hosmer stillness

 

pax et bonum

For Francis

Everything went away

But Christ

Look no

Further

Than this

If you desire

All good and

Peace, look here

Write

This

Down (he told Leo)

Laughing at 

His own

Disappearance 

i’ll go with e.e.cummings

 

my mind is

by E. E. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

 (—Best Poems Encyclopedia)

karma at it's best, (she writes), a response

First there’s Mandy and wife Kathryn:

https://twitter.com/PatinkinMandy/status/1312152046175313920?s=20

 and

https://twitter.com/patinkinmandy/status/1312360154554404864?s=21

Then there’s this response to opinion piece in The New York Times from:

 Ann,  

Canada

   Oct. 2

Times Pick

I would be hypocrite if I said I wished Trump and his wife a speedy recovery. Quite frankly, I see this situation as karma at it's best. Trump, though various regressive and inhumane policies, has put so many people in danger and at risk and not just from Covid. He has never, in any of his self-promoting appearance, expressed sympathy for the many people who have died from Covid in the U.S. While he cannot be held personally responsible for the havoc the virus itself has wreaked, he has not done much to help the situation. He has set a poor example by dismissing the seriousness of the virus and supporting bizarre conspiracy theories around it. While other people are still waiting to be tested or can't afford to be tested or cared for, he and his cronies got daily testing and can well afford the medical care needed to get through it. He cares for no one but himself and his quest to stay in power. So I will shed no tears for him.

the presence of spirits and the angels

Are there Guardian Angels? Do we have Guardian Angels? 

A pious belief? Or something beyond our perception and understanding?  

From The Physics of Angels: 

"RUPERT: Do you think there are practical ways of making friends with the angels? For example, in various Jewish ceremonies there are invocations of the archangels Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel as the guardians of the four directions. And Christians in the Catholic tradition have a particular opportunity to make friends with the angels at Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, on 29 September. Do you think there are things we can do apart from being more open to God, and the spirit of truth and justice, specifically to invoke the angels? 

"MATTHEW: Yes, there are rituals and invocations that are present already in church traditions, and some that have to be resurrected. And we need new rituals to invoke angels; I think that these will come as we allow our minds to wander more into the living cosmos. Technology could play a great role in helping us envision the angels — for example, the wonderful photographs we now have of stars being born and galaxies spiraling. But I don't think we should underestimate the path of the struggle for justice and truthfulness. This is about inner work. Certainly truthfulness is. Hildegard is saying that where there is inner work, it does indeed open the communication with angels. 

"The same is true in struggling for justice. Remember that angels often visit people in prison. St. Peter was liberated from prison by an angel. Sometimes I think that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and other great souls that have spent time in prison have found angelic support there. 

"So the struggle for justice is not an abstraction. It's a way of learning and a way of opening the heart. I know one Catholic sister, for example, a very fine and holy woman, who tells me her greatest mystical experience is being taken away in the paddy wagon by police when she protests at military bases and nuclear power plants — that is when she most feels the presence of spirits and the angels. 

"So the struggle for justice is a path that opens our hearts up and allows angels to rush in. The struggle, certainly around ecological issues, is going to get more intense in our lifetime, and we need to see these struggles as rituals. And angels come to healthy and authentic rituals. 

"RUPERT: That's an exciting prospect, the struggle for justice and the struggle for a new relationship with the environment taking place in alliance with the angels and with their help. It gives it a bigger dimension. It is an empowering thought, because otherwise it's just a handful of people fighting against huge vested interests and economic and political powers. We need all the help we can get. 

"MATTHEW: And surely then guardian angels of children must be awfully interested in the ecological crisis. The children's future depends on a healthy planet."  

(--Guardian Angels Day,  October 2,  in, Spirituality and Practice,, quoting Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake)  

The message?

That we are not alone, in ways we cannot even fathom.

The world is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can imagine. 

German mathematical physicist and philosopher Werner Heisenberg’s words were these:

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” (― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers)

Russian philosopher Nicholai Berdyaev said that “God created the world by imagination.” 

German philosopher Martin Heidegger said: “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

And, finally, the nursery rhyme:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

Science and spirituality share a common unknown: 

All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can't see, detect or even comprehend.

These mysterious substances are called dark energy and dark matter. Astronomers infer their existence based on their gravitational influence on what little bits of the universe can be seen, but dark matter and energy themselves continue to elude all detection.

"The overwhelming majority of the universe is: who knows?" explains science writer Richard Panek,... "It's unknown for now, and possibly forever."

(—Space,com) 

Some message beckons.

An angelos, an angel, messenger, Greek Original Word: ἄγγελος, ου, ὁ  .

We continue to be uncertain whether to look at the finger pointing to the moon, or look to the moon itself. 

What we are capable of is the looking. 

We look through the nothing that is there and the something that is not there.

Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations suggests we “Don’t think, Look!”

lisieux

A small flower in 

bright moonlight recites prayer —

quietly, Thérèse

the world darkens

Perhaps poetry best captures the sad and chilling experience of listening to and watching the president of the United States in the debate last night.

No place at last is better than the world. The world

is no better than its places. Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them. When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.

 

(—from A Poem On Hope, by Wendell Berry)

Berry began his poem with the line: “It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old”.

as you walk here to there

The "els" have it today:

1. Micha'el --  מִיכָאֵל -- who is like God

2. Gabri'el -- גַבְרִיאֵל -- strength of God

3. Rapha'el -- רָפָאֵל  -- healing of God 

They are recounted as spiritual, non-corporeal beings -- immaterial, individual, and immortal.

Hard for we mortal, material, time-grasped beings to acquaint. 

When I walk in cemeteries there are frequent depictions of angels about. It is an aspect of mysterious belief not easy to ground.

Nevertheless, 

"Cemeteries are the only definitively calm places around." (Why There Is No 'Happily Ever After, The School of Life, )

It's like the grammar school joke remembered: 

Q: Why are there walls and gates around cemeteries? 

A: Because people are dying to get in. 

I wish you likeness, strength, and healing today, along with associated peace, as you walk here to there. 

the future is now

Looking at the past

Stopping finally —

There’s nothing there

What is here is the

One looking

Seeing what is

Underfoot

Earth

Alone

anatomy of isolation

Just because you are depressed doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

What’s right with you is that you feel. Which becomes a burden.

Those who don’t feel are not depressed because they don’t care.

To care you have to feel.

If you don’t care, everything is just fine. 

For you.

No burden bothers.

Don’t vote for someone who can’t be bothered.

יהי חתום בספר החיים

“G’mar chatima tova” is the customary greeting on Yom Kippur. In English, it means “May you be sealed in the Book of Life.” 

...   ...   ...

It is Yom Kippur

...   ...   ...

לַחֲזוֹר

Return

(One might say)

To One’s source

One’s life

Responding

...   ...   ...

[T]he central theme of the High Holiday season is teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה), a word often translated as "repentance," though it's more accurately understood as turning (shuv) to God in response to His call. Indeed, teshuvah can mean both these things: turning and answering... A related Hebrew word is nacham (נָחַם), which literally means to "sigh" as a way of expressing regret or sorrow, usually in response to something in the past. Sometimes nacham is used to express the idea of comfort, in the sense of consolation for something lost.  The ancient Greek translation of the Bible (i.e., LXX and NT) generally used the word strepho (στρέφω) for the word shuv, and the word metanoia (μετάνοια) for nacham.   

—Teshuvah of the Mind, Being Transformed by God’s Truth)

write off

 Please don’t tax your conscience, mr president, it’s so costly to be bothered by other people’s problems.

a workshop to ponder

the dread wheel narrows

 So much concerns a

          white majority

sprinkled with second 

           amendment rights 

reigning puddles where 

            truth once grounded

becomes muddy footsteps 

            slogging 

across chicken droppings

car parked in middle of dooryard tire tracks

Did he create the conversation?

Did she?

Or did the conversation create them?

Hardly anything is what it seems to be.

You don’t have to know.

You just have to be there.

A chocolate chip cookie helps.

and word, I imagine, becomes flesh

Last night’s conversation took place between bookshed and meditation cabin around fire pit with Thai pizza and a visiting repairer of rocking chair.

This morning two pictures pop up.

I must go to zendo to sit with memory-presence of young bodhisattva off on his journey to see everything and everyone just as they are.

good company

all that’s needed is

We’ve forgotten

Love is the air

We breathe —

Remember

desire and lack

 Of course

Justice is wanted

Of course

Yes, it is

Wanting

dereliction and democracy

There is serious concern that the election will be the moment of decision everyone points to as the way democracy chooses their president.

If that exercise cannot be trusted, we are in a difficult and dangerous circumstance.

Impotence and skepticism hang out on front stoop and step up to knock at doors.

I cannot imagine what will happen when the front door is opened and despair looks these visitors in the eye.

śruti and ausculta

Yes

Vox Dei calls invitation to gather for śruti and ausculta 

to listen and to listen attending

this morning practice

for which

I am

here

pray and practice

 Buddhist practitioner reminds us at Tuesday Evening Conversation that emptiness, impermanence, and no-self are the absolute reality grounding all existence. Not relative truth, but absolute truth. Shunyata, anicca, and anatta. 

No separate existence, no permanent and fixed reality, no self that is isolated from everything that is.

The reality is that we are in this together.

Not seeing this is not seeing what is real.

Hence the condition of our country and world.

We must practice what is real and true so as to be what is real and true.

Pray that the illusory and the false fade and disappear.

Pray and practice, the fellow in Augusta said.

Good words.

where there becomes here

 If you are a nihilist, this is a good time for you.

If you used to be a citizen of the United States, I welcome you to what was once the United States.

If you don’t know where you are, you are in the middle of a bad movie starring diseased actors propped in  front of podiums megaphoning nothing recognized as true.

Pack your rucksack, grab hiking sticks, take snacks, don’t bother locking your door.

We’re all refugees now. We have no country, and no other country will have us. There’s no place to call home and no leaders interested in you.

Where to go?

Here’s a hint.

Go inside. Go within. Go where no one can track you down.

When you enter that transparent and invisible center, dwell there.

The world doesn’t turn there. There is where everything is the still point.

It is a place where no fools can enter.

Don’t be fooled.

Don’t be anybody’s fool.

Find yourself there.

Alone with everyone.

the least that could be done

The death of decency precedes the death of the indecent. 

For those of us still actively interested in practicing decency, let us pray for those who are diving into their desolate demise.

rokpa, one year gone today

 

 

 

A good dog!

let’s not lie

True words designed to

Create action — Rhetoric —

Say it. Act on it.

something is being said about love

From The Fantastics: 

Love! You are love!

Better far than a metaphor

Can ever, ever be.

Love! You are love!

My mystery of love!

If the world was like an iceberg,

And everything was frozen,

And tears turned into icicles in the eye!

And snow came pouring

And sleet and ice

Came stabbing like a knife!

Then you are heat!

A fire alive with heat!

A flame that thaws the iceberg with its heat!

Repeat!

You are heat!

Ah ah ah ah aaaaaaaaaaa!

Love! (I am love!)

You are love! (I am love!)

Better far than a metaphor

Can ever, ever be.

Love! (I am love!)

You are love! (I am love!)

My mystery (His mystery)

Of love!

(Excerpt from Metaphor lyrics, The Fantasticks)

And this from e.e.cummings:

 

the great advantage of being alive 

                    —by ee cummings

the great advantage of being alive

(instead of undying)is not so much

that mind no more can disprove than prove

what heart may feel and soul may touch

— the great (my darling)happens to be

that love are in we, that love are in we

 

and here is a secret they never will share for whom create is less than have

or one times one than when times where —

that we are in love,that we are in love:

with us they’ve nothing times nothing to do

(for love are in we am in i are in you)

 

this world(as timorous itsters all

to call their cowardice quite agree)

shall never discover our touch and feel

–for love are in we are in love are in we;

for you are and i am and we are(above

and under all possible worlds)in love

 

a billion brains may coax undeath

from fancied fact and spaceful time–

no heart can leap,no soul can breathe

but by the sizeless truth of a dream

whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea.

For love are in you am in i are in we

le matin, joie

 La vie est drôle!

One morning I won’t wake.

One morning there will be headlines Donald Trump died during the night.

Each morning I look to see if it is that time.

This morning I listen to the monks of L'Abbaye de Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux.

When morning bamboo slats are rolled up, there is the hanging cross from Trappist casket-makers in USA.

One morning I will be dead.

One morning Trump will be dead.

In the morning, joy. 

Le matin, joie.

I will be in the joy of the morning.

Je serai dans la joie du matin.

Of course I write about death in the morning beaucoup des temps.

On a morning uncertain I will no longer do so.

Alors, bon matin...

שנה טובה ‎good year

 Shanah Tovah!

 שנה טובה‎

Rosh Hashanah

the white snow / red as strawberries in the summertime

Poetic, engaging, poignant, and koan-like:

 https://youtu.be/DrQRS40OKNE

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

a tzaddik

Ruth Bader Ginsberg died last evening.

A Jewish teaching says those who die just before the Jewish new year are the ones God has held back until the last moment bc they were needed most & were the most righteous. And so it was that #RBG died as the sun was setting last night marking the beginning of RoshHashanah.

   (—Nina Totenberg, @NinatoTotenberg, 12:06am, 19sept20, tweetdeck)

Her quiet dignity and intelligent presence needs to reverberate through this troubling time.

May her memory be a revolution. 

   (—Amanda Litman, @amandalitman)

qui tacit consentiri

"All words come to an end in the face of love." (--Rupert Spira)

to think is to think/feel

 I agree. We’re not thinking.

Not yet.

Only habitual thought determined by cultural beliefs.

That’s not thinking.

To think is to think/feel this moment.

We’re not doing it yet.

ordinary tasks done with quiet resolve

Woman in final years before her seventies in bosun's chair repairs lazy jack while at dock in Rockport Harbor yesterday.

Let's hear it for sane and mannerly occurrences of ordinary tasks done with quiet resolve and crew's good assistance!

for one

 Something about Our Lady of Sorrows. Something, as well, about Kuan Yin who hears the cries of the world.

These female beings, mythic saints and bodhisattvas, attending to all beings in the world with their attentive presence.

I, for one, am grateful

abrupt change and differentiation

No more opinions. 

 "To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world." — Dōgen Zenji

No more millionaires selling shrive views.

Just morning breeze through bamboo slats.

Only empty truth.

The fact of it.

Metamorphosing.  

exultation

Cross is where false-self

Corresponds with transcendence—

Dying self finds True Self

turning around and turning inward

After watching documentary about Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, a reminder of the sorrow of separation, I turn to words by Raimon Panikkar about what it means to be a monk in the world.

           Raimon Panikkar : The Universal Monk

Raimon Panikkar-Alemany (November 2, 1918 – August 26, 2010; also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of inter-religious dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.

“By monk, monachos, I understand that person who aspires to reach the ultimate goal of life with all his being by renouncing all that is not necessary to it, i.e., by concentrating on this one single and unique goal….

The monk is compelled, as it were, by an experience that can only articulate itself in the praxis of one’s life. It is an experience of the presence of the goal of life, on the one hand, and of its absence (of not having reached it), on the other……

There can be no monasticism without this experience of conversion, of turning around and turning inward, of stripping off the very many things that cling to us, of abandoning the ‘usual’, the ‘normal’, and even the secure and often reasonable way. as one Upanisad says: “On the very day that one is ‘brokenhearted’, on that same day one becomes a renouncer”; one brokenhearted, i.e., one indifferent to the world, a disillusioned person. . . .

. . . a fundamental monastic archetype could be described as the life of those who….adopt a solitary journey beyond the supportive environment of their culture, of social life, of religious traditions, etc. The monk is called to go beyond what the culture – even the religious culture – in which he lives allows him to be, or leads him to.”

--From “Blessed Simplicity–The Monk as Universal Archetype” Raimundo Panikkar (Editor) (1982) From CITYDESERT, Desert Spirituality of the City

Then, again:

What changes when we free the monastic vocation from the attitude of mono-cultural dominance? Nothing and everything. Let me give three examples of traditional values of the religious, East and West, that can be reinvigorated by the encounter of monks in dialogue qua monks. 

Paradoxically enough, the first, the classical contemptus mundi of the monk, today takes a new and more subtle turn: not abandoning the world (which is practically impossible), but swimming against the current, like living fish in the rivers, without rage or violence, but with poise and elegance, that is, with love and patience. “La paciencia todo lo alcanza,” used to say Teresa of Avila. Patience does not give up, rather, it perseveres and insists. It never gets discouraged, because it does not believe that a single individual, system, doctrine, or religion has the total answer. Humility, to me, means the courage to be imperfect, not finished.

Secondly, the monastic vocation has meant “solitude.” But solitude does not mean isolation. On the contrary, solitude demands that I be truly myself so that I may share without encumbrances solidarity with the entire reality: Buddhakaya, karma, mystical Body, universal love. The greatest scandal of human history is religious wars—be they explicitly or implicitly religious. Even the fact that sometimes they can disguise themselves under the cloak of religion shows our responsibility: “Not of the world,” but in the world—which the “Father” loved so much.

Thirdly, the monastic “calling” is ever new. It does not repeat itself, and it has no blueprint; it is not prescribed by any law. It needs to be not just discovered, but created by our cooperation with the very dynamism of reality, by holy “obedience,” that is, by attentive listening (obaudire) to the “divine” Voice—which is the Hindu name for revelation (sruti). It is not enough to “imitate” the Buddha, Christ, God. We have to become the Buddha, Christ, God—without asking like Peter, “What about John?” “You follow me” was the answer.

(From “The New Monk” by Raimon Panikkar, in CITYDESERT) 

 Elsewhere, this:

Conclusion

“May the time come when men, having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movements of this world in the single all-embracing work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to any one of their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work—however elementary it may be—is received and put to good use by a Center of the universe.  

“When that time comes to pass, there will be little to separate life in the cloister from the life of the world . . .”                                         (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu)

We situate new monasticism in terms of a movement, an organic arising of a deep desire to live a meaningful life and serve the world through our work and our compassion. It grows out of the desire to incarnate a contemporary spirituality, one that drinks deeply from the wells of human wisdom that have been dug throughout our ages, but one that also speaks to our modern sensibilities, to the unique occurrence of the convergence of the human race in our times, and that addresses the multiple and complex needs of a humanity in the throes of transition into a hopefully new and better world. The new monk may well be the beginnings of a physical manifestation of what is already true in the spiritual worlds, where a connected and collaborative effort of spiritual energies and truths work together and in harmony for the good of all life on our planet. This can be seen in the new monk’s ability to move seamlessly between wisdom traditions, art, music, solitude, hard work, community and intimate friendships.

New monasticism is a search for the deepest humanity in us all. It is in this search that we are united, not only to our fellow ‘monks,’ but to all who long to birth a new world that lives and breathes of the Spirit, to all who desire to come to the utter depths of their being and then to enter the world through that doorway. A new monk is one who feels the calling to her own Evolution, her own depth of Spirit, her own transformational path and who responds. She embarks on this path in order to better serve all of Life, not knowing where this journey will take her, but knowing that she can no longer view anything in her life as separate from this journey. She is motivated by her ideals of love and compassion for others, as well as an impenetrable belief in the Truth and Reality of human spiritual maturation, of its transformative power, grace and sustaining ground. She is committed to serving the world in growing degrees of sacrificial love, skillful wisdom and joy. It is to this audacious goal that new monastics dare foresee, more than dare, see only it and pledge their life to becoming an ordinary, disciplined loving expression of its attainment.

Any such person may rightly be called a ‘new monk.’

(--from, New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Life in the 21st Century, by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko, in KOSMOS, The Journal for Global Citizens Creating the New Civilization for the Common Good) 

'Monk' is a word whose origins come from Old English munuc, based on Greek monakhos ‘solitary’, from monos ‘alone’. 

We are, essentially, alone. But alone in the Buddhist sense of shunyata, or emptiness of any separate existence. Hence, radical interconnectedness. Relational individuality, i.e. undividedness. 

As if, completely all-one.

All is change. Mutable. 

And in its enormity, a mute persistent gaze out of which the solitary sees itself as itself sees everything in its entirety.

Wherein, one only imagines, we dwell mit-sein (being-with), one-an-other. 

despite whatever forms of manipulation and control are exercised

A doctoral dissertation on interreligious dialogue contains this excerpt on Raimon Panikkar:

4.4.2.3 The Divine

Hall (2002) states that, according to Panikkar, “The divine dimension of reality is not an ‘object’ of human knowledge, but the depth-dimension to everything that is. The mistake of Western thought was to begin with identifying God as the Supreme Being (monotheism) which resulted in God being turned into a human projection (atheism).” (See also Panikkar, 1996:42-44; “The Cosmotheandric invariant” and “The divine dimension” in “The rhythm of being”, Panikkar’s Gifford Lectures, private manuscript, chapters 6 & 7).

Knitter (2002:129) says this would limit the freedom of the Divine and box God in. God, who is evidently operative in the religions of the world, especially in the lives of those people who exist in the different religions of the world, is highlighted as “no common denominator”. Hall (2004), says this has led “Panikkar move beyond God-talk to speak of the divine mystery now identified in non-theistic terms as infinitude, freedom and nothingness ... despite whatever forms of manipulation and control are exercised, the aspect of (divine) freedom remains” (see also Panikkar, 1993:61).

Panikkar (1993:61) says that God is not a Deus ex machina with whom we maintain formal relations, but a mystery of the inherent inexhaustibility of all things, at once infinitely transcendent, utterly immanent, totally irreducible, absolutely ineffable. This divine dimension is discernable within the depths of the human persons ... this mystery that is alive in the religions does not exist by itself, instead it has its being anchored in the diversity of humanity and the world (Knitter, 2002:129).

4.4.2.4 Humanity

131

Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za

Panikkar (1993) condemns the technocratic cultures for not recognising the threefold reality of human dimension, which he sees as aesthetic, intellectual and mystical. According to him in these cultures, it is only a two dimensional human experience.

Hall (2004) contends that for him the third dimension of human experience is not remote from ordinary reality, “but a ‘further’ depth-dimension within all human awareness.”

“... if we aren’t aware of the Divine who has its being within us and of the earth that forms us, we don’t know who we are” (Knitter, 2002:127). Hall (2004) says that, “Panikkar’s intention is to show that genuine human experience involves the triad of senses, intellect and mystical awareness in correlation with matter, thought and freedom.” There is an interrelatedness, that exists between the cosmotheandric experience, which is not “just a given, static reality, but is alive, it is growing, and it is changing and dependent on how well the human ingredient is aware of and responds to the Divine and the earthly” (Knitter, 2002:128).

Hall (2004) says, “This cosmotheandric insight stresses human identity with the worldly character and temporal nature of the cosmos [as well as revealing] a human openness towards the infinite mystery that ipso facto transcends human thought.”

And Knitter (2002:128) confirms, “... and because they do, they will know the deeper unity of religions that grounds tremendous diversity ... as well as valuing their own religion and at the same time be free of it.”

4.4.2.5 The universe

Panikkar (1993:79) does not believe in the term, “no disembodied souls or disincarnated gods, just as there is no matter, no energy, no spatio-temporal world without divine and conscious dimensions.” Instead, he says, “every concrete reality is cosmotheandric, that is, a symbol of the ‘whole.’ It is not only God who reveals but the earth has its own revelations” (see also Hall, 2004).

132

Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za

Panikkar (1993:77) reminds us that relatedness exists between the Divine, human and the world; they cannot exist without relating to each other. [emphasis added] Despite the vast differences; they give life as they interact with each other

(— from,  CHRISTIANS AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY? A THEOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF THE MEANING OF AN ETHIC OF EMBRACE IN A CONTEXT OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY, by, Hirschel Lothar Heilbron, Dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Theology (DTh) in Systematic Theology at Stellenbosch University, Promoter: Dr. G.V.W. Brand March 2012)

not instruction, but provocation

Epigraph from American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas, by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen:

Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. 

            --Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divenity School Address" 1838

I profit from a philosopher only insofar as he can be an example. 

             --Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator" 1874, in Untimely Meditation

Evening conversations at meetingbrook look through such quotes as we speak to one another. 

It is a delightful perusal. 

unimpeded

 "Do not look for a sanctuary in anyone except yourself." 

     — Buddha

as if it were now

The Franciscan who died on 9/11 sat next to me 34 years before his death that day in September.

The Franciscan who eulogized him was a friend for years.

I live in Dogen and Francis Hermitage.

Remembering.

september 11, 2020

Roaring lies fly fast

Crashing American lives —

President smiles, flees

not much else

 Emptiness means empty of separate existence.

Truth means letting go of all opinions.

Peace means what is is exactly what is.

the end of decency

 Even the morally bankrupt can’t possibly take much more of this negligent uncaring man.

radix silentio

We speak words like these 

 but we've not yet come to word -- 

 beginning and end

haecceity

Hic, haec, hoc. 

 This, this, this.