why the world is ethically bereft

"A true friend can act like a mirror and show them what their action looks like from the outside.” (CM, ethics student, writing about Enkidu and Gilgamesh)

...

I like this imaging relationship of friend to friend.

In addition, it suggests something about ethics and friendship -- namely -- authentic relationship might be the criteria of authentic ethics.

Does this suggest that without friendship there is no groundwork for ethics?

It suggests to me that to be ethical is to welcome both the stranger and the intimate into a circle of friendship in order to live together a meaningful creative life in the world.

Shema

Good words.

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”  (--Niels Bohr)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that, “Greek thought is logical, whereas Jewish thought is chronological and dialogical.” (In his Feb.2014 talk at NYU,  “Dignifying Difference: The Next Generation of Multifaith Leadership”) http://www.rabbisacks.org/dignifying-difference-next-generation-multifaith-leadership/

This Sunday afternoon, between practice and practice, listening.

Putting aside the rules of logic.

For hearing.

Death drones

I've been thinking about drones killing and maiming ordinary people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.

I've thought about the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States receiving a Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t know what to think about (the what seems to be) absurd paradoxes in the contemporary world.

Yesterday, on his way to work on route 17 enroute to Augusta, a 20 year old young man crossed into the opposite lane losing control of his car in falling snow, crashed into a truck, and died. (A sad event.)

It wasn't a drone.

How lucky we still are.

This ironic and unrooted time!

What is not being noticed

Heidegger asked, “Was Heisst Denken?” (What is Called Thinking?)

Is “what is” called “thinking”?

He also said that “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” (Martin Heidegger, in What is Called Thinking?)

If “thinking” is “what is” -- then the most thought-provoking thing is that we are still not “what is.”

What can this mean?

How has this separation not been noticed?

Can "not being" be noticed?

It is a thought-provoking question.

Practice

Buddha's shadow is entering the fireplace.

Francis' head is lifting itself from the snow.

One dog outside door, one inside door.

We leave our seats.

What is as it is?

Yes, just that.

Reading; poetry

The 93 year old man read Amy Lowell's poem in memory of his wife's one year anniversary of her death.

A Fixed Idea  

What torture lurks within a single thought    

When grown too constant; and however kind,    

However welcome still, the weary mind 

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught    

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought    

The old delight is with us but to find    

That all recurring joy is pain refined,    

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.    

You lie upon my heart as on a nest,   

Folded in peace, for you can never know    

How crushed I am with having you at rest    

Heavy upon my life. I love you so 

You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.    

In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.   

(Poem by Amy Lowell, “A Fixed Idea” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. © 1955)

He got choked up. We all kept silent. Then thanked him.

What then...

Reading learns me.

Reading studies me.

Reading teaches me.

That...

There is no me.

Coming south from catholic county

The all-golden vessel,  

the most delectable sweetener of our souls,  

she who bears the manna which is Christ, l 

and uncultivated,  

field unploughed,v 

ine streaming with fecundity,  

vessel most delightful, spring that gushes forth,  

the treasure of innocence  

and ornament of modesty 

--Byzantine sermon

(Eighth-century Eastern sermon in praise of Mary is thought to have originated in Jewish and Christian Wisdom literature. The personified figure of Wisdom...who is Hochma in the Hebrew Scripture and Sophia (Greek for "wisdom") in the Christian Scripture, came to be applied to Jesus, while they even more became connected to Mary. 

(--from P.214, Spiritual Writings on Mary, selected and annotated by Mary Ford-Grabowsky)

Tuesday; unveiling

From minus -16degrees at dawn to +22degrees at 2:48pm in Fort Kent at Canadian border.

Rokie and his companion walk the periphery of snow plowed bank and marvel at the late evening and early morning ability to walk and feel and look -- to squeak underfoot roadsnow at vacation shuttered University of Maine campus by St. John River.

Prayer wheel spins in sunlight. It says: "See what is revealing itself within!" Round and round in uncomprehending mind it's exhortatory prayer.

I read Karen Armstrong who writes on page 65 of her "The Bible, A Biography" (2007), the Greek word Ἀποκάλυψις, (apokalypsis), "a 'revelation' or 'unveiling' of a reality that had been there all along but had not been seen clearly before...."

So we look at things and look as no thing trying to see what is hidden seeking light of day, consciousness, and liberation.

Apocalypse is not doom and destruction.

It is Tuesday.

not refusing

A friend's family member is in a psychiatric ward. He writes requesting prayer.

A word replying:

In Fort Kent tonight we receive your news. And from Fort Kent we send you promise of prayer and watchfulness. 

Last night at practice we read Thomas Merton: 

If you want to know what is meant by “God’s will” in man’s life, this is one way to get a good idea of it. “God’s will” is certainly found in anything that is required of us in order that we may be united with one another in love.  
(--from New Seeds of Contemplation, chapter entitled “A Body of Broken Bones") 

Your presence at this time with love there with your loved-one sounds like what Merton was telling us at practice. 

The pain of reunion, said Merton, is love not refused. 

We wish each of you . . . well. 

 We are fragile.

And so...

We long for one another’s clear health.

storied; unread

Maybe it’s true.

The story seems impertinent and preposterous. The breath of God, the word of God, the body of God is made present in this cosmos, this earth, this communication, this moment.

 Could Have

             by Wislawa Szymborska

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you. 

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny. 

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . . 

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

(Poem from View With a Grain of Sand, trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1996) 

 I don’t know.

Dwelling in that nescient space is a little like...like...

Nope.

Not like anything.

Just absurd and, in mythopoetic dream, likely.

Storied.

Sunday morning

Readiness

Should anyone wish

To remember what is hidden

In the middle of everything

Winter Saturday afternoon, February

Fallen branch leans against cabin porch screen.

In yurt, empty roundness with silent furnishings.

Bookshed, barn, house, and mountain settle before coming heavy snow tonight.

Orange ball is center of universe,

The stillness.

Standing trees.

Prayer flags in distance.

The intimacy of it all!

Tell me: Have you heard that freedom means coming home to where no one else lives?

Home?

Yes. Where no other person lives.

And that is freedom?

I don't know. I've heard as much.

You tell me.

Hello? Anyone there?

the eve it is

Ambient light from night skiing at Snow Bowl lets us walk Hosmer Pond and Ragged Mountain in driving snow, our snowshoes topping fresh several inches with measured gate.

A Ghost 

erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being time and so

the house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of a storm

The architect tore down room after room until the sound stopped. A ghost is one

among the ages at the edge of a cliff empty sails on the bay even when a ship

or the house moves off in fog asks you out loud to let the stranger in

(Poem by Cole Swensen, b.1955, from Gravesend, c.2012)

Storms let us wander aimless through troughs and tendrils of northeast blow, free of memory, no worn trail but the steps we make surrounded by laden branches and open edges off-ice where houselights shoulder through wet flakes swirling.

If you think, ‘I love this,’ it is ok, it being the eve it is.

7:58am

Morning watch.

His human companion away.

Not seeing, yourself

How desolate it would be.

“How empty it is, a mirror in which I am absent!” (Estelle, in Huis Clos, {No Exit} by Jean-Paul Sartre)

Living without reflection.

Mirrors need not apply!

unseen apple-body

I read the background this morning:

In July 2012, Shabani and the four others arrested with him were sentenced to death on charges of Moharebeh (“waging war on God”), sowing corruption on earth, acting against national security, and spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. (--Wikipedia)

Then the news:

An Arab-Iranian poet and human rights activist, Hashem Shaabani, has been executed for being an "enemy of God" and threatening national security, according to local human rights groups.Shaabani and a man named Hadi Rashedi were hanged in unidentified prison on January 27, rights groups have said. (--Aljazeera)

...   ...   ...

An email arrives this morning: “It is with great sadness that I share the news that Cynthia Seefahrt died yesterday.” She was, (when) well, known, to us at meetingbrook.

I hear these two pieces of news.

As dull thuds.

  Falling: The Code                

             (--by Li-Young Lee) 

1. 

Through the night    

the apples 

outside my window    

one by one let go    

their branches and    

drop to the lawn. 

I can’t see, but hear 

the stem-snap, the plummet 

through leaves, then 

the final thump against the ground.  

Sometimes two    

at once, or one    

right after another. 

During long moments of silence 

I waitand wonder about the bruised bodies,    

the terror of diving through air, and    

think I’ll go tomorrow 

to find the newly fallen, but they 

all look alike lying there 

dewsoaked, disappearing before me.  

2. 

I lie beneath my window listening    

to the sound of apples dropping in  

the yard, a syncopated code I long to know, 

which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know 

the meaning of what I hear, each dull    

thud of unseen apple-  

body, the earth  

falling to earth 

once and forever, over    

and over. 

(Poem by Li-Young Lee, “Falling: The Code” from Rose.)

Morning readiness

After practice; after sleep --

Workplace.

You don't talk to me; you talk with light in darkness and I am surrounding sight

First reading

Isaiah 58:7-10 

Thus says the Lord: 

Share your bread with the hungry 

and shelter the homeless poor,

clothe the man you see to be naked

and do not turn from your own kin.

Then will your light shine like the dawn

and your wound be quickly healed over. 

Your integrity will go before you

and the glory of the Lord behind you. 

Cry, and the Lord will answer;

call, and he will say, ‘I am here.’ 

If you do away with the yoke,

the clenched fist, the wicked word,

if you give your bread to the hungry,

and relief to the oppressed,

your light will rise in the darkness,

and your shadows become like noon.