one form is formless

Getting wood from barn, thin layer of snow covers ground, points of starlight passing earth toward infinity’s edge.

The cosmos] is fundamentally and primarily living. [1] Christ, through his Incarnation, is interior to the world, rooted in the world even in the very heart of the tiniest atom. [2] —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

As Paul saw Christ as a single “New Human” (see Ephesians 2:15), as Duns Scotus saw Christ as the Alpha point of history, so Teilhard saw the same Divine Icon as the Omega point of cosmic history—both the archetypal starting point and the alluring final goal. The end was therefore already contained in the beginning. History is both emanating from and also seduced by the same force: Divine Love. Do not confuse this with any sentimental notion of love. Teilhard uses the word “love” to describe the cosmic allurement of everything toward everything, a structural, metaphysical shape to the universe, most visible in the basic laws of gravity, the inherent structure of every atom, electro-magnetic fields, and sexual reproduction. 

And yet everything is also fragmented and fighting this very process of reunification. For Christians, this resistance is symbolized by the cross. There is a cruciform shape to reality, it seems. Loss precedes all renewal; emptiness makes way for every new infilling; every transformation in the universe requires the surrendering of a previous “form.” This is the big fly in the cosmic ointment! 

(—from, Growing in Christ, Friday, December 7, 2018, by Richard Rohr)

One more  breath. One additional morning. One more prayer to the unknowable and unknown.

This is what we are — one more than not.

intersectional

when nothing
seems right —
it is

after watching GHWB funeral at national cathedral

This from TAMING THE MONKEY MIND:

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013

Кобаяши Исса. Kobayashi Issa. year unknown.

добрее добродетели // прекрасней красоты... // цветок мака


善尽し美を尽してもけしの花
zen tsukushi bi wo tsukushite mo keshi no hana

virtue beyond virtue
beauty beyond beauty...
just a poppy!

translated by David Lanoue

добрее добродетели

прекрасней красоты...

цветок мака

(—Haiku by Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828)

http://tamingthemonkeymind.blogspot.com/

haiku by Issa

wildflowers—
all we say or speak about
is autumn wind

(—Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828)

wait, then, wait

We sit in a room with compassionate people.

We speak about our time with the dying.

A good place, someone says, to exhale.

that was a colorful sunset

It's hard to imagine the American presidency will be anything other than a parody of the current president in years to come.

If someone's goal was to discredit America and its fragile democracy, they have succeeded.

Sundown comes early these days.

Darkness lingers longer.

standing down

A tweet from cbs news:

Former President George H.W. Bush's service dog Sully lies in front of his casket. The image was posted on the dog's Instagram account with the caption "Mission complete." 

Mr. Bush died Friday night at the age of 94. cbsn.ws/2BLXBmP

why we’re here

From a Trappist monk blog:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018Life in the Kingdom

Too much is happening, too much is falling apart everywhere. And it’s not the time for us to hide from one another or from Christ Jesus our Lord. It is a time to be vigilant and come together, for Jesus our Lord beckons us and leads us forth into battle. On one side are those forces within us and without that sow division, discord and isolation. On the other side there are all those forces that nurture attachment, connection and solidarity. And that’s where he wants us to be, that’s where his kingdom is going to happen. It’s a showdown between cynics and optimists, a war between “rippers and weavers,” that runs down the middle of every heart.* With Jesus we need to be weavers, creating a tapestry of loving relatedness and bonds of trust. This is why we’re here in the monastery, this school of the Lord’s service, this school of love - to practice connecting and reconnecting, obeying and deferring to one another out of love. 

The Lord of gentleness and compassion is leading us forward in hope; someone who leads by falling down, being spat upon, shoved and tortured. Not to teach us how to be doormats; that’s not what his kingdom is about. It is about refusing to live by fear and rivalry, in an us vs. them kind of world, where there always must be winners and losers. It’s about absorbing hurt because of hope and trust in One who is at our side, Christ Jesus our Master. 

God is with us, God among us; God like us in everything but our sinning. We may call him a king if we remember that his sovereignty is realized in his littleness, his nothingness, his emptying out, his self-forgetful love, his sin-bearing. He only wants to be loved; our promise to compassion and mercy one another is our pledge of devotion to him. Life in the kingdom doesn’t tolerate individuals, anybody on the fringes. His mercy always gathers, binds up, heals and connects; it never excludes. That is his truth. God always wants to wash our feet and entice us to go and do likewise. And so, we live and rejoice in the “hard truth and ridiculous grace”(Tauren Wells) that abusers and abused, demagogues and peacemakers, well-heeled, solid citizens and weary refugees and migrants, bigots and oppressors and terrorists along with their victims, are all being invited with us to have a change of heart and come together to the feast in the kingdom. 

http://spencerabbey1098.blogspot.com/Photograph of Abbey glass by Brother Daniel. * Insights from an editorial column by David Brooks in The New York Times, October 30, 2018. 

  It is Advent in the Christian metaphor.

What is

Waiting

To be

Born

Here

for saturday morning practice

This​ ​is​ ​in​ ​​Anguttara​ ​Nikaya,​​ ​4.49:

"These​ ​four,​ ​[that​ ​follow,​ ​below]​ ​O​ ​Monks,​ ​are​ ​distortions​ ​of​ ​perception,​ ​distortions​ ​of​ ​thought, distortions​ ​of​ ​view: 

[1]​ ​Sensing​ ​no​ ​change​ ​in​ ​the​ ​changing,
 [2]​ ​Sensing​ ​pleasure​ ​in​ ​suffering,
[3]​ ​Assuming​ ​self​ ​where​ ​there​ ​is​ ​no​ ​self,
 [4]​ ​Sensing​ ​the​ ​unlovely​ ​as​ ​lovely— 

Gone​ ​astray​ ​with​ ​wrong​ ​views,​ ​beings
Misperceive​ ​with​ ​distorted​ ​minds. 

Bound​ ​in​ ​the​ ​bondage​ ​of​ ​Mara,
Those​ ​people​ ​are​ ​far​ ​from​ ​safety.
They’re​ ​beings​ ​that​ ​go​ ​on​ ​flowing:
Going​ ​again​ ​from​ ​death​ ​to​ ​birth. 

But​ ​when​ ​in​ ​the​ ​world​ ​of​ ​darkness
Buddhas​ ​arise​ ​to​ ​make​ ​things​ ​bright,
They​ ​present​ ​this​ ​profound​ ​teaching
Which​ ​brings​ ​suffering​ ​to​ ​an​ ​end. 

When​ ​those​ ​with​ ​wisdom​ ​have​ ​heard​ ​this,
They​ ​recuperate​ ​their​ ​right​ ​mind: 

They​ ​see​ ​change​ ​in​ ​what​ ​is​ ​changing,
 Suffering​ ​where​ ​there’s​ ​suffering,
 “Non-self”​ ​in​ ​what​ ​is​ ​without​ ​self,
They​ ​see​ ​the​ ​unlovely​ ​as​ ​such. 

By​ ​this​ ​acceptance​ ​of​ ​right​ ​view,
They​ ​overcome​ ​all​ ​suffering.”

That​ ​is​ ​the​ ​​Anguttara​ ​Nikaya’s​ ​Vipallasa​ ​Sutta​,​ ​or​ ​the​ ​distortions​ ​of​ ​perception,​ ​thought,​ ​and view.
https://tricycle.org/wp-content/themes/tricycle/download.php?file=MjAxNy8xMS9EdXJhbi1XZWVrLTEucGRm

, (comma)

Something I remember:

The Saint Andrew Christmas Novena 

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen. 

An Advent-Long Devotion The Saint Andrew Christmas Novena is often called simply the "Christmas Novena" or the "Christmas Anticipation Prayer," because it is prayed 15 times every day from the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle (November 30) until Christmas. It is an ideal Advent devotion; the First Sunday of Advent is the Sunday closest to the Feast of Saint Andrew.
While the novena is tied to the Feast of Saint Andrew, it is not actually addressed to Saint Andrew but to God Himself, asking Him to grant our request in honor of the birth of His Son at Christmas. You can say the prayer all 15 times, all at once; or divide up the recitation as necessary (perhaps five times at each meal).   https://www.thoughtco.com/saint-andrew-christmas-novena-542608 

 It was when time seemed ordinary, its plodding pace distinct steps. Not like now, when time is an encircling recurrence upon itself, a swift emptiness with no before no after, the face of awareness in every bare tree limb as dawn and dusk manifest that which has no name.

God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day. (Genesis 1:5, NIV)

Should there be a comma after “God” in Genesis 1:5?

Today is the first day. 

That which has no name reveals itself as and within each and every moment each and every occurrence emerging as being within being.

an inn on loan to us

Some of the men at the prison observed Stoic Week. Tomorrow there will be a debriefing

A Stoic must remember, Epictetus teaches, that the material possessions we come to own can be taken away from us.  They don’t belong to us forever.  Moreover, our spouses and children are mortal, and so they do not belong to us permanently either.  As long as other people and possessions are with us, we must daily remind ourselves that they are only on loan to us.  Therefore, we ought to take care of them as travelers treat an inn (Ench. 11; cf. Disc. 4.1.107 and Ench. 7).  The people we love are mortals and a Stoic is convinced that we should love them on these terms. 
(—from, A Stoic Approach to Travel and Tourism by William O. Stephens, by Gregory Sadler

Things are on loan to us.

We are on loan to one another.

As is breath to each and all of those of us that breathe. 

may, be, ‘hen‘

If love

has any place

in this

It is this

Itself

...   ...   ...

Note: As far as "Eyeh Asher Eyeh" is concerned, this is simply a transliteration of the Hebrew text of Ex.3:14("I will be/can be/may be/keep on being what[ever] I will be/can be/may be/keep on being"; see Bible Basics part 1: Theology, note #1 and note #6).  https://www.ichthys.com/mail-I%20am.htm 

a companion

He breathes

His last

Breath —

No Volvo

Starts

buddhist boast

I have

Nothing

To say

woman looking at outdoor chapel in Rockport

Imagine

Trying to

See through

What is

Not there

good

Rohr has a way of opening insight. Here he speaks of  St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1217–1274):

He starts very simply: “Unless we are able to view things in terms of how they originate, how they are to return to their end, and how God shines forth in them, we will not be able to understand.” [1] For Bonaventure, the perfection of God and God’s creation is a full circle, and to be perfect the circle must and will complete itself. He knows that Alpha and Omega are finally the same, and the lynchpin holding it all in unity is the “Christ Mystery,” or the essential unity of matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. The Christ Mystery is thus the template for all creation, and even more precisely the crucified Christ, who reveals the necessary cycle of loss and renewal that keeps all things moving toward ever further life. Now we know that the death and birth of every star and every atom is this same pattern of loss and renewal, yet this pattern is invariably hidden or denied, and therefore must be revealed by God—which is “the cross.” 

Bonaventure’s theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He sees humanity as already being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan. As Paul’s school says, “Before the world was made, God chose us, chose us in Christ” (Ephesians 1:4). The problem is solved from the beginning. Rather than seeing history as a “fall from grace,” Bonaventure reveals a slow but real emergence and evolution into ever-greater consciousness of Love. He was the Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) of the 13th century.

(—Richard Rohr,  The Franciscan Vision, Monday, November 26, 2018) 

Good for him!

And Good for us!

right into the wall

Of course power corrupts. QED, the current American president.

The question is whether any return to “normalcy” is a possibility after him.

The presidency is an institution invested with enormous power and enormous leeway for how to use that power. Trump’s two years in office have revealed how few legal and political tools there are for curbing a chief executive who does not feel constrained by norms — or, for that matter, by shame, ethical standards or fear of public backlash. 

Nowhere is the potential for overreach more dangerous, however, than in the application of our laws. Using that power to reward friends and punish adversaries marks the dividing line where a president becomes a tyrant — and it is one that Trump seems determined to cross. 

(—from,  Trump wants to interfere with the scales of justice. These policies could curb him. By Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, 25nov18)

Yes, the man worries and frightens many. And, yes, he is crude and ludicrous and a craven con man.  His attraction — the nosethumbing, middle finger saluting, impertinent denigrating namecalling that is his calling card — titillates and rouses the residual dislike, hell, hatred, crouching within any of us toward anyone in a position of authority over us.

Something there is that doesn’t dislike a blatant breaker of rules and laws done in bold and public fashion!

He will prevail.

We ain‘t seen nothing yet.

We broke it, we bought it!

Time to ride this bronco right into the wall.

or maybe not

I am not writing this. This is writing me.
Every story is a fictive narrative intended to motivate an audience to care about the telling. Composition is decomposition of expressed reality grounded in recomposition of original longing to influence creation of something to hold on to in an impermanent and chaotic existence.

(—after reading kirkus review of book, DECIPHERING THE GOSPELS Proves Jesus Never Existed, by R.G. Price)  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/r-g-price/deciphering-the-gospels/

abdication, abjuration, finally a common arete*

When quiet

comes

of a sudden

the place

it arrives

bows low

to its

welcome

Presence

...   ...   ...

                         *[note:
                        Arete (Greek: ἀρετή), 
                               in its basic sense, 
                               means "excellence      
                               of any kind".^[1]]

• Robert Pirsig uses "arete" as a synonym for Quality in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This includes an extensive discussion of Plato's "Phaedrus" and the historical contrast between Dialectic and Rhetoric. "And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good—Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" Pirsig's line plays off a line in the Platonic dialogue The Phaedrus which reads: "And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?"^[12]

— Wikipedia, “Arete”

not finding fault, not fleeing

Here is the reason we practice.

And this:

I often say that there should be just two words over the door of our temple in Santa Fe: Show up! Yes, suffering is present. We cannot deny it. There are 65.3 million refugees in the world today, only eleven countries are free from conflict, and climate change is turning forests into deserts. Economic injustice is driving people into greater and greater poverty. Racism and sexism remain rampant. 

But understand, wise hope doesn’t mean denying these realities. It means facing them, addressing them, and remembering what else is present, like the shifts in our values that recognize and move us to address suffering right now. “Do not find fault with the present,” says Zen Master Keizan. He invites us to see it, not flee it!

The Czech statesman Václav Havel said, “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” We can’t know, but we can trust that there will be movement, there will be change. And that we will be part of it. We move forward in our day and get out the vote, or sit at the bedside of a dying patient, or teach that third grade class.

(--from, Yes, We Can Have Hope, BY JOAN HALIFAX| OCTOBER 18, 2018 )

Saturday Morning Practice -- Mainers, New Yorkers, Marylander (via phone).

If we learn to trust what is happening before us and within us -- not finding fault, not fleeing -- we begin to learn what faith is.

Seeing what is there.

Moving through whatever fear might arise.

Listening to the healing sound of what is here, hearing into the silent revelation of things being exactly what they are.

merely told

Stories
are neither true
nor false — they
are merely told

The telling narrative
is it’s own truth
neither connected
nor disconnected

with
what
really
happened

like this

Where did the time go?

Such a silly question.

Every moment in life is absolute in itself. That's all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this.            — Charlotte Joko Beck

There’s no time now; and nothing like this.

as thanksgiving goes

It’s 10 degrees outside.

Find warmth, my brothers and sisters, find warmth!

The night is advancing.

nowhere else

I remember where I was when president Kennedy was shot and killed.

I was right here.

Then, now, and always.

his superlative slog

 As it is, this poem, saying it so well:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)                            

                      Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886 

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! 

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Listen carefully and hear the  — c r o a k — echoing all day long from the odd one’s bog wallowing in his superlative slog.

no thank you

I agree with her:

In a single day, POTUS turns a blind eye to the barbaric murder of journalist and we learn that he tried to order DOJ to go after his political adversaries. Is there no depth to which he will not sink? We can’t let him drag America down with him. 

(—@SallyQYates, 11/20/18, 20:14)

I cannot imagine he will be allowed to continue his destruction of decency and democracy.

What a disaster he is for this country at this time!

Instead:

Ant. Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace. 

CONCLUDING PRAYER
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, you have given your followers an example of gentleness and humility, a task that is easy, a burden that is light. Accept the prayers and work of this day, and give us the rest that will strengthen us to render more faithful service to you who live and reign for ever and ever. – Amen.

(—from Compline) 

a particle of love

A man I know has died. His wife had been reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace to him all summer. In the last week she had whittled the novel down to the final 20 pages. They remain.

He died yesterday morning.

They’d just gotten to, she wrote, Prince Andrei’s death and Pierre’s experience on the battlefield and his thoughts on death.

I find this excerpt:

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
- Leo Tolstoy -  (from War and Peace, thoughts of Prince Andrei)

Nor had we finished reading Charles W. Eliot’s John Gilley, One of the Forgotten Millions (1899).

We left Mr. Gilley on Baker Island.

six from saturday hospice

1.

Practice

A hearing presence
Is what I heard —
She might have said healing


2.

Going,

End-room is
Vacuumed is
Room end


3.

Smart phone

Rings on table
Of man nearing death
— no one answers


4.

Wordless

Pink doggy at head of bed
White Minerva in unclutching hand
Just watching, only being held


5.

Gone

She’s left the room
I sit with who she’s been
Where she was


6.

Not now

When it happens
It will
H will happen

saturday morning practice

God is the profound and intimate connection between all beings.

Then, two quotes from Rohr’s blog:

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.” [1] 

And in Stephen Levine’s:
But water is water, no matter what its shape or form. The solidity of ice imagines itself to be its edges and density. Melting, it remembers; evaporating, it ascends. [2] 

So do not be afraid. Death to false self and the end of human life is simply a return to our Ground of Being, to God, to Love. Life doesn’t truly end; it simply changes form and continues evolving into ever new shapes and beauty.

(—Friday, 16nov18, Richard Rohr)

So too, the voice and ear from Maryland attends with us today this practice.

urge for going

The lyric, as sung by Joni Mitchell or Tom Rush said: I get the the urge for going. Here, Richard Rohr quotes Kathleen Dowling Singh:

I have come to believe that the time of dying effects a transformation from perceived tragedy to experienced grace. Beyond that, I think this transformation is a universal process. Although relatively unexamined, the Nearing Death Experience has profound implications. Dying offers the possibility of entering the radiance, the vastness, of our Essential Nature, at least for a few precious moments. . . . 

The Nearing Death Experience implies a natural and conscious remerging with the Ground of Being from which we have all once unconsciously emerged. A transformation occurs from the point of terror at the contemplation of the loss of our separate, personal self to a merging into the deep, nurturing, ineffable experience of Unity. 

My experience is that most people who are dying have no conscious desire for transcendence; most of us do not live at the level of depth where such a longing is a conscious priority. And, yet, everyone does seem to enter a transcendent and transformed level of consciousness in the Nearing Death Experience. . . . It is rather profound and encouraging to contemplate these indications that the life and death of a human being is so exquisitely calibrated as to automatically produce union with Spirit.  

Reference:Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Dying: A Message of Hope, Comfort, and Spiritual Transformation(HarperOne: 2000), 14, 15. (From Richard Rohr 12nov18

The lyric muses that although we get the urge for going — returning, while alive, to the ground of being — we never seem to go.

snow, here

In maximum security prison, of a Thursday, we read and speak of Berry’s poem:

VII 

        by Wendell Berry

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest. 

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight. 

                            The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite. 

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.

(“VII" by Wendell Berry from This Day. © Counterpoint Press, 2013) 

Even in me, carrying wood in from barn, the echoes of Schubert’s Ave Maria. I am thinking of the lad who will travel back to Vermont through the storm in a few hours.

I am thinking of the man whose hospice room I left, his family gathered, no longer struggling to say the simplest phrase, nearing his death.

Here is what has always been.

And here is what will always be.

no, really

Being-

With

no names

Is

what is

here

no more than this

 From St Joseph’s Abbey blog:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2018

Without Reserve 

Dom Thomas Keating's funeral Mass was a celebration of love and remembrance. And many  of his relatives and friends joined us in the Abbey church last Saturday. Abbot Damian presided at the Mass and preached movingly about Thomas' last days. He told us that Father Thomas frequently asked him to read the following prayer of Blessed Charles de Foucauld to him as he lay dying.

Father, 

I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. 

Whatever you may do, I thank you: 

I am ready for all, I accept all. 

Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. 

I wish no more than this, O Lord. 

Into your hands I commend my soul; 

I offer it to you 

with all the love of my heart, 

for I love you, Lord, 

and so need to give myself, 

to surrender myself into your hands, 

without reserve, 

and with boundless confidence, 

for you are my Father. 

POSTED BY     THE MONKS      AT 10:51 AM    http://spencerabbey1098.blogspot.com/

It is 14° degrees outside.

I chant into frigid air at barn door a blessing of name and loving kindness.

I bow to the possibility — the already here and yet to be.

I bring wood in for firebox.

“We are poor passing facts” — wrote Robert Lowell.

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name. 

(—from poem, Epilogue)

outside barn at dawn

This from louie, louie  http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/, beth cioffoletti’s blog:

Meister Eckhart, the German philosopher, mystic and theologian said, “There is nothing in the world that resembles God as much as silence.”

In essence, Eckhart is saying this: Silence is a privileged entry into the realm of God and into eternal life.  There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.

What is meant by this?

Silence is a language that is infinitely deeper, more far-reaching, more understanding, more compassionate, and more eternal than any other language. In heaven, it seems, there will be no languages, no words. Silence will speak. We will wholly, intimately, and ecstatically hold each other in silence, in perfect understanding.

Words, for all their value, are part of the reason why we can’t do this already. They divide as much as they unite. There is a deeper connection available in silence. Lovers already know this, as do the Quakers whose liturgy tries to imitate the silence of heaven, and as do those who practice contemplative prayer. John of the Cross expresses this in a wonderfully cryptic line: “Learn to understand more by not understanding than by understanding.”

Silence does speak louder than words, and more deeply. We experience this already now in different ways: When we are separated by distance or death from loved ones, we can still be with them in silence; when we are divided from other sincere persons through misunderstanding, silence can provide the place where we can still be together; when we stand helpless before another’s suffering, silence can be the best way of expressing our empathy; and when we have sinned and have no words to restore things to their previous wholeness, in silence a deeper word can speak and let us know that, in the end, all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

“There is nothing in the world that resembles God as much as silence.” It’s the language of heaven and it is already deep inside of us, beckoning us, inviting us to deeper intimacy with everything.

-- Ron Rolheiser OMI, http://ronrolheiser.com/in-praise-of-silence/#.W-tY3SdReSN

Silent trees listen to morning chant outside barn at dawn this Wednesday morning as logs are carried in for wood stove.

where begin where end

white dog
climbs stairs
end of day —
each breath 

the joy of 4am

Yes

rain;

the sound

of it

thank you veterans

wood stove

warms

Panikkar kitchen

this cold night

invitatory

first light

easterly turnng

beyond bamboo

jamais plus la guerre

War is never the answer.

Soldiers, Airfolk, Sailors, Coastguards, and Marines — they all know this.

The wrong questions by the wrong people with the wrong motives are tossed like political confetti over the right questions and the lives of our armed forces.

No more!

Jamais plus la guerre!

the possibilities

 This from, “Ipseity and Illeity, or Thinking Ethics without the Other of the Other,”
 by Taylor Adkins:

The conversation about the “there is” begins with a contrast between the conceptions of Appolinaire and Heideggerian ontology: it designates neither the abundance or joy of being nor the ‘es gibt’ of Being to Dasein. Going beyond the limitation of givenness to Dasein, a conception which could very easily found a humanist Heideggerianism, Levinas stresses that there is no “generosity” in the “there is” because the latter constitutes an impersonal dimension of being, a silence that is simultaneously a noise: “neither nothingness nor being” (48). 

One of the most fascinating statements concerning the “there is” occurs very early in the conversation and posits its primacy in relation to the conditions of existence: “[The “there is”] is something one can also feel when one thinks that even if there were nothing, the fact that “there is” is undeniable. Not that there is this or that; but the very scene of being is open: there is. In the absolute emptiness that one can imagine before creation—there is” (48). What can we unpack from this passage?

To begin with, what should first be identified in this concise passage is the presence of the “there is” as a feeling, an affect, but also a faith based on an ontological claim. The scene of being is open and not foreclosed means: existence necessarily is. This statement is undeniable in two senses: first as objective claim or matter of fact, then as the basis for a belief or matter of faith. Levinas is trying to describe an ontological state of affairs that is not reducible to any particular thing but is the pre-individual, impersonal, and universal permeation of existents by existence. Yet the belief in this ontological claim almost seems to turn Being into the always-already given, and thus to save it from any real disaster that would threaten the sustainability of this givenness. In other words, it seems to be a faith in the fact that things will always exist, and that even if the existence of particular things is contingent, existence itself is necessarily absolute. 

It would be wrong to see this ontological belief as an argument based on a personal God. If there is a God in Levinas, it comes through the Other’s face or leads beyond Being. What I mean to say is that the thought of the “there is” is meant to be the horror that the persistence of impersonal existence wreaks upon the individual. This impersonal aspect bears affinities with Heidegger’s thrownness, in that existence only comes to the things that are thrown into the totality of the “there is,” as though gladiators into an arena to wage the war that existence demands of itself. This is the Heraclitean/Nietzschean image of Being as the cosmic struggle where things are always ontologically at war through their own becoming and struggle of forces. If ontology’s prerequisite is the war of existence/being, what leads beyond this struggle and allows an access to the requirement of ethics as first, indeed as first philosophy that henceforth subordinates ontology to it?

 https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/ipseity-and-illeity-or-thinking-ethics-without-the-other-of-the-other/

The Other’s face.

Seen through No Other’s face.

The possibilities!

object permanence

This poem, at Friday Evening Conversation, captured our attention:

Object Permanence

      —By Nicole Sealey  

(For John)

We wake as if surprised the other is still there,

each petting the sheet to be sure.

How have we managed our way

to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn

indebted to light. Though we’re not so self-

important as to think everything

has led to this, everything has led to this.

There’s a name for the animal

love makes of us—named, I think,

like rain, for the sound it makes.

You are the animal after whom other animals

are named. Until there’s none left to laugh,

days will start with the same startle

and end with caterpillars gorged on milkweed.

O, how we entertain the angels

with our brief animation. O,

how I’ll miss you when we’re dead.


https://aprweb.org/poems/object-permanence

how to be annihilated

“Nothingness is who God is".

"Nothing is one of the greatest activities there is."

                   (—Thomas Keating, OCSO. 7mar1923–25oct2018)

(—from “A Life Surrendered to Love “ — Thomas Keating). (Time: 18:58)
  https://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-live-surrendered-to-love-thomas.html

as if words mattered

I can’t tell who wrote this.

Been thinking about civility. Looking forward to the next president. It will be good to see ‘civilitas’ — conversational integrity — revisit American politics again. Let’s disagree with an intelligent person again, and not be saddled with snide apodictic arrogance prevaricating. 

(—tweet, Friday morning, 8:16am)

 Who quotes Latin words with loose translation inerudition?

what do poets know

1 

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

(—opening lines, Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman)

There is no unconnected separate self.

We are each other attempting to become what and who we are — distinctly, alone, together.

worlding, unity differentiates

This, from  Cynthia Bourgeault on Teilhard and Rilke:

We can look to our own hearts to tell us more about what Teilhard sees as the essence of the complexification/consciousness process—hence of evolution (and hence, of love): his insistence that “union differentiates.” 

We often think of love in terms of merging, uniting, becoming one, but Teilhard was wary of such definitions; his practiced eye as an evolutionist taught him something quite different. True union . . . doesn’t turn its respective participants into a blob, a drop dissolving into the ocean. Rather, it presses them mightily to become more and more themselves: to discover, trust, and fully inhabit their own depths. As these depths open, so does their capacity to love, to give-and-receive of themselves. . . .

...

The poet Rilke (1875–1926), Teilhard’s contemporary and in many respects kindred spirit, is on exactly the same wavelength. He asks in his Letters to a Young Poet:

. . . [F]or what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent? It [love] is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person. [2]

To become world in oneself for the sake of another. . . .” Hmmmm. Does love really ask us to become world? Does love make worlds? Is that what love does?

(—from, Unity in Differentiation, Friday, November 9, 2018, by Cynthia Bourgeault)

all alone

I look forward to the Mueller hearings before a House Committee in January 2019.

I’ll wear a grey beret, hand grind coffee beans by stove, toast an English muffin, take from new refrigerator an individual Yoplait yoghurt, and settle back into blue recliner in front of glass door showing birds swooping in to feeder hanging on line stretched between barn and kitchen.

Yesterday three cord of wood were dropped in dooryard by Belfast woodman. We talked about his dad, 90, now in mechanized wheelchair, cancer spreading, dispirited at not being able to assist with wood deliveries.

For the current president there will be no graceful way to exit the office. He will, no doubt, slam and slander, mock and maul any and everyone he perceives as threat to ego, business interests, family members, and, least of all, his version of America held tightly among a wider circle of xenophobic and racially alert loyalists.

Love Poem 

It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more. 

(—poem by Richard Brautigan)

All things change. All things end. All things lack a separate self.

And as for greed, anger, and delusion — their poison swiftly course through bodies unaware.

Let us pray, therefore, for an awareness that recognizes, and is equanimous with, the passing of our fragile existence!

Poem at dawn’s twilight:

Alone in kitchen,
scent of coffee, toasted bread,

the wonder of birds
flying with seed 

to cedar branch
over dropped wood!   

—wfh 

selective service

Fear turns and stares at the president.

War is declared on justice.

The draft begins.

that’s that

Let no one commit seppuku.