Woman working all through night; as we all are, in a sense, in essence

Everything

That is

Is

Living 

Being.

Evening practice

Low-lit solitude.

Bell rings to begin.

No end.

Living beings -- a new trinity

A trinity to consider:

 Gaston Bachelard, the late twentieth century French philosopher, comments on what happens when cosmos and psyche reconnect. In the Poetics of Space he talks of the holy trinity of Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy. When you have an experience of Immensity—in Thomas’ words, an experience of the cosmos, or relationship to it, it is an intense experience. All awe is both an intense and intimate experience. Humans cannot separate the immense, intense and intimate experience and Thomas Berry by leading us into a cosmic awareness again, an awareness as important for our hearts as for our minds, is bathing us anew in Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy far beyond any mere anthropocentric relationship could ever do for us.   

Bachelard declares that “grandeur progresses in the world in proportion to the deepening of intimacy…a primal value.” We have to take back immensity as a primal intimate value where “we are no longer shut up in the weight of the prison of our own beings.” The new cosmology helps us to do this and so do solitude and meditation. I honor Thomas and Aquinas and others who are helping us to name the vastness of our souls. Ernest Holmes put it this way: “Spirituality is a word that is often misused.” (He said this 100 years ago!) “From our viewpoint, spirituality is one’s recognition of the universe as a living presence of the good, truth, beauty, peace, power and love.” Holmes recognizes that spirituality is not spirituality if it is psychologized—if it is not about the universe. Holmes was right and Thomas Berry is right. 

(--from, Some Thoughts on Thomas Berry’s Contributions to the Western Spiritual Tradition, by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox) https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/Thomas-Berry.html 

A student in a posting called it “living being.” This might be a new name to umbrella cosmic being, plant being, animal being, human being, and divine being. 

The person you are becoming

Going back through time we meet ourselves before we become who we are going back in time.

What do you say to yourself?

Watch out, you say. You are becoming the person who will ask you what you will say to yourself before realizing you are the answer to the question.

When this happens, see yourself at that moment as the person you are becoming.

How long we wait

All silence, sound, stone, fire, awareness, inter-nexus, journeying...

Day watches the work of God.

Which is inter-nexing, which is the core-center-betweening.

Is the work of God finding ground where each is all and all is each at one?

Does the watching of this work engender the creation of place, both solitary and communal, for stillness and swirling engagement of core center between one and all?

Watching-with, the work of God!

Just walking in drizzle following snow

Farmington-Wilton morning walk.

Time to track down grippers.

Although, dogs don't mind my not having  better traction.

The path is fine as it is.

Humans!

Creative Energy in a proleptic realm of anticipation

In the middle of night.

Hear words as we begin to try to translate the New Testament in more Hebraic terms:          

   In the beginning was the DABHAR the Creative Energy:            The Creative Energy was with God            And the Creative Energy was God.            It was with God in the beginning.            Through it all things came to be,            Not one thing had its being but through it,            All that came to be had life in it            And that life was the light of persons,            A light that shines in the dark,            A light that darkness could not overpower…            The DABHAR, the Creative Energy was the true light            That enlightens all people;            And it was coming into the world.            It was in the world            That had its being through it,            And the world did not know it…            But to all who did accept it            It gave power to become children of God…            The Creative Energy was made flesh,            It pitched its tent among us,            And we saw its glory,            the glory that is its as the only Child of the Creator,            full of grace and full of truth.  

Creation itself is a sacrament.  Creation itself is the primary sacrament. 

(--from, DABHAR and the ISNESS of GOD, blog of pastor dawn, 21st Century Progressive Christian Pastor) http://pastordawn.com/2012/06/12/dabhar-and-the-isness-of-god/ 

(cf. John 1:1)

In the middle of night I hear your name.

Thus all of creation contains the living wisdom and word of God, and all of it is for all of us. The human word is only one among billions of words that God has spoken and that therefore emanate from the divine splendor. To make contact with wisdom is to go beyond human words, which have, after all, existed for only about four million years -- and have appeared on paper for only a few thousand years and in print for only five hundred. We are invited to return to the many billions of years of ongoing creation that also constitute god’s talking. 

What happens when when we let go of a chauvinistic control of words, which means exclusively the human word, and return to Dabhar as the creative energy of God? According to [Gerhard] Von Rad, truth happens; and affection happens; and God happens. For “creation not only exists, it also discharges truth.” 

(p.37, in Original Blessing, A Primer in Creation Spirituality, by Matthew Fox, c.1983)

And that name is night itself.

At dawn, it is dawn itself.

And you, friend, when you appear, that name is your name. 

Unhollowed heart; following Dabhar

Here is, remarkably, hopeless.

No need for hope here.

Abandon hope, the poet says, all ye who enter here.

Not an admonishment; rather, wise directive reminder.

Here is its own present.

The playwright reminds us to remember to leave the wall. An ambiguous, and invitatory, koan.

Are you expecting?

There is no outside.

This is the intimation of the new liturgical consciousness.

Everything is within everything else.

It has been a long, long pregnancy.

Advent, 2013

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

(--from poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost) 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173530

Zen, Saturday morning, imagination

Non-intellectual, like first light through bamboo blinds, only a space of seeing what is emerging.

Let's not make anything other than what it is.

Zen is seeing what is being itself.

Nothing else.

All of existence is coming to understand

It takes the whole of humanity to be God.

All of it. From out of nowhere. 

Thanks

Is

Given

The word becomes you pronouncing it

What are you . . . saying? 

"Every creature is a word of God." (Meister Eckhart)

Yes!

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” (Meister Eckhart)

Fine words!

Passing observation

Wind winds through

bare brown branches 

blown smooth 

empty 

after rain

As dawn so death

Cat and mouse debate Wednesday morning under window by bed as sound of rain, low growling, and unfinished argument patter over motley colored rug.

If I were to die today, like mouse having wandered from walls to open space, would I know the difference between anything? Or would I not be there to consider anything, having fallen into the open with no boundaries or references to suggest anything other whatsoever?

Two cats, agents of no-othering, prowl the contours of steel shelving for signs of what seems to be considering itself still other.

Walking where once I walked

Every day twice a day.

Thirty two years ago this was my daily sojourn.

Today is that time by means of place.

We are never that far from whence we've been.

What is...your being...seeing

If every year is a marble, how many marbles do you have left? How many sunrises, how many opportunities to rise to the full stature of your being?     

     --Joy Page

 After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see.

        -- Joy Page

Seeing Through Illness is spiritual practice and community engagement with one another

MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER: An Initial Invitation

Twitter post, Sunday 24Nov2013:  We’d like to begin: STILL,MARBLES. (Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.) Interest in investing?

hermitage@meetingbrook https://twitter.com/meetingbrook/status/404615625135640576

ABSTRACT:

We learn that the property across Barnestown Road is on the market. We’ve walked it. We were shown it by a broker. Several members of the wider meetingbrook community have also walked and thought along with us. It consists of 50 acres, an animal barn, an extended house, open lawns, woodland, a pond, two streams, and our own rise of mountain. It is ideal for an extension of meetingbrook hermitage

We are inviting investors to support the purchase of this property to be used as a center to see through illness, for learning, conversation, groups, support, therapeutic meditation, movement, soul-friend interaction, community outreach, gardening, creative projects, various re-entries, and an open place for quiet visits, prayer, reading, solitude, hiking, or just sitting.

STILL,MARBLES CENTER 

The name is an acronym signifying: Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.

The goal is to focus on the oftentimes difficult navigation individuals experience through illness, be it cancer, heart condition, or other unsettling emotional, spiritual, mental, or physical issues. Particular interest will be extended to those making the journey through illness to share their attendant steps and views in communal conversations.

The Center would consist of a Meditation Room, a Community Room, a Hospitality Kitchen, a Chapel, Meeting rooms, Respite Rooms for overnight stays, and lovely grounds with streams, pond, trails, woods, mountain, and decks for quiet enjoyment of nature’s healing gifts.

Those in transition, caregivers, family members, healthcare personnel, friends, veterans, and other interested folks looking to learn and experience simple care and presence would be invited to STILL,MARBLES to enjoy the ongoing conversations, groups, respite, arts, poetry, films, talks, seminars, ordinary hospitality and relaxation.

MEETINGBROOK HERMITAGE is a place of collation and recollection between Ragged & Bald Mountains. Our personal practice, which for 20 years we’ve done at the hermitage, in the marketplace bookshop and bakery (for 13 years), state prison, hospital, libraries, nursing home, with the dying, hospice volunteers, university students and church communities, and an idiorhythmic extended meetingbrook community, is a practice that is open to and responsive with all traditions both East and West, all denominations, faiths, or none of the above, those who are looking to find their way through life with its difficulties and joys. We are not alone. Meetingbrook is committed to seeing through illness, wherever the individual is, however their path winds its way.

Please consider investing to acquire the property and invest your spirit in being of service to others at MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER.

Best,

Saskia Huising, Bill Halpin

Meetingbrook Hermitage, Camden, Maine, 04843  207-236-4346

STILL,MARBLES

Three hours before dawn thinking about possible use of neighboring property.

If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that make everything else appear so dark. Perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, demanding and oppressive. I do not know. I have not travelled very far in thought and philosophy. However I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should attempt to escape from it.

                          (--Hermann Hesse, in Gertrude, as translated by Hilda Rosner)        http://dshenai.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/

STILL,MARBLES

Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.