Epiphany, Theophany, Denha, Little Christmas, Three Kings' Day, a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ

A reading from the first Letter of Saint John
1John 2:18ff

Children, it is the last hour;
   and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming,
   so now many antichrists have appeared.
Thus we know this is the last hour.
They went out from us, but they were not really of our number;
   if they had been, they would have remained with us.
Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.
But you have the anointing that comes from the Holy One,
   and you all have knowledge.
I write to you not because you do not know the truth
   but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM
Ps 96:1-2, 11-12, 13 

R. (11a) Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

Sing to the LORD a new song;
   sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Sing to the LORD; bless his name;
   announce his salvation, day after day.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
   let the sea and what fills it resound;
   let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult before the LORD.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

The LORD comes,
   he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
   and the peoples with his constancy.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION
Jn 1:14a, 12a

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
To those who accepted him
he gave power to become the children of God.

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GOSPEL


Jn 1:1-18

The Word became flesh.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John

   In the beginning was the Word,
      and the Word was with God,
      and the Word was God.
   
He was in the beginning with God.
   All things came to be through him,
      and without him nothing came to be.
   What came to be through him was life,
      and this life was the light of the human race;
   the light shines in the darkness,
      and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
   so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
   but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
      He was in the world,
         and the world came to be through him,
         but the world did not know him.
      He came to what was his own,
         but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him
   he gave power to become children of God,
   to those who believe in his name,
   who were born not by natural generation
   nor by human choice nor by a man's decision
   but of God.
      And the Word became flesh
         and made his dwelling among us,
         and we saw his glory,
         the glory as of the Father's only Son,
         full of grace and truth.

John testified to him and cried out, saying,
   “This was he of whom I said,
   ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
   because he existed before me.’”
From his fullness we have all received,
   grace in place of grace,
   because while the law was given through Moses,
   grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God, who is at the Father's side,
   has revealed him.

(--Readings, Epiphany Sunday, 6jan19)

...   ...   ...

Radical Trinity. All Reality is Trinitarian: God-Man-World

“The experience of the radical Trinity is to know oneself enveloped in a cosmotheandric perichoresis” (The Fullness of Man).

“There is nothing but God, a God that, as absolute ‘I’, has an eternal ‘Thou’ that is equal to him and nonetheless not a second ‘I’ but always a ‘Thou’. This ‘Thou’ is the Son, is the total Christ who includes the heavens and the earth. All beings share what they are by being one with him, with the Son. All that exists, that is to say, all of reality, is nothing but God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All that exists is nothing but Brahman as sat, cit, and ânanda, as being, consciousness, and beatitude. Sat as the very foundation of all that in one form or another constitutes ‘being’. Cit as the spiritual or intellectual bond that surrounds and penetrates all of reality. Ananda as perfect fullness that receives into itself and inspires everything that reaches out toward it” (The Unknown Christ of Hinduism)

(--Raimon Panikkar, http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-radical-trinity.html)

...   ...   ...

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

(Poem, The Manifestation, by Theodore Roethke)

...   ...   ...


Poem, The Old Poets of China, by Mary Oliver:

...   ...   ...

There -- I think we can begin!

behold they are become wells of good water

In passing, researching "To Be or Not To Be, That is the Question: Yhwh and Ea, by Anne Marie Kitz, in Vol. 80 Issue 2 - Apr 2018, Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

I arrive at Wikipedia,  water and Enki: 

The cosmogenic myth common in Sumer was that of the hieros gamos, a sacred marriage where divine principles in the form of dualistic opposites came together as male and female to give birth to the cosmos. In the epic Enki and Ninhursag, Enki, as lord of Ab or fresh water (also the Sumerian word for semen), is living with his wife in the paradise of Dilmun where

The land of Dilmun is a pure place, the land of Dilmun is a clean place, The land of Dilmun is a clean place, the land of Dilmun is a bright place;
He who is alone laid himself down in Dilmun,
The place, after Enki is clean, that place is bright.

Despite being a place where "the raven uttered no cries" and "the lion killed not, the wolf snatched not the lamb, unknown was the kid-killing dog, unknown was the grain devouring boar", Dilmun had no water and Enki heard the cries of its goddess, Ninsikil, and orders the sun-god Utu to bring fresh water from the Earth for Dilmun. As a result,

Her City Drinks the Water of Abundance, Dilmun Drinks the Water of Abundance,
Her wells of bitter water, behold they are become wells of good water,
Her fields and farms produced crops and grain,
Her city, behold it has become the house of the banks and quays of the land.

Dilmun was identified with Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", where the fresh waters of the Arabian aquifer mingle with the salt waters of the Persian Gulf. This mingling of waters was known in Sumerian as Nammu, and was identified as the mother of Enki.

(-- Enki, Wikipedia)

I can imagine the earliest experience of water. It must have seemed that one was drinking God, washing with God, cooking with God, immersing in God. 

In earliest pre-Socratic philosophy, Thales of Miletus said that water was 'it.'

3. Thales says Water is the Primary Principle
Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge of certain principles and causes (Metaph. 982 a2-3). He commenced his investigation of the wisdom of the philosophers who preceded him, with Thales, the first philosopher, and described Thales as the founder of natural philosophy (Metaph. 983 b21-22). He recorded: 'Thales says that it is water'. 'it' is the nature, the archê, the originating principle. For Thales, this nature was a single material substance, water. Despite the more advanced terminology which Aristotle and Plato had created, Aristotle recorded the doctrines of Thales in terms which were available to Thales in the sixth century B.C.E., Aristotle made a definite statement, and presented it with confidence. It was only when Aristotle attempted to provide the reasons for the opinions that Thales held, and for the theories that he proposed, that he sometimes displayed caution.

(-- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Thales of Miletus (c. 620 B.C.E.—c. 546 B.C.E.)

Walking with leashed Rokpa in City of Rockland yesterday, melting sand and snow brown puddles at edge of every corner, waiting for new tires to be mounted, I am splashed by passing car with the essence of things on black coat and space grey trousers because that's just the way of things.

The white dog asks why, when there are several hundreds of acres of mountain out behind our house, we are walking the edges of snow and ice and melting mix of sand and salt on city streets, rushing cars uninterested in us after the undulation of temperature following several inches of wet storm the day before.

The various faces of water.

The sniggering sound of God.

you cannot not tell your story

ski walking stick

from barn to zendo --

squeaking snow

pre-dawn chant

bedtime

water runs

in sink

dishes

washed

madame speaker

New Congressional House.

A nice change.

Let's get started.

e t h i k o s

Reading 300+ pages of submitted papers.

The day runs out.

Word by word.

nihil obstat

Nothing moves —

still, it arrives at where it is

with no effort, no barriers

be forgot

there it is

one day gone

364 remain --

snow on ground

a trappist's thoughts

TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2019

Mary

There come to her doors men beating their breasts, confessing their sins, and having received pardon, they return home with joy...In the same way there draw near to her feet...the sad, the needy, the afflicted, the lonely...The prayers of all these who cry out of whatever tribulation she gladly receives and, making supplication to her Son, in her pity she turns from them every evil...with what great kindness she embraces and loves those who are akin to her in purity of heart...

We trust always in the kindness of Our Blessed Lady. She lets all the mercy that Jesus is come to us.

Orazio Gentileschi, Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. Lines from our Cistercian father, Amadeus of Lausanne.

still retain the ability to function

2019 will be a troubling, divisive, fateful year. 

2019 will be a loving, kind, compassionate year.

In his essay “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”     (--in, 1919: The Year of the Crack-Up, by Ted Widmer, NYT, 31dec18)

See what poet Charles Olson said about this in his poem Love.

Then what a sermon in a Unity-Unitarian church said.

Perhaps we are only as intelligent as the situation presenting itself with its intelligence to our awareness comes to be perceived, embraced, and embodied.

begin again

white smoke wanders dooryard,

wood stove doors open this new

year's morning --

Hebrew word, עזר, (ezer, helper)*

arrives as what we are to 

be with 

one-another 

...   ...   ...

       

            *  (note: ezer)

practicing end of year

we sat in silence

then chanted prajnaparamita --

in circle of poetry back in house

wide gaps of listening

nearing new year

not a drop of wine

in my house --

at least an old friend

in Mexico has his Merlot

this, from a hymn, office of readings

The zen monk cycling across Canada, the US, and Central America told us that his koan throughout was "What is this?"

     Good Christian friends, rejoice
     With heart and soul and voice;
     Now ye hear of endless bliss:
     Jesus Christ was born for this!
     He has opened heaven's door,
     And we are blest forevermore.
     Christ was born for this!
     Christ was born for this!

     Tune: In dulci jubilo 66.77.66.55.   Music: Klug’s Geistliche Lieder, Wittenberg, 1535.   Text: In      dulci jubilo: Latin and German, fourteenth century.   Translation: John Mason Neale, 1818-1866

"This" is what truth and reality is in zen awareness.

It is what Christ was born for.

Or, as another hymn says, "This, this, is Christ the King".

Pray for the grace of accuracy to be able to say throughout this coming year --

This is

what I am

becoming;

this is 

what I am

doing;

this is 

what I am

here and now!

mattock in winter

December 30th, 2018

Meeting an old Monk in deep Mountains

A cassock of coarse threads
A mind of moonlike kind;
A short mattock in his hand
To hew the sticks he finds.
By dark stones on the streamside
Over fallen leaves he goes;
A few wisps of cloud 
Trail two brows of snow.

- Guanxiu (832-912) dailyzen.com

ah, 4am

The hour when everything is at ready.

When prayer seems silent necessity.

And we are invited to listen as night confesses it's true allegiance. 

even more credible

There's something about reading from the iBreviary at side of a man the nurse says “is waiting for the angels to come tonight” that makes the words more real.

Ever since we heard this we have been praying for you unceasingly and asking that you may attain full knowledge of his will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come, giving thanks to the Father for having made you worthy to share the lot of the saints in light. He rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through him we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.

—from letter of Paul to Colossions 1, 1-14

The goodness and humanity of God our Savior have appeared in our midst. We thank God for the many consolations he has given us during this sad exile of our pilgrimage here on earth. Before the Son of God became man his goodness was hidden, for God’s mercy is eternal, but how could such goodness be recognized? It was promised, but it was not experienced, and as a result few have believed in it. Often and in many ways the Lord used to speak through the prophets. Among other things, God said: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. But what did men respond, thinking thoughts of affliction and knowing nothing of peace? They said: Peace, peace, there is no peace. This response made the angels of peace weep bitterly, saying: Lord, who has believed our message? But now men believe because they see with their own eyes, and because God’s testimony has now become even more credible. He has gone so far as to pitch his tent in the sun so even the dimmest eyes see him. 

—from a sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot (Sermo 1, in Epiphania Domini, 1-2: PL 133, 141-143)

We breathe together.

We think of peace.

you don't say

Have you seen that which cannot be seen?

Of course you have.

Seems paradoxical, eh?

We see.

But cannot say what we see.

All that can be done is act with compassion.

Compassion is the only way to say what cannot be seen.

doing only what we are

these five days

by many beds

in hospital

balancing patient

visiting with hospice

sitting and prison

teaching -- all three

a conversation with

my community --

our family sentience

one recognition

after another

walking frigid
mornings

mountain trail

icy brook

frozen field

my family
late december

sitting when all are standing

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591).                                                                                                       BY EMILY DICKINSON  

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - 

The Stillness in the Room 

Was like the Stillness in the Air - 

Between the Heaves of Storm - 

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - 

And Breaths were gathering firm 

For that last Onset - when the King 

Be witnessed - in the Room - 

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away 

What portion of me be 

Assignable - and then it was 

There interposed a Fly -  

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - 

Between the light - and me - 

And then the Windows failed - and then 

I could not see to see -

each atom, each element, each breath

yes --

it's all

we know

of god

haiku (christmas)

Yes

this

is what

I think

of you

eve of birth remembrance

Finally, Christmas Eve Vesper's antiphon:

Ant. When the sun rises in the morning sky, you will see the King of kings coming forth from the Father like a radiant bridegroom from the bridal chamber.

sunday's O antiphon

Ant. O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.

all true speech

When you hear the sound of voices speaking truth, harden not your hearts, pay attention, and smile.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. Very interesting. I would love for you just to read a little bit more a psalm that you love right now. 

MR. BRUEGGEMANN: The Book of Psalms ends with these outrageous doxologies. “Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, frost, stirring wind filling his command, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals and cattle, creeping things and flying birds, kings of the earth, princes and all rulers, young men and women, all old and young together.”
It’s an image of all creatures joining in doxology. I love that, to think that sea monsters — I don’t know how sea monsters howl or how they express their faith, but it’s an early form of [sings] “All creatures of our God and King.” The whole world is coming in doxology, and I just think it’s so wonderful.

I just read a book recently, and I don’t know whether it’s right, but it says that Socrates said that all true speech ends in doxology to God. I hope he said that. If he didn’t, he should’ve. [laughs]

(--from OnBeing, The Prophetic Imagination,) 

As good a Sunday service as I might've attended.

Bless their hearts!

(And thank you, Alexander Di Lella ofm, for your scholarly teaching on the Prophets fifty years ago)

one within the other

Never is light so strong as when darkness says "I have beaten you".

Light looks right through darkness, saying, "I love your diaphaneity in my presence."

Light suffuses darkness, allowing it to remain itself throughout interpenetration.

Hence, getting along, one with the other.

saturday's O antiphon

Ant. O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.

yes

Sleeping dog

First morning returning light

His sweet breath on gray rug

solstice

nothing

but rain --

first winter night

friday's O antiphon

Ant. O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. (Vespers)

late and soon

“The world is too much with us; late and soon” (—Wordsworth).

Let planet tip and turn, returning light from darkening descent. It is time to look beyond posturing prancing and begin upclimbing ascent to clear and unambiguous truth in joy! She, mother of light, will point.

a scary story

Everyone knows what a rotten piece of fruit tastes like. But the third and fourth bites, when taken, signal it's not about enjoying the fruit -- no -- it's about what you want from the person watching who gave it to you.

The torpid men with rancid juice dripping down their jowls are watched by gnarly eyes of smarmy face looking out from wretched man temporarily occupying Oval Office in deficient decline toward terminal throes of ill-gotten reign of democracide and denigration.

What so proudly we hailed is in danger of dark decomposition and decompensation.

The chickens, so to speak, are coming back to Washington, to get another vote and more putrid fruit from desiccated hands of poseur president on brink of vacating completely the unstable office he sits in shadows within.

thursday O antiphon

Ant. O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel, controlling at your will the gate of heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.

just to maintain perspective

Observable universe

Visualization of the whole observable universe. The scale is such that the fine grains represent collections of large numbers of superclusters. The Virgo Supercluster—home of Milky Way—is marked at the center, but is too small to be seen.
Diameter	8.8×1026 m (28.5 Gpc or 93 Gly)[1]
Volume	4×1080 m3[2]
Mass (ordinary matter)	4.5 x 10 51 kg [3]
Density (of total energy)	9.9×10−27 kg/m3 (equivalent to 6 protons per cubic meter of space)[4]
Age	13.799±0.021 billion years[5]
Average temperature	2.72548 K[6]
Contents	Ordinary (baryonic) matter (4.9%) Dark matter (26.8%) Dark energy (68.3%) [7]

From Wikipedia:

The observable universe is a spherical region of the Universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth at the present time, because electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. There are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.^[8][9]Assuming the Universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe has a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer. Every location in the Universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth.

The word observable in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. Because no signals can travel faster than light, any object farther away from us than light could travel in the age of the Universe (estimated as of 2015 around 13.799±0.021 billion years^[5]) simply cannot be detected, as they have not reached us yet. Sometimes astrophysicists distinguish between the visible universe, which includes only signals emitted since recombination—and the observable universe, which includes signals since the beginning of the cosmological expansion (the Big Bang in traditional physical cosmology, the end of the inflationary epoch in modern cosmology).

According to calculations, the current comoving distance—proper distance, which takes into account that the universe has expanded since the light was emitted—to particles from which the cosmic microwave background radiation(CMBR) was emitted, which represent the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light-years), while the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years),^[10] about 2% larger. The radius of the observable universe is therefore estimated to be about 46.5 billion light-years^[11][12] and its diameter about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years, 8.8×10²³kilometres or 5.5×10²³ miles).^[13] The total mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be calculated using the critical density and the diameter of the observable universe to be about 1.5 × 10⁵³ kg.^[14] In November 2018, astronomers reported that the extragalactic background light (EBL) amounted to 4 × 10⁸⁴ photons.^[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

beyond belief

What if, taken in the light of modern physics (as far as it goes), we came to understand these words with visionary mind?

Canticle — Colossians 1:12-20
Christ the first-born of all creation and the first-born from the dead

Let us give thanks to the Father
for having made you worthy
to share the lot of the saints
in light.

He rescued us
from the power of darkness
and brought us
into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Through him we have redemption,
the forgiveness of our sins.

He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creatures.
In him everything in heaven and on earth was created,
things visible and invisible.

All were created through him;
all were created for him.
He is before all else that is.
In him everything continues in being.

It is he who is head of the body, the church!
he who is the beginning,
the first-born of the dead,
so that primacy may be his in everything.

It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in him
and, by means of him, to reconcile everything in his person,
both on earth and in the heavens,
making peace through the blood of his cross.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Ant. The Spirit of the Lord rests upon me; he has sent me to preach his joyful message to the poor.

READING Philippians 3:20b-21 vespers, 19dec18

...   ...   ...

Would we come to see the isomorphic interface between wording and physicality -- how each vibrational breath is, at origin, the inchoate inception, and real conception of what is to be, as it emerges from. emptiness into particularity, then returning to emptiness again?

And would our coming to see (and become) our particular emptiness between arrival and departure assist our time in this interim to be less contentious, combative, and filled with illusory belief in  accretion, acquisition,  or accumulation? 

The ethos of domination, control, and personal wealth rifles our human culture.

We do not yet see.

just so

Everything is quiet,
And the night is clear:
The perfect time to raise your pillow
And cultivate your mind. 

- Daegak Euchon (1055-1101) daily zen.com

wednesday's O antiphon

Ant. O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid

thank you vinnie

fiifty years ago 

today vinnie d

ended the Vietnam 

war by stepping

on the ground

in 1968

unleashing a grenade

so that everyone

might come to love

the beauty

of this left-handed

sandlot catcher

who knew who his

people were

with equipoise

we wake up sometimes

Deepak Chopra at MIT, his talk, "The Nature of Reality", December 2018.

Vivid and fascinating.

In it he quotes Wittgenstein:

“We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”  (― Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Mind me this --

Now, then, where are we?

rising light

What if “God” were to refer to the whole of reality without limit, the rising interconnectiveness of dawn’s light gathering everything into light itself?

And Paul’s words? The realization that, if one cuts oneself off from the healing wholeness, one believes in the wretched severance of a modern day fracture of division and loneliness fabricated by narrow thinking unenlightened individuals.

For this reason the Lord himself gave as the sign of our salvation, the one who was born of the Virgin, Emmanuel. It was the Lord himself who saved them, for of themselves they had no power to be saved. For this reason Paul speaks of the weakness of man, and says: I know that no good dwells in my flesh, meaning that the blessing of our salvation comes not from us but from God. Again, he says: I am a wretched man; who will free me from this body doomed to die? Then he speaks of a liberator, thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord. 

 (—from, Second reading, From a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop, Office of Readings, Wednesday)

The sign of our salvation is the rising of light within and without.

This light rises in the darkness. It does not eliminate darkness; it suffuses darkness.

Call this Christ, sunrise, awakened mind, or compassionate caring — we long for the reality.

Of course we differ over the formulation of the words, beliefs, creeds. But not the reality.

It is not of us.

It is given.

Face to face -- we receive, experience, and incarnate the reality.

It is late advent.

tuesday's O antiphon

Ant. O sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free. (Vespers)

primary education

Look at this.

No need to conclude anything.

Just look at this.

It will reveal to you everything you need to know.

monday's O antiphon

Ant. O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation. (Vespers)

not think at all

December 17th, 2018

From dawn to dusk
Spending the day
Gathering clay for my pottery:
Surely Buddha would not
Think this a trifling matter.

- Rengetsu (1791-1875), daily zen 

worry or optimism

Theres much lost to worry about.

So far, the independent judiciary has still not faltered, despite the GOP’s efforts to pack it with unqualified right-wing hacks. The special counsel and the U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York, as well as attorneys general in several states, are systematically investigating and prosecuting those who sold out America to enrich the criminal enterprise surrounding Donald Trump. And the press has begun to dig, dig, dig, especially as it comes to grips with the threat Trump poses to journalists and the First Amendment.  

Democracy will take its country back. After experiencing the corruption, brutality, and amorality of this regime, the people and their duly elected representatives will put in the safeguards to ensure that this nation never faces this kind of perfidy and darkness again. 

(—from, The Russians meddled in our Democracy, but they had All-American Help, by Carol Anderson, HuffPost, 13dec2018)

There’s much remaining to recommend optimism.

the highest standpoint of all comes into view

Sitting four hours with a one year old -- holding him, feeding him, rocking him in cradle, listening to lullabies from iPad, until, finally, he fell asleep, his harsh cough rousing momentarily, then settling back as I continually rocked cradle leaning over, watching his face, hands, Rocky Balboa arms shooting up by him over his head in victory salute, lowering again in slumber.

He shouldn't, they say, have lived this long with such brain deprivation.

The non-separative emptiness of the interrelation.

Emptiness is the teacher.

The traditional East has always held that solutions to practical problems are the only ones that can be worked out through theoretical reasoning at the level of consciousness. True thinking, which is “moral thinking,” i.e. finding answers to fundamental questions, such as the meaning of life, our responsibilities towards others, and so on, is existential thinking, and takes place in the context of particular circumstances, which are my own circumstances, my place in society, the people I know, the country I live in. Obviously, what I can do about the environment or racism, for instance, is not the same, whether I am a social worker, or a farmer, or the Prime Minister, and whether I am in the UK, or the US, or Brazil, or whatever. Reason works out answers by applying an intellectual grid of causes and effects on a representation of the general problem on the field of consciousness. Such representation is an abstraction which more often than not pro- vides an excellent description of the issues, but do not even begin to suggest solutions. Einstein famously said “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” and “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” In real life situations, there are specific problems which we encounter, and a need for a personal response to them: actions we should take and, possibly more often, actions we should refrain from. Critics of Nishitani have alleged that he does not provide a concrete ethical system comparable to what we find in Kant’s philosophy. For Bud- dhists both problems and answers are “contextualised” and, apart from the basic pre- cepts given to beginners, no Buddhist master will ever tell his/her disciples what they should do. Instead he/she shows them how to realise the mode of emptiness where they will find their own answers.  

Emptiness, then, is the teacher. Once fully appropriated, emptiness is experi- enced not only as a state of clarity where you are “enlightened” by all things, but also as a wellspring of goodwill toward all beings. Because Sartre did not extend nothingness to the self, he missed the experience of nothingness as spontaneous altruistic concern which would have transformed his existentialist philosophy into a genuine humanism. In the Buddhist mode of emptiness, I feel compassion toward all beings, I wish them well. It is only when, on the field of consciousness, I (i.e., my representation of myself) feel threatened that I may be resentful of others, and this is a state where no one enjoys dwelling. But when I (which is really non-I at that point) dwell in the mode of emptiness, I experience an all-embracing loving kindness and an unconditional wish to do what is good for others. I treat them with re- spect and reverence, not because they have “rights,” but because this is what I spontaneously want to do. “In religious Love or Compassion, the highest standpoint of all comes into view.” (Ibid, 281) 

(--from, THE FIELD OF EMPTINESS AS THE FIELD OF THE GREAT AFFIRMATION, The Kyoto School of Philosophy, Nick Bea)

It is that view, the one of love or compassion, the lullabies of embrace, that plunges us into the Great Affirmation -- this, this, is our body.

This, this, is 

What Is, Real!

Resplended resonance of Christmas lyric -- "What Child Is This?"

where haiku will not go

republicans
          (after Basho)


flapping wings --

lift off, lift off, fly away --

soon, a vacant branch vacates

dark and dank

To the Washington Post:

Ach du meine Güte! 

For years I've worried that something stupid would unseat the thoughtful and considered rule of law and common sense holding up this country.When the Republican Party dissolved into the "What, me stupid?" method of governing by nonsense and narcissism, I began to breathe the new atmosphere as one does stale air in an abandoned mineshaft. The Republican Gemeinshaft has become dark and dank. Worry gives way to reality. They have been coal in our stocking.   

Ah, Christmas!

(My dear friend, Richard, departed farmer from Warren, would cluck and shake his head over such public comment on such low intelligence politics.)