still, life

It seems meaningless 

to say faith without belief —

like standing mid air 

ground far below cosmos far 

away, Paco, gone, smashed, car

on hearing of bobby’s (paco’s) death in car accident yesterday

The Snow Man  

                  BY WALLACE STEVENS

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

(Listen to it at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90)

friday evening conversation finally settled into this

 Tina shared poem by John Guzlowski:

What My Father Believed

He didn't know about the Rock of Ages

or bringing in the sheaves or Jacob's ladder

or gathering at the beautiful river

that flows beneath the throne of God.

He'd never heard of the Baltimore Catechism

either, and didn't know the purpose of life

was to love and honor and serve God.

He'd been to the village church as a boy

in Poland, and knew he was Catholic

because his mother and father were buried

in a cemetery under wooden crosses.

His sister Catherine was buried there too.

The day their mother died Catherine took

to the kitchen corner where the stove sat,

and cried. She wouldn't eat or drink, just cried

until she died there, died of a broken heart.

She was three or four years old, he was five.

What he knew about the nature of God

and religion came from the sermons

the priests told at mass, and this got mixed up

with his own life. He knew living was hard,

and that even children are meant to suffer.

Sometimes, when he was drinking he'd ask,

"Didn't God send his own son here to suffer?"

My father believed we are here to lift logs

that can't be lifted, to hammer steel nails

so bent they crack when we hit them.

In the slave labor camps in Germany,

He'd seen men try the impossible and fail.

He believed life is hard, and we should

help each other. If you see someone

on a cross, his weight pulling him down

and breaking his muscles, you should try

to lift him, even if only for a minute,

even though you know lifting won't save him.

  Poem by John Guzlowski 

The poem is taken from his book about his dad and mom and their experiences in WWII, Echoes of Tattered Tongues

exchange of what holiness once was

 The story says angels, wise folks, and shepherds came and saw the child.

It’s a good story, told for two thousand years.

In Maine tonight bright moon on fresh snow.

There’s a sparkle about arising faith alongside diminishing belief.

Bald mountain knows only itself.

a feast of showing through — there’s nothing out there, not a thing in here

 The story changes

Poem says father sent son

To suffer. Maybe 

Jesus was born into this

Suffering world existence

The way snow alights

On mountain because it’s there

Sky, cloud and cold air

Purposeless facticity 

This, and as this is, itself

To suffer this is

To allow what is to be 

As fully engaged

With … with…not separate, with —

Presence intimately here

Forget puppet God,

Rather, come to understand

God as being-with

The whole of this existence

Nothing other, no outside

The inner life is

All of life seen through and through

Through and with and in 

Itself, beholding what is 

Allowing itself to be

silentio veritas

 I’d like to say this —

But “this” is unsayable.

So, that’s that.

But this —this resides well within itself. 

When Gibran’s prophet-protagonist is asked to address the matter of talking, he responds:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/11/21/kahlil-gibran-prophet-talking/

This thought is morning light come up over night slumber.

Silentio veritas 

(The silence of truth)

Where 

One

Says

Nothing

0 / +

 Zero

     Plus

Circle

      Cross

Rounding

      Intersection

Empty

      Addition

kneading cat with sharp claws on me during “sed libera nos a malo” accompanies

 In Rome, at this time

Pope Francis at Vatican

Gives homily at funeral mass

For pope emeritus Benedict XVI

(Remaining in simple wooden casket)

As bare-headed Argentinian Jesuit 

Knows he, too, soon enough, 

Will follow in death, as we all do

stay home

 Healing heals itself

If you don’t make 

yourself other than

Healing itself

sounding what advances without an opposite

                (Waka on bye)

God is 

All in

Each

Listen to

Each, still

With all

In silence

Hear 

This

Let’s stop

Talking about

God

Each word

Is (truly)

Itself

it’s what our practice is

 Idiorrhythmic

or maybe it was meant for ensō dog

               (Waka sounding the three of us)

Chickadee on green

Feeder hanging from ridge pole

Above turned dinghy

Calls to me at barn door — Thanks

For seeds — good new year

one is alone with another

 Who we are

Is who we are

With

Relationship is

When two are 

With each other

Until there is

No

Other

One plus one

Equals one

Nothing

Left over,

We are who

We are in

Relation to

Who we are 

With

this, as it is, is good

                     (a waka, at first light, new year’s morning, tanka you)

Fish go splash and splish

Off winter docks — changing tide

Boats are on the hard

Deer hooves track in mountain mud

Look close — I Am — passing through

Rockport Harbor, new year’s morning

new year’s eve

no one has ever seen god

What is seeing itself

One does not see itself

One is not there to be seen

One is the emptiness through and through

As light is that which moves through darkness

Darkness, it is said, cannot grasp light moving through

Tell me this —

What is moving through

seeing through 

your life

don't let anyone put you down

Gotta love Anthony Hopkins:

https://twitter.com/AnthonyHopkins/status/1608558347925741568?s=20&t=dTKk0OJS2j-DwlvXudlUNw

causing suffering to another

 In prison today we spoke of the difficulty of someone getting into your business, giving you a hard time, harassing you.

"It's prison," a long-timer said to the relative newcomer, "there are bad people here."

Another inmate spoke of ways he goes about extricating himself from antagonistic or aggressive interactions. Short of violence, how respond?

Not an easy conversation.

Sidestepping for a spell, the old-timer wanted to talk about evil. Some words about the meaning of the name "Satan" "Lucifer" or "Shaiṭān." Adversary. Accuser. Missing mark mayhem maker.

Is it true that every act seems to the actor to be good, at least for them? Is "evil" the failure to respond to another in a way befitting our common connection and mutual longing for peace and harmony?

Why do we cause suffering to another?

Why the cross? Why the First Noble Truth?

These are hard questions. In prison there is no escaping them. Nor are they academic considerations. They are immediate, unrelenting, and everyday.

Options were brought up. Strategies. Tactics. Attitudes of mind. And recognition of the suffering, background and foreground, of those involved. "Hurt people hurt people" someone said.

No place for vague philosophy or bromide encouragement here. Just the hard work of considering the physics of light, weightless and shining through darkness, not eliminating it. An impossible nexus of science and spirituality.

Accepting the causes and conditions of real and present approximations of hurt people hurting on other hurt people.

Time grew short. We'd listened. We thought. We spoke to one another. We, by and large, understood the issue. In the context and confines of prison there's no escaping the suffering, misunderstanding, and set of bad choices available to someone faced with unpleasantness and aggressive encounters.

We were Muslim, Buddhist, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Shaivite. We talked about how these traditions see things.

We were reading Billy Collins poem "Flying Over West Texas at Christmas" for the second reading when the guard came in to say we had to end, things were shutting down ten minutes early. We did a fast final circle. Wished one another Happy New Year.  Bumped elbows, shook hands, fist knuckled.

The man who brought up the issue stopped at the door, turned, looked straight and steady into my eyes as we stood very close. He said it was helpful. Said he prays. He said he'd take what everybody said and mull it.

I get to walk out.

Lobby officer says, "See you next year, Bill."

"God willing," I said. 

In sha’Allah, I thought.

God help us, I prayed.

I get coffee at the place on Route 1.

yes, they will soon die

 Innocent children

Are abused, hurt and die —

We adore the wealthy

The powerful above law

Justice cannot find its legs

how’s the wife and kids

I cannot read the name or message the new executive director hands me after the conference in Philadelphia.

In the dream John is sitting at his desk through door in lower gym out of reach; he has died and generous hospitality is gone.

Or course, of course, I have nowhere to go, an artifact of former time, these kindly strangers, don’t even ask who I am.

The wonder of desolation! There is no belonging in rucksack. It holds everything — images of ghosts, tranche confusion, unformed faith, 

Unreadable messages, indecipherable pericope, a failed hermeneutic of a particular life, more empty space than protons unadhering.