Pepper spray is the new language of the police.

JFK's assassination is in an off year at 48, thus is kept quietly.

The liturgical year is in limbo. Between Christ the King and 1st Advent.

Cecilia inspires masses written in her musical honor.

Clouds enter Bangor in advance of tomorrow's storm.

We walk 5.80km through City Forest, delighted at the find.

Afternoon reading (None) 1 Corinthians 12:24,25-26 ©
God has arranged the body and that there may not be disagreements inside the body, but that each part may be equally concerned for all the others. If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it. If one part is given special honour, all parts enjoy it.

Trees are bare; they've entered the bed of November.

Some look at us and wonder if there'll ever be a tipping number of those who see the embodying connectivity of divinity that ligatures our seeming decatenation.

Loving God, I think, means serving the whole body.

Each.

All.

Stacking wood. One stick on another. I have nothing else to do.

Dark and dim, the Bamboo Grove Monastery,
Faint and faraway, the sound of bells at dusk.
Your bamboo hat carrying home the evening sun,
Alone you return to the distant green hills.
- Tu Fu (712-770)

Green wood from Belfast. Some very seasoned from Southwick. One stick atop another. Back and forth. Back and forth.

There is no controlling life.

There is only temporary balance.

Each stick of wood another breath.

Trip someone up, you are, perhaps, a "satan." That's what the word means way back down deep -- someone or something that trips up, like a root branch on a worn trail. Something that inhibits or opposes moving through or moving on.

There is no better somewhere else, smarter, more effective we can control.

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
- Wu-men (1183-1260)

There is only this path which is the path you are on, upon which, if travelled, would reveal to you everything needed.

Walk that path.

Don't let anyone tell you not to.

If you trip, catch balance again. If fall, rise again.

Trust, radically!

Dark early. Cold from hard row on Bay chills bones. Bed early.

The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to establish resolve -- it is no small matter to step directly from the bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself, so all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

There is no knowing.

Not anything.

So, we practice.

Not knowing.

Here.

In the morning, when Earth feels light lift night from surface, prayer wanders from sleep into open recollection, and we are once again the still and vibrant sound of cosmotheandric spirituality, the surround of wholeness stretching embrace of harmlessness throughout all in this glorious reality called by us dawn, twilight, gazing God.

17 Domine labia mea aperies et os meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam
17 O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
(from Paalm 51)

It's a lot of money. Let's say it has been a necessary expenditure. I'm uncertain it is, but let's say so. It's a lot of money for war and death.

If Congress also approves the FY2012 war funding request of $132 billion, cumulative war funding would then reach $1.415 trillion total including:
• $823 billion for Iraq (63%);
• $557 billion for Afghanistan (35%);
• $29 billion for enhanced security (2%); and
• $6 billion unallocated DOD costs (1/2%) (see Table 1)

(from, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11
Amy Belasco
Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget March 29, 2011)
In, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress
Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

I'd prefer a different expenditure of so much money, such as health care, housing, jobs, or education grants to every student young or old.

It says a lot about us, our war fondness. I wonder about our sanity and souls. Surely it is insane to want to destroy and kill, over and over, even in the name of God, freedom, and security?

It's a lot to consider.

No one wants sin. It is gone.

So, let it go.

And it is.

Tired, there is no other place than sleep.

The sound of bell!

The following day we walk the river, we walk the beach by the ocean.

We walk the wind and rest in the company of family, eating, sleeping, laughing, some tears and of course the stories.

HISTORY

There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are
And it cometh everywhere.

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

We are what we tell ourselves we are.

Today we are family

The opening paragraph of To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings, by Irish poet and spiritual philosopher John O'Donohue goes as follows:



"There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is welded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing. We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing."

We blessed Erika, and we were blessed by Erika, today as we placed her in the earth in New Bedford.

She tricked us into coming together as a body of beings longing for blessing. We thought we'd gathered to bury her. Rather we were there to receive her blessing.

As we do whenever someone understands what is taking place between us and invites us into this middle presence, a heaven by no other name.

Festivities continue upstairs.

Solitude becomes me.

At a Course in Miracles gathering Thursday evening as Erika lay in repose in "The Mutti Room" in Camden, Maine, dressed in her Thanksgiving attire, surrounded by the handiwork reds of her stitchery threads, receiving visitors touched by loving presence, a woman named Rosie from another room in final circle spoke the phrase -- "Erika's passing."

It' a wonderful phrase describing what has happened this week, these eight weeks following diagnosis, and the 89 years following her birth -- Erika's passing!

She is now and has always been passing through.

As are we all -- passing through.

We sometimes think that we're here to stay, that we own the place, that change and transition are unfortunate occurrences we have to tolerate and endure.

I think there's another way to look at it.

Erika, Mutti, Omi, Urgroßmutter, has shown us and is showing us how it is, how to live on this earth, even now, as she takes whatever steps there are to take beyond the last step of Thursday morning around 2am when she passed through her body for the last time in this realm exiting what we call the limitations of 'time' and 'space' and gliding with gracious love into the mysterious openness of timeless presence where the One we call Love Itself celebrates wholeness with this ever-new creation of loving light we have known by the names "Erika," "Mrs. Huising," "Mutti," "Omi," and "Dear Treasure."

Some would say: "She's gone," and they'd be right -- she is. Some would say, "She's gone beyond," and they'd be right -- she has. And still others would say, "She's still with us, and will never leave us." And these, too, are right -- feel her in your heart and mind, see her in your cups of tea, hear her in clinking glasses raised with endearing joy and laughter whenever family gather anywhere.

She knows now and shows here. She knows now and shows here that each one is right, that each one is an appreciated contribution to the extraordinary embrace of smiling welcome this good woman practiced as her daily yoga.

Erika would want us, I believe, to know that she's all right, that we're all right, that it's all right -- that at the deepest, truest, lightest level it's all love, and light, and bliss, and kindness, and hospitality, and family, and the community of everyone who lives and dies, suffers and rejoices, eats and drinks, weeps and laughs.

Wir loben Gott und sagen Dank,
Fur alles, auch für Speis und Trank
In Jesus Namen, Amen!

Today I take liberties to translate this prayer as:

"We happily speak our praise with God --
For everything and everyone --

for this woman, this family member, this friend, this sister of God-With-Us (also named Emmanuel, Jesus, Mary's child, the Christ),

for the food and drink

Of love, and love, and, yes, love!"

And so, and so, and so -- In the name of all that is holy, we thank you, dear woman, for bringing us here today.

Here, with one another, being-with everything, passing through!

The words heard from her so often are the words that apply so intimately to her: Schatzilein, Liebchen, Hertzilein

Treasured one! Loved-one! Heart-felt one!

Danke sehr!

Bitte schon!

We are passing through this experience with Erika's love.

May this experience be of benefit to each of us as well as all people everywhere longing for such an experience with generous love and gracious presence!

Prosit! Let it be!

Then, nearing 2am, after a passion of final breaths, there were no more. Struggle of transition coming to quiet completion, Erika returns to origin. We sit in silent vigil for a while. Tears in her presence. The women prepare to wash and ready her body for journey.

Harp music graced the room.

Kindness and compassion were the notes.

These will be known as her last days. In front room, hospital bed, she breathes asleep the rhythmic cadences of prolonging reverie.

Hospice officially began today.

This house becomes a holy place.

As life continues through it all. Hers and ours.

Don't fear the facts. That's what the reading from tonight's practice included. We have nothing to fear with the truth. It's only the truth.

Far, faraway, steep mountain paths,
Treacherous and narrow, ten thousand feet up;
Over boulders and bridges, lichens of green,
White clouds are often seen soaring.
A cascade suspends in mid-air like a bolt of silk;
The moon's reflection falls on a deep pool, glittering.
I'll climb up the magnificent mountain peak,
To await the arrival of a solitary crane.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

So, we vigil with Erika.

Saskia naps on pull-out chair. I sit in corner chair. The monk and the Sushi folks didn't make it to Camden. There were only a handful of us at the Mahabharata discussion at the library. And now it is night. What can go wrong has. No, that's not it. What can go on will.

WILD PEACE

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

(Yehuda Amichai, “Wildpeace” from Selected Poetry. University of California Press.)

Mother and daughter sleep in hot room at midnight.

Wildflowers in autumn chill.

A new day

From emergency room to room 31. Julianne, the nurse, is admitting Erika after exhaustion and low blood count, nausea, and possible mild heart attack two days ago.

It nears midnight. It grows late. An extra hour will grace the night.

Paying a visit to Monk Yung

A monk's robe hangs in a retreat in the hills.
Outside the window I find no one but passing birds.
Dusk has come up halfway down the mountain road;
Then I hear the sound of the spring
Cling to the green-tinted slope.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

Outside the hospital window, beyond and through the dark, is an ocean under growing moonlight.

At 23:15 the most recent vitals were taken.

At meditation practice sitting this morning short sentences were broken in half. I wondered: "Why am I doing this." "What am I doing here."

Then they broke:
"Why am I?"
"Doing this!"

And:
"What am I?"
"Doing here!"

Reading Karen Maezen Miller, she speaks of earth as the altar of impermanence.

I bow to this altar.

Just for now.

"Thank you," says the tired, weakened woman just before 2am as she settles back into bed.

"I had nothing else to do," I say, "you're welcome!".

Space is enfolded in this way with these words.

Do try to let time go.

It is no longer needed.

All Souls know this.

Not worth a glance, not a look. Maybe not giving harm-workers the time of day.

Revenge

At times ... I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I'd rest at last,
and if I were ready—
I would take my revenge!

*

But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who'd put
his right hand over
the heart's place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they'd set—
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.

*

Likewise ... I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn't bear his absence
and whom his gifts would thrill.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbours he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school ...
asking about him
and sending him regards.

*

But if he turned
out to be on his own—
cut off like a branch from a tree—
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbours or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I'd add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness—
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I'd be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street—as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

(Poem by Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin, Nazareth)

Forgive me my cruelty. I did not look at you.

That's what saints do. They look. Not turning away.

All of them. They looked.

Their seeing is honored today.

If I die tonight I will have nothing more to say about the nothing more I have to say.

Outwardly go along
With the flow,
While inwardly keeping
Your true nature.
Then your eyes and ears
Will not be dazzled,
Your thoughts will not
Be confused,
While the spirit within you
Will expand greatly to roam
In the realm of absolute purity.
- Huai-nan-tzuI

It escapes me why anyone wishes to live longer than any one day in their lives.

I'm alive still because it is that one day.

It is always that one day.

Always will be.