Thirty people filled the cabin for dedication. Many sang together. Then each. Kristen sang. SuSane sang. John sang. Saskia, Virginia, Sam, and John played instruments. Robert read poem. Susan blessed water for Buddhist blessing of place for practice. Cesco drank the blessing water. Transitus night was this combination -- as well as silence and hands on cabin walls leaving blessings by hands and hearts.

After Eucharist in Rockland, prison today, Andre's poem "Then He Came." A gift --
from the darkest of the skies came light,
a bright spark,
he caught the people's eyes,
and helped with their vision
(excerpt, poem by Andre W.)

Tonight's sitting and compline complete the lovely celebration of Francis.

This is our practice.
In silence and prayer to hold each in heart and light -- this is our promise.
In gratitude!

Dedication of Chapel/Zendo Cabin
Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage
Oct 3, 2002



1. Welcome

2. Reading from Living Buddha, Living Christ

3. Songs & Music

4. Buddhist Blessing

5. Words of Gratitude

6. Songs & Music

7. Psalm Prayer

8. Hands & Hearts, Final Blessing of Touch

9. Refreshments

………………………………..
To study the way is to study self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between one’s self and others. (Zen Master Dogen)

All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
(Saint Francis)

Angels today. Therese yesterday. Francis of Assisi tomorrow evening, then the 4th, and all October.

You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
I smile, and am silent,
and even deep within remain quiet:
the peach trees blossom,
the water flows.
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

The brook is a sleepy tumbling passage from one place to another. Francis went to the core. He faced the mirror. He stepped into the mirror. He is known as the mirror of Christ.

This path is worth stepping.

Finishing ladder steps to loft in chapel/zendo. Dedication on Thursday evening 3Oct., Transitus of Francis. Woodbox placed on porch. Windows cleaned. Loft arranged.

The iris pond has flowered
Before the old temple;
I sell tea this evening
By the water’s edge.
It is steeped in the cups
With the moon and stars;
Drink and wake forever
From your worldly sleep.
- Baisao (1675-1763)

The delight of a place to pray and sit zazen! Rough wood, candlelight, and woodstove. Grand simplicity of sacred space.

If the radical core of creation is at center, then as we open our mouth and heart, mind and intention to reach that place of presence we engage the open way of place itself.

The very place of prayer is where Christ emerges. The very place of silent sitting is where Buddha awakens.

Practice makes perfect sense. Prayer reaches no end. Awakening silence within practice and prayer -- it is time to begin again. I am still in my own dream. Now it is time for sleep.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
(--from poem “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke)

Two dogs get biscuits by bed. When will they chew?

“Heartwood circle up,” the woman said on the sloping roof of Sr. Bette's yurt-in-progress. Tied by rope at waist to copula beam, we join the slow and meditative work of fashioning cedar shingle to round arc and jigged height Saturday afternoon at lighthouse road Stockton Springs.

Forty-some years I’ve lived in the mountains
Ignorant of the world’s rise and fall
Warmed at night by a stove full of pine needles
Satisfied at noon by a bowl of wild plants
Sitting on rocks watching clouds and empty thoughts
Patching my robe in sunlight practicing silence
Till someone asks why Bodhidharma came east
And I hang out my wash.
- Shih-wu (1252-1352)

The koan might easily be: Why does Christ come in human form?
And Saskia kneads dough in kitchen for bread.

It is feast of all angels. Notably: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel.
These four names of Archangels rise in translation like haiku poem for us:

Coming to be Conveyance, a Haiku of Angels
Who is like God? Strong
One of God. Blessing of God.
My light is like God.
(wfh)

These Angels come to earth because this is where Christ comes. Wherever else the benefit of Angels and Christ, earth is blessed.

The world’s rise and fall is again in the mouths and minds of those whose odd delusion is the planning of destruction, war, and remaking in their image.

Hidden in the center of the world is Christ. What is Christ? Christ is not the religious object of religious people. Christ is the radical core of creation. Jesus was a Jew, a man of his time. Christ is where Jesus found himself.

Angels permeate creation as questioning, strong, blessing, light. They are inspiration and intuition of creation and humanity. They, like God, like us -- long that light show through each and all with glowing warmth and clear sight.

Here is creation. Here is where we find ourselves. Here in creation. Here is Christ, the radical core of creation. Here is laundry swaying in breeze. Here is fragrance of bread becoming itself in oven.

Finding our way is the kindness light offers.
Practicing silence. Practicing creation itself.

Lola says she and Carter wait on Bear, their elderly dog, to teach them when and how to let go.
When do we actually die? As a question it ranks with -- When are we actually born?

Around the circle this morning we consider why many consider oncoming death 'tragedy,' while others do not. It is a sweet gift to speak of death. And rare.

In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no
Different from ultimate reality,
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp—release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects
Are all one’s own mind;
There’s nothing except mind.
- Buddha

At Lectio this morning in the cabin, "Have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus." Emptying, serving -- like death to life.

Sitting in loft for night prayer, candlelight glowing rafters.
It doesn't matter what comes in our life. Whatever comes is our life.

The highest truth is not difficult,
just avoid picking and choosing.
-- Zen master Seng-ts'an, 7th century

Rain comes. This day, this rain is our life.

Earth flag on barn signals allegiance. I pledge this allegiance to the earth, on which I stand.
This is where I live. This is where I die. This day. This place. This is my life.

When the zen master was asked for a definition of truth that would be true 500 years from now, he said, "The truth...is just like this."

I don't understand this.

Just to clearly see it would suffice.
And to share the soul of what is at origin, truth.

If prayer lifts up mind and heart, God is equipresent.
If zazen quiets mind and body, presence is equally God.
Beyond this, nothing matters, nothing is said.
September night. Moonlit chill skims Hosmer Pond.

Anytime we think we are sufficient, something goes missing.

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
- Sogyo (1667 – 1731)

It is not out there, nor is it in here. It is not the moon, nor dewdrop, nor our eyes. It is the watchful participation of each with each with each that engages no-wall truth.

In chapel/zendo Richard wonders about the 6.5 billion of us, and how many serve life, how many serve God. It is the light of God that catches our attention.

All the 6.5 billion are repositories of that light. Our mistake is looking for sufficient examples that, to our thinking, are models of light. We pass over each other looking for saints, masters, divas, angels, ascendant beings, great teachers, and official spokespeople for exalted notions of what is right or perfect.

If we are lured to watch something or someone outside ourselves, we are walling up that person or thing, event or teaching. But if we recognize there is only one new being each time, each instance of engagement with another person, event, place, or thing -- then we are creativity itself in the act of birthing a new form of existence.

If we are careful, there is a way through the forgetfulness, disappointment, and suffering this world cultivates. If we are careful we might see the light of God in another. In that seeing, for that instance, we might engage with joy what is being revealed there and then.

In a space the size of a salt granule fallen from an old pretzel, all might reside in peace -- in flavoring joyful engagement serving life.

The cabin is now Meetingbrook Hermitage's Meditation Cabin. Morning and evening sittings, Saturday Morning and Sunday Evening Practice will be held there. It is our Chapel/Zendo.

Emptiness is a name for nothingness,
A name for ungraspibility,
A name for mountains, rivers, the whole earth.
It is also called the real form.
In the green of the pines,
The twist of the brambles,
There is no going and coming;
In the red of the flowers
And the white of the snow,
There is no birth and no death.
- Ryusai

No name contains everything. It will be, ineluctably, the Cabin.

Sacred reading and sacred conversation is rooted in what is showing up and sounding through now.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Were retiring as though shy
Of all around them.
Their conduct to all was
Respectful as though to
Honored guests;
They could adapt themselves
Like ice melting before a fire;
They were artless
As blocks of uncarved wood.
- Lao tzu

What have we forgotten?

Steady greening rain, dropping everywhere, staying like old friends from high away, after long absence, come to tell stories to the ground.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Possessed marvelously
Subtle powers of penetration;
They were so deep that
None could plumb their mind,
And, on this account, if forced
To describe them we can only
Say that they moved cautiously
Like people fording a river;
- Lao tzu (dailyzen)

Like those long asleep in their loneliness, stones in brook awaken with near-forgotten memory of former friendship.

Delia Mae at Sunday Evening Practice reminded us of the 14 workers from Honduras and Guatemala who died up north in a van accident on their way to work. We were talking about blood, about word and the ending of hostility.

What is the blood of words? This blood must course through us -- as words enter us through ears and eyes. Becoming part of our tissue, musculature, bone, and veins. These words from the source, the very origin of creating love, passing through us, taking residence in us, settling into quiet watchful waiting near our hearing.

Today is Yom Kippur. Today we look for light in each other. Today we save each other from the darkness we, unawares, impose on ourselves and each other. Seeing even a flicker of light in the other brings that one into a simple radiant community of shared light. The messiah arrives in the light we find and share with each one.

So, today, we move cautiously with alert attention across that dry brook or flowing river. Whether empty or full, we are seekers of light; we are watchers for light wherever it might appear. In any darkness, especially deep darkness, even a mere speck of light opens the way.

Steady greening rain. The resting souls of 14 workers. The empty dark place we find ourselves. Telling stories with old friends -- this is the ground of our shared being.

One step begins, one step continues. Blessed be the way we come to ground!

Watched film The Book of Life, by writer-director Hal Hartley at harbor room last night. Jesus prefers forgiveness. Final scene, ferry crossing from Manhattan, twin towers receding.

It is an odd juxtaposition – Jesus moving away from expectations of father’s vengeance, crossing through what would become a thin place between destructive justification and constructive compassion.

It’s a wonder to look at something suddenly seen differently.

Wonderful! Wonderful!
The sermon of the inanimate is inconceivable.
If you try to hear it with your ears,
You’ll hardly understand
Only when you hear it in your eyes
Will you be able to know.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)(dailyzen)

Eyes hear what is -- without commentary.

Forgiveness needs compassionate understanding. Forgiveness is curious watchfulness of what is emerging through. Jesus anguishes what to do with what he sees -- the sight of what is emerging through. Humankind moves with an uncertain emergence through this current time, form, and mind.

The devil, we might say, is curious too. But that curiosity is less wonder than a certain slant of frenzied interest how best to exploit the direction humanity turns.

Plans evolve for war with Iraq. War and humankind – a curious evolution!

I prefer the evolution of rough wood meditation cabin. It sits with us this morning as chapel/zendo presenting its sermon to our eyes.
Each mistake made during construction is forgiven. It stands in prayerful vigil, eyes and ears resting on simple being and silent presence. We see what we hear.

Forgiveness is not easy for those deciding the fate of nations and regimes while sorting through their own economic interests. Forgiveness is not easily fooled. It knows genuine action. It recognizes when genuine necessity disappears and posturing frippery takes over.

For some, there is nothing other than forgiveness. Christ watches. He attends the suffering of end times -- whether personal life, dreams, or war. Christ disappears into what is transparent. We, unfortunately, are difficult to see through. We place bets on possible outcomes instead of emerging from hostility to embody the peace we so long for.

Booking life is not an option. Finding oneself in the book of life means allowing life its own name. Why be other than life? Why make odds on life, wagering with all that longs to live and share life with its origin, the one creating life?

What is is What is. A Franciscan Friar I knew had a favorite sermon of three words: “God is God.”

To live What-is-Life is to enter Christ through one’s own life. If we allow this entering and this emergence to happen, we become what we truly are – one in the other. If we block and barricade our self against the shared blood of one body – the body of Christ – we remain two, separate, dissected.

“Whole sight;” John Fowles wrote, “or all the rest is desolation.” Forgiveness waits and watches this way. To see whole is to see life as it is. To forgive something or someone is to see things as they are. To see and accept something or someone as exactly what and who they are – that’s forgiveness. It seems too simple. Christ help us!

May each have a quiet night and a peaceful death!

Tom from New York smoked a cigar by harbor. Another man who carted off seven "Subjects" Books In Print after breaking a plastic plate brought back some old Ellery Queen mystery magazines, a book by Ferdinand Marcos, and one on educational philosophy. Tom found it a curious swap. Life is a curious swap.

Neither by words nor by the patriarch;
Neither by colors nor by sound was I enlightened.
But, at midnight, when I blew out
The candle and went to bed,
Suddenly, I reached the dawn.
Profound quietude delivered me
To the transparent moonlight.
After enlightenment one understands
That the Six Classics contain not even a word.
- Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529)

The Angelique will enter port channel at 8:30 this morning. Jim yesterday closed on his new dwelling. Mary Beth visited and we spoke about the Laura Common. Intimate and safe, we agreed.

At Friday Evening Conversation Betty Ann wondered about this notion of oneness and no-self. Jean put it in terms of vibration that went one into the other and once there is one as the other. When we awaken, will this be clear as clear can be?

Bob sat in biannual dread of Friday night's graduation at the C-School. Sando and Cesco each tried to take Hugh's walking stick from him. Robert shared m-n-m's.

At times it seems silly that some tsk tsk our determination to simply continue Meetingbrook's Bookshop and Bakery. Does the ocean abandon its waves during storm? Does the sky declare bankruptcy after gale winds sweep away whatever resists?

One breath at a time -- it all continues. I said in the circle last night that it makes a difference whether you say, "All are one," or you say, "All is one." Wherever there is one, there is all.

What, asks Betty Ann, would it mean practically if "we're all one" were true?

We're each one. Maybe that's a way of looking at it. One begins with you, with me. One, no other. But if there is no one, there are ten thousand others. And you know what we do with "others?"

At dawn, profound quietude delivers us to transparent moonlight.
From across Barnestown Road a dog barks. On the bed to my side Sando has not opened her eye, no sound comes from her throat. In the open van Cesco snoozes in cicada solo and sun on barn.

Not even a word can disturb an extinguished candle.

After morning sitting, one was.

Is every word alive? What if every word is alive? Would it change our attentiveness to each word that is spoken by another? By ourselves?

Reading Aramaic translations of selected texts at Thursday Evening Conversation, the thought occurs: what if each word is a living being? Would it revert back to the same difficulty, namely, are we able, much less willing, to attend to living beings?

Not concepts -- those encapsulated saran-wrapped packages of imprisoned ideas.
Not dogma nor belief -- those lined-up, snap-to-attention fixed and final arrangements of militarized sentences.
And not opinions -- those coffee-splattered newspaper-modeled typeset finger-dirtying loud-mouthed unreflective stay-too-long houseguests sitting to the right of us.

But individual, dazed and dazzling, newborn wide-eyed words. The ones that arrive fresh and naked, still open to the experience they carry -- still aware of the breath they exhale in the presence of loving attention to them.

Original presence! First there is the glance.Then there is the inhalation. Next there is the experience. After that the exhalation. On the emerging breath there is the vibration of energy longing to be free, to be born. Fanny slapping awakening to the sound of one’s own voice follows this.

The cry of emergence. The presentation of itself -- word made real through flesh. In the beginning, actually at origin, is the word. As it comes to be in our midst -- ah, there and then -- actually, here and now -- we are at origin with what is original.

At origin with what is original!

No need to look for God. No need to dissect, deconstruct, compare and contrast, translate or transact text and pericope into language to be analyzed and annotated. Here and now is our opportunity to let words be themselves.

If we allowed words their own being, will we find ourselves tempted to allow individual things their own being? Each animal their own being? Each human person their own being?

Maybe that's a stretch -- allowing each their own being. Words their own. What if everybody belonged to himself or herself? What if every thing belonged to itself? What if all beings belonged as-they-are to the as-they-are-community of all beings as-they-are? Would the word 'they' choose to sacrifice itself to the word 'we?'

Would that make community as-we-are?

Be careful. Conception -- the act of becoming pregnant, the state of being conceived, the originating of something in the mind -- can become artifice, artificial. Artifice is an artful stratagem, a trick, an ingenious device or expedient. Artificial is something produced or effected by man to imitate nature. It is simulated. It is not it. It is make-believe-it.

Let's not make-believe. Let's be it. Approach with tenderness, with kindness.

Come to word. Be what is living. Be at origin. Be original.
No knowing what is found right there, here, now.

So, don’t know. Breathe. You are alive!

Silence until noon today.

Silence of watering flowers. Silence of walking Ragged Mountain. Silence of tired dogs. Silence of sitting on cushion.

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Religion is not what we think it is.

Julien Green says: "Religion is not understood. Those who wish themselves pious, in order to admire themselves in this state, are made stupid by religion. What is needed is perfect silence, supernatural silence. Pious talk has something revolting about it."

...This is one of the deep problems that Eliot suggests at the end of Murder in the Cathedral, where Thomas is faced with the realization that he may be gladly admitting martyrdom into a political and religiously ambitious scheme for himself: punishing the wicked and making himself a saint by treading down his enemies, stepping upon their heads into heaven. It is in this sense that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom -- and of true religion. This fear questions our own religiosity, our own ambition to be good. It begins to see with horror the complacency of speeches that "know all about" piety, possess the right method of pleasing God and infallibly winning Him over to our side, etc. This "fear" is what imposes silence. It is the beginning of the "supernatural silence" Green asks for.
(--Thomas Merton, pp.138-139 in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Religion is only care-taken by churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples -- it is not owned by them. Religion is something much simpler than the institutions erected to portion and partialize it to the world.

What is religion?

Moses did not see God in the burning bush. He saw the burning bush and knew that it was a sign that God was speaking to him. In revelation, then, we recognize the signs that God is speaking to us, the works that he has done. There is nothing more illuminating than this continually repeated situation. When God is there, then he acts in our lives, our society, or our group, we do not know or feel anything special. It is only afterward, when God's work is done, that looking back we can say: "But it was God who was at work, it was he who changed the situation, it was he who passed by," just as we read that Moses and Elijah saw God's back (cf. Exod. 33:23; 1 Kgs. 19:11) when he had passed by.
(Jacques Ellul, pp.173-174, in What I Believe)

Religion is two hands of two jumpers holding each other falling from burning tower. Religion is two hands of two strangers pulling one another to safety from collapsed building. Religion is what remains when wonderful or terrible things pass human beings by. Religion is the willingness, as Rilke said about love, of two solitudes to greet, touch, and protect each other. It is immediate, intimate, and indestructible.

Am I a religious person? Are you? Not stupid religiosity, but true religion. Stupid religiosity kills in the name of God. True religion holds the suffering with tears and compassion. Stupid religiosity declares war on real or perceived enemies in the name of God. True religion attends to human beings where they are, shares abundance with those without, and consoles the sorrowing with mere simple love.

There might not be much any of us can do to fix what is broken in our world. Perhaps our task is to find what is broken within us and begin to heal there. One injury at a time, one hurting place, and one initial awareness of unknowing amid so many false certainties of who we are in this wild, unsettled, and incomprehensible place -- we begin there. This is where the world begins. It begins in the stunning shock that we have only each other to blame or love.

Blame is stupid religiosity. Love is true religion. Blame assumes and exerts power as solution. Love empties itself of all power and shows itself passing by in small, fragile, and quiet presence. It's a choice.

For this is a choice for life (nonviolence being part of it), and no other is possible. Pretending that we can express the Christian [or Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or any other form of belief or act] in works of love (aid to the poor and sorrowing, etc.), or in revolutionary acts to achieve justice, is treason if we engage thereby in the use of power. For the last word of love is that never in any circumstances will it express or indicate power in relation to others. Today only a nonuse of power has a chance of saving the world.
(Ellul, p 151) [brackets added]

Silence of cicadas in high grass. Silence of brothers and sisters one year dead. Silence of religion. Silence of God.

Silence -- even in words with another.

Ineluctably.

Cesco lies by van. Sando inside by bed. Sounds of four wheels swoosh Barnestown at bottom of hill. They flatten out, curve left, coming to Snow Bowl, then right around Hosmer Pond. Maine is too hot for this time of September.

Saskia is in galley of Angelique for week. Jon wakes to harbor. Cicadas surround Jim. Birds wonder where seeds have gone.

It is the one-year eve of the end of America's virginity. By rape, pain, blood.
What burgeons thereafter is our current ground. How fares our ground?

Loss. Ordinary people know how alone absence is, even in the company of others. Leaders of government know how seductive the temptation to insert personal agendas into national response. Religious voices cannot any longer treat doubt and skepticism as alien approaches to God -- God too is felt by absence as well as by presence.

Sorrow. How difficult the realization someone who mattered is gone. How empty the assurance they are with us still in another realm. How difficult the experience -- the one wanting to blame, explain, deny, accuse, avenge, or justify? How odd to find even forgiveness without solace or peace.

And love? Has mistrust covered love with gritty ash and soot? Is love part of our reconstruction? In looking back or looking forward what is seen if love is what is seeing?

One year ago tonight the country wondered whether a congressman who denied everything had a role in the disappearance of a Washington DC intern he'd been having an affair with. He dodged any semblance of human concern for her in favor of his career. While he tiptoed through minefields of self-interest, it was not known that her body lay lifeless in a park under brush. Not known, that is, but by the person who raped and murdered her. The discovery of her body would not occur for 13 months.

The eve. That momentary precondition and precognition of all we humans might experience. We call first woman, first mother, Eve.
We long for her now. We want to be given birth. To be reborn. Resurrection. We want to pick up the fractured slivers of love and see the faces once we saw in the mirror reflecting the other to us. Eve is promise of what is to come.

XXIII

Call me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you've captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold --
we, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;

doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.

(-# 23, from second part, The Sonnets To Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

Rilke uses the word "unaufhörlich" -- which in the German dictionary translates as "incessant, continuous, uninterrupted."

Mitchell chooses the word "ineluctably" for his translation. In English dictionary it comes from "ex- + luctari" -- to struggle out -- and defined as "not to be avoided, changed, or resisted."

This eve, ineluctably.

Looking back or looking forward -- what is seen -- is fresh promise of what is now seeing, with love seeing through us, with love seeing us through.

What kind of world begins when we realize that now the world begins?

Awake or asleep
In a grass hut,
What I pray for is
To bring others across
Before myself.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

The intersection of all the twos, the fragments, the relative that is not the absolute -- this is what is crossing.

This prayer and promise -- "to bring others across" -- is the Bodhisattva vow.

Across?

Crossing the line, fording the brook, stepping out from inner seclusion -- this is becoming human. This is how we come to exist. We begin to step out from hiding.

No belief carries us across. An empty mind and devastated heart place us at the line. It is the thin place between what is no longer and what is now coming to be.

Take the hand. Hold it. Step out. Travel well.

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.