What is the meaning of the words "Let us cross over to the other side"?

In the account in Mark's Gospel, those on the boat intuited they were "going down." In a contemplative interpretation they were dropping down to the core of their being, to core of care, the bottomless depths of what we call God.

With the coming of evening that same day, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us cross over to the other side". And leaving the crowd behind they took him, just as he was, in the boat; and there were other boats with him. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, "Master, do you not care? We are going down!" And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Quiet now! Be calm!" And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, "Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?" They were filled with awe and said to one another, "Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him."
(Mark 4:35 - 41)

We can look beyond conjurer's accomplishment usually associated with the telling -- where wind and sea obey the invitation of Jesus to "Quiet now! Be calm!" -- to another way of looking, namely contemplative reflection. Contemplative looking might see the invitation referring to the journey of mind and spirit within us through worries and frets to a more profound traverse of God's loving passage through our reality -- both inner and outer.

We are often in turmoil, seldom in respite. Our mind needs rest. Our spirit, trust. Things are seldom what they seem to be. More likely, we have written a horror story that we become terrified of -- even as we continue its composition.

The raft, the other side, the shore -- these images invite us into the passage we long to make. We always begin, if we dare begin, in fear. As we continue we experience fear, not so much as a paralyzing thing, but as a companion slowly transforming into benevolent guide through the journey. It is a spiritual journey traversing one shore across ourselves to another shore beyond what we thought was ourselves. Beyond thought, beyond self -- the raft is abandoned -- we have arrived. Where? Home!

Where is home?

In 1974 Daniel Berrigan retreated to Paris in order to take time for personal healing and reflection. He had been intensely involved in resistance to the war in Vietnam, serving 18 months in prison for acts of protest. Thich Nhat Hanh was a native of Vietnam, a Buddhist monk and poet, active in the service of nonviolence. In 1974 he was living in Paris because his passage home had been denied due to his activism for peace. This book is the fruit of the encounter of these two contemplative social activists at that time and place.

[T]he core convictions of the authors continue to challenge the reader of this book to get on the raft and negotiate the current. Though the causes today seem far more ambiguous, the call to risky discipleship remains to be heeded. Still children die each day from lack of bread and basic medicine. Still women and children suffer at the hands of violent men. Nations continue to betray their sacred trust, favoring the powerful at the expense of the weak. In a globalized economy, responsibility has become so diffuse that we scarcely know where to turn. In many respects the way before us seems murkier and far less certain.

What remains impressive is to see through this book how Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh have stayed the course. Christian and Buddhist together, they inspire faithful and courageous activism rooted in a deep spiritual foundation. To join them on the raft means a dangerous ride.
(from Book Review, Currents in Theology and Mission, Dec, 2002 by Craig Nessan, Lutheran School of Theology and Mission. About, "The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward A Buddhist-Christian Awareness." By Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan. Foreword by bell hooks. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001.)

The risky ride begins with setting off from our seemingly safe yet insufficient shore. We're meant to undertake the passage. It is our common calling. Our true home is in the passage -- and in all the embarkings that follow this one. Some have tried to teach us that the passage is God. Those who think of these things have long suspected that God has no beginning and no end. They contend it is beyond our ability to fathom God -- so immense, so intimate, so right here and now, as well as the one which is emerging with diverse unity through what is taking place.

Green Canoe

I don't often get the chance any longer
to go out alone in the green canoe
and, lying in the bottom of the boat,
just drift where the breeze takes me,
down to the other end of the lake
or into some cove without my knowing
because I can't see anything over
the gunwales but sky as I lie there,
feeling the ribs of the boat as my own,
this floating pod with a body inside it...

also a mind, that drifts among clouds
and the sounds that carry over water --
a flutter of birdsong, a screen door
slamming shut-as well as the usual stuff
that clutters it, but slowed down, opened up,
like the fluff of milkweed tugged
from its husk and floating over the lake,
to be mistaken for mayflies at dusk
by feeding trout, or be carried away
to a place where the seeds might sprout.
(Poem: "Green Canoe" by Jeffrey Harrison from Feeding the Fire. Sarabande Books)

This morning, for me, the crossing is contemplative life. It is the sounds of nature, of mourning dove bird call, of the click click click of woman cutting vegetables, of vehicles passing along road, of mountain green stillness outside my window. The crossing is finding quiet now and stillness here in the passage through the core of the presence of God in unfolding reality.

We often say with intuited awareness -- "Who can this be?" -- when we find ourselves face to face with the mystery of God's emergence.

Where seeds might sprout.

Carrying us away.

Through God.

Is home.

Here.

We're already tied together.

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn has its many moons.
Summer has cool winds,
Winter its snow.
If useless thoughts do not
Cloud your mind,
Each day is the best of your life.
- Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183--1260)

Don't let anyone tell you how to tie into their version of "the only way." It's madness to claim the wink and nod of God.

The word of the Lord was addressed to me, saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
before you came to birth I consecrated you;
I have appointed you as prophet to the nations".

I said, "Ah, Lord; look, I do not know how to speak: I am a child!"
But the Lord replied,
"Do not say, 'I am a child'.
Go now to those to whom I send you
and, say whatever I command you.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to protect you --
it is the Lord who speaks!"
(from Jeremiah 1:4 - 19)

John the Baptist was an odd fellow. His task was to recognize what he himself was -- only in another -- then, make himself obsolete.

Is our purpose likewise?

What possible purpose might it serve? That's what the character asked when questioned about testimony that could hang someone.

The sounds of streams are Buddha's speech.
The colored mountains are Buddha's pure body.
Night brings eighty-four thousand poems of Buddha.
Listen, and someday you may awaken.
- Su Shih (1031-1101)

Every cell of the body wants to understand what we are doing here.

Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove "that nests in a hole in the cliff", keeping watch at the entrance "like the sparrow that finds a home". There like the turtledove hide your little ones, the fruit of your chaste love. Press your lips to the fountain, "draw water from the wells of your Saviour; for this is the spring flowing out of the middle of paradise, dividing into four rivers", inundating devout hearts, watering the whole earth and making it fertile.
Run with eager desire to this source of life and light, all you who are vowed to God's service. Come, whoever you may be, and cry out to him with all the strength of your heart. "O indescribable beauty of the most high God and purest radiance of eternal light! Life that gives all life, light that is the source of every other light, preserving in everlasting splendour the myriad flames that have shone before the throne of your divinity from the dawn of time! Eternal and inaccessible fountain, clear and sweet stream flowing from a hidden spring, unseen by mortal eye! None can fathom your depths nor survey your boundaries, none can measure your breadth, nothing can sully your purity. From you flows "the river which gladdens the city of God" and makes us cry out with joy and thanksgiving in hymns of praise to you, for we know by our own experience that "with you is the source of life, and in your light we see light".
(from writings of St Bonaventure, "With you is the source of life") http://www.universalis.com/readings.htm

Holy hearts long to be what Sacred Heart purports to see.

The peace and reconciliation between one and all.

God's being springs from here. We are grateful for being brought here.

Without a jot of ambition left
I let my nature flow where it will.
There are ten days of rice in my bag
And, by the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
Who prattles of illusion or nirvana?
Forgetting the equal dusts of name and fortune,
Listening to the night rain on the roof of my hut,
I sit at ease, both legs stretched out.
- Ryokan (1757-1831) (http://www.dailyzen.com/)

My father came here. Today is the anniversary of his transition from here to a deeper mystery of here. I honor his coming and his going.

The Lord shall write in the book of the nations:
"Here is their birthplace".
They will sing as in joyful processions:
"All my being springs from you".
(from Psalm 87, Thursday Lauds)

New aspirations might sound like: "From your being, here!" Or: "In your being here!" And: "In gratitude for bringing me here!"

There is no place like here. To see where we are is to appreciate who we are. Such appreciation is the beginning of accepting knowledge. Accepting knowledge -- with all its majestic and terrifying implication -- is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is full appreciation of what is here.

Remembering my father, I recall e.e. cummings' poem:

my father moved through dooms of love

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
(from poem, "my father moved through dooms of love," by e.e. cummings)

When we look, glancing with attentive presence, shines out "here," calling for our care.

St Thomas More (1477 - 1535)
He was born in London, the son of a judge, and himself became an eminent lawyer. He married twice, and had four children. He was a humanist and a reformer, and his book, Utopia, depicting a society regulated by the natural virtues, is still read today.
Thomas More was a close friend of King Henry VIII. As a judge, he was famous for his incorruptibility and impartiality, and he was made Lord Chancellor -- the highest legal position in England -- in 1529.
When Henry VIII demanded a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Thomas More opposed him. He resigned the chancellorship in 1532 and retired from public life; but he could not retire from his reputation, and so it was demanded that he take an oath to support the Act of Succession, which effectively repudiated papal religious authority. He refused, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After the execution of John Fisher, he was tried on the charge of high treason for denying the KingÂ?s supreme headship of the Church, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He went to his execution, on 6 July 1535, with a clear conscience and a light heart; he told the spectators that he was still "the king's good servant -- but God's first", and carefully adjusted his beard before he was beheaded.
He wrote a number of devotional works, some of the best of them while in prison awaiting trial. He fought his fight without acrimony, telling his judges that he wished that "we may yet hereafter in Heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation". (http://www.universalis.com/)

We are complex beings -- even if we consider God to be the simplist of Being Itself. And in this complexity we are called to serve. And serve we will -- always aware of implications and consequences, should such grace be available to us.

God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping. (Thomas More, to his daughter Margaret, in Robert Bolt's screenplay "A Man for all Seasons", 1966)

When we run away into here, we are likely -- hurting and winded -- to arrive as the place where our origin is always ground for us.

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love
(Poem by e.e.cummings)

Here is where I long to be.

One thing is not the other. Some fear the distinctions and separations they've carefully cultivated over years will be dissolved by a vision that is not so separative nor hierarchical.

There is no other. There is only each one of us attempting to hear and respond to the call of love. Of truth. Of freedom. Of God. This is unfamiliar ground to many of us. But it is ground under our feet, in our being, and before our eyes.

The mind cannot seek the mind.
You ignore what is real and hold on to
That which is unreal, then try to find
What it is. You think you are the mind and,
Therefore, ask how it is to be controlled.

If the mind exists,
It can be controlled,
But it does not.
Understand this truth by inquiry;
Seek the real, the Self
- Ramana Maharshi

Perhaps the real cannot be experienced by the mind -- especially if as Ramana Maharshi says, the mind does not exist. Some say the experience of God is beyond mind. They call it faith, or hope, or love. What is meant by these three words is often different in the formulations of different perspectives. But there is a common thread -- namely, the presence of what some call God. Others might say -- that which is.

Happy the people that knows the cry of praise!
They will walk in the light of your presence, Lord,
and rejoice in your name all the day --
for you are the splendour of their strength,
and by your good will our standard is held high.
(from Psalm 89)

Today is Summer Solstice, first day of summer in northern hemisphere. In the north, today is longest day of the year; tonight, shortest night. We observe these realities, as we attend to the sound of birdcall, or neighbor calling cat in from field.

I learn to have compassion on those who cause and receive suffering brought about by those who think they must divide, exclude, and harm.

There is a place to go to seek, and find, our common ground.

Look up. Look down. Look around.

This is it.

We are here.

Open.

Morning dew on way to cabin. No place to step God isn't.

For twenty seven years
I've always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.
- Kokuin (10th century)

We are strangers to one another lost in thought that says, "We are strangers to one another." Every day the tension -- the instantaneous decision mind has to make -- this is not me, I am not that, I am this, that thou art.

God, when you set out in the sight of your people,
when you crossed the wilderness -- the earth shook.
The heavens sent down dew at your coming --
(from Psalm 68)

We come to have compassion for the suffering involved in separating oneself from everything and everyone in this existence, in this world. We often choose to spit out, to spew -- rather than not to split away, to feel the dew as we pilgrimage through wilderness.

We are new and ever-present wilderness.

God is passing through our midst.

Look under your feet.

The war is over. Occupation is going badly. Do not confuse fact with story.

Not to see what is right there before our face is to believe the story invented by someone else.

Don't believe the story; face what is there.

The great path is clearly before your eyes,
But the ignorant who are deluded
And confused cannot recognize it.
It is in one thought of the mind.
So why search for it elsewhere?
- Pao-chih

Of course it is impressive that one of the great deceptions of our age is continuing (as we speak) in Iraq and Washington DC. Here's how Thom Hartmann puts it:
Every time the media - or a Democrat - uses the phrase "War in Iraq" they are promoting one of Karl Rove's most potent Republican Party frames.

There is no longer a war against Iraq.

It ended in May of 2003, when George W. Bush stood below a "Mission Accomplished" sign aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and correctly declared that we had "victoriously" defeated the Iraqi army and overthrown their government.

Our military machine is tremendously good at fighting wars - blowing up infrastructure, killing opposing armies, and toppling governments. We did that successfully in Iraq, in a matter of a few weeks. We destroyed their army, wiped out their air defenses, devastated their Republican Guard, seized their capitol, arrested their leaders, and took control of their government. We won the war. It's over.

What we have now is an occupation of Iraq.

The occupation began when the war ended, and continues to this day. According to our own Pentagon estimates, at least ninety five percent of those attacking our soldiers are Iraqi civilians who view themselves as anti-occupation fighters. And last week both the Defense Minister and the Vice President of Iraq asked us for a specific date on which the occupation would end.

The distinction between "war" and "occupation" is politically critical for 2006 because wars can be won or lost, but occupations most honorably end by redeployments.
(Reclaim the Issues - "Occupation, Not War"-- by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, June 19, 2006 by CommonDreams.org)

Deception is the job-skill of deceivers. Calling something what it is not is not mere lie -- it is uncreating what is true. If God is what is true, the (impossible) attempt to undo what is true is the antithesis of God. It cannot be done. But -- the story can be told in such a way that God (not undone) is replaced by the story in the minds of believers who do not experience the truth of God but who glom onto the substitute story.

It is said by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters:
Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous -- that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'.

It is a dangerous time.

Some find it difficult to know what to think.

It's sad when we are convinced to deny truth in order to believe the story.

Can anyone make the conversion? Drop lie, find truth. End story, face God. Let dissolve ego, recognize authentic self.

No wonder conversion is so feared.

Chris today said a chaplain is like a bank -- whatever denomination is put into it, it returns equal value and worth to the transaction.

We need to argue better.

Tell truth.

Not story.

In John 18:38, Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" Silence followed. Only the bare, present face of the man was seen. Pilate was given only Jesus' face, no explanation, no story.

Like Pilate, like Jesus, we must face the truth.

Peanut Butter Swirl ice cream with rhubarb comport. A fine ending to day.

Although we know that a frozen pond is entirely water,
The sun's heat is necessary to melt it.
Although we awaken to the fact
That an ordinary person is Buddha,
The power of dharma is necessary to
Make it permeate our cultivation.
When the pond has melted,
The water flows freely.
When falsity is extinguished,
The mind will be numinous and dynamic and
Then its function of penetrating brightness will manifest.
- Kuei-feng

The earth, Pannikar writes, is animal. It does not 'have' a soul -- it is animate.

He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone. (Mark 4: 34)

We tell story. We live story. But we seldom, if ever, comprehend story. The power of story is enough to accomplish much -- even the most nefarious goals -- just by sticking to your story.
What's most impressive about Mr. Rove, however, is not his ruthlessness, it's his unshakable faith in the power of a story. The story he's stuck with, Iraq, is a loser, but he knows it won't lose at the polls if there's no story to counter it. And so he tells it over and over, confident that the Democrats won't tell their own. And they don't - whether about Iraq or much else. The question for the Democrats is less whether they tilt left, right or center, than whether they can find a stirring narrative that defines their views, not just the Republicans'.
(from "Karl Rove Beats the Democrats Again," by Frank Rich. Published on Sunday, June 18, 2006 by the New York Times)

It becomes ludicrous to follow political snake's oil.

Rather, I go to brunch with my son. Before that I attend church at Chestnut Street Baptist. I got a pen and bookmark upon exiting. Context, for me, matters. Now, as chaplain, context places me where I will learn. They celebrate father's day with pastor preaching on Psalm 127.

March 8

Every so often my father comes over
for a visit he hangs his overcoat and hat
on my hat rack I brief him on recent
developments and serve us coffee
he is surprised that I like to cook
once when he made an omelette
he flipped it in the air much to my delight
and it landed on the floor yes that
was the summer of 1952, he remembered
the high breakers and how fearless
I was running into the ocean anyway
the important thing is to see you doing
so well he said and took his coat and hat
and left before I remembered he was dead
(Poem: "March 8" by David Lehman from The Evening Sun: A Journal in Poetry. c.Scribner Poetry.)

What I value in dreams is the showing up.

The visiting.

Earth alive.

Nothing is true but that which is in itself true.

We want truth, but we settle most times for our prejudices and opinions even when we suspect there's no real foundation for them. Truth waits. It knows we will come round sooner or later. Whether in life or in death. We'll see and affirm what is true. And yet, giving ourselves to what is true remains always a radical act.

There are two forms of error now prevailing among followers of Zen, laymen as well as monks. The one thinks that there are wonderful things hidden in words and phrases, and those who hold this view try to learn many words and phrases. The second goes to the other extreme, forgetting that words are the pointing finger, showing one where to locate the moon. Only when these two erroneous views are done away with is there a chance for real advancement in the mastery of Zen.
- D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966)

We ask: "Where is Christ? Who is Jesus? What is the correct way to behave in the face of the mystery of God's presence in this world of matter, creation, and human thought?

We get no answer. We look around. We wonder -- Is today a good day to die? It either is, yes. Or it isn't, no.

Jesus said, "Again, you have learnt how it was said to our ancestors: You must not break your oath, but must fulfil your oaths to the Lord. But I say this to you: do not swear at all, either by heaven, since that is God's throne; or by the earth, since that is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, since that is the city of the great king. Do not swear by your own head either, since you cannot turn a single hair white or black. All you need say is "Yes" if you mean yes, "No" if you mean no; anything more than this comes from the evil one."
(Matthew 5:33 - 37)

A woman asked at the shop why I would want to be chaplain at the prison. I tell her it's the same as asking whether today is the day to commit suicide. She was confused by this. I told her Camus was right about suicide being the only serious philosophical problem. Every statement about preference, affirmation, or negation is a meditation about suicide. Will I live? Should I? How? And why?

"The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions, and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of the condemned man." (from Sartre analysis of Mersault, in Literary and Philosophical Essays, 1943)

I choose to live until I die. When my death occurs, it will be time. Until my life is taken from me I will have to consider -- (from time to time, even without stress or duress) -- that my life is in my hands. Until then, I pray with ambiguity the words, "Take my life!"

Please.

Do with it that which is in itself true.

All this will soon be over. Thought-forms will dissolve as ego dissolves. What you are will be what you present.

Rujing said: "Studying Zen is dropping off body and mind. Without depending on the burning of incense, bowing, chanting Buddha's names, repentance, or sutra reading, devote yourself to just sitting."
Dogen: "What is dropping off body and mind?"
Rujing said: "Dropping of body and mind is zazen. When you just sit, you are free from the five sense desires and the five hindrances."
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Shahab said it at conversation. He said: "Time right now is slowing us down because we're hurting each other."

At the speed of light is light itself.

The ropes of death were around me,
the agonies of the underworld were upon me.
I came upon trouble and anguish,
and I called on the name of the Lord:
"Lord, free my soul".
(Psalm 114 (116A)Universalis.com)

We must stop hurting each other.

Not only is nothing as it seems, everything is as it is.

Wise listeners, the wisdom of enlightenment
Is inherent in each of us.
We fail to recognize it because
Of delusion of mind;
To know the essence of Mind
Seek the teachings of the enlightened.
- Hui-neng (638-713)

Jesus told the truth about life. He said "I am it." This was not a triumphal statement. Saying "I am it" is a statement of profound humility spoken by Jesus so that each of us might repeat it.

Practice now: "I...am...it."

This is not a self-referential statement. This is an utterance pointing out the way to recognize and realize what is in and of itself true.

Nothing is as it seems.

Everything is as it is.

God is "I am."

We are "it."

Ready?

Speak now!

I...
am...
it!

No more than knowing the unknowable. That's what Paul said at conversation tonight. Also, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Look. There was one who was enlightened with the sound of a bamboo being struck and another who clarified his mind upon seeing peach blossoms. Is the bamboo bright or dull, deluded or enlightened? Are peach blossoms shallow or deep, wise or foolish? Although flowers blossom year after year, not everyone who sees them is enlightened. When a bamboo cracks, not everyone who hears it realizes the way.

Enlightenment and clarity of the mind occur only in response to the sustained effort of study and practice. Endeavoring in the way ripens the conditions of your practice. It is not that the sound of the bamboo is sharp or the color of the blossoms is vivid. Although the sound of the bamboo is wondrous, it is heard at the moment when itÃ?’s hit by a pebble. Although the color of the blossoms is beautiful, they do not open by themselves but unfold in the light of springtime. Studying the way is like this. You attain the way when conditions come together. Although you have your own capacity, you practice the way with the combined strength of the community. So you should practice and search with one mind with others.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

The effort of study and practice is likely to place us at the origin of unknowing. Any effort to understand why things are so, or why someone made the decision they made will lead us to a silent stillness filled with significant emptiness.

In that emptiness we come to glimpse our true nature.

What we see is the way we are.

We practice the way.

One mind with others.

St Anthony of Padua is patron saint of lost and found.

Give up all questions except one: "Who am I?" After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

We have lost our way.

Find us out.

The fellow asked what denomination. I said "non de nom" (of no name). The God of Judeo Christian heritage was a no-name God. That's my tradition.

Sages are benevolent without trying,
Trusted without speaking.
They gain without seeking,
Succeed without striving.
They take naturalness to heart,
Preserve ultimate reality,
Embrace the Way,
And promote sincerity,
So the whole world follows them as echoes
Respond to sounds;
As shadows imitate forms.
What they work on is the root.
- Wen-tzu

The root in soil of soul is nameless.

See the face.

Hear no name.

Try Neti Neti.

A new understanding of Trinity?

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti). (Neti neti, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

At Quaker Meeting in Children's Chapel the rain stopped. Wind swung to the southeast. I attended, finally, to breath. Inbreath, originator. Thin place between inhalation and exhalation, embodier. Outbreath, transformer.

We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity there is no intrusion of any alien element or of anything from outside, nor is the Trinity a blend of creative and created being. It is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and undivided in its active power, for the Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the holy Trinity is preserved. Accordingly, in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Holy Spirit.
(from A letter by St Athanasius)

Above, through, and in. Not just above. Not merely through. Not only in. This is the practice of neti neti -- not this not that -- but above, through, and in all of it.

In Guantanamo, the American base in Cuba, three men commit suicide this week.
[S]aid Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based advocacy group that oversees lawyers representing many of the detainees[:] "This is an act of desperation because they have no way to prove their innocence. A system without justice is a system without hope."

The detainees had apparently used their clothing and sheets to fashion makeshift nooses in what military officials believe was a coordinated suicide pact. All left suicide notes written in Arabic, the officers said.

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," said Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the commander at Guantanamo. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
("3 terror suspects found hanged, Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay", by James Risen and Tim Golden, New York Times, Sunday, June 11, 2006)

The Rear Admiral tries to identify suicide -- taking one's life without taking another's -- as something waged against the United States. It is a convenient analysis, proving again that the US is victim of this new asymmetrical treachery. Nothing is said about the three men who died. They never existed. They were "enemy." "Other." Of no value but to kill themselves. The admiral would probably feel that Jesus was this type -- an annoying gap embodying empty wholeness in middle of Holy Trinity, a nano-second of clarity between what comes in and what goes out.

We can never truly define God in words. All we can do is say, it isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to understand the nature of the Divine. (Wikipedia)

I pray for rest for these men. I pray for their families. I pray for all of us who try to explain away the mysteries of human life and death, warfare and greed, sanctity and hope.

Try neti neti.

Become the trinity of breath.

Do not explain away life.

Holy Scripture has fallen from the pages of Sacred Books onto pieces of poems and dreams crumpled in corners of pockets and bags of contemporary prophets unrecognized, even by themselves, during a time of changing sanctity.

The illusion we are most fond of is that we are safely tucked under the protection of something other -- call that State, Nation, God, or Belief.

If you think that you have cut off illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying how illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut the stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzen Zuiho (1682--1769)

The blade of grass growing with weeds in our minds is untroubled by our belief we control by cutting.

Hamas, Israel, Al Qaeda, United States, Muslims, Christians, Conservatives, Liberals, Cynics, Optimists, Believers, Doubters -- cut, cut, cut.

Now you are so old that you are free to hope.
Nothing needs to be considered except the root
of your desire, which has become that
crystal sliver of pain that all the doctors told you
was a chronic headache but you suspect might be
the original nerve still pulsing, the ache
that has been with you, always.
(Stanza from poem, "There is a Woman Standing on a Terrace" by Eleanor Lerman from Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds. Sarabande Books.)

To be free to hope is to have seen the desolate end of all the plans and schemes we've constructed to save, to be safe, and to salvifically anoint a particular way of thinking, point of view, a particular person, or a set of beliefs -- that is the, or only, or truth that appertains to everyone, by hook or by crook.

We become free to hope only after these deaths.

In the novel I'm reading, the monk out from his monastery prays for a woman critical after stroke. He ends the "Hail Mary" with "...pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen." It is the adding of that "s" onto the word "death" that catches my attention. The "s" is not usually in the recitation of the prayer to Mary. And yet, it seems to belong.

We do not die once. We die over and over. Whether or not there is life after life, or whether we have multiple lives (seriatim, or simultaneous -- either of which is as mysterious as a singular one-time event) -- still, deaths are our passage through life.

The loving melt of attention helps dissolve illusion. The longing to see and be what is real and true -- the desire to evaporate and disappear into the loving attention of life itself -- this is what falls with rain this Saturday morning.

As poet Eleanor Lerman wrote:
Nothing needs to be considered except the root
of your desire,...
...the original nerve still pulsing, the ache
that has been with you, always.

This consideration is holy scripture.

Writing root desire is prophetic utterance.

Worded by men and women with no office, no platform, no pulpit.

Just their expression in communion with one another.

Root hope.

He had written "loose" in the text of his recurrent dream -- but he spoke and read it as "lose." When I told him of the switch he was making, he was a bit dazed. Was he losing (as he thought), or was he loosing (as he might actually be doing?)

There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth;
Eyes fail to see it;
It has no voice for ears to detect;
To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature,
For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air;
It is not Mind, nor Buddha;
Absolutely quiet, and yet
Illuminating in a mysterious way,
It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed.
It is Dharma truly beyond form and sound;
It is Tao having nothing to do with words.
- Dai-o Kokushi

We can't be trusted to comprehend what we tell ourselves. We need the listening of community.

V
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
(Poem: selection from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," by William Wordsworth.)

Not yet being able to speak (to be an infant) is a curious privilege.

We can not afford such a privilege.

We must speak.

Beyond form and sound.

Our selves.

Jon arrives from Chicago. Red Sox beat Yankees. A murderer in Iraq is murdered by American bomb. Rain swells streams and ponds in Maine.

By day the sun shines,
And the warrior in his armor shines.
By night the moon shines,
And the master shines in meditation.
But day and night
The one who is awake
Shines in the radiance of the spirit.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada

History, that science of facts and figures, is coming indoors. The chaos of the world resembles the chaos of the individual mind. Soon it will be unnecessary to calculate any external data; only interior imagination will reveal the world to be what it is imagined to be. Bullets and baseballs, airplanes and flood points -- will not be needed. Unconcealed concern and human heart filled with joy will be telltale signs of where we are headed.

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi boosted the confidence of U.S. officials and the new Iraqi government as they moved into the fourth year of warfare. (By JOHN F. BURNS, New York Times, 8June06)

Presidents used to announce great moments for the people of the country. To be the source of announcing another murder in an ugly war says a lot about where you hope the down card might fit in your draw to an inside straight.

For the rest of us -- in a world torn between insanity and sanctity, we are surprised by the similarities.

"...the truest revelation of the endless fall through the self toward God is a sense of genuine nothingness. This "humility" is no affectation; it is no false modesty calculated to ease the usual traffic of egos; it is simply realism. I am nothing. I have looked within, long and hard, for the soul that would hasten into God, and in the end I was not there. What is left when we get to the bottom of the self, when we have exhausted all our tricks? Real prayer is a disappearance, a surrender to the embrace of deepening mystery, in darkness. In that darkness, finally, God alone is. And God is infinite surprise."
(Michael, writing to Brother James, pp.192-3, in novel "The Monk Downstairs," by Tim Farrington, c.2002)

Life, as we know it, just might be a dream.

It will be quite a surprise to wake up.

Zen koan says old monk with bowls still does not know the last word. He is nescient because there is no last word in impermanence. There's only the doing and saying the very next thing to do and say as each moment appears and presents itself.

Climbing Green Cliff Mountain in Yung Chia

Taking a little food, a light walking stick,
I wander up to my home in quiet mystery,
The path along streams winding far away
Onto ridge-tops, no end to this wonder at
Slow waters silent in their froze beauty
And bamboo glistening at heart with frost,
Cascades scattering a confusion of spray
And broad forests crowding distant cliffs.
- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433 C.E.)

Jesus knew Jujitsu. The weaponless style of Jujitsu, the gentle art of self-defense, where the self is no longer there to be defended, was perfect for Jesus. Everyone, it seems, tried to throw him, trick him, lure him into their party.

Next they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to catch him out in what he said. These came and said to him, "Master, we know you are an honest man, that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man's rank means nothing to you, and that you teach the way of God in all honesty."...
(from Mark 12:13 - 17)

Jesus must have thought them naive. The way of God is an impossible teaching. Jesus must have thought himself a fool those times when profound teachings appeared through his eyes, hands, or mouth.

Games with God

I played, a child both wild and meek,
with God at games of hide-and-seek.
I searched in vain the usual places
and found a thousand saddened faces.

"Your God is hidden in heaven," they said;
"You'll see him only when you're dead."
How could I make them understand
God often took me by the hand?
Then as my tears began to fall
I felt his touch and heard his call,
"I never hid from you at all."

I played with God a game of tag,
his mantle flying like a flag.
I gave my God a good head start
but caught him running in my heart.
I played with God the game "I Spy,"
but lost him with my fading eye,
till playmate God in his pure kindness,
printed his image on my blindness.
(Poem: "Games with God," by Virginia Hamilton Adair, from Beliefs and Blasphemies. Random House.)

Maybe Jesus embodied that blind image -- no reflection coming back to him to distract him with narcissism. He went straight ahead saying yes as his mother had gone ahead saying yes to the foolish invitation to be the image of the unseen in the visible world.

The difficulty with life is that it makes little sense without saying "yes" to what could easily be "no." What we perceive is partly determined by our willingness to perceive and transform, like a somersault -- all of a single movement twisting an impossible contortion while airborne to land squarely on the ground of assent. We are made for affirmation.

Now will saying "yes" get you in trouble at times? Will saying "yes" lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes" begins things. Saying "yes" is how things grow. Saying "yes" leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say "yes."
(from 2006 Commencement Address, Stephen Colbert, June 3, 2006, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois)

At church this morning in Belfast, exiting after mass, the prayer arises: "Thank you for bringing us here!"

"Here" is a wonderful place. "Here" is a wonderful person.

Gratitude, compassion, and suchness -- this is what it means to be here.

At conversation tonight Saskia said, "Nowness is the nearness."

Come...

Here!

His dog lived. He died. His red truck hit utility pole before the sun rose above Melvin Heights, about 400 yards down the road, where hill ends and pond begins. It was early. Still asleep, I must not have heard it.

Since sky and earth are mindless,
They last forever.
What has mind has limits.
A person who has attained
The Path is like this too.
In the midst of no activity,
She carries out her activities,
Accepting all unfavorable
And favorable circumstances
With a compassionate heart.
- Yunmen (864-949)

Maybe that's why everything felt flat and deflated all day. It puts thoughts and worries about money in a perspective barely important. However it works, I hope his spirit got to rest a while in chapel/zendo as new journey begins.

We didn't know of his death until arriving home a few minutes ago. All we knew was we had to drive around Bald Mountain to get to town this morning. That, and no electricity when we awoke. Tonight coming home -- the brokenness of Molyneaux and Barnestown Rd/Hosmer Pond Rd when we passed.

I write this to honor the fact of it. This man, once alive, now dead, passing through our neighborhood. From this quietness, a quiet prayer. For him.

The mercy of God.

Looking and listening are two doors into church. Church is the practice of seeing and hearing. To the question: "Are you a church-goer?" Comes the response: "I look; I listen." It is the birthing of community.

Cold Cliff’s remoteness is what I love
No one travels this way
Clouds lie around on the peaks
A lone gibbon howls on the ridge
What else do I cherish
It’s good to grow old content
Cold and heat change my appearance
The pearl of my mind stays safe
- Han shan

Maybe all we can be for another is a door through which to pass on the way home. To the man whose daughter is depressed, to the woman whose marriage is in doubt; to the elder whose brain is invaded by some growth without usefulness, to the inmate whose crime replays every night -- a window is needed to see through, a definition of home is called for that excludes nowhere. Each must feel their way through.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
(Poem: "since feeling is first" by e. e. cummings from 100 selected poems. © Grove Weidenfeld.)

At the Opera House in Camden a man spoke of his near-death experience. Something was missing. For me, death is not a going home. Nor is God that from which we come and to whom we return. For me, God is home and home is God -- and we've never left, thus, no return.

This morning began the Sunday Quaker Meeting at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel in Rockport. The wind blew hard. Rain fell strong. Out on the bay a sailboat tacked hard to port. In the sound of foghorn and sight of swaying trees the arrival of Holy Spirit seemed scripted. Afterwards Arnie said in this country we cultivate illness and ignore causes. He gives us Pema Chodron tapes on Living With Uncertainty.

I am never not in church. Even if I do not frequent the buildings as much as once I did -- what I found there once has traveled well through the doors and windows of being with one another.

For this, I concur with Charlotte's postcard -- it is gratitude, and compassion, and suchness we serve.

Happy birthday to us!

The spirit of holiness. Of compassion. Of wisdom

So the story goes. It is our birthing day when these appearances come upon us.

My hut settled among neighbors,
I ignore the noise of horses and carts.
You ask how I get along;
My mind remains wide,
So my place is naturally remote.
- Tao Yuan Ming (365 - 427)

It's not what anyone believes about us that matters. It's what we are, matters. The bare, mere, reality -- unadorned, unexplained, and clearly visible -- this is what matters.

The unspiritual are interested only in what is unspiritual, but the spiritual are interested in spiritual things. It is death to limit oneself to what is unspiritual; life and peace can only come with concern for the spiritual.
(Romans 8:5-)

Let's call spiritual what is: in itself true -- that which is what it is. Then unspiritual is that which is not what it is. Concern for the spiritual, in this calling, is concern for what is not other than itself. The "itself" is that which presents itself as what is itself true.

Itself, about this, let's say: God's life come to visit becomes God's life come to stay.

Spiritual is not contrasted with material. This is not a longing for the non-physical. Rather, spirituality adheres physical and metaphysical, material and immaterial -- in a singularity of what is itself true.

Spirituality infuses holiness, compassion, and wisdom into what is as it is.

On Pentecost, this spirit makes itself manifest.

Birthing each.

One.

Of us.

As itself.

Destroy the woman. Destroy the child. What has changed in two thousand years?

What we fear is life, not death. Death is easy. Life is difficult. As the Buddhists say: "There is suffering in life."

Whether you are an innocent beginner or seasoned adept, you must show some spirit! Don't vainly memorize other people's sayings: a little bit of reality is better than a lot of illusion. Otherwise you'll just go on deceiving yourself.
- Yunmen (864-949)

A news item tells about another shooting of non-combatants in Iraq. This time a pregnant woman in the process of going to hospital to give birth. She, her to-be child, and her female cousin were shot dead by American soldiers because they were driving on the wrong road.

It makes me wonder. What is taking place? What is it that has to be killed in order to satisfy the security needs of an occupying army? Obviously, in this case, a woman about to give birth must die so that, temporarily, some soldiers might feel their lives are safe from the threat of harm.

Of course the soldiers are frightened. It is war. Their country went into Iraq to make the world right. Their compatriots are murdered and mutilated every day. It is understandable their behavior will deteriorate to primal survival -- anything that threatens their survival must be destroyed.

"Sartre tried to prove that consciousness in itself is nothing until it has perceived something. Because consciousness is always conscious of something. And this 'something' is provided just as much by ourselves as by our surroundings. We are partly instrumental in deciding what we perceive by selecting what is significant for us."
"Could you give me an example?"
"Two people can be present in the same room and yet experience it quite differently. This is because we contribute our own meaning -- or our own interests -- when we perceive our surroundings. A woman who is pregnant might think she sees other pregnant women everywhere she looks. That is not because there were no pregnant women before, but because now that she is pregnant she sees the world through different eyes. An escaped convict may see policemen everywhere..."
(pp. 458-459, in Sophie's World, A Novel About the History of Philosophy, by Jostein Gaarder, c.1991, trans by Paulette Moller, 1994)

Soldiers see their death everywhere.

In the shooting incident, which happened on Tuesday but was only fully reported on Thursday, pregnant Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, and her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan were killed.
The pregnant woman's brother, who was driving the car, was wounded by broken glass.
"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans," Khalid Nisaif Jassim said.
"It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped.
Nabiha Nisaif Jassim's mother-in-law mourns her death
Relatives of the victims are in mourning
"God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."
He said attempts to save the baby's life failed.
Local police told AFP news agency: "They took a wrong road just behind the hospital which is now closed because it is next to a military road used by the Americans."
US forces said: "As the vehicle neared the troop location and failed to stop despite repeated visual and auditory signals, disabling shots were fired into the vehicle.
(BBC News, Last Updated: Thursday, 1 June 2006, 12:33 GMT 13:33 UK)

I join the lament. For the two women. For the dead upon arrival new-unborn. For their families. For the soldiers. For their compatriots killed daily. For innocent Iraqis killed daily. For combatant Iraqis killed daily. For the whole sorry mess. For all of it, I lament.

But for the President, Vice-president, House, and Senate of the United States I do not lament. For them I have a more particular feeling. I feel they have disgraced something important. They have sullied trust and truth. I am embarrassed. I am angry. I am at a loss to say why it is no one has the insight, courage, or ability to replace the invidious with individuals and actions we might be able to respect.

Something odd is taking place. Feelings of inauthentic and even illegitimate executive leadership haunt the country. Religious leaders sidle up to political power and cast their influence on intellectually valid turned morally suspect behavior -- war, patriotism, payoffs, pork, power, money, and a turgid respectability. They have trumped Jesus. He is not fit for their club.

We have been blind-sided by a coup d'etat so fundamentally flawed and ideologically inane that even both the most cynical and trusting in our midst have been fooled.

How long can something so odd occupy us?

A young woman pregnant. She wonders what God wants.

The substance of a sage
Is nameless and cannot be spoken of;
The empty door of truth as it really is
Cannot be tarried in.
- Pai-chang (720--814)

Truth is to be passed through. Like the time Mary spent with Elizabeth, both pregnant. These two women are to be passed through.

Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months and then went back home. (Luke 1:56)

We don't stay forever. Just like a woman doesn't stay pregnant forever.

Do you want to know what God wants?

Pass through.

Stay real.

Lay wreaths. Say prayers. Salute smartly. Cry at "Taps." Let the day have its dignity. Death of men and women in war deserves a pause, a time of acknowledgement. It's only right. Who would choose to die if there were an alternative?

The realm of non-thinking
Can hardly be fathomed by cognition;
In the sphere of genuine suchness
There is neither "I" nor "other."
- Yunmen (864-949)

We're not ready, it seems, for the consideration of suchness offered by Yunmen. We are affixed, so it seems, by the obvious duality of our experience -- that of "I' and "other." And so, it appears, it has been a long time.

Buddha tried to help see it another way -- teaching a path through seeming separation by means of an awake interdependence. Christ became another way so that we might become what Christ became. They were distinct individuals pointing out undividedness.

There are millions pointing to something other than the point of Buddha and Christ. (They are not alone -- many along with them intend the same realization.) Buddha and Christ pointed "as" (not "at") -- they became the way, an embodied, organic, life-filled way. The million others stand at a distance. They point away from themselves to a methodology, a war-plan, an ideology to combat the difficulty found in our psyches -- the terrible truth that we are not other than one another.

Millions do not want to hear this truth; there is no profit to it, no acquisition to set apart, no special privilege to hold some better and more important that the others. These are prophets of war. They have taken possession of the earth. Wrongly, as it will turn out. Still, they position themselves, they posture, and they prevent a difficult truth from being seen in the world.

Children,
you have already overcome these false prophets,
because you are from God and you have in you
one who is greater than anyone in this world;
as for them, they are of the world,
and so they speak the language of the world
and the world listens to them.
But we are children of God,
and those who know God listen to us;
those who are not of God refuse to listen to us.
This is how we can tell
the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.

My dear people,
let us love one another
since love comes from God
and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Anyone who fails to love can never have known God,
because God is love.
God's love for us was revealed
when God sent into the world his only Son
so that we could have life through him;
this is the love I mean:
not our love for God,
but God's love for us when he sent his Son
to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.
(from 1 John 4:1 - 10)

The great sacrifice is the death of division.

Is this the Christian mystery that hardly anyone -- not even a Christian -- understands? Instigating and perpetuating division is the easy joy of the false prophet. That course of misdirection is cause of suffering and distress.

Rather, restorative integrity -- inviting the manifestation of our true nature, our true identity and longing, the undivided wholeness of creation/humanity/divinity -- is the difficult practice of the community of prayer, meditation, and useful healing activity.

"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are."
(- G.K. Chesterton, in "Introduction to The Defendant")

The lover of truth, the lover of God, and the lover of all-which-is, is the person who is in true community with brothers and sisters, sentient beings and heavenly angels. We are good. All of us. And we are not at odds with one another. Do not fall under the spell of those fomenting the opposite.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
(Chief Seattle)

We shudder at the presence of those among us who would attempt, by acts and rhetoric, to separate us from the root wholeness of our interconnection. They are among us. Listen carefully for them. They are cunning and they are shrouded in the disguise of decency. Our task is to see through the disguise and not be fooled into believing their misdirection.

We are bound to -- we are joined with -- one another. Death in the cause of revealing indissoluble reality, the reality of non-disintegretive unity, of non-decomposable being and existence -- this truth of non-separateness will not decline, not fall, will not fail. To die in service of life for all is a sacrifice worth noting with honor and prayer. This kind of death is non-taking of life. This sacrifice gives one's life for one's life.

Today we consider such honor and prayer.

We remember those fallen.

That we might stand.

In their place.

With one another.

Is anything what it seems to be?

How profoundly silent is the temple of Tao!
Boundless and infinite,
It is the dwelling place of the divine.
The light-hall is wide and high,
Yet awed by silence.
Trees with colored leaves
Are flourishing and spreading.
Forgetful of words I roam and rest here.
- Ni Tsan (1301–1374)(dailyzen)

We confuse one and two.

Odd, isn't it?

We honor and pray for all deadened by war.

Gaia, Mother Earth, this May, comes green and full in Maine, New England, this weekend. It is Memorial Day Weekend.

For about thirty years I wandered,
Searching for the real Tao everywhere.
How many times did I see the trees
Grow new branches and watch the old leaves fall.
But at this moment, seeing the peach blossoms,
Suddenly there are no more doubts.
- Huang Shan-ku (1045 - 1105)

War is when human hearts and minds refuse to love. War is what hidden hate turns to when it sees itself in the mirror.

What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names --
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
(Poem: "What We Want," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening. W.W. Norton.)

We want fairness and justice. We want those for whom war is profit and power to go away, spare us the falsity of explanation, spare us the dry darkness of their souls. We want room for peace, love, and genuine freedom.

If you refuse to love, you must remain dead;
to hate your brother is to be a murderer,
1and murderers, as you know, do not have eternal life in them.
This has taught us love --
that he gave up his life for us;
and we, too, ought to give up our lives for our brothers [and sisters].
If a man who was rich enough in this world's goods
saw that one of his brothers [or sisters] was in need,
but closed his heart to him [or her],
how could the love of God be living in him?
(from 1John 3:11-17)

This Memorial Day we need to remember the deadened among us who exist with lies, burdened with murders, with blood on hands for mayhem they've created.

We also remember the unknown dead whose lives have been erased with no remorse, no recourse, with no compassion.

We want to care. And so we do.

We say no to war.

Jamais plus la guerre!

We remember the fallen.

Stand silent for them.

All those offered half-time position as chaplain, say aye.

Aye.

Saskia and I sit with inmate Buddhist group. We bring Heart Sutra, showing them the chanting.

In the night the bells of the mountain temple
Are swung by the wind from the pines.
From my bed of stone by the wintry lamp
I can hear the flowering rain of Buddha.
- Wang Wen-lu

JJ reads poem about 4am hour of the wolf -- when our secrets cry to be told.
We converse about two words: prolepsis, and prescinding.
After Meetingbrook Conversation in prison, deputy warden wants to see me. Would I?

It's a good weekend to remember the fallen. A good stretch to mull and decide.

We each imagine a world faithful to our perspective.

When given a look, take it.

Tarkovsky's "Sacrifice" moves slowly. Two nights so far and more to come.

The day was odd. Woman talking about "walk-ins" and "walk-outs." I don't understand the process of the thinking or what she described. I'm a bit uncertain about cloaked spaceships and thousand year time spent on one.

I prefer the news that Enron trial is over. The men who were in charge have been found guilty, I'll take mete of justice and sanity where found.

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the one who is listening to my discourse. That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and very alive. As for all manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place. Therefore, when you look for that one, it retreats farther and farther, when you seek that, it turns more and more the other way: this is called the "Mystery."
- Lin-chi (d.866)

We attend mass in Belfast celebrating Ascension. Breakfast muffins, eggs potatoes and toast with tea and coffee over conversation at Chase's Daily extends mystery of that which surpasses understanding. What does it mean to ascend to God?

I'm far from sure. I merely don't know. Tonight I take some rhubarb kuchen. A few squares of chocolate. Run off an essay on "Picture of Dorian Gray," for prison in morning -- and set out for bed.

I hope Jesus got home ok.

As well might we all.

Placid water. Canoeing around Curtis Island. Sunset. Cedar strip color silently alongside bell buoy clanking.

There is a meditative terrace
Left by the ancient Master Chi.
It is so high that it is always covered with white clouds.
Should the woodcutter see it, he would not recognize it; The mountain monks, however, were glad to find it.
They thought it would interest me and took me there to see it.
Throughout the night dew drops fall leisurely from the bamboos;
During the day pure breezes blow from the pine grove.
Meditation is what I used to do as the first thing;
The terrace of Master Chi inspires me even more.
- Meng Hao-jan

Mountains, sea, silence, dusk.

We are only visitors here.

Home is the passage through.

Wakefield got four outs in the 6th inning. There were two passed balls. Rodriguez came in on the second passed ball, he got on base after striking out to lead off. (The hour timer on radio shuts off game with men on 2nd and 3rd, 2-0 count on hitter.)

Your self-partiality is at
The root of all your illusions.
There aren’t any illusions
When you don’t have this
Preference for yourself.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Silence is good arrival. Everything goes on somewhere else, but here silence leaves things alone.

Philosophy in Warm Weather

Now all the doors and windows
are open, and we move so easily
through the rooms. Cats roll
on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp
climbs the pane, pausing
to rub a leg over her head.

All around physical life reconvenes.
The molecules of our bodies must love
to exist: they whirl in circles
and seem to begrudge us nothing.
Heat, Horatio, heat makes them
put this antic disposition on!

This year's brown spider
sways over the door as I come
and go. A single poppy shouts
from the far field, and the crow,
beyond alarm, goes right on
pulling up the corn.
(Poem: "Philosophy in Warm Weather," by Jane Kenyon, from The Boat of Quiet Hours. © Graywolf Press.)

Baseball might not be the solution to tensions in the Middle East. Whether Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter will gather another 1003 hits if he stays healthy to reach 3000 career hits seems less interesting than 2500 US military personnel killed in Iraq. Johnny Damon's four year 52 million contract seems a millionaire's idle detail in the face of the cost of the Iraq war in April 2004, starting at $134.5B and increases at a rate of $177M per day, $7.4M per hour and $122,820 per minute (as measured by the Times Square Digital Clock.)

On Jan 10, 2006 The Christian Science Monitor reported that "Reuters also reports that a Marine Corps spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Roseann Lynch, said Monday that the war is costing the US about $4.5 billion a month in military "operating costs," not including procurement of new weapons and equipment. Colonel Lynch said the war in Iraq had cost $173 billion to date.

If I never learn another detail about the game at Fenway tonight, my life would not be changed. It is a game they play there. An expensive game played by millionaires being paid to wear certain labels, sip certain drinks, drive certain cars, and sell, sell, sell their name and face to the highest bidders.

My life, however, is changed by the wars engaged in by my country. Ill-advised wars. Absurd wars. I think we have become absurd men and women with little consideration of any substantial thought or meaningful consequence.

He has put forth his strength:
he has scattered the proud and conceited,
torn princes from their thrones;
but lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
(from Canticle, Magnificat, Vespers)

How say that canticle nightly without wondering what, if anything, it means?

American Military Casualties in Iraq

American Deaths Date: Total \ In Combat
Since war began (3/19/03): 2455 \ 1978
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 2318 \ 1881
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 1990 \ 1672
Since Handover (6/29/04): 1589 \ 1346
Since Election (1/31/05): 1019 \ 861

American Wounded Official \ Estimated
Total Wounded: 17648 \ 18000-48100

Latest Fatality May 21st, 2006
Page last updated 05/22/06 7:59 pm EDT

Others
Other Coalition Troops \ 214

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan \ 295

Iraqi Body Count (IBC)
minimum: 37,848
maximum: 42, 216

We approach the final out.

If you know one, say a prayer.

Looking across to mountain -- only mountainside filling window.

Even when you are uncertain, do not use this one day wastefully. It is a rare treasure to value. Do not compare it with an enormous jewel. Do not compare it with a dragon's bright pearl. Old sages valued this one day more than their own living bodies. Reflect on this quietly. A dragon's pearl may be found. An enormous jewel may be acquired. But this one day out of a hundred years cannot be retrieved once it is lost. What skillful means can retrieve a day that is passed? No historical documents have recorded such means. Not to waste time is to contain the passage of days and months within your skin bag, without leaking. Thus sages and wise ones in olden times valued each moment, day, and month more than their own eyeballs or the nation's land. To waste the passage of time is to be confused and stained in the floating world of name and gain. Not to miss the passage of time is to be in the Way for the Way.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Cesco walks long road to beach through woods in Owls Head. Sitting in crevice rock, ocean waves lift duck and gull.

Last two days with Bukowski and Cohen.

As
the
spirit
WANES
the
FORM
appears
(--Charles Bukowski, 1977)

A delightful emptiness drifts within. Day itself is unmooring.

Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen?
(from THE MAN IN THE TOWER, by Tom Robbins, Seattle 1995, writing about Leonard Cohen)

Today's occupation is viewing young green leaves playing wind for all its sunny worth.

Some people are afraid.

They feel there are things taking place -- abuse of power, erosion of freedoms, polite patronizing of populace by police and military. It is hard figuring out to whom the insanity belongs. Some are driven mad by the subterfuge. Some are driven mad by the usurpation. The result? A mess of insane individuals passing each other like characters in Ionesco or Genet, Pinter or Beckett.

We become daffy and delusionary. Sorrier to say, we abandon trust. Suspicion and secrecy win the day. Psychological anemia replaces spiritual alertness.

Devote yourself to the Absolute Emptiness;
Contemplate earnestly in Quiescence.
All things are together in Action,
But I look into their Non-action,
For things are continuously moving, restless,
Yet each is proceeding back to its origin.
Proceeding back to the origin means Quiescence.
To be in Quiescence is to see "Being-for-itself."
- Lao tzu

The diversion is gaming power. Control seduces insecurity into flexing muscle. It is an exercise of pretending. Once we were told to pretend we're happy when we're blue -- now it is dangerous so to do.

I shall keep singing!

I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
On their way to Yellower Climes--
Each -- with a Robin's expectation --
I -- with my Redbreast--
And my Rhymes --
Late -- when I take my place in summer --
But -- I shall bring a fuller tune--
Vespers -- are sweeter than Matins-Signor --
Morning -- only the seed of Noon--
(Poem: "I shall keep singing!" by Emily Dickinson.)

We drip drop by drop into madness. No wonder we stay away from news. Some say it is better not to know. For others, such nescience itself is sign of touch being lost, a drifting in some region of imagined purity.

Theodore Roethke asks in his poem about a dark time:
"What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?"
(from "IN A DARK TIME," by Theodore Roethke)

The cost of alertness can be disillusioning. To lose illusion sobers.

The lyrics to the Nat King Cole hit suggest to us:
The little things you haven't got
Could be a lot if you pretend

Fifty years ago the song was about finding a love you can share. Today the imagined outcome has wider sweep and more grave consequence. Something seeps from the soul of a country lost in mirrors reflecting guns and drugs, martial obsession and pathetic mistrust. We have redefined certitude to mean everybody's wrong but the one stamping his will on every corner of each patch once believed inviolately personal.

The words of the song take on a darker tone once seen through dual lens of deprivation and rapaciousness :
And if you sing this melody
You'll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why don't you pretend?
("Pretend" -- Words and Music by Lew Douglas, Cliff Parman, and Frank Lavere, 1953)

No need to submit to insanity. See the tormenter for what the tormenter is -- afraid.

Practice no-mind. Have no fear.

See your way clear -- no pretending -- the world belongs to itself, no one else.

Leave behind anything they can use.

Take nothing with you.

Then let that go.

As well.

Birds sing in Saturday morning sunshine. After so long a rain, blue sky.

We live until we die. And then? Do we get up and do it again? Or does everything return to the way it is?

I'm twenty seven years
And always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.
- Kokuin (10th century)

The way it is -- a phrase many remember from a newscaster in the 20th century, it was his signature valedictory at end of half-hour news -- is equally a meditation on the ground of human experience and being.

Somewhere in the center of the moving world, the center of what is in-itself, there is the way it is. The "way" of each one of us is more likely our experience of riddle, koan, or mystery. We say, "That's just his way," or "The way she's going she'll be exhausted," or "I am the way, the truth, and the life."

The Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Power) begins with the following:
1
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
(Written by Lao-tzu, From a translation by S. Mitchell)

Buddhists might say: "The source is called emptiness."
Christians might say: "Calling emptiness is the way each appears as itself."

This morning we might say: "When we hear the call in emptiness we respond through emptiness as we are the way it is."

This call and this response is all there is. What else is there?

"Dialogue... is a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before. It lifts us out of polarization and into a greater common sense, and is thereby a means for accessing the intelligence and coordinated power of groups of people."
(-- William Issacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together)

This is our way -- a conversation with a center.

Poet Charles Olsen wrote:
There is no intelligence
the equal of
the situation.

There are only
two ways:
create the situation
(and this is love)
or avoid it.
This also can be
Love.
(from poem, "Love" by Charles Olsen, in his book Archaeologist of Morning, c.1973)

In the shop this afternoon two men talk about steering wheel salutes on islands. (The lifting of one hand from wheel, fingers extended, to each passing car.) Now it is the stock market. Now it is being freaked out by psy-ops. The sky darkens with intimation of rain.

It is necessary to remain aware so that we do not miss patterns.

Heidegger says we are not yet thinking. Authentic thinking would mean we are seeing our way through.

Our way, for each one, is through.

Passing through the way it is, it is as though there is no way.

That's the way it is.

All those not chosen for chaplain position in prison, say aye.

Aye.

If your mind is fixed on a certain spot,
It will be seized by that spot and
No activities can be performed efficiently.
Not to fix your mind anywhere is essential.
Not fixed anywhere,
The mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water which flows freely,
Whereas the deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says:
"The mind should operate without abiding anywhere."
- Takuan (1573-1645)

I give talk to lifetime recovery group in prison this morning. I say it is all about home. Poet David Wagoner says it is about "Here," that we are not lost. Central to the word "home" is "OM" the sacred syllable, the original sound of creation.

If the original sound of creation is not reverberating within us, we have abandoned our true home -- integrity and wholeness become exploitable and exploited.

"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation."
(Malcolm X, 1925-1965)

"OM" sounds close to I AM."

So many of us are lost. The sound practice of spirituality will assist being found.

Spirituality is aware practice of what is revealing itself in our midst.

Of course we are intimidated by the realization we've not seen into truth because mind has been taking bows and throwing confetti in perfect diversion and subterfuge.

Freedom, justice, and equality are wonderful words.

The time nears when any attempt to violate the wonderful will result in shocking, fruitless insanity.

There's a tutorial taking place in our nation's corporations, capital, and curriculum. It teaches diminishment of wonder. Without authentic education we learn hate and patronizing intolerance.

Poet Derek Walcott wrote: "You will love again the stranger who was your self." (In poem "Love After Love")

We will remember. Our self. With no separation. The sacred sounds of interior solace.

We'll feast, the poet says, on our life.

Sit.

With.

No other.

God is what is happening. We don't see God because we do not accept what is happening as it is happening. So it is we miss God. We want our idea, our image of God -- not God as God is. We want what is taking place to be different.

Buddha ancestors have said since ancient times, "Living for one hundred years without encountering a buddha does not compare with living for one day and arousing determination for the way."
- Dogen (1200-1253)

If the way for each one of us is the truth of our life -- it becomes imperative we dwell authentically our way, truth, and life.

"Peace is the dream of the wise. War is the history of man." (Philippe Paul, French General and historian of the 1800s). The French ethics student rounds out the quote with his: "Ethics is the dream of the wise, politics is the history of man." (R.P., May 2006). There is a split, he says, between the moral standards of ordinary people and the the ethical behavior of those in power. So why, he asks, cultivate moral standards so easily violated by rulers?

Easter Morning

On Easter morning all over America
the peasants are frying potatoes in bacon grease.

We're not supposed to have "peasants"
but there are tens of millions of them
frying potatoes on Easter morning,
cheap and delicious with catsup.

If Jesus were here this morning he might
be eating fried potatoes with my friend
who has a '51 Dodge and a '72 Pontiac.

When his kids ask why they don't have
a new car he says, "these cars were new once
and now they are experienced."

He can fix anything and when rich folks
call to get a toilet repaired he pauses
extra hours so that they can further
learn what we're made of.

I told him that in Mexico the poor say
that when there's lightning the rich
think that God is taking their picture.
He laughed.

Like peasants everywhere in the history
of the world ours can't figure out why
they're getting poorer. Their sons join
the army to get work being shot at.

Your ideals are invisible clouds
so try not to suffocate the poor,
the peasants, with your sympathies.
They know that you're staring at them.
(Poem: "Easter Morning," by Jim Harrison.)

The humble person sees and faces the truth.

We know the difference between distant stare and loving gaze.

Practice seeing what is happening.

As it is happening.

Engage wholeheartedly.

Giving up isolating individual identity, you might realize a wisdom and presence far beyond any definition carved out by small mind.

The true person is
Not anyone in particular
But
Like the limitless deep blue sky,
It is everywhere, and everyone in the world.
(Dogen Zenji)

The mind of Christ sees through our cultivated separation. Threading insight. Interweaving longing. And thatching true dwelling between delight and despair. Our everyday human path -- shreded plans, frayed dreams.

You are pruned already,
by means of the word that I have spoken to you.
Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.
(from John 15:1-8)

Soon, as soon as this next breath, it will dawn on us the great loveliness of existence side by side with one another.

Soon, this very blink of the eye, clears away whatever keeps us from seeing what is true among us.

Soon, ah! -- just now, did you feel it?

You are free to be yourself.

Beyond definition.

Great awareness.

Clear through.

Re-minding.

Love.

Stanley Kunitz knew where to look.

"Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul," he wrote. "The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race."
(-- Poet Stanley Kunitz, quoted in NYTimes, 16May2006, on his death 5/14/06 at age 100)

There is so much to read.

However deep your knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.
- Tokusan

So much to embody.

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.
(Poem by Stanley Kunitz, from The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine, W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.)

So much to let go.

With what purpose, Lord, do you stay away, hide yourself in time of need and trouble?
The wicked in their pride persecute the weak, trap them in the plots they have devised.
The sinner glories in his desires, the miser congratulates himself.
The sinner in his arrogance rejects the Lord: “there is no God, no retribution”.
This is what he thinks – and all goes well for him.
Your judgements are far beyond his comprehension: he despises all who stand against him.

The sinner says to himself: “I will stand firm; nothing can touch me, from generation to generation”.
His mouth is full of malice and deceit, under his tongue hide trouble and distress.
He lies in ambush by the villages, he kills the innocent in some secret place.
He watches the weak, he hides like a lion in its lair, and makes plans.
He plans to rob the weak, lure him to his trap and rob him.
He rushes in, makes a dive, and the poor victim is caught.
For he has said to himself, “God has forgotten. He is not watching, he will never see”.
(from Psalm 10)

I'd trade one Kunitz for any world leader, especially today.

Master And Mistress

As if I were composed of dust and air,
The shape confronting me upon the stair
(Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain
On its disjunctive breast--I saw it plain--)
Moved through my middle flesh. I turned around,
Shaken and it was marching without sound
Beyond the door; and when my hand was taken

From my mouth to beat the standing heart, I cried
My distant name, thinking myself had died.
One moment I was entered; one moment then
I knew a total century of pain
Between the twinkling of two thoughts. The ghost
Knocked on my ribs, demanding, "Host! Host!
I am diseased with motion. Give me bread
Before I quickly go. Shall I be fed?"
Yielding, I begged of him: "Partake of me.
Whatever runneth from the artery,
This body and its unfamiliar wine,
Stored in whatever dark of love, are thine."
But he denied me, saying, "Every part
of thee is given, yea, thy flesh, thy heart."
(Poem by Stanley Kunitz)

So much to poetry.

Every act done with compassion is a mothering act. Happy mothering day!

What is of all things most yielding
Can overcome that which is most hard,
Being substanceless, it can enter in
Even where there is no crevice.
That is how I know the value
Of action which is actionless.
But that there can be teaching without words,
Value in action which is actionless
Few indeed can understand.
- Lao Tzu (5th century BC)

Lao Tzu might have been angling for water in response. We might add: compassion.

If you remain in me
and my words remain in you,
you may ask what you will
and you shall get it.
John 15:1-8

If we remain in sight of ourselves -- as one another -- just as Jesus suggested to those looking for what he saw, we are the response to our request. We get it sooner or later that communion of all being begins with communion one with another in the spirit of compassion.

Our breath is within and without. The voice of being, the voice of compassion, is within and without.

In the shop today a woman was not sure she liked the idea that hell wasn't a place to be consigned to forever. She didn't know what to think about the notion that Jesus (according to the teaching of her religion) took away the separation between God and everything which is of God -- traditionally known as taking away the sin(s) of the world. Jesus, one might say, died revealing the presence of God here (inside and outside) and now (no-time, just-this-and-nothing-else).

Is it, as David Whyte suggests, a terrible revelation to our troubled and divisive thinking.

Revelation Must Be Terrible

Revelation must be
terrible with no time left
to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment
staring at the still waters
with only the brief tremor

of your body to say
you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
at least we are exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
the first time. No one is
even interested in saving you now

and the world steps in
to test the calm fluidity of your body
from moment to moment

as if it believed you could join
its vibrant dance
of fire and calmness and final stillness.

As if you were meant to be exactly
where you are, as if
like the dark branch of a desert river

you could flow on without a speck
of guilt and everything
everywhere would still be just as it should be.

As if your place in the world mattered
and the world could
neither speak nor hear the fullness of

its own bitter and beautiful cry
without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo.

Knowing that it takes only
that one, terrible
word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible
knowing you can
never hide your voice again.
(Poem by David Whyte)

One mothers one another in this revelation.

A beloving beauty beyond our thinking, a wondrous compassion transcending our exacting calculus, and a slow silencing sacredness appears -- within and without -- of a sudden.

A blessed mothering.

On each of us.

This day,