let God live in us

 From “a theological essay by Sheila T. Harty” --

Merton told a story about a Tibetan lama who escaped his country to save his life. Before leaving, when still faced with the decision of whether or not to go, he sent a message to an abbot friend, asking: “What do we do?” The answer that came back was: “From now on, Brother, everyone stands on his own feet.” Merton thought that an extremely important monastic statement. What Buddhist or Christian monasticism is about, he said, is that we can no longer rely on support by social, political, or economic structures, which may be destroyed at any moment by the dominant forces in the world. Truly, standing on your own is reliance on God. 

Toward the end of his talk, Merton referred to a traditional representation of the Buddha seated in the lotus position with one hand pointing to the earth and the other hand holding a begging bowl. This image is relevant for monasticism, Merton said. The begging bowl represents the ultimate theological belief in the interdependence of all living things. This concept is the most central to Mahayana Buddhism. The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of this mutual interdependence. 

Merton said that beyond monasticism, Buddhism, Marxism, or even student revolution is a kind of freedom and transcendence that is attainable. 

If you once penetrate, by detachment and purity of heart, to the inner secret of the ground of your ordinary experience, you attain to a liberty that nobody can touch, that nobody can affect, that no political change of circumstances can do anything to. 

Buddhist tradition uses spiritual masters to help people attain this. But this transcendent kind of monasticism, Merton said, represents an instinct of the human heart, a charisma given by God to man that is available to all. That is what the young French student revolutionary meant when he said: “We are monks too.” 

Merton ended his talk in deference to the Buddhist and Hindu traditions that have gone much deeper into this than in the West. From them, we could learn how to reach that full and transcendent liberty beyond mere cultural differences and externals. Then, with a remark reflecting that he knew questions for the morning lectures would be held until the evening session, Merton said: “So I will disappear from view and maybe we can all have a coke or something.”23 And by midday he was dead.  

(--from Thomas Merton’s Last Talk: Bangkok 1968, a theological essay by Sheila T. Harty.) http://www.sheila-t-harty-speaker-editor.com/Thomas%20Mertons%20Last%20Talk%20in%20Bangkok%201968.pdf

...   ...   ...

Then, from,  louie, louie, Exploring contemplative awareness in daily life, drawing from and with much discussion of the writings of Thomas Merton, aka “Father Louie”.

If there is a feast day for Father Louie, December 10th is it. This is the day, in 1941, that he arrived at the Abby of Our Lady of Gethsemane to begin his life as a Trappist monk. Twenty seven years later, on this day, he died in Bangkok Thailand while participating in a monastic conference. 

This year I would like to share Sr. Luke's telling of Merton's last words.  The passage is transcribed from a talk that she gave.  I believe that it gives a great deal of insight into the person of Merton from someone who knew and understood him. 

I want to conclude by telling you about Merton's last words.  Merton gave a talk in Bangkok, a final contribution, and he talked quite a bit about alienation, the separation of ourselves, tearing ourselves into parts: that which somebody else tells us we are, and that which we know ourselves to be as a center where God is present.  Now if we choose from that center, as Merton continually instructed his novices, then we are choosing according to a unified sense of self.  If we choose from what other people tell us we are or tell us we should do, or tell us anything else that we should do, or have or whatever, we have broken ourselves into two.  That's alienation.  And that's what Merton talked bout so much in his last days, that alienated self, brought all the way over to what others say we should be rather than choosing from one's center.  That is what I think was the great message of prayer and everything else that Merton taught.  At the end of it he asked for the blessing of God for himself and for all these others that are there. 

 In the very last of his life, he gave this final talk in Bangkok.  I went to the place in Bangkok, and I visited the room where he gave the final talk, and I visited the little bungalow where he died.  I remember then what I heard about his last words.  Merton, as you know, gave his talk, and then sat down and said. "We are going to have the questions tonight.  Now I will disappear."  Many people repeat that as a prophecy.  I think Merton meant he'd leave.  And we'll have the questions tonight. 

 So then he went from there to the lunchroom and had the lunch they had prepared, and then he walked over to his room accompanied by a French monk who talked to him as they walked along to Merton's room and said to him, "Well, thank you for the talk you gave this morning.  Everybody didn't exactly appreciate it, though.  We had some question."  And I thought to myself, "Yes, this is the way it always is.  Yes, I know they said some good things BUT."  There's always that little part, and Merton was experiencing that there.  Actually, it was a nun that said that, but usually I don't say that because we have a bad enough press as it is, so I don't usually set up the nun as the one who said that.  Anyone could have.  She happened to say it, and what she said was repeated to Merton: "I thought he would talk more about converting people to Christianity.  I thought that's what he was going to be talking about."  She enlarged on that.  This is a pagan area where we are working, and we're missionaries, and it's a pagan area, and here he's talking about something else and alienation, whatever.  But I thought he'd talk about bringing people to Christ. 

 Merton, when he heard that, instead of getting upset the way many of us would get upset, said simply, "Well, I don't think that is what we are asked to do today.  All the preaching we get on television telling us who God is -- honestly, you wonder what the word 'God' is to mean in all of that."  Merton has it better.  "today I don't think it is what we are asked to do.  I think today it's more important for us to so let God live in us that others may feel God and come to believe in God because they feel how God lives in us."  These were Merton's last words that we know anything about and were said right before Francois de Grunne took him to his room where he tragically died, tragically for us, in any case.  Certainly he had completed what was his journey.  In other words, so let God live in us, so allow God to be the center where we make our decisions, where we live our lives, so let God live in us that others may find God by seeing how God lives in us, by somehow grasping how God lives in us.  Better than any long television explanation of who God is.  A beautiful last message, and I'd like to leave that with you as we conclude the talk on prayer because prayer, that presence of God, that reality of God, which each of us possesses, is our good fortune, "All love's luck."  We have achieved it.  Thank you very much.  -- Sr. Mary Luke Tobin SL  

(from, Monday, December 10, 2012, Merton’s last words, from website: louie, louie, Exploring contemplative awareness in daily life, drawing from and with much discussion of the writings of Thomas Merton, aka “Father Louie”.)http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2012/12/mertons-last-words.html 

Thank you both.

And you, Thomas. We sat in silence then reaffirmed promises in our Merton Bookshed Retreat this evening.

Happily so!

Promises and Considerations for meetingbrook monastics

Each year on 10December, the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, we reaffirm our three promises. This is our 15th year since first pronouncing them in public in 1998.

Three promises: 

Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence.
 ...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage “m.o.n.o" (monastics of no other).

Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity. It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With. 
It is attentive presence.

Conversation  is the promise of integrity. It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking. 
It is root silence.

Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement.  It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
It is transparent service.

…………………………………………………………………

MeetingbrookDogen & FrancisHermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 
1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (Anonymous)

3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)    

5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)

 ...   ...   ...   ...   ...

Considerations for a life

a lay monastic meditation

• Be With God Alone. What we know of God is revealed by God’s creation, all of creation. Therefore, attend to creation.

• Be wholeheartedly listening. God is nameless. Listen in silence for the sound and presence of God.
Every voice, every sound, every face is our contemplation & attention of God.

• Be still, and pray continuously, with each being and all creation. Receive grace and truth with simplicity and humility. Let the loving light & the compassionate attention of the Christ and the Bodhisattva surround & shine through you.

• Be gratefully with what is near. We suffer each other, and we love each other.
Here is God’s home. Be what is here. Become God’s presence.

• Be Alone With God. Solitude is how we engage What-Is-God.
When with God we are with everyone.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Quotes:

       . 1. Be still and know that I am God.  (Psalm 46:10)

         2. For the Great Spirit is everywhere; he hears whatever is in our minds and hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.    (Black Elk)

         3. Have the courage to be alone - for once try to endure your own company for a while. Don’t speak, then, not even with yourself nor with the others with whom we dispute even when they are not there. Wait. Listen. Endure yourself! (Karl Rahner)

          4. Praying is not about asking; it is about listening. It is just opening your eyes to see what was there all along.   (Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche)

          5. It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer. We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us. “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” (Thomas Merton)

Learning to read

In prison last week we asked the question: What will the dharma come to look like in the 21st century?

We'd have to learn to read. Read fiction. Read fact. Read one another. Read the world. Read one self.

And as Francis of Assisi pointed out about preaching at all times, sometimes reading entails reading words.

By reading we mean allowing what is being written in our surround to be seen with our being as it is presented.

Not judged, not interpreted, not compared nor contrasted, not evaluated, not assessed, not made negative nor positive.

Not anything else nor other.

Only witnessed.

Faithfully witnessed, that is, seen in its own place, on its own terms, as it is being created by itself.

In our presence. composed, decomposed, recomposed, co-composed.

To learn to read is to comprehend the poetics of expression wherein each of us is writing the other, or, put differently, each of us is the other being illumined in creative composure in the movement of witnessing gaze.

The everyday ordinary revelation of truth will look like this.

And this will be the 21st century coming of the dharma/gospel between us -- no barrier, no boundary, no fooling!

Now, let’s open to the first page and begin reading one another authentically.

Eagle Lake

Snow begins.

Prayer continues,

Life, only and alone.

Opens here.

In New York the expression is,"Hey, I'm only askin'!" And, "I'm just sayin'!"

Is the Palestinian Jewish woman Miriam really the hollow barrierless conduit for the messiah to find form in word-laden humanity?

Is the Shakya regal Indian Siddhartha really the initial spark lighting up human consciousness to finally see through everything?

All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the Creator and His creation, have no answers. I'd even go farther and say there is a level at which only the questions are eternal; the answers never are.
And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats, "Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers."
(--p.69, in Open Heart, by Elie Wiesel)

What do we really know about God?

Is anyone who thinks they're enlightened really not?

Are you and I really not about God?

Time, Stone, Sound, Scent, Enlightenment, Openness

Be, yourself, that which is, open!

"allowing access, passage, or a view through an empty space; not closed or blocked up:”

Imagine, living life as one

They stand about and ponder the arrival that is sunrise.

Walter Kaufmann and Thomas Berry turn each to own version of Lauds.

It is Bodhi Day, Buddha’s Enlightenment Day!

It is Immaculate Conception Day, Mary begins form in the world with no obstruction no abstraction   -- only open heart open mind open body. 

Imagine!

What is itself before God? Ha!

 What is your original face, show it to me, the one you had before your mother and father were born?

Meister Eckhart said, “God is a great underground river than no one can dam up and no one can stop." God is a great underground river, and there are many wells into that river. There's a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a Christian well, a Goddess well, the Native wells—many wells that humans have dug to get into that river, but friends, there s only one river: the living waters of wisdom. All of us have to go down a well today; we all have to do spiritual practice to find divinity. But whether your well be Buddhist or Christian or Sufi or Jewish, when you do your work you will come to the same source of wisdom. Dr. Thurman said, “A strange necessity has been laid upon me, to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide. Human life is one, and all people are members one of another. And this insight is spiritual, and it is a hard core of religious experience.” ...God is totally biased in favor of diversity. We better get into that stream, because the ethnic divisions, the racial divisions, the sexual divisions, the sexual preference divisions, the class divisions are eating up the human soul and literally eating up this planet. Howard Thurman says, “ It is my belief that in the presence of God there is neither male nor female, White nor Black, Gentile nor Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist nor Muslim, but a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself before God." That is our basic identity, who we are before God. And he predicts that some day our species will discover this very same truth. He says, "Community cannot feed for long on itself. It can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them, unknown and undiscovered brothers and sisters." Community itself is not an enclave, it’s not a defense, it's not a castle with moats and thick walls of dogma and differentiation, and segregation. True community melts the walls, because true community warms the heart, and the heart's first effect is melting. When the heart learns to love, the first gift is melting.  

(--from p.24, In Honor of Dr. Howard Thurman by Matthew Fox,1997, Creation Spirituality) http://creationspiritualitymag.org/wp-content/uploads/1997/02/vol-13-howard-thurman.pdf

Sit. Have a think.

May I have this one with you?

A morning's meander.

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.  (--Thomas Merton (1915-1968), New Seeds of Contemplation)

Then, referencing from whence the words appeared:

Jason Gardner (@Gardnerblurb) tweeted at 3:44pm - 26 Nov 13: 
'God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself' mind and heart blown! Thanks Thomas Merton (https://twitter.com/Gardnerblurb/status/405437021004390402) 
...
Marcus Honeysett (@marcushoneysett) tweeted at 4:23pm - 26 Nov 13: 
@Gardnerblurb our joy is not that of having woken from a pleasant dream but awoken to the fact that we are a dream. & real reality is ahead (https://twitter.com/marcushoneysett/status/405446662174146560) 

 I am made of words. 

Speak me, or hold me silently. 

Either way, we dance.

From here to nowhere.

graced dance

We love reading fiction.

It could be said that one of the ways we learn about (what-we-call) ourselves is by "reading" the fictional narratives presented by others about ourselves.

What I mean by fiction is that the story told is told about "something" not there.

My "self" is not mine, not contained in the form of this body, nor is it

separate from you and you and you.

By learning how to read we similarly learn how to deconstruct what is being read. By hearing clearly the narrative we learn about transcending the data and moving into the place between what is considered self and what is considered other. This between space, this middle ground, is what is interesting.

Interesting, inter-esse, to be between. 

It is in this between space that the dance dances itself.

What we have called God is the graced dance of life turning and moving as living being.

This is love with itself without exclusion.

We are outsiders.

No system, no mechanism, no technology encloses us without our complicit involvement.

As outsiders we drift in and through and with the one we call God in formless poetry of movement.

We are what happens in the empty reflective place between two mirrors.

We are the door that closes nothing in and holds nothing out. The door itself. Opening and closing as itself.

Fiction is not not true; it is true only as itself.

Woman working all through night; as we all are, in a sense, in essence

Everything

That is

Is

Living 

Being.

Evening practice

Low-lit solitude.

Bell rings to begin.

No end.

Living beings -- a new trinity

A trinity to consider:

 Gaston Bachelard, the late twentieth century French philosopher, comments on what happens when cosmos and psyche reconnect. In the Poetics of Space he talks of the holy trinity of Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy. When you have an experience of Immensity—in Thomas’ words, an experience of the cosmos, or relationship to it, it is an intense experience. All awe is both an intense and intimate experience. Humans cannot separate the immense, intense and intimate experience and Thomas Berry by leading us into a cosmic awareness again, an awareness as important for our hearts as for our minds, is bathing us anew in Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy far beyond any mere anthropocentric relationship could ever do for us.   

Bachelard declares that “grandeur progresses in the world in proportion to the deepening of intimacy…a primal value.” We have to take back immensity as a primal intimate value where “we are no longer shut up in the weight of the prison of our own beings.” The new cosmology helps us to do this and so do solitude and meditation. I honor Thomas and Aquinas and others who are helping us to name the vastness of our souls. Ernest Holmes put it this way: “Spirituality is a word that is often misused.” (He said this 100 years ago!) “From our viewpoint, spirituality is one’s recognition of the universe as a living presence of the good, truth, beauty, peace, power and love.” Holmes recognizes that spirituality is not spirituality if it is psychologized—if it is not about the universe. Holmes was right and Thomas Berry is right. 

(--from, Some Thoughts on Thomas Berry’s Contributions to the Western Spiritual Tradition, by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox) https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/Thomas-Berry.html 

A student in a posting called it “living being.” This might be a new name to umbrella cosmic being, plant being, animal being, human being, and divine being. 

The person you are becoming

Going back through time we meet ourselves before we become who we are going back in time.

What do you say to yourself?

Watch out, you say. You are becoming the person who will ask you what you will say to yourself before realizing you are the answer to the question.

When this happens, see yourself at that moment as the person you are becoming.

How long we wait

All silence, sound, stone, fire, awareness, inter-nexus, journeying...

Day watches the work of God.

Which is inter-nexing, which is the core-center-betweening.

Is the work of God finding ground where each is all and all is each at one?

Does the watching of this work engender the creation of place, both solitary and communal, for stillness and swirling engagement of core center between one and all?

Watching-with, the work of God!

Just walking in drizzle following snow

Farmington-Wilton morning walk.

Time to track down grippers.

Although, dogs don't mind my not having  better traction.

The path is fine as it is.

Humans!

Creative Energy in a proleptic realm of anticipation

In the middle of night.

Hear words as we begin to try to translate the New Testament in more Hebraic terms:          

   In the beginning was the DABHAR the Creative Energy:            The Creative Energy was with God            And the Creative Energy was God.            It was with God in the beginning.            Through it all things came to be,            Not one thing had its being but through it,            All that came to be had life in it            And that life was the light of persons,            A light that shines in the dark,            A light that darkness could not overpower…            The DABHAR, the Creative Energy was the true light            That enlightens all people;            And it was coming into the world.            It was in the world            That had its being through it,            And the world did not know it…            But to all who did accept it            It gave power to become children of God…            The Creative Energy was made flesh,            It pitched its tent among us,            And we saw its glory,            the glory that is its as the only Child of the Creator,            full of grace and full of truth.  

Creation itself is a sacrament.  Creation itself is the primary sacrament. 

(--from, DABHAR and the ISNESS of GOD, blog of pastor dawn, 21st Century Progressive Christian Pastor) http://pastordawn.com/2012/06/12/dabhar-and-the-isness-of-god/ 

(cf. John 1:1)

In the middle of night I hear your name.

Thus all of creation contains the living wisdom and word of God, and all of it is for all of us. The human word is only one among billions of words that God has spoken and that therefore emanate from the divine splendor. To make contact with wisdom is to go beyond human words, which have, after all, existed for only about four million years -- and have appeared on paper for only a few thousand years and in print for only five hundred. We are invited to return to the many billions of years of ongoing creation that also constitute god’s talking. 

What happens when when we let go of a chauvinistic control of words, which means exclusively the human word, and return to Dabhar as the creative energy of God? According to [Gerhard] Von Rad, truth happens; and affection happens; and God happens. For “creation not only exists, it also discharges truth.” 

(p.37, in Original Blessing, A Primer in Creation Spirituality, by Matthew Fox, c.1983)

And that name is night itself.

At dawn, it is dawn itself.

And you, friend, when you appear, that name is your name. 

Unhollowed heart; following Dabhar

Here is, remarkably, hopeless.

No need for hope here.

Abandon hope, the poet says, all ye who enter here.

Not an admonishment; rather, wise directive reminder.

Here is its own present.

The playwright reminds us to remember to leave the wall. An ambiguous, and invitatory, koan.

Are you expecting?

There is no outside.

This is the intimation of the new liturgical consciousness.

Everything is within everything else.

It has been a long, long pregnancy.

Advent, 2013

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

(--from poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost) 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173530

Zen, Saturday morning, imagination

Non-intellectual, like first light through bamboo blinds, only a space of seeing what is emerging.

Let's not make anything other than what it is.

Zen is seeing what is being itself.

Nothing else.

All of existence is coming to understand

It takes the whole of humanity to be God.

All of it. From out of nowhere. 

Thanks

Is

Given

The word becomes you pronouncing it

What are you . . . saying? 

"Every creature is a word of God." (Meister Eckhart)

Yes!

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” (Meister Eckhart)

Fine words!

Passing observation

Wind winds through

bare brown branches 

blown smooth 

empty 

after rain

As dawn so death

Cat and mouse debate Wednesday morning under window by bed as sound of rain, low growling, and unfinished argument patter over motley colored rug.

If I were to die today, like mouse having wandered from walls to open space, would I know the difference between anything? Or would I not be there to consider anything, having fallen into the open with no boundaries or references to suggest anything other whatsoever?

Two cats, agents of no-othering, prowl the contours of steel shelving for signs of what seems to be considering itself still other.

Walking where once I walked

Every day twice a day.

Thirty two years ago this was my daily sojourn.

Today is that time by means of place.

We are never that far from whence we've been.

What is...your being...seeing

If every year is a marble, how many marbles do you have left? How many sunrises, how many opportunities to rise to the full stature of your being?     

     --Joy Page

 After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see.

        -- Joy Page

Seeing Through Illness is spiritual practice and community engagement with one another

MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER: An Initial Invitation

Twitter post, Sunday 24Nov2013:  We’d like to begin: STILL,MARBLES. (Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.) Interest in investing?

hermitage@meetingbrook https://twitter.com/meetingbrook/status/404615625135640576

ABSTRACT:

We learn that the property across Barnestown Road is on the market. We’ve walked it. We were shown it by a broker. Several members of the wider meetingbrook community have also walked and thought along with us. It consists of 50 acres, an animal barn, an extended house, open lawns, woodland, a pond, two streams, and our own rise of mountain. It is ideal for an extension of meetingbrook hermitage

We are inviting investors to support the purchase of this property to be used as a center to see through illness, for learning, conversation, groups, support, therapeutic meditation, movement, soul-friend interaction, community outreach, gardening, creative projects, various re-entries, and an open place for quiet visits, prayer, reading, solitude, hiking, or just sitting.

STILL,MARBLES CENTER 

The name is an acronym signifying: Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.

The goal is to focus on the oftentimes difficult navigation individuals experience through illness, be it cancer, heart condition, or other unsettling emotional, spiritual, mental, or physical issues. Particular interest will be extended to those making the journey through illness to share their attendant steps and views in communal conversations.

The Center would consist of a Meditation Room, a Community Room, a Hospitality Kitchen, a Chapel, Meeting rooms, Respite Rooms for overnight stays, and lovely grounds with streams, pond, trails, woods, mountain, and decks for quiet enjoyment of nature’s healing gifts.

Those in transition, caregivers, family members, healthcare personnel, friends, veterans, and other interested folks looking to learn and experience simple care and presence would be invited to STILL,MARBLES to enjoy the ongoing conversations, groups, respite, arts, poetry, films, talks, seminars, ordinary hospitality and relaxation.

MEETINGBROOK HERMITAGE is a place of collation and recollection between Ragged & Bald Mountains. Our personal practice, which for 20 years we’ve done at the hermitage, in the marketplace bookshop and bakery (for 13 years), state prison, hospital, libraries, nursing home, with the dying, hospice volunteers, university students and church communities, and an idiorhythmic extended meetingbrook community, is a practice that is open to and responsive with all traditions both East and West, all denominations, faiths, or none of the above, those who are looking to find their way through life with its difficulties and joys. We are not alone. Meetingbrook is committed to seeing through illness, wherever the individual is, however their path winds its way.

Please consider investing to acquire the property and invest your spirit in being of service to others at MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER.

Best,

Saskia Huising, Bill Halpin

Meetingbrook Hermitage, Camden, Maine, 04843  207-236-4346

STILL,MARBLES

Three hours before dawn thinking about possible use of neighboring property.

If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that make everything else appear so dark. Perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, demanding and oppressive. I do not know. I have not travelled very far in thought and philosophy. However I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should attempt to escape from it.

                          (--Hermann Hesse, in Gertrude, as translated by Hilda Rosner)        http://dshenai.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/

STILL,MARBLES

Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.

Start again

President Kennedy's death

It showed us something we'd never recover from.

Mistrust.

Georg Friedrich Handel gives us, as consolation, this St. Cecilia's Day Ode.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hbHHieh6v98

At end, ad libiduum.

What we no longer see passes us by

Train tracks no longer carry sidetracked caboose shorn of yellow paint.

And yet, golden prayer wheel sounds like the clickity clack round iron discs along spiked rail as it spins homage to what is within everything.

Thursday afternoon long miles from home.

Stirb und werde

After film Wit in class, Ikkyu concludes the evening:

I won’t die.  

I won’t go anywhere.  

I’ll always be here.  

But don’t ask me any questions.  

I won’t answer.  

                          (– The Death Poem of Ikkyu)

 From death mask, a brief pause, to eternal face.

Sometimes

When walking

Everything seems

So

Spacious

Om mane padme hum

See what is revealing itself within!

Some days Emanuel feels closer than others.

(Hebrew: עמנואל, God is with us)

Peace and good will.

As well.

Spiegel im Spiegel

Meditation is presence looking as, not at, itself.

Mirror in the mirror.

A never-ending reflection with no beginning.

Arriving home; nowhere else

No closing this gate.

On its way becoming gateless.

Moo!

The end sound as religion

The koan "Mu," the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, and Philippians 2:6-11 are the same teaching.

No stretching out hand to reach for or ask for what is already there, what is already true, what belongs as you.

As, not to.

Perhaps "I am!" finds contemporary translation in "I as!"