A poem, short story, or essay -- the good ones -- put you there. They serve self-remembering.

At end it can be said, "O, I didn't know that about myself. Thanks for showing me."

The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is nothing but the doctrine of One Mind. This Mind is originally perfect and vastly illuminating. It is clear and pure, containing nothing, not even a fine dust. There is neither delusion nor enlightenment, neither birth nor death, neither saints nor sinners. Sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same fundamental nature. There are no two natures to distinguish them. This is why Bodhidharma came from the west to teach the Ch'an method of "direct pointing" to the original true Mind.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing (1586)

Reading this afternoon from False Papers by Andre Aciman, The keeper of sheep, by Fernando Pessoa, Fire in the Earth by David Whyte, Self-Remembering by Robert Earl Burton, some Rumi, and poems self published by an insurance man named Paul M. from the Hartford area. Lloyd said some things about the 4th Way and seeing the connections, beginning to understand, to feel.

As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
(from 1 Corinthians 12)

When we look at each other, when we listen to each other, we are ready to say, "O, yes, I didn't know that about my self. Thank you for showing me."

All this so that the members may have the same care for one another.

Tommy comes in at end. Two women afterwards -- buy jams -- remembering her father worked with and helped build the chapel with Trappists from which the jams.

She is moved by this self remembering.

As each is.

An Irish visitor thinks we've not even begun to comprehend the incomprehensibility of God.

"Think of DNA," he says, "the squiggly structure of life itself, as insight into the original fire-burst of God in this existence."

We sit in cold shop, pre-fire, while in next town hundreds gather for memorial service. Our conversation is a different service -- words for others who've died in far away places in the unceasing war humanity has with itself.

God, some say, is saying life differently than our words. God, they say, is the impulse not-to-speak that sets in center of each and every being that exists along our way.

Not-to-speak, but given-to-love.

I will place my laws in their minds
and I will write them upon their hearts;
I will be their God
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach their fellow citizens
or their brothers, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for all shall know me, from least to greatest.
I will forgive their evildoing,
and their sins I will remember no more.
(from Jeremiah 31)

A God who forgives and forgets -- no wonder we can't find that God!

Religions with scriptures about a silent God, a Word made Flesh who remains silent when asked, "What is truth?"

The rest of us talk and talk, wording everything we can, explain, argue, defend, rationalize, attempt to convey feelings, try to present thought in a communicable manner. And like the pop song we shrug and protest, "It's only words, but words are all I have, to take your heart away." (The BeeGees)

Good friends, my teaching
Of the Dharma takes
Meditation and wisdom
As its basis.
Never under any
Circumstances say that
Meditation and wisdom
Are different;
They are one unity,
Not two things.
Meditation itself is the
Substance of wisdom;
Wisdom itself is the
Function of meditation
- Hui-neng

So much of meditation is silent. As is wisdom. The substance and function of wisdom and meditation are not two things.

And when we speak, when we dare open heart, mind, and mouth to say something to another, we risk everything precious. Still, we must open our mouths, we must say something.

The heart, one author said, is a lonely hunter.

I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you all that the Father has told me.
(John 15:15)

It seems we have been made known. If we have been made known, all that is needed to be known, how is it we do not seem to know one another?

Is our barrier that we remember sin? Is our boundary that we retain tightly the evil we do one to another?

Let go! Forget about it! Find freedom in the close relatedness each hunts for -- by seeing in, through, and with God's sight.

Let our hearts be broken and taken away. Whether in joy or sorrow, let hearts flash open, as the heart of God is openness. Let pour out everything held there -- until empty -- and sacred. God's way and our way -- are not two ways. God's heart and our heart -- are not two things.

When all is revealed in sacred opening -- all know.

As we move in this meditation, through this wisdom -- in quiet -- we learn how to speak with each other.

Here is where the incomprehensible, forgiving and forgetting, comes to know and love itself -- in, and through, and with.

Daylight.

If extinguished candles are fragrant flowers colored by each one's loving prayer, a wonderland of seeding ground awaits eyes of passersby there.

Fields we saw
Blooming with
So many different flowers,
Frost-withered now
To a single hue.
- Saigyo

Sprinkling overnight snow -- this muted chiaroscuro-- at service to memorial this Thursday.

Even the young gone beyond leave children of their elders, who play in snowy drift of memory when daylight bows to passing night.

Around this Mandala, this sacred spot,
May the flames that transmute Samsara into Nirvana arise.
(from Dedication Puja, Ven. Sangharashita)

Christ-light -- hard working wisdom!

Hosmer Pond, thick with solid ice, was epiclesis tonight.

When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of the sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.
- Liu I-Ming

A wide round circle of luminaries, candles in sand inside bags, on snowy ice under new moon white sharp stars. Inside the enormous circle of over 205 luminaries, an inner figure -- a heart of 35 luminaries -- lay within the still and silent cold of Wednesday night.

Car lights turn off. No one on pond. No one there when two people walk out to edge of circle lights. Stand and look. Wonder. Walk without words the edge of circle all around. Turn and bow in direction of house high on hill overlooking pond. Turn and bow to heart inside circle. Wander back off ice to car; drive off.

The word "epiclesis" is Greek for "invocation" in the sense of calling upon or naming a person. The implication of such naming is, of course, that the person called upon become actively involved in or present to the person or thing upon which he [or she] was invoked. It is not surprising, then, that long before the term was ever employed to refer to a specific part of the anaphora, epiclesis referred to the entire prayer. In time, however, epiclesis came to refer to that petition to the Father to send the Holy Spirit which usually follows the anamnesis.
(http://www.saintstephens.on.ca/Essay/KF/The%20Epiclesis.htm)

Anamnesis, (an'-am-nee'-sis) from ana, again; and mimneeskein, to put in mind; recollectio, recordatio, remembrance.
Plato called anamnesis, 'soul-memory.'

The stark emptiness of the ice and candles. The vacancy of the visit. The fullness of the experience of love set for her in glowing memory.

Whoever created the testimony had gone. The invocation, the putting in mind of the young woman whose dwelling has changed from hilltop to beyond our telling, was laid out with exquisite juxtaposition: form was emptiness, emptiness form in beautifully frozen heart-light within circle-wholeness.

Anaphora, Late Latin, from Greek, from anapherein, to bring back: ana-, ana- + pherein, to carry; a-naph-o-ra: The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.

We invoke light of 'hard working wisdom' -- Amilia Sophia.
We recollect sterling stillness of ice pond memorial.
We carry back silence of pristine star eyes from distances beyond thought.

It is all we can do to pause, walk about, watch attentively, and pray her on her way.

This is -- indeed -- a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe.

Someone, earlier in evening conversation, said, "Love is always counterbalance to whatever weight is borne."

Do questions and answers travel in pairs?

Suicide bomb in Iraq kills twenty. American ordinance in Afghanistan kills eleven villagers, four children. Car accident at routes 1 and 52 kills high school student. Throughout world men vie for positions of power -- for who will decide what bombs go where, and who will die, and who will profit from death.

Reflecting on another death, a friend writes:
Perhaps we must surrender (and I don't say submit--that seems different somehow, cowering) to what is, to I Am, and say, "I don't know why, Lord--and I don't need to know."

So many tragedies, so many questions! Do answers accompany questions? Or are we orphans and parents of orphans because 'answer' refuses to reveal itself?

No, tragedies do not cancel each other out as they succeed one another. On the contrary, they multiply and accumulate, becoming more unjust with every blow. True, every man [and woman] suffers alone -- yet his suffering is never limited to himself. Suffering begets suffering ever sharper, deeper and more harrowing. In other words, Job's anguish, however similar to Abraham's, however reminiscent of Abraham's, cannot be explained by it. The fact that Job's torments had a precedent does not imply that they have a meaning. In this respect, Jewish tradition differs from the Buddhist concept: to insert individual anguish into cosmic anguish does not resolve, but on the contrary, aggravates the problem. Therein lies its universality. Every individual is both beginning and end; that is why he deserves an answer, not a consolation, unless the consolation itself becomes an answer. (pp. 235-236, Wiesel)

In Warsaw Ghetto, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the emotional desert of contemporary consciousness -- 'answer' hides and seeks shelter from ravages of inane bombardment from occupying forces wanting to take control of what is not theirs.

In Wiesel's portrait of Job he writes: I prefer to think that the Book's true ending was lost. That Job died without having repented, without having humiliated himself; that he succumbed to his grief an uncompromising and whole man. It seems rather odd that the Midrash, so prodigal in legends at the beginning of the drama, becomes so sparing in its epilogue; it probably troubled the rabbinical storytellers. The third act of a play is usually a kind of apotheosis; this one is pale, disappointing. The fighter has turned into a lamb. A sad metamorphosis, inexplicable in literary terms. (p.247)

Wiesel wonders if God's true victory lay in forcing Job to welcome happiness -- to agree to go back to living as before.

Do we? Go on living? Doing the next thing asked of us? Not forgetting, no, but carrying on -- even without understanding, acceptance, or surrender? And doesn't that -- temporary solution -- tire soon enough? And do we not, tired and defeated, rise day after day -- as if in celebration of the unknown presence life constantly asks us to engage?

At the end of his struggle, which Job recognized as being lost in advance -- for how can man hope to defeat God? -- Job discovered a novel method to persevere in his resistance: he pretended to abdicate before he even engaged his battle.

Had he remained firm, had he discussed the divine arguments point by point, one would conclude that he had to concede defeat in the face of his interlocutor's rhetorical superiority. But he said yes to God, immediately. He did not hesitate or procrastinate, nor did he point out the slightest contradiction. Therefore we know that in spite or perhaps because of appearances, Job continued to interrogate God. By repenting sins he did not commit, by justifying a sorrow he did not deserve, he communicates to us that he did not believe in his own confessions; they were nothing but decoys. Job personified man's eternal quest for justice and truth -- he did not choose resignation. This he did not suffer in vain; thanks to him, we know that it is given to man to transform divine injustice into human justice and compassion.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a legendary man, a just and generous man who, in his solitude and despair, found the courage to stand up to God. And to force Him to look at His creation. And to speak to those men who sometimes succeed, in spite of Him and of themselves, in achieving triumphs over Him, triumphs that are grave and disquieting.

What remains of Job? A fable? A shadow? Not even the shadow of a shadow. An example, perhaps.
(pp. 248-249, chapter titled, "Job: Our Contemporary," in Messengers Of God,, Biblical Portraits and Legends, by Elie Wiesel, c. 1976)

Are we ever, really, completely defeated by the troubling and sorrowful things occurring in our way?

Is there a partnering answer to this question?

Luke said last night -- "Suicide disturbs, sends shocks and ripples to those left behind."

Wondering if it's a winter shower,
I wake in my bed
And hear them:
The leaves that
Couldn't withstand the storm.
- Saigyo

A young person, recent high school graduate from town, died. The word 'suicide' is spoken. A leaf that couldn't withstand the storm.

...India's spiritual traditions are all in agreement that the human being, though unable to intellectually know Reality in its nakedness, can become it in its different dimensions of totality. (Feuerstein, p.191)

There is a longing to change form. There is a longing to step out of the 'motions' we go through. When 'e-motions' are disturbed, it is a longing to move out of the motions that seem so containing. Whether school, church, family, relationship, or cultural box -- there is a longing to be out of the form, out of the motions.

For each of us suffering the fear of form, the disturbance of motions, there is a deeper longing we feel, a deeper way of supporting each other through these difficulties. Learning liberation, what it is, and how it serves -- is one way to begin. .

Liberation is a simple switch of identity. Prior to liberation -- from the unenlightened perspective -- there is the thought of being a human being. Upon liberation, or enlightenment, this thought ceases. The Self knows itself to be the eternal Self, not a specific individual inhabiting a particular point in space and time. (p.193, in Wholeness or Transcendence? - Ancient Lessons For The Emerging Global Civilization, by Georg Feuerstein, c. 1992)

Our hearts break, hearing of the loss and sorrow, the individual and family.

There is a need to re-learn our wholeness.

We pray the leaf finds itself in the heart of serene seed poising itself to enter new ground supported by whole trees in whole forests wandered through by whole-hearted individuals who see, hear, touch, and delight in the new creation unfolding in our midst. The fact is we are whole -- however felt the brokenness and fractured places we call our self -- we are no-other than the whole.

Suicide is painful. It calls the whole into question. Still, we are all there -- the one who has entered death ahead of us, and we, who now grieve and continue in motion down river until our own flowing out and falling into the Whole.

Our faith is in the liberation, given with grace, to each one fallen.

We long to wake, wake in our beds, to the sounds of water tumbling with joy, to the budding leafy presence of one and all.

What is this?

This is work that is alive,
Effervescent, free, liberated,
Gloriously enlightened,
True, and great.
Do you think it can be attained
By people who shut the door
And sit quietly with blank minds?
- Liu I-Ming

No.

Still, today we sit quietly with blank minds. (Maybe not so.)

Still, today we sit watching mind empty itself into quiet.

This -- this practice of sitting walking sitting, this work remembering what is alive within and surrounding us -- this is our 3rd Saturday Mindfulness Retreat.

At 1st Interreligious Dialogue Friday Evening Conversation, Nancy, Patricia, Saskia, and I read opening words of The Heart of Islam, Enduring values for Humanity, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Imagine, surrendering into God, greeting God, facing God each way we turn!

At Prison Conversation earlier Charlie, Ryan, Saskia, and I read from A Passion for Truth by Abraham Heschel, then laugh and puzzle at the Irish folktale "The Man Who Had No Story."

The joy is conversation. With each other. Alone in silence.

Turning with one another.

Facing God.

Dangerously cold. All life seeks inner shelter.

Jesus told each one not to tell anyone what had happened. Some saw. Some walked. Some were healed of various infirmities.

Why not tell?

Because they didn't understand what had occurred?

John said at the shop at Laura Conversation he was troubled by miracles. The fire was dying and the room getting cold. Temperature was well below zero outside. And the wind.

They didn't understand that the miracle did not come from outside them. Nor did it come from inside them. And they certainly didn't understand who Jesus was as he was with them.

Robert said the real miracle was chocolate icing. Or maybe flour. Saskia suggested the whole cake. Dirk was opting for the course miracles take. Su Sane thought the real miracle might be or not be a miracle.

If you ask into something with prayer, you enter the question. Su Sane said questions and answers traveled in pairs.

There we are. In frozen temperatures inhospitable to human flesh, the matter is settled.

It is not a matter of perspective nor perception. The view itself -- the view is God. All is ordinary, all is miracle.

Awareness of what is seeing itself is question entered, answer lived.

Jesus needed no belief -- not his own, not anyone else's.

True faith is one's own being lived graciously and gratefully. This is thank you, you're welcome, even for the little nephew in Charlotte's story who prayed to catch a fish, didn't, and remembered to say thank you.

It's eleven below zero. Without wind.

Barge towed by tug heads out bay. Tide high. The dredging is done.

Do not remain in the dualistic state;
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace
Of this and that, right and wrong,
The Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One,
Do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
Nothing in the world can offend,
And when a thing can no longer offend,
It ceases to exist in the old way.
- Seng Ts?an (d. 606)

Paul Krugman in Commonwealth Club talk and New York Times column today ("The Awful Truth") wonders, "Are people finally willing to admit the obvious?"

It's coldest tonight, they say, than has been in ten years.

Those who wonder about such things wonder whether what is happening in our country is more dangerous than they can remember.

"Listen, all people, and I shall speak;
I will bear witness against you,
O nations:
As Divine Presence, Eternal Flame of Love,

Shall I not find fault with what
you call holy,
these offerings of greed and war
that are before me always?

Your lies and deceitful ways,
your greed for power and wealth
are spawned by darkness;

Have you forgotten that we are to be
One in Love and Truth,
that all of life is Sacred Gift?

I know every creature, every plant,
every mineral;

I know you -- your every need
and your fears;

The Earth and all that is in it
belongs to the Whole, to be
tended by all in co-operation
with Love.

Shall I accept your proud and
boasting hearts,
the oppression, the injustices
brought about
through your fearful deeds?

Never shall I accept such burnt offerings!

Rather, offer to the Beloved a gift
of thanksgiving
with grateful hearts;

For what other return can you make
for all that Love offers to you?

My friends, search for the still voice
that dwells in the Silence.
(Psalm 50, pp. 97-98, in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, c.1996 by Nan C. Merrill)

What's worth their wonder is the worry something is irreparably changing.

Are we forgetting a grateful heart?

Is it hidden away in the silence?

That all of life is Sacred Gift?

The thought cheers -- to remember grateful heart in silence as sacred gift.

Joanie is pale in muted light of hospital room. She fell down her stairs.

Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,
One path entering the wooded hill:
The monk has gone off, locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

Two Tibetan monks stop in shop for hot chocolate. Dawa bows, leaves Kata over joined hands, prayer flags, and incense. Holly and Charlotte sit by fire with them. These monks, their bare arms not far from bitter cold. "Buddha was wrong," says Wang Chen, laughing as he points showing Karl his bare left arm, "he didn't know Maine cold."

In her hospital room there is a small buildup of ice inside the window. The room is quite warm. She is tired and weary. I say goodnight.

In workroom of bookshop a trickle of water runs inside tank of toilet so that below zero cold will not freeze pipe coming up from shallow travel below parking lot.

At his baptism with John, Jesus felt water trickle down head to shoulders and arms. God was water caressing offspring.

"Listen to him," water said. Just then, right there, water found sound refreshing and gentle, and began to flow on with restored resolve.

Our Savior came to be baptized, so that through the cleansing waters of baptism he might restore the old man to new life, heal our sinful nature, and clothe us with unfailing holiness. (Antiphon, Canticle of Mary, Evening Prayer I, Baptism Of The Lord, in Christian Prayer)

If our nature is sinful, that is, torn and frayed from its original wholeness, old man water was healing, and being healed by, new life revealed in the river.

John's words were heard and hands touched this new life -- many heard and felt the open mind, heart, and heavens -- as water found its way.

Jesus went on from that day.

A lonely trickle of water flows.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9:30am conversation on The Many Faces of Death.

.....

Sea smoke rises from Penobscot Bay.

What if it were true that the very air we look through is the spirit of God? The air we breath?

Would our perspective change?

Acts at random,
In ignorance of
The constant, bode ill.
Knowing the constant
Gives perspective;
This perspective is impartial.
Impartiality is the highest nobility;
The highest nobility is divine,
And the divine is the Way.
This Way is everlasting,
Not endangered by physical death.
- Tao-te Ching

What is constant?
In the question is the answer -- 'What Is!'

Do we look for God in vain because God is what is looking through, God is what is looked through?

The Way is constant. We either enter it and disappear; or we run around it, exhaust ourselves, and fall bitter, defeated, and seemingly wayless.

Seemingly -- because there is only the Way. What falls defeated is the false self whose belief posits itself outside and away from what is alone truth.

What is alone truth is this.

This is where we are -- each and every one of us.

We are each alone truth -- non-separate, intimate, sacred, and ordinary.

Some ask, "Where is God?"

Look around. Look through what is between the one looking and that which is seen. Now, forget who we think is looking and what we think is the object we look at.

In the looking itself, what is seen through, is what is itself seen.

The ego, what we think we are, cannot see God and live.

We live in seeing what God is seeing.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through 9Jan04. We will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9am conversation on death and dying.

.....

Very cold night in Maine.

Right at the moment of dropping off,
Deliberation and discussion
Are one thousand or
Ten thousand miles away.
- Hongzhi (1091-1157)

Snow-making machines at Snow Bowl. Wind rattles rusting chime outside room.

Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.
When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.
Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
(Mark 6: 45-52, New International Version (NIV))

What's there to understand? Bread stretched itself to 5 thousand mouths. Water buoyed itself under human feet. He was alone on land.

It's not that miracles are incomprehensible. It's more that for some reason we believe that everything isn't possible.

Everything is possible.

Machines make snow. Rusting iron ore makes music for the wind. Filament holds fragile fingers together and light glows in that touch.

Soon we'll remember a time when not everyone told the truth. Lies will be preserved in museums, many in presidential libraries, others in bait and tackle backrooms in fishing towns in Atlantic Provinces.

It's just me, Jesus says, lighten up.

Anybody got coffee on the fire?

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through 9Jan04. We will re-open Saturday, 10Jan04 for 9am conversation on death and dying.

.....

Blessings of Epiphany!

Shining through.

After sitting through unheated cabin cold, we chant Lauds. This morning prayer of Epiphany is punctuated by sun coming over clouds, through windows, to where we sit on zabutons, breath visible in every syllable:

Father of light, unchanging God,
today you reveal to men [and women] of faith
the resplendent fact of the Word made flesh.
Your light is strong,
your love is near;
draw us beyond the limits which the world imposes,
to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
(Alternative Prayer, Morning Prayer, Solemnity of Epiphany, in Christian Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours)

It is the 'Alternative Prayer' and it captures something important for us this feast. The words -- draw us beyond the limits which the world imposes,
to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete. -- tell us the emphasis we look for in this new year.

We will begin a new Friday Evening Conversation entitled, Interreligious Dialogue: Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways. The hour-long conversation, along with regular audio-video resource presentations, will focus on Hinduism (and other India-based spiritual belief systems), Judaism, Islam, Far East, Native, Pagan, and various contemplative and meditative forms attempting to express what the heart longs for in open forum.

Caroline's "story stick" leans against a cabin wall. On it are inscribed symbols of the various world religions. It resides in the chapel/zendo to remind how varied, diverse, and pluralistic is the thinking and prayer of humankind.

If we are ever to embody the kindness and peace longed for in our world, we'll have to learn how to unveil and practice peace between ways of seeing and living life.

A joyfulness comes with sunlight across cabin floor. Joy accompanies this inchoate, and now newly worded, theme of Meetingbrook.

Parents, angels, shepherds, wise men and women, kings, and the rest of us -- all -- are in the presence of 'the resplendent fact of the Word made flesh.'

Epiphany, appearance and recognition, is crucial for heart-peace and world-peace.

Draw us, indeed, beyond the limits which this world imposes, to the life where your [and our] Spirit makes all life complete!

This is the bond between us -- to move through this Word and world -- finding all life whole.

Then going home an alternative way.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04. (Will inform if closed additional days.)
.....

Tibetan prayer flags wave on cabin porch.

Snow besieges my plank door
I crowd the stove at night.
Although this form exists
It seems as if it doesn’t.
I have no idea where the
Months have gone
Every time I turn around
Another year on earth is over.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)

Mu-ge, Sando, and Cesco snooze in kitchen.

When we walk the earth, each step is prayer. When wind crosses Sally's to Sue's, prayer floats the distance. When seated in silence, prayer settles into form of stillness.

Prayer is holiness longing for itself -- no exceptions.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04.

.....

Greydusk.

Not much to offer you,
Just a lotus flower floating
In a small jar of water.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Lectio and conversation with David, Pam, Sean, and Quinn after walking across pond following long dawn sit in cabin. Peripatetic inquiry into nature of archetypes of 'father' and 'mother.'

Ice and wet snow under drizzle and returning footsteps.

"Let's live here," says last line in Karl's favorite movie.

Holiness burrows beneath knowledge and emotion, travels beyond repetition and misalliance.

Tea finished, cup washed, wood platform for Mary candle next.

Longing commences.

Note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery will be closed a few days, Friday 2Jan04 through Epiphany, 6Jan04. We will re-open Wednesday, 7Jan04.

Before dawn, 4:55am.

"Open" flag creaks at corner of cabin.

No apple tree in Sally's small field.

The sun rises; the sun sets.
Watch it and see.
River and moon
Pine trees and wind,
All old poems to me.
Who needs words for the New Year!
- Tao Kai (1065-1123)

Bowing on length of rug after sitting. Solitary candle lets go flame to wisp smoke.

Apple tree arrives on Sally's land, yes, now silhouette in dawn light behind Hosmer Pond's Melvin Heights.

Nothing doing. Hear, hear. Here, here. There, there. Happy Nooo Year!

Mary's solemnity -- God has a mother.

Jesus' holy name -- Christ sacred everywhere present.

Touch what is loving -- we each are meant to be the loving touch of "What Is"!

This dream called 2004!

Marying what is, we are mothering all of creation, the inexplicable wholeness of God within which each one of us is a perspective.

Is this what is dawning?

It is final day of year.

While we still have half a mind we continue to climb the road.

I enjoy my lifelong path
Between misty vines and rocky cave
In the wilds there's room to spare
And time to accompany clouds
The road doesn't reach the world
Only the mindless can climb
I sit alone nights on a couch of stone
And the round moon comes up
Cold Mountain
- Han Shan

While we still have firewood we light match and consider the paper thoughts holding our plans

Like Smoke From Our Campfire

All those plans for fame and fortune, honor and glory,
where are they now?
Drifted away like smoke from our campfire, dissipated
into the thin, night air,
the fire deserted and gone down to a few ashy coals,
almost out.
And all of those who sat around the fire: gone away too
into oblivion.

While we still have feet we walk Rockport harbor.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.
Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.
Drunk on music,
who needs wine?
Come on,
Sweetheart,
let's go dancing
while we've
still got feet.
(Poems: "Like Smoke From Our Campfire" and "Tomorrow," by David Budbill. Writer's Almanac®with Garrison Keillor.)

While we still see before us an alternate way we continue to dream.

Then Herod called the magi secretly and
ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance. He sent them to
Bethlehem and said, "Go and search diligently for the child. When you
have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage."
After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star
that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped
over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the
star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their
treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And
having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for
their country by another way. (Matthew2: 9-12)

Nothing ends, not really. And nothing begins, not so to speak. What really happens is we call to each other in a land of fog and mist listening for the sound of a familiar voice.

Sometimes we hear a voice -- faintly recognizable, barely audible, vaguely familiar. Listening closer and more carefully in this foreign land where once we dwelt in childlike openness, the voice seems to both fade further away and nestle more intimately close at same time.

All movement stops. There is only watchful gaze listening in deepening silence for what seems no longer there.

Fog thickens. Mist dampens. All sound disappears.

What is listening there, alone, and profoundly in love?

What is!
Listening there.
Alone.
And...
Profoundly in love.

Let's go!

Vespers of Thomas Becket this evening.

What annoys most is someone getting away with doing wrong, especially when it is not us.

History allows public apology, change of mind, and semblance of penance to cover what, in the first instance, is blatant and willful wrongdoing.

In poet T.S. Eliot's play about Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (1118-1170), a line is recited by the chorus: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." (T.S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral).

Becket was murdered 29Dec1170 by emissaries of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral as Vespers was taking place.

On Sunday 21May1172, Henry performed a ceremony of public penance at Avranches cathedral.

He was the king. He got away, they say, with murder.

Another king, Herod, had young boys murdered in Judea. He was attempting to forestall and pre-empt the possibility of a threat to his rule.

Murder and mayhem are tools used by the powerful to cement their power by eliminating whatever is perceived to be in the way of preserving that power.

There are those who feel perversion of power is the only way power can be held on to.
The alternative point of view is that genuine power goes its own way, continually relinquished by renunciate individuals who understand that kingdom, power, and glory belong elsewhere than in the hands of anyone grabbing at and grasping on to it.

Innocence is unknowing.

Ignorance is something else -- more like knowing and ignoring what is known. Repentance is more easily believed when innocence is realized, "I didn't know what I was doing."

Something more cynical occurs when ignorance uses cunning to achieve its objective, then demurs with false theatricality, "I didn't know the gun was loaded -- even after the first dozen shots I fired."

We have history to instruct us.

For the lot of us unfamiliar with the lessons of history, there is prayer:
Oh Good Jesus, for the sake of Thomas forgive us our trespasses, be present in our house, our gate and at his shrine and keep us safe from fell death. Restore to us our customary piety and keep us from straying in mind and body. ( -- Responsory XII From the Office of Matins for St Thomas' Day, Sarum Rite)

Still, it is annoying to watch kings and other incipient wrong-doing leaders get away with murder.

'Fell death' drips poisonous from untruth spoken ignorantly. Such lies stray from safe and sane life in God.

Let us pray for innocence, and reluctance to stray in mind and body!

Stay with us, Thomas, Vespers is finished, and night is upon us!

Mind what you are doing.

The preacher on television says, "Holiness is having the same mind as God; being of one mind with God."

The waistband on two pair of boxer shorts bought at Reny's is printed round with "Change Daily, Change Daily, Change Daily." The sticker taken from them says further, "If in doubt, Change Daily."

Time for a walk in the world outside
And a look at who I am
Originally I had no cares
And I am seeking nothing special
Even for my guests I have nothing
To offer except these white stones
And this clear spring water.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

If we think God’s mind is fixed and final, unchanging and static -- we need to go shopping for underwear. God's mind -- (with apologies for speculating in public) -- is not a thing that is found as exclusive property in text or tribunal claiming, as might a law firm, to be sole guardian of God's rights.

God's mind is in stones and spring water, orange rising sun and white ground snow. There, as well as in the faces of Jay, John, Harold, Martin-&-Judith, Susan, Carter-&-Lola, Joanie, Bill, Sylvia, Jeff, Sam-&-Susan, Karl-&-Pop, Max and William and Dad, and those who walked through shop yesterday whose names I did not hear.

Harold said it as we looked for Micmac book of prayers and chants -- that Spirit is beyond smaller than quark, and has no valence. Thus, immeasurable, and present everywhere. Of itself, non-separate, indecipherable.

With his eyes on mine he quietly described Native American mind on Spirit. As he did the thought occurs -- Spirit is completely within itself -- with no outside. Harold nodded. He smiled when someone behind him said they couldn’t hear him with his low and quiet way of speaking, and quoted a Medicine man who told him to speak only to the one before you, only as loud for them to hear, for only the duration of saying what you are saying.

If a Zen practitioner were standing there she might say that God's mind is no mind -- that everything is finger pointing to the moon. Most commentators make the distinction that the finger is not the moon. But yesterday's Zen smile might have spoken alongside Harold saying that the intent of the person, the finger, and the moon are not three things -- they are the joy of learning, each alongside each in complimentarity. The mind of God is the intent, the finger, and the moon. It is also the ground the pointer and pointee share, as well as the teller of the story and the hearer in relational moment of co-presence.

Martin played his new flute for me. Sylvia read about enchantment and asked where my Irish connection with myth, fantasy, and folklore resided. She made me remember times teaching and studying. The fire lowered, night cooled, upstairs guests gone, day at bookshop/bakery waning. Saskia and Sando were on the road returning home.

The preacher is right. Holiness is having the same mind as God. All day long God shared mind -- from every element (however infinitesimally sub-microscopic) to every face (however shaped and formed by thought, history, and feeling). Being of one mind with God is not difficult/not easy. It is neither of the two. It is one with each.

One mind with God merely is. This mind sees the holy family we are.

Gray squirrel climbs to windowsill. Neighbor's dog barks.

The world is still -- in our seeing, in the mind of the sacred infant and holy old one born and passing each day -- here with us.

No cares. Nothing special. Change daily.

God with us.

Is?