pass him by

A commentator used the expression tonight and wikipedia defined it: 

De minimis is a Latin expression meaning "about minimal things", normally in the locutions de minimis non curat praetor ("The praetor does not concern himself with trifles") or de minimis non curat lex ("The law does not concern itself with trifles") a legal doctrine by which a court refuses to consider trifling ...

The speaker of the house said recently that the president is not worth it, namely, the effort to impeach.

He isn’t.

He is de minimis.

A trifle.

One that will pass.

To pass over, pass by, as one would a reprehensible liar and bully with a weapon who has a self inflicted wound slowly falling to knee while screaming at the wind that he is the best, there is no better than which, not anybody anywhere at anytime in history,

If he doesn’t end history with an ignorant dense stupidity, then, history will view him merely as another ignorant and disturbed anomaly who brought indignity, consternation, and suffering to a played and traumatized people.

Maybe he will just go away long before the next election which might send him away.

(O God, wait — I’m only talking about myself, aren’t I? Aren't we always and only talking about ourselves whenever we speak?)

Still -- when I slur another, when I refuse to acknowledge any truth that interferes with my agenda for things, when I become small and mean and vengeful, when I mock and belittle any and everybody because I can -- I am a disappointment and lack grace, and should recuse myself from matters that demand fairness, equanimity, and trust. I have work ahead of me.

message -- on not going to the service

Don’t bother coming 

home to 

pick me up for Betty’s 

funeral. 

I’ll be staying here, 

lighting a candle, 

and meditating 

on who’s going to come to 

my memorial gathering -- 

which, I suspect, will take 

place in 

the cabin 

with three people, 

two cats, two dogs, 

and a box of donuts.

freeing up

Immigration is a serious concern for many in this country.

Too many trying to get in?

It's getting too crowded?

I can help.

When I die there will be an open space.

I give it to someone wishing to immigrate.

Along with my hiking sticks.

Use them well.

neutrinos permeating

Pr
Act
Ice

Down to
The
Core

And
Be-
Low

extra-diction

Face to face.

12  For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Version (KJV) 

I am known. 

no I but we

In prison today, we talk about the Shema, about the binary disease of judge/victim, about selfishness/altruism, about empire and secluding/excluding, and about Andy Weir's story The Egg

In final circle the suggestion that one summary of the conversation could be:

"No I, but we."

At evening conversation, the realization that mystics merely see -- no subject, no object.

Seeing.

With nothing to be seen. 

by which we see

Is it possible that night approaches? Not just the lee side of the 24 hour clock, but the more expansive night, when good and light are overshadowed by the not-good and pervasive dark?

What work is impossible to do in the 'night'? Jesus stated that
night is coming, when no one can work. (John 9:4, ESV) 

The immediate context is that Jesus is healing a blind person. The first clause of the sentence is:

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day

The person who sent Jesus was God the Father. In John 6:29 it records Jesus saying:

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (ESV)

Which suggests that believing in God is ruled out, once the 'night' comes. However, in Luke 18:8 Jesus asks if the he will find faith on the earth when he comes. Which at least leaves the possibility of belief even when it is 'night'. 

What type of work is impossible in the 'night'? Does such impossibility preclude God's own action, such as in the impossible case of reconciling a sinner (Mark 10:27).

(--from Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange)

"Sin" is not the proprietary preoccupation and possession of religions and their spokesmen. "Sin" is the dissembling and deterioration of decency and decorum with the overt or mindless intent of harm and ill upon another or others. 

Once we emphasized offense against God.

Then we began to realize who God is, where God resides, and what is part of God.

Let's concede there is darkness within each of us.

Then let's turn attention to the light which shines through darkness.

By which we see. 

calvary, white house version

forgive us
Father

we know

what he
is

doing

indications

snow tracks, deer on deck

chewing yew tree --

as missing cat, banging door

holds out hope

flame cools making ash

Ash does not touch forehead

Icicles hang from roof

Time for repetition, hence

No ash but in wood stove

No flame sleeps dreams

Remembrance 

vivre dans la solitude ensemble

The Benedictine Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, for those so inclined, offers online office Gregorian chants that can be retrieved at leisure. In Latin, recorded live, tower bells, with footsteps entering and leaving, coughs and nose-blowing, bumps against wooden stalls, and a practice of markedly reverently slowing the ending Gloria Patri of each psalm.

As though there.

Throughout day and night.

Écoutez nos offices en direct  

« Il n’y a qu'un problème, un seul de par le monde : rendre aux hommes une signification spirituelle. Faire pleuvoir sur eux quelque chose qui ressemble à un chant grégorien. »  -- Saint-Exupéry.                     

For a hermitage 

at foot of Maine mountain,

a wonderful sound --

vivre dans la solitude ensemble 

streets

Finish David Frum's Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, (2018). It's where democracy has gone. It has turned down a shadowy alley. 

And Pete Hamill's Downtown: My Manhattan (2004). A poetic descriptive of places I've walked and watched. Hamill charms with his prose and memory. 

Reading transports.

the simplicity of the method.

If there is anything to say,

say it --

otherwise,

be silent:

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. 

When they're full, they worry about hunger. 

Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. 

But sages don't consider the past. 

And they don't worry about the future. 

Nor do they cling to the present. 

And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

--Bodhidharma

There are thousands upon thousands of students 

who have practised meditation and obtained its fruits. 

Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. 

If you can not find the truth right where you are, 

where else do you expect to find it? 

--Dogen

If there is anything

at all --

what

a miracle!

we long to become, human-kind.

As a (m.o.n.o.) = (monastic of no other) I also acknowledge my Franciscan roots.

Perhaps I could add a  (f.o.n.a.)  = (Franciscan of no affiliation) to the alphabet soup following my nominal anonymous hiding (n.a.h).

Or, maybe, after the Italian academic distinction I humbly wear, (D. NeN) (dottore nulla e niente) = doctor of nothing and nil),

I might add (MU) = mostly unhere. Further descriptives of MU are found in wikipedia::

Some English translation equivalents of wú or mu 無 are:

• "no", "not", "nothing", or "without"^[2]

• nothing, not, nothingness, un-, is not, has not, not any^[3]

• [1] Nonexistence; nonbeing; not having; a lack of, without. [2] A negative. [3] Caused to be nonexistent. [4] Impossible; lacking reason or cause. [5] Pure human awareness, prior to experience or knowledge. This meaning is used especially by the Chan school. [6] The 'original nonbeing' from which being is produced in the Daode jing.^[4]

 Words are both fascinating and frivolous. Acronyms are growing like metaphors in a field of corroding jargon, withering facts, and incommunicable utterance. We are left with mere letters, like vanity license plates on passing cars, a puzzling exercise decrypting semaphore and smoke signal during a time of diminishing communication and nonsense babbling.

Word that drops from language like petals from flower -- kotoba 言葉 -- word itself.

Or, extrapolated into our Western iconography, Itself emerging through breath as word into matter becoming what we long to become, human-kind.

glimpse

Morning arrives

Waking soon light through darkness --

After skim snow covers night

contemplative moves

Can we say that nothing is fixed or final? That what is required is we flow through what is right there surrounding us?

The problem remains within the process. It never goes away.

We move through the problem in a process of resolution that recognizes the again and again encounter necessary going forward with the presenting problem and the resolving process.

Contemplation asks for courageous looking at the reality that is obvious and the reality that hides within and around us.

not to me but for me

Worthwhile to hear again the final remarks of Elijah Cummings at end of televised hearing featuring  Michael Cohen in front of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Wednesday 27Feb19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72gy-LZ4UN0

I think we'll be listening to Rep. Cummings replayed for many years as we look back over the disastrous time and person at center as focus of this investigation.

parsing

there
is

no-
w-
here

truth
can go

where can truth go

It is not easy
remembering
oneself a fool

Just like cramming
for a test you’ve
failed in school

We’re never that far
from where we’ve been
and who we were while there

Such facts are facts
never to change —
always there at 4AM

I confess these things
to silent ears, aware —
that wrong is wrong

Breathing in, I will not lie
I’ve no defense, no excuse —
I sip from cold green juice

It’s minus 5° with bitter wind
this top of maine deep snow —
There’s nowhere truth can go

dyadic and introverted

Just before sleep:

What Florensky calls ‘‘a substantial relationship,’’ we call the prosopon. To understand the prosopon as only the person (and, thus, the other human being) is a misunderstanding. Prosopon defines a tropos (a way, a ‘‘how’’) as well as a topos (a place, a ‘‘who’’). Person indeed becomes prosopon’s primary meaning, insofar as a person fulfills the description that prosopon signifies (‘‘towards-the-face-of-the-Other’’). A prosopon, therefore, is to be understood as a dyad of topos and tropos—these two meanings stand in a dialectical relationship with one another as ‘‘obverse’’ and ‘‘reverse.’’ ‘‘All being is, by its very nature as being, dyadic, with an ‘introverted,’ or in-itself dimension, as substance, and an ‘extroverted,’ or toward-others dimension, as relational though action.’’6

 (—from, After God, Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy, Edited by JOHN PANTELEIMON MANOUSSAKIS, p.26)

Enough to induce sleep

from ‘none’ afternoon prayer

Psalm 127 (128) Peaceful life in the Lord

O blessed are those who fear the Lord.

Blessed are all who fear the Lord

  and walk in his ways.

The food you have worked for, you will eat:

  God’s blessing will bring you good things.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

  on the side of your house.

Your children will be like olive shoots,

  seated round your table.

See, this is how the man is blessed

  who fears the Lord.

May the Lord bless you from Zion:

  may you see the wealth of Jerusalem

  all the days of your life.

May you see your children’s children.

  Peace be on Israel.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son

  and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning,

  is now, and ever shall be,

  world without end.

Amen.

O blessed are those who fear the Lord.

CONCLUSION

Short Reading
Proverbs 22:22-23 ©

Because a man is poor, do not therefore cheat him, nor, at the city gate, oppress anybody in affliction; for the Lord takes up their cause, and extorts the life of their extortioners.

---

℣. The Lord will save the needy, who are helpless.

℟. He will save the lives of the poor.

---

Let us pray.

Almighty God,

  we recall how you sent your angel to the centurion Cornelius

  to show him the way of salvation.

Open our hearts to work more zealously for the salvation of the world,

  so that your Church may bring us and all men into your presence.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

---

Let us praise the Lord.

– Thanks be to God.

...   ...   ...

(—from Universalis)

the unknown mystery of it

Black suspenders on door handle reflected in wall mirror
white dog adjusting himself on tan rug

the county, across from Canada, winds 40-50 mph wind chill 
minus 15 to minus 20, coffee and donuts after yoghurt; 

remembering Saturday

night, note about hospice visit:  "Spent whole time with
little tyke -- walking hall, feeding bottle, playing with 

monkey doll, holding in rocking chair, watching 
his brief nap, playing lullabies on phone. Contemplating

the unknown mystery of it. 
Kissing him as I left him in nurse's arms." 

monday night

driving through blizzard
conditions arriving
at Fort Kent
flake by
flake

an athlete

Watching Chris Paul of Houston Rockets play against Golden State Warriors is a treat. His team wins. The astounding skill!

mantra prayer

If ‘here’ is the name and reality of God —

And ‘this’ is the fact and truth of existence—

Then, the only place worth being, and only sound worth hearing, is what is here as this, breath by breath, second by second, appearance by appearance.

Perhaps our practice is to come to realize and live the immensity of the mantra prayer:

 I am here doing this; 

 I am this being here!

simple sentence

Here is why this is important.

attractive arguments to justify some disgraceful action

Edward Mendelson writes:

"In the two years since the 2016 US election, it seems ever more clear that Thucydides is the greatest historian not only of empire but also of contemporary politics. This excerpt is his account of civil war in Corcyra, 427 BC—and, equally, of politics in America, AD 2018:"

Revenge was more important than self-preservation. And if pacts of mutual security were made, they were entered into by the two parties only in order to meet some temporary difficulty, and remained in force only so long as there was no other weapon available. When the chance came, the one who first seized it boldly, catching his enemy off his guard, enjoyed a revenge that was all the sweeter from having been taken, not openly, but because of a breach of faith. It was safer that way, it was considered, and at the same time a victory won by treachery gave one a title for superior intelligence. And indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simple-mindedness honesty. They are proud of the first quality and ashamed of the second. 

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils. To this must be added the violent fanaticism which came into play once the struggle had broken out. Leaders of parties in the cities had programs which appeared admirable—on one side political equality for the masses, on the other the safe and sound government of the aristocracy—but in professing to serve the public interest they were seeking to win the prizes for themselves. In their struggles for ascendancy nothing was barred; terrible indeed were the actions to which they committed themselves, and in taking revenge they went farther still. Here they were deterred neither by the claims of justice nor by the interests of the state; their one standard was the pleasure of their own party at that particular moment, and so, either by means of condemning their enemies on an illegal vote or by violently usurping power over them, they were always ready to satisfy the hatreds of the hour. Thus neither side had any use for conscientious motives; more interest was shown in those who could produce attractive arguments to justify some disgraceful action. As for the citizens who held moderate views, they were destroyed by both the extreme parties, either for not taking part in the struggle or in envy at the possibility that they might survive.

— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (Penguin, 1972; pp. 242–245) in What Thucydides Knew About the US Today, by Edward Mendelson, The New Yoerk Review of Books, October 29, 2018, 12:20 pm

The recent calls for a second civil war by members of the Republican faithful, a reckless and dangerous rhetoric replete with target practice, dog whistle calls for malevolent action against opposing politicians and reporting journalists, and the persistant everyday practice of blatant lying and naked denial of facts and truth, have set the stage for an idiot's war that could easily break out without forewarning.

Mendelson writes earlier in his article:

In the third book of his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides describes the outbreak of civil war on the northern island of Corcyra in 427 BC: 

"There was the revenge taken in their hour of triumph by those who had in the past been arrogantly oppressed instead of wisely governed; there were the wicked resolutions taken by those who, particularly under the pressure of misfortune, wished to escape from their usual poverty and coveted the property of their neighbors; there were the savage and pitiless actions into which men were carried not so much for the sake of gain as because they were swept away into an internecine struggle by their ungovernable passions." (op cit)

I don't know what is in the wind. The hot-air provocations of foolish men and women broadcasting bellicosity who think their bully hawkish threats and intimidatiion only make their payday salaries more secure, are hurting so much more than their intended targets.

Yes, The Mueller report will be issued. Yes, attempts to bury and debunk the findings with take partisan stage. And, yes, denials and accusations and bilious slander will echo throughout. There will be noise and smoke and unbecoming words. Regional courts and grand juries will pick up threads and carry on the inquiries. The wreck that is our current government with take on water and list even further.

Future historians will have a trove of written words -- briefs, documents, articles, and books -- to sift through and analyze. Judgments will be made. Those who learn from history -- that small number of scholars and citizens -- will wonder how it happened, how it got to be the way it did.

nothing other than the realization of this, here, and now

God is existence

Christ is emergence

You and I are nothing other than the realization of this, here, and now

Thus, the task is becoming

• what and 
• who we are, 
• where we are, 
• when and 
• as we are

In this way

• as you
• so me
• as within 
• so without

Prayer is the practice of this realization as itself becoming fully present

good gifts

It's been a reading/listening ten days. The books, now that I am not teaching, arrive easily, are devoured happily: 

• Inside 9-11 (Der Spiegel), 
• 102 Minutes:The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (Kevin Flynn, Jim Dwyer), 
• Jesus Out To Sea: Stories (James Lee Burke), 
• The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump (Andrew McCabe), 
• Fear: Trump in the White House (Bob Woodward), 
• The Assault on Intelligence (Michael Hayden),
• Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders).

Also progressing with 

• Life of the Mind (Hannah Arendt), and 
• After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) (John Panteleimon Manousakis).

With the help of SCRIBD as well as hardcopies, I am back in the corner candy store of my childhood. 

Browsing, musing, pondering, indulging.

Knowledge and imagination.

Nice to be reading again.

Good gifts.

their devastation, their mourning, ours

It's too simplistic to pit the argument as pro-Trump or anti-Trump.

Rather, the problem presents as being for decency in disagreement versus cynical malicious threats toward opposing views.

The time is rapidly coming to an end for viewing Mr. Trump as a laugh line or parody fodder or a toss-off sarcastic dismissive abberrance.

He is much more than that.

He is, in the titles of recent books, about fear, about threat, about dangerous circus.

He is on the cusp of irreversible dismantling of whatever it was that America thought itself to be.

Problem is that much of what America pretended to be was an illusion.

Racism, sexism, elitism, imperialism, domineering global militarism -- the ways of smiling yet shielding the dagger poised between shoulder blades of both friends and enemies.

The fact and metaphor of him shoving one world leader aside so as to take front spot in photograph. Kowtowing obsequiously to other world leaders to curry favor or personal money or to avoid their emasculating goods on him.

It is a very dangerous time.

I think Mr. Trump continues to ascend in whatever nefarious and plotting scam and scheme bubbles in his psyche.

I fear he will prevail.

All the protestations of justice and constitution and law and order and balance of powers and majority of popular opinion --- are all secondary to Mr. Trump's strong and determined, albeit delusionary and near-psychotic, spasms of total control over the fate of the country, nation, and population.

I am neither optimistic nor joyful that any other corrective will emerge or prevail.

I have to sit squarely in the paradoxical koan the Trappist monk offered me before his death, when he said, "Cheer up, Bill, things are only going to get worse."

They will, I fear.

They are, I suspect.

He will prevail.

I stare out at the morning, snow quietly over everything, the faint sounds and muffled sobs of millions of people's sorrow, their devastation, their mourning.

Ours.

feel it

I think

it is time

to affirm

life

after thought

It's time

Using coals to reinvigorate wood stove fire

Chanting morning invitatory at barn door in 8° under full moon angling over Ragged Mountain

Adding kibbles to night watch hefty cat bowl

Entering silence

Where

God

Is

familia incognito

Reading Lincoln in the Bardo.

Looking out at running track under foot of snow at Bates College.

What is it I do not see?

sans doute

To all who doubt the president of the United States — remember, there’s nothing wrong with doubt.

itself out

Zen is not asking why. Rather, Zen is asking me to sit down, be quiet, look in, and allow 'why' to find itself out by finding out itself.  

seeing is all

Earth is fragile drift

 in empty space

Will you help

look around

are you kidding

It occurs to me that truth is not attractive.

There seems to be an attraction to lies.

I know, it seems odd.

So this is called the post-truth age.

It is, some still say,  wrong to prefer lies.

Still, many, if not most, do prefer lies.

No kidding.

Seems strange.

Truth.

let's change the direction this country

ok

our paralyzed stare

Having just finished Unspeakable: Talks with David Talbot about the Most Forbidden Topics in America, By Chris Hedges and David Talbot, (2016), I am again cast into that penumbral space that Chris Hedges, Daniel Berrigan, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton toss me. 

Richard Rohr lights this place a bit in his words:

If you pay attention to the text, you’ll see that the Apostle John offers a very evolutionary notion of the Christ message. Note the active verb that is used here: “The true light that enlightens every person was coming (erxomenon) into the world” (John 1:9). In other words, we’re talking not about a one-time Big Bang in nature or a one-time Incarnation in Jesus, but an ongoing, progressive movement continuing in the ever-unfolding creation. Incarnation did not just happen two thousand years ago. It has been working throughout the entire arc of time and will continue. This is expressed in the common phrase the “Second Coming of Christ.” Unfortunately, this was often heard as a threat (“Wait till your Dad gets home!”). It could more accurately be spoken of as the “Forever Coming of Christ,” the ongoing promise of eternal resurrection and the evolution of consciousness into the mind of Christ.   (from, Seeing Christ Everywhere, Wednesday, February 13, 2019, Richard Rohr)

Rohr, the day before, asked:

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe?

There's a shadow over my comprehension. The sound of it rings true. But where is it calling me to?

Annie Applebaum in The Washington Post, writes about this penumbra for me:

In truth, we know far more about these camps, and about the accompanying repression, than anyone in 1933 knew about the famine in Ukraine. They have been extensively described in the world’s media, including the New York Times and The Post . Government bodies have studied them, too. Canada’s Parliament recently produced an account of the suppression of the Uighurs that is far more comprehensive than anything Jones ever wrote. The report is one of many to describe the massive surveillance program that China has imposed in Xinjiang, using not only old-fashioned informers and police checkpoints, but artificial intelligence, phone spyware and biometric data. Every tool that a future, larger totalitarian state may use to control citizens is currently being tested in Xinjiang.
Under “terrorist” legislation in Xinjiang, anyone can be arrested for anything — for expressing an allegiance to Uighur culture, for example, or for reading the Koran. Once inside the “re-education” camps, arrestees are forced to speak in Mandarin Chinese and made to recite praises of the Communist Party. Those who break the rules receive punishments no different from those meted out to prisoners in the Soviet Gulag: “They put me in a small solitary confinement cell,” said one former prisoner cited in the Canadian report, “in a space of about two by two meters. I was not given any food or drink, my hands were handcuffed in the back, and I had to stand for 24 hours without sleep.”
As in the 1930s, there are explanations for the world’s lack of outrage. Newspaper editors are distracted by bigger, more immediate stories. Politicians and foreign policy “realists” would say there are more important issues we need to discuss with China: Business is business. Xinjiang is a distant place for people in Europe and North America; it seems alien and uninteresting. None of that changes the fact that in a distant corner of China, a totalitarian state — of the kind we all now denounce and condemn — has emerged in a new form. “Never again?” I don’t think so: It’s already happening.

Earlier in the opinion piece, Applebaum wrote:

The audiences I speak to are sometimes unsatisfied with these answers. They want to talk about the perfidy of the Left or the New York Times, or they want to blame the U.S. president at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt. But blame is easy. Far more difficult, both for them and for me, is to admit something more profound: That precisely the same indifference, and the same cynicism, exist today. (from, ‘Never again?’ It’s already happening. -- By Annie Applebaum, The Washington Post, Feb.15,2019) 

This indifference and cynicism, what Hedges and his cadre write about, is the obfuscating shadow lingering over awareness of what is happening, what is the truth, and what is our paralyzed stare into the headlights.

I love these writers. They disturb me. In that disturbance, the sound of a horn, the need to leap immediately from the crushing crash of ignorance and ignominy -- to the side, the side leading to the woods, warned and frightened, signaling what has to be done not to be someone else's catch.

note:

No practice gatherings will be held this weekend.

the world itself was pure

Thinking about Shinkichi Takahashi, poems and zen:

In his 50^th year he was married and finally achieved a period of great happiness and serenity as he lived out a quiet life with his wife and two daughters. Such a state of peace seemed unlikely in his younger days. In 1985 he produced what is probably considered to be his most famous piece of work – Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi – and this was translated into English and published in the year 2000, thus giving people all over the world the chance to appreciate the art of Zenist poetry. Here is an extract from one of his poems:
 His work was known much earlier though in both the United States and England. One American art critic, writing in the Hudson Review in the 1970s, wrote the following about Takahashi:
 The poet had a view, typical of a Zenist, that the world itself was pure and was only “fouled by our dripping mind-stuff”. Art and life, for him, where one and the same. His early years of turbulence taught him the valuable lessons from which he learned to write in a unique way. 

Shinkichi Takahashi died in June 1987 at the age of 86.

https://mypoeticside.com/poets/shinkichi-takahashi-poems 

What we listen for.

What we look for.

final uneasiness

I bought his book of poems at the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal in the 1960s.

One poem,  since then, has chagrined: 

The Warning
        BY ROBERT CREELEY 

For love—I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes. 

Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.

Where was I going that day spanning Hudson River between Washington Heights and Fort Lee? Invariably, as lost-in-place then as now.

The book of poems, For Love: Poems 1950-1960, by Robert Creeley, still with me somewhere in my mess of books, was published in 1962 by Scribner.

Attending poetry readings in Manhattan during the 60s and 70s, the voices of Waldman, Levertov, Snyder, Hecht, Ginsberg, Strand, Kinnell, Corso, Edson, Ferlinghetti, Berrigan, Rich, Lowell, Stryk, Paston, Mariani, Berry, Everson (Bro. Antoninus), Gregg, Harjo, Koch, Merrill, Olds, Pinsky, Ashbury, O'Gorman, and Hazo. Delighted, I listened.

Then there is this:

The Rain 
    BY ROBERT CREELEY 

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness. 

Robert Creeley, “The Rain” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press.

Somewhere along the line, the words came for me, pointing out that:

Poetry

is being

written.

toxic loops

True

we want things

to be

true

in accordance

with fact

or reality

Once so

valued

as "just

like this"

what is true

is breath to

suffocating

souls

staggering

toxic loops

around

lies

hearing an old word new

This new understanding of 'kin-dom' is well worth the price of a recent subscription to Sojourners.

I've never been comfortable with the concept/metaphor of 'kingdom.'

In the 37 times that Jesus describes the reign of God in the Gospels, not once is the kingdom of God like a kingdom of earth. Thirty-seven times Jesus reshapes the imaginations of his followers. Thirty-seven times Jesus tells them a story to help them remake the only world they know. 

The world of the disciples is one of domination and violence. Their world is one in which the wealthy and powerful rule over the weak, take advantage of that weakness, crush it under the boot, and lash it with the whip. It is a world in which Caesar is both king and god, a cruel, irrational tyrant who takes vengeance against his enemies.
... 

Ada María Isasi-Díaz was visiting her friend, a Franciscan nun name Georgene Wilson, when she heard the word for the first time: kin-dom rather than kingdom. I imagine that as she sat with this word, turning it over in her mind, something clicked about her own life. For Latinas, she would go on to write, kin-dom offered a description of liberation that was “self-determining” within an interconnected community, seeing God’s movement emerge from la familia, from the family God makes. 

Kin-dom became the language she used to describe God’s libertad, the liberation of God at work among people, the good news for those who suffer at the hands of kings. Isasi-Díaz dedicated her life to the work of mujerista theology, where the center of theological study is borne from the experience of Latinas. She wrote that, for Latinas, this liberation emerges from opening up space where love invites us into kinship, invites us to join others at a table that grows. Liberation is found not in hope deferred to another world, to life after death, but what can be created now.

(--from, The Kin-dom of Christ, in Sojourners, COMMENTARY, By Melissa Florer-Bixler 11-20-2018) 

New relationship, with one another, with God.

Kin-ship.

With gratitude to Ada María Isasi-Díaz (1943-2012).

shocked

Can we be sure if anyone has ever existed?

Though we can’t be sure if he truly existed, Bodhidharma is the legendary founder of Zen Buddhism in China. He is said to have arrived in China about 520. (Buddhism had by then been known in China for about 400 years.) He was soon summoned to the emperor, who had questions for him. 

“According to the teachings, how do I understand the merit I have accrued in building temples and making donations to monks?” the emperor asked. 

Bodhidharma, usually depicted as a scowling, hooded, bearded figure, shot back, “There is no merit.” 

“What then is the meaning of the Buddha’s Holy Truths?” the emperor asked. 

“Empty, nothing holy,” Bodhidharma replied. 

Shocked, the emperor imperiously asked, “Who addresses me thus?” 

“I don’t know,” Bodhidharma replied, turned on his heel and left the court, to which he never returned. He repaired to a distant monastery, where, it is said, he sat facing a wall for nine years, in constant meditation. 

(--from, What Is Zen Buddhism and How Do You Practice It?  BY NORMAN FISCHER| DECEMBER 13, 2017,  in, Lion"s Roar 

Seems to me that constant meditation is where you go when existence is called into question. 

desperate times, desperate measures

I take refuge in West Wing on Netflix..

Balm for a troubled spirit.

niege matin

snow

comes daylight

veiled white

viper's poison seeping toward heart

I've never liked the point of view that the world is corrupt. That 'sin' and 'evil' prowl and slerk, seeking the ruin of souls.

Easier to understand is ignorance, not-yet-awake or not-free from narrow self-absorbed and self-limited myopia, intentional and willful narcissism intent on defining the world as one's specific orbit, detached from what is the reality, namely, the overlapping interconnection of each thing/being with all things/beings.

Yet, the word corrupt applies. As does sin. So too evil.

Even if they are not considered as supernatural tropes evoking battle narratives of good versus evil, God versus Satan, or whatever other antipathies come to mind -- there is a common recognition that something binary and antithetical is actively at issue.

I see the current president of the United States as perpetuating falsehood and divisive antipathy. He cannot, it seems, help himself out of his sullen, mocking, crude, bullying, intemperate post-truth attempts to actively destroy good-will, compassion, and kindness in the populace he influences.

It is beyond frustrating to watch him. It is, rather, the experience of decadent fiction and designer falsehood become mainstream normalcy.

It unnerves.

And enervates.

A viper's poison seeping toward heart.

While we watch.

And wait.

For...

what cannot be

envisioned

rethink the day

A post-truth presidency. No objective facts. Only emotion and belief and opinion based on self-interest and self-aggrandizement.

It dawns on us.

the transcendent within

It's time for this emergent thought: 

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe?        (--Richard Rohr,, Another Name for Every Thing, Tuesday, February 12, 2019)

Now ... 

we're listening! 

and may your loving kindness descend upon us

It's 6° outside

At barn door I chant morning invitatory

Firewood and far stars in antiphonal stillness

for no one's benefit

In imagination, the journey is to sylvan monastic solitude, the arc of day and night following itself (Itself?) through demarcations the human mind has made of cycles of gravity and motion.

In fact, the biopic is plebeian, inconsequential, the transcript of failure and impertinence.

And yet, here I am typing these words to an empty space in a meaningless construct recording nothing of value for no one's benefit.

It is a great joy to be so doing.

“Numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, nunquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset.” 

“Never is he more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself” 

(Cicero, attributing Cato, in Arendt The Life of the Mind, p.8 1971, 1981))

I finish the book Doing Time With Charlie by Kay Page. I knew him at Maine State Prison in 2006. I liked him. He allowed as how no one had ever asked publicly what he or others thought about matters of scripture or theology or spirituality in the context of a Saturday Service. I suspect the notion of dialoguing is unpopular among those whose certainty and proselytismic reflex urge unquestioning following of the proselytiser's set and doctrinaire message. He was pleased to have been asked.

We were thinking together.

Thinking does not bring knowledge as do the sciences 

Thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom. 

Thinking does not solve the riddles of the universe. 

Thinking does not endow us directly with the power to act. 

(--MARTIN HEIDEGGER, in What is Called Thinking, p.168))

It's no surprise so few find thinking attractive. Easier to bask in opinion and belief.

Of course, I don't know what thinking is. It has something to do with presencing.

Manifesting the coming-to-be of what is most real.

Without engaging in opinion or belief, what is most real?

I remember reading Sertillanges (1863-1948) in school:

“Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden indeterminate thoughts; it serves as a check on our judgements, tries out our new ideas, keeps up our ardor, and inflames our enthusiasm.”
― Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods 

“It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth.”
― Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

Doing nothing.

By oneself.

Finally, Jean Anouilh's words toward end of his play Becket:

ACT FOUR

BECKET. [ . . . . ] It is not for me to win you round. I have only to say no to you.  

KING. But you must be logical, Becket!  

BECKET. No. That isn't necessary, my Liege. We must only do—absurdly—what we have been given to do—right to the end.  

KING. Yet I know you well enough, God knows. Ten years we spent together, little Saxon! At the hunt, at the whorehouse, at war; carousing all night long the two of us; in the same girl's bed, sometimes . . . and at work in the Council Chamber too. Absurdly. That word isn't like you.  

BECKET. Perhaps. I am no longer like myself.  

KING. Have you been touched by grace?  

BECKET. Not by the one you think. I am not worthy of it.  

KING. Did you feel the Saxon in you coming out, despite Papa's good collaborator's sentiments?  

BECKET. No. Not that either.  

KING. What then?  

BECKET. I felt for the first time that I was being entrusted with something, that's all—there in that empty cathedral, somewhere in France, that day when you ordered me to take up this burden. I was a man without honor. And suddenly I found it—one I never imagined would ever become mine—the honor of God. A frail, incomprehensible honor, vulnerable as a boy‑King fleeing from danger.  

 [p. 112]

---

SOURCE: Anouilh, Jean. Becket; or, The Honor of God. Translated by Lucienne Hill. New York: Coward-McCann, 1960. 128 pp.

Absurdly...

Yes! 

note: no practice, Sunday 10feb19 & 17feb19

Email sent today to those whose emails we have:

Greetings,
Our dooryard is just too hard-ice to walk or drive on.
Hence, we will not be having practice tonight.
Also, we will be away next weekend. Hence no practice the 17th.
The next Sunday Evening Practice will be 24feb19.
Thanks, and good cheer!
s&b&r&p&c 

See you on the 24th. 

white cup, V8 juice

Our wonderful conversation —

He breathes, I breathe, he breathes.

Perfect understanding, simply, there 

then what happens

The work, the rabbi says, is soul finishing with dead body

The grief it feels

The way forgetting drips, very very slowly, from hard hard ice

friday mornings

 These numbers are harsh.

Even with all the attention it receives, the scale of incarceration and punishment in the United States can still be hard to comprehend. On any given day, about 1.5 million people are in state and federal prisons; another 750,000 are in county jails (most still awaiting trial); and over 4.5 million are on probation or parole. Over the course of a year, over 600,000 people enter prison, and roughly the same number are sent home; and over 10 million people are admitted to jails annually. About 2.5 million more enter or leave parole or probation. 

Put differently, the United States is home to about 5 percent of the world’s population but holds over 20 percent of the world’s prisoners and nearly one-third of its women prisoners. The only countries with rates even close to ours are places like El Salvador, Turkmenistan and Cuba; allies like Canada, France and Germany have rates on the order of one-tenth ours (yet have similar crime rates and substantially lower homicide rates). Ours is a massive experiment in punitive social control that imposes disproportionate costs on people of color and those who are poor—and one that is nearly impossible to justify even remotely, at least on public safety grounds.

(in, Why today’s criminal justice reform efforts won’t end mass incarceration, by John Pfaff, December 21, 2018, America Magazine)

We sit together.

It's not much.

But it's something.

Real.

anōdunos

In prison, CJ gives wood sculpture
book on stand, poems and quotes
laser engraved -- "Was gonna write
on it 'Good riddance'."  I wondered
aloud how much I could get on eBay.

calling out

I can’t help but wonder

how to survive the stupidity

that man sets to drowning