Vulgate, for we common people

Jerome sent his Biblical Commentary into prison. It visited our table once or twice. Well, he didn't exactly write it. Some folks in the 20th century put it together. In his name.

Much like the Bible itself. In God's name. Who some of the men thought was sociopathic in the old days. Worse, these men could not understand the unread interpretation given the scriptures by the "saved" behind bars. Hard to like God if God's friends were arrogant know-it-alls who, like similar fundamentalist Muslims, blithely sent to hell anyone not down with their particular (peculiar?) interpretation of what the words say.

Jerome (347-420) had his own battles.

 Memorial

St. Jerome was a Biblical scholar in the fourth century. He studied and was baptized in Rome, then returned to his native Aquileia where he lived an ascetic life. Around 374, he headed for Palestine, but was delayed in Antioch, where he heard the lectures of Apollinarius and decided to live as a hermit in the Syrian desert. He learned Hebrew, returned to Antioch and was ordained. He spent time in Constantinople and then returned to Rome, where he became secretary to Pope Damasus. After the Pope’s death, he visited Egypt, Palestine, and Antioch, before settling in Bethlehem. There he founded a new men’s monastery, and continued his scholar work. St. Jerome was involved in many theological controversies of the time including those regarding Arianism, the virginity of Mary, and the teachings of Origen. Some of St. Jerome’s greatest scholarly achievements are his translations of most of the Bible into Latin, a bibliography of the ecclesiastical writers, and translations of the works of Eusebius, Origen, and Didymus. Also, he wrote many Biblical commentaries where he infused topography and linguistics into his discussions. St. Jerome is one of the four original doctors of the Western Church.       (Written by Sarah Ciotti) divineoffice.org

Words are so interesting.

What they say is even more interesting.

And the context, say, prison, among the skeptics.

Refreshingly complex and perplexing!

angels

beyond reason

can you imagine

being delivered

such a message

drones

If you haven't been thinking about them, why not?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/john-oliver-drones-last-week-tonight_n_5899716.html

no, one; at all

It’s hard not to read about state governors who are variably described as odd, off, or awful. So few of us would acknowledge such appellation fit personal appraisal of ourselves.

Unless you were comfortable with such awkward designation.

Signs of such perplexity could be helpful.

Zen does not teach concentration, so much as it teaches you how to give yourself perplexity as a way of controlling your mind. It teaches that you must inevitably experience the complexities and sorrows of human life. Obviously, knowing perplexity and suffering need not take the form of Zazen meditation or the Koan; there are plenty of things in daily life that will provide chances to have this kind of Zen experience. 

... 

People who are deeply experienced in Zen meditation are rarely solemn or saintly in the conventional way. On the contrary they are people who are filled with bright interest in their surroundings. They are easily surprised. They laugh easily. And even people who have less Zen experience than advanced priests say that , after a session of meditation, they see and hear everything with greeter clarity and vividness.  

(pp.54-55, in Zen Meditation Therapy, by Tomio Hirai MD, c.1975)

These Days of Awe! 

The ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) or the Days of Repentance. This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur.   

One of the ongoing themes of the Days of Awe is the concept that G-d has "books" that he writes our names in, writing down who will live and who will die, who will have a good life and who will have a bad life, for the next year. These books are written in on Rosh Hashanah, but our actions during the Days of Awe can alter G-d's decree. The actions that change the decree are "teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah," repentance, prayer, good deeds (usually, charity). These "books" are sealed on Yom Kippur. This concept of writing in books is the source of the common greeting during this time is "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year."  

Among the customs of this time, it is common to seek reconciliation with people you may have wronged during the course of the year. The Talmud maintains that Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and G-d. To atone for sins against another person, you must first seek reconciliation with that person, righting the wrongs you committed against them if possible.            

(Judaism 101), http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday3.htm 

I’ve not righted much in my life. It is unfortunate. This is clear to me. It is vivid. It sorrows.

Fire  

Probably I am an ordinary middle-class  

believer in individual rights, the word 

"freedom" is simple to me, it doesn't mean 

the freedom of any class in particular.  

Politically naive, with an average  

education (brief moments of clear vision  

are its main nourishment), I remember 

the blazing appeal of that fire which parches  

the lips of the thirsty crowd and burns  

books and chars the skin of cities. I used to sing  

those songs and I know how great it is 

 to run with others; later, by myself,  

with the taste of ashes in my mouth, I heard  

the lie's ironic voice and the choir screaming  

and when I touched my head I could feel  

the arched skull of my country, its hard edge.   

(--Poem, Fire, by Adam Zagajewski; Translated by Renata Gorczynski)

I dislike suppression of dissent as much as I dislike idiocy of bizarre theories that distract from intelligently coming to terms with complexity.  

I dislike authoritative dismissal of concerns about governance as much as I dislike lazy, self-serving patriotism and elitism found in pablum or halls of power.

I dislike trappings of holiness and ex-officio appropriation of the sacred as much as I dislike blithe blithering about abstract and insubstantial miasma.

Along this road  

Goes no one;  

This autumn evening. 

                  (--Basho)  

No one

at            all

Going away

This

nothing

is not

understood

Nothing

is

worth

this

?

what do you see?

The Jewish man explained the beginning.

In Hebrew the word בְּרֵאשִׁית, Bereʾšyt, is translated as “In the beginning”.  

He was impassioned and eloquent.

The group of us listened.

Then it was time to return to their cells, lock in, wait for count, then lunch.

I walked through eleven doors, seven of them secure and locked.

We wished each other”shana tova,” eyes unlocked.

If we return to source, where does source return to?

Panta the cat climbs to nestling spot on steel shelving.

Rokpa the dog will be up on sofa by now.

I sneeze twice.

Rosh Hashanah, Hebrew: רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎

Remembering

Returning

Rejoicing

Teshuvah

Carrying and stacking old wood in new place by barn and kitchen.

Rowing harbor.

Sitting zazen and reading Thich Nhat Hanh.

The day goes on.

Returning and returning.

autumn

a

fall

from

summer

i’m twice as strong wearing gloves and boots

The inmate once said you can tell about a man by the condition of his work gloves and boots.

Work Boots: Still Life

work boots dry in the sun.
Salt lines map the leather
and laces drool
like the arms of a new-hire
waiting to punch out.
The shoe hangs open like the sigh
of someone too tired to speak
a mouth that can almost breathe.
A tear in the leather reveals
a shiny steel toe
a glimpse of the promise of safety
the promise of steel and the years to come. 

(--Poem by Jim Daniels)

Them, and the willingness to laugh.

Original word: repositioning ‘autos’ and ‘allos’, a student makes his mark

A student writes:

Original word: 

“Autodidallocism” - the educational process of self-teaching through interaction with others.  

Mr. Halpin favored an autodidallic method of teaching in which his students entered into dialogue with one another and educated each other via their contributions.  

(Otto-dye-DAllo-sizm; Otto-dye-DAllick) 

Happy Frindling!  

-Justin

To Mr. Snow, my response did go:

Well composed; well played! 

Compliments

(I had to look up Frindling. Of course, then, having to order Andrew Clements’ book Frindle.)

Penultimate equi-nox

           (haiku at season change)

entering last day

of summer, hiking ragged 

step by tiring step

αυτός/άλλος--διδακτικ: self learning through another

Faith is intuition of deep,reality.

Belief is intellectual and rational formulation of that intuition.

Religion is the structural dogma and requirements of the practice of particular belief.

Church, mosque, synagogue, or temple is the emboldened housing of a specific religion.

Spirituality is the term some use to explain the urge to practice intuition, thought, and service to others.

If anyone asks, say I practiced faith.

Deep reality is the mystery of faith.

Trust in self through another.

Autos/allos--didacticism: self learning through another.

αυτός/άλλος--διδακτικ.

Bow not for something—to get something for yourself. Bow to empty yourself, to repent and clean out your mind. With no thought of self, all benefit. With a thought of self, all suffer.

-- Heng Sure, "Bowing"

Auto-allos-didacticism (self-teaching through another or others)

Tonight is a good night to die.

Temperature falls.

Wood in two weeks.

again; refresh

Quickly, before update restarts.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?  
                - Buddha in the Dhammapada

And we have to begin again.

errata

On at least two occasions over the 13 years of meetingbrook’s blog I have misquoted Elie Wiesel’s line from p.93 of “The Wandering Jew” from his book Legends of Our Time (1967).

Here is the accurate quote:

"Man defines himself by what disturbs him and not by what reassures him. When will you understand that you are living and searching in error, because God means movement and not explanation.”

My error was the word “is” instead of “means” and the comma between “movement” and “not” in final line.

Here are two of the culprits from 2003 and 2006:

Meetingbrook Hermitage Update

www.meetingbrook.org/updates/03JulyUpdate.htm

As Elie Wiesel said in one of his books, "God is movement, not explanation." Seeing God is not as vital as moving through what (God) is moving through, what  ...

Today at Meetingbrook: 08/06/2006 - 08/13/2006

meetingbrook.blogspot.com/2006_08_06_archive.html

Aug 6, 2006 - 'God is movement, not explanation,' wrote the novelist Elie Wiesel. Let's move through reality with grace and wholeness. We are not separate ...

           erratum 

[ih-rah-tuh m, ih-rey-, ih-rat-uh m] Spell Syllablesnoun, plural errata 
 [ih-rah-tuh, ih-rey-, ih-rat-uh] (  [ih-rah-tuh, ih-rey-, ih-rat-uh] (Show IPA)
1.
an error in writing or printing.
2.
a statement of an error and its correction inserted, usually on aseparate page or slip of paper, in a book or other publication;corrigendum.  1. an error in writing or printing. 2. a statement of an error and its correction inserted, usually on aseparate page or slip of paper, in a book or other publication;corrigendum. Origin1580-90; < Latin, noun use of errātum wandered, erred, strayed (neuterpast participle of errāre). See err, -ate1 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/errata

Apologies!

Haiku, (in passing)

                 “...God means movement and not explanation.” (Elie Wiesel) 

Profound faith in this

mere looking, nothing in mind 

arrives then departs

Ad vitam aeternam

Faith is the trust we have that nothing 

will not be what it is

in itself.

The holy, cross

Interconnection and transformation

no matter

what else.

Dropped off mind and body

It seems simple.

If you do not fear death, you are free.

To be what you are and do what you want.

His brothers and sisters said that about Jim Laurita today.

With humor, affection, and a little bit of awe.

from Late Latin, condolere -- "to suffer together"

Condolence From: meetingbrook hermitage for James L. Laurita

           Haiku,

          (for Dr Jim)  

here is what is known 

          you were kind here, now we know 

          september sorrow

It was 11:11pm on 9/11 about 11 minutes ago

I remember less fear.

A good memory.

Starting when?

Here is what we know about 9/11/2001:

Many people died; buildings were destroyed; wars were begun; many people continued to die.

Whoever planned and executed the terrible event and its follow up were very successful.

And what have we learned?

Success isn't always desired.

Killing is easy.

There's something else we have to consider -- some different way of living we might wish to contemplate.

It's worth a look.

A long look.

Starting now.

Dwelling now.

No concept, only an idea

Watched Generation War. The insanity and idiocy of that time.

Macbeth:
     She should have died hereafter. 

There would have been a time for such a word. 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, 

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 

To the last syllable of recorded time, 

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 

And then is heard no more. It is a tale 

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing.

(--Act 5, Scene 5)

Shakespeare saw it and said it well.

The midcoast community loses a good man who cared for animals and rescued two elephants to a new life.

The footprint of mortality can be seen everywhere.

from war, to gnosticism, to anyone’s motivations

1. It’s hard to know what is true.

2. It’s hard to know. What is true?

3.     It’s hard.

To know what is?

    True!

just this; just sitting

Hummingbird comes to bay window as eight folks at hospitality spoke of intellectual emancipation and panecastic insight.

 “ Was das Volk verdummt, ist nicht sein Mangel an Unterweisung, sondern der Glaube an die Minderwertigkeit seiner Intelligenz. ”
                                                                                          (— Jean Joseph Jacotot, 1770-1840)

Everyone has equal intelligence. Each has the God-given ability to teach themselves. And yes, even someone ignorant is capable of teaching another ignorant person what longs to be learned. (I.e. We can teach what we don't know.) Everything is in everything. These four principles from Jacotot are both interesting and useful.

Even unto today.

Not unlike shikantaza.

Now, just this

And if I die before I wake

Just one more thing to contemplate

Endless One-Another

Rabbi Kushner: I think the best way to understand it, Krista, is to teach, remind you of two Hebrew words that are in kabbalistic language much more important than their normal definitions. The first word is yaish. And it's sort of untranslated. If you held my feet to the fire I'd say it translated as is-ness. Being-ness. And yaish refers to virtually everything in creation. Anything that has a beginning or an end, that has the spatial coordinates, that has a definition, that is bordered by other things, and it's not just material reality. I mean, love has a beginning, it has an end. Beauty can have a definition. And, it's not bad. It's not something to be renounced. I mean, anybody who has tried to live in the world knows that it is the world of yaish. You and I are yaish. Our microphones are yaish. The room, the city of San Francisco is yaish. Everything is yaish. Yaish is not bad. It's only bad if you think that's all there is.
Turns out there is only one thing that's not yaish. It has no beginning, it has no ends, it's not bordered by anything, it has no definition, it has no spatial coordinates. You probably can't say as much about it as I'm about to try to say, it is the opposite of yaish. It is called Ein Sof — without end. Literally it means nothing. But with a capital N. Because if I said it was something, you know, you've got to stay with the logic here. If I said something, then you will say well it's next to another thing. And the Kabbalists being serious about logic also, they are very logical, no, the only way we can talk about this non-yaish thing is to call it no-thing or nothing, and that becomes Ein Sof, and that has something to do with God, the source of everything of yaish.
Everything in the world is made of Ein Sof. Everything in the world is the wave of which the Ein Sof, or God, is the ocean. And our knowledge our knowledge of the ocean is largely based on the way it manifests itself in the waves. That is the yaish. So my closest I can come to learning about Ein Sof and God is by talking to you, or looking at a tree, or planting one.
(--from On Being, Transcript for Lawrence Kushner — Kabbalah and the Inner Life of God, May 15, 2014)

used parts

“Would A Human Head Transplant Be Ethical?” We talked about this article in Popular Science in class tonight. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/would-human-head-transplant-be-ethical

Curiously timely meditation,

Where do I begin?

Where end?

As simple as remembered

Because he could not simplify his life.

Who said that? Richard would quote it.

Then there's this:

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

(-- Thoreau, Walden, 323- 324)

nose on toes

“Myself I cannot see the persistence of the artist type. I see no need for the individual man of genius in such an order. I see no need for martyrs. I see no need for vicarious atonement. I see no need for the fierce preservation of beauty on the part of a few. Beauty and Truth do not need defenders, nor even expounders. No one will ever have a lien on Beauty and Truth; they are creations in which all participate. They need only to be apprehended; they exist externally. Certainly, when we think of the conflicts and schisms which occur in the realm of art, we know that they do not proceed out of love of Beauty or Truth. Ego worship is the one and only cause of dissension, in art as in other realms. The artist is never defending art, but simply his own petty conception of art. Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. There is nothing but art, if you look at it properly. It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.” 

― Henry Miller, originally in “Of Art and the Future,” a wide-ranging essay on war, art, technology, the role of women in society, and mankind’s future, eventually published in Sunday After the War (public library) in 1944. From "Brain Pickings" http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/07/henry-miller-of-art-and-the-future/

replacing

The square gray-faced Bulova kitchen clock in Bensonhurst needed batteries.

Time had stopped.

It was in the dream.

There was no Wednesday Evening Conversation to get to the shop for. Nor was there a shop any longer.

Slowly waking, cat on window ledge looking out, the bare sense of being not alone.

curriculum vital (née vitae): toward a course of learning together

Here we are!

Let's become interested.

Let's become conversant.

Let's become knowledgeable.

Let's become thoughtful.

Let's become acquainted with wisdom.

Let's
     think about,

     discuss,

     debate,

     call into question, and

     deepen

what we are looking at and studying.

Finally,

   let's converse with one another,

      write about what we are finding out, and

         learn how doing all of the above moves our behavior

             and thinking along

                 a journey of beneficial  

                     engagement with all involved

                         in the process of dwelling together
   
   in this existing place wherein we are.

Let's begin now.

At origin.

What do you mean, "Just as I thought?"

I have no opinion.

Some day I'll be able to say: "I have no opinion."

What's your opinion of that hypothetical?

Just

 as I ...

thought.

kazoolessly wished a good celebration

Aug 31, New Year's Eve .

In the morning, September.

In Vermont, a 42nd birthday.

A voice in good spirits!

Greek ἰδέα (idéa)

Plato said, “See!”

What an idea!

{From Latin idea (“a (Platonic) idea; archetype”), from Ancient Greek ἰδέα (idéa, “notion, pattern”), from εἴδω (eídō, “I see”), related to French idée. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idea }

as I was

There were fireworks over the harbor tonight. I heard them. It was after sitting shikantaza. It was after listening to compline. In the muted second floor of bookshed. In the quiet.

I heard them.

It might have been bombs in Syria or Iraq. It might have been exploding tear gas canisters in Furguson MO. It might have been gunfire in Chicago IL.

But it was Camden ME. They were celebrating windjammers. Waves and wind, hulls and sails.

As I was.

Celebrating solitude.

peeing under stars

                (haiku with dogs)

early reminder --

shaking winds brush tops of trees

Han on trunk says fall

vigils

                 (a haiku at 4:44am)

crickets pronouncing 

late august cusp dawn -- monk time;

nothing but god is

Acoustics and appreciatives

New mahogany Han from harbor boatbuilding scrap hangs on tree outside meditation cabin.

Shema on right side of doorway into cabin.

Birchat Habayit Mezuzah on jamb of Panikkar wohnkuche. ("Baruch ata bevoecha u'varuch ata betzeitechah" which means "Blessed are you upon your arrival and blessed are you upon your departure.")

The sound and touch of these beings!

Here is your teacher

There is nothing

To learn

Not here

The Dearth of God/Man: Learning together -- teaching God, teaching Man

Jesus' death as a dearth of awareness -- a scarcity and shortage -- suggests a deficiency we should look into.

Were both God and Man complicit in this dearth?

Was our awareness unready?

Will a return require fuller depth and wider inclusion to occasion?

Qui tacit consentire? Juvenal, Thales, & Buddha

Silence has a mind of its own. It has a body that is our own.

mens sana in corpore sano

English translation: You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death, and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts that can endure any kind of toil, that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus. What I commend to you, you can give to yourself; For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.

In original Latin: orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem, qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponat naturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores, nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil et potiores Herculis aerumnas credat saevosque labores et venere et cenis et pluma Sardanapalli. monstro quod ipse tibi possis dare; semita certe tranquillae per virtutem patet unica vitae. —Roman poet Juvenal (10.356-64)

Which is in which? Is mind in body? Or, is body in mind?

I rather think they are two words, eight letters, that turn and dance and show various sides of themselves, forming transient and temporary expressions of their soundless manifestations twirling through evening patina of cloud-sun haze on greeny hills in Maine.

τίς εὐδαίμων, "ὁ τὸ μὲν σῶμα ὑγιής, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν εὔπορος, τὴν δὲ φύσιν εὐπαίδευτος 

"What man is happy? "He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature."^[1]

1. As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, (R. D. Hicks, ed.), Lives of Eminent Philosophers I:37  (--Wikipedia)

Let's return to silence. It is the language of god. 

Silence, the face of god. 

Friday, waiting curbside for Saskia after her Jin Shin Jitsu she arrives saying, “I knew you were here, but I couldn’t see you.” If we are able to face this about god, we might be able to hear what is not said.

“I don’t envision a single thing that, when
     undeveloped, leads to such great harm as the
     mind. The mind, when undeveloped, leads to
     great harm.”
“I don’t envision a single thing that, when developed,
     leads to such great benefit as the mind. The
     mind, when developed, leads to great benefit.”
                   ......................
“I don’t envision a single thing that, when
     undeveloped and uncultivated, brings about such
     suffering and stress as the mind. The mind, when
     undeveloped and uncultivated, brings about
     suffering and stress.”
“I don’t envision a single thing that, when developed
     and cultivated, brings about such happiness as
     the mind. The mind, when developed and
     cultivated, brings about happiness.”

(-- The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 1.23–24, 1.29–30. Trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu.)

It is not mine to envision, it is mine to turn and twirl within the appearance itself.

How can I see what I am in the happiness of what is being itself?

What-is, being-itself: this, this, this is the appearance of  -- b o d y m i n d / m i n d b o d y  -- in and through and with the One Sustaining Gaze that is life in this place we call existence.

Sunday morning.

sit with this

Silence, the face of God, is what we gaze on without knowing.

If so, perhaps faith is the willingness to look.

The truly faithful see this.

breathing in, I have nothing to say; breathing out, I say nothing

Silence is the face of God.

No one has ever seen silence.

Cease practice based on intellectual understanding, 

Pursuing words and following after speech,  

And learn the backward step 

That turns your light inward 

To illuminate yourself.  

Body and mind of themselves 

Will drop away and your original face 

Will be manifest.  

—Dogen, 1200-1253

We want words.

We don’t want silence.

Except as monastics.

Faceless; wordless.

Unseen; unheard. 

nothing; kind

I said, “Try solitude.”

It was unkind.

There’s nothing to try.

The book on it

Jesus was a nice Jewish man.

Never anything other than.

Who recognized God in himself.

Becoming what he was.

Within.

Nothing other.

As himself, as God is, as a thing might be completely Itself.

God is...

That which is coming to be.

That which is.

Coming to be.

I give you my word

The poet 

ran out 

of words.

Settling 

for 

silence.

spiritual - religious; spirituality - religiosity; facing - facelessly

We have fallen between words. Which means we have fallen between worlds. A chasm of voided meaning opens exposing a bridge-less rhetorical lacunae into which unsuspecting pilgrims fall tumbling deeper and deeper into wall-less descent such as does not reveal to the falling one that they are falling at all. Mere gravitationless tumbling -- seeming like being solidly fixed in place -- whereas there is no place that they are. They have disappeared in plain sight of themselves. The reflection they believe they see of themselves is a repeating loop of an imagined time when they believed there was something to believe in that explained, sustained, and reclaimed.

Through such experiences, one thing was becoming clear to me: the dangerous power of the face, of the suffering face, the excluded face, the face of a victim. A story of suffering may become a morality tale or be co-opted by theory. A face calls in a different way. 

The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas famously argued that to be human is to be responsible for the suffering of the other, for the person whose well-being our very existence may be threatening. This obligation to others is encountered and symbolized in a unique way in the face-to-face relation. The faces of others present persons genuinely different from us, exposed to us. The vulnerability of the human face presents us with the claim: do not kill me. In a sense, Levinas says, the bare face of another says “do not deface me”; allow me, it says, my otherness without violation, shame, or indifference.4 

Wherever we are kept from seeing the face of the other, I was slowly seeing, whether of the other who stitches our clothing, or dies from our taxpayer-supported bombs, we make it easier for ourselves to act as if we, too, are not responsible for that other. It is an option only the privileged have available to them. 

(--from, Is Your Spirituality Violent? The Emergence of Violence as a Theme in My Theological Life and Work, by Tom Beaudoin, Santa Clara University http://www.scu.edu/cm/upload/Microsoft-Word-Beaudoin-s-Is-Your-Spirituality-Violent.pdf

Sitting in kitchen by bay window I hear periodic thumping. When I finally get up to explore, I see Chitta, one of our cats, looking at me from door between cellar, bathroom dining room and kitchen, as through demanding "what?" - as I notice a mature mouse struggling to right itself not far from hunkered gaze. After a conversation of eyes I take the dazed mouse out across Barnestown Road to the high growth, wishing it as well as it can be.

In prison Friday there were words that war is necessary. Look at the innovations for general use that emerge from product research in time of war -- the conveniences and gizmos that defense industry conjures alongside sidewinders and 50cal ammo. I am unconvinced.

Or, factories in foreign lands that make sweatshirts and sneakers for branded celebrities as lure for $50-100 dollar tag -- a voluntary walking advertisement that perpetuates the cult of "look at me" centered on exposure, bombast, and self-promotion. From mega-church shills to on-court on-field hubris, from glamorous body-shots to seductive substances ingested by the too-monied modeling for the too-down-and-dirty, we are lured into a celluloid/glossy/digital delusion that substitutes for the ersatz substitute of (shall we call it) radical reality. 

Radical reality, another awkward phrase, is what life is without addenda or adumbration.

It's nothing.

It's life.

Without making it anything other than it is.

Just...life.

What are the powers of violence that our spiritual commitments fail to comprehend? How can those who want to call themselves Christians avoid the demand for the spiritual practice of fostering an anticapitalist, nonviolent relation to God and our sisters and brothers, especially our sisters and brothers whose faces we will and can never see? For too long, the facelessness of the economic and religious other—student, worker, gay priest, terrorist suspect—has kept God faceless. But now Jesus returns to open for us the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, and says to postmodern, consumer capitalist, American Christians: whatever you did to the most faceless of my sisters and brothers, you did to me. An idoloclastic strain in the Christian tradition may now be married to the ethical demand of our time: Jesus calls us by remaining faceless, by being present in and through our relation to the faceless. Jesus is the faceless man, who is kept anonymous by the way our spirituality fails to challenge our economic and religious practices. Jesus is the faceless man, whose flourishing is pinned, governed by our practices. 

Yet early Christianity also described Jesus as a parrhesiast, one who spoke confidently, freely, frankly. As a ritual reactivation of the dangerous memory of this parrhesia, we can ask, and ask again: How often do student voices about tuition inform university policies? How often do we ‘consumers’ hear from those who make our computers and cut our flowers? Who speaks for those arrested in the “war on terror”? When have gay priests been encouraged to speak of their reality? Does Christian spirituality search out the face and the voice, not of the random other, but of the other of the body of Christ and of the globalized economic body—the other on whom we depend and to whom we are related through politics, church, or economy?
What would a nonviolent Christian spirituality look like, both in the Catholic world and on the American scene? Might we have to free ourselves from the desire for spirituality itself?      

(-- Ibid) 

To gaze on life, gaze with life, gaze as life -- this is a real radical reality -- one wherein we see what is taking place, feel what we are seeing, and act without acting from within the action taking place as us in the occasion and circumstances wherein we find ourselves nothing-other than what is unfolding within, among, and between (what we have previously believed or thought of as) us and the world, self and other, subject and object, me and you, us and them, this life and afterlife, heaven and hell, haves and have nots, 1% and 99%, black and white, saved and damned, smart and stupid, living and dying.

I am falling between words. I am falling between worlds.

A piano piece on Keith Jarrett Radio plays -- Autumn in New York -- slow with piano and snare brush.

A bit drowsy and damp in Camden.

Dogs in dooryard.

Chickadee flies from feeder.

Kitchen surrender.

Face it.

It rains.

right up until the end

Christopher Hitchens was asked "How much longer are you going to do this?" He responded, "Until I drop."

He went on doing what he did best -- pointing out what he considered to be the foible of faith. His voice was needed in the conversation.

In 2011 he dropped. His voice is missed.

The "this" that Hitchens did was to annoy, consciously, the religious-minded.

I'm religious-minded. I'm glad he annoyed me.

laughing at nothing

Which way do you see it?

1. Death is nothing to laugh at.

or,

2. Death
             is nothing --
                       to laugh at.

monitum

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.

(--from poem Epilogue by Robert Lowell)

Charlie, bemusing, said, “I like the word, I think I’ll use the word ‘repent’.”

Photos of militarized police pointing automatic rifles at unarmed men and women protesting the shooting of unarmed men in Missouri and Los Angeles is unnerving.

It is not a good time to be police. The helmets, the boots, the camouflage pants, the riot gear, the belief that anyone protesting mistreatment is candidate for being shot.

America is afraid of itself. It has become afraid of its citizenry. Congress is afraid of the black man elected twice president; so they play the white plantation owners’ game of disregard and disrespect.

Blowhards at Fox Spews rush to mock even the suicide for egoistic dollars. Keep the brown skins out, they bellow. This is a country for white men making greenbacks wet with surly arrogance.

I worry about the elasticity of apathy. The sleeping electorate has twisted its somnolence into a tight and thin tearing stretch of belief in corroded words such as “equality” “freedom” and “trust.”

The NSA luridly watches us into nakedness. The FBI becomes agent provocateurs inciting hapless anger into absurd plans to cause mischief -- then arrest the duped as terrorists. Throw them into cells.

The CIA foments unrest in foreign lands and spies on congress in its spare time. Assassinations are called like a bartender’s call for last round in barrooms throughout inebriated disheartened minds.

It is a dangerous time. In dangerous times the dangerous people with power and ammunition become more paranoid and dangerous -- making an unsafe situation even more unstable and unstoppable.

The church, having lost any moral cred, is a pantomime of an ancient play whose plot becomes a caricature of a once believable story now trivialized by kabuki ritual without real flesh and blood.

Is this our lament? That police, politician,  pundit, public plotter, pastor and priest have become shadowy relics of useless and cruel posturing? Mirrors become empty? Mouths say nothing worthy?

Surveillance -- first by an omnipotent and omnipresent God, now by an overreaching and oppressive state -- seems to be the one skill of those who would protect us from ourselves by executing us.

It seems a dark time lowers.
I fear something stupid looms.

But for this: Sylvia reads poem, John sings song.
Their paeans transcend pains that loom like gloom.

They finish learning how to work with the dying.
Their inspiring poem and song will serve what soon will die...well.

Is this where lament gives way to lamentation of Jeremiah all those vigilant monastic vigils?
“Jerusalem, Jerusalam, return to the Lord your God!" O People, People cease the fearful foolishness!