foot of the ox

Is anything ever what it seems to be?

Dhammapada
Chapter I. The Twin-Verses 

1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. 

2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him 

(--beginning of the Dhammapada, translated by F.Max Muller)  http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Dhammapada.html 

 Hardly ever!

confido

If I had to say anything about belief, or even a philosophy of education, here is what I believe and think for now:

confido

I trust and have faith in nothing other 

than direct and immediate radical 

individual experience --

what is real realizing itself

here and now presenting

as it is innate and inchoate

emerging throughout.

(--wfh, 10mar16)

Rokpa, Old Orchard Beach, looking

Let's see . . .

anything else?

No , , ,

this is enough,

That's it!

all times, and, the whole

I have nothing to say about God. If there is a God, that God could no doubt speak for itself.

If, as some like to say, there is a Higher Power, the same applies. Nothing anyone says does anything to verify that Higher Power’s place in the world or above it.

What, then, can be said? I don’t know. I really don’t. 

These following words tell us something about the where and the when of anything being said:

7.2 Zero Time and Zero Space

Yet Zen thinks that the preceding is still a partial understanding of “here and now.” To fully understand it, it is helpful to examine the following often-quoted phrase, as it is particularly illustrative. Zen demands the practitioner “to show one’s original face before one’s parents were born.” This demand points to an experiential dimension prior to the bifurcation between the subject and the object—and hence “not two”—where “prior” means negation of the spatial-temporal ordering principles such as in Kant’s understanding of time and space as a priori forms of intuition. It points to a non-dualistic experiential dimension that is zero time and zero space, by which Zen means that neither time nor space is a delimiting condition for Zen-seeing. In zero time there is no distinction between past, present, and future, or between “before” and “after,”; in zero space there is no distinction between the whole and its parts. One can also say that both time and space, experienced from the point-of-view of the everyday standpoint, is relativized when zero time temporizes and zero space spatializes, where zero time and zero space characterize the bottomless ground. Accordingly, Zen contends that zero time and zero space are the natural and primordial being of all things including human beings, for they are all grounded in it. Taking these points together, the Zen enlightenment experience suggests a leap from a causal temporal series. 

Consequently, Zen contends that “here and now” is enfolded in both zero time and zero space. This means that one time contains all times and one part contains the whole, as in the case of a holographic dry plate in which a part contains the whole. Seen in this manner, “now” for the Zen person is a temporalization of zero time, while “here” is equally a spatialization of zero space, even though he or she may be anchored in the perceptual field of “here and now” as understood above. In other words, for the Zen person both “now” and “here” are experienced as an expression of thing-events in their suchness, because, as mentioned in the foregoing, Zen takes zero time and zero space to be the original abode of thing-events. Caution must be exercised here, however. Zen’s zero time should not be confounded with the idea of eternity standing outside a temporal series (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Newton’s “absolute time”) by means of a logical or intellectual transcendence, nor the zero space to be identified with “absolute space” (e.g., Newton) wherein there is no content of experience. In other words, Zen does not understand time and space by imposing a formal category on them, by presupposing in advance a form-matter distinction, which indicates an operation of the discursive mode of reasoning by appealing to the either-or, dualistic, and ego-logical epistemological structure.There. These are words that present themselves on the page.

(--Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy, First published Wed Jun 28, 2006; substantive revision Tue Feb 10, 2015) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/

Now, then, a brief nap might help.

special announcement pertaining to upcoming election

I’m ready to made an endorsement.

I endorse Noman Nowoman for highest office.

(Andrei Rublev’s Icon of The Trinity)

Please refer questions to my unimpressed secretary Mr. Mu-ge.

Incense and candle touched by fire

Friend

In surgery

Now

Time for quiet 

Prayer

letter, night before

Poet Stanley Kunitz wrote: “End with an image and don’t explain.” (--in, The Collected Poems)

So here’s how I’ll end: 

There was a room that had a door. The door did not know why it was there. To hold out? To let in? It wasn’t sure. One day the door handle said to the door, “You don’t decide who comes in or who goes out, I do.” The door thought about these words. It became unhinged. A feeling of joy slipped through its wood veins as it leaned against the wall.

I wish you health, comfort, and peace of mind in these hours. In these days.

And also love.

heart sutra candlelight

Full table practice

Boundlessness

Is form, was emptiness

isnow, willbe & noti -- three nonillusioned mendicants

takuhatsu, wandering begging, this political season, very little nutritious rice falling into tubular cloth, malnourished people, sad land

discovery

Walking empty boatyard
I find short line looped at one end
pick it up, put it down

Why, she asked, are people cruel?

Cruelty isn't particular. It comes from following orders.

Forgiveness isn't usual. It follows from breaking rules.

Do you follow orders? Or break rules?

Education is

emerging out into the present.

Would we not want to be educated persons?

for a frightened friend in a fearful place

Is now

And will

Be

Our prayer

For you

oremus

Prayer is lifting mind and heart to God

God is what is lifting

God to God -- 

Lifting itself, god-mind god-heart, 

Let us

Pray

an ambiguous phrase

There's nothing to fear.

Ha!

reading student papers

At York Harbor

One boatsman 

Motors to fishing boat

In afternoon sun

Here's David Brooks take on it

Excerpt:

We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation. 

And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and that he represents a break from politics as usual. That’s not true. Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means. 

Trump represents the path the founders rejected. There is a hint of violence undergirding his campaign. There is always a whiff, and sometimes more than a whiff, of “I’d like to punch him in the face.”           

  (--from, David Brooks, op Ed , the governing cancer of our time, 26feb16, Nytimes)

Haiku

Where going? mountain

asks water. Just here -- 

flowing together

Friday night

It's a long story.
But it's a person's life.
Listen.
It is being told.

They are telling it.

rain

There

Is no place

Over

Here

in a nutshell

Dasein, for Heidegger, means "Here I am!?"

Presencing presence.

Opening Being.

Lighting way.

Exclamation and question.

full moon over ragged mtn through trees at 4:45am

Salt light under Thoreau woodpile words at 4:30 am.

Soapstone holds candle in winter zendo at 4:50am, sitting mentioning names of remembered deceased.

Woodstove fire kindling cedar shingles at 5:05am.

Faint blue donation of nascent dawn under fading light of stars at 5:08am.

Kibbles for cats and biscuits for dog at 5:10am.

Gratefulness for frozen ground, silent mountain, warm covers, visiting words at 5:29am

accipe hoc

I receive this waking, this descending of stairs, this placing of three sticks of wood into stove, this bowing to white dog on angled couch, this escort of mottled cat brushing against ankles, this adjusting string of hanging thermometer on cold porch, this breath, this quiet -- I receive all this with gratitude, with mere joy on a Monday morning. 

and Bob's your uncle

I responded to a Valentine's card last week with a fractured ditty: 

there's something fishy about this card just like a lot of snow in dooryard --  

i love your words, and like the birds i break open seeds of this welcoming co-mono  

with attendant love, w

 It was the word "co-mono" sent to me that captures my attention. Co-mono, "alone-with" or together-alone, is a good neologism. It sounds a bit like 'common' and seems close to 'kimono.' [ORIGIN 
mid 17th cent.: Japanese, from ki ‘wearing’ + mono ‘thing.’]

Reminds me of Robert Creeley poem:

 The Song 

It still makes sense
to know the song after all. 

My wiseness I wear
in despair of something better. 

I am all begger,
I am all ears. 

Soon everything will be sold
and I can go back home 

by myself again
and try to be a man. 

(--p.215, The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975, Volume 1, By Robert Creeley)

This thing we "wear" -- whether belief in separateness or wiseness or a sense of inadequacy -- is a kimono we might choose to step out of from time to time.

This co-mono we are -- our common equality, the foundational awareness behind all appearance, the root silence out of which we emerge and into which we naturally return -- is a committed life (i.e. sent-together) journeying through all seeming separation toward actual indivisible unity.

We had breakfast hospitality on the porch this morning. Middle 60s inside, 40s outside, we in sunlit rocking chairs in mid-day passive solar. We talk. We sip coffee and tea. We ponder.

Later, we remember Friday in SMU (special management unit) talking about Upanishads. This arises:

Fourth Brāhmaṇa↩⚓✪

The creation of the manifold world from the unitary Soul↩

1. In the beginning this world was Soul (Ātman) alone in the form of a Person. Looking around, he saw nothing else than himself. He said first: ‘I am.’ Thence arose the name ‘I.’ Therefore even today, when one is addressed, he says first just ‘It is I’ and then speaks whatever name he has. Since before (pūrva) all this world he burned up (√uṣ) all evils, therefore he is a person (pur-uṣ-a). He who knows this, verily, burns up him who desires to be ahead of him.

2. He was afraid. Therefore one who is alone is afraid. This one then thought to himself: ‘Since there is nothing else than myself, of what am I afraid?’ Thereupon, verily, his fear departed, for of what should he have been afraid? Assuredly it is from a second that fear arises.

(--p.81, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads [1921] Translator: Robert Ernest Hume,)    http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2058

Haunting, the notion that "it is from a second that fear arises." Is there, then, no fear when we attend to/as 'first', or 'only' or 'alone'? First, that is, without a second. Not two. No broken fractured inventory ranked and sorted into upper and lower shelves, better and worse designation, richer or poorer disparity, important or unimportant sniffing.

Indivisible unity.

With equality and awareness in all.

This -- with this I can align, I could pledge allegiance. [ORIGIN: late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French, variant of Old French ligeance, from lige, liege (see liege), perhaps by association with Anglo-Latin alligantia ‘alliance.’]

Allein ist! (German, for "Alone is!")

And, Bob's your uncle, I can go back home / by myself again / and try to be.

...   ...   ...

Epilogue: 

• While "co mono" in meetingbrook's metaphor means "alone with" -- "mono" also standing for "monastics of no other," suggests a stance of un-affiliated union. 
• In Spanish, spaced differently, the letters suggest:  ¿Cómo no?!! (Why not?); and, Cómo no!! (Of course!).

A haiku suggests itself:

Haiku,   (for two hermits) 

  co mono?             (living alone together? )        

     Cómo no!!                (of course!)           

        ¿Cómo no?!!              (why not?)

a different now

Yes.

Grey cat rousts white dog from under desk for Saturday vigils. He takes refuge on narrow bed.

Town plow goes by swiping snow to roadside. I bump thermostat in winter zendo for morning sitting. I add wood to wohnkuche woodstove.

Aperi, Domine, os meum ad benedicendum Nomen sanctum tuum; munda quoque cor meum ab omnibus vanis, perversis et alienis cogitationibus; intel- lectum illumina, affectum inflamma, ut digne, attente ac devote hoc Officium recitare valeam, et exaudiri merear ante conspectum divinae Maiestatis tuae. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen
______________________ 

O Lord, open Thou my mouth to bless Thy holy name; cleanse my heart also from all vain, evil and wandering thoughts; enlighten my understanding , kindle my af- fections, that I may be able to recite this Office worthily, attentively and devoutly, and may deserve to be heard in the presence of Thy divine Majesty. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

I
See
God
Different
Now

If I were to breathe my last and fall to unbreath, I would look to all that surrounds -- human animal insect element -- and thank each, requesting they carry on, my life, that is, life itself, for me.

Upanishad means the inner or mystic teaching. The term Upanishad is derived from upa (near), ni (down) and s(h)ad (to sit), i.e., sitting down near. Groups of pupils sit near the teacher to learn from him the secret doctrine. In the quietude of the forest hermitages the Upanishad thinkers pondered on the problems of deepest concerns and communicated their knowledge to fit pupils near them. Samkara derives the word Upanishad as a substitute from the root sad, 'to loosen.,' 'to reach' or 'to destroy' with Upa and ni as prefixes and kvip as termination. If this determination is accepted, upanishad means brahma-knowledge by which ignorance is loosened or destroyed. The treatises that deal with brahma-knowledge are called the Upanishads and so pass for the Vedanta. The different derivations together make out that the Upanishads give us both spiritual vision and philosophical argument. There is a core of certainty which is essentially incommunicable except by a way of life. It is by a strictly personal effort that one can reach the truth.The Upanishads more clearly set forth the prime Vedic doctrines like Self-realization, yoga and meditation, karma and reincarnation, which were hidden or kept veiled under the symbols of the older mystery religion. The older Upanishads are usually affixed to a particularly Veda, through a Brahmana or Aranyaka. The more recent ones are not. The Upanishads became prevalent some centuries before the time of Krishna and Buddha. http://www.hindunet.org/upanishads/

I have no interest or concern for any individual afterlife reincarnation immortality rebirth reward or punishment heaven or hell or even nirvana bliss or moksha release. What goes round comes around; what falls flat goes splat. Water drops from house roof to porch roof as dog snores.

"If today you hear God's voice, harden not your heart." (--from Invitatory psalm)

The sound of one hand clapping is night flight through snow cloud off to northwest.

It is, different now, I see.

Oremus pro invicem!

just another 90 minutes in maximum security segregation talking the Upanishads

Through the plexiglass, using speakerphone, shackles unlocked, orange threads, we talked of divine ground, tat tvam asi, indivisible unity, prana and prajna, neti neti, and self entering heart.

Prison is prison.

But no separate self is no separate self.

We three were that. 

I watched the traffic stop of Sandra Bland for 40+ minutes

It is chilling what police can do to ordinary people.

“Law is the politics of the past frozen into ice blocks, which must be melted from time to time. Otherwise, law is the dead weight of the past on the present.
(--Marcus G. Raskin, p.299, in, Essays of a Citizen, From National Security State to Democracy, c.1991)

Tomorrow, yes tomorrow someone can rewrite the law to let the jailed and imprisoned go home.

Except for Ms. Bland and so many others now dead.

Much the way power corrupts.

Without real understanding.

Without compassion.

after 600 miles driving Maine along northern border and down its eastern edge

My dear departed farmer friend, Richard  (d. 2007) -- (“Dick the Republican,” as one inmate called him when he used to come in for meetingbrook conversations at prison) -- would shake his head, having often said, “Stay away from politics!” 

...   ...   ...

A College Education for Prisoners

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDFEB. 16, 2016

                                  

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/opinion/a-college-education-for-prisoners.html?comments&_r=0#permid=17587281

ama nesciri

 camden maine 2 days ago

I teach college courses in a maximum security prison. Let’s agree on one thing: ignorance and stupidity are not our best next door neighbors, whether inmates/former inmates or legislators/punishers inside or outside of prison.

I find the men change with knowledge and accomplishment. This could happen to all of us if we were to change our minds from a template of punish/revenge to educate/compassion.

One more thing. I have been educated beyond expectation by these men. Try it. Affiliate yourself with a prison education program. Be changed. Learn what it takes to overcome a history of unseeing. Become seers of possibility and hope.
All it costs is the loss of fear and a new currency of longing for a tangible equality.

...   ...   ...

Republicans See How Long They Can Hold Their Breath

Gail Collins FEB. 18, 201

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/opinion/republicans-see-how-long-they-can-hold-their-breath.html?comments#permid=17608709

ama nesciri

 camden maine 10 minutes ago

I'm pleased President Obama is an intelligent man. He knows the difference between a Moe, Larry, and Curly schtik and the posturing theatrics of Marco, Mitch, and Ted.
The Three Stooges made wonderful parodies of human foolishness. Today we don't need make-believe television, we have candidates for the highest office and holders of esteemed leadership positions on Capital Hill slapping one another in the head and tripping over booby traps they drop under their own feet.
The President, I trust, will continue to do his job with dignity and composure which will be to nominate someone for the Supreme Court in a timely manner. I hope it is someone who will judge wisely and well.
As for the current bunch running for a new reality tv show, I’d suggest cream pies, squirting lapel flowers, powder puff makeup bops, and a tiny car in the center ring to climb out of to the sound of Wurlitzer and cotton candy machine.

...   ...   ...

Ok, Richard, I’m done. 

By the way -- how are things in the realm/time post-body? I miss your suspenders and empty tea cup.

there is, Merton writes, no spiritual life

Out of silence, everything.

Here, Thomas Merton's words:

As for spiritual life: what I object to about [the phrase] ‘the Spiritual Life’ is the fact that it is a part, a section, set off as if it were a whole. It is an aberration to set off our ‘prayer’ etc. from the rest of our existence, as if we were sometimes spiritual, sometimes not. As if we had to resign ourselves to feeling that the unspiritual moments were a dead loss. That is not right at all, and because it is an aberration, it causes an enormous amount of useless suffering. Our ‘life in the Spirit’ is all-embracing, or should be. First it is the response of faith receiving the word of God, not only as a truth to be believed but as a gift of life to be lived in total submission and pure confidence. Then this implies fidelity and obedience, but a total fidelity and a total obedience. From the moment that I obey God in everything, where is my ‘spiritual life’? It is gone out the window, there is no spiritual life, only God and His word and my total response."  

(— Thomas Merton, extract from a letter to Etta Gullick, an Oxford scholar with whom he had an extensive correspondence during the last eight years of his lifeThe Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon (NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985), p 357. From louie, louie blogspot http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/?m=1, 17feb16)

We read the word of God when we open our shut eyes and see whatever appears before them. There is a scripture of creation, a scripture of person, and a scripture of language.

They are each the word.

Silence, the whole of Word Itself, is backdrop, foundation, and beyond, of Holy Presence. 

what is the sound of an unringing bell

Perhaps what we call 'God' is compassion arising when we allow what is presenting itself to be felt and experienced with our attentive presence.

We don't fix God. We don't fear God. We don't ignore or deny God.

We attend. We feel. We allow the sight of God to surround and enter us.

This awareness of what is, this awareness of God, this aware holismic engagement and involvement (even without understanding or overt knowledge) of things-as-they-now-are becomes for us an attitude of prayer.

Prayer becomes our stance in the world.

Present, attentive, engaged.

Not fixing. Not fearing. Not ignoring nor denying.

But there. With this. As oneself.

God be with you. God be with us. 

God be our prayerful active contemplation and contemplative prayer of acts and actions extended through us into the world we inhabit.

For this difficult time, may we be what we are, may God be what God is, and may we find ourselves prayer and compassion as we are where we are.

Look around. Perhaps this is what God looks like, looks as, and looks for -- us looking and acting with loving presence and suffering compassion.

Perhaps the Buddha wanted us to know that the end of suffering is compassion.

Perhaps the Christ wanted us to know that the end of compassion is suffering.

Perhaps this koan looks around for a bell to ring it out the door.

Fort Kent, St John River, St John Valley, later afternoon, looking across to Canada 

We spoke of compassion and empathy at Sunday Evening Practice

Sangha sister writes telling of difficult history and painful family circumstances.

After silence:

I bow to that in you
that feels the suffering
with longing for compassion
as the broken slowly heals

              __/\__

oh well

Minus eleven degrees outside (-11) now.

Deep snow from recent storm atop everything low and high.

Then, tomorrow afternoon, just about (+50) fifty degrees,

Ice dams is a'comin!

compassion

Benevolent attention to any coming into field of awareness.

A voluntary simplicity.

Accepting everything and nothing as not yours but belonging to itself.

Giving.

Sharing.

This.

This being this reality.

through the whole

 Quoting Jamie Manson’s profile of Ilia Delio in the National Catholic Reporter, (Aug. 2014), an excerpt:

The word “universal" does not adequately capture the rich meaning of katholikos as the ancient Greeks used it. “Katholikos means ‘through the whole' or 'throughout the whole,'" she says. “It connotes an active consciousness of the whole or a seeking to make whole.” 

But by the third century, "catholic" became less about a whole-making process and more about orthodoxy. Eventually, it was employed to distinguish orthodoxy from heresy. 

"We know that Jesus was a Jew, but he was 'catholic' in the sense that he was a whole-maker," Delio says. “He came to bring life and bring it to the fullest." 

"Jesus taught us that salvation is about whole-making and healing," she continues, "It's not this grace of being rescued from a depraved, fallen world. It's that grace of love that heals us. I think that's what it means to be saved: to be healed and to be whole and to be sent on our way to be whole-makers ourselves." 

If Catholicity has shriveled in our current milieu, it's because it has shrunken into a legalistic set of propositions and rules. Religious belief, Delio believes, loses its power to transform anything when it no longer relates to concrete, lived reality. 

(—in Aug 15-28, 2014  NCR print issue under the headline: The evolution of Ilia Delio.) http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/evolution-ilia-delio

If language, as Heidegger said, is the house of being, we must realize we are transients speaking our way through many temporary residences.

On our way; home.

replete, discrete

Good travels, Justice Scalia!

Good choosing, President Obama! 

Good grief, scouring Republicans, don't overturn card table when not your deal.

How cold?

Really cold.

That's how.

a sentence fragment worth pondering

"...Teilhard said that we are evolution made conscious of itself...”

(--in, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness, By Delio, Ilia)

https://books.google.com/books?id=D1v5CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT107&lpg=PT107&dq=%22evolution+made+conscious+of+itself.%22&source=bl&ots=kgyaBaI47C&sig=0kCNM-_PeNe_g7UcvqFkaYaC4hU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj486jfx_XKAhVIdj4KHYQaBxcQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=%22evolution%20made%20conscious%20of%20itself.%22&f=false

"pretty sad, wouldn't you say?" he said

Getting wood from barn, bumping thermostat in winter zendo for morning practice, sitting with lighted candle near tower holder from India, I think about friend hurting stunned by surprise change of plans.

Temp. -1*F

Light snow.

I always say on Friday night -- "no practice tomorrow morning!"

Then Saturday morning comes.

Things change.

the house of being speaks us through its door

Sometimes someone says it well.  

      

        In Franciscan parlance, Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. This grounds Christianity in pure love and perfect freedom from the very beginning. It creates a very coherent and utterly positive spirituality, which draws people toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and even universal "at-one-ment," instead of mere sacrificial atonement. Nothing changed on Calvary, but  everything was revealed as God’s suffering love--so that we could change!

(--by Richard Rohr) http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=2b0f5eaf-df1a-4470-9670-852ead1104bd&c=4d6fbfb0-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120&ch=4d742c80-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120

Friday morning prison dharma combat was true to itself today.

If in the beginning was the word, was with God, and was God, thereupon word became flesh, then, there’s an integrity of word and silence (which is the nature of God) that announces itself with no duality or objectification.

That manner of speaking, that language -- looks out from us, longing for expression.

We’ve got to say something!  

Something about Francis of Assisi

Cat telemarks stairway rubbing at each foot stepping slowly down.

Francis, seeing the beginnings of the propertied leisure class, told us to work for our pay; and if work was not available, we were to humbly beg, just as the Buddha advised his monks. Francis recognized that his society was becoming a structured system of protected and unequal social relationships. He knew the violence, mistrust, ambition, and pride which that worldview would engender. So he insisted on what he called equal power relationships in religious communities. He rejected all titles like Superior or Abbot. Francis did not want anyone to act as if he was higher than anyone else. Even those who led the community were to be called friars or brothers, and they only held the office for a short term and then returned to the equality of brotherhood. No one should stay at the top for very long; and when they were there, they were to be servant leaders or "guardians" of the mission and message of the friars. 

In Francis we see the emergence of a very different worldview, a worldview that is not based on climbing, achieving, possessing, performing, or any idealization of order, but a life that enjoys and finds deep satisfaction on the level of naked being itself--much more than doing or having. He learned this from Jesus. It seems to me the Franciscan worldview is now desperately important if the 7.4 billion of us are going to exist happily together on this one limited planet. Voluntary simplicity is now essential for social survival. Francis warned us where we were headed eight hundred years ago.

(--Richard Rohr)
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=c94e5b9c-bbe0-44ad-aa63-b6b3bcf9505d&c=4d6fbfb0-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120&ch=4d742c80-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120

Naked being-itself!

Wood from barn placed in woodstove  -- silence before dawn.

Then, this:

Francis understood the deep implications of the Incarnation and took Incarnation to its logical conclusions: Real Presence is everywhere--in the neighbor, in the other, in nature, in animals, in Brother Sun and Sister Moon, in sinner and enemies, in the collective Body of Christ, and yes, in distilled form in the bread and in the wine, just as it was distilled and focused in the person of Jesus. The principle is this: we must struggle with the truth in one concrete place--and then universalize from there. This has sometimes been called the first philosophical problem of "the one and the many."

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=cc0faea0-6d0d-41a9-81cf-049876985bdf&c=4d6fbfb0-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120&ch=4d742c80-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120

Panecastic.

no tellin’

Twelve years ago, so the newly found slip of paper indicates, on 20Jan04, someone named Virginia is quoted as saying, “I’m no longer exactly an atheist.”

It was in our bookshop/bakery. I was behind counter. A place from which to listen. 

Her husband, an artist, was delightfully grouchy. Then he died.

Twelve years later she is a sister in a religious order working with the poor.

Exactly!

vanished power

In the dream Ignacio, Bolivian Friar friend, secretly gives to and receives from thumb on forehead. Ignacio is in everyday clothes. The other man in uniform. I am by rubble near shipyard no longer familiar with surroundings, dogs sniffing, large ships at anchor.

It is Ash Wednesday. 

The poet's first stanza:

Because I do not hope to turn again 

Because I do not hope 

Because I do not hope to turn 

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope 

I no longer strive to strive towards such things 

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) 

Why should I mourn 

The vanished power of the usual reign? 

                  (--from poem, Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot)

I add wood to ember'd Irish woodstove resting from night's work.

Soft ash, faintly warm, falls out when door opens.

There's something sweet about dreams resembling ash. A secret interchange, a passed folded slip of paper with illegible blurred ink delivering no intelligible message.

This is that day.

I no longer strive to such things as explanation or understanding.

I look to see if smoke rises from chimney.

I wait watching for smoke from catch.

hermit's response

Asked whether there's 

life after death, he said: 

"I don't know; 

I don't care; 

it doesn't matter." 

That says it. 

I suppose.

morning prayer

O Lord, open my lips --

And my mouth shall declare your praise.

(For all, the suffering, the alone, the joyous, those who long for what is just, true, and good. For everyone and everything in the infinite multidimensional eternal here and now.)

With gratitude and quiet trust, in unknowing attentiveness, we watch for dawn.

 Amen!

Pray always means feel always

To pray is to feel with surrounding environment, people, and all sentient beings.

To truly feel.

It's why so many do not live a life of prayer.

And also why compassion is such a wrapped yet unopened gift.

and then, nothing

In her early years, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, enjoyed several mystical experiences of intense closeness with God. She also experienced that rarest of spiritual graces, a locution; she actually heard God’s voice. And then—nothing. For the last 50 or so years of her life, until her death, she felt a sense of emptiness in her prayer. At one point, she wrote to her confessor, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing.”

When her journals and letters were published not long after her death in the book Come, Be My Light, some readers were shocked by these sentiments, finding it difficult to understand how she could continue as a believer and indeed flourish as a religious leader. But Mother Teresa was expressing some very human feelings of abandonment and speaking of what spiritual writers call the “dark night.” This state of emotion moves close to, but does not accept, despair. 

(-- James Martin sj)     http://americamagazine.org/issue/my-god-my-god

Orange juice and ice cream

New mantra from woman 

in hospital room:

Shut up,

Love,

And pray

Slán

Someone leaves for France tomorrow.

There is no someone. There is no France.

There is only the leaving and arriving.

Everything we think things are, nothing comes close.