Before going away a few days to visit friends and family, a meditation on what we are learning with Meetingbrook Conversations.

Seeing and saying and service are the very ground of learning.

I've been thinking of the Maine State Prison and the Meetingbrook Conversations held there. Something simple and lovely is taking place. Observations and insights from the community outside the walls, and from the community inside the walls -- are being shared and thought about, and if found useful, incorporated into each persons understanding of who they are -- inside and outside. Topics in philosophy, poetry, the practice of seeing and saying -- are talked about in round-table conversation. Inmates and volunteers from Meetingbrook Bookshop meet together twice a month for two hours a meeting. So far we've conversed about poetry or pieces from Rumi, Thomas Berry, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, John Logan, Andre, Brendan, Kevin, Boyd, Kenny, Stephen, Russell, Robin, Mike, Sonny, Denis, Robert, Paco, Chris, David Whyte, Richard Hugo, Robert Lowell, Eckhart Tolle, John Riker, as well as Seth, Cheryl, David, Dick, Gale, Saskia and I.

For once, for a brief space, we walk among you
for a space of words,
we quicken your hearts in pursuit of the sovereign will. O makers and unmakers! I shall shortly be borne
in a flowering cart of sandal, into a high heaven; a quaint apotheosis!
The routine slaveries once more possess you.
Man and god, Buddha and Merton, those years, this hour, fold in like a dough.
The blows of the kneading fist withdraw, the times are your own.
(--Daniel Berrigan, from his poem "The Funeral Oration as Pronounced by The Compassionate Buddha" from series In Memoriam; Thomas Merton.in New & Selected Poems)

Thinking is seeing. Poetry is saying. Service is sharing what-is-found.
If thinking is what wakes us, then poetry enlivens us more than we think, but the service of sharing with each other what is found in the encounter -- that is the real practice. These three aspects of being-in-the-world are the foundation of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence.

They are a monastic practice. By monastic practice I mean what we are and what we do when we are alone -- alone by ourselves, alone with others -- or, alone with the Alone. Being alone is not always easily understood. For me it means no matter where we are, no matter who is with us (one other or a number of others), we are engaged in the practice of remaining true and faithful to who we are -- we maintain our grounded individual being -- even while we engage and collaborate with others in the Being and existence we share with them. The Alone (with a capital "A") is the Source of our Being, or Higher Power, or Ultimate Reality, or God, or What-Is. Whatever name we give it, we are referring to that foundational root No-Other that upholds us, informs us, inspires us, creates us, sustains and draws us into our own deepest understanding of what we are, where we are, and why we are in the world. By any other name, this is philosophy, poetry, and practice.

While Breathing

Sometimes I breathe harder and all of a sudden with the aid of my continual absent-mindedness, the world rises with my chest. Perhaps not Africa, but big stuff.
The sound of a brass viol, the noise of an entire orchestra, the noisy jazz beside me, sink into a silence ever more profound, profound, smothered.
Their light scratching collaborates (in a way that a millionth of a millimeter collaborates to make a meter) with these waves all around which give birth to themselves, splay themselves, which make the buttress and the soul of everything.
(Prose Poem by Henri Michaux, translated from French by Richard Ellmann, in The Prose Poem)

This is the year of poetry, the time is right. I understand poetry in this context as -- what is being written, what is being spoken. "Poetry and Autobiography," the course Harold & I did at Maine State Prison as an independent study has been a wonderful experience following the promptings of personal recollection along with the promptings of poetry. If anyone else wishes to explore these promptings, it would be a good exercise, a good practice.
I'm planning to offer as a course suggestion to the University of Maine System. "Philosophy, Poetry, and Practice: A Study of Seeing, Saying, and Service of the Ordinary and Extraordinary in Life." As a working draft for a course title it is a bit elongated. Perhaps, "Philosophy of Poetry in Practice."

By means of the three "P's" we'd read, write, and reflect the three S's." It would be an interdisciplinary aesthetic inquiry into the inter-relationship of thought, expression, and engagement-with-others. We'd interweave philosophy, poetry, and spiritual thinking as collaborative corollaries to situations in the world, personal experiential autobiography, and the creativity of meaningful contribution to both the arts and to one's everyday interactions with the world.

"Look, Paddy, nothing could ever make me believe
in that heaven of yours."
"Of God's, more strictly speaking...
and all the luckier for you. Think of your surprise
when you'll be waking up and saying, 'I still don't believe
in all this heaven stuff!' and God just grinning,
'Nor do you have to, man. Not if not believing
makes you any happier. We aim to please.' "
(--from Ramon Guthrie's poem, "There Are Those.")

The joy of philosophy, poetry, and practice is that whatever is seen, said, or served by the conversation is meant to be taken back by any of the participants to their own root tradition, spirituality, everyday reality, philosophy, or personal experience. Everything about the conversations is gift, namely, anything given into the center of the circle is just given. Anything taken is just taken. No other agenda, no other intention. Many are wary about motivations. At Meetingbrook Conversation the only motivation is the conversation. That anyone puts in something they think others should hear, well, there's no stopping that. Any attempt to push the issue to the right or the left, to one corner or the other, is soon counterbalanced by comments that move the topic back to the center. Preaching, proselytizing, or trying to convince are accepted for their duration because the openness of the circle equally invites the opposite opinion, the countervailing comment that expresses whatever is in the mind of the person not to be preached at, not to be converted to, not to be convinced. All is welcome, and therefore, all is considered in its own light.

Existence itself is poetical. The poetry is merely an expression of such existence. Chinese poets penetrate into the source of things and reveal their true nature. As Archibald MacLeish would say, "A poem should not mean, but be!" The best works of Chinese poetry do not "mean"; they "are." The spiritual rhythm emerges from the objective reality, which appears no more a mere visual description.

When the poet is free from artificiality he will not only reflect pure objective reality, he will also be able to reflect spontaneously his inner joy without distortion and limitations from the ego-consciousness. He is purposeless and fearless as the flowing stream and the shining moon. Since the poet is serene he simply reflects what happens to his mind.
(pp.176-7, Creativity and Taoism, A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, by Chang Chung-yuan)

The prison conversations, like the conversations held at the bookshop in Camden, are free, open, and informal. Free doesn't just mean there's no monetary cost to attend. It also means, as with all freedom, there's no telling where it will go and who will point it in that direction. This invited spontaneity serves to open the possibilities, and inform the individual and group that it is safe and sound to attend. Respect, rather than being a set of rules, follows when you know you are free to admit what you see and say into the service of the conversation.

Someone asked the master, Bokuju:
we have to dress and eat every day --
how do we get out of all that?

Bokuju answered:
We dress, we eat.

The questioner said:
I don't understand.

Bokuju answered:
If you don't understand,
put on your clothes and eat your food.
(in The Grass Grows By Itself, by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

In other words, practice. As a contemporary saying puts it, "The only way out is through." Whatever we do is what we do; it is the mind that makes it burden or delight. Each thing done for itself needs nothing added to it. If the feeling or thought of "delight" or "burden" comes, then we just watch it come and watch it go. Practice is doing each thing for itself. So too, with things we've done in life, things we regret or things we'd like to repeat and repeat. Regret and longing to repeat are journeys to the past and the future -- which can only be done in the mind. The body is here and now. Awareness is here and now. To practice what is here and now is to free oneself from regret and longing for something else. Despite the attraction for what is not here and now, it is often a painful experience to realize that what is not here or not now is not real. What is real is here. What is real is now. By entering and engaging what is, here and now, is to live fully the life that is ours to live.

Perhaps there is a spirit of the place we occupy, and there are spirits of places we are not. (Poets can speak of these things; they have a poetic license.) When here and now, we occupy the spirit of the place we are, and are content to be what and who, and where we are -- no matter how objectively undesirable that place might seem to others. When not here, not now, spirits of the places we've wandered to in our minds occupy us, and we are at the whim of their memories and projections, no longer ourselves, and not moving through our own life, but through someone else's. Does poetry help us understand this dilemma? Czeslaw Milosz writes:

Ars Poetica?

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That is why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It's hard to guess where that pride of poet's comes from,
when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
(--by Czeslaw Milosz, trans. from Polish by CM and Lillian Vallee, in The Poet's Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry On The Origins and Practice Of Their Art)

In the same book as Milosz's poem is an interview with poet and Zen ecologist Gary Snyder. He has just been quoted as saying that,
Poetry effects change by fiddling with the archetypes and getting at people's dreams about a century before it actually effects historical change."
INTERVIEWER: I'm not too clear on the idea of the archetype blocks.
SNYDER: What I'm saying is we change the values of a society.
INTERVIEWER: Then the poet is essentially a pioneer?
SNYDER: No I wouldn't say a pioneer. A pioneer clear-cuts an eco-system and sets the succession phase back to zero again. A poet would be, in terms of the ecology of symbols, noting the main structural connections and seeing which parts of the symbol system are no longer useful or applicable, though everyone is giving them credence. And out of his own vision and hearing of voices he seeks for new paths for the mind energy to flow, which would be literally more creative directions, but directions which change politics. Poets are more like mushrooms or fungi -- they can digest the symbol detritus...
The value and function of poetry can be said in a very few words. One side of it is in time, the other is out of time. The in-time side of it is to tune us in to mother nature and human nature so that we can live in time, in our societies in a way and on a path in which all things can come to fruition equally, and together in harmony. A path of beauty. And the out-of-time function of poetry is to return us to our own true original nature at this instant forever. And those two things happen, sometimes together, sometimes not, here and there all over the world, and always have. (p.292, Gary Snyder, "The Real Work" -- Excerpts from an Interview.)

We are fortunate to be able to learn -- to listen to, speak with, and practice alongside so many wonderful learning individuals. This is the real work of Meetingbrook Conversations -- to see what is taking place with attentive presence; to listen to the sound of what is being said; to practice what is now taking place.

We walk the snowy surface of playing field and frozen Hosmer Pond as midnight nears. Returning to hermitage, lighting incense and two candles, bowing to cushion, sitting. Brass bowl sounds itself 12 times as both candles dim and extinguish themselves. In the dark and silence we sit. Whatever juncture is crossed is done without sound, without illumination. Only woman, man, dog, & cat -- each settled and still in the crossing.

May blessing and peace dwell herein at hermitage in Maine -- and at any other quiet place of heart or mind -- wherever we dwell in the wide world this New Year 2002!

A meditation this day: Mothering God – O Marvelous Exchange!

What would it be like to experience the expression of creation from God’s perspective? Is every appearance of life a maieutic event, a midwifing birth from no-it-isn’t to yes-it-is? Is God the mothering Being-unto-Birth attending tirelessly every insight, every howling infant, and every death-rattling final gasp that brings one more being through the door of finitude?

When Jesus was told that his mother was waiting for him he asked who was his mother, really, who was his mother but anyone who heard and obeyed the promptings of the source of all Being, the Father. Contrary to the sketches of hurt usually ascribed to Mary upon hearing this relativizing rendering of her place in his life, I suspect she was delighted. If Mary is the woman so long touted as extraordinary in nearness to the unfolding of Christ, then she knew hearing Jesus’ words that he knew what she knew what we all will know when our time comes.

“O marvelous exchange!” proclaims antiphon 1 at 1st Vespers for January 1, the celebration of Mary, Mother of God, and the Octave of Christmas. “Man’s Creator has become man, born of a virgin. We have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Don’t we all become what we create? In the Creator’s case, the Creator becomes the creation. What do we become? What are we creating?

As a new year begins at Meetingbrook we are creating space for meditation and contemplation, conversation, collation and recollection, correspondence, and simple engaged service. We are doing nothing special, really, nothing other than what anybody does who suspects or realizes that we have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ. And what is that? The divinity of Christ might be seen as the unbroken awareness that we are what God is doing – the unceasing revelation of God’s life and breath in this existence. Jesus knew it, Mary knew it – now, we are practicing what they knew and taught.

We practice the awareness graciously given us by these two wonderful beings. Presaged and predated by other marvelous and compassionate beings in Israel, India, Persia, and what would come to be called the Americas – this anawim (poor and lowly) woman and anointed son forged a new exchange – a new circle wherein what we will be and what we are is just ahead of what we’ve been. The straight road has turned around into itself and become a circular spiral where we no longer are straying from what and where we are – but are extending this being and place called who-we-are into a profound and deepening awareness of our shared origin. Point of departure and focus of destination have grasped each other’s hand and now twirl in ecstatic embracing dance at origin – a grounded, real, encircling earthly/heavenly origin.

That’s what a hermitage is and does. It creates a place of practice and then practices so as to be a place of practice. And so this New Year – we practice. Alone, together, with those we know, and with those we will come to know. This practice, this dance, this prayer -- this exchange of mothering creation with mothering creator – is the exchange taking place in solitude and community. As long as we can, we practice the presence of this exchange, one breath at a time.
………
We’ll be visiting a new prison when we continue conversations at Maine State Prison in February. Meanwhile, the windows for the Meditation Cabin are all nearly in, with door, flooring, and woodstove at ready to complete the creation. We want to buy the adjoining 2.8 acres this year and trust the money will appear. The Hermitage Harbor Room is ready to receive those wishing a retreat by the ocean. Call to reserve for a creative rest and retreat. It is available for all four seasons.
……….
As we face backward and forward this January, lets surround and mother each other with creation. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s practice with each other. Let’s exchange our life in the creation of freedom, peace, and love – the life of mothering God with us.

With gratitude -- May all experience joy this January, this New Year!

Let's end the year and begin the year with silence.

Wait! Before that, let's speak, even name what can be named, what can be understood, in words or music -- of the transition from this to that, old to new, one thing to another, what remains of the narrow self of our egos to what is immeasurably the selflessness of God. Then, perhaps, neither word nor silence will be necessary. Then, perhaps, both word and silence will comprise the song and music of what the eyes alone in cherishing muted gaze enfold. At Sunday Evening Practice Nancy spoke the word cherish, and we heard her.

Robert Lowell's poem "In the Ward" included the lines:
Music,
its ever retreating borderlines of being,
as treacherous, perhaps, to systems,
to fecundity,
as to silence.

Then, a couplet,
Die Sprache ist unverstanden
doch nicht unverstandlich?
[Language is not understood
but not un-understandable?]

Is there a communication, a cherishing, that occurs when the heart is open and receptive with love to anyone presenting themselves? Is this language of the unheard sphere -- the sphere of apophatic understanding, wordless and inexpressable, -- what we feel when an abiding accepting love permeates who, what, and where we are? (Perhaps our elder Janet captures Lowell's quote best when of a Friday night poetry reading she said, "I don't understand a word you write and say, but I love you!")

Martin Heidegger's words, Die Sprache sprecht! -- Language speaks! -- continue,
Its speaking bids the dif-ference to come which expropriates world and things into the simple onefold of their intimacy.
Language speaks.
Man speaks in that he responds to language. This responding is a hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.(in ,Poetry, Language Thought , p.210)

There is an ordinary language of daily intercourse that is heard, and there is a sacred language that stretches beneath it unheard. Both involve a speaking that fills our senses and our soul. As we listen and hear either dimension, so it is we learn to speak in response -- whether in sound or in silence. The whole body listens and the whole body speaks -- sometimes with vibrational word, sometimes with grace of gesture.

Heidegger later says,
It is not a matter here of stating a new view of language. What is important is learning to live in the speaking of language. To do so, we need to examine constantly whether and to what extent we are capable of what genuinely belongs to responding: anticipation in reserve.

Placing Heidegger's words in another configuration: "Anticipation in reserve,...the simple onefold of...intimacy, [is]...what genuinely belongs to responding." Perhaps this nears what Nancy is saying with cherish?

Bankai celebrates this cherishing language:
What does it matter,
The new year, the old year?
I stretch out my legs
And all alone have a
Quiet sleep.
Don’t tell me the monks
Aren’t getting their instruction.
Here and there the nightingale
Is singing;
The highest Zen.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

As does Lowell,
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.-- Lowell, "Epilogue" in Day by Day)

Georg Trakl's poem brings this night to transition:

A Winter's Evening

Window with falling snow is arrayed
Long tolls the Vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.

Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome courses.
Golden blooms the tree of graces
Drawing up the earth's cool dew.

Wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.

From our hermitage to yours, one year to another -- May each be cherished! May all be cherished! May our language cherish what is each in all, and what is all in each!
For this, and for you, we are grateful.

Happy New Year,
Love,
Bill, Saskia, Sando, Mini & all who grace Meetingbrook

Family is what we are. When we practice what we are, we are holy; we are a practicing holy family.
Perhaps all revelation is made in small measure in local habitat. What is seen by one is a vision for many. Philosophers furrow brows and debate the one and the many. But for our benefit the one is the many. See one, see many; see one see all.

The Holy Family is what we practice by being what we are. The festival of the Holy Family practiced in the Catholic tradition is small measure and local habitat meant for many -- profoundly immeasurable and worldwide dwelling. Woman, Man, and Child -- the specific building blocks of individual human physical and spiritual community. Writ small -- woman, man, child is what each one of us is -- family unto oneself. Writ larger -- woman, man, child is the core blocks for what is most familiar -- what we've called nuclear family. Writ whole -- woman, man, child is the very embodied collective of our entire world population -- the human family.

When we practice family-unto-oneself we become real and honest. When we practice nuclear-family we become loving and patient. When we practice human-family we become compassionate and accepting.

But if we do not yet understand who we are as family, we pervert honesty, love, and acceptance. We make of those three qualities a lie. A lie is a lesser and perverted truth -- not the simple telling of what is, truth alone. A lie is a torturing of truth until it doesn't look like itself. To understand what family is, is to be oneself -- with particular others, in the embracing inclusion of everyone who now lives, has ever lived, will come to live. Family!

Embedding in stories of a holy man, Susan Trott has him telling of a "game" watching dappled ponies that applies as well to family:
Yes. Along with everything else about it, it seemed to be a parable for life. Going forwards and backwards and round in circles, striving ever forward only to have to run like crazy backwards to get the ball again, realizing that your enemy is after the same goal and you're actually helping him toward it and getting roughed up and possibly killed while you're at it but still feeling the comradeship of being in the game all together. (p.145, The Holy Man)

The straight line of our thinking is now capable of turning around -- rethinking and recollecting -- what has been there from the beginning, but only now able to be seen by more and more of us. The movement of our awareness has seemed through generations and centuries to be evolving toward a new comprehension of family. Robert Creeley's words from his poem "Here" help:

Past time -- those
memories opened
places and minds,
things of such reassurance--

now the twist,
and what was a road
turns to a circle
with nothing behind.
(from Creeley's book of poems Pieces)

And nothing left out. The comprehension of holy family has another dimension to it. Like 4th and 5th dimensional thinking of time and space, string theory posits many more dimensions of reality that we cannot yet seem to calibrate into our experiential understanding. Part of this to-be-grasped sometime is another dimension of family, namely, all matter, all beings, all animals all that has shape, form, and presence (whether visible or invisible) -- all as family. Sacred and real -- what is, has been, will be -- the timeless and spacious celebration of family.

Paul says in Colossians 1:15, Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creatures In him everything in heaven and on earth was created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations, principalities or powers; all were created through him, and for him. He is before all else that is. In him everything continues in being.
Is Paul pointing to a dimension of appreciation that we have yet to arrive at experientially? Might this someday be appreciated as referring to each and every being and person that is seen and experienced as family?

For now, this appreciation or realization is for many of us embedded in the daily practice of the appreciation or realization. Some call this meditation practice, some contemplation practice, some call it banging their head against the stonewall of hard, unrelenting experience of its opposite. (The opposite is the hard, unreflective experiences of non-family, fragmented family, broken family.) To practice the appreciation and realization of true family, holy family, and the sacred familiar -- is to enter into true, holy, sacred for that moment, that duration of practice. We practice what we are; we are what we practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes in his lovely way about practice:
To me a meditation center is where you get back to yourself, you get a clear understanding of reality, you get more strength in understanding and love, and you prepare for your re-entry into society. If it is not like that, it is not a real meditation center. As we develop real understanding, we can re-enter society and make a real contribution
We have many compartments in our lives. When we practice sitting meditation and when we do not practice sitting, these two periods of time are so different from each other. While sitting, we practice intensively and while we are not sitting we do not practice intensively. In fact, we practice non-practice intensively. There is a wall which separates the two, practicing and non-practicing. Practicing is only for the practice period and non-practicing is only for non-practicing period. How can we mix the two together? How can we bring meditation out of the meditation hall and into the kitchen, and the office? How can the sitting influence the non-sitting time? If a doctor gives you an injection, not only your arm but your whole body benefits from it. If you practice one hour of sitting a day, that hour should be all 24 hours, and not just for that hour. One smile, one breath, should be for the benefit of the whole day, not just for that moment. We must practice in a way that removes the barrier between practice and non-practice. (from Being Peace, pp52-53)

So too family. We must practice in a way that removes the barrier between family and non-family. What we consider non-family might just be a distorted notion we carry that doesn't look like itself. The mind, if not watched with care, can torture what is true to an unrecognizable distortion. Such uncaring and uncared-for reflections that become distorted often result in much suffering and unhappiness. A practice that removes the barriers -- between family and non-family, true image and distorted images -- most often results in relieving suffering and realizing happiness.

We are family -- and when we practice being family, we realize what we are. When we practice what we are, we are holy. I greet the holiness we are, my family!

Thomas dressed for Vespers and died after the Magnificat. Henry lost a friend and a powerful counterforce. Thomas was murdered in the Cathedral. Henry's men left with bloodied steel sheathed in their belts. The Archbishop tried to stay the encroaching power of the King; the King wanted to control the power and tuck the church under the royal curtain and keep only his hand on the drawstring. Power wanted, power preserved, power exercised -- jealous power taking what the other has.

800 years later poet T.S. Eliot wrote of the event in his play Murder in the Cathedral , inserting the line that the highest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Here in Maine other murders were committed 23 years ago. Yesterday Harold and I brought to closing the initial course on Poetry and Autobiography at the Maine State Prison covering the first 23 years of his life. Over 500 pages so far -- writing covering his childhood, school years, neighborhood, army, marriage, and murders at end -- have followed our first course. That course was about another experience about 15 years into his sentence -- a near-death or near-death type experience that brought him to a new, equally disturbing, and ultimately profound insight about what is true and sacred.

This seeming anomoly bypassed the traditional explanations of heaven and God and left him with seeds of seeing that slowly broke the ground of his awareness until he now sees what happened 23 years ago, what the right thing to do would have been, and that what he did wasn't right. For 23 years his reluctance to express remorse or regret was sealed in an inner crypt of untelling and unhearing, which, like Thomas and Henry, didn't find voice or ear to stave off murder and loss. There's another 23 years yet to be told.

Henry repented. Thomas sainted. Their dance down history as a pas de deux is a pattern part tragedy, part pawn of fate, part morality play. Both did what they did. And their story is told. Spin it as you wish -- friends gone political, church repelling state, power nibbling another's lunch -- the story shakes down to treason, wrong reasons, and the right thing to do or not do. Whatever the individual motives of either Thomas, Henry, or Harold -- each did what they did and their world, perhaps the world changes.

"The language of a people is its fate," wrote theologian Amos Wilder. What would it mean to be fateless? "Fate" the word cames from L. fatum , to speak. The New World Dictionary adds, "Fate refers to the inevitability of events as supposedly determined by a god or other agency beyond human control."

I suspect to be fateless might mean to be untelling and unhearing. A story untold and unheard seems to render a person to whom it belongs not-there. The opposite of presence is not absence, it is avoidance.

Our job is not to avoid what is. To avoid is to empty, make void, annul, invalidate, to quash. Avoidance of voice and story nullifies not only the one not speaking, but also the one not listening. Henry, Thomas, and Harold wish to speak and be heard. They wish to save our lives in the process. To denullify. No matter how imperfect we consider our lives, there is a perfection -- a moving through -- that waits for the right fate, the right speaking/hearing time to appear

Poet Wendell Berry ends his poem "To The Unseeable Animal" with the lines
That we do not know you
is your perfection
and our hope. The darkness
keeps us near you.

Nietzsche ends Zarathustra with,
And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also poet and reader of riddles and...a way to new dawns.

We make each other visible by our attention. Nothing is null and void. Rather, we seek something, something real and present. Our speaking and listening glorifies what is presenting itself. That is a new dawn worth waking to.

For the innocents who have been killed, for the ignorant who have killed them, and for the rest of us who fall between the two -- Forgive all that binds us in fear, that we might radiate love; cleanse us that your light might shine in us.

Psalm 51, in the companion translation Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, by Nan Merrill, continues a few verses later to its conclusion with:
Let the nations turn from war,
and encourage one another as
good neighbors.
O Most Gracious and Compassionate Friend,
melt our hearts of stone,
break through the fears that
lead us into darkness, and
Guide our steps into the way of peace.

What space there is between innocence and ignorance I do not know. Both have been part of my life -- one suffering, the other causing suffering. From there I am able to see their larger extension into the wider world -- those who suffer unknowing why, and those who make others suffer with no understanding of what or why they do what they do.

Explanations, yes, they have explanations, reasons, agenda, purpose. And, yes, they feel justified -- it is a right thing to do, they think. "They" includes me, and you. Ignorance is like that -- it attempts to hide the person under a bevy of righteous and defensive explanations.

Innocence is more open, a playing in the field of the Lord. That is, a presentation of oneself that does not know (or care to know) what will follow, as consequence, as repercussion, as effect. An innocent child doesn't know anything other. An innocent adult doesn't care to know anything other than the presentation of what and who they are.

Innocence is what holiness and enlightenment seek. Perhaps it is a simplicity of unworried mind, unselfconscious acts, gift without recompense. If innocence seems rare in our contemporary world the signs of its absence are worried minds, self-serving behavior, and exacting fees for any and all service.

Ignorance is even more troubling than innocence. Ignorance has considered the implications of actions, has looked at the right and wrong of situations, has traveled the oftentimes harsh road of experience and learned the hard way. But ignorance has a forgetfulness about it. Consciously or unconsciously ignorance disregards what it has learned and acts with abandon. Some abandon a right way for a wrong way. Some abandon fear of consequence for the need to engage what must be done.

Perhaps there's not much space between innocence and ignorance. What would that space be? What name would we call it? Saskia, when asked, says from rolling pin, "It is the knowing space. Where one is aware."

You have placed your truth in the
inner being;
therefore, teach me the wisdom
of the heart.
Forgive all that binds me in fear
that I might radiate love;
clense me that your light might shine in me.
(Merrill, from Ps 51)

Perhaps what is there, the "What Is" that dwells for our awareness, waits to be born in that knowing space. And until then, is constantly forgiving the innocent and the ignorant.

Snowplow climbs Barnestown road as morning dove sits on rope stretching from cedar to birch holding two bird feeders behind kitchen. On other side bright red against white snow on ground cardinal shuffles under feeder as chickadee fly to and from taking their individual seeds back to sheltered spot to eat. The cardinal depends this morning on chickadee fumble, selection spillage, for his taking. Dove is content to sit still with slowing flakes accentuating its balance. Like tales of Shakers at worship behind dove determined oak leaves sway and quiver in northerly breeze.

Ultimately, I have found it meaningless to hold the yardstick of fact against the complexities of the human heart. Reality simply isn't large enough to hold us.(Epigraph quoting A. Manette Ansay, River Angel in Diane Schoemperlen's novel Our Lady of the Lost and Found A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship.)

The first line of the novel is, "Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs."

Watched the film "The Nightmare Years," William L. Shirer's account drawn from his Berlin Diary of the movement, sign by sign, the 3rd Reich made from Germany to Austria and France, to the Low Countries, to the bombing of Briton. Propaganda preceded invasions, protestations by the aggressor to being the victim enabling a confused populace to align with the hypothesis -- We're doing this for our own good, a defensive measure, we must strengthen our threatened identity.

Perhaps all war and all terror, within or between individuals, within or between countries -- have this aspect of protection and retaliation to secure a threatened identity. Whether or not we are that identity doesn't seem to matter once a threat to it occurs. On an individual level we begin to suspect after long loving looking that what we've considered to be "me" is a dubious construct the mind has fabricated to establish control. We are not what we seem to be. There are signs to that effect. In retrospect, if we care to, we can begin to see them.

Maybe that's what happened to Stephen whose feast was yesterday. He was singled out for scorn and held before some who knew better as someone whose truth was different from theirs. Truths that differ cause political and power turmoil. He was stoned and killed. Someone named Saul watched. Stephen asserted confidence in his union with Jesus and recognized the ignorance and unawareness of his murderers. Stark signs -- two men murdered for the truth they saw.

So many early martyrs for Jesus. So many contemporary martyrs for Osama, for Arafat, for Bush. Martyrs dying for their faith. Religion capitalizes faith until it becomes Faith. What is the faith the martyrs are willing to die for so others might live in a new reality? Are there similarities? What is our faith today -- not the proclamations of Faith with a capital "F" about exclusivity of power and divinity and the exclusive highborn roles that certain personages play in that Faith -- rather, what is the faith with small "f" that drives them and us to assert our confidence?

Is that longing, that faith: Equality under God? Love of neighbor, which means everyone? Unity of God? Care of the less fortunate, the sick, the misdirected? Respect for all life, all beings, all creation? Eminent ability to awaken for all men and women? Loving kindness and compassion toward each and all? Willingness to suffer with those who suffer? Readiness to serve when service is called for? Reluctance to kill? Unwillingness to deprive another of what is theirs? Trust that in our hearts dwells the strength and inspiration to transform our small opinions and beliefs into great and glorious revelations of grace? Finally, the courage and humility to understand without turning away that "I die and God dies!" when another is killed because their faith isn't spelled the same as another's?

Maybe Ansay is on to something, saying, "Reality simply isn't large enough to hold us." Mind-created reality, the reality resulting from fabricated opinions and beliefs, is often blinded to what its creator intends. What we call Reality (with a capital "R") itself might be equally blind to the intention of its Creator (with a capital "C.") If so, what are we left with?

Maybe we're left with signs of blindness, signs of uncaring actions, stark signs of murder and destruction in the name of things once held sacred but over time forgotten. What are we trying to remember? What are we left with that is beyond Faith and Reality?

Today is the feast of John, the prologue of whose Gospel can be read:
In the beginning the Word already was, it was at origin. And the Word was in intimate personal relationship, face to face, with God. And what God was, the Word was, not two, not other than.
[A personal reading helped by Detailed Exegetical Notes by W. Hall Harris, Ph.D. Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary. (http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/joh/harris/gjohn-04.htm)]

Even now there are signs the writer of John saw something beyond our current conceptions of Faith and Reality. Will we continue to look? At origin, emptiness presents itself, holding us in sacred watchfulness. We can do this. We can begin here and now to be this.

Morning dove is gone from rope. Cardinal no longer under feeder. Barnestown road sounds wet with slush under tires. Many birds swoop for mid-morning feeding.

A day of joy for all!

It is today. It is here. What are we hoping for now?

Crunchy snow and frozen oak leaves underfoot on mountainside this morning after silent sitting at dawn. The ordinariness!

Sunlight through silent trees. Stepping of solitude on the trail. Curve and tumble of rushing brook falls with swell abandon down Ragged Mountain. The joy!

White birch, greeny fir, bare elm, lingering oak -- nothing stirring, nothing special -- just sound of water falling, feet stepping, sun climbing. The one after the other!

Returning to cushion, incense rising. Candle flame comes through the night. Inflection of resounding bell. Something long listened for, the coming of the Word, has leapt from the profound empty awayness of open space -- into the profound open nearness of every face, every thing. What hope!

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons." (--Vaclev Havel)

Christmas Haiku

Maybe Christ is no-w-
here found walking Ragged
path looking through each, all

(wfh25dec01)

The horizon, the boundary, is gone beyond. The Word has rooted Itself. Christ is born -- today!
Come, let us see the Word -- open today, here, with simplicity, silence, and service.

Now...you may dismiss your servant
in peace, according to your word. (Luke 2:29)

What are we? Perhaps we are this hope.

The invitatory verse of December 24th: Today you will know that the Lord is coming, and in the morning you will see his glory.

We've waited long enough. We've suffered enough. East, West, North, South -- there is no need for inflicting any further suffering. We long for the word to be spoken. And when it is, there, it will all change. We will have said what needs to be said. As it is said, so is it done. When word is made flesh, it dwells in and through, around and among us.

And what is that word? Well you might ask! By asking, by making inquiry, by prayer -- the word is ever nearer. The word in hidden emptiness begins to form. The word in frightened ignorance takes shape. The word in silent solitude stays poised for emergence.
What is that word, now, what is that word!

Wording what is, the invitation to honor, awe, praise -- the revelation of the essential, ultimate, existential reality of what we call God --that wording will determine our fate, will unveil our true face.

It is time. That time is now. This is the place. That place is here. We wonder what will happen. We're not certain. So we hesitate one last time.

What is the word? What is the word! The movement from questioning to declaration is a matter of inflection. Inflection is a turning, bending, or curving. When applied to voice -- it is any change in tone or pitch. Applied to grammar -- it is the change of form of a word -- as in, to be changed by inflection.

The time is very near. Do not delay. Open your self. Open your mouth. Inflect yourself. Pronounce one's name.
On that day,
The branch of the Lord will be luster and glory, and the fruit of the earth will be honor and splendor for the survivors of Israel.(Isaiah 4:2)
(Response, yes, time for response -- open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.)
The nations will revere your name, O Lord.
-- And the great ones of the earth will acknowledge your glory. (Our Daytime Prayer)

We've waited long enough. We've suffered enough. It is time for word.

Word us, O Silence!
Inflect us, O Night!
Open us, O Holiness!
Reveal us, O Brightness!

We wait in joyful hope for the coming of the Lord.

It rains. The baker bakes. The wet dog dries on kitchen bed. A lone chickadee flies to bare branch, there breaking open seed. All is ready!

What are we to word?

Bright sun on snow out window. Three more windows fitted into rough wood cabin yesterday by Paul and Jim. As someone observed "Its less a cabin with windows than windows with a cabin." Viennese potato soup makes its way mushroom by bacon, potato by celery into cauldron by Saskia in kitchen.

In the book On Essence (trans.c.1980 from Sobre La Esentia, c.1963) by Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri (1898-1983) A.Robert Caponigri writes in his introduction:
This most ancient and fundamental problem of western thought is simplicity itself; indeed, overwhelming in its simplicity but far more so in the profundity which this simplicity conceals. This problem is, in Zubiri's own words "el esfuerzo por entender el ultimo de las cosas", [i.e.] the effort to comprehend the first principle of things. This principle, whatever its character, is what is really real in itself and what, in turn, through the communication of itself, its "dar de si," is the source of all else that is real and that really is. The quest for this principle is philosophy. Its presence is the most distinguishing mark of western culture.

Where philosophy and the simplicity of human experience come together is in the meeting place of everyday reality. The snow on the kitchen roof, the dog's head on the blue pillowcase on the single bed, the pumpkin colored bowl alongside keyboard with leaning spoon where farina with chocolate, yogurt, and bananas filled not long ago -- these are all here, I see them, they are part of my field of experience that resounds Sunday morning in my awareness. I seem to know these things.

In their introduction to his life, the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America writes:
The fact is that an intrinsic priority of knowing over reality or reality over knowing is impossible. Knowing and reality are in their same root strictly and rigorously congeneric. There is no priority of one over the other. And this is true not simply because of de facto conditions of our investigations, but because of an intrinsic and formal condition of the very idea of reality and of knowing. Reality is the formal character—formality—according to which what is apprehended is something "in itself", something de suyo.

I like the phrasing, "what is apprehended is something 'in itself'."

This season is quiet for me. While the shop is busy there's a wider slower apprehending of a more intimate awareness of the beauty and love covering and emanating from each person entering or leaving. In the solitude that comes for me at Christmas there is a dropping away of the bustling exteriority of reconnection. In its place comes the simplicity of the fact of the reality we inhabit together, our congeneric presence -- that is, "of a kind together with," or as the Zen saying of it, not-two.

The fragrance of soup comes to this desk. Sando doesn't snore on the bed. The wind is not shaking the chimes. It is time to consider going in to open the bookshop/bakery. The meditation of embodiment and incarnation is upon us. First things first, and during, and at end.

One final word.
Reality, our awareness and seeing of what is, is a consideration of presentiation. It's a good word, "presentiate." It is defined in the O.E.D. with a twofold activity, namely, "to make or render present in place or time;" and, "to cease to be perceived or realized as present."

In a way, it does represent simplicity. Revealing and concealing are congeneric gifts of ours.
At Christmas, the word and the gift -- are ours to apprehend and comprehend.

Zubiri points to what Zen and Christ point to -- "what is really real in itself" -- and so do you and I.

Yesterday at the Maine State Prison -- in the old, and soon to be demolished maximum security prison, for the last time this year -- a Meetingbrook Conversation with prisoners took place in the education department after a night of new snow. Nine of us sat around the round table: 3 from outside, 6 from inside. The reading piece was from John Riker's Human Excellence and the Ecological Conception of the Psyche, his chapter on Basic Needs, specifically of the ten he lists, the need for Sacredness.

Whether the roundtable view was from Quaker, Pagan, Christian, Ethicist, Curmudgeon, Baker, Buddhist, Poet, Cell-mate, Optimist, Near-Death'er, or Pencil-sharpening visitor -- there was a profound willingness to read, speak, share poem, laugh, or ruminate the implications of Riker's words:
A person who has been touched by sacredness has two traits that are absent from those whose lives are grounded in the secular: thankfulness and peace. These characteristics are tonal qualities that infuse the entirety of a person's way of acting, feeling, and thinking. Thankfulness is dwelling in the memory of the world and self as gift. ...Thankfulness is a state that transvalues all values without hostility or rebellion. Peacefulness is a state of fully accepting the world and ourselves as we are.

Alfred North Whitehead's words on peace were contained in the chapter:
(Peace) is a positive feeling which crowns the "life and motion" of the soul. It is hard to define and difficult to speak of. ...Its first effect is the removal of the stress of acquisitive feeling arising from the soul's preoccupation with itself. Thus Peace carries with it a surpassing of personality.

Chris asks and answers his own question: "Why have thankfulness and peace? To be icons. To be icons that teach and are a moral guideline for all."

Brendan says, "Each blooms in their own certain time. A handicapped person can't run a hundred yard dash; but maybe their highest 'bloom' is not kicking the dog."

Paco says, "The gift is not to teach or try to give someone what you've found. But you see it in some people. They simply emanate peace and calm. If I try to spread it, I taint it. The divine is love, so, you love. You just are it, there, with others. Like the child -- he loves because he loves."

Kevin says the child sees what is real.

We become adults. What the child we were has seen, and what the child we are now sees -- we easily forget. We forget so much. How do we invite what we've forgotten back into the open?

Sonny says, "By conversation."
"Sangha," says Brendan. "Community," says Dick.

"Poetry," says silence in Andre's eyes.

We will continue this in the New Year, in the new prison, in the new revelation of what is now for each of us with this.

This?
What is this?

We'll have to see what child is this!

"I am the glory of God" is the koan given by John Eudes to Henry Nouwen in Genesee Diary. Saskia is presenting the Wednesday Evening Conversation topic "The Glory of God" this last Wednesday before Christmas. She is reflecting on her retreat at the Trappist monastery. David, in an equivocal laconic aside, says "When you say there's a little bit of God in you, you're full of it." We delight in the possibilities of his wording. He quotes Joseph Campbell about our coming out of the earth, not being thrown here from anywhere else.

Judith reminds that we are made in God's image and likeness, we are reflections of the original, and the image cannot be separated from the original. Susan tells of a dream she had wherein the virgin Mary was seen, then entered her and wrapped herself around Susan's heart. She felt unconditional love and joy -- and the insight that this love had nothing to do with "deserving or undeserving." Rather the experience that "I am the glory of God" is an acceptance we are of God and manifest God's glory, the expression, the praise, the beauty, the very fact of what we are, what God is.

Seth asks "Does it imply I have to do something that I'm not doing? Or is it like the crabapple tree in spring -- we're the glory of God?" But we think, he says, that we're a worm sometimes. Someone wondered whether a worm being a worm is also the glory of God, as beaver being beaver are. To a crabapple a worm is dinner guest.

Thursday Christian Contemplative Studies takes a night off from the regular book and returns to Nouwen's koan. Forrest tells of a book about Jesus and the death of meaning, how the Jewish sensory and Greek rational strengths are both befuddled by the death of the messiah, the stumbling block of the cross. "To faith" something is to extend beyond the boundaries of sensory or rational reliance.

Like the Zen card Jonathan sent this morning of a snowman wearing a Buddhist rakusu (a vest-like robe) in mountainous terrain with the words "Merry Satori," we decide tonight that "to faith" might be transliterated into merry satori -- that is, joyous emptying and seeing.

As fine an explication of the mystery of the incarnation, and as glorious a Christmas wish as there might be -- A joyous emptying and seeing to us all!

Last evening the snow and sleet didn’t keep many away from Buddhist studies. In the fireplace one log breaks from itself and falls to the side. Saskia silently reaches in with poker to assist the return of each part to the flame as we speak of the 1st Mindfulness Training as reformulated by Thich Nhat Hanh:
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

Sando, who had been a frightened clinging dog all day following Saskia’s 360 degree slide in the van just down from Oak Hill cemetery (no hit, no harm, but for nerves), finally came to rest in the confines of the circle as Tom invited us to “hold the silence” as we began the first hour.

This morning, bright sun on snow, another quote:
Several students came to Bassui with the practice of calling on the names of savior Buddhas like Jizo. With great patience, he explained to them that ji means “earth” and zo means “storehouse,” or mind nature. Then he urged them to realize that all the names of the Bodhisattvas are just different names for the nature of the Mind. Ordinary people, being unaware of this truth, become attached to the names, and in the hope of attaining Buddhahood, seek the Buddha and the Dharma outside of their own minds. It’s like cooking sand in the hope of producing rice. The true nature of the Dharma body of ordinary people is everywhere teaching of the many creations that come from it. All sermons of the Buddha are only metaphors pointing to the minds of ordinary people.
- - Bassui (1338-1500) -(from dailyzen.com)

We spoke from that circle:
Having a compost toilet, said Jean, has taught her to be responsible for her own shit.
Betty Ann wondered whether the phrase “May I be happy” wasn’t a desire that caused unhappiness? Muriel noted where and when she felt happy today and where and when she didn't.
What if happiness was our true home, and the awareness that we are not at home causes us to long for that true home, that's when we express the longing to return to that path of true home. Robin read the wording from the Saltzberg book, “...wish as homing instinct for freedom.” Tom said whichever path he was on the cultivating of mindfulness applied. Nancy said it might be a similar path, but different place of origin. Sarah said at end she was staying in Maine this Christmas -- not making the far pilgrimage to Pennsylvania home, then upper New York State wider family home.
Barbara said the silence and peace of the evening felt like happiness.

Betty Ann said the path is the thing, the precepts aren’t the thing. Another added, so too the commandments – they’re not the be-all and end-all or stopping point – rather the lived reality of God is the path, the pointing reality. Robin said its like the finger pointing to the moon – the moon is the thing. “Thing” here refers to our direction, our path, perhaps – our ordinary mind. In our culture there’s more focus on destination, not enough on path. It is harder yet to consider that path and destination are not two things. Path is destination; destination is path. Of what soil, what earth, is that path comprised?

When we seek outside our own minds we might just be out of our mind, in someone else's, but not where no-mind is the path.

Author Eckhart Tolle says that by stopping the mind (from its incessant forays to past and future) time stops. There is only now.
Now, and ordinary mind, are not two things. Now, path, God, ordinary mind -- Not four things?

One thing doesn’t produce another. Cook sand, get cooked sand. Cook rice, get cooked rice. Who has the pot, and what is the flame?

Everyone likes Thay's use of the word “cultivate.” It appears a gentler more accessible word than the words "command" or "reprimand." If a Zen poet were to redo the Ten Commandments, would we better understand the path they offer? When teachings become acculturated rather than cultivated they have to be dug up and looked at fresh. Seen anew, then, back to the soil of our soul. Back to the path of the minds of ordinary people. Back home to all dwelling there, wherever we find ourselves each day, any day, even Christmas.

Nameless and present we move through our origin recognizing each one, each path. The burning flame of our attention, as Delia said of the log in the fireplace, transforms us on the way.

Just before Compline, while still at table, Seth says, “It’s because we’re afraid we won’t be cared for.” He finishes the conversation at Sunday Evening Practice.

Before the conversations, from the two readings that followed sitting meditation:
1. "Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow nor reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span?…Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself." (Matt.6:26,27; 34)

2. “You’ll know you’re among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, and if it’s all under lock and key.”
“Hmm,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine it being any other way.”
“But of course it once was another way. It was once no more owned than the air or the sunshine are owned. I’m sure you must realize that.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You seem unimpressed, Julie, but putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key – and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.”
“How is that?” I asked. “Why is it the cornerstone?”
“Because, if the food wasn’t under lock and key, Julie, who would work?”(p.39, My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn)

Are we turning to a new understanding of our new communal relationship each to each in this world? Or, are we returning to how we originally were when dependence on God – or self-giving nature – was common?
Is the fear of our culture that, really, we are not cared for -- not by neighbor, not by larger community, not even by God? Is it fear that makes the norm insurance, lawsuits, corporate medical management, savings and investments? Is there any correlation between trust and faith in God and carefree and fearless life that doesn’t hoard, own, protect, and charge the dearest price for the necessities of living?

Earlier in the shop, Tom, on the way to his art gallery, spoke of noticing that Jesus expresses forgiveness “for they know not what they do” while they were doing what they were doing. That, and the fact that the prayer he taught, the Our Father, is in the present tense. “This day,” “those who trespass,” “deliver us,” – all now, all in the moment. Contemporaneous awareness of compassion.

Sando and Mini come to this room. Mini licks my hand as I write. Sando jumps on the bed. Chimes under cedar tree toll rapidly in cold wind. Saskia and mother, Erika, ready baked goods for mom's travel back home.

If we change, if we care, will our culture change? Or is caring, caring without filling our barns with surplus under lock and key, is that caring something that places one outside the culture – the culture of worry, collection, tomorrow and yesterday?

We pray in meditation room -- A quiet night. A peaceful death.
Practicing this life. Sounding bell. Extinguishing candle. Bowing to cross, to wood Buddha. Doing dishes.

Can we forgive each other now?

I visit the monastic desert of the maximum-security prison. It is Advent. Harold speaks of his life before and since his near-death experience. He says we're all an integral part of God. He says that there are fundamentalists who emotionally hijack Islam and Christianity, who demand a separating and hateful discrimination against those who don't believe what they believe.

He says that God wishes to enter this world, through us -- so that we might enter heaven with God. Jesus, he says, has much more to teach -- this time, and all times -- if we'd allow him out of the cultural and conceptual box we keep him. He says what is needed is perceptual freedom -- the personal expression of each person's spiritual intuition. In the meditation and silence of this work, we come to the love of understanding. He says that's what God is -- love of understanding. There's no discrimination with God.

I visit this monastic desert for the silence and meditation of our conversation. Harold surprises himself, and me, with what he is saying. Visit heaven, he says, and you speak this way.

At Lectio this morning at the hermitage, Matthew's words of Jesus: "Go tell John what you hear and see..."(Matt.11:5). This resounds with the invitation to listen and watch -- in one's own way -- then share with a safe community of attentive and appreciative friends -- what it is you hear and see. And I hear Harold's insight in the next verse, "And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me." (Matt.11:6)

With tea and coffee after Lectio, Saskia, Erika, Delia, Jim and I listen to the sound of our invisible guest from his monastery -- his longing to communicate -- that freedom can’t be created for or given to anybody. It comes from us. Our task is not to earn it, but realize it.

Someone prepares the way, as John did. Someone realizes the way, as Jesus did. Someone holds both these to the light and bows, with respect, to their work -- then gets on to their own expression of this good work. What work? The work of realizing the freedom of one's own expression of spiritual intuition -- with love, with understanding and with love-of-understanding.

This monastic practice helps proceed in peace -- in and out of prison – with prayer for each traveling their own way.

This is not about Hamas; this is not about Al Qaeda. This is about you and me. This is about the question -- Could you or I place a bomb under a bus and then shoot people who try to run away from the fire? If inclined to say --No! -- consider the possibility that you and I are just that right now. This consideration is not about complicity and guilt; neither is it about psychological empathy nor imagination. It is about fact; it is about right now.

Eckhart Tolle's book Practicing the Power of Now is being read every other Wednesday Evening Conversation. In chapter 2, read last evening, he writes:
Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not?
Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being.(pp.31-32)

Titmouse and chickadee stop on wire outside window before flying to feeder hanging from discarded ski pole extending from side of house. It rains. Water visits, well received.
One of the arguments we are not interconnected is we do not feel what the other feels. I wonder if this is our great delusion. The illusion is that we are disconnected. We don't feel what is taking place because we are not dwelling in the Now. Our minds keep us dispersed and distracted, going from past to future, constantly diverting us from our true home. That home is Here. That home is Now. We don't feel what and who we are because we are never at home. No one is there to feel. Our busy and worrisome minds are a perpetual travel itinerary sending us out into ten thousand amusements and ports of other illusory fears dressed and disguised as self-identity, roles, and beliefs. If we were ever to return home for even an instant to the Now, we would stop, smile, laugh, turn, watch, listen, and cry.

Earlier Tolle writes:
Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops -- unless you chose to use it.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. (pp30-31)

I remember hearing that our central nervous system plays the important function of allowing in to our consciousness only one or two things (feelings, energies) at a time. Essentially it keeps us from experiencing everything at once. There is a sequential admittance that occurs -- so as not to be overloaded, overwhelmed, and paralyzed by the input. (Much like the "freezing" of computers when over-tasked.) That's a good thing at, some would say, the current stage or structure of our consciousness. Perhaps we're not yet able to receive all that is there to receive.

It is for me, in prayer and meditation, a curious possibility -- to actually be there, be here, now. This possibility does not mean being isolated and in a trance-like bliss. Nor does it mean being taken over by God in a protective bubble and ceasing to exist in this current reality. Rather, this possibility places me squarely in the fact of existence -- with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, facts and feelings. Squarely there. Present.

With one additional observation, namely, I am there as a transforming presence, a healing and compassionate presence. I am not a reactive, retaliatory force, nor am I a passive disinterested bystander. I am there, the possibility suggests, as who and what I am. And if I am there, fully there, I will do what is there to do. I will feel what is there to feel.

Retribution, revenge, prevention, elimination, making sure (as if that were possible) that no one ever again does mindless, hurtful things -- "righting" the world according to their religious belief system, "securing" the world according to their political belief system. These things, while arguably rational steps in a disturbing world disorder, do not have the same power as returning to our true home with true presence. At times I feel that there is not a great battle waging between good and evil, but that the real struggle is between presence and absence. We are mostly absent. We long for presence. Awakening, returning to the Now, admitting God as "I AM" -- these expressions of the possibility of Being-Here have greater attraction than any campaign -- military, political, religious, or economic.

The kicker, and not an insignificant one, is that this possibility entails suffering. We don't know what suffering is, or how to suffer with joy. Some have tried to teach us. But until we enter the presence of Now we will not learn the expansive consolation and compassion that Here awaits us. This possibility somehow cheers me.

It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Better than a thousand
Hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand
Hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.
Better than a hundred
Hollow lines
Is one line of the law,
Bringing peace.
It is better to
Conquer yourself
Than to win a thousand battles.
Then the victory is yours.
- The Dhammapada (from www.dailyzen.com)

Here in hermit room this morning. Mini undercover on my chest when I wake. Sando bedside licks my hand. Saskia jingles bells at door bringing oatmeal with yogurt and walnuts from her kitchen. Dogs bark from next dooryard. Windchimes toll. Sun on windowframe. Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan Diego's tilma (cloak) has opened, flowers fall from an other geography, and a beautiful image of the Aztec princess who identifies herself as the Virgin Mother of Jesus is imprinted on it. Seeing, they say, is believing.

Jacket notes to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment say: "The theme of this profound work is that man's crimes against man are paid for through suffering, and only by the acceptance of suffering can he find salvation and purification." (c.1959, Dell)

In Thomas Merton, Cornelia and Irving Sussman write about Merton's views in the 1960s:
As usual, Thomas Merton could not run with the pack. "For my own part, I consider myself neither an extreme conservative nor an extreme progressive. I would like to think I am what Pope John [23rd] was -- a progressive with a deep respect and love for tradition."
But if he had to choose, he would choose the extreme progressives over the reactionaries because the reactionaries were fanatically incoherent, and he never sensed in the extreme progressives "the chilling malice and meanness which comes through in some of the utterances of extreme conservatives."
Buddhist monks told Thomas Merton that the same conflicts were going on in Buddhism. These stresses and strains within his own communion gave Father Louis a deeper comprehension of Buddhist renewal.
"This new Buddhism is not immersed in an eternal trance. Nor is it engaged in a fanatical self-glorying quest for political power. It is not remote and withdrawn from the sufferings of ordinary men [and women] and their problems in a world of revolution. It seeks to help them...." (pp.145,6) [brackets added]

In the story from Mexico, tradition has The Lady saying consoling words to Juan Diego which have come down to us through the years since 1531:
Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or affliction, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of hope? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?

Our need, now and always, is for one unmanipulative word, verse, one unmanipulated line of the law that brings peace. It is ourselves -- our true self -- we need to conquer, non-violently and with lovingkindness.
The first meaning of the word "conquer" is defined as , "...to seek for, search for, procure..., attain to, to acquire by effort." (OED). To conquer is to ask for and seek together what we long to see.

To find what and who we truly are is to move through suffering to an acceptance and letting go of what is found. It is a chilling course to hunt down and put to death that and those considered enemy. These may have more to tell us about who we are than we seem willing to accept. It is not sufficient to be right, being right is irrelevant. Eradicating wrong is an insufficient promise. We cannot eliminate who and what we are -- but we can invite and enter into a flowering and transforming deeper consciousness -- the seeing of which is love. Consequently, it is better to drink from a fountain of hope, and offer healing water to the rest of us who deeply thirst for freedom, benevolent justice, and yes, the love our true self invites here. Here is so lovely, wherever here is! And here we are.

At Buddhist studies last night, a sentence in For a Future to be Possible from Annabel Laity, "We follow a path that we know from our direct experience brings happiness."
Later, during the hour on metta, a talking stone went hand to hand. Out of the silence came Charlotte's voice, "I don't believe in killing!"
See?

The quote from dailyzen is perfect today:
Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
-- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Saskia leads the way up center path passing cabin, site for chapel, rusted '38 Buick, under pine boughs to bend in brook coming down Ragged mountain there turning east to tumble into rising sun. In hand she carries wooden box with ashes & bones of Kotoba our Belgian shepherd, since Feb 2000 resting in meditation room, now being brought to earth by brook to lay near Norwegian elkhound Jitai buried there in April '93.

Erika follows with psalm books. Sando and Vera bounce alongside with sticks in mouth for the simple ceremony. I bring vigil lantern to be lighted at burial site. From next dooryard Daisy and Welby bark their choral processional from their enclosure. Chickadee stay behind at feeder's return outside kitchen window.

To earth falls Koto! Yellow and red tugboat toy is placed with her. Snow, which she loved so much, joins her. Some leaves, then the good earth fills the space she will stay. Sando's and Vera's sticks are laid in form of cross on fresh earth. Sando returns to the stick and the earth where Koto now dwells and plays one more time with her dear friend before stepping off. Lantern is lighted and set next to cairn on sloping hill. Brook speaks whispers of welcome as it falls over stone & around felled branches.

We chant the psalm "Like a deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is longing for you my God" (Ps.42) and read from Nan Merrill's companion renderings of "Hear my prayer, O Merciful One; let my cry come to you!" (Ps.102), and "Praise the Beloved! Praise be to you in earth's sanctuary..." (Ps.150). Hands together, we bow to the reverence she has shown.

With gratitude for this dog, this "Kotoba" (petal fallen from flower), we bow again, wash linen shroud in brook, and return down path with two dogs bouncing, two dogs barking recessional, and three humans in silent joy and wonder at how valuable we are each to each this Tuesday returning to earth.

Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, born 1915, died this date in 1968. War raged then; war rages now. And with war, death. Some 3300 (estimated to date) dead in September 11 terror attacks in the United States; some 3700 (estimated to date) dead in post-September 11 bombing in Afghanistan. And these, civilians. Another undeclared war. We grieve for the deaths, all of them.

Thomas Merton, monk and hermit, was willing to speak to those unpopular voices opposing the war in his time. In their book, Thomas Merton (Image Books, Rev.Ed.c.1980), by Cornelia and Irving Sussman, (a book summarized for the Library of Congress as "A biography of the Trappist monk and Zen mystic who gained fame as a writer, social critic, and radical peace activist.) -- the Sussman's write:

Many of the Movement People were baffled when he spoke of such things as "purity" in their non-violent action, and detachment from results and said that: "We must act only because the act itself is true and expresses the truth... as for results: truth needs only to be manifested. It can take care of itself." But their bafflement was no greater than that of some of the religious who also did not understand when he compared the monks at prayer to atom bombs. The monks were bombs stored in silos -- as death bombs were stored in silos, so monks were life-bombs stored in silos. "These are the monks of the twentieth century: the fellows cloistered in the bomb silo, with their communal life, their silence, their austerity, their separation from the world." They dug into the earth to find the sources of life as the bombs of death dug into the earth with the power of death.
He told them (the contemplatives): "Whatever I may have written, I think it can all be reduced in the end to this one root truth: that God calls human persons to union with Himself and with one another in Christ, in the Church, which is his Mystical Body. It is also a witness to the fact that there is, and must be, in the Church a contemplative life which has no other function than to realize these mysterious things, and return to God all the thanks and praise that human hearts can give Him."
This was why prayer was of the essence, and becoming a hermit was of the essence. All had to go together. (pp.134-5)

Merton saw and understood the separation and the union. With war, death. With prayer, life. Sometimes prayer is witnessing bodies of the dead. Sometimes prayer is witnessing bodies of the living. Practicing Catholic Zen we are practicing union with God, a practice with no other function than to realize and return to life.