de nada

Sometimes there is

nothing to say

How fortunate

here’s the whole of it

 From Center for Action and Contemplation, Fr. Richard Rohr writes:

“Ensouled” Animals

Readers of the Daily Meditations may be familiar with the theological and scientific work of Ilia Delio. Today we share a reflection that honors both her Franciscan theology and her personal relationship with a beloved pet. 

It is almost a week since our beloved cat, Mango, was put to sleep. . . 

We had rescued Mango a little more than eight years earlier. . . . He liked to sleep in the chapel and often joined us for prayer in the evening. Mango was real presence. And it is his presence that was sorely missed.

Recent questions in ecology and theology have focused on animal life. Do animals have souls? Do animals go to heaven? Without becoming entangled in theological discourse, I want to say quite clearly that Mango was ensouled. His soul was a core constitutive beingness, a particularity of life that was completely unique, with his own personality and mannerisms. To use the language of [Franciscan philosopher] Duns Scotus, Mango revealed a haecceitas, his own “thisness.” Scotus placed a great emphasis on the inherent dignity of each and every thing that exists. . . .

Each living being gives glory to God by its unique, core constitutive being. . . . To be a creature of God is to be brought into relationship in such a way that the divine mystery is expressed in each concrete existence. Soul is the mirror of creaturely relatedness that reflects the vitality of divine Love.

I did not have to wonder whether or not Mango had a soul. I knew it implicitly by the way he listened to me talking or thinking aloud, the way he sat on my office chair waiting for me to finish writing so he could eat, or simply the way he looked at me—eye to eye—in the early morning, at the start of a new day. Soul existence is expressed in the language of love. . . .

Love makes us something; it makes us alive and draws us in to the dynamism of life, sustaining life’s flow despite many layers of sufferings and disappointments. . . . If God is love, then the vitality of love, even the love of a furry creature, is the dynamic presence of God. . . .

Every creature is born out of the love of God, sustained in love, and transformed in love. Every sparrow that falls to the ground is known and loved by God (cf. Matthew 10:29); the Spirit of God is present in love to each creature here and now so that all creaturely life shares in cosmic communion. . . .

As I reflect on Mango’s death, his haecceitas, and the mystery of love, I have no doubt that his core love-energy will endure. His life has been inscribed on mine; the memory of his life is entangled with my own. My heart grieves for Brother Mango, my faithful companion, but I believe we shall be reunited in God’s eternal embrace.

https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/006EA8015EDC48B12540EF23F30FEDED/F62860CEBA66D37F4BD7C9066BE4161D

nothing to see here

Bruno’s empty cell

Chartreuse solitude, bells sound

through vacant selfless

forcing me to over 65 side of table

 flu-shot, no balloon

no lollie-pop, just smiling

nurse saying I'm done

oh felice giorno

A good day!

Furthermore, let us produce worthy fruits of penance. Let us also love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility. Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin. Men lose all the material things they leave behind with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. For these they will receive from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve. We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh. Rather we must be simple, humble and pure. We should never desire to be over others. Instead, we ought to be servants who are submissive to every human being for God’s sake. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on all who live in this way and persevere in it to the end. He will permanently dwell in them. They will be the Father’s children who do his work. They are the spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(From a letter written to all the faithful by Saint Francis of Assisi)

A good meditation on a way of being-with-others that invites peace, goodness, service, and humility.

cf 25march2021, late announciation

 Haiku 

                                         (for Tommy, on your death) 

Late have we learned this, 

master of three word phrases -- 

Fondness, for you, yes 

                                                             (wfh/3oct21)

rēs ipsa loquitur

 I’m here — the phrase holds

Everything that could be said

Itself being true

rapprochement

 After zazen, the Heart Sutra and the Sandokai chants.

And, in colloquy, it seems a rapprochement arises between sandokai and catholic theology.

"Father" is the absolute.

"Son" is the relative.

Holy Spirit is the energetic wholeness encompassing and vivifying absolute/relative, father/son.

It is cosmotheandric complément.

to stave off the loneliness

 Sometimes a paragraph jumps out at you.

Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where he was supposed to go. He stayed where he was needed. He took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith.

(pg.20, from Let the Great World Spin, novel by Colum McCann, 2009)

As it applies to each human being. 

is good for the soul

 I know what’s missing ..

The grace of admission, un-

veiling the hidden

Revealing and bringing in

what longs to be the open

pu trid

 Sometimes politics

Skunk smell everywhere, today

Is one of those days

sefer

 The records show names

the human race across years

adam, enosh, you

she was an elegant principal

 Owl at dawn wakes me

Reporter’s notebook jotting

Hoot research in dream

who is like god

 Celebration of 

Archangels — powers not

Understood —  surround 

having the touch

Have we lost our sense of taste? 

Become tasteless?

 Central to the interpretation of embodied life is evaluation.

 The ancient term for wisdom, sapientia, comes from sapere, to taste. Sapere-savourer-savoir. This etymological line speaks legions, reminding us that our deepest knowing is tasting and touching. We first sound the world through the tips of our tongues, discerning between savory and unsavory.

Living well is a matter of “savvy,” as we say. Ordinary language knows this, and philosophical language is no more than an extrapolation of what we already know “deep down.” Wisdom, in the end, is about taste and tact. That’s what we mean, isn’t it, when we say that someone sensible is someone sensitive: they have “the touch,” as healer, teacher, artist, lover. They are attentive, careful, tentative. They get it. To have the right touch is to touch and be touched wisely. Touching well is living well.

Hermeneutics begins there: in the flesh.

(--from, What is Carnal Hermeneutics, Richard Kearney, 2015, Academia) 

Perhaps we need to interpret our lives with less analysis and more imagination.

Wisdom invites imagination into its room to sit and speak.

What’s wrong isn’t that something is wrong. Rather, it is the unwillingness to say, yes, that’s wrong, and get on enacting what’s right without fear or remaining mired in shame.

“What’s wrong will always be wrong” (Richard Hugo) — but what’s right is each time created new.

Keep in touch.

listening to the news

 Are you worried about the COVID variant?

Do you think the right wing Republicans are really out to cripple all government?

Is it inevitable a militant violent few will begin to execute politicians outside their narrow ideology?

It is, it seems, a dark time.

The worry, the thought, the inevitability all seem a depressing reality on the horizon.

Short term and long term prognoses fail the test of imagination.

A collective deflation of hope.

Those who pray are losing faith.

The rabid nihilists abandon charity.

powód bycia

Doris, our elder, sends her Monday poem.

Today the final two lines catch my attention:

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility 

that existence has its own reason for being.

              (—from poem, “Possibilities” by Wislawa Szymborska)

Raison d’être! 

Such an intriguing phrase. 

Such a ponderable possibility.

when one’s name is its reality

 Alone-with,

God

just this

 Resurrection is

The realization of 

the True Self — just this

oremus pro invicem

 Sunday morning pray-

er, oh god, make us your own

sheer, invisible

Nothing to cling to, nothing

To let go — merely what is