hospice

companioning presence

here,
home

God is
what is
looking through
us
with love.

Snow grows wet and slush hardens Ragged mountainside. Ji-Ji-Mu-Ge settles into hermitage. Jumps to table during Sunday Evening Practice knocks over two candles. Spends rest of conversation about the philosophy suggested by his name in the bathroom meowing his views.

Cesco perfumes himself on the mountain with some fragrance that is washed out of him in bathtub. He is cooperative and unfragrant again. Both Sando and Cesco stopped short on the path overlooking Hosmer Pond when a moving lump that turned out to be a porcupine ambled across our trek. We turned back.

Mu-ge and the two dogs circle for agreeable boundaries in the house. These wary obstacles of particularity -- spatial negotiations -- narrow and tighten and perhaps, in time, will disappear. So too with us. We move from the unboundaried to vague then clear boundaries, through permeable boundaries to no boundaries -- someday. So much of life seems to be the establishing then dismantling of boundaries. In the spiritual life the process is mandatory. In national and security matters the process freezes with establishing and protecting clear boundaries. Unless, of course, the will of the state demands more and more and more for itself.

We are grateful to be spared the responsibility for securing the state, the nation, and interests therein. It is a special service some take on for the rest of us -- to protect and preserve. Both church and state assume that task. The rest of us are free to let go and let God emerge where church and state do not control. That place is within. That place is no-place.

In prison Friday Andre's poem asked us to consider the word "capture." It is well worth contemplating. To capture = to take. (In contrast, to leave = to fail to take or refrain from taking.) To be captured by the sun after a storm is to be taken by the warmth and brightness, relief following danger. (To leave or to let go, to suffer, permit, or allow is to free and be freed from that which catches or gains control by force, stratagem, or guile.)

Likewise, Harold follows up his personal autobiographical inquiry with an investigator's efforts to interview those who knew him before his crime 25 years ago. The investigator writes he might not spell so well, but he'll ask the right questions.)

So too Shane is asking himself whether to continue here where he is or (in some way) depart. Maybe a new citizenship in another country. (Maybe in a way of thinking that is not so punishing.) It is a privileged education we experience visiting for conversation inside the walls of prison. We read Andre Cadrescu's essay on John Cage's Silence, and Shunyata's (Emmanuel Sorensen's) two chapters in Dancing With The Void and a New York Time's Science article on the Cosmological theory of an Inflating Multiverse and Limitless Space.

We're just conversing with each other.

Perhaps there is no boundary. I am in prison. I am in hermitage. I am poem being written. I am universe expanding beyond itself. I am inmate sitting at round table. I am guard looking in through glass window. I am Cesco snoozing on bed after bath washing away pungent smell. I am water draining into septic. I am kneeler in front room waiting for weight to posture itself in front of crucifix. I am wind chime hanging from cedar tree in strong wind. I am crusted snow with fallen oak leaves stretched along expanse. I am porcupine burrowing into hollow trunk on darkened hill. I am letters throwing themselves together into words that settle for now into narrative. I am silence and emptiness following final period ending this word.

At shop Jeff strings stick. Hugh and Sam have been talking about starting a fire from scratch. Virginia and Susan watch on. They are intent on the experiment. It goes nowhere.

Muge arrived last night from local shelter. His full name is ji ji muge (or, harmony within diversity). More literally ji ji muge means between one thing/event/happening (ji) and another thing/event/happening (ji) there is no (mu) barrier/separation (ge).

He seems a sweet 4-month-old kitten. Some coon cat in him.
Cesco tracks him. Muge swats Cesco. Sando raises her head, glances over, and lowers head.

Ji ji muge -- welcome to this generous new arrival!

Crossing Oneself

To understand
what is here
begin to understand
our being there. Cross
"t" from there, comes here,
comes God. Dying cross,
lives God, there to here.

wfh,13nov02

Joel brought firewood. Dropped it right by last year's stacked towers. It's out there. In drizzle. Yup. Waiting for this year's architecture. Beehive? No telling what shape might take.

Accomplishing Peace

November is emptying. The leaves of two prior months' turning have fallen. Rain and snow begin to saturate earth again.

We know this without going outdoors. The basement is under 13 inches of water today. Sump pump from last winter is ground down and muttering but not working. I sit and stare from broken wooden steps at floating debris. Saskia comes home from Rankin’s with new pump. Water flows over rims of green boots and freezes my feet while I twist hose and submerge plastic pail riven with holes containing new Flotec.

In the ocean of the holy dharma
There is neither movement nor stillness.
The essence of the wave is like a mirror;
When something comes, the reflection appears.
When there is nothing in the mind,
Wind and waves are both forgotten.
( - Gido )

Autumn is end-season. Piece by piece earth in New England reclaims what it gave. Nothingness of first season, winter. Seed and sprig of spring. Summer’s resplendent glorious fullness. Now autumn receives back emptiness, especially November.

Hosmer Pond can be seen through bare branches. So too the neighbor’s house. The chapel/zendo is prominent stark. It stands four square behind Loon IV and dinghy Immer Call back from salt-water heel and bounce to mountain stillness.

Elections are over. We will most likely enter another war. This one with Iraq. The war on drugs against American ghetto poor and anti-drug fumigations in Colombia continues. The war on terrorism home and abroad continues. The war on poverty was lost without a truce. The war against the middle class and lower class by the corporate class and wealthy class is raging in a seemly quiet. Whenever the administration in Washington wishes its way on any contemporary issue they simply call their opponents unpatriotic and liberal rhetorical sympathizers with the enemy. So many enemies, so little room for dissent, so complex a metaphor -- that of war.

It is the empty time between secular celebrations. Stores shelve their Halloween costumes and ready for pre-Christmas merchandise sales. Thanksgiving will show up as time to remember we ought to be grateful for something to do with fruitful fields, new occupancy, freedom of expression, and a sense we are blessed. It is a regional holiday, decidedly American.

It is an empty time between religious celebrations. Ramadan nears end, Christ prays an Advent of new consciousness, Buddha pauses before enlightenment the same day Mary readies to be conceived with no barrier to God, and Chanukah menorahs prepare to extend a hedge hope against lowering candles.

Darkness tiptoes across the middle of this hunter’s month. We, like frightened deer in wooded glen, listen for breaking twig and bolting metal in pre-dawn stillness. Death loads, takes sighting, and pauses. We’re unsure the light to come is flash of ordinance signaling our end, or nova spirit of life burning through our ignorance with news of liberation for human consciousness.

97 Jesus said,
The [Father's] imperial rule is like a woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. 2While she was walking along [a] distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her [along] the road. 3She didn't know it; she hadn't noticed a problem. 4When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.
(-- from the Gospel of Thomas from the Scholars Version translation published in The Complete Gospels)

It is a curious proposition that the Father’s accomplishment is emptying out. Emptying out, not noticing a problem as it occurs, not knowing that it is happening as it is happening.

There’s no joy in war. It is November. We are emptying. A nova nada, a new nothingness, perhaps, will release us within. We must find out who we are. We have to come to see who we are in each other’s lives. There is no opposite to war. There is only war, and those who live through war with peace in sacred emptiness. God alone knows how this is accomplished.

May each be accomplished.

Without Knowing Why

A Hallowed Eve arrives. We'll ready the chapel/zendo wood stove for sitting and psalms. We will try not to be veils between each other.

The spiritual light shines alone,
far transcending the senses
and their fields;
the essential substance is
exposed, real and eternal.
It is not contained in written words.
The nature of mind has no defilement;
it is basically perfect and complete in itself.
Just get rid of delusive attachments,
and merge with realization of thusness.
- Pai-chang (720–814)

Veils are willing to dissolve when we are willing to look through them. Veils exist to protect us from seeing too clearly what is there to be seen. Veils are thinnest this eve of All Souls, Celtic New Year's Eve, and Eve of Day of the Dead.

Some in spirituality speak of the death of the ego. It is when there is no longer any supportive energy for veils. The held belief we are isolated separated beings crumbles and dissolves. We are left bereft of what we once thought we were. This dissolving of the veil is a shocking invitation into a new way of being. A new energy is released.

Opening Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's book The Future of Man page 210 presents itself with these words:
After a short period of untroubled proprietorship every new source of energy, as we know by experience, gives rise to two related problems, that of the limitations to be imposed on it and that of its preservation. The new force must not be allowed to get out of hand or to exhaust itself. The same applies (although we have thought less about it) to the source of energy abruptly released by Nature through Man which I have called the 'force of purposive thinking.'

What are we to think when the veil thins? Are we, of necessity, compelled to both put limitations on, and try to preserve, what is revealed? How far are we from understanding Meister Eckhart's phrase "leben ohne warum" (life without the question why)? What is the alternative to our dependence on the question 'Why?'

If today you hear God's voice,
harden not your heart.
--Psalm 95

Will we always ask "Why?" when (or if) we hear the voice of God? Do we need to search and find the right wavelength, the right station on the dial, in order to hear God's voice? Or, is God's voice the permeating sound and silence resonating at heart of each and every being, each and every thing, each and every event and occurrence in existence? In life itself?

Tonight the veil thins. Something dissolves. Without limitation or preservation. Arrives. Softens.
Our hearts?

Now?

Cesco at foot of chair. Sando by door. Today quiet. Trees field chill air. If limbs bare, my spirit bares. Cold stillness. Some days it takes all one can to simply breathe. Thin air. Thin membrane between worlds. The thin place opens. No speaking there. Only stark learning silence.

After Jesus said, "This is my body, this is my blood," was he at that place? Where does one go once coming to earth and returning to earth?

Today, walking 4 road miles to town, I thought about each granule of soil. I thought about all I don't know.

Heart of Peace; Heart of God?

What is the cost of peace?

We know the cost of war -- dead bodies, enormous economic expense, consolidation of power in the hands of a few military or administration officials. But what is the cost of peace?

We'd have to consider justice -- equal treatment under the law. This equal treatment is at times more abused than held in honor. I frequent a prison. I know who is there and not there. Not many millionaires. Not those Wall Street or corporate activists drinking Black Label or sniffling white powder who've stolen from thousands of people and are protected by the weapons of lawyers. Rather, mostly poor kids. Those whose back street activities after beer and marijuana or heroin rip off two or three people brandishing extra bags to sell and a firearm for protection.

Peace costs less than war. But the cost hits us and our culture right where we hurt the most -- in the comfortable habits of our American life style. Peace would ask us to change our way of living. We in America are very wealthy. We are criticized that our way of life is decadent. Our way of life depends on others' living far below our standard. Would peace, real peace, ask of us to have less, consume less, demand less from others?

Christianity is loosely based on the life of Jesus, called by some Christ. The Ground of Being and Ground of Christ is the very Ground of Each One of Us. It occurs to me that to turn or return to that Ground or Christ would mean living the life of Christ. What is the life of Christ?

Here is where many part paths. It occurs to me that Christ is peace. Not security, not protection at any cost. Not deterrence. Not primacy in munitions or deployment of armed forces. Not detente. Not first strike ability. Not patsy. Not victim. Not martyr. Not savior of the world.

To say Christ is peace is to consider saying we are not other than Christ. We realize Christ realizing what Jesus realized. Jesus realized that to live God is to abandon the self that acts and operates in place of God. To find oneself dwelling God is to live what God is. What is God living?

Here is where many more paths part. To live God is to embody peace. Peace is the radical acceptance of the poverty of God. Emptiness is God’s dwelling.

God owns nothing. Thus, everything is of God.
God withholds nothing. Thus, everything is gift.
God sees everything as it is. Thus, we are transparent to God; there is nothing to hide.
God loves what is real. Thus, to be real is primary.

Peace is the dwelling of God. No economic wealth, no military strength, no ideas of hierarchical "we are the best" applies in the dwelling of God.
What does peace cost? And why can't we afford peace?

Peace costs nothing. And we, it seems, are unwilling to, or cannot, afford the nothing it takes to dwell there.

We understand war, killing, spoils of conquest, and exploiting fears.
What we don't understand is someone emptying himself or herself, taking on the form of one who serves others, and dwelling there with and as God. As God's dwelling in this existence on this earth.

Unless, of course, it isn't a matter of understanding. But a matter of simplicity, love, and life. Unless it is a matter of courage. Of heart.

Which brings us into the question; do we have the heart for peace?

In Augusta Maine and Washington DC people gather to say "No" to President Bush's intended war with Iraq. In Minnesota a state mourns at the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, family members, workers, and pilots in plane crash yesterday as investigators prepare to sift through the site for clues as to how and why it happened. The weather turns raw and wet along the coast, a bleak statement corresponding to antipathy toward war and sorrow at death.

Before I was forty I quit my job
and came to tread the way
of saints and sages.
If I come out, it’s just
because I love the hills
and streams.
My ears are clean,
my vision’s ample.
When you ponder it,
this is true happiness.
The golden girdle girds calamity;
purple robes, pain.
Are they better than my briar
cane and cap of straw?
- Chang Yang-Hao

Who are these men and woman who give up briar cane and straw cap for purple robes of governance and power? And how can they, and we, sort through the temptations to ignorance so rife in human rational ego? How do we come to serve rather than be served? How transform the inclination to rule with benefit to some few and begin to serve with benefit to everyone?

Workers from Prock Marine are tearing out the deck pilings outside the shop. Sawn tired debris of 40 years lay on side. New full replacements stand fresh and green from mid-tide under dock. There is, always, much to replace, much to reform.

To transform is to allow what is occurring or being said by another to pass through our very form there present with another. Transformation is more difficult than replacement or reformation.

It is a day to pray for those attempting peace. It is a day to pray for those attempting to rule. For wisdom, compassion, understanding, and service.

It is a day to pray for those dying, and those who have died.

Waking this dawn, Meetingbrook mala beads in hand, the words occur:
Jesus lived his life living God.

Practice is practice

At Tuesday Evening Conversation on Buddhist Studies John C. and Saskia collaborate unknowingly on a wording of practice that fits: "Naturally -- it's not hard, and doesn't hurt -- practice."

Earlier a woman spoke of playing piano years ago. She seemed wistful when asked if she kept her hand in. "If you don't practice, you forget." (Susan F.) With prompting she realized what she'd said. Her words apply to any practice, particularly that of zazen and mindfulness.

We practice to remember -- to remember who we really are and what is the ground of our being. There is no future goal -- no goal of enlightenment or heaven. We practice sitting meditation and mindfulness to remember our ground.

When sitting there is no technique, word, breath regulation, mantra, image, or guided formula we follow. There is only sitting. There is no "subject" concentrating on some "object." There is just sitting.

Remember -- earth is earth. We arise from earth and return to earth. While sitting we sit with earth as earth.
Remember -- God is God. We are within God and return to God. While sitting we sit in this creation with this creating God.
Remember -- each one of us is each one of us. We present ourselves within the presence of each being. While sitting we sit with each presence as it is in itself.

This is what we practice, this remembrance.
If we don't practice, we forget.

Naturally, it's not hard and doesn't hurt, practice.

Four inmates and two outmates conversed about Jean Paul Sartre's "Condemned to be Free" essay and Andre's poem about that place within where we still have choice whether to go to light or to dark.

The fishing hole each finds is a virgin future. Alone in the moment, accompanied by the presence of all who have touched us, appreciating what is there for the first time. Ed brought us to that fishing hole. Paco brought the touch of all he's known with him. Andre brought his poem. Sonny knows the place well once and once again.

It was raining as we went inside the walls. The sun was shining as we said goodbye at the fishing hole of our appreciation for each other.

Lori calls to tell me Rocky B's funeral was today. Friend and neighbor of my parents on 69th street. We'll keep them in prayer.

All things are
perfectly
resolved in the
Unborn.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

We know why he died. Because he was born. How can one be unborn? Much less come to terms with the phrase "Born again?"

Originally, yes, nothing is born.
Perhaps if we learn to unask a question we might learn what is unborn. Until then, tired, it is time to sleep.

Everything is relational -- no subject, no object. There is only two "jects," says Forrest at Thursday Evening Conversation. We laugh. Without "sub" or "ob" what is there but simply to be thrown?

Land well, Rocky!

Theme: Trow-el: To Disturb or To Trust God?

Our country, right and wrong.

It occurs to me this damp storm-readying day that the difficulty we are having in this country with ethical thinking is lists. On one side of the page, correct behavior. On the other side, incorrect. Therefore, keep to the correct; avoid the incorrect. Sounds right and reasonable. Are we missing anything?

The exceptions to this list are thrown into the area known as murky or unclear. They follow the question, When is the right thing not good to do? Or, When is the wrong thing good to do?

When kill? When deprive people of their rights? When choose death over life by withholding services or medical assistance? When not make medical insurance, and thus care, not available to increasing numbers of people? When choose to take from the rich to give to the poor? Or, the more common decision - When take from the poor to give to the rich?

The murky unclear usually calls for guidelines or principles for use in determining where and when such and such an action might be taken without incurring punishment or too great a common public outrage. The human mind is often very clever in devising criteria for such situations. The popular mind shrinks differing views into simplistic allegiances and categories -- like Republican versus Democratic, or conservative versus liberal. Commentators and political pundits whose aim seems to be parody and divisive antagonism pick up still further simplifications. They load complex issues into simplistic jingoes and fire their guns into airwaves and newsprint. Their aim is to kill meaningful conversation and reasoned debate by substituting mockery, name-calling, othering, and arrogance.

Arrogance especially. Not asking questions in such a way inviting responses that explore ways to meaningful solutions honoring all participants affected by the issue, all touched by the topic. Instead, the bottom line becomes: them versus us; we've got it versus they want it; and finally, God favors the strong and bright and disfavors the weak and stupid. These designations are arrived at by architects of arguments who are intent on winning and preserving their way of life. It is not a conversation created by those seeking thoughtful insight, those longing for diminishment of suffering for all peoples.

We don't know the so-called right time and right place to concentrate the energies of the nation toward a purposeful goal of neutralizing or eliminating evil. Pragmatists and idealists alike worry that such goals are foolhardy. Others contend that if not now, when? If not us, who? If not definite action, what? Talk and more talk while outrageous attacks on individuals and communities continue?

This is the crux of ethics and our contemporary world. What used to be the concern of ethics and morality -- namely, sexual behavior, honesty in interpersonal and business dealings, use and abuse of substances such as alcohol and drugs, assisting people to die according to their own decision, or not -- has changed. Today's concerns seem different.

Today's concerns have escalated from complicated issues that divide and offend cultures different from each other -- to simplistic solutions of elimination of those whose difference you cannot abide. This is another list. Ethnic, religious, sexual preference, economic status, racial complexion, class strata, political philosophy -- all manner of variety and diversity, plurality and difference -- are on a list. This list is earmarked for elimination.

In days gone by the list was controlled by religious zealots and institutional hierarchy. Those on the list were going to hell for everlasting damnation in fire and unceasing suffering. It was known as the division of saints and sinners. Agents of God administrated the list. The good went to heaven. The bad consigned to hell. Wars and inquisitions, crusades and ritual condemnation were enough to strike fear into hearts of the undecided.

Today, God is still used to condemn and destroy. Whole nations and/or whole sections of people are earmarked for destruction. We are capable of making these lists. We make these lists. We study the names. We check them off one by one.

My country does this. Many countries do this. And multitudinous factions within countries, religions, ideologies, and mental constructs do this. These mental constructs reduce all conversation and worldview to good/bad, right/wrong, evil/our way. It is a mind, a mental construct that is hopelessly dualistic. This dualism, a helpful way of navigating our technological and mechanized world, has deteriorated into an either/or in the moral/ethical realm that deeply endangers our ability to seek solutions that fall outside simplistic categories of deliberation.

I think we need to seek solutions using tools of archeology. We need to trowel and excavate awareness from the debris of history. We need to find again the lost origin of our being-in-the-world. This digging needs careful sifting through debris accumulated by dust raised by passing wars, laws, ambitions, failures, fears, accomplishments, and grand (at the time) successes.

What lay at bottom of human action? What ground wishes to reveal its original reason for being? What has the earth to say about what has emerged from it?

And where, really, is what we call "God?"

Our country is right and wrong -- about wealth, war, human worth, freedom, happiness, and systems of sharing resources of the earth with all dwelling therein and on. Beneath the right/wrong is the origin of our being here at all. Beneath the mental constructs we've developed to manage the opinions and resources of personal and planetary existence is a profound reality hidden.

What profound reality remains hidden beneath, beyond, and within us?

That profound reality hidden is life itself.

Not the mental construct that asks questions like: When exactly for legal purposes does life begin in a woman's body? When exactly are we justified to take another's life? Does life end when the body dies? Not the questions that proliferate the majority of minds -- about inheritance, investments, security, power, and pleasure. Neither the phrase “life-style” nor "the life of this country." But -- life itself – beyond the divisions and distinctions we place on it.

The profound reality hidden is how we look into permeating questions all share. Such as: What is life? Who are we in each other's life?
Really.

If we stopped everything for a week and asked ourselves this question, over and over, perhaps something will be unearthed.

Perhaps we will return to earth.

Finding there God.

Really.
Not right and wrong. Not ideas about God. Not creeds, constitutions, charters, real estate deeds, personal finance portfolios, nor nurtured hurts with (in the words of poet Richard Hugo) "compensations too lovely too leave."

Only God. Originating earth. Cosmos eternal. The ground, center, spirit, and light of existence.
Life and love. An ever-present origin, (in Jean Gebser’s words).

To think, or suppose, God?
Any trow-el handy?

Colors appear in crisp light. What matters appears in clear light.
Mark and friends visit from New York this Columbus holiday. Wind blows from northwest gusting to 35 knots.

See for yourself.
Directly transcend the
principles and activities
of the buddhas and patriarchs.
Go through the forest of thorns.
Transcend the barriers
of potential described by
ancestral teachers.
Pass through the silver mountain
and iron wall; then for the first time
you will realize there is a
transcendent fundamental endowment;
you can sit, helping people solve their
sticking points and untie their bonds.
- Shoitsu (1202-1280)

Walking Ragged this morning after zazen and psalms with Sando and Cesco, leaves glistening in first sunlight, cool air invigorating their pace.
Karl is back from Christ in the Desert, delighted. A honeymooning couple visit the shop. He'd been a short while with the Trappists. Retired Lutheran minister over from central Maine earlier. Those longing for unsticking point and untied bonds surround us.

The heart of monastic practice is wholeheartedness. David Steindl-Rast OSB said this to poet David Whyte -- about the antidote to exhaustion being wholeheartedness.

If we are going to sit, then completely sit. If praying the psalms, completely pray them (with objections as well as affirmations). If walking mountain trails, then completely walk the trail. All of it is prayer. All of it, mindfulness.

The terror of Bali explosion, Maryland/DC sniper killings, and the obsession of the United States president with attacking Iraq and its obsessive dictator is the realization how little matters to those whose eye is filled with death and destruction. Ideology doesn't equal the value of human life. Whether the ideology of capitalistic democracy or the ideology of oil powered tyranny -- neither come close to the importance of a single human life. Neither is more important than earth itself we stand on.

Look at us. Look at all of us. Abandon ideology; receive living beings with hospitality and humility.
Take a look at what really matters.

Look through clear light.
See for yourself.

The human heart longs to return home to itself.

Moni dies. Several weeks ago she sat in center of canoe as we paddled the pond near Rangeley Lake. So quiet. She was experiencing back pain on her visit to the double 80th birthday celebration. On the canoe ride, peace and silence.

Reading Dowling Singh at this morning's 'The Many Faces of Death' conversation we wondered about the Ground of Being. Earlier at Lectio the parable of the wedding feast -- which at first and second reading sounds like the resolution just passed by Congress authorizing first strike permission to the president. On third reading it might be metaphor for abandoning ego self for God self -- else, punishing behavior toward everybody, even those gaining access to the mystical oneness of the wedding feast.

Punishment precedes and succeeds the self-aggrandizing posturing of dictators of every stripe, star, and crescent scythe. War cannot distinguish between the self-indulgence of tyrannical leader or democratic leader. All are punished for the evasion rife in willing the world in our own image.

There is sorrow in death, as there is sorrow in the preface to war. Powder is loaded and flint readied for striking.

If we were wise, we would say, “Send innocent and foolhardy peace pilgrims to Baghdad. Let them enter the feast of union, or let them be killed trying.” No one is killed when the innocent die willingly -- taking no life, but allowing their lives to be offered for peace.

But we are not wise. So we prepare to send warriors to shoot and bomb and kill those who do not wish to die.

We who are about to live in the prayer of peace and silence salute you in the name of what is holy. Do not create death by taking other's lives. Create life by abandoning all illusion and false ideology -- whether tyrannical power or executive power. Look for the opposite of war.

Look for what is looking for the human heart.

No war will return the human heart to itself.

At dawn, frost gathers on tent top. Unzipping sleeping bag not heavy enough for autumn in Canada, light glows behind island mountains across from St. Andrews.

Walking path behind Katy's Pond we see mother deer and two young ones at edge of beach across growing expanse of light.

Last night at Christian Contemplative Conversation, we speak of the word ecology. Oikos = ‘home’ in Greek. Logos = ‘meaning’ or ‘wording of.’ Wording of home, meaning of home, or dwelling at home -- this is what ecology is.

Once there was a way to get back home again, went the words of a song.

Now?

As sun peeked over island mountain, lengths of sticks waded in salt stillness near shore.
This is a way of seeing oneself home.

Two people, two dogs, and three deer walked that path one sweet cold morning in Canada.

On the road, two days away.

My home’s in the
flowering mountains.
My joy is purest reflection
in a rush hut by a blue grotto,
at the end of a crazy winding path.
At noon I take a simple meal
and when I’m full
I take my staff
and wander to the
mountain top and gaze.
- Yun-K’an Tzu

What is there to see?
Looking at earth, at nature, at nothing in particular.
Looking as earth, as nature, as nothing in particular.
This cosmotheandric gaze – Earth/Nature, God, Each One of Us.

Nothing in particular?
God is not a thing, no thing, nothing. Is it true? Are we nothing in particular?

I have nothing to say about this. I don't know. God alone knows.
God’s language is earth, nature, each one of us.

God speaks silence lovingly within each one -- and all -- we see.