Letter to Rick in Missouri:

More specifically, it's just Saskia and I (with dogs and cat, of course) residing at hermitage. We continue to wish to dwell as hermits in the everydayness of the marketplace. Thus, many of our "conversations" are in town in the bookshop. There are several who would like to be part of a Laura of Hermits, i.e. a community of hermits. I can barely organize myself out of my pajamas -- and so have little skill or energy to contribute to that.

A hermit is one living alone. A Meetingbrook hermit ponders the words, "Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone, stepping aside to make room for another." Dwelling alone with the Alone does not mean isolation from others. It suggests dwelling as no barrier.

We are not a Zen center as typically conceived, as is in Missouri. Thank you for the link. By practicing between traditions, we actually are neither here nor there, but continually pass through a "thin place" which often feels like a mirror's surface, where in and out know no difference, yet are not the same.

The very attempt to see this kind of life through feels like a koan.
God is God; No God is no God. Zen is Zen; No Zen is no Zen.
Saying, "yes" to each of these phrases places us, unknowing, in the middle of our life.

Much was made last night at the bookshop during our conversation after reading Meister Eckhart's 'The Noble Man' that there is a "knowing" that occurs that is beyond beliefs, beyond mere thought and experience. While I affirm that reality, I question it.

It still seems to me that this kind of 'knowing' is a wink-wink, nod-nod secret handshake type of posing that must be watched carefully. It is my suspicion that if someone really didn't know, i.e. looked from a don't know mind, there wouldn't be anything other than the don't know reflection mirroring the presence of the one there.

Francis didn't know Christ, Francis mirrored Christ. The Zen practitioner doesn't know everyday extinguishment, that person is right there by being transparent and empty.

God is being there. "Da-sein," the German word literally translated "there-being," is used to signify 'man' or a human being. For Christians the mystery asks them to ponder, "What does it mean to say that God became human?" What does being there, or being here, or being anywhere have to do with God?

Zen asks, "What is this?" By calling each into the question of "What is," we are invited to dwell as "this" wherever we are. Bird comes, bird. Joanie comes, Joanie. Tom the mailman comes, Tom the mailman. Dredging barge in harbor comes, dredging barge. Snow falling on Friday morning, snow falling on Friday morning.

Enough for now. So it is, always, enough for now.

Best,

Who knows about God?

A man from Missouri writes and asks about Francis of Assisi and Zen. It is a kind question. He invites looking at what is the relation of theistic approach with Francis and non-theistic with Zen.

Practicing Zen is zazen. For zazen, a quiet place is suitable. Lay out a thick mat. Do not let in drafts or smoke, rain, or dew. Protect and maintain the place where you settle your body. There are examples from the past of sitting on a diamond seat and sitting on a flat stone covered with at thick layer of grass. Day or night the place of sitting should not be dark; it should be kept warm in winter and cool in summer.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

The cabin and front room of house are the sitting places we share. Cabin sits cold during week, front room warm. Lights from stars, moon, and Snow Bowl wander cabin through night. Light from vigil lamp stays on cross with Jesus, icon of mother and child, and sitting Buddha in front window of house. Each stays steady through night.

Who knows or does not know about God? Francis lived connected with all that was there in the Umbrian Hills. Zen is the eyesight of leaves, grass, dove, and squirrel in the hills of Ragged and Bald. Francis knew no other. Dogen changed verb from "has" to "is." Everything, he said, is Buddha-nature. So, to it he looked, and so, as it he watched.

The Soto tradition says -- Just sit! Just do what you are doing. Stand when standing, eat when eating, and make no image when no image need be made.

Francis loved Jesus, so, his spirit mirrored Christ's spirit, his body Jesus' body. There is a place in the speaking about mirrors where there is no subject reflecting object. At that nearside, the place where image and reality are not two, is a transitus. The Latin word, transitus : translates as "crossing, passing over, transit /changing, alteration." Stepping into the mirror changes everything. Inside and outside fall away. All opposites evaporate and become each other. Looking shifts from "at" to "as."

As hermits who live temporarily in both a hermitage and in the marketplace we are learning to live in the midst of others as no other. For us this means we live in distant and separated seclusion from the values of our culture that are hostile to the sacredness of every being or antipathetic to the stillness, silence, and solitude of true nature.

We choose the paradox of living alone with others, together with all alone. Close is too far. Near is not far enough. What Nishitani calls the absolute nearside is neither here nor there – it is all there is here now.

Who doesn't know about God?

Not two of us, not one of us.

Dogs bark in frozen snow outdoors. Bell rings at bottom of stairs for dinner.
Thank you for asking, Rick.

The bookshop/bakery will re-open today at 4:00pm. There will be Buddhist Studies at 5:30pm.


January 2003 Events

All Events at Meetingbrook are free, open & informal

Note: There are several changes on schedule, including Winter Hours, and Evening Conversations. 1) We’ll be closed Mondays and Tuesdays in winter. 2) Maybe Zen, Maybe Not, A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition will be held on Friday Evenings, 5:30-6:30pm 3) A new conversation, Tea and Literature, will be held Saturday afternoons.
Note: Consult "Today at Meetingbrook” for any changes in shedule.

MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE. (6:05am-6: 35am) Silent Sitting - 30 minutes, daily. Then follows (6:40am-7:00am) Chanting/Mindfulness Walking (MWF Christian; TTh Buddhist). Whatever your tradition or practice come sit together. Simply enter, sit, & leave in silence. Note: For the winter, the cabin will be heated only on weekends. Sat/Sun sittings and practices take place at the Cabin just up from the barn. Weekdays held in house front room.

SATURDAY MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE – Weekly Lectio Divina: Sat, 6:45am-8:00am; (In Cabin) Monthly Retreat 7 hrs, 18Jan; 6am-1pm, (Buddhist focus this month)

SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE Each Sunday evening, 6:00-8:00pm. Practice Silent Sitting, Walking, Listening, Eating, Conversing, Chanting. (12,26Jan.Buddhist focus; 5,19Jan.Christian focus) All welcome.

A Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection at Camden Harbor
Come anytime, each conversation stands alone.

WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30-6:30pm
Wed. 8Jan.03 Topic: Reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. A reading circle
Wed. 15Jan03 Topic: In whose name? A conversation about the threat of war.
Wed. 22Jan03 Topic: Reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. A reading circle
Wed. 29Jan03 Laura Soul-Friend Circle: A monthly reflection about personal spiritual well-being.

THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP
5:30pm-6:30pm.Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christian Contemplative Tradition. Currently reading Selected Writings, by Meister Eckhart. (1260-1328)

FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP
4:30pm - 5:30pm Poetry. Open gathering invites anyone to bring poetry to read, whether own or others’. “Poetry” for us is Poems, Letters, & Pieces of Journals. From time to time we might even write.
5:30pm-6:30pm Maybe Zen, Maybe Not, A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition. Currently reading Nothing Special, Living Zen, by Charlotte Joko Beck

SATURDAY MORNING & EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP
9:00am-10:00am: The Many Faces of Death. We are reading book, The Grace in Dying – How We Are Transformed Spiritually As We Die, by Kathleen Dowling Singh. Come by any week.
4:30pm-5:30pm: Tea and Literature. For one hour we’ll read and converse about a prose piece, essay, or short story. (Fiction or non-fiction). Bring or suggest a piece.

MUSIC REHEARSAL AT THE BOOKSHOP
1:00pm-3:00pm (approx) Every Wednesday and Sunday Afternoon. A group playing effort. Join in. Also, any other days for individuals. An opportunity to rehearse with ease in a public place, anytime.

Bookshop & Bakery Schedule
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays,
Open:
Wednesday Noon-7:00pm
Thursday 10:30am-7:00pm
Friday 10:30am-7:00pm
Saturday 9:00am- 6:00pm
Sunday 10:30am- 5:30pm

The sweet solemnity of Epiphany sees us through.

Is God what is looking through us?

Epi = on, at, besides, after. Phainein = to show. Epiphany is an appearance or manifestation of a divine being.

So many wise ones in our world, so few Magi. So many teachers, so few learners. If teachers are not learners, what then do they teach? If the wise do not embody their wisdom, why travel anywhere to point out the divine shining through another human being?

There is a place we must visit before hanging out a shingle with the word "teacher,” “coach,” “therapist,” or “ordained anything" affixed.

And the people on the street view me behind my own glass in much the same way, and it is the way that I have looked at others in their "foreign licence" cars, and it is the kind of judgement that I myself have made. And yet it seems that neither these people nor this man are in any way unkind and not to understand does not necessarily mean that one is cruel. But one should at least be honest. And perhaps I have tried too hard to be someone else without realizing at first what I presently am, I do not know. I am not sure.
(sic) (Pp.56-57, in story The Vastness of the Dark, in Island, by Alistair MacLeod)

That visit is to the vastness of the dark. It is an inconvenient side trip. It is there, without deflective light from any external source, we begin to see signals and signs pointing to the place we would like to call home, ourselves.

Magi point and leave. Others set up tents, hang out shingles, and ply skills of directing traffic. Like colorful officers waving white-gloved hand signals, those who don't leave direct visitors toward, away from, around, and sometimes through their tents.

God is not in any tent. Magi know this. Magi arrive, leave presents, and leave themselves.
The divine, akin to what Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle points out, shows up and through in a glancing passing presence.

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. (-- Werner Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927)

No stake fastens the movement of God.

Magi return home. Having seen God, they move on in a delighted weariness continuing their watchful and curious lives.

They move on with what is seeing them on their way.
They see through what is there to be seen through.

They are themselves seen through.

When the divine shines through life, death appears clear and present.

When you are born with a strong presentiment of death, life advances toward birth in reverse. It recovers all of the stages of life in a sort of upside-down evolution: you die, then you live, suffer, and finally are born. Or is it another life that is born on the ruins of death? One feels the need to love, suffer, and be born again only after having known death in oneself. The only life is the one after death. That’s why transfigurations are so rare.
(p.14, in Tears and Saints, by E. M. Cioran)

Is life only seen through death?

Perhaps this is the danger of the Magi. They follow intuition to the divine showing through a child. They’ve brought presents. The present has brought them to their senses. “Now,” they say, “Now we have seen what we have long traveled to see.”

The child is born, recognized, and everyone shivers. They shiver not from some atmospheric chilliness. Their shivering is rapt awareness that the gift of life is the gift of death, and that death must be opened first.

For the divine to shine through we must first reconcile humanity to transparency. See life, see death. See death though life; see life through death. Try to hold on to one of them and discard the other, and a contemporary murderous Herod will try to fool you into reporting back to him what you are willing to sell out for a fool’s errand of personal gain, favor, or praise.

Cioran tells Herod, The only life is the one after death.
Herod is tempted to kill. He is wrong. It is a koan, a deep riddle.
See?

What does a lovely transfiguration ordinarily look like?
Do we dare respond with our own epiphany?

Snow seems sweet and soft this Saturday. All day.

We move things around kitchen.
Saskia finishes at sink. "Ready to go?"
What a choice! Go out to shovel snow? Or, move daybed and table in kitchen?

See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar, and your daughters in the arms of their nurses. (Isaiah 60)

If God were to show up, what would we see?
The Feast of Epiphany comes near.

The Magi in the Gospel were looking for something that had been revealed to them. They knew a spiritual truth and they followed it. There is no indication in the Gospels that they ever follow Christ. Their task in the Gospel is simply to point to the divinity of this small child. So it is with many of us: our task is to point to the divine at work in our world without becoming caught up in strife or useless religious arguments.

Christ is born for us! Christ is revealed to us this day. Let us open our eyes and our hearts.
(-- from Epiphany Homily, 2003 The Monastery of Christ in the Desert) (http://www.christdesert.org/news/homily.php)

Appearance with recognition.
What would God see?

What is being revealed to us?
What would any of us be seen as?

At prison Charlie, Shane, Ed, Mike, Paco, Andre, Sonny, Saskia, Vaughn, and I read the Canadian writer's story aloud in circle for 35 minutes.

"I know, Ma," says my father, "I know that and I appreciate it all, everything. It is just that, well somehow we just can't live in a clan system anymore. We have to see beyond ourselves and our own families. We have to live in the twentieth century."
"Twentieth century?" says my grandmother spreading her big hands across her checkered apron. "What is the twentieth century to me if I cannot have my own?"
(p.88, in The Return, (1971), story by Alistair MacLeod in his book Island The Complete Stories, c.2000).

We sit in silence 5 minutes. We let conversation carry us from the writer's Cape Breton to Montreal, then take side trips from New York City to the island of Jamaica, from towns in Maine to Holland, jail cells to childhood everywhere remembered.

I’ve always loved friends of the Way,
Always held them dear.
Meeting a stranger with silent springs;
Greeting a guest talking zen;
Talking about mysteries on a moonlit night;
Searching for truth until dawn,
The tracks of our inventions disappear,
And we see who we really are.
- Han-shan (dailyzen)

Andre's poem, It's Too Late, caps the two hours we spend in Meetingbrook Conversation at Maine State Prison. Poem begins with lines,
I get this gift called life,
but it's like my every breath is through
a shattered wind-pipe,
my speech is quite a whisper,
it's hard to get a listener,
it's hard for insight,
angles of angels get it twisted,

The ten of us are tourists. We travel by word across the table to each other's country. We stay as long as we can. Return fare is letting go what we think we know about the other, paying opinion and prejudice's ticket price back to one's chair, looking out over the landscape passing us, and sorting through what we've become enroute.

I'm so confused in my movement for direction,
I'm so lost, I lose myself, where am I headed?
Good question,
where's my head at, it spreads in sections,
along with my flesh,
never forgetting life and death,
they're both conception.
(from chorus in It's Too Late, poem by Andre H.)

Alistair and Andre convey us through their written words to places we visit with them in our conversing words. We feel a familiar memory. Have we been here before?

Life and death, / they're both conception -- Wherever we arrive, we have been here before.
The grandmother's words bring us to wonder what it is we conceive if we cannot have our own.

This is our own, this is the path we take, where we meet each other.

Charlie said it's something he's been reading about, "empathy."

The sign on door of shop still says, "We're closed a few days. Happy New Year."

"Stormstay," was the word used in a story about Cape Breton in a book about Nova Scotia.

We stormstay at hermitage for rest.

Dew and the moon,
Stars and streams,
Snow on pine trees,
Clouds hovering on the mountain peaks;
From darkness, they all become glowingly bright;
From obscurity, they all turn to resplendent light.
Infinite wonder permeates this serenity;
In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.
Serenity is the final word of all teachings;
Reflection is the response to all manifestations
- Hung Chih (1091-1157)

Bach plays.We stay put.
We look at things that have been still for a while.

Winter.
Ice over everything.

If anything moves, it must move carefully.

Old year eve sitting with snow fog surrounding cabin wood. New year morning sitting with sunlight permeating cabin windows. This is how the mountains stay so quiet -- they sit looking across each at each.

Happy in the morning
I open my cottage door;
A clear breeze blowing
Comes straight in.
The first sun
Lights the leafy trees;
The shadows it casts
Are crystal clear.
Serene,
In accord with my heart,
Everything merges
In one harmony.
Gain and loss
Are not my concern;
This way is enough
To the end of my days.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Hugh C. from Surry sends this invocation:

INVOCATION FOR THE NEW YEAR

Let us invoke our ancestors,
And our spiritual ancestors,
for we are the sole reason for their existence.
Let us also invoke our children, and their children,
for they are the sole reason for our existence.

Let us invoke the mountains and
the rivers of this great Earth,
and realize that we and they are
part of the great wheel of being
of sentient and insentient life.

The gift of Life is more fragile than
the dewdrops on the morning grass.

So let us vow to heal & nourish,
to love & share,
To alleviate suffering & bondage.

May we come to know Peace & Joy,
wisdom & compassion in the New Year.
(Adapted from the Mayan New Year Invocation)

Each bird and squirrel takes seed, whether from feeder or what is scattered on snow.

So it is to all Mary’s, all mothers, all expressions of God's light -- praise and gratefulness this day!

With two dogs we walk across Hosmer Pond. Shroud of moist air clouds Ragged and Bald Mountains as daylight lowers to white gray silhouette.
"Do you think the ice is thick enough?" is often asked by one of the four.
"Yes!" the repeated answer.

Another year about to end
In my empty mountain abode;
Rivers and clouds,
Their trails indistinct;
Pines and cedars,
Their natures the same.
I arise from my nap
To find the taro roots done;
As the incense fades out,
I finish a scripture.
Who knows that real pleasure
Lies within stillness and silence?
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)(dailyzen.com)

Sign on shop door says, "We're closed a few days, Happy New Year."

Smoke rises from house and cabin chimneys.

Body and breath. Carnal and spiritual. And the dissolving of all that is seen into the unseen.

As calendar year ends, so does all time transmute into no time. In brief: beneath the story we tell about life is life beyond story, among and within what is itself no story.

Have you not seen the idle person of Tao
Who has nothing to learn and nothing to do,
Who neither discards wandering thoughts
Nor seeks the truth?
The real nature of ignorance is
Buddha-nature;
The illusory empty body
Is the Dharma body.
- Yung Chia Hsuan Chueh (665-713)

The story is history. What is now is what?
The open is God Mothering/Fathering. The body is God Christing. The breath is God Spiriting.

Let's call it a day. Let's call it a year. Let's call it a silence.

The words Di sent apply. "Beyond, among, within, beneath" -- is everything -- silence, stillness, solitude, and sanctuary.

In the beginning was the word. At end will be the gaze.

For now, only the open alone invites and conveys body and breath.

As we live and breathe!

In Murder in the Cathedral about the killing of Thomas a Beckett in 1170 in Canterbury cathedral, the chorus intones,
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right thing for the wrong reason."
(--T.S. Eliot)

Jonathan Mondaldo is on New Dimensions Radio talking of Thomas Merton with Michael Thoms this 29Dec., the date Thomas a Becket is traditionally celebrated. Montaldo reads from the Asian Journal a prayer by Merton to God which includes the phrase, "because our being is in your being."

Is our last temptation to do the right thing for the wrong reason? To pretend to be God is most often recognized as madness. To disappear into God is holiness. But the middle path, to recognize what God is recognizing, engaging and enacting our being within the being of God, what is that called?

There is no need to pretend we are God. We are not mad.
There is no need to disappear into God. Everything is revealed as it is with God.
There is no need to look for the middle path. We are the middle path. We are only to look as what is traversing the way of God.

The right thing is to be what, where, and who we are.
The wrong reason is to think we are trying to become, do, or accomplish something else by pretending or practicing that which we aspire to.

As we live, and breathe, we come to see our being in God's being. Merton's prayer in Asia was one he embodied.

No temptation. No treason.

Live. Breathe.

There is no place to hide. Even when we long to disappear it has to be done in plain sight.

The little retreat is to hide
Among wooded hills;
The great retreat is to vanish
In the capital.
- Kanzan

A curious dream. Waking up after dream of a monastic setting and another of beach waves behind sand dunes the idea of consolidation and enfoldment recurs. The woman from Lincolnville comes in and is fired as spiritual director (a self-appointed position that consisted of pizza and advice, both by the slice).

As an ancient Chinese saying goes, 'Mediocre hermitry exists in mountains; real hermitry downtown.' It means ordinary hermits retreat to mountains or forests; great hermits retreat to the center of the city. City life is quick-paced and it is difficult for hermits to find a quiet forest. In Lantau Island one can find a Trappist Haven Monastery, a group of true hermits - the cenobites. If wild life is forced to emigrate from this Concrete Forest, how could there be sufficient space for these cenobites? (on website, Trappist Monastery in Lautau)

What sleeping dream of monastic life and ocean proximity? What retreat does the inner solitary find in outer community?

Great hermits don’t know who should live and who should die. They allow life to see itself through. We need hermits and solitaries that continue to look deeply and long for, at, and as each of us.

There is no place to hide. What really interests is how to be hidden in the obvious. To find oneself out is it necessary to lose no self within?

Today we think of innocents. Those who die -- first in the minds of uncaring people, then physically at the hands of unkind people -- die without being seen by those who profess to know who they are. Their death is an ignorance that causes suffering in the world.

What do we do when we don’t know what to do?

Sit a while. Be unknowing. See what is there. Care for what is seen. Be kind to what is cared for.

Whether ignorant and harmful, or unknowing and hurt – these are two versions of innocence. Perhaps we might learn to look at “wild life” the way hermits look out of solitude. The world longs for what is looking at it with love.

What if innocence was treated with love?

John's words make of the Word a language of love.

Is he "the disciple whom Jesus loved"? Is it because he was loved that, in his words, Jesus the Christ was one who taught we must love one another?

Now whether withdrawn on a mountain,
or retired in a city, the essential
thing is the long maturation.
For this, it is good to keep
the examples of the old masters in mind,
or we will be pulled back into
the dust and delusion of the world.
- Torei (1721-1792)(dailyzen)

A long maturation is needed to learn through dust and delusion the longing of love for itself.
It seems muddled to suggest love has no object. Love has only itself, and itself includes one and all.

John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of James the Greater. In the Gospels the two brothers are often called after their father "the sons of Zebedee" and received from Christ the honourable title of "Boanerges," i.e. "sons of thunder" (Mark, iii, 17). (Catholic Encylopedia)

Had mother Salome been the chosen reference, the honorable title for the boys might have been "Rogati Dei," or, "asked of God." They were asked to consider with their lives the question of love.

What is the question of love?
With our lives, in the beginning, we listen to the word.

When word and question become flesh, we'll sit in stillness, move with peace, our long maturation.

Shoveling 20 inches of snow 4 hours places one in prayer.

Christmas night white snow blowing northeasterly stops everything in Maine. Stephen’s Day pulls blanket from manger, covers everything with pause, and drops coat at feet of someone needing new way of seeing.

Where is Christ today?
Is each sculpting act, each falling flake, each wandering thought preparing this one to be the question? Is “this” – each instant as it is – the coming into being of Christ?
Like the words in the story told in Acts 6: "And the high priest said, “Is this so?”
I ask: Is this so?

More than the watchman for daybreak, let Israel hope in the Lord:
for with the Lord there is kindness and abundant redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all its transgressions.
(from Psalm 130)

Like the Dalai Lama -- who says that his religion is simple, his religion is kindness -- is the new way of being, “kindness,” replacing religion, as we’ve known it?

Absent all implements and instruments of religion, absent creeds and confessions, pronouncements and pontification, capital building fundraising and hoarded treasures in basement archives -- absent all these, can kindness revive religion? Or, perhaps, can kindness reveal the Itself, God, Ultimate Reality?

Is there a need to divest all extraneous possessions, a divestiture of special symbols, handshakes, & titles on the part of religions in order to restore genuine trust and everyday sacredness to the world?

What is religion holding on to that makes it so reluctant to allow appear the true face of God longing to shine through everything?

The vagaries of life
though painful,
teach us not to cling
to this fleeting world.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Not to cling to this fleeting world, surely, means letting go the ornaments and prized differences so precious to religions. .

It is a terrible thing done in the name of God. Patronizing and murdering, growing rich with divisive rhetorical venom spit at others -- all the "others" -- and calling it entertainment, commentary, ecclesiastical and clerical fatwa, interdict, and casting into the darkness.

No wonder.
No wonder and fear replace wonder and love.
Kindness need not apply.

And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60)

We're told that Jesus' words and Stephen's words were prayers to absolve those who killed them.
Kindness? No cry for justice. No curse of damnation. No promise of future retaliation or vigilante revenge. No elimination of enemies in the name of God, country, flag, or the deaths of the innocent.

What would the world come to if kindness were our prayer and act?
One need applies to everything, everywhere, everyone, and every time.

Kindness.

Simply.

What is this?

Cesco looks over toward woodpile. We've returned from short walk along Ragged Mountain. I take wood to cabin. Smoke from woodstove chimney. Stillness.

Blue Lincoln pulls in as I sit at desk in house with Mu-ge tossing off, one by one, small things to floor and attempting to do same to words from computer screen.

Betty gets out, walks to cabin, and enters. Some time passes. Later, leaves. Bringing, and leaving with, solitude.

MoGLIAD, (i.e., Mother of God, Light In All Darkness), gift of Betty, icons north gable of chapel/zendo, as does her wooden turning centerpiece on Janet’s hermitage table in dining room

In front room of hermitage, incense burns rising behind clay carrying animal (reindeer? camel? donkey?) from artists Clarity with child in basket on its back.

Arrives child extending into life. Single candlelight glows behind child on animal between sitting Buddha and crucified Jesus. Arrives these two men expanding through death.

The whole season of a person's life celebrated of a day. Our Mother Light issues forth her children. We are gifted and served well!

"This," says song and script, "this, is Christ the Lord."
What is "this?"

I ask this so that we, each and all of us, might have life, and have it abundantly.

A sound! Nuthatch breaks seed on bell pole outside window.

This is good!

We like the invitation of a silent night.

"I'm not there yet," says Jerry from the bench and table by fireplace. He is writing. Cesco sleeps by door.

They shall tear down the Temple to Self for man is an unworthy God when man exalts something and heads into nothing.
There is no higher-minded goal other than love thy neighbor as thyself...otherwise the foundation of man is sand, washing away. Build it on stone so others can stand with you. (Jerry at 4:45pm)

The people from New York finish their coffee and hot chocolate and leave with words of the season. Jerry goes. Sam and Susan arrive. Joan from Northport arrives. I can't imagine why we are open.

"Caring about people who are alone, who don't have much," that's what Joan relates Rev. Susan S. at Lincolnville said at this evening's service. There were four speaking people at four corners of the church and a woman in a gold scarf telling the Christmas story.

Soon solitude will watch doors close and cars disappear. The star atop Mt. Battie tower has focus tonight. Generator filled with fuel. Cold night air. Drivers heading north on Elm Street Route One might pause.

For now, that is all we can do.
Pause.

What is being pointed out?

Stefanie, a student, leads her paper with two quotes:
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
( -- Albert Einstein, letter dated 1950, quoted in H. Eves’ Mathematical Circles Adieu, 1977)

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
( -- Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, foreword to The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery)

Is birthing Christ a dawning consciousness that recognizes one family?

A holy family? All beings – inanimate to animate, dirt to sentience, all species through human to realms unknown to any of us? Are we ready for this birth?

Another student writes:
I know I won’t emerge from this class as a philosophical scholar. In my “trained” way of thinking, I tell myself that I did not succeed in this class because I can’t put a pretty ribbon around the little box of wisdom that I didn’t gain from this class. Are you following me? Then, I realized that I do not need to because there is no box and no ribbon. There is only philosophy, which leaves things as they are; bare. In the end, I’m still holding onto the ribbon, but I’ve managed to throw the box away! (Josyln)

Perhaps the box is bare, empty. Without box, the empty content, that is, the emptiness that even the idea of box could not contain, much less the greater illusion that a container such as a physical box could contain what is wisdom, spills effortlessly into nowhere.

Put differently – what a lovely ribbon!

Is Christ a lovely ribbon remaining after what we thought we held has disappeared? When nowhere becomes now here?

Is Christ the light illuminating a circle of compassion embracing all and whole?

There is no shopping for this. This is gift given and received once and for all when the first sound resonated from the origin of sound.

Put differently – Let there be light!. (cf. Gn 1:3)

And there was, and is here, and ever will be -- this sacred ribbon.

Still.

Holding.

Haiku for Elizabeth

Wet old apple tree
watching orange sunrise wash
clear cabin window

(wfh, 21dec02)
.........................
Sometimes fire doesn't catch until you leave it alone.
After several attempts, not until returning to house, cabin woodstove chimney dances smoke. Woman arrives, walks mindfully to screen door, and disappears into chapel/zendo.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16:25 - 27)

"Now," Paul writes, and "now disclosed." What is constant, and what is evermore constant, is honoring resplendence no longer hidden from our eyes, is born aware presence.

Coming to this, an advent pilgrimage is what is born, within and without.

We must first visit another. They too are near birth.

Visit Elizabeth, a name that means "one consecrated to God."

Aware presence sits in maximum-security prison around table in education. Eight inmates, two visitors, reading at random snippets from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, pieces from many minds collected by Jack Kornfield. Later we read a piece on history and who we are. We finish with poem by e.e.cummings let it go .

Then Sonny getting up to leave says it. One sentence. It sums up the gathered circle conversation with compact clearness.

Sonny says, "What Jesus was, we are now, if we let it be."

Turning the wheel of the Dharma
is the beginning and end
of the whole training.
With this aspiration one starts
giving one’s whole heart to the training;
with one’s heart in it, one does it.
Depending on it, one looks
for the wonder arousing,
mysterious state behind appearances.
That attained, the transformation
of one’s life has been completed.
- Torei (1721-1792)

Beyond appearances, at center of our very being, Sonny's sentence.

Saskia ends with their nodding affirmation, “May we all be at peace, now.”