To live a religious life in the world today -- first, stay silent. That will work. No one will know what you are doing. And that's good.

To live a spiritual life in the world today -- next, open your mouth. That too will work. No one will understand the babble that tries to word the incomprehensible. Try anyway.

To live an ordinary life in the world today -- finally, practice a poem created while walking beyond your strength.

I've crossed the sea after Truth.
Knowledge, that snare, must be defied.
Here and there, I've worn out heaps of sandals.
Now -- moonlit water in the clear abyss.
(--Kakua, 12c)

There will be those who love their life -- and they will love yours.
There will be those who fear their life -- and they will fear yours.
There will be those who wander mumbling to themselves things true & improbable. Invite them in.

I have never found anyone touched by God to appear sane.
They're not. What they are is something more valuable -- they're safe, and sound.
They're the ones to sit with for a stretch of mind and time.

They've seen
what we are
not seeing.

God is no other than love.
And love will not forget the sound of our voice attempting to pronounce its name.
As the wind blows, there’s no pinning down its direction, it takes our hesitation away with it.

There we stand,
without what we thought
lost.

How can I tell you what I've seen?
Fall, stand -- it's clear at once.
Wearing my cowl backwards, I
Trample the old path. And the new.
(--Kakua)

For Christians, the words expressing longing and struggle to comprehend and embody Christ might sound awkward. Patterns of thought change century after century, and the wording of a core reality needs constant and refreshing expression.

The core reality doesn't disappear with new wording. Rather, it appears in new light. This requires courageous faith, good will toward God, and good will toward one's own exploration.

Christian theology says God doesn't change. God is there as we change. For Buddhists, change is all there is. Transparent awareness reveals what our rational minds cannot grasp. For both, the exploration asks for caring and careful attention.

The proposal for Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits asks into such attention.
We pray for courageous faith, good will all around.

A Proposal for Intentional Community:
Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits
Camden, Maine USA, and dwelling places elsewhere

Meetingbrook proposes a laura of hermits, an intentional community, a loosely knit association of individuals seeking what might be called Zen Contemplative Ecology.

For the purpose of Meetingbrook’s proposal, “laura” means the pathways and waterways connecting us on our journey. A laura is:

1. a gathering of individuals living their own lives in their own dwellings;
2. peripheral to a central location shared for communal use;
3. building community with distinct yet similar shared intention to deepen one’s life;
4. each engaged in idiorhythmic practice (i.e. according to one’s own rhythms and schedule) -- whether prayer, meditation, contemplation, energy work, healing unease, encouraging physical, intellectual, spiritual health & balance;
5. with periodic sharing of each person’s conversation & practice in community;
6. devoted to the common intent of cultivating peace, compassion, engaged service, merciful reconciliation, and lovingkindness;
7. welcoming hospitality and generosity of spirit within and toward others.
8. A Zen Contemplative Ecology is, for this proposal, the practice of seeing directly & clearly -- now, safe, & whole -- interrelationships of individuals in community, sentient beings in nourishing environments, and a cosmotheandric awareness (of earth & nature itself, divine presence, and human family) that caringly and carefully makes room for each other..

A Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits -- welcomes individuals, couples, & families. Members of any or no religion are welcome. Members of sanghas, orders, followers of specific teachers, are welcome. Those on any particular spiritual path, those willing to allow others to practice their own religious and spiritual path, are welcome. Inclusive, autonomous, & generous hearted people, are welcome. Those who appreciate diversity and a plurality of seeking, those realizing and embodying what is natural, sacred, and human – the immeasurable gift of existence and life beyond compare -- are welcome.

The mere prospect of connecting what already touches us is attractive. Identifying, consciously and intentionally as part of Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits, deepens the affection and mystery of living life alone with others. Whether you prefer: to live alone on one’s own; live with others; or live alone together – we will explore how to dwell engaging solitude and community – a dedicating of life and love -- with God, each other, oneself.

If interested, come join us for some exploratory conversations toward the creation invited by a Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits. If nothing else, it might provide thoughtful considerations, laughter & a spate of belonging!

If interested in such an exploration, please call 236-4346, leave name and #. or email laura@meetingbrook.org

Thanks, Bill Halpin and Saskia Huising 25Feb2002

It is time to rethink the word "severity." It wishes to be known by a designation other than "strict in judgment, discipline, or punishment."
Or, what do we really think life is?

This morning, consider every breath. Every blink of the eye. Even the dozens of ladybugs at window suddenly awakened by warm February sun on attic eave. Sando snoozing. Saskia baking. The verity of Sunday morning at the edge of silence.

If we are the universe, there is much we do not yet understand.

If Awakened Buddha, Compassionate Father, Incarnated Christ, Sacred Spirit, Divine Radiance, Eternal Love, Blessed Mother -- (whichever designation brightens our eyes) -- if that personification longs to indwell this reality, there is still much we have to comprehend in order to ourselves inhabit this reality.

If life can be stripped of all denial so that we can begin to love -- there is much to let fall away. When we let this happen, there arrives a transparence that is itself true. .

In 1986, there were 22thousand cases of AIDS worldwide. In 2001 there were 38million cases worldwide. There have been 19million deaths in that time.
"We are each grains of sand on a beach," Joel Rothschild says, "And God is the beach." His book is Signals, An Inspiring Story of Life After Life.
"We are the heartbeat of the universe. There is a biological connection. Every moment in every life matters," says Rothschild speaking with Michael Thoms on New Dimensions Radio.

At the hermitage we pray for all who suffer in body, mind, or spirit. Especially those who are dying, those who will die today, and those who have died with no one to pray for them.

"Se-verity" -- wishes to be known as truth itself, or perhaps, itself true -- another edge of silence. ["Se" in Latin means "itself." "Veritas" in Latin means "truth."]

What is itself true? Or, what is true to itself? And, what can we say about the severity (the itself true) of love?

Even Pilate asked Jesus about severity. Following Jesus' assertion that anyone experiencing the reality he himself embodied, that person will testify to the truth. Pilate asked the reality standing before him, "'Truth,' what is truth?" Jesus remained in silence. Pilate was left to his own reflection.

Our very life depends on our reflection.

A moment of silence might help.

Keep our mouths shut? How long?

Do not tell the vision to anyone until the son of man has been raised from the dead. (Mt.17:9)

What does "raised from the dead" mean?
Yes, there is the notion of resurrection that arises. But are there ways of perceiving this notion that are not typically associated with the return to life of a body once dead or even the continuance of life beyond death? Perhaps, also for us to consider is -- raised from deadening ignorance, unawareness, blind grasping onto what others say and believe -- maybe it means entering this very life we live with eyes open, finally, after a long time of not embodying exactly who I am, who you are, who we are.

It might mean -- until the felt and awakened reality of Christ draws us up into a humble and transparent embodiment of Christ. It might mean -- letting fall forms and ideas, notions of inside and outside, us and them, divine and human, sinner and saint -- all the dualistic, separating, either/or's of our mind's making.

Don’t seek favor
Don’t clamber after fame.
Giving up and getting are empty:
Both the same.
This floating life
Is petals falling,
Emptied past the eye.
Serving the state
Is a dream;
Serving yourself
Is the same. -
Ch’en Ts’ao-an (dailyzen)

No tents. Just attend him, just fully engage the reality he is attending and engaging. Do what he is doing -- deepening his dwelling, finding root, allowing cloud to enfold and overcome -- trusting the grace of a loving community of all beings in God's sacred voice.

Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are in the cloud. Peter, James, and John are outside the cloud. So it seems in the script. But does inside and outside really represent what is taking place here in this story?

On the high mountain, where Jesus is made luminous, Peter wants to build three tents. The voice from the cloud interrupts -- "listen to him" -- listen to the one with whom the voice is well pleased. The three disciples are in the drama; they are part of the story. They are actors as much as the other three are. It is a single and singular event. We're there too. Not outside. Not inside. In fact, we are the story.

Standing in light, three are glowing. Prostrate on ground, three are frightened.

The cloud is God's tabernacle. It is the manifestation of His presence promised for the last time (Rev.21:3) It is here a theophany. The one whom God hides in His pavilion belongs very closely to Him (Ps.27:5). If Jesus is taken up into the cloud with the two divine messengers of the last time, this means that He brings final deliverance and that He brings it now. (Lohmeyer, quoted in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittel, Vol.IV, pp.908-909).

Jesus touches the three on the ground. (What a lovely place to be. It's where we encounter the sacred.)

He says, "Rise, and do not be afraid." Matthew then writes, "And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone."

No one else. Jesus alone with them. They alone with him.
This brief, bright, surprise of the Christ touching them. Saying, be without fear. Saying, be what you are. Saying, be what you see.

Places, everyone!
Ok, rise and shine!

Now. Are we ready to speak?

I've been thinking about dying. I'm alive. It's not over yet...

The front page of the Rockland paper has a picture of a man, Jim H., now terminally ill with stomach cancer, but once a student in a Philosophy course I taught in Thomaston where he was police chief. The last night of class he said he'd put off the Ethics course until last, that when he realized he wouldn't get a list of ethical standards for his department from the course he was worried he'd wasted his time. But, he'd come to find out the course was just what he needed -- made him think, tore away many of the neat categories of right and wrong he'd been used to, exposed him to some hard questions, grounded ethical thinking in an evolving consciousness poetry seems to access as good as anything, and finally it was a good enough course -- he liked it.

And I liked him. His papers had the experience and maturity of someone who'd been around, whose ideas of how the world should be were tempered by how people were, and he was a student set in a career that saw people, situations, and responses to both that were real and gritty -- and not hypothetical, not nearly.

Jim is aware of his mortality. More so than most of us, he knows that he's going to die. We all do. But his time is defined by an illness with no respect for time, age, person, or place.

I know I will die. Just when, and how -- I don't know. There are days I think I won't see dusk. But it is February and all ailments take on more sinister outcomes during this awkward month especially considering this curious winter. Being of Irish-American heritage I've adopted the point of view, especially having no health insurance, that you are born, live, get sick, and die. Absent accident or catastrophic natural or terrorist events, that formula seems accurate.

I wince when I read obituaries -- those claiming that so and so fought a valiant, hard, or long battle against their illness, losing -- or unexpectedly, of natural causes, suddenly, succumbed, or wordlessly we are left to wonder just what it was that immediately preceded their death. Was it suicide? Murder? (This category we're usually told.) Or was it a simply loss of the will to continue living, a sighing of an out breath, a turning of a head, no recognizable symptoms of anything, a closing of eyes, and... death?

Then what? Ah, there's the rub! What then?

Here is where several billion words have been written and spoken -- about death, afterlife, grieving of those remaining behind, the spiritual, psyhchological, and religious verities proclaimed sincerely by those who claim a very certain knowledge or faith. Assurances are asked for and received, comforting expectations are shared and are comforting, beliefs are led out to be seen and reviewed -- and they too are nodded to in their passing review. These activities of settling into the fact of one's life and pending death are good activities, usually done by sensitive and caring people with individuals who come to realize that love, kindness, and respect is what we need to reckon with the final considerations. No matter what assurances and comfort we find, death is an unknown.

In the newspaper article Jim said, "The rest of my life depends on me, a personal attitude, a positive attitude." Jim mentioned a couple of regrets about his life: "I didn't stop the Vietnam war," he said. "And I didn't stop world famine." The article also said that he keeps in sight a small printed message on his wall -- "I am baptized. I am a child of God." .

There's a new war now. And a new hunger.
Jim H. is still alive. It's not over yet.
Seeing through the fog and the raindrops on the window, I know there is a foghorn out there, somewhere.

Perhaps -- if we look together...

If we had that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus, would we see what is there -- without fear, illusion, or judgment. Would that free us?

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes. (William James)

There was a progression of quotes I once followed in order and properly attributed. From Edmund Husserl, to William Carlos Williams, to Robert Creeley, to my own conclusion. They went: "To the things themselves." "No ideas but in things." "And things are made of words." Finally, "Silence makes no-thing clear."

The perceptual order sees what is there. The conceptual order looks elsewhere.

We long to see what is right here, right in front of us. Yes, the obvious and visible and finite -- but also the hidden, the formless, the beyond that stretches from here. This kind of mind, this kind of seeing -- is hard to word. We are often reduced to mumbling, and sometimes to silence. There, in stark and desolate bewilderment, we are given a profound invitation -- let go, surrender, and fall into freedom!

Christ help us!
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite. (William Blake, plate 14 in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell )

...................................................................................................

Please note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery --
·
Will be closed weekdays the last two weeks in February,
Monday – Friday
Feb.18th-22nd
Feb. 25th – Mar.1st


We will be open on weekends
Saturday and Sunday
Feb.23rd –24th
Mar. 2nd- 3rd.


No weekday evening events will be held during this time.
Sunday Evening Practice will be held at the hermitage.

Evening events will resume with Tuesday Evening Buddhist Studies, Mar.5th.

What would peace look like? We might have to look through words a while before coming to see itself as "itsown."

Graham Greene in his novel The Heart of the Matter (1948):
"That's what I say," she said. "If I go away, you'll have your peace."
"You haven't any conception," he accused her angrily, "of what peace means." It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, artic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. (pp.60-61)

Cordwood in towers by oak tree. Cedar branch in warm February sunlight. The day cannot imagine itself other than it is. It is fine.
I've begun to think about Meetingbrook in terms of practicing Zen Catholic Ecology.

What might that look like? What is Zen Catholic Ecology?
What of the words? Zen -- A seeing and saying that adds nothing, subtracts nothing. Catholic -- A whole-safe comprehension that turns one into one. Ecology -- A dwelling inquiry that asks into the interrelationships of organisms and their environments.

A theme runs through the three words for me -- a theme that originates before split and separation -- a theme embodied in each of the words, namely: Practice seeing, whole and safe, each as its own dwelling place.

Perhaps a new word, "itsown," wishes to come into our language. I have long liked the word "itself" as pointing to that which cannot be other than what it is. It has served to suggest to me a corresponding place for the notion of "God" in theistic parlance, and "What Is" in nontheistic parlance. The "Itself" -- whether God or Ultimate Reality -- cannot be divided, but can be seen in diverse manifestation.

"Itsown" --as a new word, yet to cry aloud in its own voice -- suggests not only that which belongs to itself, i.e. "its own", but that which sows itself wherever it appears, i.e. "it sown." This suggestive quality of "itsown" reminds me of peace.

Peace is when each belongs to Itself as Itsown.

Please note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery --
·
Will be closed weekdays the last two weeks in February,
Monday – Friday
Feb.18th-22nd
Feb. 25th – Mar.1st

We will be open on weekends
Saturday and Sunday
Feb.23rd –24th
Mar. 2nd- 3rd.

No weekday evening events will be held during this time.
Sunday Evening Practice will be held at the hermitage.

Evening events will resume with Tuesday Evening Buddhist Studies, Mar.5th.
...............................................................................

Turn stones into bread? The devil tempts Jesus. Never mind baking bread -- perform magic, go for the big sell, the fast profit, the easy return on small investment.

Jesus had it. He'd had enough of the foolish parlor tricks stipulated by the power broker in this world. Then he said it:
He responded, "It is written, 'Human beings are not to live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of God's mouth.' " (Mt.4:4)
Morning Lectio at our monthly Saturday retreat was taken with this utterance.

The Os Dei, L.=the mouth of God. As we understand the story of the creation of the universe and all in it, God spoke the word of creation. Or, attempting to relate the origins of what we experience as matter and form, we have no idea what and how anything occurred "in the beginning." So, we say, "In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom." (Jn.1:1)

Then, whatever is, and all that is, flows from the Os Dei, the mouth of God -- the ever-present origin. This is the word of God, these are are the words of God. Each thing, each being, each manifestation, each instance -- this is what emanates and emerges from the mouth of God.

Stones are stones. Bread is bread. Each is itself. Each longs to be itself.
Beware the suggestion to become something else, to be other than what we are at root. .
Jesus seems to be saying we are not about magic and myth, not about the mindless or the mental -- but rather, we are part of the expression of God.

As part of the expression of God we are invited to watch and look, listen and speak, engage and serve each and everything encountered and experienced in this world, on this earth, before, and within one's body.

Jesus embodied Christ-Nature, Christ-Mind. In the story of his encounter with the devil, (with false action and manipulated reality), Jesus teaches us to recognize the false and choose what is true. "Not by bread alone," but by the Alone -- which excludes nothing and includes everything, that which is the root and sustenance of creation as it reveals itself .

What we call God -- or, the Alone -- is here, now, the ever-present origin. God presents all we need -- just like that, just like this. Jesus saw and felt this presence, this awareness, and he tells us we are inside and surrounded by what God is speaking.

The Os Dei is silence, stillness, and solitary seeing. The Os Dei is communicative, moving, and communal Christ consciousness. By any other name, "Christ" is the permeating intelligence and compassion longed for by all that is human. God's presence, or, the creating word of God is a way of relating this grounded reality.

If we accept a particular facile answer as the whole, as substitute for a universal compassionate understanding that moves within and incorporates all creation -- we trip over the false promise of self-serving greed, our particular devil at this time in the world. The wisdom of one who would be Christ accepts no substitution -- wisdom longs for the good of each and all, a longing that will not be satisfied until Alone-With-Others (God with us) inhabits our consciousness, our hearts, and our lives.

No war against evil can substitute for Christ. The wisdom of compassion says: Human beings, if you don't live compassionately with every person and being now in the world, you will inevitably perish in the ignorance of false and fatal warfare, crusades, military and secret retribution, campaigns of terror against terrorism.

Can we hear the sound of that plea?
Christ, the Os Dei, longs to be that sound in our creation.

O Lord, open my lips; and my mouth shall declare your praise! (Ps.51:15)
O Christ, open mouth of God, help us praise the presence of every being!

Fresh, rising, worked in morning mist, scent of yeast, fragrance of heat forming crust, the very revelation of creation for all to taste.

Bread anyone?

The Beloved, through the energy of Love
brought forth the world.
From the rising to the setting sun,
Love radiates out to the nations
perfect in beauty.
...
I know every creature, every plant,
every mineral;
I know you -- your every need
and your fears;
The Earth and all that is in it
belongs to the Whole, to be
tended by all in co-operation
with Love.
(from Psalm 50, as presented by Nan Merrill in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, pp.96-97)

Jim said in response to the question "Really...What is Love?" at Wednesday Evening Conversation, "Love is allowing God to flow through you."
To the thought "God is what is there," Charlotte corrected "here!" Jesus, by dying on the "T" makes it and separation and death disappear -- so that, There becomes here -- and God is what is here.
Saskia added, "By entering the flow we present God here. Trust, the letting go on, and the letting go into, the Love-of-God flowing through us -- that's trust."
It seems to me that the phrase "Love-of-God" is the very flow of the reality that originates and sustains life and existence. As we come to feel it and know it, we enter and even dissolve into it. What we have named "God" and "Love" with the possessive "of" -- can be seen in another way. The "Love-of-God" is what we are, what we are meant to be, the very reality of existence we are not other than..

Earlier in the day Virginia told that Seinfeld once said his show was all about language and words. She, Hugh, and I were assembling the new chair for Saskia purchased in Bangor enroute home from Presque Isle and the County. Talking about our stay-over in St. Andrews By The Sea, New Brunswick, I told them about our ruminations about the missing third part. There's a wonderful sailboat with its business for sale there, and a house perfect for the hermitage also for sale up the hill from the wharf. This process --from separateness, to consolidation, to enfoldment, to disappearance -- seems to be a sequence of meetingbrook meditation that applies to spiritual as well as physical life.

My friends, search for the still voice
that dwells in the Silence.
If you call upon Me in times of trouble,
I am ever present to you.
You will know Me in your hearts,
As you honor my love for you.
(Merrill, Ps.50, p.98)

Allowing is suffering, is letting -- that's the definition meaning of the word patior, (L.=to suffer, experience, undergo, permit, allow). Suffering is not synonymous with pain. Suffering is allowing. So, when Jim says, "Love is allowing God to flow through you," there is a suggestion of suffering God through one's being, one's person. Much the same way Jesus said, "Suffer [let] the children to come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mk.10:14) To prevent, or hinder, the free flow of love through anyone, especially the young, is a real sorrow. To dam (damn?) anyone, to attempt to block the flow of the Love-of-God, is a foolish, cruel, and terrible activity to attempt. To open, unblock, let flow again what has been dammed (damned?) is healing, kind, and gracious activity.

All who surrender to the love of
the Great Mystery,
whose hearts are merciful and kind,
will go in beauty and walk with grace;
And all who reverence Love's Eternal Flame,
will know Love's Companioning Presence.
(Merrill, Ps 50, p.99)

It's St. Valentine's Day. Give chocolates! Bow in gratitude to the life and love that flows through each one of us!

The Earth and all that is in it belongs to the Whole, to be tended by all in co-operation with Love.

Tend well! Let love go on!

Desperate times demand desperate measures. When does despair become a virtue? Is it when hope turns to face you, and you have disappeared?

Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with noninvolvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu (in dailyzen)

In a time of censure, suicide, and slaughter, I propose a more radical penance practice -- namely, disappearing in place of Christ!

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
(final part, from poem "Ash Wednesday" by T.S.Eliot)

Dean, concert singer doubling as bookstore clerk, would often reach for a quote from Pema Chodron, about hope -- that it was something you hung on to, clung to -- but it too must be dropped. He'd say this over coffee. He wondered why Christians placed so much value in hope. Wasn't it wanting something other, something separate that wasn't necessary? Suffer me not to be separated.

Lent begins. Let the suffering begin! Or, put differently, let the allowing begin. To suffer is to allow, to let what is taking place be what it truly is. And what is taking place? What truly is? What is turning itself into itself in this existence?
Perhaps, just perhaps, it truly is the body of Christ taking place in this world.

Although I do not hope to turn. These are desperate times. Canadian figure skaters are denied the gold they demonstrated belonged to them. Catholic priests are deconstructing the privilege and power they once assumed was theirs no matter what. Politicians poise to saw off the limb of easy money that held them aloft from the ground of honest brokering. The heresy of having a different opinion about war, murder, infallibility, and nearness to God -- has been moved from ecclesiastical sanctuaries and relocated in the oval office, justice department, and pentagon -- linking heresy with treason, and usurping the national flag as new icon of redemption.

And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth.

I am desperate. I despair. I cannot see myself...without hope...where does one turn?

It is Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the slow emptying begins.
Perhaps it is not hope, but something wonders -- If what we call "Christ" takes place in this world, will anyone who answers 'yes' or 'no' come to realize their separation? -- or, their true self, their Christ-self?

As for me, disappearing might be a virtue to consider.
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross

At least, it's a place to begin.

[Note for bookshop Tuesday Evening Schedule -- There will be no Buddhist Studies for the remainder of February. They'll continue first Tuesday in March.]

.......................

The woman, the priest, and the community are shaky today.
We're not sages. We're ordinary people...

Sages lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies.
They are successful
In whatever they undertake,
And arrive wherever they go.
Whatever they do, they
Embrace destiny and go along
Without confusion.
- Wen-tzu (dailyzen.com)

...And we're confused.

Yesterday the pastor of the local Catholic church said someone had accused him of being sexist, arrogant, and having done immeasurable harm to women parishioners. He said he'd be rendering his resignation at an emergency parish council meeting this coming Wednesday. He then launched into his sermon, ignoring the murmurs of surprise as well as the woman who stood addressing him "Father?" Her plea was ignored. So too ignored was the question of propriety in announcing in such an unresponsive way what to some is a sudden and undesirable revelation.

Edward Collins Vacek, S.J. in an America article (March 9, 1996) entitled "The Eclipse of Love for God," wrote:
When David Hare interviewed clergy as part of his research for his play, "Racing Demons," he ran into a problem: None of the priests wanted to talk about God. One of the disturbing questions his play raises is whether contemporary Christians, with the exception of a few fanatical fundamentalists, are concerned about loving God.
In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God's love for us, but few are willing to talk about their love for God. When I press them to say what it means to love God, some of them in fact deny that we can love God directly, many admit that they don't give much thought to love for God and most deny that there is any ethical obligation to do so. They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but they have no such thoughts about neglecting God. In short, many contemporary Christians subscribe to Jesus' second commandment, but not to the first. (p.13

The priest on Sunday must have been very upset to blurt out his suffering in what some feel was an insensitive and uncaring way to his parishioners. If he was asking for help, he didn't ask. If he was lining up support against the person (presumably a woman) accusing him, he chose an abusive way to do so. But if he was trying to say that he loved God, wished to serve God and God's people, and was temporarily knocked off his pins by rage, sorrow, and helplessness -- then, we must attempt to heal the cut and tear that all of us participate in as members of the body of Christ.

Brother Antoninus (William Everson), in his book of poems The Hazards of Holiness (1960) writes in his poem "Saints" --
Souls and warriors!
Great-hearted ones!
How may we hope to learn of you,
Of anyone,
For a course of battle
That can't be seen
Ever at all?
When what is relatable
Broke at a level beyond any ken?

Even you, even you,
Never really knew it, saints.
Stalwarts of the soul's war,
Prechosen.

But woke one morning
Dead and glorified,
Nobody more surprised than yourselves.

And looked back doubtless
As some thorn-torn climber
Pants at the peak-top,
Staring down in amaze
At the hell of cockle
He clambered through.

I've done that.
Looked back down all choked and bleeding
At what I crawled across,
Raking scorpions and poison-mouthed toads
Off my clothes as I stared.
I know that.

But now ahead
No cactus there nor any beasts,
No toads, no snakes,
No devils and no ghosts.

Nothing.

No thing. Not anything.

Not to be named, even,
Cursed at, grinned back against,
Invoked, knelt to,
Adored, denied, befouled or hated!

And nothing to love!

A blankness
Like neither night nor day
Confronts: the flat void
Of unrealization.

Before what will be
Is.

Before what might be
Can.
(pp.32-33)

The woman, the priest, the community attempting to be body of Christ -- are each "Before."

What happens next -- with, to, and as, love -- will reveal to us either realization or unrealization.

Vacek ends his article in America saying:
At the end of this essay, let me make it clear that in speaking of love for God, I do not mean to exclude love for neighbor or self or world. Rather, love for God leads us to cooperate with God's love of the world. Hence -- strange as it seems -- one of the reasons we want to love ourselves and others is that we want thereby to cooperate with God's love for us. In a profoundly religious sense, we are aware that the ordinary and usually best way that God can love creatures is through our love for them. Still, although love for neighbor and love for self are essential to the Christian life, my concern here is that we must not let these wholesome Christian loves eclipse our love for God. That love should be the sun of our lives. (p.16)

Perhaps here is offered a way out, or in, for the woman, priest, and community attempting to be body of Christ in a confusing time -- namely, acknowledge, but do not succumb to seasonal affective disorder. The light of the sun, deprived during dark winter, is returning -- slowly, slowly. Lent, the slow preparation for the mystery that enfolds our bodies as well as that of Jesus' is upon us. The sun, the son, the sum of our "thorn-torn climber" selves -- is returning to the midst of our consciousness, returning to this part of Maine's eco-geography. Put differently, what we are "Before" is ready to engage and enfold Real Presence. And for this, we need to:
...lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies. (Wen-tzu)

The snow is blowing horizontal in Presque Isle. We're on our way!
We'll, all of us, clamber through!

Meetingbrook riddle:
Question --"How do you know that you're a fool, a dimwit, and don't know anything?"
Answer -- "I don't know. Try not to think about it. What was the question again?"

There was this silly exercise done in workshops -- you ask one half the room to think of a question, any question, and write it down. The other half is told to think of an answer, any answer about anything that comes to mind, and write it down. Then by choosing willy-nilly one from each side to read their question and answer -- there occurs a sometimes hilarious, sometimes serious, but most times absurd connection between random questions and random answers. It nearly always served as a curious reminder that, while all questions find answers, the direct relationship between question and answer resides in the wit and intelligence of the occurrence, and not in the intentional logical conclusion reached for by the questioner or responder. The general result of the exercise is laughter.

So what? Well you might ask!
Once you enter the path of prayer and unknowing -- a curious sensation occurs -- nothing makes sense, and, everything seems absurd. Absurdity isn't a condition one reaches for in order to cultivate, propagate, and disseminate -- rather, absurdity arises from the everyday occurence of being, life, loss, and emptiness. Absurdity, according to the New World Dictionary, is from the Latin absurdus= not to be heard and is defined as "so clearly untrue or unreasonable as to be laughable or ridiculous; laughably inconsistent with what is judged as true or reasonable; laughable from incongruity; foolishness; nonsense."

Erazim Kohak's book Idea & Experience -- Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in IDEAS 1 (c.1978), begins with Kohak's Preface:
This study is predicated on the Heraclitean conviction that wisdom is "to know the gnome, the thought by which all things are guided through all." In the case of Husserl's project of phenomenology, that one thought, profound in its simplicity, is that, primordially and ultimately, to know means to see, or, as Husserl presents it in Ideas 1 # 19c,
Direct "seeing" ([Gk]: noein), not merely experiential sense perception, but seeing in general as the primordial presentive consciousness of whatever kind, is the ultimate source of the validity of all rational assertions. ((p.xi)

Kohak continues, The primordial starting point, as well as the ultimate aim of all knowledge, is not speculation but that clear, evident insight which humans acknowledge with the startled exclamation, "Oh, now I see!"

The devout wish such a consummation!

A Zen Master writes:
He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Place that alongside the Dalai Lama's words when he said, "My religion is simple. My religion is kindness..." and there is a generous invitation to open one's eyes and see.

Human nature is developed
By profound serenity and lightness;
Virtue is developed
By harmonious joy
And open selflessness.
When externals do not
Confuse you inwardly,
Your nature finds the condition
That suits it;
When your nature does not
Disturb harmony,
Virtue rests in its place.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

These days the externals confuse me inwardly. While my only refuge is kindness -- this I trust -- the storm of closed self pounds absurdly against the place virtue rests in profound serenity and lightness. I feel Queeg's steel round clinking balls rolling around my hand as I realize the absurdity of my foolishness, dim wit, and ignorance.
What was the question, again?

The morning is brilliant. Bright sun on white snow, startling blue sky, elongated white cloud, bracing cold breeze. Outside the window everything seems in place. On bed, Sando stands, stretches, turns and returns to blanket, licks left paw while looking at me.

She sees me sitting right where I am!

Enfold. That's the word. The word had been 'consolidate.' Enfold seems more like it. 'Enfold' in the dictionary has two parts: 1. to wrap in folds; wrap up; envelop; 2. to embrace. We need to enfold.

Don’t be surprised,
Don’t be startled;
All things will arrange
Themselves.
Don’t cause a disturbance,
Don’t exert pressure;
All things will clarify
Themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

In Meetingbrook's case, the two separate instances need to enfold one in the other. The bookshop/bakery in town and the hermitage on Barnestown Rd. at Ragged Mountain can no longer be sustained as two places. This emerging fact is unsettling. Perhaps Huai-nan-tzu is right, all things will clarify themselves, all things will arrange themselves.
Right now it looks like our 6 years at Bayview Street might come to an end and we will enfold at Barnestown.

A hermit by temperament longs for the simplicity of nature being nature. A solitary by inclination longs for silence and solitude to experience what is alone. A monastic by surrender longs to move through the appreciation that there is no movement to or from anything -- only the nondual appreciation of what is moving in stillness.

In the forward to Frederick Franck's book To Be Human Against All Odds, James W. Heisig writes of Franck:
He is equally attracted to the Zen view that dichotomized thinking is ultimately a betrayal of religious experience. Life/art, subject/object, I/Thou, persons/things are all modes of thought and need to be broken through in order to make what sense they can make.
By the same token, and in true Zen fashion, he does not see Zen itself as something to be clung to in exclusion of other religious ways. The sacredness of any tradition is that it opens our eyes to see what there is to see. By becoming dogmatic and self-sufficient, a tradition may have a better chance of surviving shifts of time and place, but it forfeits the basic task of opening our eyes to the sacred. (p.9)

The sacred is enfolded in the secular. Prayer is enfolded in politics. Work is enfolded in worship. If there is a thin place, that thin place is not between one and the other, not a membrane however transparent that separates one and the other, not a free zone that runs contiguous to one and the other. The thin place is the aspect of enfolding.

The aspect of enfolding is the looking at and as what is enfolding. It is not a matter of foresight nor of hindsight. Rather, what the aspect of enfolding is -- is seeing itself, now -- and here. Here we speak about seeing the reality of Meetingbrook move from two locations to one while retaining the monastic tension inherent in living -- alone-with-others, or solitude-in-community, or embodying the thin place of rooting-sprouting as the same instance differing directions.

The whole consideration of Meetingbrook is practicing between traditions. We are coming to see that this doesn't mean going from one to the other and back. Nor does it mean throwing them both into a single pot to stir together. Perhaps we will come to see that the meaning for us is to watch and see the unfolding and enfolding of what longs to present itself in the midst of creation itself. Some might call that God. Or, Ultimate Reality, Truly Human, Risen Christ, Buddha of Compassion, The Way with its Power, Truth, What Is, or even -- Hello my name is...!
Something is emerging in, with, and through creation and those awake to the emergence. Exactly what that is to look like is unknown to all but a few of our species. And it terrifies us.
Terra est! Terra's I Am! What is the error? It is the earth! I am the earth. And the error? It seems the error is we've separated ourselves from the earth, from creation -- and are intent on objectifying it, thereby eliminating it.

Frederick Franck writes:
Raimon Panikkar coined the term cosmotheandric for the trinitarian relationship referred to by Samartha. I understood him to agree that in our present situation no single religion, culture, or tradition can pretend to present a universally valid solution for either our theoretical or practical human problems. Alone and isolated, Hinduism is threatened, Christianity is impotent, Islam is in ferment, Buddhism is dissolving, Marxism is bankrupt, secularism is self-destructing. It is not unthinkable that cross-fertilization among the traditions could reconcile the original insights of the various cultures and make the stilled voices of the sages audible once more over the abysses of time.

A new innocence, perhaps even a new naivete, is needed. This is not something that can be willed or concocted intellectually, but must be born from "grace." What we need is a holistic view of reality, a post-modern view in which all our fragmentary modern knowledge would be evaluated as mere preparation of its insights on a higher level. This does not imply facile assumptions about some undifferentiated reality, but a restoration of a view of the human in its dignity as a spark of the infinite fire (agni), a microcosm, an image of the whole, a constituent of the entirety of the real: cosmically, environmentally, communally integrated.

Science is powerless when it comes to understanding what it might mean to be human, for this is not a scientific question. It is precisely this human mystery that is the questioner. An anthropocentric answer would be as deficient as a theocentric one, for being human is a coexistence with the Divine and the Cosmos. The Divine is not "pure transcendence," not free from all relationship. The Ultimately Real is not "Wholly Other," not an exclusively 'divine" kingdom. The human has its place in it.

In every human being, Panikkar noted, the entirety of the cosmotheandric real is centered. This does not make us the center of reality. It means that reality is centered in itself and at once the center of that "circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere."

As creatures we may be nothingness, but as constituents of the real, we are integral participants in the Trinitarian Mystery, and not merely passively but as fully sharing in the destiny of being. (Franck, pp.97-98)

The cosmotheandric, the enfolding aspect of Earthly/Divine/Human, is a longing that is felt everywhere. And yet, there are those who intentionally rape, pollute and expropriate for personal greed what does not belong to them, but belongs to a grace and a power beyond the understanding of the separators, takers, and criminals -- both petty and lawyerly corporate. (This last sentiment after viewing Bill Moyers Report: NAFTA'S Powerful Little Secret).

Elsewhere Panikkar describes his Cosmotheandric Principle as that in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole. (In 'The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar,' by Carmen Font, from the October 1996 issue of "Share International.")

Something dies. Something falls away. As we participate in our small instance of this change, we try to see the enfolding aspect of the cosmotheandric; we try to see the grace of it.

Hui-neng, 7th century, said, "The Meaning of Life is to SEE."

The poet Ikkyu (1394-1481) wrote:
I shall not die
I shall not go away
Just don't ask me any questions
I shall not answer.

I enfold my hands. They assume the posture of prayer, departure, and arrival. These enfolded hands set to greet what is to be. This is done as the unnecessary disappears.

What is it we think about when killing people?

Read papers, listen to news, and the reasons heap upon each other. The explanations, the defenses, the invocation to national pride, satisfaction of justice, or elimination of evil -- all have a compelling soundness that nods heads and mulls minds sipping coffee in strategy rooms, cafes, and penal committee rooms.

"A mind," an advertisement went years ago, "is a terrible thing to waste!"
It is also a troublesome thing to taste. At best it makes clear what is clouded. At worst it clouds what is presented to it.

"Pay no mind," -- my grandmother would say. "Don't give it any currency," -- David would say at a Wednesday Evening Conversation. It is costly to use the mind in ways that are useless. It is costly to allow the mind to use us in ways often beyond our recognition.

"No mind," the Zen people say. "Dropping off mind and body," enlightened Dogen Zenji. "Don't mind me," takes on a different ring when spoken to another.

Coming, I don't enter by the gate,
Going, I don't leave by the door.
This very body
Is the land of tranquil light.
(--Gyokko, 1315-95)

Perhaps it is the body that refracts the light of understanding we normally attribute to mind.

The perfect way out:
There's no past/present/future.
Dawn after dawn, the sun!
Night after night, the moon!
(--Getsudo, 1285-1361)

Perhaps it is Nature itself that calls to us -- as mother, lover, friend, and child -- inviting us to simply see what is there, who we are, how life endures.

What is it we think about when killing people? Mind this -- reason justifies, but no reason satisfies. I don't sense we understand, not yet. Perhaps we're not ready yet.
Don't mind me.

God's breath exhales: "I Am Everywhere!" God's sight pleads: "Don't kill me!" God's compassion wonders: "What are you thinking of?"

Every thing, every place is real,
Each particle makes up Original Man.
Still, the absolutely real is voiceless,
The true body's majestically out of sight.
(--Chosa, 9c)

See?

Simeon, old and hanging on for some sign, held the child. He told Mary the child would be a sign that is contradicted, something spoken against. There would be pain and sorrow piercing her heart.

Anna, old and a regular at the temple, thanks God, and tells whoever would listen about the child. The child is presented as a light to the non-Jews and as a son-heir to the Jewish messianic hopes. The God of the Jewish people is both invisible and nameless but there. The Gentiles needed a light to see what they couldn't comprehend. The child with Simeon and Anna is visible, named, and will suffer and die. Like Mary, Joseph, David, Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Pontius Pilate, Herod, John, our parents -- like everyone who appears and is called by name, this child Jesus, will suffer and die. God or no God -- if you're going to appear you'll disappear. If you are given a name, it will be taken away. What's the point?

Today America says it is groundhog's day -- see or don't see shadow, the groundhog appears and is watched by others for signs of the length of winter. Tomorrow is superbowl Sunday -- bet or don't bet on the New England Patriots an enormous viewing audience will watch for signs to see which one or the other will suffer loss and defeat. Many will attend as the whole show comes to an end with the final whistle. And here too, will there not be signs contradicted in these events? Won't there be many who will speak against whatever outcome occurs? Won't the child be dismissed in equivocal ways that Simeon only half represents when he suggests God dismiss him now that he has seen? See what the heart longs for and dissolve with the seeing, dissolve into the seeing?
Seeing what?

Acts at random,
In ignorance of
The constant, bode ill.
Knowing the constant
Gives perspective;
This perspective is impartial.
Impartiality is the highest nobility;
The highest nobility is divine,
And the divine is the Way.
This Way is everlasting,
Not endangered by physical death.
- Tao-te Ching (dailyzen.com)

Light clarifies as fire refines. An email about refining silver was sent by Kristen. Excerpted:
He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold
the silver in the middle of the flame, where the heat was the
hottest, in order to burn away all the impurities.
The man answered that
yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to
keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the flames. If
the silver was left even a moment too long, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith,
"How do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her
and answered, "Oh, that's the easy part - when I see my image
reflected in it."

The value of sangha, community, church, supporting circle -- is the constant attentiveness, watchfulness, listening, appreciating and questioning. The work is done there, within and surrounding the gathering of individuals witnessing the transformation presence encourages.

Simeon held this truth in his hands. Anna told it to others. You and I always have a choice -- namely, do we divert our attention and energy away from the process at hand, or do we engage each and all in the reflective work of allowing what we have seen and heard dissolve into who we are in silence?

One of the annoying yet endearing qualities of Jesus was his invitation to allow the rules and laws of external imposition dissolve -- and to enter the freedom of building together the kingdom of heaven, the indwelling place of God, the one reality of love, light, truth, freedom, justice -- an unseen, unnamed, unother Presence.

Simeon longed for the "consolation of Israel." Perhaps we might transliterate this phrase of Simeon's to -- taking comfort with the wrestling we engage in with messages/messengers of God. Is this what we call Presence?

Anna thanks God for the intuitions and energies that God is in our midst. She is a prophetess. She "...anticipates," as one writer says it, "what will happen when the spirit is poured out on all flesh...A model of faith in action, one who responds positively and properly to the coming of the Messiah." (in Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol.I, p.257),

At the Snowbowl next door, toboggan championships are being run. One by one they shoot through the chute and out across Hosmer Pond thick with ice. Each run is timed, measured, and recorded. In the dooryard Kristen leaves with her portable table. Jim unloads some things from his red truck and drives east. In kitchen the apple Kuchen is baked and out of the oven. Gray squirrels have emptied the house feeder out back. It is Saturday. Sando noses into this room. Smoke rises from woodstove chimney outside window and dissolves into the sun-bright frosty air.

I present these facts so that when each one of them dissolves there will be no need to speak against them. They are signs of themselves. No other meaning is needed.

We thank God, knowing this, constantly watchful.
Presence!

What we need is some way to be and say -- what and who we are -- as we become, truly, what and who we are!

"Rabbit, Rabbit." (That's for Susan, Bob, Dana and the rest of the schooner crowd -- as well as Kristen the Sweetvoice of Evergreen, Reiki and Massage -- who over the years have spoken these words upon opening their eyes on the first of the month. Although none of them have been able to attribute the source of pronouncing this ritualized awakening, they, and several visitors from away, nod enthusiastically as to the appropriateness of the practice.)

Attain the center of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet;
As myriad things act in concert,
I thereby observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root
Is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Tao-te Ching (dailyzen.com)

Upon my awaking this morning, (rabbit rabbit notwithstanding), I found words echoing in my yawning dawn that remind me of the center emptiness, act in concert, observing return, flourishing root, calling stillness, returning to life the constant, knowing the constant is enlightenment -- the Tao-te Ching fragment arousing resemblance and resonance. Here are the words I wake with -- they arrive from a night's sleep:

May this bread we eat place us in mind of Christ.
May this wine we drink serve the embodying of Christ.
When we eat and drink this bread and wine we remember Christ with compassion.
May the understanding and awareness of Christ transform each and all in simplicity, silence, and service.
Yes, thank you!

Round drops of snowy sleet sound whoosh and shhh when pushed by my boots approaching the empty birdfeeders. We were gone four days to southern Maine and western Massachusetts. Saskia attended the funeral in New York State of her brother-in-law's father at a Russian Orthodox Monastery. May he rest in peace!
Today the birds must be higher on the mountain, not yet aware that our negligence is revisited with feed again for them as light snow resumes. That's how I felt at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland yesterday at 12:15 Mass listening to the words of liturgical celebration, receiving/reciprocating communion, and sitting in silent presence after the chapel emptied.

During his homily the priest spoke of Don Bosco, the saint honored on the 31st -- how he worked with youth, and his followers too were known for their educating and serving youth. I prayed for all those involved over the years with the sorrow and pain of sexual abuse, priests to youth, and for the healing of wounds in both victim and perpetrator. Boston reels with the coming to light of the secrets and denials rife in the clash of institution and human lives. The Church takes its hit -- and (in deference to upcoming Superbowl Sunday, another American liturgical event) -- it is thrown for a long significant loss. It is time to field a more transparent plan to embody the compassion, understanding, and awareness of Christ. Mere institutional lineage and conferring of teaching power -- whether in priestly or political arenas -- no longer compels as reason for fidelity. A dry, empty time, fallow and hard, winter's face.

And then -- one chickadee, two, three return. Their chirping precedes them. They take seed, dart to safe limb, and eat. This, this, is what we need -- to return, eat, drink -- remembering source, revealing what can no longer stay hidden, responding with what and who we are.

Yes, thank you!

Thomas must have loved straw. He compared all his writings to straw at the end of his life. Still, his straw became the foundation of scholastic theology for the next 700 years.

The tragedy of man is not that he cannot find happiness, but that he looks for it in all the wrong places. Because the desires of man are boundless, no particular good, whether outside himself, or in himself can perfectly satisfy him. (PartIIa, Ch.1, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas, Summa Simplified for Everyone)

Why did the Son of God have to suffer for us? There was a great need, and it can be considered in a twofold way: in the first place, as a remedy for sin, and secondly, as an example of how to act.
It is a remedy, for, in the face of all the evils which we incur on account of our sins, we have found relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives. Whoever wishes to live perfectly should do nothing but disdain what Christ disdained on the cross and desire what he desired, for the cross exemplifies every virtue. (From a conference by Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest: The Cross exemplifies every virtue)

The desires we cultivate are boundless. We want what is not here. We want more, bigger, better. We want others to be as we wish them to be. We want the world to embrace our politics, our values both good and bad. We want wealth, health, happiness, for ourselves. We want something to go away, something else to come. There's no end to the ways our mind fabricates the belief that this, here, now is inadequate, measly, merde, straw. And yet, if God is here, now?

What are "the evils which we incur?" What, according to Thomas Aquinas, did Christ disdain on the cross or desire on the cross that exemplified every virtue? Perhaps the evil is the refusal to look at and see what is good. Perhaps what Christ disdained, that is, what Christ saw as unworthy and beneath the dignity of men and women, is the false front, mock values, and posturing pretense that prevents us from opening to and falling into the one true reality. And what is that one true reality? I'm not sure, I don't know.

But Christ seemed to suggest the one true reality is that we are family, brother, sister, mother, father to each other. That we are what God is -- we are meant to be presence, light, comfort, and truth for each other. That we are meant to be free and full of grace -- not burdened by debt, disease, distorted beliefs.

Today a 20yr old woman in the Middle East blew herself up and killed alongside her an 81yr old man and wounded 113 others. Commandos rush a hospital in Afghanistan and kill 5 members of a terrorist group holed up there for two months who threatening to blow up the hospital. Today four professional football teams rest from their games yesterday -- the combined gates, betting, salaries and endorsements of their and some of the professional basketball teams that also played their games -- amounting to well over a billion dollars. Corporations, lawyers, accountants, and politicians resume their Joycean monologues and polyphonic atonal rap songs to each other in the myriad hearings and scandal scouting events of Houston and Washington D.C.. Hide and run, shuck and jive, steal and fleece and explain it as capitalism, as distraction and entertainment -- what else can be seen from the cross?

When men see clearly the justice and the mercy of God, the wisdom of God will also be apparent to them. All the seeming inequalities and injustices of human life -- the prosperity of the wicked and the oppression of the just, the sudden and early death of the saintly and the long life of the tyrant -- all these mysteries of life will be opened to the minds of men [and women]. The plan of God in the creation of human life, in all its vastness and complexity, will be seen by men [and women]. (p.596, op.cit.)[brackets added]

Christ is the seeing of what is real. Jesus, hanging on the cross, Christed this world with a compassionate eye. He saw with the vision of God that so much of what we do, to ourselves and others, is unworthy of what we really are, and does not resonate the dignity of who we really are -- here and now. That vision is ours to see and to be. The words we've heard -- "he died for our sins" -- might better be phrased -- "he became straw so we would become wheat" -- flowering stalks, dazzling wildflowers, grass under snow urging winter on. Christ finds us worthy, with dignity, nearly ready to see and be what we really are. You've got to love straw, its fragrance, its feeding form, its sun shading brim.

The gift dies into this seeing/being.

"How can a thing be a miracle one day and not a miracle the next day?"

In the novel by Brian Moore, Catholics, (pp. 121-124) situated on the Isle of Muck in Ireland, the Abbot has to do something,
He hears Fr. Matthew's question.
"And I will not be put off like that," Father Matthew shouted. "I will not be ordered to believe something which I do not believe."
"No one can order belief," the Abbot said. "It is a gift from God." But even as he said this, said the only truth left to him, he saw in these faces that he was failing, that he was losing them, that he must do something he had never done, give something he had never given in these, his years as their Abbot. What had kept him in fear since Lourdes, must now be faced. What he feared most to do must be done. And if, in doing it, I enter null and never return, amen. My time has come.

The Abbot leads them through the nave, entered the chancel, and faced the altar.
"A miracle," he told them, "is when God is there in the tabernacle."
"But you said the opposite, you said that the sacrifice of the Mass is just ritual, that bread and wine remain bread and wine, that there are no miracles!"
Matthew, thundering: righteous, wronged. The Abbot, his back to all of them, heard their stiff intake of breath, the fear of their lives at these words, said in this place. He stared at the golden door of the tabernacle. His fear came. "Prayer is the only miracle," he said. "We pray. If our words become prayer, God will come."
..................
Kris, from Belfast, writes to say, "We send our best to you, Saskia and Meetingbrook. Wish we could do more--"
I respond, "You can do more: say a prayer!"

This fear is dear to us. If we pray... if our words become prayer... if God comes... then...?
..................
Slowly, with the painful stiffness of age, he went down heavily on one knee, then on both. Knelt in the center of the aisle, facing the altar, the soles of his heavy farm boots showing from the hem of his robe. He trembled. He shut his eyes.
"Let us pray."

He bent his head. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven," he said. His trembling increased. He entered null. He would never come back. In null.

He heard them kneel. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven." Relieved, their voices echoed his.
"Hallowed be Thy name," the Abbot said.
"Hallowed be Thy name."
.........
Then, indeed... not any... none!