we each have one spare set of eyes

Here's why we need poetry: 

 From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old

   

                     by Hanan Mikha’il Ashrawi

Tomorrow, the bandages

will come off. I wonder

will I see half an orange,

half an apple, half my

mother’s face

with my one remaining eye?

 

I did not see the bullet

but felt its pain

exploding in my head.

His image did not

vanish, the soldier

with a big gun, unsteady

hands, and look in

his eyes

I could not understand

 

I can see him so clearly

with my eyes closed,

it could be that inside our heads

we each have one spare set

of eyes

to make up for the ones we lose

 

Next month, on my birthday,

I’ll have a brand new glass eye,

maybe things will look round

and fat in the middle—

I’ve gazed through all my marbles,

they made the world look strange.

 

I hear a nine-month old

has also lost an eye,

I wonder if my soldier

shot her too—a soldier

looking for little girls who

look him in the eye—

I’m old enough , almost four,

I’ve seen enough of life,

but she’s just a baby

who didn’t know any better. 

 

Poem by Hanan Mikha'il Ashrawi a prominent Palestinian academic, poet, politician, and human rights activist

The poem is (Being) written for the soul present to reality.

Yes, I know, so many dislike poetry. 

why the spiritual life is difficult

When things seem impossible —

Don’t try to solve it;

Rather, let yourself feel it.

morning watch

Old monk

In bed

Where cat curls

Near eight bells

origin (airy)

This Sunday morning

Nothing moves becoming

Being as itself

Itself has no opposite

Something to love

Nothing to love

Love is itself

when illusion shall cease

 I am not

Waiting on god

I am waiting

For men and women

To stop

Being not god

summa theo-logia

 I cannot

Figure out 

The cross

No-

body can

Clearly

Let it go

Then there’s

Nothing to grasp

as i live and breathe

Do you love me

No, I love you

Don’t mention it

I can’t  

forty nine years now

 When my father died

I sat in room with him

His shoes taken off

The stillness

originary creative breath

Still night

Rain drips

Early light

Bird invitatory

foray date

snow tonight (ha!)

 Lovely invitation for the longest, hottest, day of the year. 

I have a new batch of emerald wine
And a small stove made of cinnabar clay
It feels like it’s going to snow tonight
Can you come by for a cup or two?                                                                                                          (--Pai Chu-yi (772-846) daily zen

Make mine Pellegrino Lemon Zero.

Don't bother with the stove.

Which mountain?

I'll be right up. 

a life in contemplative assent to the world

What is according to reality? 

And what are we missing?

Romano Guardini happened to be speaking to the youngsters on this occasion, the choir gave a recital of some of Goethe’s shorter poems, and twenty-year old Josef had recently begun exploring Thomas’s Summa. And now it happened: “Alles Sollen gründet im Sein; das Gute ist das Wirklichkeits-gemäße” [Moral law originates in Being; the Good is that which is according to reality]. This insight would provide the kernel of his dissertation, “The ontic foundation of morality according to Thomas Aquinas,” and the rest of his philosophy would flow from it.

Pieper spells out what he means. Contemplate, if you will, the result of these words spoken into an American discussion on social policy, school reform, family values, or the abortion debate: “Whoever wants to know and do the good must view objective reality, not his own ‘ideology,’ not his ‘conscience,’ not ‘values,’ not his self-chosen ‘ideals’ and ‘models.’ He has to resist examining his own action and instead view reality.” For only a brief moment one suspects that Pieper is begging the question of what constitutes objective reality. Does not science give us the answers? No! Only philosophy asks after the totality of existence by asking for the ultimate reason of why things are. Pieper’s answer is buttressed by faith: the phenomenal world offers evidence of things unseen. Knowledge is a significant step on the path to belief. One wants to know as much as one can, to be sure. But factual knowledge does not answer “why.” What is common to all the elements Pieper tells us to reject—ideology, conscience, values, ideals, models—is their privileging of the supposedly autonomous self, that chimera of Enlightenment thinking moderns so revere. For Pieper, Aquinas’s natural rights philosophy provides the “nomos” we no longer need to impose on ourselves. In the place of a world self-defined by duties, contracts, and obligations, he would put a life lived in tune with creation, a life in contemplative assent to the world.    (--in JOSEF PIEPER’S CONTEMPLATIVE ASSENT TO THE WORLD, October 8, 2014 by Thomas Austenfeld)

 It seems that "reality" is far down on the list of things we know or experience. Mostly it is our beliefs, our opinions, our interpretation, and our feelings we deal with and respond from. Reality is something (we might say) that is further beyond and more originative.

It might be more difficult than we can imagine to live "a life in contemplative assent to the world."

And yet, and yet, and yet... 

The understanding of reality will set you free. (John 8: 31-32) (Is what "The truth will set you free" actually means.)

225 alḗtheia (from 227 /alēthḗs, "true to fact") – properly, truth (true to fact), reality.

[In ancient Greek culture, 225 (alḗtheia) was synonymous for "reality" as the opposite of illusion, i.e. fact.] 

https://biblehub.com/greek/225.htm

We long for reality.

Not illusion.

Truth/reality.

Yes! (we do.)

dawn

 As contemplative

Slight breeze moves leaves, passes, there

Nothing moves, again

remnant remains ruminant

beginnings, they say, are difficult

 

the way of knowledge

 Fools and the wise greet us daily.

Those who cultivate Prajanaparamita do not reject the dharmas of fools, nor do they grasp the dharmas of sages, because in the light of Prajanaparamita, there are no dharmas to be grasped or rejected.

The Prajnaparamita Sutra spoken by Manjushri

 So much to learn.

So many teachers. 

readying

 

for he could feel the mountains grow

my father moved through dooms of love

                         E. E. Cummings 1894 – 1962

34

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise 
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

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,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

-- Copyright © 1940, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage.

trees and birds and sky and you

Words matter

Look what The Creator

Did with them

how do you find god

 Do the right thing

there’s worry we are being recorded

 What you believe is 

what is seen

What is seen  

Is what you believe

No belief

Nothing seen

It is easy 

To love God

There’s nothing 

To it

Love is

Not belief

It sees itself

In what is seen

Nothing

Else

maybe the best flag is the word that flags what is foremost

 

franciscani

Anthony was 35 when 

he died in Padua in 1231

I think of him today.

your turn

 Yes

If i had to choose

I’d choose

 Yes

correct(ion)

 All is

(not) lost

this and that

(still)  -- 

 

finding this 

(and) that . . .

nonagenarian

(friend) writes

...        

        --  ion, any atom or group of atoms that bears one or more positive or negative electrical charges. (Britannica)

one way or the other

Deo Gratias

Otherwise

Miserere nobis

preghi

 Yes, I pray

For you, for me

I pray we become human

Free, safe, and come to dwell

In our true home… Happily —

What does our “true home” look like?

I suspect we will know it

When we find ourselves in it.

May you find

Yourself well

Within it!

vetus

willing to be old

each day comes and goes, can't help

losing this and that

looking back seeing nothing

looking ahead, nothing there

...

        * vetus, veteris M; [Latin] old, aged, ancient, former, veteran,  experienced, long-standing, chronic

when prophecy ends

Shut up

MU -- Say no

More

what did illusion say to certainty

If you want to be

Enlightened, go ahead do

It — I’ll just sit here

bridges for inter-cultural communication

Makes you wonder what the 'human-being' makes of, or contributes to, the fact of 'Being-Itself' sounding through our being-human.

Thus one could claim that the lack of an elaborated anthropological vision made Heidegger’s philosophy after the ‘turning’ philosophically anti-Hellenic. The quest for ethics and moral distinctions that have bedeviled the students of his work must be incorporated within a quest for a complete anthropology delineated by his works, an anthropology that would look at Being in its anthropic re-creation of the silence of nature and the absence of god. Only then will the ethical consequences of the “livable” part of his philosophy become apparent and Heidegger’s philosophy regain the moral authority to reveal the essence of being. Heidegger’s philosophy is arguably the most daring hypothesis about the human condition in recent centuries; yet his answers somehow do not do justice to the questions he poses and show the unredeemed debt that he himself owed to his society, class and personality. Yet the hypothesis remains valid and still spurs thinking on; indeed it makes philosophical thinking immerse itself into the ‘thick questions’ of the mind and helps reformulate important aspects of the European tradition. Indeed, Heidegger’s thought has stimulated great Japanese thinkers like Keiji Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro and Masao Abe and has contributed to the re- interpretation of Dogen and to a degree of Nagarjuna himself. Thus it builds bridges for inter-cultural communication that express a new understanding of the anthropic in history. The cross-pollination of his philosophy leads to a new anthropological vision of being in history and time above and beyond the cultural limits of the philosopher’s origins. For to philosophise does not simply mean to ask “why there are beings rather than nothing?” but “why beings that are experience nothing?”. Then Being ceases to be mute and becomes the true being of the human presence.

 (--in, Heidegger and the Aesthetics of Living, xv, Edited by Vrasidas Karalis, 2008) 

Perhaps it is our 'coming to word' that creates, organizes, and causes to emerge into appearance that which is hidden and that which is not-yet and coming-to-be into what we might call the 'umwelt of now.'

Our contemporary culture suffers an aphasia that stifles authentic communication which might build and nourish out and away from decadent morbidity and caustic rhetoric of decimation, elimination, and ostracization. 

Do we not long for an aesthetic eloquent in creativity, compassion, and cooperating community toward wholesome interrelationality and open-hearted caring?

I do!

And you, too!

se ci sia un altro modo, non lo so

 yes

to everything

all the time

no matter what

(it's simply

the way to 

see one's

way clear)

...

    * whether there is another way, I don't know

mirar dentro

 Sacred Heart of Jesus 

Immaculate Heart of Mary —

There might be a hint here

How fare our hearts?

...

    * look inside

what is going on

 This

Whole

Time

(Yes, 

That’s

It)

watching with wonder and worry

 Rainy Friday morning

Two baby loon on hosmer pond

Their watery home

can I still be joyful whilst not optimistic

 I don't buy it. The over-the-top reckless acclamations of revenge and vituperative governance if elected again. I don't buy it. 

I worry about assassination. I worry someone has decided it would be good for rightwing uprising if the titular frontrunner were to be mowed down by an ambiguous assassin. I worry the rightwing would rather sacrifice the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party and reap the forensic fury to the detriment of maligned and misidentified parties as stooges in the planned misdirection of the crime.

But this worry comes from reading these days about violence, the collapse of civilizations, and the weirdness of consciousness. [cf. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated, by Eric H. Cline (2021); The Weirdness of the World, by Eric Schwitzgebel (2024); and Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads by Gil Bailie (1996).] About the latter:

This is a Girardian-influenced, engagingly written classic on the nature of violence and the hope for overcoming it in our conflict-ridden world. It is also a literary work, an often miraculous interplay between cultural documents and historical periods. (Amazon)

The current political babel about vengeance, retribution, mass arrests and deportations, ending immigration, freeing of criminals and flirtation with despotic dictatorship might be a parody carnival-act on the part of a desperate man. 

But it's a script of a bad movie when shadowy characters decide to sacrifice one man for the good of the party and the future of a manufactured crisis. We are witnessing the zombie-like rogues-gallery backdrop to the master of ceremonies' complaint and victimization monologues following 34 felony convictions. 

Like ghouls at an execution they salivate the prospect of being second fiddle to the chief prevaricator as he whittles his way into a mythic scenario of being crucified for the good of the people and the sins of the opposition party.  Is he playing the role too well? Is he being steered into a dark alley to be accosted, mugged, and left for dead in a murky drama of horrific violence?

The comedy becomes a tragedy. 

The nation will be shocked.

Sanity will be compromised.

Chaos will be cultivated.

It will be called "A Time for Retrieving Our Constitutional Footing."

All the crazies who've appropriated the legislative, judicial, and executive functions of our once nascent democracy will declare the experiment too ambitious, too unrealistic, too marxist/socialist, too unchristian and too aufgewacht (woke) for our Schläfrig (sleepy) country.

What do I think?

I hope the carnival continues. I don't want any resolution that entails violence or extra-judicial action. Let Trump be Trump. The people will tire of him. And his entourage? They will drift away to other cons and grifts and become entrepreneurs of entropy grinding down the alacrity and energy of a yet-to-emerge populace from its infancy.

Can I still be joyful whilst not optimistic?

Sure I can.

Pass me the next book, please.

salut et louange du ventre de ma mère

Eighty years ago

In third trimester — drear beach

In Normandy France —

So many gave their lives — sand

waves, fear, blood — fighting for life

…  …   …

     * salvation and praise from my mother's womb

out with dog

Stars off bald mountain

How far away are they — near

Just beyond loon call

not perception, perspective

 This is not reality

Yes it is

This is not really reality

Yes it is

This is not ultimate reality

Wait — 

What are you

Looking at

(Encore) This is not

What I am

Looking at

It’s what I am

What I am

Looking…

how we go on

Nuns chant psalms

They are in France

I listen to their tones

I am in Maine

Morning comes and day begins 

this fourth day of the week

Perhaps there will be

No assassinations today

Unlike fifty six years ago

In California near Midnight

dwelling together in peace

if we stay at the horizontal level of calculating

 In prison this morning we wondered about thought being pre-physical.

True thought is pre-physical. This is the thinking behind the thinking, the consciousness behind our small ability to plug into it. If we stay at the horizontal level of calculating, judging, and labeling, we won’t plug into it very well because we don’t really believe in it. Many of us don’t really believe there’s anything spiritual beyond this material body. (--Richard Rohr)

Five of us considered the prospect of return to the source. 

And whether Christ is actually the cosmos.

in the heart of every atom

Today in the Christian calendar is the feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. It got me thinking. What if the body of Christ were the very earth. The very cosmos itself?  Would that realization be an insight, a faith, that transcends anything that any religion, church, or dharma has previously taught? 

The historical Buddha and the historical Jesus each walked the earth in their day, but it is the living Buddha mind and the Cosmic, or resurrected, Christ that are present among us today. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the “ontological Buddha, the Buddha at the center of the universe,” which echoes the Cosmic Christ “in the heart of every atom,” as Teilhard de Chardin puts it. I see the Cosmic Christ archetype as a parallel concept to that of buddhanature, or Buddha mind.

It is easy for Christians to forget that the oldest understanding of Christ is as the Cosmic Christ, which predates the Nicene Creed by three centuries. Paul called the Cosmic Christ “the pattern that connects,” which “holds all things together in the heavens and on the earth,” and is the “light in all beings.” (—in Ultimately the Same, by Matthew Fox, Oct 2022 Lion’s Roar)

Maybe Jesus didn’t just come to earth. Maybe he came as earth. 

Buddha as Being.

Christ as creation.

corpus christi

 I look at body of christ

There outside window

First light through cool air

I look as body of Christ

Here inside room

Turn off light; telling beads

Wavering leaves

Dance with dawn breath

Christ’s body with bare feet

believe me because you are wrong

We live upside down. It doesn't occur to us that we are living upside down. But we are.

It is a curious fact. But a fact nonetheless. We live upside down.

Bad is good. My flaws are really your flaws. I am perfect, you are crooked. I am pure, you are corrupt.

Do you see? Can you feel how this is going? Do you recognize how you have been so unaware?

If I commit crimes I am being persecuted. If found guilty for those crimes every one who pointed it out, laid out the facts, deliberated the details, judged the proceedings -- all of these people are liars, evil, conflicted, against me, and wrong.

In is out. Up is down. Bad is good. Everything is silly putty and magic marker. You are not you. Only I am I.

There are marvelous teachers lecturing the populace as to what it is like to live upside down.

They are ordinary citizens, elected officials, members of house and senate, those sitting on the highest court.

God is not in his/her heaven and all is not right with the world.

And here we are. 

No amount of education or study of history contributes anything to the alertness of the citizenry. It has all been edited and re-education into correct thinking has become a full-time job for the deranging rearranging of what we thought we knew into how we now must think.

We live upside down.

Be glad the torture has not yet begun.

Postscript: Some say there have been those who came to us to tell us we've been living upside down. You know their names. 

Right?

You do know their names, don't you?

what lives is what he left in air

In prison this morning: 

Farmer, Dying

                for Hank and Nancy

Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow

from his cough. These limp days, his anger,

legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,

lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.

Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam

unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves

of cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.

His geese grow fat without him. Same old insult.

Same indifferent rise of mountains south,

hunters drunk around the fire ten feet from his fence.

What's killing us is something autumn. Call it

war or fever. You know it when you see it: flare.

Vine and fire and the morning deer come half

a century to sip his spring, there, at the far end

of his land, wrapped in cellophane by light.

What lives is what he left in air, definite,

unseen, hanging where he stood the day he roared.

A bear prowls closer to his barn each day.

Farmers come to watch him die. They bring crude offerings

of wine. Burnt Fork creek is caroling. He dies white

in final anger. The bear taps on his pane.

And we die silent, our last days loaded with the scream

of Burnt Fork creek, the last cry of that raging farmer.

We have aged ourselves to stone trying to summon

mercy for ungrateful daughters. Let's live him

in ourselves, stand deranged on the meadow rim

and curse the Baltic back, moon, bear and blast.

And let him shout from his grave for us.

(--Poem by Richard Hugo) 

The poet and the subject, the man and the land, the reader and the conversation.

"Let's live him in ourselves..." 

twelve ordinary citizens

Unusual day

thirty four felony votes --

justice finds its way