morphing

1.

He slept last evening

after prune juice

and water

as lullabies played

Brahms and Disney

two weeks until

first birthday.



2.

She slept for

good as wood chair

pulled to side

of bed, I sit --

flickering residue

images of prior

night cable news

no longer of

interest.



3.

The nurse's dog

in main lobby

separates head

from doll's body

as CNA fills notes

her droll words

explaining

everything.

void does in some marvelous way 'exist'

 Some wonder what will happen following what we've known as religion disappears.

In Anatheism, Richard Kearney sets a path of returning to God "after God". This is a road map for those who have moved intellectually away from the notion of God. Following the hermenutic tradition of Paul Ricoeur, Kearney sets way forward for adherents of the "death of God" theology, French phenomenology and literary deconstruction, to make a theological turn toward a Western and Christian notion of God. This returning to God is not a religious turn, but a hermenutic one. It does not promise salvation or religious certainty, rather shows a way of engaging in the world.  

Kearney analyses the literary tradition of the west as well the Abrahamic tradition. He locates the movement towards God, as lying in hospitality to the stranger and the alien. When we now accept God, we accept him/her as stranger and alien. This movement find its physical reference not in ritual, prayer, existential certainty or wish fulfillment but in the way we engage in the world ― a world that is strange and alien. Anatheism thus lies neither in the spheres of atheism or of theism, but in the yet unexplored lands of A/theism.  

Anatheism is a work of weak theology [*], other authors in this tradition include John Caputo, Peter Rollins and Gianni Vattimo. 

 (--Chris Samuel, (non)Conformist, Answered Jun 11, 2013, Quora) https://www.quora.com/What-is-anatheism

[*] re. weak theology, see Spring 2015 Report on Weak Theology, Westar Institute

Some wonder what will happen following what we've known as self disappears.

Bernadette Roberts' The Experience of No-Self is a remarkable and valuable book. It is an account of an inner journey she went on after many years of trying to live out the Catholic contemplative life, a journey that ended in what she called the experience of no-self. But this very word no-self and an attentive reading of her description of her experiences reveal an inner structure and language that is much closer to Buddhist enlightenment than Christian mystical union, a fact made all the more interesting because the author was not trying to explain herself in Buddhist categories. 

She will say, for example, "Where there is no personal self, there is no personal God." (p. 24) or God "is all that exists... God is all that is." (p. 31) The individuality of the object observed is overshadowed by "that into which it blends and ultimately disappears." (p. 34) What is is that which can neither be subject or object. (p. 67) God is not self-conscious (p. 75) and we must come to "terms with the nothingness and emptiness of existence" (p. 75), which seems equivalent to "living out my life without God." "I had to discover it was only when every single, subtle, experience and idea - conscious and unconscious - had come to an end, a complete end, that it is possible for the truth to reveal itself." (p. 75) 

But if there is no self, "What is this that walks, thinks and talks?" (p. 78) The end of the journey is "absolute nothingness" (p. 81), but "out of nothingness arises the greatest of great realities."(p. 81) It is the "one existent that is Pure Subjectivity" and "there is no multiplicity of existences; only what Is has existence that can expand itself into an infinite variety of forms..." (p. 83) Our sense of self rests on our self-reflection and "when we can no longer verify or check back (reflect) on the subject of awareness, we lose consciousness of there being any subject of awareness at all." (p. 86) This leads to the "silence of no-self." (p. 87) 

1 don't think it is necessary to go to great lengths to draw out Buddhist, especially Zen, parallels to these thoughts. There we will find talk of no-mind, and letting go of body and mind, and the question of who is walking, and the famous saying that emptiness is form and form is emptiness and so forth. Let's let one brilliant passage from Huang Po suffice: "When your glance falls on a grain of dust, what you see is identical with all the vast world-systems with their great rivers and mighty hills. To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe. Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of Mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void and yet this Mind to which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this I mean that it does exist, but in a way too marvelous for us to comprehend. It is an existence that is no existence, a non-existence which is nevertheless existence. So this true Void does in some marvelous way 'exist"'. (The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, P. 108) 

Bernadette Roberts as a Catholic and someone relatively unfamiliar with Buddhism has rendered an important testimony to the universality of this kind of mystical experience. But inevitably, she has had to face the question of its relationship to her own Christian contemplative heritage, and it is here that her conclusions need a careful examination. Since she had a deep life of prayer in the Christian contemplative tradition before she went on this journey that ended in the experience of no-self, it is understandable that she will see this experience as the next stage in the Christian contemplative journey, and a stage that the Christian mystics like John of the Cross know very little about. (The one exception is Meister Eckhart, a predilection which is shared by D.T. Suzuki.) Thus she is forced to put the no-self experience at a level higher than the spiritual marriage described by John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and therefore place her own experience above that of the Church's mystical doctors. I don't think this interpretation is correct. This mysticism of the no-self, as well as Zen enlightenment, is not a supernatural mysticism that comes from grace and leads to an experience of God's presence and of sharing in His life. It is a very different kind of experience that attains to the absolute, to God, but through emptiness. (For details on this position see God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, and Mysticism, Metaphysics and Maritain, both by James Arraj.)

(--from, Inner Explorations, J. Arraj)  https://www.innerexplorations.com/ewtext/br.htm

That's Arraj.

Here's what Bernadette Roberts (who died November 2017) said:

There is really no great mystery about “self” or man’s self-awareness. The real mystery is the true nature of “what” remains when it is gone – has ceased to function. With the cessation of self-awareness, all the experiential effects it generated are gone in the blink of an eye. And what were these effects? They were the experience of “being”, of “life”, “soul”, “energy”, “mind and will”, “interiority” (within-ness), the “affective system”, even theawareness of ”being one with God” - all these experiences are suddenly blown out and gone forever! Now there is no center (God) and no circumference (self). In truth, this “blow out”(or cessation) is the only death-experience man will ever experience – could ever have, in fact. So take away self-awareness with all its experiential effects, and the real question becomes “what is the true nature of what remains beyond all self?” This is the realmystery of man and the real question he needs to have answered.13 No idea in the mind could ever come up with a satisfactory answer to this mystery, only God can reveal the truenature of “what” remains beyond all self and individuation. Since only the Creator knows the true essence of man’s common human nature, only God can reveal its eternal oneness with God. I have written a book about this revelation, and its title is The Real Christ. 

THE END  

Some food for thought: Some time ago, listening to the quiz show Jeapardy, one of the questions was “What is the name of the German psychiatrist who had a patient say to him,“Doctor, I have no self”? No one on the panel knew the answer - which turned out to be “Doctor Alzheimer”. For people who want to get rid of their “self”, at least Alzheimers might be one way to go. 

I have never advocated the idea of "getting rid of self" - why? Because no one knows what self is – until it is gone. Until people get to the Unitive State (what some call their "True Self"), all they know of self has been what Jung called the "ego-self". But who has ever advocated getting rid of the "True self" and its union with God? NOBODY! No human being can go beyond this Unitive State or could even think about doing so. Going beyond one’s (self’s) union with God – in this life at least – is solely God’s doing for God’s own purposes. 

(from, What is Self? A Research Paper by Bernadette Roberts )

Clearly, there's more to mull here.

We will.

I add W.S. Merwin's poem as epilogue:

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day 

When the last fires will wave to me 

And the silence will set out 

Tireless traveler 

Like the beam of a lightless star 

Then I will no longer 

Find myself in life as in a strange garment 

Surprised at the earth 

And the love of one woman 

And the shamelessness of men 

As today writing after three days of rain 

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease 

And bowing not knowing to what 

-- W. S. Merwin, “For the Anniversary of My Death (1927–2019)
                 (Winner of National Book Award and 2009 Pulitzer Prize)

don't know

This, from Friday afternoon's Poetry, Tea, and Thee at Quarry Hill:

Spring Morning

Where am I going? I don't quite know.

Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-

Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-

Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

Where am I going? The clouds sail by,

Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.

Where am I going? The shadows pass,

Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.

If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,

You'd sail on water as blue as air,

And you'd see me here in the fields and say:

"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

Where am I going? The high rooks call:

"It's awful fun to be born at all."

Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:

"We do have beautiful things to do."

If you were a bird, and lived on high,

You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,

You'd say to the wind when it took you away:

"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going? I don't quite know.

What does it matter where people go?

Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-

Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

(--poem by A.A. Milne,)

one called into a life

Happy to read this piece by Simon Critchley in NYTimes, THE STONE, 3APR19, Athens in Pieces: The Happiest Man I’ve Ever Met.

At our hermitage, these words:

     Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone;

     Stepping aside to make room for Another.

The monastic vocation and practice invites the one called into a life of solitude in the midst of community -- with respect, recollection, and engaged kindness.

following God

To be alone

with God --

monastic practice.

To be alone

in community --

hermit grace.

To be alone

with the

Alone --

anatheism

we've done here

Communication

is the practice

of listening

and speaking

with one another

toward achieving

clarity moving

into action

benefitting

each

at the end of the day

melt

river

through

Augusta

ice floes

one duck

slaloms 

song to heal our time

let's look at each other
let's look at each other
let's look at each other

with love

let's listen to one another
let's listen to one another
let's listen to one another

with  light

let's find what is true
let's find what is true
let's find what is true

with no fear

and when we come to see
and when we come to hear
and when we come to feel

there will be peace

hospice house, Saturday evening

1.

In the room

he, not there,

only recently

wife takes guitar

so


2.

In another room

she, not there

hay square meal

lets family

go


3.

In rooms

sitting with

absence realizes

what is

unknown


4.

if asked

after silence

all response

adsum

dazzle gradually

At Friday Evening Conversation, someone opened for the rest of us the maze-like stretch of E.E.Cummings

My father moved through theys of we, 

singing each new leaf out of each tree 

(and every child was sure that spring 

danced when she heard my father sing) 

then let men kill which cannot share, 

let blood and flesh be mud and mire, 

scheming imagine,passion willed, 

freedom a drug that's bought and sold 

giving to steal and cruel kind, 

a heart to fear,to doubt a mind, 

to differ a disease of same,c

onform the pinnacle of am

(--from poem My Father Moved Through Dooms Of Love , by e e cummings) 

That, and several Emily Dickinson poems made for a delightful hearing and wending conversation.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)                                                                                                                                      

                                                  BY  EMILY DICKINSON  

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — 

Success in Circuit lies 

Too bright for our infirm Delight 

The Truth's superb surprise 

As Lightning to the Children eased 

With explanation kind 

The Truth must dazzle gradually 

Or every man be blind — 

We see better in one another's company

direction

Some feel hope is vital for the health of a people.

1. I hope Robert Mueller has a backup copy of his report.
2. I hope Donald Trump decides being president is not his cup of tea.
3. I hope Republicans in House and Senate become fewer and fewer.
4. I hope paper ballot backups are mandated in the 2020 election.
5. I hope citizens demand intelligent, ethical, and inspired leadership for the country.
6. I hope Russia doesn't own the remnants of American democracy.

Hope feels useless.

Action seeks direction.

no way

The kind Baptist man told us as we carried a hospital bed

to a room above the gymnasium that Jesus was the only way

I asked him which way did Jesus follow

There was no basketball to be found to take a shot

We settled for polite pleasantries until we said goodbye

he going his

we going our

way 

so do we all

There is a disruption in the noosphere

Someone is thinking disorderly

Everyone is off-kilter

Suffering

our journey, alone in community

Pope Francis has had some awkward encounters trying to prevent those greeting him from attempting to kiss his ring, a traditional gesture of respect and acknowledgement of authority. It appears he'd like a more humble expression of relationship.

I recommended to America Magazine that a simple practice of Gassho would be an option to investigate using in all encounters.

Here's how a piece on Being Zen speaks of Gassho:

How Does Gassho Relate to Zen and Buddhism? 

Zen didn’t invent the gesture, as the hands-together bow is used throughout Asia in countries such as China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and India. However, the practice took on a different significance once Zen began spreading throughout Japan in the 8th century CE. 

Whereas gassho in its traditional sense was an act of greeting, apology, or reverence for another, gassho in Zen is about showing respect and reverence for life and serves as an act of humility where one can practice letting of the ego. In this way, gassho in Zen is a powerful practice which allows the practitioner to deeply touch their own spirit and that of the world around them. 

The great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh said this of the significance of the practice:

“Bowing is a deep form of communication. A bow may mean hello, thank you, good-bye, or excuse me. But it’s not just a way to be polite. It’s a way of recognizing and honoring the Buddha or the awakened nature in each of us. We bring our palms together carefully to form a beautiful lotus flower at the level of our heart. Then we look at the eyes of the person we will bow to and we smile.  

We say silently, “A lotus for you,” as we breathe in and, “A Buddha to be!” as we breathe out and bow from our waist. Then we straighten up, look at the eyes of the other person, and smile. Isn’t that an easy gift to give someone?”

Respect and reverence for life is a core principle of Zen practice and something which is symbolized in the act of gassho. In Zen, practitioners bow to everything, everyone, and for almost every occasion. 

The practice is a constant declaration of reverence for the world as a whole. When you enter the Zendo (a Zen meditation hall within a Zen center or monastery), you bow. When you enter the lecture hall, you bow. When you arrive in front of your zafu (a Zen meditation pillow) for meditation, you bow. Wherever you go, and whatever you do, you gassho. 

The Zen practice of gassho is, in a way, an affirmation. An affirmation of your commitment to respect and care for the world around you in the same way that you would care for yourself. It serves then as an opportunity for more deeply connecting with the world around you, thereby nourishing you in the process.

(--from,  HOW THE ZEN PRACTICE OF GASSHO CAN ADD BALANCE AND MEANING TO YOUR LIFE BeingZen.com  

 Humility is balance.

You and I, face to face, continue our journey, alone in community.

morning lauds

Is the cross kenotic self-emptying?

Is this what is meant by glorying in the cross of Christ?

Is this what catholic means -- that if one does it, all feel and benefit by it?

Emptying oneself --

Becoming free

For all

sand

all is

not well

in the land

of the free

and the home

of the incredibly

brave --

truth be told

lies will destroy

us

longing for the true sound of...

What do the Jewish Tanakh, Christian Gospel and Letters, Hindu Vedas, Buddhist Dhammapada and Writings, Confucian Analects, Taoist Tao Te Ching, Muslim Suras, and worldwide poetry of every stripe -- have in common?

Words.  

One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. 

The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words – an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words – is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created. 

We have forfeited the reverence for words. Purification of language, therefore, remains a major task in theological discipline. Beginning by emphasizing deep sensitivity to words, its goal must be the sanctification of human speech. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. To relish more of his wisdom, read this review of "Abraham Heschel: Essential Writings," edited by his daughter Susannah Heschel that contains numerous quotes from Rabbi Heschel.   https://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/monks-our-midst/rabbi-abraham-heschel-reverence-words 

Words are our true religion.

The question is asked: How religious are we? How religious am I?

My word! What a question!

So many words these days resemble the picture sketched in what a friend sends in these words:

"...the contraction of existence into a spiritual will to destroy, without the guidance of a spiritual will to order." (p.319, in Age of Anger: A History of the Present, By Pankaj Mishra)

The shocking and disturbing words of right wing politicians and fawning followers are matched with the apoplectic and outraged words of left wing counterparts. The centrist crowd straddles the seesaw with a shaky aplomb seeking to stake some solid rootedness in traditional law and values referring to the Constitution and a loose obeisance to a Christian canon.

Words become empty missiles launched against the other. And 'the other' is everyone outside narrow ribbon of fabricated enclave of unquestioning loyalty.

Martin Heidegger asked questions about these issues. He especially asked, "what are poet's for?"

what are poets for? They are not exactly philosophers, though they often try to explain the world and humankind’s place within it. They are not exactly moralists, for at least since the nineteenth century their primary concern has rarely been to tell us in homiletic fashion how to live. But they are often exceptionally lucid or provocative in their articulation of the relationship between internal and external worlds, between being and dwelling. Romanticism and its afterlife, I have been arguing throughout this book, may be thought of as the exploration of the relationship between external environment and ecology of mind.  

“What are poets for?” (“Wozu Dichter?”) asked Martin Heidegger in the title of a lecture delivered on the twentieth anniversary of the death of Rainer Maria Rilke. In his later philosophy, Heidegger meditated deeply upon three questions. “What are poets for?” was one of them, “What does it mean to dwell upon the earth?” was the second, and “What is the essence of technology?” was the third. Heidegger’s answers to the three questions turn out to be closely inter-related.

(--in The Winter Anthology, article What Are Poets For? by Jonathan Bate)  

 Poet Friedrich Hölderlin] says to us: poetically man dwells on this earth. 

The curious dance of Shiva and Kali comes to mind:

Shiva is the silent, eternal all pervading aspect of the Transcendental Reality. Shiva is often depicted as spending years meditating unperturbed. 

Mother Kali is the dynamic aspect of the Transcendental Reality. Kali in Sanskrit literally means ‘time’ 

Kali is depicted as dancing on Shiva to illustrate the interaction between Shiva the silent, all pervading force and Kali the destroyer of Time. Kali creates the cycles of time on the underlying structure of Shiva. 

Kali and Shiva are very close. They could be considered to be the Yin and Yang of creation.

http://www.writespirit.net/spirituality/the-cosmic-gods/the-relationship-between-mother-kali-and-lord-shiva/ 

We seesaw between creation and destruction, between order and chaos.

Our task is to intimately engage and word reality in such a way that the inner dynamic between the edges of wildly conflictual experience is the sounding of a radical compassion for the suffering practitioners of everyday living -- for the ideologues and the pragmatists, staggering, wending their way through life in the world -- as technology makes the peregrination seem easier and less worrisome by concealing the underlying issues.

Jonathan Bate continues:

In Heidegger’s theory, when man is driving technology, he does not become standing-reserve. Technological man orders the world, challenges it, “enframes” it. “Enframing” (Ge-stell) is the essence of modern technology. Enframing means making everything part of a system, thus obliterating the unconcealed being-there of particular things. Enframing is a mode of revealing which produces a styrofoam cup rather than a silver chalice. The chalice’s mode of being in the world, its Dasein, embraces aesthetic and social traditions—it is shaped so as to be beautiful, it is associated with customs such as sacrificial libations and the sharing of a communal cup. The styrofoam cup has no such associations. Its being is purely instrumental. The styrofoam cup is a symptom of modern technology’s forgetting of Dasein. “Above all, enframing conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance…Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding sway of truth.” The techne of the craftsman, though it was not internal to the physis of the chalice, nevertheless revealed the presence, the shining-forth, the truth of the chalice. The enframing of modern technology conceals the truth of things. 

Both Plato and Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. The history of technology is a history of the loss of that wonder, a history of disenchantment. Bruce Foltz explicates Heidegger’s version of the story: 

The need that [philosophy’s original] astonishment engenders is that entities, emerging of their own accord (phusei), must stand in unconcealment. The completion or fulfillment, then, of the necessity arising from this fundamental astonishment lies in techne, which keeps in unconcealment the rule of phusis. Yet precisely in techne as the fulfillment of this fundamental mood lies the danger (die Gefahr) of its distraction and ultimately its destruction; that is, there is a possibility that techne, originally allowing phusis to hold sway in unconcealment, could become detached from the mood of astonishment before entities in their self-emergence and hence become willfull and arbitrary in its independence from phusis. It is through such a “defection from the beginning” that unconcealment could become distorted into correctness, that the “letting-reign” (Waltenlassen) of phusis in unconcealment could become a demand for constant presence, that thinking could become metaphysics, and that the techne of the Greeks could be utterly transformed into modern technology.

(Bate, Ibid)  

Words and bodies, in poetic phenomenology, appear together.

When word deteriorates, so also do bodies.

When word is inchoate origin, incarnation originates.

When word presents itself, Itself emerges.

We seek the inspiration of word.

We long for the true sound of...

A kind of manifesting revelation,

What Is Originally Being Said.

a poet leaves his words

W.S. Merwin died this last fortnight (15Mar).

Witness   

I want to tell what the forests 
were like  

I will have to speak 
in a forgotten language 

      (Poem by W.S. Merwin) 

Thank you William! 

right

Thank you Mr Mueller.

Thank you Mr Trump..

Now, then, might we proceed with matters of governance, maturely and wisely?

'Tis a course of conduct devoutly to be wished.

will we come to see

When final breath is taken and released, what is it that occurs?

The particular form that we call "the body" becomes still and inanimate.

We sometimes say that the "soul" has left the body. Is that true?

Or has the body in its particular detectable form now become undetectable?

Yes, the particular form we've come to know lays still and unbreathing on the bed.

But where does the undetectable formless embodiment released from previous particular form go?

Has it become formless being?

Are our senses not capable to follow the diffused breath now exhaled and intermingled with every breath exhaled in the last 4.5 billion years of earth and the last 66 million years of man's tenancy?

Have we made the mistake of calculating the being of being and the being of particular beings as not of the same lineage?

When final exhalation of particular forms occurs, we are witnessing the continuation of wholeness in ways less and less observable.

Like the observation of silent shikantaza, we gaze at what is before us, seeing and unseeing.

By and by -- will we come to be what we see and unsee? 

ligatura naturans

We are.

Whatever distinction added afterward -- body, spirit, mind. soul. elements, matter, human, divine, reason, emotions -- merely follow.

In this article I propose a theory of the biological and embodied nature of religion. This theory rests upon two premises: (1) Human (and all animal) embodiment places a sentient organism in a meaningful environment, that is, correlates an autopoietic self with a meaningful environment; here “meaning” entails both cognition and value, this latter involving some affect and an aesthetic dimension. (2) All human meanings are embodied, including cultural meanings based upon language. Thus, human beings are radically embodied. 

While these two claims stand undisputed among scholars working in em- bodied or enactive cognition,1 the impetus for this article is that many scholars of religion, as well many scholars in the wider academy, often ignore and often hold beliefs or assumptions that contradict the radical nature of our embodiment—even as they may engage the topic of “the body.” Such contrary views ultimately rest on some version of mind-body dualism, which in turn rests upon a picture where humans can abscond from our bodies, including the language and traditions that are extensions of, indeed forms of, our embodiment, in hopes of reaching a God-like vision of reality. Sometimes this entails a narrow and discarnate focus on language. Kimerer LaMothe observes how many scholars of religion assume the primacy of the linguistic and ignore or subsume the bodily.2 Donovan Schaefer decries the following notion of the body influenced by the “linguistic turn”: “A body determined by language—a deanimalized body—is a blank slate without preexisting affective dispositions.”

(from, A Theory of the Embodied Nature of Religion*, David Nikkel / University of North Carolina at Pembroke 3 The Journal of Religion, 137-138)                                     

 It seems to me: To be is to be religious.

Whatever thought, belief, apprehension, or practice follows upon our being as and where we are, firstly we are.

Related and connected, we are.

Religiously.

Ligatura naturans.

merely where I dwell

No longer thinking about god, God becomes all not thought about.

Walking up stairs, sitting in chair, sipping coffee, watching squirrel.

There is no other place to be; here is what is here.

Do I pray?

I look for nothing not here.

If someone asks for prayer, I say yes.

Do I think of Jesus? Only now does that question resonate.

At no other time does Jesus come to mind.

I glance within.

I see nothing there...

Just within itself.

Expanse beyond expanse, beyond awareness, within immense within.

Do not ask if I believe in God. I cannot answer that question.

I cannot answer because I cannot see beyond that question.

There is nothing I can say that would not sound absurd.

God is beyond belief.

God is this moment speaking. God is this moment coming to be.

I do not believe in this moment.

It is merely where I dwell.

au printemps, turiya (तुरीय), venīte

It is possible we are becoming lost in victimhood.

Yes, those with money and power have ruled over those without money and power. And yes, the human race seems to be transmogrified into persons of personal opinion rather than persons of relatable rational thought and balanced emotional equanimity.

Universities, students and administration, seem intent on politically censuring or muffling different points of view, focusing on personal pique and social adumbration, rather than intelligent dialogue and dialectics fostering clear and response-inviting interactive conversation.

Blueprint” — and its theory about the evolutionary origins of virtue — became his balm. That’s clear in the book itself, which makes unmistakable allusions to the Yale ugliness. 

“I have seen the effects of overidentifying with one’s group and witnessed mass delusions up close,” he writes. He rues America’s intense polarization, which perhaps makes this “an odd time for me to advance the view that there is more that unites us than divides us.” But advance that view he does.  

His reasoning, oversimplified, is this: Complex societies are possible and durable only when people are emotionally invested in, and help, one another; we’d be living in smaller units and more solitary fashions if we weren’t equipped for such collaboration; and human thriving within these societies guarantees future generations suited to them.  Yes, there are hideous wars and horrid leaders. But if that were the sum of us, how to explain all the peace and progress? Christakis urges a wide angle and the long view.  

“To accept this belief that human beings are evil or violent or selfish or overly tribal is a kind of moral and intellectual laziness,” he told me. It also excuses that destructiveness. “The way to repair our torn social fabric is to say: Wait a minute, that’s not quite right.” 

He mentioned theodicy, which endeavors to vindicate God’s existence despite so much suffering. “Blueprint,” he said, is sociodicy: It tries “to vindicate society despites its failures.” 

A ‘Disgusting’ Yale Professor Moves On, By Frank Bruni, NYTimes, March 19, 2019,)

It appears we are frightened. We are frightened by what we are. At core, in our 
metaphorical hearts, down to the bone.

We seem to be besieged by frightened men and women in high office who battle 
their demons on a powerful stage by projecting their fear and anger on the 
vulnerable, the unthinking, and even the dead.

It is eminently possible that the core of our individual and collective being is loving-kindness. And we might be afraid of that core.

What’s so important about loving kindness? Well, compare loving kindness with how we normally go through life:

• Normally: We get stressed, frustrated, angry, anxious, overwhelmed, and then deal with it by running away and going to comfort foods and distractions (or other comforts). With kindness: We might still feel these difficult feelings, but then give ourselves compassion and loving kindness to help deal with it.
• Normally: We mess up somehow, either by not sticking to a diet or a new habit we’re creating, or not being the person we want to be … and then we feel guilty, beat ourselves up about it, etc. With kindness: When we mess up, we notice the feelings of guilt or harshness and then deal with it by giving ourselves compassion and loving kindness.
• Normally: We get upset at someone for not acting in the way we’d like, and this can result in us being harsh with them, damaging our relationship. With kindness: We see that this person is acting less-than-ideally because of some difficulty they’re having, and we might give them some compassion or loving kindness. Our relationship gets better.

As you can see, every time we act with compassion and loving kindness, things improve. When we act with harshness or by running away, we make things worse.   

(--from, The 44: The Power of Kindness)

 It is, the Chinese curse would exemplify, an interesting time.

Inter = between.

Esse = to be.

We are beings between -- and we're not fond of being between. We don't seem to like ourselves because of where we locate ourselves; we don't seem to like one another.
So we run to a far edge, and shout from there or write memos from there.

I prefer to be in the middle.

Curiously, it is eremitic there.

We can be alone together there.

I recall a photo of someone on an elevated outcropping looking out. There were words: 
When you find me here, don't think me lonely, only alone. 

Au printemps.

Turiya (तुरीय).

Venīte!

why he eschews belief

"That's a long wait for a train don't come." (Mal, in Serenity)

Belief comes slow, late, and seldom at all.

Can we live without belief?

Can we?

of the constellation

A morning of John O'Donohue:

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing. As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel — to be here is immense. Nowhere does the silence of the infinite lean so intensely as around the form of a newly born infant. Once we arrive, we enter into the inheritance of everything that has preceded us; we become heirs to the world. To be born is to be chosen. To be created and come to birth is to be blessed. Some primal kindness chose us and brought us through the forest of dreaming until we could emerge into the clearance of individuality, with a path of life opening before us through the world. 

(--from, Kindness: The First Gift, --by John O'Donohue, syndicated from awakin.org, Nov 28, 2014) 

This day of my sister's remembrance of birth twenty years gone.

During the octave of Irish and the remembering of Joseph of the constellation of Mary with Jesus.

worth a listen

This is as good as I've heard.
Senator Warren answering "What role does faith play in your life?"

reimagine

Three words: here, now, within.

If here is presence, albeit a presence both discernible and indiscernible, might we understand Father by "here?"

If now is immediacy, albeit a now both temporal and eternal, might we understand Son by "now?"

If within is interiority, albeit an interiority in both inner and outer form and appearance, might we understand Holy Spirit by "within?"

These three words are common, everyday, pragmatic.

If our religion is to remain meaningful in an irreligious environment, we might need to reimagine traditional religious concepts into ordinary language rooted in ordinary experience.

Right here.

Right now.

Looking within.

respect the unsaid and unsayable within

That’s what John O’Donohue said in a talk we watched at practice tonight.

Happily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDSw5Vza6Yk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyCzIU9jPFk

data, Blondel, and the news

Data will be the new currency, said Stephen Fry, rather than petrol or the dollar.  (CSICon 2018 in Las Vegas on October 20, 2018)

I am rich these days. The reading I am able to access is borderless.

All this to say that Merwin’s conception of poetry is devotional in its service to other languages and cultures. The Mays of Ventadorn is not only a story about troubadours handing down their songs through the ages, but about how poetry itself seems to engineer twists of fate in the lives of its acolytes. Early in the book, Merwin relays the story of how Richard, Coeur de Lion, was captured and held prisoner while en route to England after the Third Crusade. His enemies “worked out a ransom for the king that was meant to cripple Richard’s kingdom before he was returned to it”—in addition to stipulating, among other things, that his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (or Queen Aliénor, as she’s called in the book), marry Count Leopold of Austria’s son. But apparently Richard’s jongleur, Blondel, was pursuing the king’s whereabouts on foot in Austria, when out of nowhere he heard Richard 

singing one of his poems, a tenso: a poem written as an exchange of alternate voices. When pthe [sic] first stanza ended, Blondel sang the second in reply, and so they went on to the end of the poem, each certain by then of who the other was, and Blondel spread the news.

This delightful tale may seem improbable, but is it any less amazing that Richard was the son of Aliénor, the granddaughter of Guilhem IX (considered the first troubadour), who brought their language, the langue d’oc, to Poitiers, where she established a court devoted to chivalric love and song? And that Bernart de Ventadorn followed her entourage as a courtly lover? And that the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Henry of Hohenstaufen, would sit with his prisoner, Richard, and talk about poetry, agreeing to exchange verses? Out of their chat came Richard’s most famous poem, and eight hundred years later, it became the first translation Merwin ever published. It begins, in his updated version:

No prisoner ever said what he was thinking  

straight out like someone who suffers nothing  

but to ease his mind he can make a song.  

My friends are many but are poor at giving.  

It is their shame that, with no ransom coming,  

these two winters I am held. 

(--from, Whole Earth Troubadour, by Ange Mlinko, December 7, 2017 issue, New York Review of Books )

On Friday mornings in prison, in the corner room, the men, having dispensed with tedious dayroom apophatics, cross the border into open thought, and we speak together.

With, as it were, Blondel -- spreading the news.