What about coffee, or tea?

I have no argument with God.

     THE ARGUMENT
                    By Jane Kenyon

On the way to the village store   

I drive through a down-draft   

from the neighbor’s chimney.   

Woodsmoke tumbles from the eaves   

backlit by sun, reminding me

of the fire and sulfur of Grandmother’s   

vengeful God, the one who disapproves

of jeans and shorts for girls,

dancing, strong waters, and adultery.

A moment later the smoke enters

the car, although the windows are tight,   

insinuating that I might, like Judas,

and the foolish virgins, and the rich

young man, have been made for unquenchable   

fire. God will need something to burn

if the fire is to be unquenchable.

“All things work together for the good   

for those who love God,” she said

to comfort me at Uncle Hazen’s funeral,   

where Father held me up to see

the maroon gladiolus that trembled

as we approached the bier, the elaborate   

shirred satin, brass fittings, anything,

oh, anything but Uncle’s squelched   

and made-up face.

“No! NO! How is it good to be dead?”

I cried afterward, wild-eyed and flushed.   

“God’s ways are not our ways,”

she said then out of pity

and the wish to forestall the argument.

           (Poem by Jane Kenyon, “The Argument” from Collected Poems. © 2005)

Nor do I know the good of being dead. 

Will there be peanut butter or rye bread toast?

gingham and lace

That mourning dove finishing its morning meditative chant moves off into quiet elsewhere.

In churches up and down coast they come to praise Jesus.

In this room having witnessed invisible panoply departure of suppliant calling into silence I also withdraw.

Sunday devotional idiorhythmy.

In the dream walking through various lifetimes without restriction to any.

This empty form forming emptiness into images and story enough for now.

Suddenly dove picks up recitative . . .

Blue dot in empty billions of galaxies.

Magma, lava, volcano, tectonic plates.

Makes the silliness of politics even sillier.

Give us a million more years to think about it.

Qui tacet consentire

 Am living parallel lives in Aspy Bay NS, Santa Cruz CA, Bensonhurst Brooklyn NY, Nanuet NY, Rye Beach NH, Ranchos de Taos NM, Washington DC, Jolon CA, Callicoon NY, St Andrews by the Sea, NB, Camden Maine.

So many me's!

There's nothing to say of these me's.

John Cage, these 21 years, so eloquent, says it well.

a way within you

Prison and black holes. Quarry Hill and Robert Burns, Jane Kenyon, Ken Nye, and Emily Bronte. Finally Friday Evening Conversation with poems by Wendell Berry and John Fox.

No Going Back   

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away.  

(--Poem by Wendell Berry)

Then: 

Finding What You Didn't Lose     

When someone deeply listens to you 

it is like holding out a dented cup 

you've had since childhood 

and watching it fill up with 

cold, fresh water. 

When it balances on top of the brim, 

you are understood. 

When it overflows and touches your skin, 

you are loved. 

When someone deeply listens to you, 

the room where you stay 

starts a new life 

and the place where you wrote 

your first poem 

begins to glow in your mind's eye. 

It is as if gold has been discovered! 

When someone deeply listens to you, 

your bare feet are on the earth 

and a beloved land that seemed distant 

is now at home within you.   

(--Poem by John Fox)

Give your self away; give your self a way.

Is now at home within you? Now is at home, within you.

Lines are inexhaustible possibilities of eternally ineffable parallel multidimensional imaginative incalculable ways of being in the universe.

choose life, or fear?

Comes August.

 "...I think we only have a tiny fraction of understanding the extent of the kinds of operations that are being done on a daily basis around the world..." (Jeremy Scahill, speaking with Amy Goodman, Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and author Noam Chomsky recently sat down together at Harvard University to discuss Scahill’s groundbreaking new book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." Amy Goodman hosted the discussion, which was sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and the ACLU of Massachusetts. --from Democracy Now  website. http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/5/23/video_jeremy_scahill_noam_chomsky_on_secret_us_dirty_wars_from_laos_to_yemen_to_pakistan

Here, across from Bald Mountain, in front of book shed, across from chapel/zendo, bees move from blossom to blossom, perpetuating beauty.

It seems an easy choice.

  

east of here

Francis in corner.

Sunlight sits on zafu.

Calligraphies by David Stinson.

Shadow visit of morning leaves on plastic sheet at edge of cabin porch.

Everything is temporary, impermanent, incomplete, and imperfect -- wabi sabi!

Oh! two apples thud to earth east of here!

sweet survival, productive availability

Born into Catholic culture, raised Catholic, have never left, not recovering. I'm fine, thank you. I'm also Buddhist, a little Pagan, partially agnostic, and mostly skeptical. All institutional leaders are smooth communicators and culturally savvy. Francis among them.

We are in an age when what matters is truth, not position papers. And truth, as Sherlock Holmes' Arthur Conan Doyle said, "Is arrived at by the painstaking elimination of what is not true."

As you can imagine, the interior conversations between various inner philosophical and spiritual points of view will be lively and diverse in nature. They focus on the question of how to live in peace with difference and change in a world that would rather suffer the rigidity of uniformity and sameness.

My Catholic-Buddhist-Pagan-Agnostic conclusion is that the conversation continue with respect and love for individuals. Fewer institutional mission and omission statements, please. Followed by kindness toward all who hold differing opinions so that they might have more time to reconsider a more fruitful and generous way of being with one another.

There's a precipice nearing. The instinct among our doctrinaire brothers and sisters is to throw over those with whom there is disagreement or disapproval. 

I'd prefer we begin to construct at that edge complimentary communities built upon sweet survival and productive availability toward the real common enemy we face. That enemy is distortion of truth, that truth that we are, each!

...

(--in response to, 'Pope Francis in Context,' by Ross Douthat, Explanations Blog, New York Times, 30July2013)

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/pope-francis-in-context/#more-18867

Office of Readings

In cabin chapel/zendo.

Honoring Ignatius of Loyola.

"You are loving with those who love you." (Ps.18)

Haiku, On never yet ready

In the dream, promise

Coffee with assumptive friend

Lifetime half ours

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

Out, doors

A whole july's worth of daylight.

A morning's worth of prayer.

 

A flowering following rain.

Quiet within mountain breeze, drifting birdsong, and stretching sun ground.

Breaking dawn, Haiku

They sound singing

First light

Telling haunting sight

Its ancient memory

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

translation is long journey across wide space

Fellow sitting looking at tree outside window said, "So many leaves, each a cosmos we do not visit nor think about!"

Yet, there they are, mostly unperceived and ignored from spring when they green until autumn when they fall.

What 'mind' is it doesn't see what is there?

Mine? Yours? Our?

There is a need for translation of the unseen into the seen. That very explosion of what-is-there into awareness should keep us both very busy with noticing and very quiet with awe.

Sit down and shut up; stand up and walk away: why zen practice will never catch on in America.

The Principles of Zazen

Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a buddha. Zazen has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down.

(-- Zen Master Dogen, "The Principles of Zazen")

For the unborn not to be born is called not-being-born

Four quotes from guests on this morning's broadcast of "On Being" -- Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Dialogue with David Gushee + Frances Kissling

"We see the world, not as it is, but as we are." (Anais Nin, per Kissling)

"If you do not want to be changed, don't go into dialogue." (Thich Nhat Hanh, per Kissling)

"I think we're getting dumber as a society." (David Gushee)

"Students don't want loud talking points; they want to understand." (Gushee)

(- See more at: http://www.onbeing.org/program/pro-life-pro-choice-pro-dialogue/4863#sthash.FIJq5Q6m.dpuf)

the one you are, with

The workman sat quietly a brief while, then said, "It is beyond me."

We'd been talking about the vast distance across our galaxy (100,000-120,000 light years across), the speed of light being about 186,282 miles per second, there being in the Milky Way galaxy somewhere between 100-400 billion stars, with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy containing an estimated one trillion (10¹²) stars, there being approximately 100-500 billion galaxies in the universe.

I tell him that the ability to speak that phrase is itself marvelous. More than that his phrase, as language, contains in four words the great mystery of the universe.

Namely: 

"It is."

"Beyond."

"Me."

Acknowledging scientific existence -- It is.

Acknowledging artistic source/transcendence -- beyond.

Acknowledging mystical relational identification -- me.

At Friday Evening Conversation eight of us considered depression, witnessing, and fallout from failures.

It occurs to me there is only one person in the world, the one you are with. There is only one being in the world, that with which you are.

And this "with" is not two, nor one: it is bewithing.

Being-with is beyond one being with another being. 

It is the unknowable and incalculable 'between' that occurs when one is with another.

Call it, if you wish, mitversation. It is that which occurs when one turns to and with another in the movement of grace engaging what is to be.

This 'grace engaging what is to be' is the triadic trinitarian interplay of Beyond, Between, Becoming.

The universe is the one you are with. This person is the one you are with. This tree is the one you are with. This day is the one you are with.

What we call 'God' is the one you are with.

Vaya con Dios!

Gracias!

What is beyond religions and philosophies?

Truth.

Truth is.

"Truth is a pathless land," said Krishnamurti.

look all you want, there's

No going back.

No going forward.

Only . . . Mu! . . .

No

n o w h e r e

Qui êtes-vous?

Je suis celui qui est.

Ich bin der ich bin.

I am the ONE who is.

 אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh

I shall be there as who I am shall I be there.

I Am that I Am. 

(Exodus 3:14) 

 Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω ἀρχὴ καὶ τέλος, λέγει ὁ κύριος ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ὁ παντοκράτωρ  (Rev 1:8)
⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

It is morning.

Good to know!

Mid-afternoon Haiku

Summer downpour

Sudden. Like death.

Just as fleeting

 Passing through

Away.

watching nothing through what is there

The sign of light through blinds is early invitation to see.

“Our entire life, the whole liturgy, and everything ceremonial are symbols. If you abolish the symbols, then you tear down the walls of your own house. When we abolish the signs, we lose our orientation. Instead, we should search for their meaning … one should unfold the core of the symbols. … The signs are not to be questioned, we are.”

(--	Anonymous Monk, Into Great Silence, film)

 Vision is silence making its way through an open heart.

Schweig, sei still! Frieden erklären!
(Be silent, be still! Declare peace!)

seeing through a lens

Tuesday art:

#5 haiku

Swimming in tree, fish
considers canopy -- yes --
nothing else buoys up

#13 haiku

It seems so easy --
straw brushes its shadow off
ground sweeping itself

#19 haiku

Forget Joshu's dog --
this pup raises fire from prayer,
walking under 'Mu'

(-- Haiku responses to "Photographing the Part of Buddhism That Can't Be Seen," by James Estrin, in New York Times, LENS, July 23, 2013)
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/the-inner-lives-of-buddhist-monks/?comments&_r=0

now itself communing

Two postulants are asked in Carthusian chapter hall:

"Are you ready to adopt our monastic way of life as the way through which God will lead your souls to the inner holiness where He will reveal his existence to you and let you commune with Him? 

 (--from, Into Great Silence, {German Die Große Stille} a documentary film directed by Philip Gröning, first released in 2005) 

 They say they will do their best with assistance from their brothers.

Community that prays for one another is salvation of world.

Saved from or saved for is irrelevant. 'Salvation' in itself

Salvation (Latin salvatio; Greek sōtēria; Hebrew yeshu'ah) is being saved or protected from harm or being saved or delivered from some dire situation. In religion, salvation is stated as the saving of the soul from sin and its consequences. (Wikipedia)

The Greek word gives further interest:

Soteriology (Greek σωτηρία sōtēria "salvation" from σωτήρ sōtēr "savior, preserver" + λόγος logos "study" or "word"^[1]) is the study of religious doctrines of salvation. Salvation theory occupies a place of special significance and importance in many religions.   In the academic field of  religious studies, soteriology is understood by scholars as signifying a key theme in a number of different religions and is often studied in a comparative context; that is, comparing various ideas about what salvation is and how it is obtained.  (Wikipedia) 

Back to Carthusian monasticism, nothing is said of salvation in the question. The interest is in inner holiness, revealing, and communing.

Mostly, silence.

Letting each speak for itself.

Itself.

Saying nothing.

But: "Here we are!"

Presence preserved for only now.

If you long for this, obtain it in silence, prayer of infinite eternal holiness within what is now being revealed as itself communing! 

fine misty moisture covers very early morning adventure

The German shepherd comes upstairs at 4am. He wants out. We go out. He runs up path and ... What wanted out explodes out. The air is reordering itself. The ground begins its absorbtion. He comes back. Leans against me. We come back in through barn. I give him and white dog biscuit.

I think that's the way it is meant to work. And it did.

Birds begin choral sound check.

Going with that

Some people are smarter and luckier than the rest of us. They are richer. Sometimes they work harder.  Their yield seems effortless.

Then there are those of us who're not so smart, not so lucky, poorer, not ambitious, whose effort is without yield.

Say what you want, compare what you wish.

Me?

There's nothing to it.

What you've got is what you've got.

Go with that.

mitversational companioning: a new window

In phone call from prison I am asked about Trayvon Martin matter. It is a long conversation. Obama's personal contribution, nationwide rallies, looking at laws that intend to strengthen ability to defend but also raise loophole for shoot-the-one-you-dislike by claiming to be afraid of them.

By third callback I am ready to propose my solution. Something Gary David Goldberg in his book Sit, Ubu, Sit said about Steven Spielberg, namely, "OK, I get it. This guy's just smarter than the rest of us."

We need someones smarter than the rest of us to facilitate a new conversation. The time of traditional education (achiever/nonachiever, haves/have nots, elite/herd) is over. The time of classic communism socialism capitalism is over. The time of liberal conservative is over. The time of crips and bloods is over. The time of leftwing rightwing radio is over. The time of black white yellow brown red race is over. The time of Jewish Christian Muslim Hindu Buddhist Pagan Theist Atheist is over. The time of male female LGBT is over. The time of single married divorced is over.

All that is done, finished, over.

Only . . . we're asleep to this realization. We do not yet understand that the old ways are dead.

Intensely shared reality (like 9/11) empties us into instantaneous cooperative feeling behavior. Then, just as the smoke is clearing, those with divisive agendas advance conceptual solutions that insinuate into vulnerable psyches, and felt solidarity is morphed into ideological separation serving someone's hungry ghosts grasping for profit and power.

What then? What now? What's coming? What's to be?

We've said all the words possible to be said in the old conversation.

The new conversation is the conversation no longer defending old positions. 

It is mitversation. I want it to mean "to turn with." 

("Mit" in German, translates 'with.') 

("Verso, versare, versavi, versatum," in Latin, translates "to turn, to turn around.")

Mitversation is turning with others or another within a commonly experienced reality that both find exigent needing healing and whole-making response.

Once this word took shape I researched its provenance. I found it, alone, in a Samuel Johnson 18th century letter:

" TO BENNET LANGTON, ESQ. OF TRINITY COLLEGE,
OXFORD.
" DEAR SIR,
" Though I might have expected to hear from
sou, upon your entrance into a new state of life at a
new place, yet recollecting, (not without some degree
of shame,} that I owe you a letter upon an old account,
1 think it my part to write first. This, indeed, 1 do
not only from complaisance but from interest ; for liv-
ing on in the old way, I am very glad of a correspond-
3 " Mr. Langton."
" " Part of the impression of the Shakspeare, which Dr. Johnson conducted alone.
and published by subscription. This edition came out ia 1765."
DR. JOHNSON. 263
ent so capable as yourself, to diversify the hours. You 1758.1
have, at present, too many novelties about you to need ^£ut!
any help from me to drive along your time. 49.
" 1 know not any thing more pleasant, or more in-
structive, than to compare experience with expectation,
or to register from time to time the difference between
idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that
we grow daily less liable to be disappointed. You,
who are very capable of anticipating futurity, and rais-
ing phantoms before your own eyes, must often have
imagined to yourself an academical life, and have con-
ceived what would be the manners, the views, and the
Mitversation, of men devoted to letters ; how they
would choose their companions, how they would direct
their studies, and how they would regulate their lives.
Let me know what you expected, and what you have
found. At least record it to yourself before custom
has reconciled you to the scenes before you, and the
disparity of your discoveries to your hopes has vanished
from your mind. It is a rule never to be forgotten,
that whatever strikes stron^'lv, should be described
while the first impression remains fresh upon the mind.
" I love, dear Sir, to think on you, and therefore,
should willingly write more to you, but that the post
will not now eive me leave to do more than send mv
compliments to Mr. Warton, and tell you that I am,
dear Sir, most affectionately,
" Your very humble servant,
" June 2S, 17-58. - Sam. Johnson."

 http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofsamueljohn01bosw/lifeofsamueljohn01bosw_djvu.txt 

Perhaps we remain asleep to our wider cache of companions in this world at this time when divisions and cultivation of division for profit or power has become lethal sport. We are no longer innocent entrepreneurs of self-aggrandizement and Damon Runyon jackpots that leave us beyond the hoi polloi -- the ordinary suckers we are better than, those who should be doing our bidding. That thinking and using of others for our benefit is cancerous. There is a cure.

The cure is care.

We must realize the situation we share.

And strongly consider, and undertake, mitversational companioning -- the first impression of compassionate communion response to one another.

If, as Heidegger says, language is the house of Being, then "mitversation" is a new window to look through.

Denouement

Sun rises. Of that there is daily experience. Coo-birds from field, chickadee in branch, nuthatch scaling tone. It is enough to wake with these sounds, without need to hear the serrated phrasing of preachers and dharma teachers try to surround the unsayable with phonemes and phantasmagoria.

Earth itself is enough. Ground water air and fire. Dew on grass. Mist on mountain. Fog on ocean. The human voice is becoming questionable now that it is unwilling to question the words and actions it sees and hears everyday from disreputable and callous charlatans.

Symphony of birdcall!

In the dream a man is wearing brown, pax et bonum, knowing he is imposturing, wandering field.

Belonging is fleeting impermanence.

No one belongs where they are. Everyone borrows name, face, feet, and feeling. The aggregate swirling forces seem to sketch a narrative mind grabs as it formulates and signs declarative documents -- "Yes, he was born here and then went on to there with that name doing these things."

We are a series of events and experiences that get sold for salary to assist others to make money to buy transportation to move furniture to sleep at night to eat through day to keep on going selling self for recognition and perpetuation -- sometimes helping the help-needing make things less awful, less discouraging, less humiliating. Helping to make the passage with a little grace, a little dignity, a smidgen of simple gratitude.

Then we die.

Big uncertainty.

Say goodbye.

Or be a cat.

One long line of twitching syllables without fixed meter or rhyme stopping suddenly.

Then going on disappearing through metaphoric stealth the exploration of nothing special nothing intended nothing necessarily there -- only exploration rest exploration play exploration rest exploration.

Life seems no longer anything but passing sound with furry attentiveness, feathered quartets, leafy pirouettes, breathful moments really instants of just this awareness.

Come.

And gone.

One 

Right after

Another.

Don't you think

Zen is watchful indifference. 

Not not-caring, but caring without attachment.

Zen, perhaps better said, is aware non-difference.

That's different, don't you think?

Don't not think!

gifting

In section "The Silent Watcher" the following:

All she wants is to experience what freely emerges from the forest as it is. She does not cling to the beautiful ones. She does not fear the large ones. She does not ignore the small ones. She simply watches each arrival witha friendly and unobtrusive interest, getting to know it as it is, until it returns to the forest. She relates to these visitors with such a lightness and kindness of heart that they relax in her presence and show her their true nature.    (from, Unlearning the Basics, by Rishi Sativihari, c.2010)

In prison we sit silently for 20 minutes, talk about current events, then read from Sativihari book. He talks about the brahma viharas (i.e. goodwill, compassion, equanimity, and joy in the happiness of others). These wholesome states of mind are useful when considering the difficulties and distress launched by the confrontation with ignorance, greed, and anger.

Rokie had a bath last night. He was soft and white visiting with inmates. They like him. He likes them.

We like the gifting of silent watchers.

there never was reason to hurt

The man writes from Yemen about his grandson's death-by-drone, about earlier his son's death-by-drone, about his own sadness and loss. His son had angry feelings and fierce rhetoric against the United States. His grandson not so much -- he was an ordinary seemingly none of the above teenager who went looking for his father. Both were American citizens. 
(cf. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR, The Drone That Killed My Grandson, by NASSER al-AWLAKI, July 17, 2013, )http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html, 

These deaths by drones are difficult new patterns of extermination Americans have to algorithm into their nascent sense of who we are as a people and a political presence on the earth.

That truth should prevail over terrorism is a good belief. That someone should not be summarily executed -- that first a hearing of charges, a process of judicial review, and an open and proper judgment be made -- this is also a good belief.

For terrorism not to triumph over truth the United States has to remain steadfast in its belief in its own bedrock and fundamental principles.

If terrorism consumes everyone, if our belief in the principle of justice properly administered is abandoned, then our truth will also be abandoned and everyone will indeed be devoured by terrorism -- ours and theirs.

Is it too late to believe in truth over terrorism?

Or will we hide behind the delusional rant: "It's war, anything goes!"?

If truth goes, everyone is lost.

There is a debate taking place. Is America a beacon of democracy and hope? Or is America sliding down a muddy decline with guns blazing, its face unrecognizable with rage, certain everyone else is unappreciative of its single-minded crusade to rid the world of all evil and sin except for its own?

Those in power -- i.e. those with the most, newest, and biggest guns and latest stunning technology -- are convinced that the rest of us are ignorant and unaware of the real depth of danger facing the elite leaders of the world community. (No doubt, guilty as charged.) But, in the same admission, there's a reluctance to agree that everyone disagreeing with the particular fervor and direction of worldwide policing and military/financial dominance America appears to profess -- that each protestation is treason, that every criticism is cause for suspicion, surveillance and sequestration.

Steve Goodman's lyrics to Spoon River play this morning:

All of the river boat gamblers are losing their shirts 

All of the brave union soldier boys sleep in the dirt 

But you know and I know, there never was reason to hurt 

All of our lives were entwined to begin with, 

Here in spoon river.

My concern is that it is the entwining that is being overlooked. We are entwined from the get go -- and to forget that is to become maddened with hunting knife severing limbs and questions from our bodies and minds.

We're gambling with obsession and destruction for high stakes -- our sanity and decency.

The deranged hand with sharp knife is making bloody whatever it perceives as threat.

We're losing our shirts.

The gamble is both sham and shame.

Drop by drop day ends

Grace, gift, and transformation. That's what the man said on podcast about trinity. The music of it.

Outside window, rain.

Source, experience, inspiration.

The simplicity of emptiness

If nothing to say, say it.

Night!

needing nothing; more

Penobscot River, dog swims, south of Lincoln, hot day.

Big dog forages on east bank by boat ramp Tuesday afternoon.

I drive and read and handle livestock, eat yogurt sip fermented ginger drink chew cereal bar.

Summer miles under seat reading kid I knew in Brooklyn went on to big time died of brain cancer makes me smile remembering inside his words.

What does what it should do (wrote Roethke) needs nothing more.

That's exactly what I need.