Now the world begins!

When news comes that shocks us, when our minds say, "Uh oh, this is bad," or when we first awaken of a given morning -- these words apply. Now the world begins.

The real sunrise is in
The sky of the heart;
Just as the water jar
Reflects the sun,
So the entire universe
Shines in the heart
Of the One.
When you are in a train,
The whole world appears
To pass by.
Similarly, the whole universe
Can be known within the One.
- Nityananda (d.1961)

Surprise might be the sign of an awakening mind.
It is always curious to hear someone say, "That doesn't surprise me." There's an element of either ennui or feigned control whenever we demure we already know and are not surprised by something, anything that happens.

With each occurrence, the world begins. With each encounter, the world begins. With each appearance, the world begins. With each invitation to respond, the world begins.

This is being present at the creation. At that instant, we have to say something, do something, or not. We might simply be eye and ear, body and soul in the presence of what is unfolding. All time and space originate in this augenblick, this glance of the eye, this seeing now.

Now the world begins.

The anniversary of the devastation in New York City approaches.

That day, amid many other deaths, when 200 people fell or jumped from the top floors of the World Trade Towers one year ago, eleven seconds remained until they hit their death. A longtime, a lifetime. A time, curiously, of grace.

Grace is within you;
Grace is the Self.
Grace is not something
To be acquired from others.
If it is external, it is useless.
All that is necessary is to
Know its existence in you.
You are never out of
Its operation.
- Ramana Maharshi ( d. 1950)(dailyzen)

The Bangor Maine paper reported today the death by hanging of a 37 year old man in jail. He was serving a 60-day sentence. It was only seconds after his cell was checked, the guard said, that they found him dead. What does his death have in common with the WTC deaths? On the surface it seems an odd question.

I'm coming to suspect that just being alive is the grace of God.

No hoops to jump through. No groveling penance. No judgment and evaluation of deeds to endure.

In a fractured time, is what we need just God, grace, and gratefulness?
These three things? And split seconds to appreciate, to affirm, these gifts?

Camus was right. Suicide -- or the consideration of how to enter and pass through life, through death -- is the only serious philosophical question.

It is our gift to consider this question.
It is our gift to consider this.
It is our gift.

To know the existence of grace in us.

A few seconds.

It is enough.

Along Ragged this morning an hour hike. Using ski poles as walking sticks I am able not to always keep eyes fixed on trail.

It occurs while ascending and descending over root and rock how much attention is placed on keeping to the path and not falling or turning ankle. A lot like spiritual paths and religions.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)(dailyzen)

The two poles steady me on my way. Something about Contemplative and Zen supports along the path allows looking around without fear getting snagged on exposed root or loose stone.

At Quaker Meeting end at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel Diane asks we hold two Friends with failing health in the light. Ed asks if I know a man at local Episcopal Church who died this week. I remember Penny's mother below Boston who is readying her going beyond. Our one certainty -- one we will encounter somewhere along the trail -- is that things change.

And things do change.

Charlotte comes into shop after musicians leave. She tells me one of the Friends we prayed for died last night.
This tall and gentle man disappears around the turn by a tree on the path.

It is September. On trail this morning the fresh air wandered clear and cool with us.
Feeling change, mountain shrugs, turning toward equal balance night and day.

When balance is right, the single bright moon is our guide through the woods.
All we’ll see will be seen well.

Early sun over Melvin Heights wades Hosmer Pond to Ragged Mountain coming through prismatic sphere hanging from thread at window of meditation room releasing angelic plumes of color dispersed to wall where Meetingbrook Promises hang over Phil Root's sitting bench.

If people are quiet,
They can be quiet anywhere.
If people aren’t quiet
They won’t be quiet in the mountains.
Everything depends on you.
Life is transient,
Like a flash of lightning in a dream.
Before we receive this form,
We had another face,
Our original face.
We can’t see it with our eyes.
We can only know it with wisdom.
- Chi-ch’eng (dailyzen)

Readings today scratch with irritation.

I said: “Thou hast deceived me, O Lord, and I am deceived. Thou hast been stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I am become a laughing-stock all the day, all scoff at me. For I am speaking now this long time, crying out against iniquity, and I often proclaim devastation: and the word of the Lord is made a reproach to me, and a derision all the day”. Then I said: “I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name”: and there came in my heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it. (Jeremiah 20:7 - 9)

Who wants to hear "The Lord said so"? Whose God wishes to smoke Iraq? Whose Lord wants to kill America? What deity has consulted her stockbroker and decided the poor suck and don't deserve but crumbs off the table? When will the Great One, the Lord Adonai, the Savior of the World -- when will he, she, or they win a seat on the UN Security Council and bang their shoe on tabletop to protest the scurrilous phantoms wielding unyielding power in the world?
Jeremiah is ready to shut up, go home, and cultivate his garden. But for that burning fire in his heart.

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1 - 2)

The writer of Romans bears fire from Jeremiah. "Your bodies," he says, "a living sacrifice." Forget your ideas; forget cool constructs of complacent rationalization about why things are the way they are; forget being awed by mystery sidelining understanding; and forget the illusion you are chosen, separate, one of the few who have to suffer the pangs of others' antagonism to your privileged standing.
"Transform, renew, by the mercies of God -- change your mind."

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you”. But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men”.
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done”. (Matthew 16:21 - 27 )

Peter is an obstacle. He says, in effect, "No, no, not you -- you're above all this, you don't have to do that." Not Jesus, he's exempt, chosen, not like 'them' -- and Peter wonders -- maybe we too? He has to be set straight with the crooked, spherical lines of God's mind.
In the prior chapter, the Canaanite woman who told him about dogs -- a lesson pivotal to his coming to reverse and transform his mind to God’s -- has just straightened out Jesus. He had it wrong. He thought it was just "my people" he was about. Not any more.

"Save and lose, profit and forfeit, return and repay" -- Matthew's wording of Jesus' sayings sounds like the financials page of the Wall Street Journal. Is this a coded insider-trading alert to heads up investors?

I prefer to see something to do with bodies. Poet Dan Berrigan wrote, "Bodies belong where words are." I think it is a matter of bodies, not of belief, nor of besting antagonists.

Be quiet. We can only know our original face with wisdom. Everything depends on you. Life is transient.

So much suffering in the world caused by making obstacles to God's mind. What have we done?
What are we doing?

Are we attempting to recognize and make holy the body of what is alive in this existence? One body recognizing Itself is all bodies being seen as truly sacred.

All living beings, wherever they are, whatever they are called, no matter what their diverse appearance - this is our prismatic light. "Prismatic," that is, "having such symmetry that a general form with faces cutting all axes at unspecified intercepts is a prism." (Webster’s Seventh)

Seeing with wisdom is seeing all faces intersecting sacred compassion at unspecified intercepts.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice -- holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Here's looking at you, kid!

Windjammer Weekend floods Camden Harbor with schooners, people, and events.

On a peak standing still
Only clouds coming and going.
A thousand misty mountains below me.
In the open sitting straight
Nothing false, nothing real
Shapes of light and dark before me.
- Ch’and-hui

Strange notion "nothing false, nothing real."

Deck fills with waiting crowd for 9pm fireworks. Bursts of light, multi-colored flowering falling fading sighs of surprise.
Gordon Bok's voice and music from cd player inside the bookshop. Clouds high over masts will not dull the display readying on barge by Curtis Island.

This final weekend of summer vacationers. Coming and going, clouds giving shape to night sky. We are fortunate to see the many shapes before us.

Charles dulcets "Topfen Kuchen" and is served some. Jim readies himself to step outdoors and step into his fortieth birthday in two days. Jonathan listens to Red Sox game on radio in Harbor Room and prepares for 30th birthday tomorrow.

Dogs are frightened by loud noise. Cesco and Sando huddle by my feet behind counter. Proximity is no problem. Necessary solace. What others celebrate, they shy from.
Every second begs for compassion.

Afterwards, Sando walks home with Charlotte. In shop a woman walking by steps on Cesco's paw. He cries out.

Some joy, some sorrow.

A thousand misty mountains encircle us.

When beeper beeps, cake comes out from oven. When Cesco barks once, door is opened for him to come in. When story is told, always look both ways before crossing into it.

To practice Zen, you need deep roots.
People with deep roots are rare.
In the past anyone could practice Zen.
But not now.
Zen depends completely on yourself.
It’s much harder, especially now.
- Sheng-hi

Why harder now? Are the barriers erected by thought-patterns of contemporary culture that much thicker and impenetrable? Or is a more subtle explanation -- one that says the barriers are down, it is all revealed, no need to break through anything -- causing us to throw away practices and disciplines once used to root us to see and be with each other without barriers?

Take the story told in Matthew:
Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him’. Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out’. But the wise replied, ‘Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves’. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut. Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us’. But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”. Matthew 25:1 - 13

In the story, wise prepare, foolish despair. Hip hip hooray the wise! Nah nah na na nah the foolish!
Remember -- look both ways.

Jesus relates the story, then adds postscript: "‘Lord, lord, open to us’. But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”.

The bridegroom in the story says, "‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’."
Jesus says "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day or the hour."
Which saying is the compassionate saying? Is the Boy Scout motto invoked, "Be prepared"? Or is the Zen saying suggested, "Zen depends completely on yourself.”

Watch therefore, become therefore, practice therefore. You are therefore.
"Therefore," in Webster's Seventh is defined, "consequently, for that reason, because of that, to that end."

So, what follows that story? How are we to follow that story? Perhaps we are to look both ways, even look twice, before crossing.
Are our roots deep enough to remain who, what, and where we are? Are they deep enough to be wherever we are?

Maybe Jesus quoted that story to usher the wise behind the door, into the room with the bridegroom -- these 5 unwilling to share what they had with the other 5 -- they get what they've prepared for, what they've known would happen if they were wise.

But the other 5 -- the so-called foolish ones, those who beg, "Lord, lord, open to us," -- these are given a greater teaching than the reward reaped by the wise. They are given the teaching to practice, to "Watch therefore." To let roots deepen into the ground of one's being, the very soil of this earth, the loam of longing for what is revealing and opening itself in their midst.

To allow oneself deep roots is foolish these days. We are not "on" the earth for anything we can prepare for. We are "in" the earth for Itself. We are the earth. Came from there, returning there, are it here. Roots reside best where they've found their own depth.
People with deep roots are rare.

Practice doesn't follow anyone else disappearing behind a door. Practice watches What-Is-Itself right where one is -- open, here, and now.

These watchful rooting foolish ones! Open. Here. And now.

Watch well. Sit well. Cross well.
Especially now.

Wednesday afternoon brought two boats into the harbor. One a large green ferry-like three-decker named "Who Cares." The other a big marlin fishing sports rig with the name "So What." It seems some of our wealthier watercraft owners are taking a stand on matters economic and political.

It might be serendipitous that many across the country went today to speak to their congressional representatives about war-making talk by the administration. These large craft broadcast a response several expect from the exercise of public opposition to government's terrifying polemic to increase war.

Some see peace right where it is. Looking within, there is seen a self-emptying humility. Seeing -- no wanting, no needing -- only God Alone. These visionaries are neither pro-war nor anti-war. They are in the sight of God. They are seen as what they see.

The entire universe is one bright pearl.
When the right time comes,
The essence of the bright pearl can be grasped;
It is suspended in emptiness,
Hidden in the lining of clothes,
Found under the chin of dragons
And in the headdresses of kings.
This pearl is always inside our clothing,
That is, inside us, our real nature.
Do not think about putting it on the surface;
Is should be kept in headdresses and under jaws.
Never attempt to wear it on the surface.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

To be what you see and are seen as -- this is what is longed for by anyone longing to live life within God's sight.

Who can wear the sight of God on the surface?
No one -- at least, it seems -- not yet.

We'll have to wait for wiser boats to enter our harbor.
We'll have to wait for This and That to sail beside Here and Now.

We'll stand on edge of yacht club lawn as turn is made around head of harbor buoy. They’re gliding slowly mid-tide. Names come within view.

We Care.
Because This is, That is.

Brad said a woman he knew, when dying, spoke aloud the words "donut hole" while her daughters, keeping watch with her, sat around bed eating donuts. All these years the donut koan has been right there in my hand, and I've missed it.

I’m twenty seven years
And always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.
- Kokuin (10th century)

Question: Why do we eat the donut?
Answer: To free the donut hole becoming wide as the universe.

She died, as we each shall. In the end she understood the mystery of the donut.

Our lives, too, exist to be held, eaten up and away, then let go -- so as to free the inner emptiness becoming wide as the universe. In Buddhist readings about the death of enlightened beings there is ordinariness, a simple moving to what is falling in our midst. No big deal. One more bite, then...

Brad smiles at the story and it’s telling.

My love of donuts is coming into practice. Everywhere is expanding whole the donut hole.

This bite and that bite, some crumbs, and here it is.

Root and stone along mountain path. Two dogs sleuth the past night's forest visitors side to side up and down hike. Their scripture is fragrance. Their eyes look back at me as if to say, "Do you know what was here?" I don't. Sometimes they come quickly back to my side to mull the seriousness, proximity, and timeline of their investigations.

Every day priests minutely
examine the Dharma
and endlessly chant
complicated sutras.
They should learn
how to read the love letters
sent by the wind and rain,
the snow and moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

In the small Catholic church in our Midcoast town Sunday morning the visiting priest, after finishing his sermon about being somewhere between heaven and hell, is telling the congregation that he'd taken down some decoration he doesn't describe, something someone had placed in the church because: 1) it wasn't done together with him or other folks in charge, and, 2) because he is the priest, and he could.

In the backset of chairs, the local corporation's multi-millionaire and wife exchange glance and smile. I imaging she is telling him "Just like you, dear." Ahead of them one set of chairs, a local carpenter-builder and his wife. I imagine they are saying to themselves, "We've come to pray, can we please." Most folks I see by back of head possibly respond with patient acknowledgement that something is being said, the context and lesson of which they have not measured yet. From the place on the wall where I am about to exit through kitchen where Tommy offers me a coffee, I am thinking, "Priested again!"

The Quaker Meeting in Rockport is an inviting contrast. Trees, water, birds, breeze, small animals in underbrush -- and God in silence. The open-air chapel allows "the love letters sent by the wind and rain" to be read by bare attention. The sounds of nature and expressions of one's heart are exegetical scholarship and homiletic inspiration that change with each movement of attention or shift of breeze. We listen in prayer-shrouded recognition that only God reveals either nature or heart. Then, when unknowing presence finishes its rounds, Diane says "Good Morning!" We are invited to say aloud our names, one by one, to be recorded only by the passing stylus of silence.

It's not that authority and priestly order are not important. It's just that in prayerful and worshipful stillness -- they are not interesting.
What is interesting is appreciative presence -- sensitive awareness. To what? To what is asking/responding within -- what is inviting and accompanying us -- what is offering coffee, mentioning their name, and returning to our sides.

The solitary path, with root and stone along path. These are good reminders.
That, and the willingness to trust what is sniffed.

Quaker Meeting at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel is quiet. Arnie praised the silence then read two lines -- about seeds readying in soil.

Dogs in Rockport bark into each other's hearing during sitting.
Sando barks as two folks arrive tonight. Cesco twice asserts his boundary in meditation room.

A man of the Way comes
rapping at my brushwood gate
and wants to discuss the
essentials of Zen experience.
Don’t take it wrong
if this mountain monk’s
too lazy to open his mouth:
late spring warblers are
singing their hearts out,
a village of drifting petals.
- Jakushitsu (1290 –1367)

Music on deck at harbor shop was rich and fully attended. Sam and Virginia, Hugh and Tom, Gale along with voices of several passers by marked the clear sunny pleasant day.
Tonight's practice at hermitage is also rich. Sokei-an's writing about soul and mindlessness.

"Be kind," says the High Lama, Father Perrault, to Robert Conway in Lost Horizon.

Dog barks across road.

We are drifting petals in a waterless brook.

The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
Of final belief. So, say that final belief
Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.
(in poem "Asides On The Oboe" by Wallace Stevens)

Fiction is a word with its origin in the Latin fictus, past participle of fingere to shape, fashion, feign. Definition # 2 in Webster's 7th reads, "an assumption of a possibility as a fact irrespective of the question of its truth."

Shaping any experience into something other than itself, while a work of imagination and creativity, is a fiction. Some readers love fiction because it reminds them of something familiar. Some avoid fiction for the same reason -- preferring to stay with verifiable and solid facts, something that stubs toes and bangs heads when met.

So much of our autobiography is fiction. The same event, looked at from long distances over stretches of time, can be written and re-written innumerably with only vague resemblance one version to the other. It is a shaping that fashions and feigns as it forms itself.

Right now -- chirping birds fill dooryard. Candle flame lowers toward brass holder. Man in yard pulls red truck forward 20 feet, moves something from tail end of station wagon to truck, reverses gear returning red truck to original parking spot. Sunlight passes over green plant, water bottle on its side, glances weathered cover of "poems Wallace Stevens," touching fingertip on keyboard. Sound of car finishing downhill of Ragged/Bald mountain sluice.

My life is fiction whenever the attempt to portray it distances me from it. My life is a work of fiction. Only in the living of it, or, only in its living itself, does it approach fact.

Nothing wrong with fiction. Nor with conversation. And nothing wrong with listening through the shaping syllables like fingers in wet clay for the sound we recognize as our own. We become our own creation when we shape our own image, allowing others their own shape.

It worked with God. It is the way God works.

If you say on the hautboy man is not enough,
Can never stand as god, is ever wrong
In the end, however naked, tall, there is still
The impossible possible philosopher's man,
The man who has had time to think enough,
The central man, the human globe, responsive
As a mirror with a voice, the man of glass,
Who in a million diamonds sums us up.

II

He is the transparence of the place in which
He is and in his poems we find peace.
He sees this peddler's pie and cries in summer,
The glass man, cold and numbered, dewily cries,
"Thou art not August unless I make thee so."
Clandestine steps upon imagined stairs
Climb through the night, because his cuckoos call.
(Stevens)

It is not an issue whether or not to believe in prison. It is enough to visit and enter conversation.
It is not an issue what ideal or fiction any of us chooses to hold as true. It suffices to choose.
What we see once we choose depends so much on what we make of ourselves in the work we undertake.

I heard only a fragment of Charlie's question in the prison conversation circle yesterday. He asked, "What's enough...?"
This morning I sense I heard enough -- of his question, and of the answer imbedded in his question -- as his question.

What's enough?
What is -- that's enough!

We had always been partly one. It was as we came
To see him, that we were wholly one, as we heard
Him chanting for those buried in their blood,
In the jasmine haunted forests, that we knew
The glass man, without external reference.
(Stevens)

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied.
It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
(from, The Leaf And The Cloud, book length poem by Mary Oliver, in chapter, "Gravel.")

Gale, Richard, and I know we've been to prison. After collecting driver’s licenses and keys we walk out the front door to parking lot with common feeling something simple and extraordinary has just taken place. Clouds have found room in a place without space.

My hut isn’t quite six feet across
Surrounded by pine, bamboos, and mountains,
An old monk hardly has room for himself
Much less for a visiting cloud.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)(dailyzen)

We read Camus' essay on Sisyphus, then introductory words by Zukov in The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Andre's poem is read twice:

TIME

I'm lost in a space in time,
cause time and spaces have me racing,
trying to make a finish line,
wasting seconds chasing him,
and not pacing mine,
until seconds add to decades in second place,
and I'm praying on my deathbed for one more day,
they say it's no time left,
just give me one more breath,
breathe in my mouth,
press on my chest,
send shock waves,
and when I'm saved hook to that thing for respiration,
let me remember every Christmas in December,
and every family member that was at Thanksgiving dinner,
just give me one minute,
let me ask for forgiveness,
I should have been more religious,
but I spent hours sinning,
I spent months of calendars smoking and drinking,
endless women,
what was I thinking with all that senseless spending?
It got me nowhere,
just dizziness and unclear vision,
now I’m aware and I can't hear
time and time again, I lose focus
where did time go,
the clock tics, but I can't watch it,
it's sort of like I'm going blind slow,
losing optics, losing my mind, losing my soul.
(- poem by Andre)

The souls of those in prison know the lines of Mary Oliver about stone and water.

Some are captive in the burden of their lives.
Not many know existential satisfaction in the absence of external freedom.
Most sense that somewhere else is dwelling place for their essential self -- that the journey is worth the letting go..

We visit these places in ourselves. We speak to each other of what is seen there. There is a willingness to play with absurdity as it sounds in voices we speak and voices we hear.

We laugh. There is a balancing earnest and playful intersection within the circle. It sounds true.

The sound is community.

What is le point vierge (the virgin point)? Thomas Merton cites Louis Massignon introducing the phrase to him, quoting a saying of al-Hallaj to the effect that "our hearts are a virgin that God's truth alone opens."

Wednesday Evening Conversation, reading Mary Margaret Funk's chapter "Purity of Heart, A Dialogue" from Purity of Heart and Contemplation -- A Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions, (Edited by Bruno Barnhart and Joseph Wong, c.2001):

"The consecrated term in Sufism is 'fana,' annihilation or disintegration, a loss of self, a real spiritual death. But mere annihilation and death are not enough: they must be followed by reintegration and new life on a totally different level. This reintegration is what the Sufis call 'baqa.' The process of disintegration and reintegration is one that involves a terrible interior solitude and an 'existential moratorium,' a crisis and an anguish, which cannot be analyzed or intellectualized. It also requires a solitary fortitude far beyond the ordinary, 'an act of courage related to the root of all existence.' It would be utterly futile to try to 'cure' this anguish by bringing the 'patient' as quickly and as completely as possible into the warm bosom of togetherness." ( p.289, quoting Thomas Merton, "Final Integration: Toward a 'Monastic Therapy.' ")

Tommy comes in as the conversation comes to an end to help settle up purchases and notes from the last few days. We talk to a couple from Georgia.

As Dirk, Joanie, Jim and I finish the circle I wonder whether a new sign might be posted over the beds of those in hospice or nursing home final stages of life. Instead of DNR (do not resuscitate) perhaps DMR (disintegration, moratorium, & reintegration) might better identify the process taking place.

It is in "a terrible solitude" we encounter the nothingness, emptiness, and transparency of God's truth.

No wonder we avoid being alone. And by avoiding such solitude we know no wonder.

How wonder-full, how wonder-empty -- is the life of God-itself with us!

The women in Saskia's family travel from Ragged to Saddleback Mountain to celebrate births and retreat. Three women friends of Saskia's (along with the always willing Tommy) cover shop and bake in her absence. These women are surrounding mountains, clear lakes, and open skies in a time of support.

When this Woman of Tao left the mountain,
The mountain turned as gray as ashes;
The white clouds hid away their smiles,
And the blue pines were filled with grief.
Suddenly came news of the Woman of Tao’s return,
And bird’s song burst open the mountain valleys.
A divine light radiates from the precious temples,
And a dharma rain washes away the swirling dust.
- Su Shih (1073)(dailyzen)

It finally rains a short while. Hard ground will not yet be softened.

Paul Tillich (8/20/1886 - 10/22/1965) said, "Faith comprises both itself and doubt of itself." It's his birthday. I like the way he uses the word "itself." That word has become, like the phrase "what is" -- in my eyes -- alternate spellings of "God." The more something or someone becomes "itself" the more it changes. And the more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself. Allowing and accepting this is faith.

Faith allows itself access to you and me. Faith accepts what is found there. Faith becomes itself when mountain and rain, valley and birdsong -- each and every sound swirling in the dust of our footsteps -- finds rest in a silence of watchful becoming. This -- is what is -- becoming.

For Tillich, the Ground of Being knows dust well. For Women of the Tao, ground itself lifts itself, finds their feet, and carries them along.

Doubt it? No doubt!

Step lively!

On pond in northern Maine, loon glides and dives near canoe. Two old women sit on white couch opening presents. They are one and eleven days from their eightieth birthdays. One wears tiara, one cries. Both sport blinking buttons from a grandchild. They are at this moment happy.

At dawn two dogs step off dock into green canoe and settle into silent surface water smoke. Wood paddle slides smoothly through no ripples. It is ruhe morgan.

At night the young people drink and hit new drum from Africa the Peace Corps brother has sent. The sound carries over pond and we are paddling down a river in the Congo, message of a foreign ethos rebounding off mountain. Fire in pit, high and hot, as all join the 80 year olds in semi-circle.

I drive back alone listening to talk by Tibetan on Diamond Cutter Sutra.
Something about northern loons -- with disappearance below surface, return finds everything changed.

Three dogs walk alongside path on Ragged Mountain. Across field between snow bowl chalet and downhill. To Hosmer Pond where sticks are thrown prompting swim for them.

Psalms on porch of meditation cabin. Hot morning. Wet dogs at feet during silence. One chipmunk watches from boulder.

Nearly wordless. A morning's mindful sitting, walking, psalming.
The mountain remains strong, dry, and still. Pond remains penetrable, wet, and cool. Trees remain green holders of sunlight.

We agree to be nothing other than what we are.
Floorboard creaks on screened porch stepping over dogs.

In Nicolet, Province of Quebec, 35 years ago on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, a woman took vows in convent motherhouse. Jo-Ann said: poor, chaste, and obedient. She said, yes!

I drove with Joe, known by his Franciscan name Paschal at the time, up through New England to Canada to be there with her that day. These years later, I have a book of Joe’s somewhere in a toppling pile by R.C. Zaehner on Matter and Spirit, Eastern Religions, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin. I'd return it, but I've lost track of him.
Jo-Ann went to Japan for ten years, came back, and became chaplain at university. We were never again, so it seems, as together as in the photograph of the three of us that August 15th in Canada.

In the still night by the vacant window,
Wrapped in monk’s robe I sit in meditation.
Navel and nostrils lines up straight;
Ears paired to the slope of the shoulders.
Window whitens – the moon comes up;
Rain’s stopped, but drops go on dripping.
Wonderful – the moon of this moment,
Distant, vast.
- Ryokan (1758–1831)

Today, Nathan, a man from St. Petersburg Russia with intense eyes and surprised delight seeing the icons at the shop, stayed to chat a while. As did Gene from Stamford Connecticut, who bought books by Robert Kennedy on Zen/Christian and Aelred Graham on Catholic/Zen explorations, told of his unfolding interests in matters of the spirit. A woman from San Francisco stopped me on our deck to say how she liked the dogs, the shop, and the Gregorian music playing inside at the time. Karl and Cathy with their family sat at waterfront restaurant table as the hot day slowly darkened. Barney said he'd be moving his rowboat from our line extending to the dock. Ed, with continuous consternation at the minds of our leaders in Washington, said he'd had two beers -- it being so hot.

We watered the small tree in flowerbed near old loch marina fence on patio by harbor. Cesco -- (we're changing his name from Cisco to ‘San Francesco,’ like the medal that came with him on his collar) -- stared long and intently at dozens of ducks being fed popcorn from condo deck by young boy. This single minded Border Collie appears to smiling tourists on the deck ready to spring back to a former lifetime's work of herding other animals should a command come to him from somewhere. Earlier in day I tell Sam how Annie, his wife, is a terrific poet.

We'd arrived in Belfast at 7:30am for mass. There wasn't any. We had blueberry pancakes at Chase's Daily instead.

What I remember most about Jo-Ann is the ease with which she was within herself. It is the surrender of love -- one asking nothing, one promising everything -- that opens heaven to earth. What is taking place in these moments of grace -- is an emptying cup of one's life. Within oneself, an offering to others, and belonging to God -- this nears as symbol of the Assumption. It is beyond 'me' -- it is a voyaging project we can barely imagine.

It is well beyond the orbiting trajectory of the two Voyagers launched 10 years after Nicolet:
Voyager 1, climbing at 38,540 miles per hour above the plane in which the planets orbit, is now 7.9 billion miles from Earth, more than twice as far away as Pluto. Voyager 2's speed is 35,158 m.p.h., dipping below the planetary plane, and its distance 6.3 billion miles. (NYT,13Aug02)

These two voyagers follow an orbit and trajectory set for them a long time ago.
Then both craft turned their attention forward, to the heliosphere and beyond. The Voyagers are expected to survive millions of years of interstellar travel, steadfast as ever. But silent, their computers and radios dead and the Sun receding into cosmic insignificance, the two spacecraft will have long since lost touch with their makers and the home they left behind in 1977. (Ibid)

Their travel -- away and apart -- is myth-veiling origination.
At origin we are, quite possibly, dwelling many lives at once. What the mind has segmented, serialized, and discarded for purposes of order, sanity, and pragmatic agreement -- might not be the whole of what life is doing with us.

Look at the fact of that photograph -- when two friends visited a woman who was speaking to God in Quebec. And look at a railroad station in Connecticut one night later on, window reflecting slow acceleration -- radiant departure to seemingly separate orbits. These telltales flutter our imagination and cause wonder on a very deep sea.
They are semiotic passages flowing along streams of an incomprehensible consciousness -- taking place in our lives like undetected theater pieces of molecular play -- while we, without knowing why and with no certain destination, continue our lives on an ordinary, practical level of sensible activity.

Mary disappeared all at once in an instant of transparency. Where Mary went that instant in Palestine long ago, I don't know. And this not knowing is similar to the joy and delight available to us throughout long love, continual fidelity, and deep trust.

The recollection of 3 friends -- their voyage instantiated in a photograph somewhere out of reach -- smiling 35 years at each other's side -- this too delights.

Still, and more curiously, is the way our lives might be unfolding simultaneously in what some call parallel dimensions. The radical possibility exists -- well beyond our awareness and comprehension – that we have been living full and intimate lifetimes in profound mystery with each one presented to us with love and promise.

This prospect borders on what mystics know to be the eternal unfolding of God in our lives -- realities and expressions of divine life we can’t even guess at. It is also the stuff of science fiction. It is equally an intimation and intuition of the mystery of heaven -- here, within, now and forever.

There is Mary, for instance, well within herself.

And in my prayer, also well within themselves, the 3 friends pictured one summer afternoon in Quebec. Light plays around them.

Wonderful, distant, and vast -- the refractive light -- living us, seeing us through.

If heaven is within, what does it mean to be assumed bodily into heaven?

For all these years, my certain Zen:
Neither I nor the world exist.
The sutras neat within the box,
My staff hooked upon the wall,
I lie at peace in moonlight.
Or, hearing water plashing on the rock,
Sit up.
None can purchase pleasure such as this:
Spangled across the step-moss, a million coins!
- Ryushu Shutaku (1308–1388)

If I were mother of the Christ, I'd be pregnant with each moment. I'd be nursing each appearance with my attention. If asked to open my mouth and describe what is seen, apophasis.

Perhaps Mary became one of the precious few to completely inhabit her own and true body.

To become one's own and true body is to dwell completely within what one is.

And the word becomes her flesh; her body dwells among us.

To dwell thusly, such as it is, is to assume heaven.

Mary's assumption is our glorious invitation.

No looking elsewhere.

No saying anything.

Just returning home.

John Joseph left his toy truck behind in the shop on Saturday. Mathew Gerard yelled "hello" into phone from Long Island last week. A little girl clung to her mother in church Sunday. They are each about two years old. And precious embodiments of this universe peopling itself in God's image.

"Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me;
See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18)

Still, children are abused, hurt, and used by older people who forget the image they mirror.

A woman who hears an angel says she is fascinated by the current youth she calls Indigo children. They brook no bullshit and see through false social placebos. They are equally frightening and pioneering.

There are men and women who know what the troubled among us know. They too find themselves outside on the inside, inside on the outside. They are hiding in plain sight. Some in monasteries and convents, some in quiet rooms in unremarkable dwellings, some walk the roads and streets of towns and villages across the land. They understand the need to reside in prayer as antidote, a homeopathic resonance with all that poisons the soul. They pray. They smile with lovingkindness at strangers. They attempt to transform the instinct to hate what appears to be hateful, to rejoin what is severed in their midst.

He is like white clouds rising from the mountains,
No-mind from the start.
[She] is like the roosting bird who feels no longing
For the woods of home.
Because this [woman] of the Way happens to enjoy
The mountains and streams,
He wanders among them unconcerned about how deep
Into the lakeside mountain peaks he goes.
[She] has gone to the empty cliffs to pay respect to
The hundred thousand forms of the Buddha.
- Su Dongpo (1037–1101)(dailyzen)[brackets added]

There is a great deal remaining to do. To reverence what is. To reverence what is child. To reverence what is woman. To reverence what is man. With this doing, and this mind, we reverence what is -- animal, sentient, planet, and universe.

This reverence and respect is our true name, our very image. It is what God is. It is What-Is -- the awakening sacred momentum of now. Whatever name or no-name, it is that which is our life.

What child is this?
Do we think we know?

At Sunday Evening Practice we read from Dogen’s Gyoji -- focusing on continuous practice -- in the Shobogenzo. While this focusing reading is being done, Cheryl takes book from Nancy in circle reading and proceeds to read the whole of the long paragraph just read by Nancy. Not until she smiled then laughed with familiar sounding words did the rest of the table laugh and acknowledge the "continuous repetitive reading practice" Meetingbrook version of Dogen's teaching.

We speak of impermanence and the invitation to constantly wake up, no resting on laurels, and understanding that to practice is to see one's way through this now, this moment, this existence, this awareness -- this now and this now.

Originally, we do not have any invincible problems, which mentally spoil us, although they may harm our physical body. Our physical bodies cannot exist forever. Not only our physical bodies, but also any constituted matter or object cannot exist an arbitrarily long time. All matter is quite ephemeral and short-lived. Even if a being could survive forever, that duration is not meaningful unless it is valuable for some causes. Still, all beings and matter are sad and upset, angry, disgusted, depressed, anxious, restless, regretful, and finally delusive when they are going to die, are aged, sick, isolated, frustrated, or irritated. They are quite emotional, passionate, violent, depressed, and confused whenever they are missing or losing something which they covet, to which they are attached, to which they are addicted, to which they are used to, on which they are dependent. (- from Wakeful by Shibuya Subhuti. Author's Summary - An extract)

That's how I was yesterday arriving at shop. It was, I related at table, like I'd died to that reality, and was angry, impatient, and not accepting the death of the moment. I went home. I waked the death. I wake to the passing moment of upset and allow the passing to pass.

It was the feast of Clare of Assisi.
Her freedom from her roots makes her capable of understanding and accepting the newness of the Franciscan evangelical life; at once, without the slightest hesitation, among all the possible ways of serving God, she chooses to follow Francis; she is perfectly at ease with these new forms of life and spirituality. She even breaks new ground. The manner in which she lives poverty and works within the society of her day are an example.

Her choice of the most high poverty completely reverses the usual situation of monasteries and how they relate to society; she creates a situation in which the community is dependent on the surrounding world at a time when the presence of an abbey usually causes villages to spring up around it, a whole group of artisans, and tradesmen, work to satisfy the needs of the abbeys, which are sometimes significant. Because of the necessity of begging alms, Clare's monastery is in a state of dependence on the city; this is the practical application of minority.

Some of the new orders do not dare impose such a precarious condition on the women. St. Dominic wants his friars to own nothing, but does not take that risk for his sisters; he solicits property for them and charges one of his friars to manage their temporal possessions in order to ensure their material security.

The effect of the monastery's dependence is a close bond with society; even though their enclosure is strict, they have a close solidarity because the community suffers the same hazards as the inhabitants; like the poor, they suffer the consequences of crises, famines and wars, but also reap the benefits of the generosity of their benefactors in times of plenty. ("Saint Clare - An Image Of God," by Sr. Marie Colette OSC)

This close bond with society -- consequences and consolations -- is a lesson of tension interdependence requests. There is no place to run. No place to hide. The monastery of everydayness does not choose its members, does not choose who passes in the cloister of open interaction. If each is not received as Christ, then the enclosure is a place bedeviled with our personal mental and emotional disturbance. We are left with our own images if we do not see through them the image of God.

"- The mirror of the morning star, the beautiful mirror in which we admired the image of the true light, has disappeared from our eyes -".
These words begin the letter by which Clare's companions announced her death to the sisters of some 150 monasteries of Poor Clares throughout Europe. For them, Clare was like a mirror reflecting the image of Christ, the God-Man; she was his image. Hence the title chosen for this talk is appropriately: "-Saint Clare, an image of God-".

At first sight, one could wonder, perhaps some people even with a bit of skepticism, if a nun who chose to live as a recluse eight centuries ago could have anything to say today. Clare did not do any preaching; she did not leave any tangible heritage. She is a woman of silence and prayer who chooses to withdraw and does it so well that at this distance she has all but disappeared behind Francis. We must take the time to study her attentively. Then that medieval miniature gradually begins to take on detail and come alive, and the mirror becomes clearer. Then one can contemplate the face of a woman who is a mirror and model for all ages, for today and tomorrow too; of a woman who is free because she is liberated not for her own personal satisfaction, but in order to live the Gospel better; of a woman of solidarity and communion. Behind her, covering her with her mantle, one can see the Blessed Virgin presiding at her consecration in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels and close to her is the Christ-servant whose characteristics Clare spent her life reproducing in her feminine nature.
("Saint Clare - An Image Of God," by Sr. Marie Colette OSC - Extract of a talk given at the General Assembly of the Conferenza Francescana Internazionale - TOR, Assisi 16-22 May 1993.)

When we know ourselves -- perhaps then we will see clearly through what appears dissuading and distracting, until what does not disappear becomes dwelling place and wandering place -- Now Awakening God.

Finally, this discussion would not be complete without quoting the Kalama sutta, (excerpt of Buddha’s words to the Kalama people):
"Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon a maxim; nor upon fair-spoken reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.”

It is my hope that this essay helps Buddhists see how Buddhism is scientific, helps Scientists see how Science is also personal development, and helps everyone remember to apply this Method and be wary of the alternatives. Let us not simply become engineers of logic, device and description. Let us investigate ourselves and the world and live with joy and ease, perspicaciously.
( -"The Method Of Science And Buddhism," by Eric C. Berg, Ph.D., Bodhicari, March 14, 2001)

This monk, nun, friends of each of us -- teachers all -- with kindness offer gifts to open.
We sit, walk, read, smile, laugh, eat in silence, speak, chant, and bow after bells with each other -- these gifts of everydayness -- practicing.

And we miss Mini. A flower on her cushion.