not haram

My Muslim brothers in prison

Laughed and conversed in circle

All of us immigrants considering

How much trouble we are in

While on table two poems by

ee cummings went unread about

Love and letting all go because

Love are in we, through and throughout 

visiting myself

 Crinkling snow underfoot

after sleet frozen fall

Dog takes long pee

Moon high overhead

Smell of wood fire  

in stove drifts lazily

Doctor says one cancer

Is slow moving, another

Concerns, might want 

surgery — I’ll weigh 

That option, he seems

Surprised that I’d hesitate.

But i do.

Pass my pregnant nurse-

Practitioner in hall, say “hi

Mom”

I used to volunteer here

Cancer care, patient’s rooms

Across parking lot at hospice —

Not now. Now i just have 

appointments, am missed 

Inside chemotherapy room, 

My deactivated badge in foyer

My energy gone for gurney ride

Recounting that slipping fall

Under anesthesia into darkness—

Windshield wipers standing erect

a new rubric

 Too much truth

Dims I-sight

Telling me a lie

Helps my sight

I’m so pleased

To see you

In your

Light

a new language of prayer -- our being is your being

I tell my doctor I study hermeneutics. The signature in their 'thank you' card of the doc who surveyed my pancreas began with a "B" laid on its side looking all the world like cartoon of buttocks. He also does colonoscopies. There was a chuckle.

Reading Merton at Calcutta suggests a similar brush stroke. Some neologism was suggested. Some breath beginning to sound through throats long accustomed to silence. A revolution of syntax, an haruspicy glancing into the entrails of moribund religion to divine the future. A coming to word.  

Thomas Merton’s Closing Prayer

Offered at the first Spiritual Summit Conference, given in Calcutta. Nov.1968

I will ask you all to stand and join hands in a little while. But first, we realize that we are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in the spite of real differences, real emotional friction.… The things that are on the surface are nothing, what is deep is Real. We are creatures of love. Let us therefore join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts. I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all. I have no idea what I am going to say. I am going to be silent a minute, then I will say something….

Closing Prayer

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You will dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.

If our being is God's being, how speak or communicate such?

It is a prolepsis. 

A time before.

Before coming to sound.

Before coming to word.

Before coming to ourselves.

Before The Divine One comes to ITSELF.

laid to rest

Finishing Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic (2024), by Cynthia Bourgeault.

Two quotes:

“The notion that God is absent is the fundamental illusion of the human condition.” (Thomas Keating)

As the false self diminishes

And the ego becomes a servant,

Everything turns into poetry

And everything becomes a movement of Divine Love.

But, the separate self lingers on.

Once the separate self has been laid to rest,

The Divine Presence alone remains,

And the Creator of all becomes all in all.

 (—stanzas 3 and 4 of his opening poem “Out of a Stone” in The Secret Storm, by Thomas Keating)

Good enough, Thomas!

Good —

Enough!

off road

 Yes, why not, yes

Yes to everything

Even to each no

Why not, then,

No to each and

Every yes

Non-duality is as

Overrated as 

Duality is, both 

Inadequate. What’s

The non-alternative —

No/yes, yes/no?

You tell me

Up against it all

A snowplow

last hello

 She knows

He is leaving

She knows

A kindness

Seeps into

This realization

Each hello

Presages 

Last one

he waves as sound of thunder approaches

When is it better to remember

and when to forget?

we remember those who've killed our family

hating them, wanting vengeance

we forget who we are, sliding into

anesthetic unconsciousness, drifting off

the blankness, no recall, no new imput

do with me as you will -- unwind my body.

but to forget, to drop past into hole in ice

be condemned to the present, surrounded

by only what is here what is now -- alzheimer's 

prison cell of un-referenced non-coordinates

a medical horror of flat non-temporicity

death before death, loss before loss.

And yet, and yet -- to forget, to forget

with clear mind and full consciousness

is the present moment unconstrained

unburdened -- yet opened fully -- there

the uncaptioned arrival of this moment.

These days some say we live subjected

the tyranny of willful wealth and power

making right with might each slight --

cruelty instead of kindness -- despondence

rather than community -- distemper, political

disorder -- a viral disease of wealth ruling --

once we shot the dogs, now we send money

to support their appetite, to feed their habit.

I hear the whispers, one says remember

one says forget. I am a patient etherized

upon a table, someone is cutting into me

there is a house in the dream, and a road

in the dream, he is riding off on motorcycle

he waves, rain is coming, I've been here before

a recurring dream, I am not remembering, I am

returning someplace I have once and future been

the house is white, three stories, on a steep hill

across road is smaller road I've been down before

I know this place but do not remember it, the kitchen

long drive-in to back pole barn and outbuilding

somewhere in Nova Scotia? Or Santa Cruz mountains?

I cannot remember. I cannot forget. I remain still.

Luckily it is night. The snow moon hovers. The cold

contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere

• “Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere” is a Latin phrase that means “to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation”. It is a motto of the Dominican Order. (--cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemplata_aliis_tradere) 

• If ressourcement is about revitalization, renewal, then the oft-mentioned, but often misunderstood concept, aggiornamento is essentially a question of a new and wider contextualization, with the aim of finding new ways to rethink and reformulate the fundamental affirmations of the Christian faith in order to more effectively communicate the Gospel.   ( https://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2014/08/ressourcement-aggiornamento-and-vatican-ii-in-ecumenical-perspective.html#:~:text=If%20ressourcement%20is%20about%20revitalization,faith%20in%20order%20to%20more)

Teilhard spoke of

the above and the ahead

the conception of God from 

above or from what is ahead of us

the so-called heaven(s) or

the so-called future

back then or

up ahead

where we've been or

where we're going

just as poets say that translation

of a poem is a different poem

ressourcement and aggiornamento

are different religions different faiths

consider yours -- is God above and back then?

or, ahead and in each next step?

and which calls for a deeper faith?

which throws you into deeper consternation?

I stand on my head

I twirl in barnyard corral 

snow deepens in the slog

ice hangs from roof and thickens

I look back, I look ahead --

the room wherein I sit goes nowhere

being formerly known as god

The Holy-One

The Wholly-One

The Holey-One

The Holdy-On

χρυσάφι του ανόητου *

                       (* fool’s gold)

 Convenience

Much of our lives

Going along to

Get the hell what we want

Conveniently

Giving up integrity

To fawn over the rich

The celebrity, the powerful

My brothers and sisters

We are living a lie

Told by a fool

Surrounded by fools

The laughing crowd 

Foolishly following

For their own

Convenience

A public

Pisseur

λύπη και χαρά

• λύπη και χαρά (sorrow and joy) 

• "Monsters aren't born monsters." (from documentary on Sean John Combs. aka Puff Diddy) 

• Immaculáta Concéptio tua Dei Génitrix Virgo. / Your stainless conception. Maiden Mother of God.   

• Gáudium annuntiávit univérso mundo. / Was a message of joy to the whole world. (Laudes -Versus, Neumz, 11feb.25, Our Lady of Lourdes)

we become what we are by 

beginning with who we are

day by day, choice by choice

evolving into the face now seen

Buddhists say causes and conditions

Catholics say a trace of the first sin

I don't know.

It is beyond my understanding

The Lady showed up in France

Sean showed up in music industry

What we show is what we know

What we know is what we show. 

είναι όλα μέσα σε όλα

 Ο Θεός είναι όλα μέσα σε όλα

    God is all in all

obscure and

hidden

God waits

loud and

performative man

pontificates

if you want

to know God

disappear

within everything

see nothing

abjure 

start fresh

ignore foolishness

renounce

tell God

you are

sunrising

seeing what is to be seen throughout

 what if prayer is

the shining through 

of what is

there

the way first

daylight shines through

hilltop ridge trees 

evergreen, rock ground snow

bare branched deciduous

that brief glimpse of 

what is behind things

seeing through

letting be seen

obscure holography

gazing God

non ego me absolvo

 pale blue

yes

first light

wherever

imagination goes

in dreams, I went

then waking

erases

into this

sitting looking

eastly through

cross, power line

twilight dawn

hill-tree

silhouette 

if ever I

learn how to pray

I will remember

night stepping back

first sight into what 

might [have] be[en], 

the way earth

turns without seeming

to lose balance

I remember 

everyone wronged

by my lack[ing  of] prayer

moonlight

Self realization is

Coming to see

What cannot be seen, 

and

Saying nothing

Until

What is heard is

Seen sound 

walking around poetry

Sitting in car

mainstreet Thomaston

listening to Neumz

monastic cell

trucks passing

latin cadences

a friend visits friend

in new apartment

just after prison

it is peripatetic

this solitude

stroph after stanza

ending earlier with 

For love are in you 

am in i are in we

e.e.cummings, paroles

bringing it home, free,

commuted, pardoned

what dropping away might feel like

 What are you waiting for?

     Me? Nothing

You’re standing inside it.

     I’m dizzy. Everything is turning.

Go in peace! Spin no more.

     I am earth. I turn and spin.

No, you are my imagination.

     I am not . . .

No, you’re not. Now go away.

     [Falling away — As one, disappears.]

before leaving barn

 Quickly, quickly

There’s little time remaining

Day is slowly slowly darkening

If you want to talk, talk indeed

Say it all at once, no punctuation

Oh lord, here comes silence

Don’t look over at it

Go about your pondering

As if nothing were wrong

over and over

Clouds muffle sound of airplane. Clouds drop snow covering and muting everything with descending  flakes and powder.

Looking at clouds from both sides

Now

I’m am a cloud seeing nothing but itself.

Vicissitudes of Sunday morning.

Body impermanent like spring mist;
Mind insubstantial like empty sky;
Thoughts unestablished like breezes in space.
Think about these three points over and over. 

—Godrakpa (1170-1249)

I sleep. I awaken. I sleep. I awaken

There are coffee beans in kitchen next to stove under icon of mother and child.

“Love,” it reads,”is all you need.”

Love is all you.

We need to be what we are, all this and that, we are what we need.