Morning in-town walk. One Belted Galloway, standing in middle of fenced pasture, moo'd loudly. One more monk in the world. Gene the walker passed on other side of road, hands clasped behind back, making his rounds. I look in windows of Swiss Cottage, Buzz-vacated, now for sale, and try to remember when real estate prices were last sane. Cheerful fellow asks how far I walk; he's at the end of his, turns in driveway, last house on left before Bayview.

It has been asked,
“How should those who enter
The path apply their minds?”
All things are originally uncreated
And presently undying.
Just let your mind be free;
You don’t have to restrain it.
See directly and hear directly;
Come directly and go directly.
When you must go, then go;
When you must stay, then stay.
This is the true path.
A scripture says,
“Conditional existence is the site
of enlightenment, insofar as you
know it as it really is.”
- Niu-t’ou Hui-chung (683-769)

What does it mean to keep or hold someone in prayer? The making of a statement of intention to hold in prayer is part of any spiritual life, certainly of a monastic life. Praying my hand-beads as I walk the roads I mention names adding, "May God's blessing be with them!" Passing Herb's grave and Ben's grave, and the "Unknown, Unwanted" grave of the 5 month old quarry baby from many years ago, I pray for them and their neighbors along tree shaded cemetery. I pray for names over the years, for those passing me today, and for relatives of people I've not met.

Prayer is appreciative communion resounding our reliance on one another in this life and existence. Prayer asks into God-nature to comfort, protect, and enlighten those for whom we pray, those we've forgotten to include, and those for whom we'd rather we didn't have to pray. Prayer is the assent, conscious or unconscious, of unity -- a oneness too profound for thought, a union so inchoate it itself is the prayer we do not know how to pray.

Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation.
(--Thomas Aquinas, Office of Readings, Feast of Corpus Christi)

The catholic Christian metaphor is a good one. (Literally -- a "good one.")

It is the affirmation that at core of existence is a benevolent unity within which all belong. This belonging does not exclude anyone or anything. Everything belongs. And as -- (the metaphor extends) -- the body of Christ. "Christ," here, might be considered "what-is, sacred-in-itself." Thus, our prayer is for this Corpus Christi in our midst. The most difficult realization is that which is closest.

Jack comes in. He's bought a new boat. He wants me to read the name on its side. It is across the channel, tied to his recently purchased finger float. He's happy with his purchase. It's a J-boat. He says I'd appreciate the name; others would think its two kids' names. The name is Samadhi.

Samadhi, (Sanskrit, lit. "establish, make firm"), is a Hindu and Buddhist term that describes a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing subject becomes one with the experienced object.
(footnoted --Diener Michael S., Erhard Franz-Karl and Fischer-Schreiber Ingrid, The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen; -- in Wikipedia)

I've noticed over the years the emergence of a new phrase of valediction. (Ed S. was the first to catch my attention with it. Then, others.) They would say, "Have a good one!" Maybe it began as a shortening of , "Have a good day!" Nevertheless, the words themselves have a life of their own. They are a prayer of sorts. This prayer attempts to remind someone to have a "good one" -- to enter the sacred space of communion with everything as it all appears, and even as it all remains invisible.

The art of dharma practice requires commitment, technical accomplishment, and imagination. As with all arts, we will fail to realize its full potential if any of these three are lacking. The raw material of dharma practice is ourself and our world, which are to be understood and transformed according to the vision and values of the dharma itself. This is not a process of self- or world- transcendence, but one of self- and world creation. The denial of self challenges only the notion of a static self independent of body and mind--not the ordinary sense of ourself as a person distinct from everyone else. The notion of a static self is the primary obstruction to the realization of our unique potential as an individual being. By dissolving this fiction through a centered vision of the transiency, ambiguity, and contingency of experience, we are freed to create ourself anew.
--Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs

On one level I pray wanting to be prayed for.

I often forget who I am and why I am here.

Prayer -- coming or going -- is an act of calling to mind, an invitation to remember, a commitment to try to embrace and embody our whole and complete reality.

We forget often and we do not pray often enough.

Corpus Christi is today self- and world- creation, anew.

No leaving out.

Passing.

(Joyfully.)

Through.

This retreat at Harbour Room has enough silence and solitude for now. Morning sun penetrates sea fog. Tracy brings plants and flowers for gardens. Tie-hack (the white husky) appears in Barney's truck, walks about the back deck, a little bruised, shaved, and dazed -- but on her own after being run over last Saturday. Lobster boats pull abeam, greet, then head for open water with this year's traps. The shop is quiet. Last night's coffee is good enough until fresh pot in a bit.

Something necessary and radical is changing.

Kate, from New York, sends a piece written by Thomas Merton:

O my brother, the contemplative is not the man who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say in the surrender of our own poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist. The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God; but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present to you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons. The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart, and risk the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you and with you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union in the depths of your own heart, of God's spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and He are in all truth One Spirit. I love you, in Christ.
Such are the few ideas I have had, written in haste -- so much more will be said so much better by others.
Yours in Christ Jesus, br. M. Louis (Thomas Merton)
{--from, Monastic Apology, br. M. Louis
(Thomas Merton), http://essenes.net/mertonletter.html}

It is a time to penetrate, dare, and risk a new solitude of intimate union in the open.

When things feel foul and emotions hoist storm flags, it is time to remember the very ground of being-itself -- this place of God's spirit and your own secret inmost self,

And, as well, remember the collateral collation of this existence.

Transitory, Insubstantial and Conditional:
To say that Buddhism is transitory, insubstantial and conditional is merely to restate its own understanding of the nature of things. Yet its teachings endlessly warn of the deeply engrained tendency to overlook this reality.... Instead of seeing a particular manifestation of the Dharma as a living spiritual tradition of possibilities contingent upon historical and cultural circumstances, one reifies it into an independently existent, self sufficient fact, resistant to change. Living continuity requires both change and constancy. Just as in the course of a human life, a person changes from a child to an adolescent to an adult while retaining a recognizable identity (both internally through memory and externally through recurring physical and behavioral traits), so does a spiritual tradition change through the course of its history while retaining a recognizable identity through a continuous affirmation of its axiomatic values. Thus Buddhism will retain its identity as a tradition as long as its practitioners continue to center their lives around the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and affirm its basic tenets. But precisely how such commitment and affirmation are expressed in different times and places can differ wildly. The survival of Buddhism today is dependent on its continuing ability to adapt.
(--by Stephen Batchelor, in The Awakening of the West)

Walking the self-same and seemingly-divergent paths of "change and constancy," we set out on a practice that necessitates both the threefold love of God's One Spirit, and the Three Refuges (Three Jewels) in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

A hermit's life must adapt.

"Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.
(--Deut. 4:39, New American Standard Bible, 1995)

As "monastics of no other" it is both oddly satisfying and curiously desolating to approach the realization that there is, in fact, no other.

It is time to open the doors.

I'm afraid today. Of what? I don't know. I'm afraid that the fear I feel is only me. I'm equally afraid that the fear I feel belongs to the larger body of my brothers and sisters in the world.

(Someone is likely to be thinking "Love is the absence of fear" -- and thus I am fallen outside the protection of love. This might be so. Hence, fear.)

Question: You say that the suchlike Dharma Nature is embodied by both sentient beings and the Buddhas identically and without duality. Therefore, if one group is deluded, both should be deluded. If one group is enlightened, both should be enlightened. Why are only Buddhas enlightened, while sentient beings are deluded?

Answer: At this point we enter the inconceivable portion of this teaching, which cannot be understood by the ordinary mind. One becomes enlightened by discerning the mind; one is deluded because of losing awareness of True Nature. If the conditions necessary for you to understand this occur, then they occur; it cannot be definitely explained. Simply rely on the ultimate truth and maintain awareness of your own True Mind.

Therefore, the Vimalakirti Sutra says: “Dharmas have no Self Nature and no Other Nature. Dharmas were fundamentally not generated in the first place and are not now extinguished. Enlightenment is to transcend the two extremes and enter into non discriminating wisdom. If you can understand this doctrine, then during all your activities you should simply maintain awareness of your fundamental Pure Mind. Do this constantly and fixedly, without generating false thought or the illusion of personal possession. Enlightenment will thus occur of itself.

If you ask a lot of questions, the number of doctrinal questions will become greater and greater. If you want to understand the essential point of Buddhism, then be aware that maintaining awareness of the mind is paramount. Maintaining awareness of the mind is the fundamental basis of nirvana, the essential gateway for entering the path, the basic principle of the entire Buddhist canon, and the patriarch of all the Buddhas of past, present, and future.
{--Hung-jen (early 8th century), Excerpted from: The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism, by John R. McRae 1986}

My mind has gotten away from me. I slip and tumble down the slope of rootless suspicion.

I am alone.

In a ditch.

Words are stones.

Even the most benevolent are hurled weapons cutting my face and head.

There's nothing to do but let the day go its way across the sky to its horizon.

I can't see anyone passing by.

Throughout night, rain. Purple Finch sings at daylight. Flags are curled back over railing on balcony.

A good day to be quiet and ask: What is spirituality?

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622–1693)

Begin with breath. Breathe!

Look around. See!

Listen openly. Hear!

Engage what is there. Serve.

My reading of what happened in early Christianity is that those communities knew Jesus the Christ was risen and living. Did they want to hear the stories of Jesus? Of course. But that is not why these four Gospels were written or collected into the canon. These four Gospels --and only these four Gospels-- form the internal and eternal sequence of spiritual practice: Face change, endure suffering, receive joy, and serve. Early Christians wanted to know how to practice Christianity --not the flat words of an "original Jesus." And the great truth has endured the passage of centuries and numerous translations.
(from THE SOCIAL EDGE INTERVIEW: AUTHOR AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR ALEXANDER SHAIA, by Gerry McCarthy) http://www.thesocialedge.com/archives/gerrymccarthy/1articles-apr2007.shtml

Wind stiffens flags at wharf's end by Wayfarer Marine where blue travel-lift waits on next hull.

Preparing farm prison presentation/conversation to be held in three weeks. Some poems and questions about topic: What is Spirituality? "What is" spirituality is the most difficult practice. Who can take in the behavior and secret shenanigans of the world and still practice a transformative engagement that occasions profound friendship and panentheistic revitalization of this phenomenal existence?

One can begin with Shaia's "Quadratos" -- namely:

[T]he internal and eternal sequence of spiritual practice: Face change, endure suffering, receive joy, and serve.

The fragrance of rain borne by wind over salt seas.

Water weaves ways down wet window.

There are days when the only sanity is solitude.

What sages learn
Is to return their nature
To the beginning
And let their minds
Travel freely in
Openness.
What developed people,
Learn is to link their nature
To vast emptiness and,
Become aware of the
Silent infinite.
(- Huai-nan-tzu)

Solitude is the open itself.

Without belief or ideology, the open emptiness of solitude is comfort.

Since my house burned down
I now own a better view
Of the rising moon
(-- Poem by Masahide, 1657-1723)

Elsewhere, Masahide's poem is translated as:

The barn’s burnt down
but now I can see
the moon above.

Loss opens once hidden vistas.

This.

Alone.

Suffices.

Longing: The erstwhile natural state of humankind. Belonging: That which is longed for. Breathing: That which we do before, during, and after the course of longing and belonging. Until, that is, breath pauses, disappears, enters stillness.

One of the reasons we call breath (or 'spirit') 'holy' is because there is no life without it.

Thomas Aquinas when trying intellectually to interpret the revealed mystery of the Trinity,...saw the Word, the Son, proceeding by way or by mode of understanding and the Breath, the Spirit, proceeding by way or by mode of will.
(P.3, The Word and the Spirit, by Yves Congar, c.1984)

Will is our longing for home; home is where we dwell as one.

Yesterday Meetingbrook began an additional place of conversation at Maine State Prison, a segregated unit not able to avail themselves of ordinary offerings. We unpack some Metallica lyrics and observe how many of us mask our inner life and insights in harsh noise designed to turn away anyone approaching.

The waterfall on South Mountain hits the rocks,
Tosses back its foam with terrifying thunder,
Blotting out even face-to-face talk.
Collapsing water and bouncing foam soak blue moss,
Old moss so thick
It drowns the spring grass.
Animals are hushed.
Birds fly but don’t sing
Yet a white turtle plays on the
Pool’s sand floor
Under riotous spray,
Sliding about with the torrents.
The people of the land are benevolent.
No angling or net fishing.
The white turtle lives out its life, naturally.
- Wang Wei (701-761)

Our lives are lived in the midst of unsettling externals and equally difficult to decipher interior impulses. We're often surprised to look around and see where we are, where we've landed.

Where The Wild Things Are (Metallica lyrics)
Artist: Metallica
Album: Reload
Year: 1997
Title: Where The Wild Things Are

So wake up, sleepy one
It's time to save your world

Steal dreams and give to you
Shoplift a thought or two
All children touch the sun
Burn fingers one by one, by one

Will this earth be good to you?
Keep you clean or stain through?

So wake up, sleepy one
It's time to save your world
You're where the wild things are
Toy soldiers off to war

Big eyes to open soon
Believing all under sun and moon
But does heaven know you're here?
And did they give you smiles or tears?
No, no tears

Will this earth be good to you?
Keep you clean or stain through?

So wake up, sleepy one
It's time to save your world
You're where the wild things are
Toy soldiers off to war

You swing your rattle down
Call to arms, the trumpets sound
Toy horses start the charge
Robot chessmen standing guard

Hand puppets storm the beach
Fire trucks trapped out of reach
Hand puppets storm the beach
Fire trucks trapped out of reach
All clowns reinforce the rear
Slingshots fire into the air
All clowns reinforce the rear
Slingshots fire into the air
Stuffed bears hold the hill till death
Crossfire from the marionettes
Stuffed bears hold the hill till death
Crossfire from the marionettes
We shall never surrender

All you children touch the sun
Burn your fingers one by one
Will this earth be good to you?
Keep you clean or stain through?

So wake up, sleepy one
It's time to save your world
You're where the wild things are
Toy soldiers off to war
Off to war
Off to war

So close your little eyes
(http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/metallica_lyrics_219/reload_lyrics_1089/where_the_wild_things_are_lyrics_12370.html)

Some wonder: Where is God in this world?

Theologians mull:

The Spirit, then, is from the Father and the Son. Augustine reflects about this datum, often within the context of his ordinary preoccupations, such as the need to answer certain questions, to reply to the Donatists, or to throw light on the spiritual life of believers and their life in the Church. He says, for example:

'Scripture enables us to know in the Father the principle, auctoritas, in the Son being begotten and born, nativitas, and in the Spirit the union of the Father and the Son, Patris Filiique communitas... The society of the unity of the Church of God, outside of which there is no remission of sins, is in a sense the work of the Holy Spirit, with, of course, the cooperation of the Father and the Son, because the Holy Spirit himself is in a sense the society of the Father and Son.

The Father is not possessed in common as Father by the Son and the Holy Spirit, because he is not the Father of the two. The Son is not possessed in common as Son by the Father and the Holy Spirit, because he is not the Son of the two. But the Holy Spirit is possessed in common by the Father and the Son, because he is the one Spirit of the two.' (27)

Augustine was naturally loving and always gave priority to charity. As a pastor and teacher living in the midst of Donatists, he elaborated an ecclesiology at two levels, that of the sacramentum and that of unitas-charitas-Columba, in which the Spirit was the principle of life, unity and effectiveness to save. Even in his early writings, he called the Spirit charitas. (28) This idea emerges from the first evidence of his interest in a theology of the Holy Spirit. It can be found, for example, in his preaching and his commentaries on Scripture. (29) It is clearly present in De Trin. VI, 5, 7. Augustine concludes: 'They are three, the one loving the one who has his being from him, the other loving the one from whom he has his being, and that love itself.'
(from, Augustine, the Trinity, and the Filioque-Yves Congar; St. Augustine's Theology of the Holy Trinity. Excerpt from Yves Congar's book I Believe in the Holy Spirit {vol. 3, Part B - chapter 1: Augustine} outlines Saint Augustine's understanding of the person and role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the other two persons of the Most Holy Trinity.) http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/736/Augustine__the_Trinity__and_the_Filioque_Yves_Congar.html

Where are we in this world?

We look. We listen. We engage.

That.

(In effect. Is...)

Love.

Itself.

It is good to be in conversation circles at the prison.

44

Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success of failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching)

And to belong.

In the world.

A woman we know dislikes religion -- immensely. Even as we converse and argue together, I admit she has a point. Our deeper argument has to do with the relationship of individual to belief. A man we know worries about casting any doubt on a person's belief. His concern centers on the question of what does he have as replacement belief should his words cause their current belief to fall away.

It would be a difficult argument and a harder practice to claim that religion and belief are unnecessary. I would not make that claim. Unless...a profound faith, an existential hope, and a fearless love were to wander into our lives and be recognized as the mysterious presence of what once we were satisfied to call "God."

This ineffable knowing would have no exterior validation other than the day to day living of one's life. No rational proof, no literary tenets, and no rhetorical persuasion would be satisfactory credential. Only the breath by breath, step by step, glance by glance, engaged ordinariness of simple presence -- only this mere being-with one another in everydayness would be the offering of such a life

The problem is not religion but religious orthodoxy. Most moral thinkers—from Socrates to Christ to Francis of Assisi—eschewed the written word because they knew, I suspect, that once things were written down they became, in the wrong hands, codified and used not to promote morality but conformity, subservience and repression. Writing freezes speech. George Steiner calls this “the decay into writing.” Language is turned from a living and fluid form of moral inquiry to a tool of bondage.

The moment the writers of the Gospels set down the words of Jesus they began to kill the message. There is no room for prophets within religious institutions—indeed within any institutions—for as Paul Tillich knew, all human institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Tribal societies persecute and silence prophets. Open societies tolerate them at their fringes, and our prophets today come not from the church but from our artists, poets and writers who follow their inner authority. Samuel Beckett’s voice is one of modernity’s most authentically religious. Beckett, like the author of Ecclesiastes, was a realist. He saw the pathetic, empty monuments we spend a lifetime building to ourselves. He knew, as we read in Ecclesiastes, that nothing is certain or permanent, real or unreal, and that the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal, that, since death awaits us all, all is vanity, that we must give up on the childish notion that one is rewarded for virtue or wisdom. In Ecclesiastes God has put ’olam into man’s mind. ’Olam usually means eternity, but it also means the sense of mystery or obscurity. We do not know what this mystery means. It teases us, as Keats wrote, out of thought. And once we recognize it and face it, simplistic answers no longer work. We are all born lost. Our vain belief in our own powers, in our reason, blinds us.

Those who silenced Jesus represented all human societies, not the Romans or the Jews. When Jesus attacks the chief priests, scribes, lawyers, Pharisees, Sadducees and other “blind guides” he is attacking forms of oppression as endemic to Christianity, as to all religions and all ideologies. If civil or religious authority enforces an iron and self-righteous conformity among members of a community, then faith loses its uncertainty, and the element of risk is removed from acts of faith. Faith is then transformed into ideology. Those who deform faith into creeds, who use it as a litmus test for institutional fidelity, root religion in a profane rather than a sacred context. They seek, like all who worship idols, to give the world a unity and coherency it does not possess. They ossify the message. And once ossified it can never reach an existential level, can never rise to ethical freedom—to faith. The more vast the gap between professed faith and acts of faith, the more vast our delusions about our own grandeur and importance, the more intolerant, aggressive and dangerous we become.
(from "Chris Hedges: I Don’t Believe in Atheists," May 22, 2007, By Chris Hedges.
Editor’s Note: On Tuesday night, Chris Hedges and Sam Harris debated “Religion, Politics and the End of the World.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070523_chris_hedges_i_dont_believe_in_atheists/)

Here at Ragged Mountain we have our own brand of intolerance. This morning the hav-a-heart trap rattled noisily. When I approached there were two red squirrels saying "Uh oh!" I took them for a ride to a lovely setting with ocean view where they quickly found a tree to reassess their needs. Back at the farmhouse we'll listen to the ceiling and the walls to determine whether the crawlspaces find new tenants. Extraordinary rendition is closer to home than I'd easily admit.

In the shop, discussion often goes to the dangerous influences in our lives. If someone feels religion or belief to be dangerous influences, there are still the persons-as-themselves to be considered, respected, and engaged. Each one of us has a history and a traceable journey we've traversed. Some have moved from one belief to another, from one religion to another, or from a particular tradition to the abandonment of that tradition. These are sometimes very personal and very difficult transitions. Some of us stay with the beliefs, religion, and tradition of our earliest days. There are many permutations of personal spiritual life. Each, I submit, must be acknowledged and appreciated as being, for the individual involved, the journey they travel. We honor one another by honoring the journey.

We also inquire. We ask: How is your journey? We ask: How can we help? We ask: Tell us where you've been and where you are, and where you feel you might be heading?

If we ask into our own journeys, we are prepared to hear the inquiries of others. If we are willing to share (safely) the questions we've asked and the answers we've heard, we are valuable companions to brothers and sisters on their ways.

The most valuable responses we can give to the questions of belief and religion are our own responses. When we are willing to say where we are, others might hear where they are.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
(Reinhold Niebuhr, in his Irony of American History, c.1952.)

If we are able to forgive ourselves for being exactly as we are at the time we are that way, we might learn how to forgive one another for being exactly as each is at the time they are that way.

Put another way, every journey begins with acceptance and ultimately arrives at acceptance. Between acceptance and acceptance is the wobbly, wavering, wonderful and sometimes wayward journey we call our lives.

In the Park

You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
–you won't know till you get there which to do.

He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park. He laid on me not doing anything. I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them. For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.

I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah,
Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels. Certain
animals converse with humans.
It's a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven's an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there is a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,

and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot. In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.
(Poem: "In the Park" by Maxine Kumin, from Nurture. Viking Penguin, 1989.)

Last evening's conversation was about Patricia's interest in the boundless.

Much help is needed to negotiate and navigate our way through the barriers and the boundaries.

The grizzly patterns.

Wanting unraveling.

It is a fact that many in the world mock others in the world. Mockery is just another one of those facts of life everyone must learn to endure. To endure these difficult experiences -- without cynicism or bitterness, but with composure and equanimity -- is a meditative practice worth learning

As the gate of heaven opens and closes,
Can you be impassive?
As understanding reaches everywhere,
Can you be innocent?
Producing and developing,
Producing without possessing,
Doing without presuming,
Growing without domineering:
This is called mysterious power.
(- Tao-te Ching)

To endure something difficult is not the same as relinquishing one's dignity and being cowed by the mockery heaped. In the beginnings of Christianity the notion of martyrdom -- suffering for what you hold as true -- was rife.

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem; Jesus was walking on ahead of them; they were in a daze, and those who followed were apprehensive.
(--Mark 10:32)

Of course, apprehensive. It is a shock to the system (the personal system as well as the political system) when you realize your views are eliciting mockery and scorn.

Cindy Sheehan, once reviled by the Republicans for her criticism of them, becomes also reviled by Democrats after criticizing them. She holds as true that neither of the political parties is really interested nor courageous enough to effectively admit and act on the futile failure of this country's invasion and occupation of Iraq. She is mocked. She withdraws from the fray.

12. Nirvana is attained by giving all,
Nirvana is the object of my striving;
And all must be surrendered in a single instant,
Therefore it is best to give it all to others.

13. This body I have now resigned
To serve the pleasure of all living beings.
Let them ever kill, despise, and beat it,
Using it according to their wish.

14. And though they treat it like a toy,
Or make of it the butt of every mockery,
My body has been given up to them.
Why should I make so much of it?

15. And so let beings do to me
Whatever does not bring them injury.
Whenever they may think of me,
Let this not fail to bring them benefit.
(Excerpt from Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva, From Chapter 3: Taking Hold of Bodhichitta)

What does others injury is what they do to us. Likewise, our acts and intentions concerning ourselves go a long way to either bring injury or pardon to another. We heal others when we are ourselves healed. Wholeness has no other place to go but everywhere.

mock·er·y (mk-r)
n. pl. mock·er·ies
1. Scornfully contemptuous ridicule; derision.
2. A specific act of ridicule or derision.
3. An object of scorn or ridicule: (made a mockery of the rules.)
4. A false, derisive, or impudent imitation: (The trial was a mockery of justice.)
5. Something ludicrously futile or unsuitable: (The few packages of food seemed a mockery in the face of such enormous destitution.)
(--from The Free Dictionary)

Let's find something to praise.

Some small appreciation.

To countervail.

To encourage.

Is there no going back?

Carrying vitality and consciousness,
Embracing them as one,
Can you keep them from parting?
Concentrating energy,
Making it supple,
Can you be like an infant?
Purifying hidden perception,
Can you make it flawless?
Loving the people,
Governing the nation,
Can you be uncontrived?
- Tao-te Ching

If there is no leaving home, there is no going home again.

There's no going back because there is no "back" to return to.

There's no time like the present.

No time.

Like...(only just)

The present.

If we were mindful, would we agree with Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote in the Prologue to his Report to Greco, that : "God is being built."?

Into a person,
Absolutely free
From thoughts and emotions,
Even the tiger finds no room
To insert its fierce claws.
- Shinkage-ryu sword school

I don't know why God is feared. Someone has badly imprisoned human imagination.

Our ancestors call out to us in our cells and memories. They are asking us to reconsider our myths, reverse our thinking, and reverence the One from which we come and to which we are to be building. There is now, and always has been, a truer way to dwell and act than that which deception wishes to turned us from. "Way" -- whether as articulated by Christ, or by Lao Tzu -- is our true course.

"Reach what you can, my child."
Your voice was grave and dark, as though iisuing from the deep larynx of the earth.
It reached the roots of my mind, but my heart remained unshaken.
"Grandfather," I called more loudly now, give me a more difficult, more Cretan command."
Hardly had I finished speaking when, all at once, a hissing flame cleaved the air. The indomitable ancestor with the thyme roots tangled in his locks vanished from my sight; a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled:
"Reach what you cannot!"
(--p.22, in Report to Greco, by Nikos Kazantzakis, c.1965)

To reach what "I" cannot requires "you" and "you" and "you," "Our" father/mother, our ancestors and guardian angels, our deepest longings and most sacred instincts -- all collate and collaborate together to awaken our attention.

In the United States today is Memorial Day. For us it is a time to honor and pray for all those dead and deadened by war. So many have died. So many have been deadened.

God is the most resplendent face of despair, the most resplendent face of hope. You are pushing me beyond hope and despair, grandfather, beyond the age-old frontiers. Where? I gaze around me, I gaze inside me.Virtue has gone mad, geometry and matter have gone mad.The law-giving mind must come again to establish a new order, new laws.The world must become a richer harmony.
(--p.22, Kazantzakis)

This is the day following Pentecost. Something happened that day...long ago. Was it an intimation of a "richer harmony" beyond hope and despair?

I belong to this longing for a richer harmony. And I long to follow this "Way" with all who are willing to accept the gift of being "friend" one to another. If this is "church' -- then I am a church-dweller. Church is the doing of what we are. Are we friends on the way to a more subtle, richer harmony?

They have set their mouth in the heavens,
and their tongue traverses the earth.
Thus they sit in their lofty positions,
and the flood-waters cannot reach them.
They ask, “How can God know?
Does the Most High have any understanding?”
Behold, then, the wicked, always prosperous:
their riches growing for ever.
(from Ps. 72, Office of Readings)

Many of us do not attend church any longer. Not even those who show up at church on Saturdays or Sundays are assured they are attending church. Church is the doing of what we are. If we are not engaging (with body, heart, or mind) all our brothers and sisters, near or far -- we are not attending church.

Mindfulness is today's church without and beyond walls.

Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize that process and say to yourself, "Oh, I am remembering," that is thinking.
(-Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English)

If we are willing to practice mindfulness, we are being built as God is being built.

The priest in Belfast mentioned the "Way" Jesus spoke of, and the "friends" he spoke with.

1 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.
(--Acts 2)

Perhaps "church" is the practice of being "all in one place together." (Not a building; not an institution; not even a denomination.) When we attend one another wholeheartedly, we are in the "place" of the "way" of "friends."

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.
(--from Psalm 104)

We will come to life.

With. One. Breath.

As is the way of friends.

Seeing things through.

Together.

We are you.

What is this Holy Spirit?

The question clear,
The answer deep,
Each particle,
Each instant a reality,
A bird call shrills
Through mountain dawn:
Look where the old
Master sits, a rock, in Zen.

- Sodo (1841-1920)

The other night, somewhere between 1:00am and 3:30am two owls called back and forth to each other in the valley echo of Ragged and Bald Mountains. Their five pointed sequence went on through dozing off and waking up.

26. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
(-- John 14:26; New International Version)

We need to be re-minded.

Everything has been said -- all at once, all of a piece. It has been a very long time since this existence was spoken-into-being. The sounds of being -- words, vowels, and consonants -- are still making their way through space/time to our eyes and ears.

To be spoken-into-being is the fact of human life. It is a continual reverberation.

If the Holy Spirit is the constant and continual reverberation of creative inspiration, we are pleased to pray for, to, and with the Holy Spirit. We are the corresponding echo of belonging.

We belong in silence.

Breathing into and being breathed upon.

A lovely silence of belonging.

We belong in silence.

All the places we're not.

One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1635-1714)

We spoke about the film Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille).

Dee said, "They didn't smile." Ananur said, "They were so secure."

They were so secure, maybe they didn't have to smile.

All the places we're not, love can only be.

Love can only be where we are not.

Tell me: Where is God not?

If we disappear, that is, if our self-centered ego dissolves into mere and clear presence, will God be realized?

Forget security.

Honor your work.

Smile.

We are exiles from our true home.

This affair is like the bright sun in the blue sky, shining clearly, changeless and motionless, without diminishing or increasing. It shines everywhere in the daily activities of everyone, appearing in everything. Though you try to grasp it, you cannot get it; though you try to abandon it, it always remains. It is vast and unobstructed, utterly empty. Like a gourd floating on water, it cannot be reined in or held down. Since ancient times, when good people of the Path have attained this, they’ve appeared and disappeared in the sea of birth and death, able to use it fully. There is no deficit or surplus: like cutting up sandalwood, each piece is it.
(- Letter to Hsu Tun-chi from Zen Master Ta Hui)

Becoming an exile is necessary. Home is not in a single place. We must constantly leave home to happen upon home as it reveals itself to us.

Body Found in Iraq Is California Soldier,
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
Associated Press Writer

Posted: Today at 9:03 p.m. Updated: 29 minutes ago

TORRANCE, Calif. — The body of a U.S. soldier found in the Euphrates River in Iraq was identified Wednesday as a California man who was abducted with two comrades a week and a half ago, a relative said.

What did we expect? War murders men, women, and children. People who are deluded by security will not hear the cries of exiles.

We are spiritual exiles.

God is not in a single place.

We must leave God and family to happen upon God and family.

I sorrow for God found dead in the Euphrates River. I sorrow for the California man whose body washed up on shore. I pray for him, his family. I pray for God. It is a mystery

In Iraq, each soldier is it. Each civilian is it. You are it.

Exiles.

Face it.

Cheryl said, "Even in grief, joy."

Others said, "Even in anger, joy." Even in depression, joy."

Followers of the Way, do not be deceived by teachers who everywhere say “I know Zen, I understand the Way,” and who endlessly deliver discussions like mountain torrents. All this is action that produces hellish Karma. If one is a true learner of the Way, one does not search for the faults of the world, but rather speedily applies oneself to attain genuine insight. If one only can see with perfect clarity, then all is completed.
- Rinzai (d. 866)

Maybe joy is appreciating that what is taking place is, indeed, taking place.

Joy is completely being-with what is taking place.

Earlier in the shop, before conversation, someone spontaneously called for a resolution of impeachment of the president and vice president. By swift and sudden parliamentary maneuver, a motion was made, seconded, and voted on. Outside, Jeffrey measured the pulpit for a new set of beams, Richard fastened hooks for a diminished number of dinghy lines, and Thomas complained that the code for a fence he had to construct around his gallery's roof sculpture garden was stricter than the restaurant's there at the harbor.

I'm not sure anyone recorded the vote inside the shop, or whether there is any mechanism to implement what was decided. One man voted with his back to the proceedings.

It was a typical lovely sunny Tuesday at the harbour. I'm not sure anyone really wants impeachment. It would be so embarrassing.

"Even in embarrassment, joy," says someone without opening her mouth, without counting today's dead in Iraq.

I don't always follow my breath. Sometimes it leads me through body pain. I'd rather fall asleep. Sometimes my breath says: "Don't mind me; I'm just passing through."

In seated meditation, with one's back straight, one is enjoined to breathe naturally but deeply, intentionally and slowly, so that the breathing is centered on the lower diaphragm. One thus becomes aware that it is the whole body, not just the lungs, that participates, or rather, partakes, in the breathing. And as one becomes more and more familiarized with this way of breathing while doing zazen, this way of real-izing one's connectedness with the breath flows into what one does after zazen. One finds oneself breathing more easily and with a greater sense of relaxation and satisfaction.
This process of familiarization with the breath is what we experience as we go on in our practice: the connection between our zazen and the rest of our daily life, taking the fourfold posture given above, gyo-zen, or Zen in action, ju-zen, or Zen in passivity or relaxation, and ga-zen, or Zen in horizontal position, that is, even while one is asleep, in addition to zazen, comes to be realized more and more.
(--from Rediscovering the Breath, by Ruben Habito; Excerpted from Healing Breath, Orbis Books)

These last few days we've been coughing and trying not to speak or breathe. We take walks with Cesco along Ragged bottom to Hosmer Pond, the three of us slow and variously failing. Something has grabbed us and shaken us wobbly.

Each moment, death is possible. It's the price of birth. It's the payment at the end of the check-out line. After a life spent shopping for -- whatever -- love, happiness, peace, enlightenment, we have to "check out." It is our debt for all the joys, happiness, ecstasy, and love we've been given throughout our lives. The cost of each life is exactly one death. May all beings get their money's worth!
(--from Zen and Hospice, By Joe Benenate, DO; Maria Kannon Zen Center)

We meet a young Border Collie racing after tennis balls flung up hill. Her name is Annie. She and Cesco greet one another. Annie shares her ball. Her human says she does that with no one. She must be taking compassion on an old failing relative. It is joyful to view the expanse of age and vitality between the 3 year old and the 16 year old working dogs.

It can be dangerous to encounter others’ pain, because it’s tempting to shut it out, not feel it. I’d especially like to shut out the pain -- and therefore the humanity -- of people with whom I disagree – the soldier in the tank, Donald Rumsfeld, suicide bombers.

But the experience of encountering another’s pain can also break through the illusion that we are separate beings. One day during a religious festival in 2004, some people set off bombs that ripped through Shi’a shrines in both Baghdad and Kerbala. I knew that some dear Iraqi friends, including a little girl named Houda whom I especially loved, were at the shrine in Kerbala. I was trapped for awhile at the shrine in Baghdad and could not get to their house until the following day. I practically ran to their home, and when I saw little Houda, surprised both myself and her by bursting into tears.

That is when I realized how much I loved her, that she was my own child. And I realized that every child is my own child – every child is our own, every person our brother or sister, every sentient being, every animal, rock and tree, is part of us. Literally, by blood, by breath. We are each other and we are responsible for each other. If we all woke up to this, wars would disappear because we simply could not hurt each other anymore. Conflict would not disappear, but we’d figure out some other way to solve our problems.
(from Practicing Zen in Iraq, By Sheila Provencher, Maria Kannon Zen Center)

There's a simplicity when illness lays you low.

Attention naturally falls to breath.

Mine.

Yours.

Our.

These will be posted elsewhere on the website. Until then, here's the:
1) Spring/Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook, and the
2) Spring/Summer 2007 Hermitage Update

..................................................................

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update, Spring/Summer 2007

Theme: And All Is As It Is.

And this, then,

is the vision of that Heaven of which

we have heard, where those who love

each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,

the light a music in the air,

and all is unentangled,

and all is undismayed.

(From poem “To My Mother” by Wendell Berry)

Spring comes to Maine. Summer follows. Last patches of snow draw into themselves on northeast side of Ragged Mountain. As usual, the mountain remains itself through ice, wind, and snow -- throughout stays itself as green stretches awake, water seeps from hidden springs, and porcupines wander trails. The more a thing changes the more it remains and becomes itself.

Meetingbrook begins again. We've a new lease at the harbour. The following gatherings take place regularly at the Meetingbrook Hermitage Bookshop/Bakery by the Harbour, and at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain.

Note: All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal

1. At Harbour Meetingbrook. Evening Conversation Practice at Bookshop/Bakery: Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evening, from 5:30 to 6:30pm there is a formatted conversation on a different theme or focus. Each conversation intends and practices deep-listening and loving-speech. The hour consists of: reading aloud around the circle, brief silence, open conversation, and final circle comments.

Themes of weekly and daily events :

• Tuesdays: Buddhist Meditative Tradition

• Wednesdays: Laura Soul-Friend Conversation -- a circle group inviting each to reflect and speak of their own prayer and practice, what is noticed, and how things are going. (Occasional presenters.)

• Thursdays: Christian Contemplative Tradition

• Fridays: Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue

• Saturdays: Poetry Tea, and Literature (4:30-5:30pm).We read around circle our own writing or pieces of each person's choosing.

• Sundays: Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table (1:00pm-2:30pm.) Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)

• Daily: Noon Lectio -- 15 at 12. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon to listen to a reading for 5 minutes, sit in silence for 5 minutes, then have an opportunity to share some personal response (if you wish) in the circle for the remaining 5 minutes.

• Music: Come by any time to practice or rehearse in public. We also have a piano. No one will pay a bit of attention to you. Weds and Sun others are sure to be there with harmonica, guitar, harp, or flute.

• Invitations to Use Patio:

-- Open invitation to use harbour patio for gatherings. Any time, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by. -- Open invitation to use harbour patio for morning Tai Chi, QiQong, or Yoga.

Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:00am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

…

2. At Mountain Meetingbrook. Practice at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain:

• Saturday Ora et Labora Practice (7:15am-9:15am). Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation – we then (after coffee/tea and toasted English with jam taken in silence with periodic audio tape background) do a period of work around grounds of hermitage in mindfulness.

• Sunday Evening Practice. Two hour meditation practice consisting of: 35 minute sitting, 10 minute walking, chanting (of Heart Sutra or Compline), then: reading at table, silent mindful eating of soup & bread, then circle conversation/reflection.

…

3. Hermitage Harbour Room. Upstairs over bookshop/bakery is a lovely studio apartment. This single room with balcony overlooks our patio and the harbour with all the boating bustling that takes place there. This room is available for brief retreats, overnight stays, or day solitude visits. Call and ask us to reserve it for you. We operate by donations, and are grateful for whatever dollar amount you are willing to leave as donation for the ongoing work of the hermitage.

When not occupied by guests, the Harbour Room is available to everyone for quiet time, one-with-one conversations, meetings for up to 12 people, reading, or simply looking out over the water.

…

4. Meetingbrook and Maine State Prison. Meetingbrook volunteers weekly at the State Prison in Warren. We hold Meetingbrook Conversations (MC's) and Individual Learning Conversations (ILC's) with attendees from general population. We are also embarking on MC's and ILC's in the closed unit protective custody. Also held will be ILC's in the Special Management Unit (formerly known as the Super-Max). Friday mornings are dedicated to these lovely encounters.

…

5. Ongoing Life at Meetingbrook. Masquerading as a mildly mannered (sometimes cranky gathering place of irregulars) bookshop and bakery at Camden Harbor, Meetingbrook Hermitage is a place of collation and recollection, hospitality and inquiry, acceptance and forgiveness, good conversation and better baked goods, not to mention the best and quietest sitting place on the water where coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are always on the house.

The harbour location is the market-face of Meetingbrook Hermitage. We often think of ourselves as hermits-in-the-open. The promises we take are Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence. There are no secret handshakes nor special qualifications to belong at Meetingbrook -- everyone who walks into view or is heard saying a word, or who thinks of us and others with engaged consideration -- everyone belongs.

…

6. Money. We are small and we are not independently wealthy. Therefore we need, ask for, and accept donations to fund Meetingbrook. The bookshop/bakery is a labor of love, it does not pay for itself, therefore. we ask for help to continue its operation i.e. for rent and utilities. We ask you to donate whatever you can, whenever you might be able. Saskia and Bill have part-time employment to help stay afloat. We are blessed with volunteers and board members who help run the place and keep us in our place. Everyone involved receives a yearly salary of a penny and a pizza for their efforts.

...

• Subscriptions: We invite you to become subscribers.

Subscriptions of $50.00 dollars or more a year earns you our gratitude and a 10% discount a year on all books and music.

Subscriptions of $250.00 in a year and you receive our gratitude, 15% discount, and one night in the Harbour Room.

Subscriptions of $500.00 a year, and you receive our gratitude, a 20% discount on all books and music for the year, as well as two overnight stays in the harbour room with morning breakfast.

Any gift subscription of $1,000 dollars or more receives all the above -- and -- we will loan you our dog and cat for a weekend, ignore you when we see you, and not tell anyone of your kindness.

...

• New Economic Template: Curiously, we would actually like to operate the bookshop/bakery on a new economic basis, namely, by donation. Items such as used and sale books, not-today baked goods, previously owned music cds, as well as soups, sandwiches -- would be exchanged on the basis of whatever the individual could pay or wishes to donate to the hermitage. (We've done this already with tea, coffee, and hot chocolate since 1996. Since last year the practice extends to sandwiches and Sunday Community Table, patio-grill food-stuff, and several other goodies).

We have tea pots around upstairs and downstairs for donations to help us pay the rent etc and purchase food for all the hospitality gatherings where we are pleased to offer food and drink gratis. We like both the idea and the practice of what a philosopher once said, namely, “Life is gift, not recompense.” We slowly mull, meditate, and little by little implement this notion of gift-for-gift economy. We daily recognize that everything -- all of it -- is gift.

...

• Please consider donating to Meetingbrook. Tell us about Grants or Foundations that might be friendly to peace, hospitality, tolerance, community engagement, or just plain nice folks who like the idea of what we've been praying, meditating, and engaging these past years as we begin our 12th year at the harbour.

...

• Sails: Everybody gets to go sailing with Saskia on Penobscot Bay. That's a given. Even without asking. You might just be shanghaied by her. Keep your wits about you.

• Some final words: We have called ourselves mono, that is, monastics of no other. We intend a life of prayer and mindfulness, practicing between traditions what the designation mono stands for. It stands for the gift given all creation and existence -- the gift of wholeness -- a gift very often not seen, heard, or understood.

We feel called. We do our life and this practice of mindful service with the realization that each person is gift, and each invitation to love and serve one/an/other is gift. We are each of us invited to dwell within a true dwelling place.

Some hold that true dwelling place to be What Is Itself...or...God. Our focus as meetingbrook monastics includes both expressions -- namely, Buddha-Mind and Christ-Consciousness. Some do not use the word God but nevertheless long for What Is Itself. However it is worded for you, we feel this reality to be no other. Hence: monastics of no other

For us, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a place where each is invited to presence herself or himself. What is no other to us is gift. What Buddhists call Bodhichitta, (unconditional loving-kindness and compassion), and Christians call Agape, (love that promotes overall well-being, the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, and humanity for one another as well as God) -- is what we attempt to practice, engage, and embody. (The Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, and a Cosmotheandric spirituality which is all-inclusive, are both ways that are Vorbild (i.e. the pattern before us) and Schwer (i.e. difficult). Still, humbly, we practice.

Meetingbrook is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, (that is, a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation). It is a daily practice. It is hospitality. It is an integral conversation between silence and word. It is an engaged interaction with all our brothers and sisters. It looks to, and listens for, all sentient beings. It quietly and reverently seeks to attend the source mystery of life. This source mystery of life is what some call God, and some call What Is Taking Place, Here, Now! We try to pay attention to how each person and being expresses their view. We trust in inclusive sharing of each path, each trail along that path, each step on the trail. This is what a Laura of Hermits is for us -- It is a common viewing of each trail and each pathway leading each of us home.

In conclusion: We are grateful for all the blessings and wonderful folks we've been privileged to meet these dozen years. Come visit. Grace us with your presence. You are integrally within the sound of what is taking place. We listen for you. Let's listen together!

What else is there?

Just you.

Just us.

Just everyone.

And all of it.

As it is!

With love,

, Cesco , Mu-ge ,
and all who grace Meetingbrook,
5 May 2007

(In memoriam, Katherine)

................................................................................



Spring & Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook

All Events at MEETINGBROOK are free, open, & informal
Meetingbrook is a Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection
at Camden Harbour and at Ragged Mountain
Consult “Today at Meetingbrook”For any changes in schedule.

CONVERSATIONS AT BOOKSHOP/BAKERY HERMITAGE ON THE HARBOUR
Note: All conversations are 1 hour in length. Anyone invited to drop in. We practice loving speech, deep listening, and honest inquiry. Format: circle reading; brief silence; conversing; final circle comments.

TUESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme - Maybe Zen, Maybe Not. A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhism and its meditative tradition. A brief silent sitting, brief reading, and conversation. Currently: No Time To Lose, by Pema Chodron.

WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm
Theme - Laura Soul-Friend Conversation. A conversation focusing on personal practice, experience, and belief. (A “Laura” is the Greek word for “trails” or “ various paths.”) Primary focus is the invitation to reflect and speak aloud where our practice is, what delights and/or difficulties we experience. Each Wednesday some person, or some aspect of practice, will begin the conversation.

THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm.
Theme - Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christianity -- whether traditional, radical, alternative, contemplative, or contemporary. Brief silence, followed by relevant reading, conversation. Currently: A Course in Miracles.

FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme -- Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue. A look at how contemporary topics affect the many and various everyday concerns --whether religious/spiritual traditions, earth, or the world. Reading, presentation, or film/audio considering topics on themes from all traditions. Currently Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue. Next, Beauty. Films and videos interspersed.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP -- 4:30pm-5:30pm
Theme - Tea, Poetry, and Literature. For one hour we’ll read poems, prose pieces, essays, or short stories. Bring with you anything you wish to read -- your ow writing, or others'.

DAILY NOON LECTIO AT BOOKSHOP --Noon -12:15pm (Tue-Sat) Theme-- 15 at 12. A 15 minute mid-day practice in harbour room. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon consisting of: listening to a reading for 5 minutes, sitting in silence for 5 minutes, then having an opportunity to share some personal response in a circle go-round for the remaining 5 minutes.

OTHER EVENTS AT THE HARBOUR

SUNDAY UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS COMMUNITY TABLE 1:00PM –2:30PM
Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table: Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)Music, conversation, laughter, and superb Sunday dinner. Stop by! Donations accepted for food!

MUSIC REHEARSALS -- 1:00pm-3:00pm (approx)
Any time any day of week. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoon a group might gather.. We've a piano. Come rehearse, or play in public. No one will pay any attention to you. (Unless you wish so.)

OPEN INVITATION TO USE HARBOUR PATIO FOR GATHERINGS --Anytime, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by.

MORNING TAI CHI, QiQONG (CHI KUNG), OR YOGA -- OPEN INVITATION FOR SMALL GROUPS. Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:30am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

MEETINGBROOK EVENTS AT MAINE STATE PRISON, WARREN ME

FRIDAY MORNING PRISON CONVERSATIONS -- 7:15am --11:15am.
Weekly Meetingbrook Conversations, group and individual, open to all inmates.

HERMITAGE EVENTS AT BARNESTOWN RD, RAGGED MOUNTAIN

HERMITAGE CHAPEL/ZENDO MEDITATION CABIN -- An Open Daily Community resource The Chapel/Zendo Meditation Cabin is always open and available for silence, meditation, or prayer. Whatever your tradition, let us remember one another whenever we sit.

SATURDAY ORA ET LABORA PRACTICE -- 7:15am-9:15am. Prayer and Work. Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation. We then (after coffee/tea, English Muffins with jam, taken in silence) do a brief period of work in mindfulness around grounds of hermitage.

SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE -- 6:00pm-8:00pm
Each Sunday evening, drop-in. Practice includes: Sitting (40min), Walking, (10min), Chanting, Table reading (10min), Silent Eating (10min), Conversing (20min). Bell. Leave.

Closed Mondays.
Open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00am to 8:00pm, Sunday 10:00am to 4:30pm
Let us order your books and music! Thanks!
Bookshop/Bakery, 50 Bayview Street, Camden, ME
Dogen & Francis Hermitage 64 Barnestown Rd, Camden, ME
mono@meetingbrook.org (207) 236-6808 or (207) 701-9644