as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where it isn't

On this day, the acknowledgement of Mary’s being invited.

These two poets give us perspective:

1.

Annunciation

         (by Marie Howe)

Even if I don't see it again -- nor ever feel it

I know it is -- and that if once it hailed me

it ever does--

and so it is myself I want to turn in that direction

not as toward a place, but it was a tilting

within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where

it isn't -- I was blinded like that -- and swam

in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so

specifically myself I thought I'd die

from being loved like that.

2.

ANNUNCIATION

                   (by Denise Levertov)

   

           ‘Hail space for the unconfined God’

             (—from the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc)

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, 

almost always a lectern, a book; always

the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,

the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,

whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions

courage.

       The engendering Spirit

did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice

integral to humanness.

               ______________

Aren’t there annunciations

of one sort or another

in most lives?

         Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies,

enact them in sullen pride,

uncomprehending.

More often

those moments

      when roads of light and storm

      open from darkness in a man or woman,

are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

                                 God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child–but unlike others,

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence

fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel’s reply,

the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness,

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being,

the sum of power–

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man-child

needing, like any other,

milk and love–

but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

his gaze

The question was put to the old man, "Have you ever seen God?"

He said nothing , looking down at the ground.

She asked again.

And again he said nothing, only this time he raised his gaze, and looked at her.

if laid into the earth

The king and the land are one.

When we look back to these ancient schools of initiation, what sort of a teaching do we find there? What was the Mystery that was taught in them? It is after all only the forms of the teaching that change with the passage of time. Astonishing as it may seem, we actually find that in these very ancient schools of initiation the secret, the mystery that Parsifal discovered, is brought to its highest development — the secret; namely, of how the new budding life of nature in Springtime is connected with the Mystery of the Cross. We have to understand it in the following way. 

The power of reproduction which we recognize in the animal and human kingdoms is also to be seen in the plant kingdom. In the springtime of the year the divine active power of creation shoots up out of Mother Earth. For we have to recognize that a deep connection exists between the power that manifests when the Earth clothes herself with her robe of green, and the divine creative power. The pupils in the initiation school were taught as follows: “All around you in nature you see the opening flower buds, and within them a power at work which is then later concentrated in the small grains of seed. Countless seeds will come forth from the flowers — seeds which, if laid into the earth, will be capable of bringing forth new plants. And now receive what I am about to say into your heart; take it deeply into your soul. The process that is taking place out there in nature is the very same as takes place in human beings and in the animal kingdom, only in nature it takes place without desire or passion. It goes forward in perfect purity and chastity. The boundless and chaste innocence that sleeps in the flower buds of the plants — this, it was felt, must enter right into the soul of the pupils. 

(--from, Parsifal, The Secret of the Grail in the Works of Richard Wagner, Parsifal, Arthur, Lecture by Rudolf Steiner,  Landin, July 29th, 1906 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19060729p01.html 

If the king is corrupt, the land suffers. 

light prayer

432,288 miles diameter

92.96 million miles away --



Morning sun rises through





Bamboo shade -- right here --




Everything is new and near

rooting for tree

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary questions Judge Gorsuch at his confirmation hearing.

Yesterday the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency testified before the House Intelligence Committee covering Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

There are questions about the truthfulness of the current President when he accused the prior president of wiretapping the residence of the current president, a felony if proved true. There seems, on the testimony of members on the Intelligence Community, to be no evidence pointing to the accuracy of the allegation.

The machinery of government grinds on.

There are 3 branches.

Let’s root for the tree to be healthy.

when everything changed

Russian cyber attack with collusion?

So much to lose if true.

They say it is spring today.

How late are we?

nothing moves

under white ash bed

blanket red embers yawn, flame

licks twigs -- slow waking

from Greek ‘kubernan’ -- ‘to steer.’

There was something in the reading at Saturday Morning Practice that took us by surprise. Two of us were touched emotionally by two letters -- one from Catherine de Hueck Doherty to Fr. Louis (Thomas Merton), and one from him to her. It was 1958. Something in the timbre.

The sun porch heats up to the high 70s these March days. Someone was out working on numbers in bare feet and short sleeve t-shirt. Outdoors in high 20s.

Friend visits from Belfast. He says it must have been a visitation to meditation practice this morning.

Visited another friend in Lisbon Falls yesterday after driving to three places for work. His new house. Subway sandwiches and filtered water. The good feeling he has settled in.

At Friday Evening Practice the conversation was about obstacles and the gnawing persistence of seeing “others.” And the need for a third to give the opposite-two a place to gain perspective. Another view of trinity.

It is discouraging to experience the deconstruction and dissolution of what we once thought was a pretty good system of governance. The United States seems to be inching toward rule by arrogance and disparagement.

Because, if I’m open and simple, and not afraid or ashamed to show my poverty, my nothingness, my wounds and scabs, then perforce all those who come in contact with me will be able to bypass my small self. I hope, with pity and compassion and a prayer for me, to see Christ in His fullness. For nothing will impede their sight. For nothingness cannot stand between another soul and its Creator, its Lover.
...

You see why I need your prayers, Fr, Louie. There is so little time left for me to learn to love the Beloved, to begin to probe the saying TO GOVERN IS TO LOVE. Will you beseech Him in your solitude that I in mine may be a better pupil in my old age than I was in my youth.     (p.49, Catherine to Thomas, 26Aug 58, in Compassionate Fire, The Letters of Thomas Merton & Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Edited by Robert A. Wind, c.2009)

“To govern is to love,” seems such a curious notion, so uncertain, these days.

In the end, though, the solution is Love -- you have said it. And love, it seems to me, implies the realization that perhaps already those subject to us know our failings very well, and accept them with love, and would not dream of holding them against us, because they know these things do not matter. This is the great consolation: in the joy of being known and forgiven, we find it so much easier to forgive everything, even before it happens. (p.50, 18Sept58, Thomas to Catherine, ibid)

We steer.

We are not the thing that moves through the water, the country, or the universe.

Only Love can govern.*

* Middle English: from Old French governer, from Latin gubernare  ‘to steer, rule,’ from Greek kubernan  ‘to steer.’

Let us pray for hands on the helm!

In response to the deepening dilemmas of the Western world, Catherine offered the spirituality of her Russian past. She introduced the concept of poustinia, which was totally unknown in the West in the 1960’s, but has since become recognized in much of the world. Poustinia is the Russian word for “desert,” which in its spiritual context is a place where a person meets God through solitude, prayer and fasting. Catherine’s vision and practical way of living the Gospel in ordinary life became recognized as a remedy to the depersonalizing effects of modern technology. In response to the rampant individualism of our century, she called Madonna House to sobornost, a Russian word meaning deep unity of heart and mind in the Holy Trinity—a unity beyond purely human capacity.   http://www.catherinedoherty.org/life/ 

Let us pray for words from the heart!

During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far East in 1968, the Dalai Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. The date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance to Gethsemani.  http://merton.org/chrono.aspx

For good navigation, with gratefulness to mystics and monastics! 

obstacle on trail

It's all about the refusal to accept reality.

All the suffering.

The lies.

The accusations.

The adversity.

There's a name for it.

out of the cold

Irish

March

flowers

today

retro,spective

let’s look at the facts --

(what? no facts? what do you mean?)

history has ended

faith within emptiness, is, silence without explanation.

It was October 2001.

Less than a month after 9/11.

It was silence, was wanted.

I was wordy then. But had nothing to say.

Nor is nothing said well.

http://www.meetingbrook.org/updates/01OctUpdate.htm

are you done

             (a morning haiku)

winter zips satchel, looks

at torn storm sheaves strewn piqued

tantrum done, shown door

response to student post on Bb: “[Together] making [our] way through contemporary coexistence.”

RE: Feminism and Unity

COLLAPSE

"...where we need to be--perfect equality--"(LC)

I like the word 'perfect' and I like the word 'equality.'

If 'perfect' (for me) means 'making way through'...

• • L. per = through
  • L. Facio, Facere, Feci, Factus Translation: To make, do, accomplish; to become (passive)

... then, it raises a question (for me) about what "perfect equality" means.

'Equal' -- (Latin: aequalis)

Translations of  aequalis

adjective
	equal		aequalis,  par,  aequus,  commensuratus,  compar,  conpar
	contemporary		aequalis,  contemporalis,  contemporaneus
	level		planus,  aequus,  aequalis,  individuus,  indivisus,  aecus
	of the same age		aequaevus,  aequalis
	equal in age		aequalis
	coexistent		aequalis
	coeval		coaevus,  aequalis,  coaequalis,  congenitus

http://www.lexilogos.com/english/latin_dictionary.htm

.

And so, "perfect equality" (for me) can translate into: "[Together] making [our] way through contemporary coexistence." 

.

This definition attempts to avoid the comparative or calculative aspects of former definitions, and adds a new starting point for interrelationality.

.

(Footnote: Here endeth bill halpin's tortured translation trudge toward transcending 'what-once-we-thought-was-a known-definition.')

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reading Peter Singer chapter introduction

Politics and ethics tonight in class.

Why bother?

et maintenant

Au revoir, ma petite heure

Le froid vous prend

Je suis tout seul dans la nuit de l'hiver

to my departing hour

                 (a haiku before 2am)
It's our final day

together --
we part tonight --
we had our minutes!

mendacious

Q: What's the best thing to be said about the current administration in Washington, D.C.?

A: There's a possibility they might someday decide to say something that is not a lie.

Comment: That's a stark statement.

Response: Yes, it is.

three in mourning

haiku

        (for dt/45)

Your job is easy --

Serve all the people fairly

Don't fall in disgrace

...

haiku

       (for March)

Maine mud shrugs from snow

skunks wander drowsy roadside

winter soon to go

...

haiku

       (for God)

No need to despair --

we had it wrong so long -- your

 name: surround within

fade into empty prayer

There are enough reasons not to pay attention to the absurdities of the current political and governance issues in Washington DC.

It is hard to watch someone or something sick waste away.

One could turn philosophical, cite Toynbee or Nietzsche, and walk away down a cobbled street.

Tonight I pause, in silence, to consider what next.

Shut off the lights.

Fade into darkness.

Empty prayer.

women (a haiku) today

Women
         (a haiku)

today
show every-

one
how "No!"
means unask
stu-

pid
unwhole
questions

it follows, nothing does

Q: Do you believe in belief?

A: Yes.

Q: What do you believe?

A: Nothing

haiku

cat

walks in

walks out

screw me, says the teetering

There are some
who think
there’s a man
in charge
who, like a door
unhinged, might
soon fall to floor --

i don’t know --
seems more that
we, the floor,
would rather
the screws be
found and put
back into holes

so’s that when
closing is ripe
it might close
and open is right
there’s something
nearby to move
us passing through

as it rolls down the hill

I happened across an obituary:

Father Eric F. Kyle, O.F.M., 91, a professed Franciscan friar for 69 years and a priest for 64 years, died Dec. 1, [2016] at Holy Name Friary, Ringwood, N.J. https://thetablet.org/obituary-father-eric-f-kyle-o-f-m/

It was 1963/1964 and Fr Eric suggested I might like a conference being held that summer at St John’s University in NYC on The Theater of the Absurd. I did. Still have Martin Esslin’s 1961 red paperback.

Also still grateful for this quiet friar’s scholarly teaching and lengthy thoughtful sermons at the seminary.

As a Zen Buddhist Catholic Christian living in a small hermitage not far from Canada’s Atlantic Provinces, I continue to recollect the spirituality and studies Fr. Eric helped me begin.

I’m glad I found this obituary.

The collation of literature with meditative and contemplative practice he exemplified resonates the insight of Camus’ words, absurdly, that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I am happy to have been introduced to the absurd, as well as being acquainted with this Franciscan 54 years ago. 

Va bene, grazie Papa

 Take the worry out.

The Opinion Pages  | EDITORIAL , New York Times 

The Pope on Panhandling: Give Without Worry   By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 3, 2017Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

New Yorkers, if not city dwellers everywhere, might acknowledge a debt to Pope Francis this week. He has offered a concrete, permanently useful prescription for dealing with panhandlers. 

It’s this: Give them the money, and don’t worry about it.
The pope’s advice, from an interview with a Milan magazine published just before the beginning of Lent, is startlingly simple. It’s scripturally sound, yet possibly confounding, even subversive. 

Living in the city — especially in metropolises where homelessness is an unsolved, unending crisis — means that at some point in your day, or week, a person seeming (or claiming) to be homeless, or suffering with a disability, will ask you for help.
You probably already have a panhandler policy. 

You keep walking, or not. You give, or not. Loose coins, a dollar, or just a shake of the head. Your rule may be blanket, or case-by-case. 

If it’s case by case, that means you have your own on-the-spot, individualized benefits program, with a bit of means-testing, mental health and character assessment, and criminal-background check — to the extent that any of this is possible from a second or two of looking someone up and down. 

Francis’ solution eliminates that effort. But it is by no means effortless. 

Speaking to the magazine Scarp de’ Tenis, which means Tennis Shoes, a monthly for and about the homeless and marginalized, the pope said that giving something to someone in need is “always right.” (We’re helped here by the translation in an article from Catholic News Service.) 

But what if someone uses the money for, say, a glass of wine? (A perfectly Milanese question.) His answer: If “a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that’s O.K. Instead, ask yourself, what do you do on the sly? What ‘happiness’ do you seek in secret?” Another way to look at it, he said, is to recognize how you are the “luckier” one, with a home, a spouse and children, and then ask why your responsibility to help should be pushed onto someone else. 

Then he posed a greater challenge. He said the way of giving is as important as the gift. You should not simply drop a bill into a cup and walk away. You must stop, look the person in the eyes, and touch his or her hands. 

The reason is to preserve dignity, to see another person not as a pathology or a social condition, but as a human, with a life whose value is equal to your own. This message runs through Francis’ preaching and writings, which always seem to turn on the practical and personal, often citing the people he met and served as a parish priest in Argentina. 

His teaching on divorced and remarried Catholics has infuriated some conservative critics who accuse him, unfairly, of elevating compassion over doctrine. His recent statements on refugees and immigrants are the global version of his panhandler remarks — a rebuke aimed directly at the rich nations of Europe and at the United States. 

America is in the middle of a raging argument over poor outcasts. The president speaks of building walls and repelling foreigners. That toxic mind-set can be opposed in Washington, but it can also be confronted on the sidewalk. You don’t know what that guy will do with your dollar. Maybe you’d disapprove of what he does. Maybe compassion is the right call.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/opinion/the-pope-on-panhandling-give-without-worry.html?comments&_r=0#permid=21681611 

Krishna told Arjuna not to be attached to the fruit, or outcome, of the action. 

If we need an argument from authority to do what we long to do naturally -- help one another -- this pope gives us a Lenten hand.

how so many

It's a little like liking a guy but not where he lives.

READING Jeremiah 14:9a 

You are in our midst, O Lord, 

your name we bear: 

do not forsake us, 

O Lord, our God!

Then again, as a hermit, I rarely visit another's house.

I'll have to be satisfied with hearsay.

How so many suffer so much by the unaware.

it's just a concern

Here's the worry:

• Scandals arise
• Quickly an attack on America by some "foreign terrorist or enemy"
• An immediate declaration of  Martial Law, freezing in place everything 
• All scandals and investigations are suspended while we look for the "bad hombres"
• Military attacks on the usual suspects commence 
• Nuclear weapons are "strategically" used
• And escalate until, four years later, carnage and desolation in specific areas of the geopolitic globe, there's a hiatus.
• And a presidential declaration that, while we had to suspend the constitution and NATO and the UN and the normal system of governance in the US, there will be a new jobs program, all residents with less than 50 years citizen status or less than 1 million dollars of liquid assets, will be rounded up and deported to the former Europe for reprocessing and reeducation.
• Blame will be assigned.
• Former presidents Obama and Clinton will be tried for treason.
• And massive crowds attend the swearing in of the first epoch of post-democracy "Huge Leader Reign" in the former United States.

It's just a concern.

Nothing like this could ever happen,

Right?

reading the day

It used to be -- "What are you giving up?

Then it was -- "What will you do as positive acts?"

Today it is raindrops on windshield and spinning prayer wheel and empty space crucifix, and cooling coffee in paper cup, and meditation beads from someone who visited India, and a small metal bell.

Everything, everything,

speaks of who we are

where our anchor sits

the perennial presence of

What-is

urging us on our way

tuesday into wednesday

I'm giving up lent.

I'm sitting down with silence.

Dust and death and suffering --

these I lament

these I remember

to these I do return.

stepping out beyond the veil

DT/45 is the new face of America

It looks into mirror

Seeing itself

Only itself

Others be dammed

It is time to consider another reflection

Another face looking back

Yours

Mine

DT/45 will soon fade from view

It's that way with pornography

It imprisons those whose fantasies

Play out in public

coming to word

The word is our body.

We must learn how to speak.

Pronouncing itself.

when you hear your name, please say "here"

Sue?

Susan?

(Silence)

Go well, dear cousin!