The words say: "Our use for words is almost over now."
http://acim.org/Lessons/lesson.html?lesson=351

"Now is he redeemed. And as he sees the gate of Heaven stand open before him, he will enter in and disappear into the Heart of God." (ACIM)

How to think about this prefacing morning? Cat purrs on chest. Last night's embers rekindled in woodstove as dawn stars guide dog and cat out Wohnkuche sliding door to morning pee. The night was giving way. We are its quiet remains.

In his poem "Ten Years Later," David Whyte writes:

Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers

as if remembering them
by touch alone.

A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.

Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.

Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we've given ourselves away.

There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one day

we are blessed to return.

(~ David Whyte ~ from, House of Belonging)
file:///Volumes/meetingbrook/poem,%20Ten%20Years%20Later%20--%20David%20Whyte.webarchive

Perhaps this is a nativity reflection for this morning. There is one. World. Only.

Is Jesus, called Christ, one through which we listen, see, and have awareness of being-itself?

Is this the invitation?

To arrive. To listen and to see. To completely feel with what-is-here. Then disappear. Into the heart. Of God.

Alone with.

With...

Alone.

Cold wind blows through moonlight over this morning’s snow.

Just as sound of existence is heard through Christ-Mind over din of world’s erroneous perceptions.

Still, we listen for light. We look for harmony. We cry freedom.

A curtain of cloud hangs
Before the meditation seat
An ice wheel of moonlight
Turns through the railing
Don't say I have erased
All trace of attainment
Behind me there are still
Heaven and earth.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Still, heaven and earth.

Today was Thursday. Tomorrow Friday.

Then comes Saturday.

God itself is what is sounding through.

I write:

Christmas Haiku:

If I were you I’d
wonder why I’d written this
to someone I am

Cat and dog are in. Saskia gone to family. Cold wind passing through.

Last minute legislation in Congress. Applause.

So many words. Too many.

Our use for words is almost over now. Yet in the final days of this one year we gave to God together, you and I, we found a single purpose that we shared. And thus you joined with me, so what I am are you as well. The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us.
(--from December 20th - Lesson 354, A Course in Miracles))

What happens when the words become exemplification?

What do we see when the word becomes flesh?

Zen-sitting is the way of perfect tranquility:
Inwardly not a shadow of perception,
Outwardly not a shade of difference
Between phenomena.
Identified with yourself,
You no longer think,
Nor do you seek enlightenment
Of the mind or disburdenment of illusions.
You are a flying bird with
No mind to twitter, a mountain
Unconscious of the others rising around it.
- Meiho (1277–1350)

Twitterless un-con-consciousness without illusions -- sign me up!

Some silence saves even what is lost.

Winter! Solstice!

Light will return.

First, the cold. Then, throughout, returning light.

The Original Self

Even those who have set aside all judgments of right and wrong and do not view people in terms of self and other cannot be said to be truly on the Way as long as they have not seen the original state before personal history.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

A few days to Christmas. Today, I am alive.

There's nothing else.

And nothing to fear.

We are not going home. We are home.

The moon will eclipse tonight. I will be eclipsed by the time it happens.

I will try to remain still and silent.

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

A student writes:

"I tried to think logically about how the story could be the way it was but if you just let it be… it is. Being transcnds reason. Being allows for everything to be at once.”
-- Melyssa K, 15dec2010

She sees something here.

I am with you.

God is with us.

Be with one another.

Advent draws into its evening and final days.

Then Isaiah said:
‘Listen now, House of David:
are you not satisfied with trying the patience of men
without trying the patience of my God, too?
The Lord himself, therefore,
will give you a sign.
It is this: the maiden is with child
and will soon give birth to a son
whom she will call Immanuel,
a name which means “God-is-with-us.”’
(-from Isaiah 7:10-14)

All obedience is contained in the phrase: "Listen now."

All spirituality is rooted in listening now to what is now.

What do we hear?

He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ Now all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel...

a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’ When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home.
(-from Matthew1:18-24)

We are, it feels. far from home as we listen to the fears and frustrations, savaging and sycophanting, noisily clanking though the streets and hallways of our collective sleep and disturbing dreams.

We long to find, to return, to be -- home.

(Angelus, or, Abendbebet, (1857-59), by Jean-Francois Millet, Public Domain)

Joseph, listening, heard, took Mary to his home. Mary was home to her new listening within her. The time was now. What had been time was no more. What would be time would not occur. Everything, from origin to completion, was now.

Was now listening.

Being with.

Is with.

Your life.

My life.

Life itself.

Coming to be-with us.

Bewithing the world as-it-is.

Origin...Present...Holy Wholeness.

Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum!

(Allow it to be-with me as-is your word!)

Stacking wood by moonlight. Rowing to bell buoy #2 in middle afternoon. Sitting zazen in morning.

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

It is the ordinary that sustains us.

No need for miracles.

Just someone being born.

Just someone dying.

Just life between.

In prison today three men took the 14 precepts. I said yes to each one from my chair in the back of the room. Indirection suits me.

If you miss the mark even by a strand of hair,
You are as distant as heaven from earth.
If the slightest discrimination occurs,
You will be lost in confusion.
You could be proud of your understanding;
Have abundant realization, or acquire
Outstanding wisdom and attain the way
By clarifying the mind. Still, if you
Are wandering about in your head,
You may miss the vital path of letting your body leap.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Maggie turned 90 today. Gertrude read the same poem twice and recited her quote twice. She's 91.

Prison and nursing home. Both, gifts.

Tonight we finish Anam Cara for the second time and complete our four year Friday night with John O'Donohue's three books.

We've got to listen to one another.

Gravel in dooryard grips tightly recently sodden earth now frozen hard.

Why live an open life, unfettered by concealing fear and resentful, revenging rage?

Because we are beings of the open who’ve mistakenly been hiding from who and what we are.

Denial attracts oppositional accusatory energy, blocking forward movement, makes barriers, imprisons, and isolates.

Acceptance allows what is real to be what it is, and frees motion within and without us to be a vibrant stillness that is continuous and diaphanous.

Dewdrops,
let me cleanse
in your brief,
sweet waters
these dark hands of life.
- Basho (1644-1694)

Ethics is concerned to free individuals and communities to a set of actions that are transparent and moving toward healthy, truthful, and liberating presence.

Teaching, especially ethics, is a humbling and uncertain activity.

So it is the semester ends.

Cold night. They're making snow on the mountain. Last class for the semester, over.

Coming or going,
Day or night,
You must just strive to
Face the incomprehensible.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Just presence. Only presence.

Is all.

That.

Matters.

If you love
God you
will be
kind.

If you know
kindness you
see with God
everything.

Be this
seeing
kind.

You speak, I listen. I speak, you listen. Then we confer.

It takes work. But the opposite of this art is cultivation of dissuasion and aversion.

Dialogue is important for Panikkar but not purely mechanical or informative dialogue but rather what he calls “dialogical dialogue” which leads to recognizing difference but also to what we have in common, which in the end produces mutual fecondation. Dialogue is not a luxury for mankind, it is something absolutely necessary and inter-religious dialogue plays an important role. By this Panikkar does not mean an abstract theoretical dialogue, a dialogue about beliefs, he means a deep-reaching human dialogue in which one seeks the collaboration of the other for mutual realization since wisdom consists in being able to listen. Religion is not an experiment for him, it is an experience, an experience of life through which one is part of the cosmic adventure, with neither worry nor anxiety. This, for example, leads him to put forward the notion of “identity”. He was once asked during an interview: “Where do you find your identity?” His answer was:” By losing it rather than looking for it: by not wanting to hold onto an identity which has not yet been fulfilled and therefore is impossible to find in the past because it would only be a copy of something old. Life is a risk; adventure is radical innovation; creation comes about day after day, it is something absolutely new and unforeseeable”.

(-- from Laudatio of Raimon Panikkar Alemany, during the solemn academic ceremony of his investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Girona. Presented by Prof. Josep-Maria Terricabras, sponsor of the new Doctor.)

This is what a vocation is: to listen, and by listening to call out from concealment that which longs for communion, commonality, and commensurability.

There are so many brothers and sisters waiting for us to pray with them.

Are you listening?

I'm not waiting for Jesus to be born. I'm not waiting for his resurrection. I'm not waiting for the second coming.

What then? It is Advent. What am I doing?

The real way circulates everywhere;
How could it require
Practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
How could effort be necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is
Free of dust; why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this
Very place; why journey away?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

I'm dwelling in this very place.

Here is birth. Here is resurrection. Here the eternal return.

There's nothing to wait for this Advent.

Become what you are.

Be yourself!

Soon to realize:

Hodie.

Christus est.

Natus.

Merton felt monasticism was the only venue for Marxism. From each according to their ability; to each according to their need.

Pema Chodron might agree. We are alone, she says. Merton agrees. So does the Buddha. We're on our own. (Our own what?)

Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It's not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can't grab it. Beyond this mind you'll never see a buddha. The buddha is a product of your mind. Why look for a buddha beyond this mind?
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

I will be staying closer to home. I suspect the return home nears. I find little reason to leave home.

And yet, I have no home.

Just feet. And boots. Along with what remains of breath.

Thomas Merton had a way of annoying some people and enchanting others:

His visit with the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan monks impressed Merton more than all other Asian encounters. Of course, these Tibetans have experienced Marxism as a force that destroyed much of their monastic structure. And Merton is confronting Marxism also as a political force that destroyed all structures. What happens when these structures are destroyed? In the future, he says, we will not rely on structures. We cannot be sure whether any of the structures with which we are familiar will outlast even our lifetime. What then are we supposed to do? What is the essence of monastic life?
Here is the high point of his whole Bangkok talk, the background of which is the story of Trungpa Rimpoche, who moved to the U.S. and founded a number of lively, prospering meditation centers. Merton met him on his Asian journey and was impressed. When the communists invaded Tibet, Trungpa Rimpoche was abbot of a large monastery, but was out on a visitation and got caught by the invasion at some farmhouse. Now the question was, what should he do? Should he go back to his own monastery, or should be flee across the border? He sent a message to a nearby abbot-friend to ask, “What shall we do?” The abbot sent back a message which Merton found most significant: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.”

Merton goes on to say, “To my mind, this is an extremely important monastic statement.” (Remember, this man is now speaking in the last hours of his life!) “If you forget everything else that has been said, I would suggests that you remember this for the future: ‘From now on, each one will have to stand on his own feet.’” He throws everything back on each monk personally: “Don’t rely on structure; stand on your own feet.” Then Merton expresses his relationship to structures: “Yes, we do need structures; we are supported by structures. But they may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force. We cannot rely on structures. Use structures, but do not rely on structures.”

The moment we stand on our own two feet, the moment we find contemplative life at the root of monastic life, deep down in our own hearts, in our own center, we go beyond division. That is the third essential that Merton sifts out in facing the monastic identity crisis: that the Christian monastic calling is one that unites us with all monks. There again is this crack where he breaks out from the enclosed shell of a Trappist, Christian, monastic structure into universal monasticism. Monks East and West share the same quest, the contemplative quest of the human heart, in which we are all united. We go beyond division to an inner liberty which no one can touch.

Merton sees the essence: “What is essential in the monastic life is not embedded in buildings, not in a habit, not necessarily even in a rule.” (That must sound like enormous heresy to some.) “It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation.” Once we have reached that last quest for total inner transformation, to quote Saint Paul, “there is no longer slave or free-born, there is no longer Jew or Gentile,” there is no longer Asian or European, but we have transcended these divisions. “This kind of monasticism,” Merton said in his last talk, “this kind of monasticism cannot be extinguished. It is imperishable; it represents an instinct of the human heart.”

(from, Thomas Merton, Now at the Crack of Dawn, by Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB, http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_merton-crack2.htm

The Heart Sutra, chanted at this morning's practice, has a section that says:

Therefore, O Sariputra,

in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness ;

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to :

No mind-consciousness element ; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to : There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path.

There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.

(trans. by E. Conze)

In emptiness, where do I belong?

Where are you?

I think of Thomas Merton's death the way I experience the 9th stanza of the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens:

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles

We renew our promises, watch film biography, and eat pizza.

On Going to see a Taoist master

A dog barks
Amid the sound of water;
A heavy dew stains
Peach blossoms.
In these deep woods,
I see several deer;
At noon along the stream,
I hear no temple bell.
Wild bamboo
Divides grey clouds;
Waterfalls hang
From blue peaks.
No way to tell
Where you've gone;
Disheartened, I lean
Against a second, now a third pine.
- Li Po (701-762)

I lean on the realization that Merton is so right for Meetingbrook.

Love has no opposite.

Only itself nowhere not.

Viewed Hamlet from London to Rockland screen this afternoon.

To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what's meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond the mind, but such a place doesn't exist.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

Rory Kinnear as Hamlet was felt through and through.

There ’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’t is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is ’t to leave betimes?
(--Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 2. by William Shakespeare)

Thoroughly felt.

I saw no morning star this morning. Back to shuffling feet.

Wondering if it's a winter shower,
I wake in my bed
And hear them:
The leaves that
Couldn't withstand the storm.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

If I was born immaculately whole, something broke afterwards.

I can't imagine there's nothing to live or die for.

I've tried. It's not easy.

There is, some say, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Those who say it are in the middle. We don't hear much from before the beginning or after the end.

I'm not saying that beginnings or endings are what we call them. I like the idea that there is no beginning, only origin. I like the idea that there is no ending, only disappearance.

After his final talk on 10Dec1968 Thomas Merton said he would just disappear. And he did. By electrocution. His words remain. Lots of them. But he...has disappeared.

There's a koan question asking to see the person's original face -- the one they had before their mother and father were born.

We usually stare at the questioner when this question is asked.

"Sweep away thoughts!" means one must do zazen. Once thoughts are quieted, the Original Face appears. Thoughts can be compared to clouds. When clouds vanish, the moon appears. The moon of suchness is the Original Face. Thoughts are also like the fogging of a mirror. When you wipe away all condensation, a mirror reflects clearly. Quiet your thoughts and behold your Original Face before you were born!
- Daito (1282-1334)

When death nears, there's a question asked: "What happens at the end, what happens after death?"

I don't know.

That's what happens: "I don't know.”

Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,

Receive thy new possessor—one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same

. . . Here at least/ We shall be free . . .

we may reign secure; and, in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. (I:251-263)

— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

So says the mind. Does the heart feel a different last line? The mind has reigned in a hell of war and carnage. The heart longs to serve peace with kindness and attention.

Robert Thurman says that only monasticism is an antidote to militarism. Either you empty the mind of egoistic grasping or you attack others with a mind to possess what they possess.

I choose a lay monastic attentive life.

Monasticism sees no end. Militarism is the beginning of the end.

Right now -- ask the most important question: "What is the most important question?"

That's it!

December 8th is about us.

Happy Buddha's Enlightenment Day!

Happy Immaculate Conception of Mary!

Happy sorrow at the assassination of John Lennon!

Dogen Zenji said: “Life Is One Continuous Mistake.”

Find yourself in the middle of it. Extend your mistake.

It's alright.

We're not barbaric. We're afraid. And people afraid do the bidding of their intimidators. These are difficult times. Many fearful people will do many awful things.

“Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1945 essay “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” “it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman.” (-- Chris Hedges, Happy as a Hangman, Truthdig, 6Dec2010)

We have good reason to be wary. There seems to be, oddly, a concerted effort to widen the imbalance of those who have far more than they need and those who have far less than they need.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book “The Gulag Archipelago” writes about a close friend who served with him in World War II. Solzhenitsyn’s defiance of the Communist regime after the war saw him sent to the Soviet gulags. His friend, loyal to the state, was sent there as an interrogator. Solzhenitsyn was forced to articulate a painful truth. The mass of those who serve systems of terrible oppression and state crime are not evil. They are weak.

“If only there were vile people ... committing evil deeds, and if it were only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them,” Solzhenitsyn wrote. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
(--from, Happy as a Hangman, by Chris Hedges, on Truthdig, Posted on Dec 6, 2010, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/happy_as_a_hangman_20101206/

I'm confounded by the way the economic institutions in our country and world operate with such ease of function to reap enormous profits while, at the same time, finding new ways to extract money and encourage debt from so many ordinary citizens who have no resources to counterbalance the system or money brokers in our midst.

My face feels frown furrowed, my mind incredulous, my spirit deflated. The way I live does not feel holy.

To drink up the ocean and turn a mountain
Upside down is an ordinary affair for a Zennist.
Zen seekers should sit on the site of universal
Enlightenment right in the midst of all the thorny
Situations in life,
And recognize their original face while mixing
With the ordinary world.
- Huanglong

I look at the mountain full of falling snow and ask it about its original face. It looks back at me -- frowning, furrowing, befuddled, and dispirited.

I sit on the site of universal unknowing and find the holy questioning me about what it should do.

I say nothing.

Snow

At every hand there are moments we
cannot quite grasp or understand. Free

to decide, to interpret, we watch rain
streaking down the window, the drain

emptying, leaves blown by a cold wind.
At least we sense a continuity in

such falling away. But not with snow.
It is forgetfulness, what does not know,

has nothing to remember in the first place.
Its purpose is to cover, to leave no trace

of anything. Whatever was there before—
the worn broom leaned against the door

and almost buried now, the pile of brick,
the bushel basket filling up with thick,

gathering whiteness, half sunk in a drift—
all these things are lost in the slow sift

of the snow's falling. Now someone asks
if you can remember—such a simple task—

the time before you were born. Of course
you cannot, nor can I. Snow is the horse

that would never dream of running away,
that plods on, pulling the empty sleigh

while the tracks behind it fill, and soon
everything is smooth again. No moon,

no stars, to guide your way. No light.
Climb up, get in. Be drawn into the night.

(--Poem, Snow, by Jared Carter, from Poetry, c.1999, 2003)

The mountain continues to fill with snow.

The black and white cat scratches and grooms.

I will make no noose.

Nor noise.

Near, a sigh of sorrow.

And if the doctor says: You have a disease that will kill you." Say back: "Thank you!"

Now, in this world and in other worlds, in India and China, buddha ancestors equally carry the buddha seal and teach the practice of sitting immersed in steadfastness. Although circumstances may vary in a thousand ways, whole-heartedly practice Zen, giving yourself fully to the Way. Why give up the sitting platform of your own house and wander uselessly in the dust of a remote land?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

I consider myself a wanderer.

And useless.

Sit well.

Do I have a clear mind? Is my heart open and responsive?

It is not for me to know. If they are so it will show.

The knowledge of the pure clean mind
Is as yellow gold to the world;
The spiritual treasury of wisdom is
All in the body and mind.
The uncreated spiritual treasury
Is neither shallow nor deep.
The buddhas and bodhisattvas
Understand this basic mind;
For those who have the chance
To encounter it, it is not
Past, future, or present.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)

The good thing about rowing around Curtis Island in middle afternoon is that the light fades and when there is a northerly wind the exercise you get is not an elective choice. Rather you are rowing against exhaustion to get back to inner harbor and not get blown out across the bay or slump over thwart with heart failure.

You just pull and lean, pull and lean, pull and lean all the way back.

There is no choice.

I would like to speak with what is holy.

What is holy is imageless and soundless.

Nothing to do.

But be.

Silent.

Silence is invitatory prayer of Holy Spirit.

Here only silence.

For 8 days our winter zendo will be an inviting place to practice zazen in preparation for Rohatsu, the December 8 celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment.

No fuss, no set schedule. Just come and use as you wish.

He cried:

That's it! That's it! That's it. That's me! That's me that's shining so brilliantly!

How deeply he was moved and what wonder he felt. From this comes all of the Buddha's dharma. From within this state of mind the Buddha said:

How wondrous, how wondrous! All beings are endowed with this pure nature! What a wondrous, astonishing thing has been realized! All the ten thousand things, all the flowers, all the trees, all the rocks, all things everywhere are shining brilliantly! What an amazing thing! It's the same landscape, but how brilliantly it is illuminated! What freshness is everything!

From within this deep illumination of the mind of the Buddha, all the Buddha's wisdom was born. All of Zen is held within the deep impression of the Buddha's mind at that moment.

People vow to experience this very same experience of the Buddha as they approach the rohatsu sesshin. In every single Zen dojo, people put their lives on the line to be able to experience the exact same state of mind, on the eighth of December, as that of the Buddha. This is the firm vow with which they come to the rohatsu sesshin.
(--from Morning Dewdrops of the Mind: Teachings of a Contemporary Zen Master, by Roy Tribelhorn, Shodo Harada Roshi, c.1993)

That's it.

Sit well!

Watching planes land and take off at Bangor airport this afternoon. The marvels of flight!

Everyone we pass might be the only person who knows the truth.

Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental,
unnoticed by the monocled eye of History,
you could be the man I held the door for
this morning at the bank or post office
or the one who wrapped my speckled fish.
You could be someone I passed on the street
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.
(--from poem, Dear Reader, by Billy Collins)

How fortunate we smile on each other.

No contrivance.

Do not say the mind monarch is empty
In having no essential nature;
It can cause the physical body to do
Wrong or do right.
Neither being nor nonbeing,
It is concealed and revealed
Without fixation.
Although the essence of mind is empty,
It can be ordinary and can be saintly:
Therefore I urge you to guard it yourself
Carefully; a moment of contrivance,
And you back to bobbing and sinking.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)

No bobbing and sinking.

No fixation.

There, that settles it!

I pass Harp Seal on way out to Curtis Island as sun spent last half hour before setting. Past it again as dusk darkened everything and only oarlocks made sounds an hour later. Pretty far south from Newfoundland, Greenland, and Russia.

We're all far from home.

Study the Way and never grow old
Distrust emotions; truth will emerge
Sweep away your worries
Set even your body aside

Autumn drives off the yellow leaves
Yet spring renews every green bud
Quietly contemplate the pattern of things
Nothing here to make us sad
- Shih-shu (17th-early 18th c.)

Video of Anthony de Mello at table portion of practice tonight. Good words.

We're not tied.

Walk away.

We are free are we!

Where to look?

To you my eyes are turned
(from Psalm 140)

Are you good looking?

May the God of peace make you perfect and holy; and may you all be kept safe and blameless, spirit, soul and body, for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has called you and he will not fail you.
(1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

No one is good. No one is bad.

We are, in fact, perfect and holy.

It's your call.

It's Advent.

Stay awake!

If these are the last words I write, they are pleasure to write.

‘You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do . . .’ (--from, A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968)

I choose nothing...but...to see things in God's view.

‘It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.’

Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, ‘What of death?’

The girl listened, her shining black head bent down.

‘For a word to be spoken,’ Ged answered slowly, ‘there must be silence. Before, and after.’
(--from, A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968)

The great word "that" is.

Is that all I have to say?

Then, that's that!

Against the gently flowing spring morning
The arrogant rattle of a passing coach
Peach blossoms beckon from the distant village
Willow branches caress the shoulder of the pond

As bream and carp flash their golden scales
And mated ducks link embroidered wings
The poet stares about; this way, then that
Caught in a web beyond all speaking.
- Shih-shu (17th-early 18th c.)

Beyond all.

Speaking.

Three ways of viewing what meditation practice on Thanksgiving morning might suggest:

1. What is not the ego is what is revealing God as being with us.

2. What is,
not the ego,
is what is revealing
God as being with
us.

3. What is not,
the ego,
is what is
revealing God
as being
with us.

I like facts and gratitude.

A good Thanksgiving!

Only answer the question asked.

The rich worry about getting poor
For me poverty would be a good year
I followed fate into these myriad peaks
You don't need a penny here
Thatched eaves beside a racing brook
Cragflowers draping the bamboo fence
In winter, I turn my back to the sun
Come summer, park myself at water's edge.
- Shih-shu (17th-early 18th c)

If I want to know more, I'll ask.

Gratitude is its own accomplishment.

Really, there is nothing.

To accomplish...

After yesterday in Oxford and Norway, today in St Albans and Hartland Maine -- drizzle. fog and rain throughout -- we return to Tuesday Evening Practice in bookshed. And the question: Is the only 'trap' the one wherein we repeat the habits and patterns of ego's fears until we cannot take one further step with our lives?

To be is to become.

Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant. (~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin)

Many years ago, I recall writing: "We marry ourselves and are shocked by the inevitable divorce."

If you want to attain buddhahood,
Don't be stained by anything.
Though the essence of mind is empty,
The substance of greed and anger is solid.
To enter this door to the source,
Sit straight and be Buddha.
Once you've arrived at the other shore,
You will attain the perfections.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659

I'd like to be a saint and nobody knowing about it.

Not knowing is a grace.

My gratitude for not knowing what or who I am!

Why or how this came to be.

Becoming itself.

Icy rain in Oxford Maine this morning.

I see perfect winter zendo chairs for bookshed/retreat in discount store there.

My long white hair is framed by
Green mountains
My body is surrounded
By a thousand cliffs and gorges
The pine gate is silent
No one passes by
The only ones who visit
Are the drifting clouds.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

For silence and silent sitting practice -- with apologies to the original lyrics: All we need is a room somewhere. Between barn and cabin in cold night air. Warm space with two new chairs. Wouldn’t that be? Love her. See!

ELIZA:
All I want is a room somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air,
With one enormous chair.
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

Lots of chocolate for me to eat.
Lots of coal makin' lots of 'eat.
Warm face, warm 'ands, warm feet.
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

Oh, so loverly sittin' absobloominlutely still.
I would never budge 'till spring
Crept over the windowsill.

Someone's 'ead restin' on my knee,
Warm an' tender as 'e can be,
Who takes good care of me.
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
Loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly.

(Song, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady, music by Frederick Loewe; lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, 1964)

We watch Book of Eli and find it stark and interesting. Makes me want to read again novel read in the 1960s, A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

What will prevail when our civilization derails?

The First Book of Moses, called Genesis

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

(Beginning, King James Bible)

From there. To here. No departure. No arrival.

Dwells the Source.

We adjourn to winter zendo in bookshed/retreat next to barn for its warmth and sweetness to house our meditation and prayer practice from now through winter.

After late fall rain
The falling leaves swirl
Weightlessly; celestial scent
Covers my patched robe
A simple vacant mind
Has no place to go
Resting on the peak
I watch the clouds return.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

I love prayer and meditation.

You’ll find me there for the winter.

Fear is only the ego's doorkeeper. All fear wants us to do is carefully observe what is presenting itself.

Careful awareness of what is presenting itself is the beginning of wisdom.

Like salt in water,
Like adhesive in coloring,
It is certainly there,
But you don't see its form;
So is the monarch of mind.
Dwelling inside the body,
Going in and out the senses,
It responds freely to beings,
According to conditions,
Without hindrance, succeeding,
At all it does.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)

In prison today there was a presentation of a conversation entitled: "Let's just see how it goes!" This is a phrase used by Maezumi Roshi whenever a student wanted to try to accomplish something. The gathering was a forum for the emotional needs and stress related aspects of prisoner release.

Five Points for Conversation

1.
The way you feel now is how you’re going to feel.
(feel, acknowledge, free)

2.
See your way through, don’t be distracted by expectations.
(your or others; rather, focus on what you are doing)

3.
“Don’t think: Look!” (--Ludwig Wittgenstein)
(avoid explanations, rationalizations, excuses, blaming, targeting, or trying to fix.)
(Rather: look clearly and carefully, feel, and free)

4.
“Man is defined by that which disturbs him.” (--Elie Wiesel)
(be aware of what disturbs, pisses you off, makes you angry, makes you crazy.)
You are not that. Find a way to move through. Movement, not explanation.)

5.
Revelation of non-illusory reality is initially terrifying.
(while illusory existence might be comfortable, true reality is liberating)

Illusions will end.

As we become sane we will take off masks, stop telling covering stories about everything, and we will no longer fear to see what we see, hear what we hear, and become again what we truly are.

Free in and through the practice of seeing where this goes.

The Dalai Lama says meditation will help arrive at universal ethics with peaceful calm mind.

Today I sat before the cliffs
Sat until the mist drew off
A rambling clear stream shore
A towering green ridge crest
Cloud's dawn shadows still
Moon's night light adrift
Body free of dust
Mind without a care.
- Han shan

Live free and die.

I’m having no part of it.

But all of it.

It is amazing anything that is said makes any sense. Sometimes it feels like chaos is the only thing there is.

What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas.
- Linji (d. 866)

I prefer being...

nobody.

Which, I sense, is what I am.

I leave two pennies on red and white channel marker. Not one boat is in the outer harbor. No one passes me as I row out in the bay. I am alone. With seals. And loons.

In human life, if you feel that you have made a mistake, you don’t try to undo the past or the present, but you just accept where you are and work from there. Tremendous openness as to where you are is necessary. This also applies to the practice of meditation, for instance. A person should learn to meditate on the spot, in the given moment, rather than thinking, “. . . When I reach pension age, I’m going to retire and receive a pension, and I’m going to build my house in Hawaii or the middle of India, or maybe the Gobi Desert, and THEN I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ll live a life of solitude and then I’ll really meditate.” Things never happen that way.
(—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Transcending Madness , From "Your Life Is Your Practice" by Glenna Olmstead)

At evening practice we listen to Pema Chodron on Maitri.

Maitri is translated in a lot of ways, maybe most commonly as love, but the way Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche translated it was unconditional friendliness and in particular unconditional friendliness to oneself. (Pema Chodron, in Shambhala Sun, )

Let's do that.

Be unconditionally friendly.

To ourselves.

In another.

At times someone says, “I cannot pray.” I hear their words as, “What I think is prayer I cannot do. I can only do what I am doing, saying, ‘I cannot pray.’”

Whenever we do what we are doing, we are praying. Paying attention to our life is having faith in life. Faith is attention seeking insight.

We wonder about life. We wonder about God. We wander about life. We wander about God.

Saturday morning practice today included silent sitting, reading (today from Shambhala Sun article by Karen Maezen Miller: “Do Dishes, Rake Leaves -- And Don’t Forget the Endless Loads of Laundry”), followed by a circle reflection by each attending, then metta blessing. It was a lovely morning and lovely practice.

This afternoon, rowing around Curtis and out around R2 bell buoy. Not a ripple. Slightest of swells. Slack tide. Rokie in stern. No boats in outer harbor. Only mooring balls to bump into. Warm afternoon. We meet Mannings just north of island, coming alongside -- they in their large dory, I in Anna’s good-sized peapod. Rokie jumps into dory, greets Sam and Susan fore to aft, then jumps back to peapod to resume our passage. Three sets of oars pull away from the rendezvous. Saskia is at wharf taking in the warm sun in wheelchair a month into her broken ankle.

We pray just by being in the world. Our very being is prayer. God is the open expanse of wholeness within which all things live and breathe and have their being. To acknowledge this reality is what some call gratefulness, some call the contemplative life, and some call prayer.

Vespers is spoken in quiet kitchen. Kali calls and does healing silence over phone with Saskia.

A Ken Follett series on Netflix, The Pillars of the Earth, dark and brooding treachery of court and church in middle ages. Power, ambition, and greed seem a staple of human nature. We pray, if we do, because it is a staple. Prayer is a fast. Or so it was. Reducing our obsessions.

But now, prayer is not wanting anything. Not from God, not from man, not from earth.

Left bereft, we pray to see through the emptiness what is permeating the emptiness. There's nothing there.

We are this nothingness seeking what we are.

This prayer is the longing of the presence of God to realize itself/himself/herself in the self-emptying place of receptivity and weakness.The Northumbrian Community of Ireland uses the words availability and vulnerability.

Names of the unified mind are
Buddha-nature,
True suchness, the hidden essence,
The pure spiritual body,
The pedestal of awareness,
The innocent, universal round mirrorlike knowledge,
The open source, the ultimate truth,
And pure consciousness.
The enlightened ones of the past, present, and future,
And all of their discourses,
Are all in your fundamental nature, inherently complete.
You do not need to seek,
But you must save yourself;
No one can do it for you.

- Xuefeng (822–908)

I left two pennies on base of bobbing bell buoy in the bay.

You never know who might need change.

It is Remembrance Day. Armistice Day. Veteran's Day.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

(-- 3rd and 4th verses from For The Fallen, poem by LAURENCE BINYON. Originally published in The Times on 21 September 1914)

For those, everywhere, who have served to protect and secure life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, their fellows in combat, their families and friends at home, and the natural inheritance of respect and revering all life, all existence -- on this day, we express gratitude.

Many are dead or deadened by war, world-wide. For all veterans of the horror and unkindness of the awful experience of war with its implications and consequences -- our prayers and thoughts for a continuation that is filled, in whatever form, with kindness, compassion, and loving embrace.

We will remember them.

We will remember you.

Grateful for gift extended.

Thank you!

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

If we must quarrel, let it be without war and other forms of unkindness. Let us converse, however spirited or full of disagreement, with the intention of peace and compassion shown one another.

Death is not where life goes.
Death is where life sees itself through.
No death, no life,
Death in life is nothing other than its opposite.

I heard what might have been the pickup truck go by the hermitage last night around 10:30pm.

Later, I heard the emergency vehicle climb the long hill. The long hill, the curve at Pearse's farm, the gully, the curving turn passing Seacoast Road.

The three young people, ages 21, 17, and 14, one male, two female, were dead at the scene after the truck, in mist and fog, slid on its side into a tree.

This morning cars and trucks in ordinary transport ascend and descend Barnestown Road. It is still wet and misting, grey and desolate in the dropped-color stillness along the mountain sluice of Bald and Ragged.

A deeper, more sober transport took place last night. There is a pall drenching the wide circumference of this sorrow.

For these three, for families and friends, for all of us attending this place, we mourn and pray safe passage!

Act surprised at what is taking place.

"Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act."
-- Leonard Cohen

I am surprised.

(And nothing is

Ever

The same

Again.)

Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

Stream, not scream.

Asking: What's the point?

Responding: What is...is the point.

The times I feel pointless are the times I am going nowhere.

In a Susan Stamberg interview with Dick Cavett on NPR this morning, a segment from his talk show in 1973 conversation with Marlon Brando:

"We couldn't survive a second if we weren't able to act," Brando said. "Acting is a survival mechanism. It's a social unguent and it's a lubricant. We act to save our lives, actually, every day. People lie constantly every day by not saying something that they think, or [by] saying something that they didn't think."

"That's not acting," Cavett countered.

"That is acting," Brando insisted.

Does act itself, with nothing else, invite yielding?

A merging way emerging way!

It's just the way I feel.

Three quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein -- (listed on Wikipedia). One by Muso -- (from DailyZen).

What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
(-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e)

Then:

Many times the mountains
have turned from green to yellow.
So much for the capricious earth!
Dust in your eyes,
the triple world is narrow.
Nothing on your mind,
your chair is wide enough.
- Muso (1275 – 1351)

And:

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
(§ 464, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

Finally:

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen."
Translated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (7)
Also: About what one can not speak, one must remain silent. (7)
--Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Exactly!

Note: There will be no Sunday Evening Practice tonight.

See you next time.

The world is wounded and weary. Spent shells of ordinariness and ordinance litter the ground. Bandage packaging is strewn along the edge of our attention. We look askance at anyone walking near us.

Aid. Help. Beginning. Now. Ever shall be.
Amen.

Loaves and Fishes

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

-- David Whyte
from The House of Belonging
©1996 Many Rivers Press

I cannot unmake war on Iraq. I cannot unmake war on Afghanistan. I cannot stop the charge to war forming against Iran.

I cannot elect kind, compassionate, effective, and just leaders by myself. I cannot stop men fondling and raping children, women, or other men. I cannot make the world a harmonious place while so many of us are dwelling within ourselves falsely.

But here is what I can do. I can enter the silence of attentive presence and dwell there quietly. I can heat water for someone's tea. I can brew coffee. I can speak when spoke to with simplicity, kindness, and respect.

I can walk up to bodhichitta and declare my interest.

Etymologically, the word [bodhichitta] is a combination of the Sanskrit words bodhi and citta. Bodhi means "awakening" or "enlightenment". Citta is derived from the Sanskrit root cit, and denotes "that which is conscious" – mind or consciousness. Bodhicitta may be translated as "awakening mind" or "mind of enlightenment". (--Wikipedia)

I can sit in quiet readiness to enter one place possible to find sanity in the world.

Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel - shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don't have to carry the burden with us anymore.

We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we'll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we'll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm.

We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, and expression of our basic goodness. This potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.

(--from, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion (Shambhala Library) by Pema Chodron)

This morning there's a north wind.

I'll take my oars from barn, tie them to roof rack, drive to head of harbor, descend ramp, untie peapod, and row to and around Curtis Island, wave to empty space on small porch where recently deceased lighthouse keeper sat and waved each morning his last season of looking out over Penobscot Bay, and I will contemplate the sounds, smells, and swells of the fragile place of passage I am/we are.

The world is not the problem.

The world is that through which we make our way home without ever leaving it.

Listening always for and with one good word resounding in and through everything this Sunday morning.

Not so much to hear it, but to be it soundlessly in what is being done.

It very well might be the best.

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)

And tonight there's an extra hour to be the best in a new moon filled with emptiness.

My best feels a little desolate in new darkness.

Tumbling down the mountain.

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)

Connections without contrivance or controversy.

We dedicate the space newly constructed last year in honor of Raimon Panikkar. It is now to be known as:

THE RAIMON PANIKKAR CONVERSATION KITCHEN.

We like him. He died in August of this year. He has inspired us for a while now.

And while now, we want his inclusive, expansive way of seeing and saying things to continue to inspire the conversations taking place around the firebox.

“...[T]he indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.”
(--Cynthia Bourgeault in The Wisdom Jesus, p.32)

And Panikkar:

God is always God for the world, and if the conception of the world has changed so radically in our times, there is little wonder that the notion of God is undergoing a corresponding change.
(-in Christophany, the Fullness of Man.)

Nishitani called it circumincessional interpenetration.

A profound and corresponding change.

Nobody saw it coming.
It came.
Yesterday's elections.
Can you see where it is going?

All Souls.

They must know, by now, what Raimon Panikkar's thinking is revealing.

What for long has driven and unified Panikkar's thinking has been his cosmotheandric vision of reality, what he calls the "trinity" of cosmic matter, human consciousness, and divine presence in co-constitutive relationality. These three basic and irreducible dimensions of reality interpenetrate one another and only exist in relation to one another:

There is a kind of perichoresis, "dwelling within one another," of these three dimensions of Reality: the Divine, the Human, and the Cosmic. 3

And then again:

There is no matter without spirit and no spirit without matter, no World without Man, no God without the universe, etc. God, Man, and World are three artificial substantivized forms of the three primordial adjectives which describe Reality. 4

(from Foreword, written by Joseph Prabhu, to Raimon Panikkar's The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures, p.xvii.

Footnotes:

3. Panikkar, "The Myth of Pluralism: The Tower of Babel - A meditation on Non-Violence," Cross Currents 29, no.2 {1979}: 214-16.)

4. Panikkar, "Philosophy as Lifestyle," in Philosophers on Their Own Work {Berne: Peter Lang, 1978}, 206.)

Wonderfully worded!

As is each soul.

Nov.2nd is election day. It is All Soul's Day. We might consider electing dead souls.

Some might call that business and money as usual.

May the politicians and the faithful departed rest in peace!

To be faithful you must have attended your life on earth.

My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Ama nesciri -- love, to be, unknown.

And unknowing.

Go ahead. Vote.

Count.

Saints preserve us!

That's not a petition. It is a declarative. Saints declare true relationality, preserving 'us.'

Mountain of Samadhi

This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290-1368)

Be patient. It's only your mind that wishes you not to be your true self. That will change.

Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints. But our dispositions change. The Church of all the first followers of Christ awaits us, but we do nothing about it. The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them.
Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness. While we desire to be in their company, we must also earnestly seek to share in their glory. Do not imagine that there is anything harmful in such an ambition as this; there is no danger in setting our hearts on such glory.
( from A sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot. Let us make haste to our brethren who are awaiting us; Office of Readings, All Saints Day)

I opt for clear sight.

Leave the reunion to those who want such reunions.

I'll take the empty room when all have moved on.

This thinnest night of the year.

Bon voyage!