as I contemplated not doing silent sitting at 7:30am...

Blast these teishos! Taking Control of Habit

Each step may seem to take forever, but no matter how uninspired you feel, continue to follow your practice schedule precisely and consistently. This is how we can use our greatest enemy, habit, against itself.

—Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, "Tortoise Steps"

but words are all I have, to take your heart away

Yes.

The wording is "consubstantial with the Father." (--creed at catholic mass, Christmas morning)

Since the Latin language lacks a present active participle for the verb "to be," Tertullian and other Latin authors rendered the Greek noun "ousia" (being) as "substantia," and the Greek adjective "homoousios" (of the same being) as "consubstantialis". Unlike the Greek words, which are etymologically related to the Greek verb "to be" and connote one's own personal inherent character, "substantia," connotes matter as much as it connotes being. 

The term is also used to describe the common humanity which is shared by all human persons. Thus, Jesus Christ is said to be consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and consubstantial with us in his humanity.[1] 

It has also been noted that this Greek term "homoousian" or "consubstantial", which Athanasius of Alexandria favored, and was ratified in the Nicene Council and Creed, was actually a term reported to also be used and favored by the Sabellians in their Christology. And it was a term that many followers of Athanasius were actually uneasy about. The "Semi-Arians", in particular, objected to the word "homoousian". Their objection to this term was that it was considered to be un-Scriptural, suspicious, and "of a Sabellian tendency."[2] This was because Sabellius also considered the Father and the Son to be "one substance." Meaning that, to Sabellius, the Father and Son were "one essential Person." This notion, however, was also rejected at the Council of Nicaea, in favor of the Athanasian formulation and creed, of the Father and Son being distinct yet also co-equal, co-eternal, and con-substantial Persons.

 (--Wikipedia). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consubstantiality

You think that I don't even mean a single word I say.

It's only words... 

Cosmic Christ "is" born with awareness

Unto us

is born

a child 

"Is" is born.

As child.

Unto us.

What do we understand about incarnation?

Better to ask: why is being born so difficult to comprehend as the mystery of the incarnation?

Being born, with awareness, is the fact of Christ in the universe.

For all, light

Invitatory

Lord, open my lips.

— And my mouth will proclaim your praise.

Antiphon: Today you will know the Lord is coming, and in the morning you will see his glory.

Comes very soon eve of nativity

Psalm 138 (139)

The Lord knows all things

“Who could ever know the mind of the Lord? Who could ever be his counsellor?” (Rom 11:34).

The Lord who is all-powerful will come from Sion to save his people.

O Lord, you search me and you know me,

    you know my resting and my rising,

    you discern my purpose from afar.

You mark when I walk or lie down,

    all my ways lie open to you.

Before ever a word is on my tongue,

    you know it, O Lord, through and through.

Behind and before you besiege me,

    your hand ever laid upon me.

Too wonderful for me this knowledge,

    too high, beyond my reach.

O where can I go from your spirit,

    or where can I flee from your face?

If I climb the heavens, you are there.

    If I lie in the grave, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn

    and dwell at the sea’s furthest end,

even there your hand would lead me,

    your right hand would hold me fast.

If I say: ‘Let the darkness hide me

    and the light around me be night,’

even darkness is not dark for you

    and the night is as clear as the day.

Glory to the Father and to the Son,

    and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now,

    and will be for ever. Amen.

The Lord who is all-powerful will come from Sion to save his people.

(--Vespers, Universalis, 23Dec)

Winter

A warm welcome!

if you want to know

Practice.

Sense reality.

Say nothing.

then vanish

Finding a yellowed newsprint fragment taped to bookcase in room. Typing it. Finding source.

"Selected Exits" is adapted by Alan Plater from a memoir by Gwyn Thomas, a crusty Welsh writer and raconteur who died in 1981 at 67. Established as a writer of novels, short stories and plays, Mr. Thomas became a television celebrity in the 1960's on the BBC talk show "The Brains Trust." That's when this dramatization begins, with Anthony Hopkins grumblingly playing the wittily provocative Thomas. "All writers are liars," he declares, explaining that the lie is a compulsory social tactic. Then, with Hopkins assuming the role of narrator, the story goes back to Thomas's adolescence in South Wales.  

Thomas's mother died when he was 6. He describes his father, partial to pubs and denouncing Shakespeare as an imperialist, as "a latter-day Moses who had lost his map." Despite his determination to be a sidelines rebel, the gifted Thomas ends up winning a scholarship to Oxford University, although he continues to insist on being an outsider. He is a shrewd observer of ordinary lives, noting that in his beloved valley in Wales, "from all sides I was pelted by the unbelievable." He pinpoints the theme of his stay on earth: “Get close to an event, hear it breathe, then vanish. 

(--from, TV Weekend; A Perpetual Outsider and a New Host, By JOHN J. O’CONNOR Published: October 1, 1993) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/01/arts/tv-weekend-a-perpetual-outsider-and-a-new-host.html

Good way to stay. Then, hearing breath, to go. 

When it changes from the military "pre-sent arms!" to the murmur "dans le présent, aimer."

They make snow next door. Lights on all night. It is 4th Advent. Who notices subtle changes?

The Two Freedoms
Whatever your difficulties—a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness—you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to love.
—Jack Kornfield, "Set the Compass of Your Heart"

And yet, it is quiet in this room. Just images and memory. And realization, as Noah Levine wrote at our reading for Saturday morning practice, that with deeper awakening comes closer association of impermanence and death. At every moment. 

Anicca, anatta, karma, what remains of ego, and dukkha. Like a starting five on a college court a long time ago. 

It nears time. Nothing has an opposite. Just another view of same thing.

Gone.

Gone.

Gone beyond.

Everything presents itself with love.

Suddenly

Sunday

some meetingbrook words from years ago; still, for consideration

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 and 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 and the compassionate attention of the Christ and the Bodhisattva surround and shine through.

• 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.

http://meetingbrook.org/considerations.htm

life, for now, goes on

After turning temperature up in bookshed for morning practice.

St. John of the Cross...How to Attain Perfection
Fourth Counsel
The fourth counsel concerns solitude. St. John says:
“You should deem everything in the world as finished. Thus, when (for not being able to avoid it) you have to deal with some matter, do so in as detached a way as you would if it did not exist.
“Pay no heed to the things out in the world, for God has already withdrawn and released you from them. Do not handle any business yourself that you can do through a third person. It is very fitting for you to desire to see no one and that no one see you.
“And note carefully that if God will ask a strict account from all the faithful of every idle word, how much more will He ask it of the religious who has consecrated his entire life and all his works to Him. And God will demand all of this on the day of reckoning.”
This counsel on solitude is as basic as the previous three. It reminds us that the world is passing. We cannot make its goods exclusive. We must use them wisely as gifts but release our frantic grasp of them.
To be in the world but not of the world in an ex- clusive sense is to become more mindful of the need to take Father’s will into account as Jesus did.
(--from, spiritual life/ Online, continuation of spiritual life magazine Published 4 Times a Year, Winter 2015, Vol 1, No.4
http://files.ctctcdn.com/9fbfacab001/cf85d8fd-168b-43f4-a58b-7ed1d5cb676d.pdf?utm_source=Copy+of+Winter+2015+Issue+spiritual+life%2FOnine&utm_campaign=spiritual+life%2FOnline+Winter+2015&utm_medium=email

White dog jumps up on bed.

Life, for now, goes on.

Diurnal

Saskia says she dreamt of her grandmother. 

At poetry today in Quarry Hill Walt read from book of poems he gave to Maggie in 1983 inscribed with his calligraphy.

Rose sat with daughter Tina content to just listen.

The yurt resident is selling his tools.

Sam might have spine surgery.

Susan shops with Marti in Rockland, stops at ABC for lunch.

Charissa might have another spine surgery.

In prison today a full house for meditation and conversation.

Light, disappearing this final week, will reappear in a few days as cosmos and sacred reality turn to origin and birth of Light.

Dustin, inmate, read his poem about fire in ice that does not melt.

Some people speak with the dead. Some barely speak to the living.

without mentioning God, who judy said, is ourself seeing ourselves

The future is what the present lets go into.

Now, now!

No need to look back at what will be -- you are the future of the cosmos 

Within this,

Reading 

Becoming what being is

God sees us.

We do not see God.

We are being-seen.

And he sees

Gary Snyder writes about axe handles.

How we go on.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/248068

Unafraid human beings suffer

Chris Hedges thinks a rebellion is coming.

He quotes Immanuel Kant: “If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.”

Wikipedia adds the Latin, “Fiat justitia, ne pereant mundus” ( “Let justice be done lest the world perish.”)

The Argentine poet, Antonio Porchia, in one of his brief poems, wrote:

Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise. 

(p.29, poem, in Voices, by Antonio Porchia, translated by W.S. Merwin)

Justice and suffering.

When we rise to justice we will suffer more.

So we stay below justice, unwilling to ask for justice.

Full Definition of JUSTICE1
a  :  the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments 

b  :  judge

c  :  the administration of law; especially  :  the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity 2
a  :  the quality of being just, impartial, or fair 

b (1)  :  the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2)  :  conformity to this principle or ideal :  righteousness

c  :  the quality of conforming to law 3
:  conformity to truth, fact, or reason :  correctness  

(--Merriam-Webster) 

 We did not want to bring the perpetrators of a deceitful, cruel, and falsely waged war against Iraq in 2003 to justice.

We did not want to bring the money criminals of investment firms and mortgage banks of the last two decades to justice.

We are reluctant and slow to bring overzealous law enforcement and security forces to justice for killing and torturing people outside the propriety of protecting and serving.

We are afraid of justice. Afraid it would bring down institutions we’ve come to give wide berth to, suspicious of, but hesitant to hold accountable.

Moreover, we are unwilling to suffer.

To become compassionate means to suffer. To feel another’s pain is to suffer. To recognize the indignity and humiliation of individuals, races, nationalities, religions, and various forms of difference -- all invite suffering.

Rebels suffer. Redeemers suffer. Unafraid human beings suffer.

Justice demands.

Suffering is that demand.

I am concerned that in the absence of genuine justice and spiritual suffering the arrogant and uncaring powers will forward their agenda to cause unjust pain and torturous injustice against anyone they wish to target.

America is in a precarious teeter.

Some feel there is no longer a healthy trust of elected leaders, mammoth banking and corporate powers, or religious institutions. This is a precarious and diminished trust.

If prayer helped, we should pray. If non-cooperation made sense, we should resist. If things continue to slide into dearth of confidence and active mistrust of anything proffered by executive, legislative, or judicial -- then, we are fallen into the hands of tyrants, mercenaries, terrorists, and opportunists.

Can we find another way?

Or is Jesus in his sealed tomb, Buddha fast asleep far from Banyan tree, Moses languished in Egyptian prison, Mohammad desiccated in Arabian desert, Lao Tzu gone by wall without writing anything to leave behind?

Have all words of poets and philosophers been taken and burnt in the furnace of deficient and decadent cant and hypocrisy, ashes scattered over open graves?

Leaving us, alone, mute, and frightened?

Or, is there something else, as Porchia says:

In my silence only my voice is lacking. (p.32) 

Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless.
If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker. (p.33)

Gratefully, let God go.

The thought of it!

 Let God go?

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s, when I was a theology student at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, I studied and prayed with the works of Meister Eckhart, a medieval Dominican monk.  His fundamental teaching, that we participate in the life of Christ via the process and practice of detachment, has enlivened my spiritual life and brought hope, peace and creativity in its wake.  Eckhart’s teaching is entirely consistent with an even older Christian tradition called the apophatic way, or the way of “negative” (not in the sense of bad) theology.  God is present to us always, but always in a way that is beyond our thoughts, feelings, images and sensations.  Whatever we think about God is NOT God.  God is always greater.  We can enter an ever-fresh arena of God’s presence by continually letting go of our ideas, thoughts and images of reality and of God.  Eckhart named this process, in his native German language, Gelassenheit.  I like the sound of it. 

(--from Robert Jonas blog, Bread for the Journey, forge institute: I-thou in meditation and prayer)   http://www.emptybell.org/blog/?p=4#more-4

Gratefully, let God go.

What remains?

What remains is the open expanse of space, empty now, where, what we thought of God, once was, and where, what is to become of God, infinitely eludes conception.

Right there, in that silent stillness, pointing nowhere, once more, a letting go, breathing this present next revelation, also passing through, and away.

after troubles, light

"In the end, I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.” (Chris Hedges, in talk given at All Souls Unitarian Universalist, Kansas City, June 2015)

fascist |ˈfaSHəst|

noun

an advocate or follower of the political philosophy or system of fascism: he went to Spain to fight against the fascists | Eastern European fascists could win power only with support from the Nazis. 

• a person who is extremely right-wing or authoritarian: fascists made death threats against immigrants and asylum seekers. 

• a person who is very intolerant or domineering in a particular area: I'm a bit of a spelling fascist, but still have blind spots over words like “privilege” or “separate” | if I were being a culinary fascist, I would possibly moan about the overdone cooked tomatoes. 

adjective

of or relating to fascism: a military coup threw out the old fascist regime.

ORIGIN

early 20th cent.: Italian fascista, from fascio (see fascism).

(--from Dictionary, Apple inc) 

America is in trouble.

Not simply because more and more candidates for the right wing presidential nomination are outdoing each other to sound as outrageously reactionary as possible. The trouble comes in the acknowledgement that a greater majority of Americans are sidling toward such a point of view embracing racial, ethnic, economic, gender, and intellectual prejudice -- a bigotry that serves the dominant minority in the Arnold Toynbee sense.

Toynbee believes that the ideas and methods for meeting the challenges for a society come from a creative minority. The ideas and methods developed by the creative minority are copied by the majority. Thus there are two essential and separate steps in meeting a challenge: the generation of ideas and the imitation/adoption of those ideas by the majority. If either of those two processes ceases to function then the civilization breaks down.  

If the creative minority fails to command the respect of the majority through the brilliance and rightness of their solutions to the problems and challenges of the society then the minority becomes merely a dominant minority. In the breakdown of a civilization the society splits into three parts: the dominant minority, the internal proletariat (the working masses which are part of the civilization) and the external proletariat (the masses which are influenced by the civilization but are not controlled by it.

 The disintegration of a civilization involves a time of troubles, such as a time of wars between the nations which are parts of the civilization. This time of troubles is followed by the establishment of a universal state, an empire. The existence of a universal state such as the Roman Empire is evidence that the civilization has broken down.

Ultimately the universal state collapses and there follows an interregnum in which the internal proletariat creates a universal religion and the external proletariat becomes involved in a Volkerwanderung, a migration of peoples.

(--Arnold Toynbee on Civilizations and Religions, San Jose State, Thayer Watkins) http://www.applet-magic.com/toynbee.htm 

 The migration is afoot.

The frightened backlash is apace.

The implications for chaos and militaristic control response is affrontive.

Insult and offense will result in violence and repression. Warfare will be waged on our streets and in backyards, in schools and in elevators of office buildings.

I would rather listen to rain falling and water dripping from eaves.

I would rather contemplate the potential enlightenment of everyone. And sign off saying ‘I told you so!’

Whereas everyone goes home and eats ice cream.

the one who is to come

Monastic hour.

The flock he shepherds.

And they do not know my ways.

Gaudete!

God is present awareness

Si...

Chris, in prison Friday morning, said, "God is present awareness."

I'll stay with that awhile.

this monk died 47 years ago yesterday.

We are fond of him.

http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2015/12/by-my-monastic-life-and-vows-i-am.html

--BETH CIOFFOLETTI (louie louie blog). 

thomas merton wrote this:

“Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our times doing things, which, if we only stopped to think about them, are the opposite of what we were made for?”

And this:

"For me to be a saint means to be myself.”

seeing things differently

I remain intrigued by the notion that when we reach our center we reach one another, and conversely, if we stay out on the periphery, away from thoughtful investigation and contemplative inquiry, we are more prone to create division and separation, ultimately remaining lonely, or worse, antagonistic and bellicose toward the 'dangers' presented by anyone 'other' than that which our narrow perceptions recognize as 'our people,' threatening (so we are of the opinion) our sanity and safety. 

.

Can we learn to experience difference without division? Can acknowledgment and appreciation of diversity and difference introduce deeper access to the diaphaneity (seeing-through) of our true and shared nature with all creatures, people, and being-itself?  

.

In other words, will the blown-out outer flame of the candle reveal within us a true and real illumination that will faithfully guide us through the chaos and confusion of a unenlightened world?

.

From a blog about Keiji Nishitani and his book Religion and Nothingness:

The burden of existence from the perspective of sunyata appears instead as a mission or a debt towards all others with whom we are essentially connected in elemental existence. As discussed last chapter, entering the infinity of the present moment allows to see our connection with all other things in the universe, effecting a liberation from karmic conditioning. The moment of time and the present moment, then, appears from this perspective as instead one unit of time, the present moment, “spreading out endlessly before and after with the present at its point of origin.” (267) This conception of time as one moment spreading out infinitely into the past and future correlates with the understanding of the elemental existence of the universe as one harmony, a single whole. Understanding the universe as essentially connected makes self-love ignoring others impossible, as loving ourselves necessarily entails loving all other sentient beings, such that loving thy neighbor “as thyself” “comes about where each and every ‘other’ has its being as other, namely, at its own home-ground; or again, where all things are gathered into one circumincessional interpenetration as a ‘world’ and ‘All are One.’” (279) Self-centeredness gives way in religion to understanding the entire world as its own center, such that love must be directed towards all others. Thus, only from the perspective of religion can we grasp our ethical purpose in loving all others, seen most clearly for Nishitani in Boddhisattvahood in Buddhism and love of one’s neighbor in Christianity.
http://strongreading.blogspot.com/2011/08/keiji-nishitani-religion-and.html

aware that this is true

Every breath is final breath.

too soon to say

There are, some might say, several idiots running for president of the United States.

It is an idiotic time.

Fear and intimidation are call words of those trumpeting our movement to a new form of fascism.

These shills do not know God.

Nor do most of us.

But most of us do not peddle fear and intimidation.

Breathe.

This idiocy might pass.

But it's too soon to say.

the entangled knowns and unknowns of this existence.

From CC, 8Dec15, Life BEFORE Death

COLLAPSE

I love David Foster Wallace's explanation of deciphering meanings. To a religious person and to an atheist, there would be a complete difference on how they each view the same problem. In his 2005 commencement address he illustrates a man at a bar, explaining how he was stuck in a blizzard praying to god for help. The man next to him believed God did  help him, while the man telling the story solely believes the Eskimos that came to show him the way were his saviors. I can't say why the man would pray to god for help when he didn't believe in him. Maybe it's a comfort reaction to a hardship. I am not a believer and don't believe in God, or that God put us here and he has 'plans' for us. It's entirely tiring to listen to it as well. This course most definitely gave me incite into what others believe and I've considered the possibility however I don't have enough evidence to convince me from my current beliefs. 

Reply Quote Edit Delete Email Author

(1) (last edited 0 minutes ago)

William Halpin INSTRUCTOR MANAGER 

RE: Life BEFORE Death

COLLAPSE

"...I don't have enough evidence to convince me..."(CC)

...

It's on days like these (i.e. Dec 8, Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Celebration of Buddha's Enlightenment Day, Secular Feast of John Lennon's Death) that I sense that something is up.

What is "up" I do not know. Like your words, I don't have enough evidence.

But here's my take:

• I like the notion that at least once in history, in the 1st century BCE, a woman was born with no barrier or impediment to completely experiencing and embodying the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That prospect cheers me. And perhaps she's not alone in this realization. 
• I also like the notion that once in history, in the 5th century BCE, a man, sitting under a Bo tree, awakened and realized the true nature of reality, the true nature of suffering, and the path both useful and necessary to successfully invite others into that same samadhi and nirvana. 
• Finally, I like the notion that once in history, in the 20th century CE, a man wrote songs like "Imagine" and "Stand By Me" and "Happy Xmas, War is Over" and "Give Peace a Chance" -- capturing an ethos of an age that resonates forward.     
• •      (Note: Ethos (/ˈiːθɒs/ or US /ˈiːθoʊs/) is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. (Wikipedia) 

I like the convergence of these three personages into a particular date in early December.

I don't have enough evidence to convince my rational mind to believe or my magical mind to claim control or my mythic mind to join with others in a "we" belief, but I do like the integrality of all the structures of consciousness inviting me into a sense of appreciation and attentiveness to the entangled knowns and unknowns of this existence.

(Thanks for the prompt!)

--bh

Where are you?

Its just a photograph of someone that I knew.

Rather, a video. Vimeo. He's 82 now.

I realize...we're strangers. Then and now.

This does not bother me. We're all strangers. Trying to make our way back home again.

But there's no home there. Never was.

Just the notion.

And that's gone too.

What's left?

Right

Where

You

Are.

harbor responses

KK writes: Scramble on the Mud Pile; King of the Mountain

COLLAPSE

Sometimes it feels like we're crawling all over each other even when we're evenly spread out doesn't it? How strange it is to feel piano wire tension in a room, the unsaid presence of sorrow or the frolicking wispiness of joy.It is the non physical becoming real,unfolding like a sail in the salty spray of oceans dawn. We all want something, we're all going somewhere, and dammit you're all in my goddamn way! It feels at times like the organized madness of ants pouring into and out of a snarling  labyrinth of tunnels, the piglet mass writhing for an open teet. Just millions and millions of conciousness' bouncing around and off of one another trying to understand, if even for just a second, whats really going on here.For when I scramble on the mud pile I feel like the King of the Mountain. 

bh responds: 

RE: Scramble on the Mud Pile; King of the Mountain

COLLAPSE

"It is the non physical becoming real, unfolding like a sail in the salty spray of oceans dawn."(KK)

[nice sentence]

...

 And if we became more conscious? I wonder what I would find. Hungry, would I step back for all the other mouths, also hungry, to eat before me?

The terms "altruism versus egoism" don't seem to satisfy. What could we call it?

I've been thinking about difference without division.  Having a mind which does not divide (although, disastrous for math class) but which recognizes difference (or, as Jacques Derrida coined, "différance") might change something so fundamental that it would be like the collapsing Matrix in its implication.

We could sell t-shirts saying:

    dwd

we for me

--bh

Feel, and understand, the nature of being alive and what suffering is...

Compassion cannot be taught or bought.

It is only learned by feeling what life alone reveals.

It is free & found by understanding suffering.

the way of difference within wholeness without division

december maine

afternoon mild

not yet

steady cold and icy

a kind of kindness

Perhaps God is what is true and beautiful. And we are what longs for truth and beauty. 

But something in our longing becomes craving to possess -- as if an object owned -- what suffuses existence as itself ungraspable and ever gracefully moving as dance of rising light -- in order (by our frantic instinct to prevent loss) to objectify and control what otherwise belongs only to itself as pure subjectivity passing through (perfectly) everything on its way of difference within wholeness without division.

“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting,” (Bar 5: 1-2).

Advent, coming towards, is anticipation of what is meant to be in the midst of how things are now.

Anticipate what might be -- by attending to what is -- with an attitude of realization -- a kind of kindness toward what is presenting itself seen with beauty and true quiet awareness.

Venite et videte quid hoc est nunc!

Come and see what this is now!

                         

sola ontology

Where does scripture come from?

Mind of God?

Imagination of man?

Alphabet?

I will tell you:

From the moment and situation conversing --

overheard by someone who shows up, listening

to what is

revealing itself

ask again

Do you
know
Who
I am?

No

"But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.” (DFW)

I particularly like these words in the David Foster Wallace talk:

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. 

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. 

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. 

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

What’s wrong? You ask.

Malaise.

Jimmy Carter had it right.

Malaise.

in (spirit) a shun(ning of idea ‘other’ for Reality Through Other)

Robert Lax (30Nov1915 - 26Sept2000) un-turned 100 yesterday.

 Thomas Merton wrote early on of this friend, “the secret of his constant solidity I think has always been a kind of natural instinctive spirituality, a kind of inborn direction to the living God.” (--from, a lax life, St Bonaventure University, quoting Thomas Merton on his friend Robert Lax) http://web.sbu.edu/friedsam/laxweb/a%20lax%20life.pdf

Whatever it is, we can make it through

Through.

We live through.

That's the practice.

Sometimes something just says, “here, try this.” Her name, Joey. His name, Rory.

An unfolding story.

http://www.wcsh6.com/story/news/features/2015/11/29/joey-martin-feek-hospice-roller-coaster/76535078/

And,

This Life I Live | scenes from one man's extraordinary, ordinary life 

it is time

8 bells. Noon. Fishing boats at ease on mooring lines.

 What are we waiting for?

“...on earth nations in agony, bewildered by the clamour of the ocean and its waves; men dying of fear as they await what menaces the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken.”         (--from Luke 21:25-28,34-36)

Tide comes in, tide goes out.

If we stay upwind from chatter, what we hear is sunlight snoozing on sea shoulder.

Seagull wings its way with wind banking over center channel.

new liturgical shikantaza

Breath comes

As God 

Opens eyes

examination of conscience

Zazen

Moving stacking wood

Imagining history

Compassion changes everything

What do you think

See.

Poems are the last thing we want to hear.

I Know a Man

BY ROBERT CREELEY

    As I sd to my
    friend, because I am   
    always talking,—John, I 

sd, which was not his   

name, the darkness sur- 

rounds us, what 

can we do against 

it, or else, shall we & 

why not, buy a goddamn big car, 

drive, he sd, for   

christ’s sake, look   

out where yr going.

(--Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press,) www.ucpress.edu.

The teisho of it!