To unsay oneself.

To allow the breeze to be the voice that flows through you. To be unpronouncing. To unanounce yourself.

In prison yesterday, Wendell spoke of passive awareness. Charlie, Craig, Jared, Joe, Ryan, Saskia and I listened.

French poet, Simone Weil (1909-1943) wrote, "Love is abdication. God is abdication". Abdication is the formal relinquishment of one's claims, rights, responsibilities and power.

Talk included Robert Nozick, Krishnamurti, John O'Donohue, Eckhart Tolle, Francis Thompson, and the Zen Master's dry shit on stick.

The truth is, had God not abdicated, there would be no hope for creation, if in fact there would have been a creation at all. None. Zero. There would have been no incarnation, no crucifixion and no resurrection. And there would be no new creation. There would only be hopelessness and despair in everything we do and say everywhere we turn. The cries of Ecclesiastes would be our cries. "Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaning- less" (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV). Life would be filled with nothing but unrelenting emptiness, sorrow and woe. There would be no Romans 8:28. There would be no redemption. Praise God this is not the way is is.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified" (Romans 8:28-30 NIV).

It was for but a moment in time, but can we even begin to take hold of the gravity of God's abdication? Can we comprehend the astonishment of the angels at such a sacrifice? We can only humble ourselves and accept it by faith. Clearly, the abdication of God was an act of purest selflessness and, as it can only be with God, abdication demonstrates for us what brokenness looks like. We can only begin to take it in by the grace of God. And O the wonder of it all.
(from "The Brokenness of God, A Biblical Look at the Humility and Brokenness of God," by Anne Murchison, http://www.annemurchison.com/brokennessofgod.htm)

The words 'this' and 'here' and 'now' riveted attention. Even with, as Craig said, the life so many men lived in the prison. He was saddened by the plight of his brothers.

We remembered Thompson's words:
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
(from poem "The Hound of Heaven", by Francis Thompson, 1859 - 1907)

So we go.

On.

Being said.

Jesus on Tabor studied Zen. On Golgotha he studied Zen.

In Hiroshima 59 years ago today, at 8:15am, one of the darkest days in world history, the world's first A-bomb attack took place. The bomb, dropped by a U.S. plane on August 6, 1945, caused the deaths of an estimated 80,000 people. Eighty thousand died right away; perhaps as many died from radiation or injuries. President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device contained 20,000 tons of TNT and was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date. (from bbc.co.uk)

At that hour of 8:15am many Japanese people beginning their day studied Zen.

When your original reason
For studying Zen is not right,
You wind up having labored
Without accomplishment.
This is why ancients used
To urge people to study Zen
As if they were on the brink of death.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

When Jesus was seen through at his Transfiguration, no one could figure what it meant.

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said. As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.
Luke 9:28 - 36

Of course they were afraid as they entered the cloud.

Listen! And keep silence.

If someone could tell what was seen at the Transfiguration, if someone could tell what was seen at Hiroshima, they would surely be deemed crazy.

Who can be seen through? Who can see through the actions and events of men and history and retain sanity, hope, or compassion?

Today is that day.

Becoming transparent.

We pray with, in, and through each one and all of us.

Eternal life is now.

It is no-time -- like the present.

Meanwhile, the priest takes the host and breaks it over the paten. He places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly:
"May this mingling of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it."
(Breaking of the Bread, Communion Rite, Catholic Mass, Weekday Missal)

Bring now to us. That's what we pray.

Is 'now' the body of Christ?

Receive it!

Breathe.

Each and all of us.

It is not merely a matter of having a personal relationship with Jesus. Isn't it a matter of personifying Christ as well? Or, embodying enroute?

Is the divine energy of the Original Logos the very impulse that enlivens each and all of us toward realizing the true direction of our lives?

Jesus wondered aloud why God had not appeared to prevent his death, asking: "Why have you forsaken me?"

Night sitting
The hermit doesn’t sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

There is no "me" in divinity. Divinity constitutes all of us. The kindness of God is allowing the dissolution of any idea, belief, or behavior which makes an "other" of each and all of us.

God is not to be seen face-to-face nor possessed as one might a person or a favored thing. God resides in the intimacy, engagement, and transparent compassion each extends to each and all of us long for in our lives.

No one was forsaken.

Separateness dissolved.

Christ arose in the wholeness.

Some bread? Wine? One another?

Converse. This is how what is lost is found.

Exhale. Inhale.

Soon, distinctions disappear.

By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
(Prayer during preparation of the altar and the gifts)

Water in wine, one in the other, is symbol enough to throw us into the reality.

We touch one another, wish Peace of Christ, suspecting, pretending, actually enacting what we really are.

Walking forward. Small bow. Open hands. Host. Tilting cup. Sip.

Returning consecrated.

Sitting still.

Sitting.

Still.

Would moving to Cape Breton Island be same or different?

(It's a trick question. "Same" or "different," say Zen folk, exist only in the mind.) Moving to Cape Breton Island, to follow that way of seeing, would only be moving to Cape Breton Island. No more. No less. Just that.

Everything feels not quite "just that."

There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
There’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that
Simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

Still, we'd like to think everything is what it is, no matter what story we tell about it.

People may not know, for instance, that the Morning Star is the Evening Star and so their beliefs about and their reactions to what is in fact one and the same planet can be quite different according to the description under which it is considered.
(p.202, entry "Leibnitz Law" in A Dictionary of Philosophy, by Antony Flew, c.1979)

There are times it is painful to hear one more explanation, warning, narrative description, or apologia for things as they take place in the world. It is a curious time when even dire alerts about possible terrorist attacks are based on planning information begun four years ago, only recently discovered, and released at this time. It is all beyond understanding.

Leibnitz law is the principle that if one thing is identical with another then anything that is true of the one must also be true of the other.

The political parties, Democrat and Republican, seem identical. The names Bush and Kerry have become targets of abusive and negative statements. People seem to actually believe that by trashing one of them the other comes out smelling of roses. That's not the law.

In Contrast to Spinoza's view that there is only one substance, Leibnitz declares that there is an infinity of substances, created and maintained in existence by God. The world that these substances compose is the best possible, created by God precisely because it is the best possible world. Each substance is simple, that is without parts, and for this reason Leibnitz calls it a 'monad', a term that means 'unit' or 'unity'. A substance is also immaterial, and therefore may be called a soul.
(p.199, "Leibnitz", ibid)

The words 'unity' and 'soul' seem anachronisms in the fierce rhetoric of denunciation and denigration.

Some consider the upcoming election a bellwether. The man whose bell leads the sheep of the flock come election results that first Tuesday in November will poise us at open grazing field or precipice tumbling drop.

An alarming sentiment grows -- it augurs an end of trust in the electoral process. We enter an age of blasts and bombast. Decisions by fiat and proclamation will replace, some say, plebiscite and popular choice. Those who know best will decide what is right for this country. And those who know best trust in power and explosives, hostile aggression and preemptive retaliation for possible future hostilities. Sucker-punches and blind-side hits are the new ungentlemanly and indecorous strategies replacing conflict resolution and negotiation.

A mild, tranquil place?

To get that simple...

Which field?

What bell?

Forget my pain, cause your pain.

Banks, financial center, lower Manhattan, will be hit. So say government spokesmen for terrorist warnings. They have specific and credible information that an attack is immanent. The director of homeland security also says even if a building or two are lost they will never disrupt the business of finance and economic strength the United States represents.

So, there. Sticks and stones may shatter our bones but wealth, our ground, will always charm us.

No one wants a terrorist attack. No one wanted the Spanish Inquisition. Attacks and inquisitions happen because whoever “no one” is, they get what they want.

Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Complete in itself?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Immutable?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature can create all things?
- Altar Sutra

I’ve begun to suspect that calling upon “God” is an act intending to defeat Self nature. When the republican or democratic politicians say “God bless you, and God bless America” they continually hypnotize listeners into a subtle state of misidentification, a sort of schizoid distance from their own Self nature. I don’t think they suspect they are divisive and disuniting – they think it's a time-proven strategy for getting them something they do not want the other to have. That might be power, wealth, or position – but the dynamic is the same: negate the other, become the one. So they think.

When they become ‘the one” or “number one” or “the only one” – there is a curious shift that occurs. As the “one” they become the “other.” “One” has to say “no” to every contender to their position, power, or wealth. They become their opposite. Their “no” attaches them to “the other.” It might be thus that for those claiming to be “the one,” God is made “the other.”

Is the opposite of “one” -- “the other?” Is the negation of “one”-- “two?”

The opposite of “one” is “no one.”

The curious shift that occurs is “one” cuts off “two,” “many” and “all of us,” by taking claim to “the one” and ignoring whatever is not “one” with them.

Disagreement goes, as does dissent. Others who do not fall into the camp of the one are believed to deserve the poverty or disempowerment occurring in their lives. Their lack of living wage, medical benefits, social assistance, or any real say in the choice, participation in matters of governance, and stance toward the rest of the world is dismissed and disinvited.

The ugliness of terrorism and the ugliness of ruthless response by war – both done in the name of causing pain to the other – is the remarkable insensitivity and unawareness on both parts for the pain each carries within.

The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain – that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world – the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.
(p.72 in The Inner Voice of Love, A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, c.1996)

When the man in prison said, “Spirituality is how we carry ourselves,” he spoke well. We shred spirituality by implying God will assist in any plot to terrorize or decimate any people.

Owning our own pain is not blaming or punishing anyone else for it.

Philosopher John Caputo, in the introduction to his book, said,
We have it from Aristotle himself that life is hard. There are many ways to miss the mark of virtue, he said, but only one way to hit it, and so the former is easy but the latter is difficult (Nic. Ethics 1106 b 28ff.).
(Opening line in Introduction, “Restoring Life to Its Original Difficulty,” in Radical Hermeneutics, Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, by John D. Caputo, c.1987)

Buddha made it the first noble truth – There is suffering in life.

Jesus embodied it so as not to deny it, but to transform it.

And we – what do we do with the original difficulty of life?

(Off in distance, thunder. It travels closer. Dogs and cat make their way back into the house.)

Let’s come home.

Dwell true.

All of us.

We are a country in the middle of a war.

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions." Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God."
(Luke 12:13-21)

Yes, there's a war in Iraq.

Bullets, bombs, and billions.

An inmate in Maine State Prison said on Friday that spirituality is how we carry ourselves.

What matters to God?

Carry this question!

In prison in the morning we'll talk about spirituality
 
If everyone is already enlightened, teachers show up when anyone shows up. However unknowing we might be, the light resides at center.

If everyone has that of Christ-reality within them, incarnations of that reality find themselves revealed when invited or prompted by circumstance or attentive being.
 
From the passions arise worry,
And from worry arises fear.
Away with the passions, and no fear,
No worry.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Brennan Manning in his book A Glimpse of Jesus : The Stranger to Self-Hatred says something close to the following: Jesus was not compassionate because he was the Christ; he was the Christ because he was compassionate.

We'll speak about spirituality because spirituality is about finding a way to compassion through all the diversions and dispersions leading to something other than compassion.

Prison might seem like a difficult place to embody compassion.

No fear. No worry. Will we ever see their absence?

We'll see it. Any day now.

We will.

See. 

In cabin chapel/zendo statue of Francis moves from corner to under loft ladder.

There's something agnostic about July.

In corner where Francis was, small wood box with anchor carving on top.

I tell someone it is a tabernacle.

It holds nothing.

Home of God.

Sitting.

Within.

No thing.

Political convention begins.

Jimmy Carter spoke tonight in Boston at the Democratic gathering. He said: Ultimately, the issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and integrity of the American people or whether extremist doctrines and the manipulation of truth will define America's role in the world.
 
He's 80 years old, been president of the US, won a Nobel Prize, built houses for the poor, and monitored elections worldwide. Jimmy Carter thinks that in this upcoming election, "At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul."
 
I’ve finished the pavillion
On the pond’s west bank
Cleared out the trees
Across to the east
And this
No one understands
But I just wanted a place
To wait on the moon.
- Po Chu-I (772–846)

Hillary Clinton introduces her husband Bill Clinton who rouses the crowd. It's been a long slog from a ruptured vote in November 2000 to this official beginning to restore voter will in November 2004.

Neither too far to the right nor too far to the left, Americans will have a new chance to decide where the middle resides.

In an article published on Monday, July 26, 2004, Steven Laffoley from Nova Scotia, writes "Dissent is Now Dangerous" on CommonDreams.org about conversations he had in Maine. He says, In the local newspaper, buried on page twelve, I read that the Bush administration is test flying the conditions necessary for postponing the November election. A terrorist attack? A hurricane? An earthquake, perhaps?
I find myself wondering: is the "dissent" of pastors, landscapers, and filmmakers enough?
It is then that I realize: I am scared. After all, in America, dissent is now dangerous.

It is an odd thought that in America dissent is now dangerous.

To make now safe again.

We need an election.

A change.

The experiment of Meetingbrook is the intuition that enlightened ordinary individuals serve as unknowing teachers to us.

They don't know who they are. Nor do we try to determine who is or is not teacher. Meetingbrook holds as true that each person, each being, and each situation is itself a teaching.

Those who are following the Way should behave like a piece of timber which is drifting along a stream. If the log is neither held by the banks, nor seized by people, nor obstructed by gods, nor kept in the whirlpool, nor itself goes to decay, I assure you that this log will finally reach the ocean. If monks walking on the Way are neither tempted by the passions, nor led astray by some evil influences, but steadily pursue their course for Nirvana, I assure you that these monks will finally attain enlightenment.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

We're grateful there are beloved Zen Masters with devoted followers who call themselves students of the master.

We're ever further grateful there are so many ordinary non-masters who devote themselves unknowingly to be teacher and guiding examples of learning needing to be integrated within one's being.

Not to choose specific teachers, but to attend alertly to each person/being/situation is to exercise no-choice in the practice of mindful presence.

Compassion and humility are harmonious sounds in this practice.

Listening reveals dissonance and obedience encourages clear resonance as response to what is heard.

We assume enlightenment -- everyone's.

We practice to pass through.

To remember.

One's sound. 

Together.

Practice helps us pass through. The word ‘practice’ comes from Greek, praktikos, passein to pass over, fare, do; akin to Gk peran to pass through – more at FARE. (Webster’s Seventh)
 
Prepositions and pronouns. That’s what we talk about Tuesday evening after conversation. We read Finding Freedom, Writings from Death Row, by Jarvis Jay Masters. Do we pray to, with, in, for, or as God? Do we use you, he, she, it, I, they, or us when referring to God?
 
Some do not believe anything about God. Belief, they say, disperses direct experience.
 
“Beliefs about anything limit our experience and cause us not to be able to perceive what’s in front of our eyes and nose.” (Pema Chodron, on tape Pure Meditation)
 
That which we call the world is the result of a host of errors and fantasies which have gradually arisen In the course of the total evolution of organic nature, have become entwined with one another and are inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past – as a treasure: for the value of our humanity depends on it. Rigorous science is in fact able to detach us from this ideational world only to a slight extent… but it can gradually and step by step illuminate the history of how this world as idea arose…
(Epigraph by Nietzsche, in Joan of Arc, The Image of Female Heroism, by Marina Warner, c.1999)
 
The idea emerges and takes root that only those who currently are in power deserve to be and remain in power. The belief grows that to criticize those in power is unpatriotic and hateful – even if the criticism is accurate, factual, and true. A great number of Americans actually believe the distorting rhetoric and misleading behavior on the part of the ruling administration has been good for the country and is excusable because the leaders are in power.

The story goes like this: our enemies hate us because we love freedom; some Americans criticize freedom-loving leaders who will do almost anything to defeat and eliminate our enemies; therefore, critics are enemies who hate freedom and hate their own country.
 
A story lives in relation to its tellers and its receivers; it continues because people want to hear it again, and it changes according to their tastes and needs. (Prologue, Warner)
 
We are asked to believe that there is only one truth – namely, that whatever we are told is the truth.
 
Mr. Joachim, who has considered very carefully the whole question of error, comes to the conclusion – which seems the only possible one for a monistic theory of truth – that the essential characteristic of error is the claim to express truth unqualified (p.143). He says: The erring subject’s confident belief in the truth of his knowledge distinctively characterizes error, and converts a partial apprehension of the truth into falsity’ (p.162).
(p.135, “The Monistic Theory of Truth” in Bertrand Russell’s Philosophical Essays, c. 1966) referring to book The Nature of Truth (c.1966) by Harold H. Joachim)
 
We need to deepen our practice. Our practice is to pass through the barriers and boundaries thrown up around us, distortions of truth that cloud perception and inhibit authentic inquiry. We are in danger from those claiming to “express truth unqualified.” Arrogance, lack of humility, and smug exclusionary certitude are clues to detect the danger.

Spirituality involves the practice of no barriers and prayer of no boundaries. This practice must stretch through theological and political aspects of life. Spiritual practice threads the disparate into a wholesome unity allowing what is true to pass through.

When pulled together
And bound, there stands
A hut well thatched:
But take it apart,
And we have the wilderness eternal.
- Anon

We need a new civil compact and social contract, one where we include everyone in a network of care and response. The tune we hear from the current breed of believers in the might and rights of the few is startlingly painful to the ear.

The World Is Too Much with Us
 
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.---Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.
(poem by William Wordsworth)
 
To get through this, to pass through a dark time, takes practice.
 
What is practice?
 
Love this question.
 
See it through.

What if middle way and middle trinity shared a secret?
 
Michael is concerned seven Carrier Strike Force Groups will be on maneuvers off the coast of China. Jean talks of 'walk-ins' to the planet the way one might walk-in to a hair dresser. Pia points out a blockage in throat of someone not acting on his intuition. The other Michael remembers when he did well as a healer. Dick has fleeting passing doubt about a Fox News Irish guy who might not be fair and balanced. Buzz holds an undistributed belief that to act is better than to think. Joanie says she didn't have a date on Sunday. Lola brought her dog in the car to meet Saskia who was off in her rowboat. Sylvia had lunch with someone who spoke to her mood. Jory liked Adyashanti's poem about "Here." Nancy is wondering about narrative and naming. Lloyd decides to leave early Saturday afternoon when there are too many unspecific words being read. Kristin performs her one woman show in Belfast. Sam plays harmonica. Susan wears swap shop hat. Betty sits a spell.   
 
Charlie is confident when he sings:
Man, they said we'd better
Accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative,
Latch on to the affirmative,
Don't mess with Mr. Inbetween.
No, don't mess with Mr. Inbetween!
(Transcribed from vocals by lyricist Johnny Mercer with Paul Weston and His Orchestra, recorded December, 1944)
 
I'm not that confident. I think we've lost sight of the between. From Buddha's middle way as silent truth to Jesus' middle say as loving word, from Aristotle's in medio stat virtus to Tolkien's Middle-earth, and to the piquancy of the Middle-East in our minds today -- we are invited to a new centrist philosophy that dwells in-between and acknowledges filiation and sorority with adjacent edges of everything.
 
We are in the middle of it all.
 
You are in our midst, O God.
 
The poet says his secret is silence.
 
Say nothing more.

Suddenly sun after night of rain. Brook tumbles Ragged as dogs drink and immerse up from crossing footbridge on morning mountain circle.
 
The Sun
 
 Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
 
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
 
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again
 
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
 
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
 
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
 
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
 
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
(poem by Mary Oliver )
 
We walk with a question. Is Ganz Anderer, (German for ‘wholly other’), of a piece with ‘no other?’ I’d been reading John Caputo’s Against Ethics. He writes about Abraham’s “Me voici.” He is making the point that in the French the ‘Me’ is the accusative case, the object of speech, addressed by an ‘other.’
 
The dogs don’t have this question. Cesco doesn’t even seem interested in responding to being addressed by my voice saying, ‘Cesco, come here!’ when he trots away to another dog or follows a car to the other end of the Snow Bowl parking lot from which a tan dog named Admiral emerges to a wagging tail. 
  
Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening
to him speak.  Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
"Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the
serving?  Tell her to help me."  The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha,
Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.  There is need of
only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken
from her."
(Luke 10:38-42)
 
Can we be serving and listening and yet maintain there is no object, no other being served or listened to? Martha and Mary perform this theatrical piece with the one many have come to call the Christ. “Tell her to help me,” says Martha to Jesus. Mary says nothing.
 
In the shop today Chicken is cooked on the grill, salad plucked, podded peas shelled, strawberries sliced, goat cheese crumbled, and lettuce torn into wooden bowl. Cesco lays near where Buzz sat. Sando burrows in dirt under deck. Joanie sits quietly by fireplace. Therese calls from shop out front about remaining pickings. Earlier Alease calls from Maryland and we catch up the years. An artist from Rockland comes by and goes back with his sketch/paintings.
 
If there is only here, if there’s no time like or but the present, then the question about wholly other or no other  falls between the asking and the response. It is the ‘between’ that holds everything together.
 
What is between Martha and Mary? What is between serving and listening? What is between any of us?
 
Jesus’ answer is a trick answer. He tells Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." The trick is in the wording comes down to us in translation.
 
Jesus says, “It will not be” – is what is “taken from her.” Mary does not have “it will not be.” She does have what is, the part that will not be.
 
There’s something imbedded here that neither the dogs nor I comprehend as the afternoon lengthens. Saskia returns from her row out to sailboat in Rockport to secure lines for the blow someone says will come tonight.
 
Do not let anything come between you and what you consider not-you. Let nothing, what "will not be," rest between each and everything. The “better part” that Jesus refers to is listening/serving, each in each, wholly other/no other, as it is, on earth/in heaven.
 
Wholly no/wholly yes.
 
Otherless child.
 
Sometimes we feel.
 
So.  

To unknow is to allow the intelligence of the situation to reveal itself.
 
THE GOOD MAN HAS NO SHAPE
 
Through centuries he lived in poverty.
God only was his only elegance.
 
Then generation by generation he grew
Stronger and freer, a little better off.
 
He lived each life because, if it was bad,
He said a good life would be possible.
 
At last the good life came, good sleep, bright fruit,
And Lazarus betrayed him to the rest,
 
Who killed him, sticking feathers in his flesh
To mock him. They placed with him in his grave
 
Sour wine to warm him, an empty book to read;
And over it they set a jagged sign,
 
Epitaphium to his death, which read,
The Good Man Has No Shape, as if they knew.
(Poem by Wallace Stevens)

They might not know. But they are correct -- the good man has no shape.
 
Shape is not brought by the good person. Shape is given by what is found wherever that person is.
 
There are far too many words about things we know nothing about. All day long chatter and narration, commentary and senseless prattle.
 
Here too.
 
If there is a God, wordlessly that God dwells.
If there is a Christ, the body of Christ's incarnation belongs to you.
If a Holy Spirit has anything to do with this world, it is an allowing reality full of forgiving for the unallowed.
 
Form is not only emptiness, but emptiness is the unshapable loveliness of silence allowing itself our inspiration to sound through it.
 
Even when nothing is heard.
 
We are being spoken.
 
As we are.
 
Known.  

Two mornings two young skunks in Havahart moved up Barnestown Road to Bald Mountain side of road. Third day empty. But the ritual drive is made anyway. 
  
We never know what is trapped under blanket cover until door is open to set it free.
 
Look up to heaven and down on earth, and they will remind you of their impermanency. Look about the world, and it will remind you of its impermanency. But when you gain spiritual enlightenment, you shall then find wisdom. The knowledge thus attained leads you to the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
 
Separating young ones from mother is not a happy task. Sunday night the conversation was about mother and mothers. Someone suggested to give up the role of mother is what is meant be the sentence, "Mother-love is the only love that loves toward separation."
 
When role is abandoned, person sounds through. We become part of the unfolding reality, parenting (from L. parere=to give birth to) that person or that reality by participating in its appearance or life.
 
At Friday Evening Conversation talk of the need to step out of the game of dualistic stories, of good and evil, right and wrong, the mind games and brain washing of greed and power. There was passion and intelligence in the ad hoc topic of cultural change and the fomenting fear insinuating the country.
 
To stand mind-naked and humbly unknowing, allowing each the unfolding reality of their being, with loving attention, and no agenda.
 
Compassion.
 
For skunks.
 
Alike.
 

"Watch and pray," the saying goes.
 
I think the correct saying is -- "Watching is prayer."
 
Cloudy mountains, fold on fold,
How many thousands of them?
Shady valley road runs deep,
All traces of people gone
Green torrents, pure clear flow,
No place more full of beauty;
Birds sing my own heart’s harmony.
- Shih-Te (c. 730)
 
By looking, or watching, we allow what is unfolding the reverence of attention.
 
Just as the phrase "custody of the eyes" suggests we allow what is there to be seen in its own integrity -- not imposing and not detracting -- we learn to pray by seeing what is there in full alertness.
 
What is there -- full of beauty.
 
Of truth.
 
In itself.

The man from Georgia says that AIDS is God’s punishment on homosexuals. The question on C-Span is whether abstinence or condoms is the best method of preventing AIDS. Each of the three succeeding callers says they cannot believe each preceding call. The moderator smiles.

If you want to learn the Principles,
Don’t study fine bound books.
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts.
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih Te (c 730)

On the floor of the Senate, Frank Lautenberg, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, is saying he is seeking a special prosecutor to investigate Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney and the no-bid 2.5 billion contract awarded for services in Iraq. Was Cheney involved in awarding the contract? Sen. Lautenberg says he was, and that an investigation is needed on this as well as the 160 million overcharge, or profiteering, on the part of Halliburton

The day starts hot. Cesco and Sando return with Saskia from walk to Snow Bowl. The two dogs snooze flat on floor.

I am the escaped one

I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.
(Fernando Pessoa)

The poet does not want to be found. Time was when “soul” flourished desired and revered as essence of a human being’s life. Here the poet, as the escaped one, hopes his soul never finds him. What spiritual stance is this?

[840]
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book,
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
(Fernando Pessoa, from 35 SONNETS, 1918)

Dreams come and go. Fact stays. The dream of a country. The dream for one’s life. The dream of how our lives conform with the theological dream of the life of God.

What fact stays? All of them. A “fact,” (from L. ‘facere’ ‘factus’ = to do, to be done), is a thing done, something that has actual existence.

Whether government or schools of theology – it is not what is dreamt of that matters, it is what is that matters. Facts have a way of staying around long after dreams have wandered off.

“We are ever unapparent,” says Pessoa in his sonnet.

We have escaped our soul.
We look everywhere in desperation.
What fact locates?

What are we, what are you, what am I –- doing?

Look.

Lost?

Mind is maddened by greed.

Greed appropriates the communal. It privatizes to the personal what belongs to no one. What maddens the mind is the belief, and therefore the urge to act on this belief, that land, things, ideas, people, and God can be owned. A more absurd notion, from a spiritual perspective, is hard to find.

There is anther view, namely, that each piece of earth, each thing, each idea, each person, and certainly what-is-called-God belongs completely, and only, to itself.

And yet, the most maddening history of humankind, whether secular or religious, is predicated on wanting for one's own what can only belong to itself. We want power, land, cause of riches, and sole rights to each. We name this want with conventional names -- from materialism to infallibility, from private property to dogma, from capitalism to fatwa, from democracy to tyranny. Whatever name we give it, the message is similar --"This is mine; You owe me."

Is there a way out of the vault of privatized belief? Is the "Way" -- in either Eastern or Western tradition -- something saner for us?

Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way. It is like stirring up clear water with your hands; you may come wishing to find a reflection of your face, but you'll never see clearly in disturbed waters. A mind troubled and vexed with the passions is never able to see the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

We have nearly ceased to listen. We do not listen to each other -- not beyond the surface words to the inner cry. Our capacity to enter the silent plea for recognition transmuted by each being is dulled by dismissive flip belief there is not much there to warrent our attention. This is how we erase God. This is how we yuck it up, hail fellows well met, and place our heads on pillows at night falling asleep to restless dreams reminding us we are missing something very important, waking in the morning to a world securely conforming to our marketable beliefs.

Moses said to the people: "If only you would heed the voice of the LORD,
your God, and keep his commandments and statutes that are written in this
book of the law, when you return to the LORD, your God, with all your
heart and all your soul. "For this command that I enjoin on you today is
not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not up in the sky, that you
should say, 'Who will go up in the sky to get it for us and tell us of it,
that we may carry it out?' Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
'Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may
carry it out?' No, it is something very near to you, already in your
mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out."
(Deuteronomy 30:10-14)

We've nearly lost what is nearest to us. By hurling opinion at each other, by making objects and categories of each other, we have nearly become blind and deaf to what longs to be seen and heard.

God-life, that which is within and surrounding each and every thing, person, idea, and piece of cosmos, longs to be seen and heard. The vital spark that causes everything to be itself is muted by opinion and belief diminishing and denying the specific revelation of God's life is each specific face.

81
True words do not sound beautiful;
beautiful sounding words are not true.
Wise men don't need to debate;
men who need to debate are not wise.

Wise men are not scholars,
and scholars are not wise.
The Master desires no possessions.
Since the things she does are for the people,
she has more than she needs.
The more she gives to others,
the more she has for herself.

The Tao of Heaven nourishes by not forcing.
The Tao of the Wise person acts by not competing.
(from Tao Te Ching - Written by Lao-Tzu, A Translation For the PUBLIC DOMAIN by j.h.mcdonald 1996 )

We have nearly exhausted the Way by claiming to own it, sell it, develop it, auction it, privatize it, and keep it out of view.

But that behavior is madness. It is illusion. It has been elsewhere been called 'sin,' the turning away of (or from) God, the denial of God by denial of God's ever-presence.

What remains for us to do? How forgive and be forgiven for failing or refusing to see or hear God in and through one another?

Madness is belief that has little correspondence with what is real. Not the real we believe is real, but the real beyond belief. We have enclosed belief in our private collection and ownership. Locked away from the light and fresh air of open inquiry, privatized belief suffocates the mind.

Minds stagger under the weight of "my," "mine," and "me." Enclosed and stifling belief holds that the open should be closed, debt is wealth, the few know better than and thereby must dominate the many, to protect freedom it is best to restrict freedom, to champion justice is to hoard and portion it out selectively. It is a heavy belief which leads us to imprison, hold, and terrorize those who long for what we ourselves have, but who have difficulty reaching out for what we hold as ours.

How traverse the minefield and tar pit of greed? Is it still possible to dispel madness and retrieve sanity, to open mind and soul, let flow through us the lightness and freedom of reality beyond belief, the Itself, God-life?

Is greed a death-knell? Is privatized belief an inescapable madness?

Or can we still find a way to set free a saner, more inclusive, and compassionate Way in the world? Is it too late or too far from us?

As far back as Moses, we are told: No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.

Reflection of our true face is seen in the face of each and every being. By letting go the clench-and-grab mind we allow things to fall free to earth with all its idiorhythmic and unoccupying vastness. Freedom necessitates releasing God-life.

All for each. One for one. Itself for everything.

Dare we the Way?

Would it become us?