incline to one or the other

Light and dark. It's where we live.

Not in the light; not in the dark.

We live in the light and the dark.

The admixture.

In prison earlier a man says that we incline toward a community of common desire.

In each moment, in each instant, we incline either toward manifesting light or dark.

But we live in the light/dark, or, dark/light.

We participate every moment in the choice to embody or manifest one or the other.

Pray for the grace of accuracy 

Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination 

stealing like the tide across a map 

to his girl solid with yearning

(--from poem, Epilogue, by Robert Lowell) 

But we live, simultaneously, in both.

There is no separation.

There is only the moment of desire to incline to one or the other.

We step into the field of emptiness.

We move.

We open our mouth to say something.

?

what is

itself

is what

gracias el amigo

Yesterday, in Mexico and all the America’s, the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Three days prior, that of Juan Diego. In America Magazine yesterday, this article — 10 things to know about the Virgin of Guadalupe, by Andrew Chesnut.

The realm of faith, experiences thereof, articulation and institutionalization, remains a curiosity not easily understood or verifiable.

And yet, and yet, and yet...

10. The tilma upon which the Virgin's image is imprinted is held to be miraculous by devotees. 

Some scientists claim an absence of brush strokes on the cloak while others report that the coloration contains no animal or mineral elements. Perhaps the most spectacular miracle, according to devotees, is the tilma emerging unscathed from a bomb blast. 

In 1921 an anti-clerical radical detonated 29 sticks of dynamite in a pot of roses beneath the cloak. The blast destroyed a marble rail, twisted a metal crucifix and shattered windows throughout the old basilica but the tilma itself was untouched. (article)

We tell the stories and the implications with the ambivalent fascination we relate dreams after waking up from sleep.

The world, it seems, might not be merely binary nor bound by 2+2=4 certitude. This prospect gives me no particular joy. But it does bid me keep my eyes open and my mind inquiring into story and surprise.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet suggests that human knowledge is limited: 

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.                                   https://www.dictionary.com/browse/more-things-in-heaven-and-earth--horatio

 Gracias el amigo!

ever deeper silence

What do we think will happen if we enter silence?

Bliss? Enlightenment? Unadulterated joy?

Or, perhaps, merely, an ever deeper silence?

Centering Prayer is a method designed to facilitate the development of contemplative prayer by preparing our faculties to receive this gift. . . . It is at the same time a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. This method of prayer is a movement beyond conversation with Christ to communion with Him. [1] 

Centering Prayer is based on the wisdom saying of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:6): “If you want to pray, enter your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Notice that “Father” refers to a personal relationship, whether you call it father, mother, brother, soul-friend, spouse or anything else. 

The first step in Centering Prayer is to enter your inner room, which is symbolized by the heart in most traditions; that is, your innermost self beyond the senses and beyond thinking. . . . 

Second, “close the door,” symbolizing your intention of letting go of all thoughts, preoccupations, memories and plans during this time. As soon as you are overtaken by thoughts, which is inevitable in the beginning, return to your original intention to let go of all thinking. You can do this in a very simple and extremely gently way, like saying a sacred word briefly, noticing your breath, or turning to God with a brief glance of faith in His presence. 

Finally, you pray in secret to the Father who speaks to you beyond words and who invites you to ever deeper silence. . . .

 [1] Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart, 20th anniversary edition (Bloomsbury: 2006), 175.

(—from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation,Week Fifty, Contemplation, Centering Prayer, Wednesday, December 12, 2018) 

And what then?

(A clock ticking. Whirling sound of machine making snow at town ski slopes across brook. The engine of pickup truck going up road. The cutting in of furnace from cellar. The field of listening itself attempting to hear itself.)

"What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send My messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'" (Luke 7:24-27)

Jesus is speaking here of John the Baptist.  He could as easily been speaking of different messanger — silence.

Preparing our way.

Before us.

Silence is Spirit. The Holy. Of which we know nothing — not from where it comes, not to where it goes, not it’s name, not it’s meaning nor purpose.

Ours is a silence-deepening life.

Where, in a limitless, boundaryless, and borderless expanse of silence we gaze from silence as silence into silence.

Here is where gaze sees nothing other beyond ...

Itself

get the hell out of here

From “Damn It All,” by Stephen Greenblatt, in The New York Review of Books, 20dec18 issue:

The Penguin Book of Hell, edited by the Fordham history professor Scott Bruce, is an anthology of sadistic fantasies that for millions of people over many centuries laid a claim to sober truth. Not all people in all cultures have embraced such fantasies. Though the ancient Egyptians were obsessively focused on the afterlife, it was not suffering in the Kingdom of the Dead that most frightened them but rather ceasing altogether to exist.  

At the other extreme, in ancient Greece the Epicureans positively welcomed the idea that when it was over it was over: after death, the atoms that make up body and soul simply come apart, and there is nothing further either to fear or to crave. Epicurus was not alone in thinking that ethical behavior should not have to depend on threats and promises: Aristotle’s great Nicomachean Ethics investigates the sources of moral virtue, happiness, and justice without for a moment invoking the support of postmortem punishments or rewards. 

The Hebrews wrote their entire Bible without mentioning hell. They had a realm they called sheol, but it was merely the place of darkness and silence where all the dead—the just as well as the wicked—wound up. For the ancient rabbis, heaven was a place where you could study the Torah all the time. Its opposite was not a place of torture; it was more like a state of depression so deep that you could not even open a book. 

In the Odyssey, Homer bequeathed to the world a much more elaborate vision of the afterlife than the Hebrews ever imagined, one in which Sisyphus ceaselessly attempts to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again, and Tantalus, standing in a pool, reaches for fruit that forever eludes his grasp and thirsts for water that he can never drink. Yet notwithstanding these isolated examples of exemplary punishment, the land of the dead visited by Odysseus is notable not for the meting out of just deserts, whether pleasure or pain, but for a general sadness, more akin to sheol than to the Christian hell. “There’s not a man in the world more blest than you,” Odysseus congratulates the ghost of the great Achilles. “Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,/you lord it over the dead in all your power.” But Achilles contemptuously dismisses the facile compliment:

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead. 

Though life, as Homer’s great poem shows, can be excruciatingly difficult, it is still preferable to even the most honored place in the underworld.

 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/damn-it-all-book-of-hell/?printpage=true

For my personal philosophy, the following proposition applies: Get the hell out of here!

If “here” is all there is, no need to go elsewhere to assess and engage what needs assessment, engagement, and transformation.

by way of defeat

 We don’t understand the central symbol of Christianity, the cross. Nor do we comprehend the most obvious absurdity of the Jesus narrative, the empty tomb. But mostly, this season, the glaring question comes upon us — what does it mean to be born?

To be born is to die on the cross.

Whether the Roman implement of execution, or white nationalist tree limb of lynching, or quiet hospice bed of shallow breathing as something, something we can’t quite grasp, slows to a fragile sliver of breath fading from body, signaling the end of the apparent.

The primary cause of death is birth.

The cruelty of the cross is human denial that we are in this, and soon out of this, together. This denial, as with lynching and the blind ignorance of racism, misogyny, and classist snobbery — points out the devasting harm when willful stupidity slashes across human opinion and prejudice — instead of the conscious compassionate intelligence of spiritual and moral depth.

Chris Hedges, in an article on truthdig.com, writes about the radical theologian James H. Cone:

The cross, Cone reminded us, is not an abstraction; it is the instrument of death used by the oppressor to crucify the oppressed. And the cross is all around us. He writes in “The Cross and the Lynching Tree”:

The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it invertsthe world’s value system, proclaiming that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last. Secular intellectuals find this idea absurd, but it is profoundly real in the spiritual life of black folk. For many who were tortured and lynched, the crucified Christ often manifested God’s loving and liberating presence within the great contradictions of black life. The cross of Jesus is what empowered black Christians to believe, ultimately, that they would not be defeated by the “troubles of the world,” no matter how great and painful their suffering. Only people stripped of power could understand this absurd claim of faith. The cross was God’s critique of power—white power—with powerless love, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  

Present-day Christians misinterpret the cross when they make it a nonoffensive religious symbol, a decorative object in their homes and churches. The cross, therefore, needs the lynching tree to remind us what it means when we say that God is revealed in Jesus at Golgotha, the place of the skull, on the cross where criminals and rebels against the Roman state were executed. The lynching tree is America’s cross. What happened to Jesus in Jerusalem happened to blacks in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Lynched black bodies are symbols of Christ’s body. If we want to understand what the crucifixion means for Americans today, we must view it through the lens of mutilated black bodies whose lives are destroyed in the criminal justice system. Jesus continues to be lynched before our eyes. He is crucified wherever people are tormented. That is why I say Christ is black.

(—from, The Heresy of White Christianity, by Chris Hedges, truthdig, 10dec18) https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-heresy-of-white-christianity/ 

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (d.10dec68) obituary by Mark Van Doran in America Magazine, (4jan69)..
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/12/10/thomas-mertons-obituary-1969

nothing else

As a Buddhist I recite the four vows of the Bodhisattva.

As a meetingbrook monastic I recite the three promises of the hermitage.

As a Christian I recite the St Andrew advent novena.

As a poet I recite the words of Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Antonio Machado, Goethe, and Rilke.

As an American I recite the words “We the People...”.

As a contemplative I recite nothing, remaining in silence.

Silence.

Nothing

Else

the mountain is seen -- Thomas Merton, 50 yrs along

Fifty years ago today Thomas Merton died in Bangkok Thailand.

We light candle in Thomas Merton Bookshed / Winter Zendo.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans [“nature naturing” or “nature doing what nature does”]. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia,[“holy wisdom”] speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

“Hagia Sophia,” The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

"The full beauty of the mountain is not seen until you consent to the impossible paradox: it is and is not. When nothing more needs to be said, the smoke of ideas clears, the mountain is seen." 

(--Journal, 1968) 

We are glad for his having been on earth with us as he was. 

practice

Wood burns in stove

Soup warms in silver pot

We recite contemplation, conversation, and correspondence promises

Someone cries at table over losses

We listen

sinless

Dec 8 — the day of no barriers.

Buddha’s enlightenment day. Immaculate Conception of Mary.

John Lennon’s death.

Hannakah lights.

Wholeness is not reduced by parts.

mulling such a thing

Yes...

Every request could be seen as the ask of reality to engage it unfolding what is to come.

Or, another perspective: 

“As Bokonon says: 'peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.” ( ― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle)

The silence moving through barn at 4am, temperature 9°, out to winter zendo, bowing, raising thermostat, ringing Tibetan bell, pronouncing (bubba, richard, rob) names of only three of our departed sangha. As earlier in poetry circle, we pronounce Anne, Walt, Maggie, Lydia, and Sheilah’s names — whose physical presence we no longer see nor hear on Friday’s at poetry, tea, and thee.

The separation between those of us seen and those not seen seems less and less apparent.

As poet Robert Lowell told us — 

We are poor passing facts, / warned by that to give / each figure in the photograph / his living name.     (— Lowell, end-lines of poem “Epilogue”)

 In wohnkuche, woodstove warms, green woolen Irish fedora placed back on shelf, brown cloth Franciscan  zucchetto placed on head, and stairs climbed back to room, 

Soon enough, our stoic friends at prison remind, there will by no one here to remind we are mortal, therefore deserving of kindness and compassion as we mull such a thing.

the pundits are straining at the bit

Your move, mr president.

I’m sorry for your troubles.

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