It's terrific to sit in such a circle of diversity. This way, if even one of us is right there's a chance we'll all be pulled along to the truth; instead of the possibility that, being of one mind, belief, and creed, we just might all fall into ruin with falsity." (His wife, visiting her first time, glanced at him, keeping an eye on his delighted smile.)

Ragged Mountain is curtain of snow.

We are in profound need of what Augustine and psalmist plead: "bring us back, he will show us his face." Again, not to show us a face out and apart from our face -- rather, show us his face. It is our faces that are to be the face of God. This is not to suggest (for those of us troubled by the confusion of dualism and non-dualism) that some substitute for God is envisioned. What is envisioned is the emergence of God where the Christian mystery this season reveals God to be -- that God became human so that humans might become God.

460: The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."81
(80 St. Athanasius, De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B)
(in Catechism of the Catholic Church, c.1992, PART ONE, THE PROFESSION OF FAITH, SECTION TWO, THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)

Of course these words are terrifying! Our fear is that misguided, unaware, and deluded men and women might try to grasp at and appropriate this notion of "becoming God" -- and ride roughshod with flailing egos over those they subordinate.

On the other hand, the above words of St Athanasius (295-273) invite a new "Pax Terra" (rather than a War on Terror) -- a peace that belongs to every being emerging from out itself to become itself. ("Pax Terra," is Latin for "Peace on Earth.") The word "terra" means earth, land, ground, soil; a country, land, region. It is time for authentic terra.

God's way is not the way of war. It is not the way of power and control. The way of God is kinder, more compassionate, and ultimately loving.

Cruelty, torture, deception, and greed are signs that the true and authentic God, profoundly longed for by every human heart and every being, is not emerging through us, but rather a perversion and distortion of our "idea" and "grab" of God has taken possession of our lives and culture.

It is terrifying to become what one is. It means we let go of everything we are not. God is the longing of God to emerge through this creation. There is no "intelligent design" out there pulling puppet strings, manipulating the material world to bring about a pre-ordained spiritual paradise once we muck through this horrible existence. We might rather think that we are the longing of God to fashion in our emerging way the kind of existence and world worthy to allow God's dwelling place under our roofs, under our feet. It has been given to us to work this out with diligence.

This prospect -- the humanity of God -- is frightening. It scuttles many of our theories about "God out there" judging and damning, praising and rewarding us. It asks us to grow up -- not fall back on mommy and daddy's praise or blame, and continue on with faithful hope that love alone reveals the reality of God in our midst.

Ours is a sorry time. It invites correctives of authentic compassion and kindness to heal the hurt and comfort the suffering. We cannot count on leaders whose idea of God is punish and protect. They will deceive and force their will on those weaker than them. We cannot, (God help us), depend on churches, mosques, temples, or any bastions of deficient ideas of what God is and what God wants. "God" is not our idea of God.

God is Itself -- emerging through love, longing to dwell in this world, with one and all, as one and all. The way we know God is God is when our actions are compassionate, loving, kind, and truthful

The fruits of God are God itself.

Without God we are not converging -- not in contemporary culture and world, not within ourselves.

God is the corrective in convergence.

Pray for corrective.

For Epiphany.

Appearance and transparence -- maybe that's it. It is said no one has ever seen God, who is pure spirit. But there have been manifestations of God, expressions of this holy spirit that appear to our senses and minds, presenting confirmation of our suspicions (or faith).

There is spirit, and there is manifestation of spirit.
There is nirvana, and there is samsara.

At the same time, one is and is not the other. (Who can hold this contradiction?)

Nicholas Cryfts, (whom we know as the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, 1401-1464) has his work described:
Theodicy
God is infinite. The infinity of God leads Nicholas of Cusa to affirm the coincidence of opposites. Observing how, in a circumference carried to infinity, the straight and the curved line coincide, he affirms that in the infinity of God all oppositions are identified, all distinctions overcome, and all contrariety fades into nothingness, since the correlative is not to be found. God is the "implicatio" of all opposites. But what in God is "implicatio" and "complicatio," becomes "explicatio" in the universe, which results from multiplicity, distinction, and opposition.

This concept does not differ substantially from the Neo-Platonic idea. The "explicatio" is equivalent to Platonic emanations, by virtue of which God, absolute unity, becomes multiple through subsequent emanations. The concept of Nicholas of Cusa becomes more dangerous because of the consequences he derives from "explicatio." The world is an infinite potential, and because of this it participates in an attribute of divinity. This theory was to be reaffirmed by Giordano Bruno. God is as it were contracted in beings; He is the absolute quiddity of all the things in which He is contracted.
(http://radicalacademy.com/philcusa.htm)

Quiddity means essence, whatness.

Giordano Bruno was murdered by the Catholic Church for not believing what it believed. It's a fact. There are many disturbing facts.
Bruno (1548-1600) was burned at the stake as a heretic. Four hundred years after his execution, official expression of "profound sorrow" and acknowledgement of error at Bruno's condemnation to death was made, during the papacy of John Paul II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Last night in West Virginia church bells sounded with the joyous proclamation that trapped miners were found alive. The family and community sang hymns and cried with joy at the rescue. But it was short lived. The news was erroneous. In fact, only one of thirteen trapped survived. Where does praise and thanksgiving to God go when it stops on a dime?

Su Sane said at conversation that if time were money we are wealthy. Some people are very busy and have no time. We have all the time in the world. She says of herself that she is very wealthy. Time is expensive. She spends much for it. She has a great deal of time.

Through the rise and fall of empires, through the creation of vast bodies of symbols that give shape to our dreams; through the forging of magic keys with which to unlock the mysteries of creation; through it all we are marching from epoch to epoch towards the fullest realization of our soul.
- Rabindranath Tagore ( 1861-1941)

Today my marching took thoughts to Cape Breton.

Amber's went to Spain and Egypt. Paul's to the Yukon. Joanie's to Princeton. Robert's to an unpainted round chair where a 7 year old girl sits. Jayen went to an ecstatic place with joy. Sylvia travels where she doesn't know a thing. Saskia went to mists of snow on mountain tops. Su Sane was spending time. Helen thought she'd wait til next time to share her trip. There was a curious peace at conversation.

I hope Giordano and the men from West Virginia are at peace.

They are transparent. They have gone. Where?

We'll see.

Not all who come to Buddhist conversation like some of the ideas of Buddhism. Take "nothing" for example. Reading James Carse's Breakfast at the Victory, The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience , the discussion turns to samsara and nirvana.

I liked the story.

Wanting nothing with all your heart, stop the stream
When the world dissolves, everything becomes clear.
Go beyond this way or that way
To the farther shore where the world dissolves,
And everything becomes clear.
Beyond this shore and the farther shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go.
- Dhammapada

There's a difference between meditation practice and meetingbrook conversation. One intends to view nothing; the other places nothing in view. When I say that "transparency" might be a better word for "nothing" there is some softening of rhetorical banter. Several attempts on the part of unruly members to shift the talk to Gnostic Christianity -- the time is up and once again the nonbelievers in victory and defeat smile and argue and make their way out into the cold winter night.

Now you know that he appeared in order to abolish sin,
and that in him there is no sin;
anyone who lives in God does not sin,
and anyone who sins
has never seen him or known him.
1 John 3:6

It is terrific that we might live in God yet still not see God. No sin, nothing doing, is where we no longer are over against ourselves or anything else -- just doing what must be done when it needs doing.

God not sinning means samsara is nirvana, and nirvana samsara -- the world of change and the world of extinguished ignorance, hatred, and earthly suffering. One is the other. Nor is there, then, any other.

Nevertheless, we have the conversation, tea is sipped, rubric of attentive listening thoughtful speech followed, hats and scarves put on, pleasantries posted in the air between all -- "safe home" "drive carefully" "see you next week."

In Hen kai polla -- the Greek phrase, the one and the many -- "kai," i.e. "and" -- is the root word.

Unity.

It's all we have.

The Baptist deacon said to us God works in mysterious ways.

When the master
Without a word raises his eyebrows
The posts and rafters
The cross beams and roof tree
Begin to smile
There is another place for conversing
Heart to heart
The full moon and the breeze
At the half-open window.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

The 9th day of Christmas. The only prayer is heart to heart. With the woman in Belfast pulling two trash cans to curb. With the man in Lincolnville by green gate, two Springer Spaniels ready to walk.

He brightens with the idea being neighbor to monastic retreat hermitage. It is only an idea, we say. He says we should ask Charlie Cawley to make the place happen.

We say that might not be a bad idea.

Everything in God's hands.

Handing mystery.

(Just saying.)

Our own.

Over.

Mothering God is day one, job one, for each one of us.

Paul Andrews, in the newsletter of "Sacred Spaces," tells that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a Christmas play in 1940, "Barjona." The following are excerpts:
The Virgin is pale, and she looks at the baby. What I would paint on her face is an anxious wonderment, such as has never before been seen on a human face. For Christ is her baby, flesh of her flesh, and the fruit of her womb. She has carried him for nine months, and she will give him her breast, and her milk will become the blood of God. There are moments when the temptation is so strong that she forgets that he is God. She folds him in her arms and says: My little one.

...I think that there are other rapid, fleeting moments when she realises at once that Christ is her son, her very own baby, and that he is God. She looks at him and thinks: "This God is my baby. This divine flesh is my flesh. He is made from me. He has my eyes, and the curve of his mouth is the curve of mine. He is like me. He is God and he is like me."
(http://www.sacredspace.ie/latestspace/latestspace17.htm)

This 8th day of Christmas is New years Day. It is celebrated in the Catholic Christian calendar as The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

"He is like me," Mary says through Sartre's pen.

Mothering God, Mary knows, is not a one-time historical event. As absurd as it sounds, each one of us today is invited to mother God.

How is this possible? We do not know how one mothers itself.

Be transparent.

Be innocent.

Be as-is is longing to be.

Become the body, the blood, the water, and the sight of God.

Happy New Birth of God -- all our dear kind mothering communion of beings!

Bells chime into solid cold. Firewood catches in kitchen stove.

If you understand the first word of Zen
You will know the last word.
The last word or the first word,
Is not a word.
- Wu-men

Ice collars stone in brook, pushes land at edge of pond.

He sends hailstones like crumbs -- who can withstand his cold?
He will send out his word, and all will be melted; his spirit will breathe, and the waters will flow. (from Psalm 147)

This 7th day of Christmas is New Years Eve.

Mostly, it is Saturday night.

It is a matter of faith that waters will again flow.

Today we watch ice. In time, watch water.

Happy New Year!

Not a word.

Be, as is, is.

Chimes pause. Wind takes a breath.

Cold night, no wind, bamboo making noises,
Noises far apart, now bunched together,
Filtering the pine-flanked lattice.
Listening with ears is less fine than
Listening with the mind.
Beside the lamp I lay
Aside the half scroll of sutra
- Hsu-t'ang Chih-yu

I prefer mountain streams rather than mountain tops. Tumbling down Ragged Mountain, water dances just ahead of clutching cold fingers forming ice.

Watching what passes where you pause to be what is passed.

This 6th day of Christmas.

Water seeks lower ground.

Tonight, low ground.

Lowering water.

Chants in dark.

Unfathoming.

Bows.

They're not only words.

Woman from Bangkok visiting shop said she wasn't going to convert to Christianity. Her friend wants her to. She'll remain Buddhist, she says. She likes the shop. Her companion says to her on way out, "I guess I know where you'll be spending time tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning I'll be in prison, God willing, meeting with sixteen students in final interviews.

One glance at the morning star,
And the snow got even whiter.
The look in his eye
Chills hair and bones.
If earth itself hadn't
Experienced this instant,
Old Shakyamuni never would have happened.
- Daito (1282-1334)

It is the 5th day of Christmas. Rain drenches Maine. Snow trickles away.

The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent: "You are a priest for ever, a priest of the priesthood of Melchisedech".
The Lord is at your right hand, and on the day of his anger he will shatter kings.
(-- from Psalm 109 {110})

Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by king's men carrying out what was perceived to be the will of Henry II. Edward Grim, a monk, observed the attack from the safety of a hiding place near the altar. He told, finally, what he saw and heard. In this country, we long for someone who has seen and heard to come out of hiding, tell from the inside the intrigue and hushed tones that have brought us to such a awkward resemblance of who and what democracy and republic longs to be.

Kings kill Archbishops and Bishops. They are killed in large English cathedrals and small Latin American country churches.

Becket, once close friend of King Henry, fell afoul averring he was now God's servant first and foremost. Kings don't like such standing. It sounds disloyal to them not to have their will first and foremost.
He had to take refuge in a French monastery for six years, and when he returned to his diocese four knights, inspired by careless words from the king, assassinated him in his cathedral on 29 December 1170 (St Thomas Becket, 1118 - 1170, Universalis.com)

Playwright Jean Anouilh is quoted to say: "The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it." And, "Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way."
These are things kings must take into account.

Some in America worry that a king has insinuated himself into the nation's capitol. This king starts wars, orders torture, overlooks illegalities, assumes to himself whatever power available, has a fawning court, brooks no disloyalty, and carelessly uses words to rid his domain of troublesome opposition. At this year's end he busies himself cutting brush, riding bike, and putting into awkward words the 27th new explanation of exactly why he took us to war, why he expects all rights to be predicated on his discretion rather than on law or will of the people.

Novelist William Gaddis said, "There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren't worth doing." It is troubling that so many are so distracted allowing this insinuating careless user of words the forum to say so little of value with so many foolish words.

Words are dangerous when spoken carelessly by kings and insinuation of king.

We pray for defusing sanity and sacredness to find voice.

We pray for new wording that will sound clear new perspective.

We pray for gathering of wise and visionary men and women who actually love the earth, love people, and love God -- who put their bodies where words are. Poet Daniel Berrigan said that, "Bodies belong where words are."

Let kings and rulers, pretenders and patronizers -- fade away as fades this year end.

No longer try to be rid of opposition. Rather, practice becoming free by entering words with care.

Words are that which fall from Word Itself.

Retrieve them.

Serve their origin.

We still kill innocents. When they are children, it breaks the heart.

To those with power to bring death -- it is a 'king of the hill' game they play. Except the game has taken on a different tactic since as children we played it on city street or farm mound. Now the game is not to care who is destroyed or killed. Those with power, guns, or bombs spray destruction on anyone in their way as they play their awful games of "This is mine" and "We are more pure" and "God has chosen me to kill you, because you are wrong."

From the Office of Readings:
Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans?

The kings of the earth have risen up; the leaders have united against the Lord, against his anointed.
"Let us break their chains, that bind us; let us throw off their yoke from our shoulders!"

The Lord laughs at them, he who lives in the heavens derides them.
Then he speaks to them in his anger; in his fury he throws them into confusion:
"But I -- I have set up my king on Sion, my holy mountain".
(from Psalm 2) http://www.universalis.com/-500/readings.htm

This 4th day of Christmas we remember with sorrow those innocents killed by kings who court visibility and adulation; and we watch with wary worry those who would repeat, endlessly, torture and destruction for ends they can measure and store away in vaults.

If we are to understand holiness, we have to come face to face with innocence. The metaphor of Christ the King feels awkward. Especially king of an invisible kingdom. And what do we make of innocence?

Mindful innocence (that is, aware unknowing) is not the same as willful ignorance (that is, arrogant certitude). To be certain, and not to question the point of view held -- is a recipe for prolonging suffering. Alternately, to be and remain open to the spirit of unfolding reality taking place right in front of us -- is to not know the direction we are being asked to follow until it is presented (suddenly, surprisingly) for our response.

Why remain open?

56
Why? This is everyone's favorite question. No one ever says:
Because our bags are always packed and we hear footsteps
on the stairs. Because the dark feels unwashed and incomplete
and Maimonides said, "When the Messiah comes war will end,
God's blessings will be on all men." Because we have a God
who never dies and never comes and it's three in the morning
and I'm walking a crying baby around, singing lullabies Grandma
sang to me. Because I expect nothing and what I expect defines me.
Because the world exists without us but without us it is nothing.
Because all my life I've been afraid of the next page. Because
nothing is explained and my old bedroom shadows are thriving
and the floor tilts west toward Lake Ontario where all the snow
comes from. Because it's getting late and I'm in bed, waiting
for Mother to come kiss me good night, like she promised.
(from "Poems No. 1, 56 and 80" by Philip Schultz from Living in the Past.

We remain open to honor the innocents who have gone before and those that will follow.

The kings of this world vie for hills and vaults. The king of that mysterious place called heaven dwells in open inner receptivity -- that is, within aware unknowing presence.

Heaven helps those who help their selves enter true Self.

Nan Merrill's transformational companion to the psalms words Psalm 2 in the following way:
Why do nations and people plot against
one another,
setting themselves apart and conspiring
against the Beloved and those
who follow Love's way?
They say to themselves, "We are free
of Love's law;
humility and service are for others."

The Beloved, who is ever present, can but
smile at their foolishness,
knowing that one day, they will
fall to their knees in regret.
They do not hear the Beloved's firm and
steadfast voice:
"I have set Love in your hearts,
my dwelling place."
(from Psalm 2, in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, by Nan C. Merrill)

So much depends on wording.

So much, on where we dwell.

Love the open inner heart.

Broken, open.

Be innocent.

John says God is light.

If so, every drop of water carries God.

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)

And every sky narrates God's story.

The skies tell the story of the glory of God,
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands;
day pours out the news to day,
night passes to night the knowledge.

Not a speech, not a word,
not a voice goes unheard.
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,
their message to all the corners of the world.
--from Psalm 18 (19)

Creation conspires to breathe life through and through.

John is worth listening to:
Something which has existed since the beginning,
that we have heard,
and we have seen with our own eyes;
that we have watched
and touched with our hands:
the Word, who is life --
this is our subject.
That life was made visible:
we saw it and we are giving our testimony,
telling you of the eternal life
which was with the Father and has been made visible to us.
What we have seen and heard
we are telling you
so that you too may be in union with us,
as we are in union
with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We are writing this to you to make our own joy complete.

This is what we have heard from him,
and the message that we are announcing to you:
God is light; there is no darkness in him at all.
If we say that we are in union with God
while we are living in darkness,
we are lying because we are not living the truth.
But if we live our lives in the light,
as he is in the light,
we are in union with one another,
and the blood of Jesus, his Son,
purifies us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin in us;
we are deceiving ourselves
and refusing to admit the truth;
but if we acknowledge our sins,
then God who is faithful and just
will forgive our sins and purify us
from everything that is wrong.
To say that we have never sinned
is to call God a liar
and to show that his word is not in us.

I am writing this, my children,
to stop you sinning;
but if anyone should sin,
we have our advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ, who is just;
he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away,
and not only ours,
but the whole world's.

We can be sure that we know God
only by keeping his commandments.
(1 John 1:1 - 2:3)

Let's settle sin for today. Sin is refusal to let light be seen in one another. Sin is the way we turn from works in the light to deceit in the night. Sin is intentional unawareness and willful unacceptance of what is of another.

God's commandments are simple. Only this: love transparency, serve transparently. Be alone what is true; only see with undivided heart, undivided mind.

John has always had a way with love and light.

Now it's ours to wake and wander with clear sight.

This third day of Christmas.

Stephen was murdered.

Some political religious group wanted their way -- and he was in it. Stephen was marked as traitor and terrorist by men who were really zealots and terrorists. It is considered good form to label others what you are and punish them while you stand aloof and behind their suffering. Anyone working to relieve poverty and equalize inequities -- then and today -- is considered unpatriotic, enemy, and dangerous. Trumped charges and false witnesses rendered him a doomed man. Rendition works.

Dissatisfaction concerning the distribution of alms from the community's fund having arisen in the Church, seven men were selected and specially ordained by the Apostles to take care of the temporal relief of the poorer members. Of these seven, Stephen, is the first mentioned and the best known. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14286b.htm

He is a man for our time. He is a man for our country. His story should haunt Americans.

As should the Christmas story.

That the Christmas story is a protest against empire may not be noted much among us not only because of the blinding familiarity of the story, but also for another reason. We are the empire, the world's sole and reigning superpower, whose military and economic power stretches to every land. The American empire is, I hope and believe, more benign than many of its predecessors, but for Americans today, the Christmas story brings not only comfort and joy, but caution and challenge.

Our American story, whether told as the story of political freedom or of free markets, is not the only story. There are other cultures and peoples whose stories bear their own truth and power -- and which deserve our respect. Moreover, God has a story, too, and this story tells us that things are not always what they seem to be. Most of all, the Christmas story warns against the Achilles' heel of every empire, pride and pretension. In her song of ecstatic praise, the Magnificat, Mary sings of God who "has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their thoughts." "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly." If the Christmas story once again warms our hearts, as I hope it does, it is also a story that sends a chill upon every empire.
(--by Anthony Robinson, a pastor of the United Church of Christ, Published on Monday, December 26, 2005 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "A Story to Warm Hearts and Chill Empires," by Anthony B. Robinson) http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1226-27.htm

The sweetness of the manger scene, shepherds, livestock, and angels is winsome story. The underlying power -- the poignant story that the surface story masks -- is told by master story tellers, with an eye to preserving the truth for future understanding, tucked away in plain sight.

I'm unsure Christians know what it means to be Christian.

Here's Stephen at end:
7:55. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said: Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.

7:56. And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears and with one accord ran violently upon him.

7:57. And casting him forth without the city, they stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man, whose name was Saul.

7:58. And they stoned Stephen, invoking and saying: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

7:59. And falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice, saying: Lord, lay not his sin to their charge: And when he had said this, he fell asleep in the Lord. And Saul was consenting to his death.
(--from Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 7, http://www.newadvent.org/bible/act007.htm)

On second thought, maybe those who really understand the Christian vocation know that they are at odds with the political powers of this world, and they will not be assimilated. Rather, they hide. Sometimes, in plain sight.

Meanwhile, those who play at Christianity -- who conjugate political power with religious pretense, whoop up their faith and ready their ammunition to take out threats to single-minded belief in assimilation and moral superiority -- remain very visible, professing, and doctrinaire.

To long for the kingdom of heaven today is to long for the Jesus born to Mary -- to long for peace beyond understanding, and to long for reality that dwells in the midst of, but not subject to, mendacity, cynicism, and ruthless ambition.

It is the second day of Christmas.

Stephen's day.

Celebrate his warning!

"Becoming One-Like, Us"
(from prayer, Christmas liturgy, punctuation added)

Near (ness)
Love (ing),
Itself

This day
Births

What
Is
Near (ly) accomplished;

Christ
Is,
(No,
Stranger) --

We are...

Nearing

(What a sight to
See)

And so it is...
Christmas.

(-- Poem for Christmas, 25December2005, by Bill Halpin, with gratefulness for each and all)

Walking path to brook over bridge knocking branches laden with fresh snow as dawn rises. In cabin woodstove sleepy sticks slip out of cold tightness stretching into valiant effort small flame embraces and devours with abandon.

In my middle years I love the Tao
And by Deep South Mountain I make my home.
When happy I go alone into the mountains.
Only I understand this joy.
I walk until the water ends, and sit
Waiting for the hour when clouds rise.
If I happen to meet an old woodcutter,
I chat with him, laughing and lost to time.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

Mute light rises from mist over fragile snow. Hosmer Pond bathes magical white. Fir pine trees hang limbs to ground.

Light rises, as it does, through old split apple trees.

Sits solitude.

Lauding resonates.

Day unfolds prayer.

Christ comes through this.

Near.

That's the name. Not a place; a presence.

The Lord is near to those who call on him,
to all those who call on him in truth.
--from Psalm 144 (145)

Truth, they say, is just like this.

Hence: presence this.

Near truth.

Go ahead...

Call!

"The Spirit travels only through the open."

That's what Billy said. He thought the Spirit had been sent away from the Roman Catholic Church by them and has found an inspiring welcome elsewhere. "They thought they owned the Spirit because they made its words into true statements used exclusively by them at the mass."

In the car, idling in parking lot behind Pen Bay Hospital, Billy was speaking to Saskia and I about the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. We'd been to morning service at St Peter's Episcopal Church in Rockland. (Megen took a ring, blessed by those attending, and said she did not want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into heaven -- but wished to openly respond to the Divine Lover's invitation.) We sat in small, chilly room under bell tower where bell tolled in stately remembrance of what bells remember. They've been doing this Wednesday mornings since 9/11.

I thought (while driving route 1 east) of all the times I'd not said what Billy said while attending those true statements and feeling no sense of what was curiously absent. Spirit is not a hidden, legal, or dogmatic possession.

Lute Music

The Earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents --
A small franchise indeed.
Right now we have lives,
Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,
Like everybody had once --

Here at the year's end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts --
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses --
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.
(Poem: "Lute Music" by Kenneth Rexroth from Sacramental Acts. Copper Canyon Press."

This is not to say that some victory is won in a denominational game of "Who's Got The Spirit?" (available for purchase in time for the holidays). Nor do I run from bath exclaiming "Eureka!" having solved an equation useful for moving the world. No, rather, it is a thought that has occurred many times while watching in silence the modes of meditative innerness and presentational exteriority in various churches over dozens of years.

The psalmist wrote:
But now, God, you have spurned us and confounded us,
so that we must go into battle without you.
You have put us to flight in the sight of our enemies,
and those who hate us plunder us at will.
You have handed us over like sheep sold for food,
you have scattered us among the nations.

You have sold your people for no money,
not even profiting by the exchange.
You have made us the laughing-stock of our neighbours,
mocked and derided by those who surround us.
The nations have made us a by-word,
the peoples toss their heads in scorn.

All the day I am ashamed,
I blush with shame
as they reproach me and revile me,
my enemies and my persecutors.
-- Psalm 43 (44), from Office of Readings, Vigils

Church and State might not be so separated after all. When politics and approved interpretation becomes the inserted text substituting for the open and living 'word' of What Is True, What Is Holiness Itself -- something is not only lost, but something unseemly, opaque, and divisive is erected to wall in and wall out.

Kenneth Rexroth said, "Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust." And "I've never understood why I'm [considered] a member of the avant-garde... I [just] try to say, as simply as I can, the simplest and most profound experiences of my life."
(from "The Writer's Almanac" for Thursday, December 22, 2005)

Kenneth Rexroth translated this Japanese poem:
LVI -
I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.

{Tsui ni yuku
Michi to wa kanete
Kikishi kado
Kinoo kyoo to wa
Omowazarishi wo}
(poem by Ariwara no Narihira 825-880ce, translated by Kenneth Roxroth in One Hundred Poems from the Japanese),

It is, indeed, today.

Finally, Rumi:
Creatures are cups. The sciences and the arts and all branches of knowledge are inscriptions around the outside of the cups. When a cup shatters, the writing can no longer be read. The wine's the thing! The wine that's held in the mold of these physical cups. Drink the wine and know what lasts and what to love. The man who truly asks must be sure of two things: One, that he's mistaken in what he's doing or thinking now. And two, that there is a wisdom he doesn't know yet. Asking is half of knowing.

Everyone turns toward someone. Look for one scarred by the King's polo stick.

A man or a woman is said to be absorbed when the water has total control of him, and he no control of the water. A swimmer moves around willfully. An absorbed being has no will but the water's going. Any word or act is not really personal, but the way the water has of speaking or doing. As when you hear a voice coming out of a wall, and you know that it's not the wall talking, but someone inside, or perhaps someone outside echoing off the wall. Saints are like that. They've achieved the condition of a wall, or a door.
(-Translated by Coleman Barks with A.J. Arberry, From Enlightened Mind Edited by Stephen Mitchell)

Wish every wall a door.

Rumi is a door. "An absorbed being has no will but the water's going."
Christ-child is adorable. "For, this day, is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord..." (Luke 2)

Nativity longs to pass through.

This day.

Inmates in prison write final projects for Ethics class.

I read them in a solitude of watchfulness -- their words, their studies, their lives. As usual, at end of course, my quiet vow never to teach again.

One broken often.

Once you suddenly smash through,
and go on to make the leap beyond,
you will find that everything
around you and all that you do,
whether active or at rest,
is the scenery of the
fundamental ground,
the original Mind.
There will be not a hairsbreadth
of difference between you
and other things;
there will be no other thing.
- Daito (1282-1334)

As I read, I am in prison. I share a space with cellmate, a space too small by half for one person. I negotiate every passing inmate as one would a minefield. I have fifty years remaining in this space, everyday, with no hope of release. I cannot afford to be weak-minded, weak-bodied.

If there was faith to be had, what good would it be? No one understands. If anyone did, what would they understand?

For he knows how we are made,
he remembers we are nothing but dust.
Man -- his life is like grass,
he blossoms and withers like flowers of the field.
The wind blows and carries him away:
no trace of him remains.
-- from Psalm 102 (103)

I fade. Molecule by molecule, dropping away.

I'm told it is December, that it is solstice, that in a few days, Christmas.

Tonight, nothing other than inmates, prison, time without promise.

The president says he is protecting us by violating our laws.

It is hard to believe him.

The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. They're no different from things that appear in your dreams at night, be they palaces or carriages, forested parks or lakeside pavilions.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

Something happened to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. They believed their own stories about how important they were, how they could do anything they wanted and no congress, no court, no press, and certainly not the people would dare try to stop them.

I am lonely as a pelican in the wilderness,
as an owl in the ruins,
as a sparrow alone on a rooftop:
I do not sleep.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
they burn with anger and use my name as a curse.
-- from Psalm 101 (102)

It has happened. A corner has been turned. Messrs Bush and Cheney have shown themselves contemptuous of law and constitution. How did this happen? How long will it be allowed to continue?

The Christian world prepares to celebrate the birth of Jesus. In this oft self-designated Christian nation how did it come to be that murder, lies, deceit, torture, war, and bullying are committed and tolerated in the name of Jesus? Christians are relegated to being either cheerleaders or mute bystanders.

Refuge is needed. Protection becomes a paradoxical koan: To protect our way of life based on laws, is it right to break the law to prove paramount the rule of law? Are our leaders asking us to accept a lawless way of life?

We need a more profound liberation than that offered us by our protectors.

We pray Night Prayer:
Come quickly and hear me, O Lord,
for my spirit is weakening.
--from Psalm 142 (143)

Be calm and keep watch. The Devil, your enemy, is circling you like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, strong in faith.
1 Peter 5:8-9

Let us pray.
Of your kindness, Lord, dispel the darkness of this night, so that we your servants may go to sleep in peace and wake to the light of the new day, rejoicing in your name. Through Christ our Lord.

May the almighty Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
A M E N

A young Jewish girl is about to give birth. Her mind is clear. She knows nothing other than what is to be is coming to be.

If you misunderstand your mind,
you are an ordinary person;
if you realize your mind,
you are a sage.
There is no difference at all
whether man, woman, old,
young, wise, foolish, human,
animal, whatever.
Thus, in the Lotus of Truth assembly,
was it not the eight year old
Naga girl who went directly
south to the undefiled world Amala,
sat on a jewel lotus flower,
and realized universal complete enlightenment.
- Jakushitusu Genko (1290-1367)

Our stories and myths are thresholds across which we step to visit awhile a place beyond space beyond time beyond cause and effect.

Some say drop stories, and they have a good point of view. Some say drop myths, and they, too, offer good advice. Still, these thresholds are invitations bypassing points of view and advice worth heeding. The danger is we will remember the stories and forget the present moment. The difficulty is we might entertain the myth but ignore the current reality longing to emerge with our clear and present attention.

For who else is for me, in heaven?
On earth, I want nothing when I am with you.
My flesh and heart are failing,
but it is God that I love:
God is my portion for ever.
-- from Psalm 72 (73)

Portion suggests part of a whole, or part separated from a whole. If God is my portion, then what is the whole of it?

The Jewish girl nears us in story and myth.

In her nearing we see that the question is the answer.

What is -- is -- the whole of it.

Birthing isn't portion. Birthing infuses what is throughout the whole.

Step carefully the threshold.

Pass through with care.

Omega Point. That's what Teilhard says. It approaches, Bede Griffiths says, as our consciousness changes. Reality appears different with new consciousness.

This mind, perfectly and fully realized, moves with a clear, tranquil spiritual awareness. It encompasses heaven, covers the earth, penetrates form, and rides with forbidding abruptness. It is a radiant light shining from the crown of your head, illuminating wherever you are; it is an awesome wind, rising up at each step you take, enveloping all things. If you are able to make this mind your own, then even though you do not seek excellence yourself, excellence comes to you of its own accord. Without seeking emancipation, you are not hindered by a single thing.
- Daito (1282-1334)

That's why we celebrate the birth of Jesus, called the Christ, each year. It's not a big thing. It's the only thing.

So many have such difficulty with Christmas. But, then again, so many have difficulty with any consciousness that sees into, through, and beyond what is, "what is" itself beyond our thinking.

What is it that enters this existence and births what is?

See that, and we see our own birth. See our own birth, and we see the birth and death of each and every being, of the earth and world within and beyond space and time, beyond cause and effect. See with this mind and resurrection is once again a wholeness of humankind/sentient beings, the earth and planets, and what we call God Itself.

"...[S]aid Mary 'let what you have said be done to me.' And the angel left her." (Luke 1:38)

The angel, as it must, departs.

Leaving Mary alone.

With her.

Self.

"The play's the thing..." (-From Hamlet, II, ii, 633)

Not the players, nor the celebrities; not the professors, nor the athletes; not the CEOs, nor the elected officials and judges. There is entirely too much misidentification of the play (which is vital) with the players (who have become darlings and demigods of contemporary culture).

Students of today get nowhere because they base their understanding upon the acknowledgment of names. They inscribe the words of stone dead old guys in a great big notebook, wrap it up in four or five squares of cloth, and won't let anyone look at it. "This is the Mysterious Principle," they aver, and safeguard it with care. That's all wrong. Blind idiots! What kind of juice are you looking for in such dried-up bones!"
- Lin-chi (d.866)

Lin-Chi's fierce passion suggests looking at sometime more alive and perhaps something with more simplicity, modesty, and truth.

I am the Lord, unrivalled;
there is no other God besides me.
Though you do not know me, I arm you
that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun
that, apart from me, all is nothing.
(from Isaiah 45:1 - 13 )

I'm fond of this "no other" God. This one reminds me of the Buddha's last words to his friends: "Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation."

So much depends on how we see and read the words "your own" -- and how we understand "salvation."

The "no other" God who sees, in the prophet Isaiah's words, "that, apart from me, all is nothing" -- is the God of (from, with) whom the Christ emerges.

The simplicity, modesty, and truth of what is itself disappeared into the reality appearing and playing out into everydayness -- this is for me, today, a glimpse into Lin-Chi's passion.

Not the person, but what is itself sounding through. Not the particular athlete, but what inserts itself into the play when they act. Not the spiritual teacher, but what reveals itself through their presence or words.

Have we forgotten how to play well? Not the outcome, nor the adulation; not the cult of personality, nor the pride of ego feigning "I did this!"

No other, nothing apart.

All together now:

Play well!

No need to call anything other than what it is.

There is a simple way to become a buddha. When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate to all sentient beings...not excluding or desiring anything...you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else. (Eihei Dogen, in "Moon in a Dewdrop")

Don't even seek to be called what you are.

There.

You are.

All.

Alone.

Chocolate pudding with whipped cream.

Jewels are tested with fire, gold is tested with a stone; a sword is tested with a hair, water is tested with a pole. In the school of the patchrobed monks, in one word, one phrase, one act, one state, one exit, one entry, one encounter, one response, you will see whether someone is deep or shallow, you will see whether he is facing forwards or backwards. But tell me, what will you use to test him with?
- Yuan-wu (1063-1135)

Test him with chocolate pudding and whipped cream.

You, Lord, are my inheritance and my cup. You control my destiny,
the lot marked out for me is of the best, my inheritance is all I could ask for.
I will bless the Lord who gave me understanding; even in the night my heart will teach me wisdom.
I will hold the Lord for ever in my sight: with him at my side I can never be shaken.
Thus it is that my heart rejoices, heart and soul together; while my body rests in calm hope.
(- from Night Prayer, Psalm 15, 16)

Kalliopeia, that which "works to support the evolution of a world culture that honors the underlying unity at the heart of life's rich diversity," humbles us with a gift, out of the blue.

They say: "In devotion to the Essence that unites all as one..."

We say: Blessings of the day and quiet serenity of the night.

We are facing every way that You, O Honored Guest, appear.

With gratitude.

No wonder...we shun God.

John of the Cross' mystical experience, which he also called infused contemplation, meant a real experience of union with God.

Truth's naked radiance,
Cut off from the sense and the world,
Shines by itself.
No words for it.
- Pai-chang (720-814)

The idea we have of God is not God. Nothing but God is God. Itself alone is God Itself.

St. John implies that the experience of contemplation is an intersubjective experience. The person experiences God within him, not as an object or thing about which something is known, but simply as a whole, a subject. God is present to him in a way analogous to the way he is present to himself.

"At this time God does not communicate Himself through the senses as He did before, by means of the discursive analysis and synthesis of ideas, but begins to communicate Himself through pure spirit by an act of simple contemplation, in which there is no discursive succession of thought."

It is love in informing and vivifying faith that allows faith to attain to this sort of knowledge. Love of its nature is geared to the subject, and divine love lifts the person to a subject- to-subject relationship to God. Contemplation "which is knowledge and love together, that is, loving knowledge" is the beginning of the experience of this new relationship. In it love is strong enough that it draws knowledge with it, so there results an experience of the within, God present as a self in the heart of the limited human self.
(from St. John of the Cross and Dr. C.G. Jung, Part II: THE DAWN OF CONTEMPLATION, Chapter 3: St. John and the Beginning of Contemplation, by James Arraj, http://www.innerexplorations.com/catjc/st.htm)

John of the Cross, (1542 - 1591), joined with Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582) to reform and deepen the religious life of Carmelites and the times they lived. He knew suffering. The words of Eckhart Tolle, if applied to John, cast curious light on his life:
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment". (E Tolle)

John's consciousness was profound. As was his suffering.

"Man is a certain immensity. In his relation to the universe he is more than a part: he is a center, a totality, a culmination."
"(W)ithout man the universe is truncated and inexplicable: it has no center, no ultimate, no issue. It is nowhere conscious; therefore at no point does it take possession of its own being, and so it does not exist intrinsically... Man is the intrinsic end of the world, and is the relatively last end for the world."
(Arraj, quoting from -The Theology of the Mystical Body, by Emile Mersch, Herder, St. Louis, 1951,)

Man is center, God is center; man is end, God is end.

Shun man, shun God.

It's what we do without wonder.

Let's diminish our lack of it.

At 12:01am Tuesday another man will be killed. We know about this one. He's been convicted of murder himself, and been on death row since 1981.

LOS ANGELES - As word spread this afternoon that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had turned down Stanley Tookie Williams' last-ditch bid for clemency, reaction was muted on the streets where Williams launched the Crips gang 35 years ago.(San Jose Mercury News - online, By Patrick May. LOS ANGELES)

May he, and all those departing and departed, with the mercy that remains us of God, rest in peace.

What remains for us to do?

Would that God re-mind us!

Moonlight on snow during zazen in cabin. Soft candlelight inside. Kerosene lanterns on path from barn.

Woodstove a balanced harmony of heat and clear air.

Be happy at all times; pray constantly; and for all things give thanks to God, because this is what God expects you to do in Christ Jesus.
(1 Thessalonians 5:16)

I don't know why it is; I do know that it is -- at times everything falls into place and nothing is other than it is.

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)

Around table in silence reading of Teilhard, Hildegard, and Berry -- the need to relieve the divine its burden of being God. Free humans their obsession of feeling enslaved. Allow nature release from rapacious progress in what erroneously is called economy.

Four shared the monastic ritual sitting, walking, chanting compline, reading as lectio, eating in silence, sharing reflections in words, departing in quiet appreciation. "Four harpies," we were, Jory said, "holding the space, preserving temple ritual."

In earlier versions of Greek myth, Harpies were described as beautiful, winged maidens. (Encyclopedia Mythica)

We read the New Zealand lecture on cosmotheandric spirituality and the feminine -- quoting Richard Tarnas saying the need for the feminine does not negate the work laid down by the masculine -- but a balanced harmony must emerge. A new creative act is called for.

So we act on our lives. Moon inspiring. Snow refreshing. Light revealing.

Not why we are, but that we are, here doing this. Tonight, it is enough.

Compline's end: That awake, we might keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.

Now, Lord...