What is the Christ? Those who say it is the creative and creating energy which brings into being that which is -- these interest me.

Something brings into being that which is. "Christ" is as reasonable a nomenclature as any other symbolizing sound formed into a word.

From the treatise On the Mysteries by Saint Ambrose, bishop
(The sacrament that you receive is effected by the words of Christ)
We see that grace can accomplish more than nature, yet so far we have been considering instances of what grace can do through a prophet’s blessing. If the blessing of a human being had power even to change nature, what do we say of God’s action in the consecration itself, in which the very words of the Lord and Saviour are effective? If the words of Elijah had power even to bring down fire from heaven, will not the words of Christ have power to change the natures of the elements? You have read that in the creation of the whole world he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created. If Christ could by speaking create out of nothing what did not yet exist, can we say that his words are unable to change existing things into something they previously were not? It is no lesser feat to create new natures for things than to change their existing natures (-- from Office of Readings, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel).

I like reasonable words.

They're much in demand for lack of them today.

May this feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel be a phrase contributing to a sentence of peace and prayer for peace in this desperate time.

Less depletion of creative energy would be nice.

Maggie spoke the simplest poetry at Quarry Hill, saying: "I'm only here to listen."

A temple, hidden, treasured
In the mountain's cleft.
Pines, bamboo such a subtle flavor:
An ancient Buddha sits there, wordless
The welling source speaks for him.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

At prison, Charlie came to see what the character in Genesis saw of creation: "It's all good!"

We don't judge someone to be good, rather, they are good, and by seeing so we are sane.

Tommy and I talk baseball.

It was Podres pitching to Berra in 1955 who sliced it to left where Amoros made the grab.

Two years later Brooklyn was abandoned.

Birdsong in Bangor. Outside, on shaded asphalt near portable water dish, Rokpa hunkers in leaf-light.

We' taken first of 4 walks during 4 worker's comp audits driving Miss Saskia.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
Every heart is its own Buddha;
To become a saint, do nothing.
Enlightenment: the world is a mote of dust,
You can look right through heaven's round mirror
Slip past all form, all shape
And sit side by side with nothing save Tao.
- Shih Shu (c. 1703)

I imagine someone asking: Have you been saved in the nothing of Tao?

I wonder if it would be useful to suggest I carry some particular adult onset peculiar syndrome rather than the equally odd narrative suggesting I carry a propensity toward being a hermit, an anchorite, or a lay monastic cosmotheandric solitary.

The leaves have nothing to say. Nor do clouds and breeze passing do anything but invite gaze. Grass and weeds, wildflowers and white birch move in synchronized laze.

"Friendship is trust your friend will reveal you." (17Feb2011). That's what I wrote then. Today I add: "At the same time a friend is someone respecting the undisclosed. The undisclosed is not something dark or sinister. It is the deep and hidden wholeness. I prefer to look at the undisclosed as that which is hidden from sight, in the same way the eye is hidden from sight but serves as that through which we see.

In Orono we walk past Shaw & Tenney by river construction of hydro project. Old yellow building and barns where fine oars and paddles are made. The car has been moved when I return from walk. Later I learn Saskia moved it to allow tractor trailer a wide turn.

In Lincoln Rokie swims in river. After a bit, I sit in Catholic Church for a spell. The smell of wood pulp plant and closed windows makes stuffy the small interior. One woman sits on opposite side, side window open. I open window next to where I sit. I like that some churches keep doors unlocked.

At lake in Lincoln we park in shade. A few months ago we walked on ice for an hour where now kids swim and play in water. I love the seasons in Maine!

In Milo we read. Two more hours on the road.

At root it is nature -- (what some refer to as 'creation') -- that intrigues. The other narrative, the religious stories that condense history and cosmos into discursive theologies and cosmogonies, that, too, is interesting.

We have to learn about metaphor.

Wind picks up.

The gods breathe hard. Lows and highs converge.

It is a lovely summer day on the road!

At tonight's sitting thoughts arise.

Three sets of words:

• Everything is as it is.
• God is what is God.
• I am as I am.

Later Gerard asks if I can simplify.
I say:

• As it is
• Is what is
• As I am.

One hundred eighty miles today. Milbridge and back.

Hot day followed by three sets of three words.

Three soundings of bell end our sitting,

Thanks, Benedict!
Hermit monastic contemplative.
The monk in me bows in silent appreciation.

"I thought it belonged to a puzzle. But, it's just a piece -- there's nothing else to put it into." That's what Tom said at evening practice.

Thomas Merton suggests silence.

No words, nothing, between you and things.

As dawn is.

A new intimacy of presence.

In creative silence the world presenting itself beyond analysis, revealing what is wholely seen and holy heard.

No barriers.

No separation,

Merely with.

There is today. And breath to live it.

Why worry about anything.

There is no tomorrow.

Lose the idea you are special.

You're not. I'm not. 'Special' is not the accolade we think it is.

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, (dailyzen.com)

In prison today we sat with Atwood's poem:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

(Poem by Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright © 1974, 1976 )

Stick with being ordinary.

It confounds the paranoid and the powerful.

Life, they say, goes on.

Millay, in Lament, can't imagine why.

LAMENT
by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

LISTEN, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
-- "Lament" is reprinted from Second April. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921.

There is no why. And I don't know why this is.

In the Magnificat there is a line: "He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away:”

To send empty away is to leave the rich with something less than emptiness, namely, separation and disconnection. The rich were not sent away empty, rather ‘empty’ is sent away.

In Buddhism ‘empty’ means empty of independent, isolated, separate existence.

Errant thoughts are fundamentally empty; the essence of mind is fundamentally pure. You suddenly realize this essence is originally free from afflictions; the essence of knowledge is inherently complete, no different from Buddha. To cultivate practice based on this is called the Zen of the highest vehicle, and it is also called the pure Zen of those who realize suchness.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Mary’s soul, in itself, magnifies the Lord.

Mu-ge, here shown guiding winter songbirds to their feeder, died today. Barnestown Road had one too many cars, we suppose, for him to elude.

The ground next to Koto, Jitai, Mini, Sandi, and Cesco is unearthing itself to receive his body.

We are saddened. We are also grateful for his 9 years with us.

And we are equally blest for someone like Tom who found him, waited for us to return home from town, and quietly, simply told us where he was.

I could hear waves hitting against the island but could not see it. Thick fog as I rowed the outer harbor. A solitude surrounding rare.

People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

What is a mystic? Someone in the fog trusting a clarity unseen.

John Dear writes about Thomas Merton:

When Jesus calls us to love our enemies, he said we should do so because God does so. God let's the sun shine on the just and the unjust, and the rain fall on the good and the bad. God is compassionate to everyone, and we should be. too. This is the heart of contemplative nonviolence. Then we are able to see everyone as a human being, and to see God and become like God.

As we pursue contemplative peace like Merton, we learn, contrary to what the Pentagon tells us, that our God is not a god of war, but the God of peace; not a god of injustice, but the God of justice; not a god of vengeance and retaliation, but the God of compassion and mercy; not a god of violence, but the God of nonviolence; not a god of death, but the living God of life. We discover a new image of God. As we begin to imagine the peace and nonviolence of God; we learn to worship the God of peace and nonviolence; and in the process, become people of peace and nonviolence.

"The great problem is this inner change," Merton writes. "We all have the great duty to realize the deep need for purity of soul that is to say, the deep need to be possessed by the Holy Spirit."

On his way to Asia, Merton told David Stendl-Rast that "the only way beyond the traps of Catholicism is Buddhism." In other words, every Catholic has to become a good Buddhist, to become as compassionate as possible, he said. "I am going to become the best Buddhist I can, so I can become a good Catholic." That is the wisdom of Merton's contemplative life, to become like Buddhists, people of profound compassion, deep contemplative nonviolence.

That is what he discovered with his experience in Polonnaruwa when he wrote: "Everything is emptiness and everything is compassion."

(--John Dear, June, 2005, in Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Nonviolence, San Diego, California, http://www.johndear.org/speeches/thomas_merton_wisdom.htm

This is what makes Merton so interesting.

On a day like today, the fog shrouds, the fog lifts, the fog returns, the fog converses with dusk in sounds only silence endears and endures.

A subtle interdependence.

The only freedom is choosing to be free even in unfree places.

For now, It rains.

We relaunch Jootje with help from Sam and Susan. We row around Curtis Island. In mid-day sun. That will be a rare time-slot for me.

We watch The Dhamma Brothers about Vipassana meditation in Alabama penitentiary. Good for them!

It is a characteristic tendency of human beings to indulge in emotions such as happiness, grief, or anger in response to present conditions, failing to balance these feelings with the awareness that present conditions are results of past causes. It is illogical to face the present only as an object of enjoyment or tolerance, neglecting to use it as the opportunity to create the future.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

To live life well now is to create the future. Now, then, whenever -- its' all the realization of true self, true nature.

That, and strawberries on vanilla bean ice cream, does the job.

New American flag flies at barn door opening.

It's a good country.

It could use some good, long, insightful sitting.

Solomon had an advantage over Obama. Both had a choice whether to cut the baby in half. In Solomon's story, he held a live baby. In Obama's, well -- listen to Mac Deford:

No Matter, the Baby Was Already Dead
6/30/2011 9:25:00 AM
Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan, by G. Whitney Azoy; 3rd edition, revised and updated, June 2011

by Thomas McAdams Deford

It's too bad President G.W. Bush, not to mention President Obama and General Petraeus, never read the one book that tells us all we need to know about the social and cultural underpinnings of Afghanistan, Whitney Azoy's Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan. It explains why our 10-year effort to remake that country was mission impossible.

The Afghan war will have cost us half a trillion dollars by year end, with 1,500 dead, and a multiple of that maimed or badly wounded. Last week, President Obama told us two things in his Afghanistan speech:

1) We've lost; and

2) It doesn't matter.

The Taliban, after being routed in six weeks nearly ten years ago, have managed to fight back against NATO forces that over the last two years have topped out at nearly 150,000 in addition to an Afghan force, armed and trained by NATO, growing from 200,000 to 300,000. The Afghan army already costs about $3,000,000,000 a year to maintain; by the time of NATO's departure, it will be up to $6 billion in an economy of $20 billion. Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was nickel and dime stuff compared to this.
(--from The Free Press, Rockland ME)
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=13517&TM=36100.4

We couldn't go into prison today because...the prison environment, including all involved in the environment, is the prison environment. And later in the day we were 15 minutes late for the nursing home. Walt couldn't read, he was too choked up, but Sheilah could, the Browning poem that reflected the 69 years of his and Maggie's marriage. They celebrated this week. Maggie is not well.

Deford adds:

Losing a war is poor politics. The spectre of the Taliban marching on Kabul in the fall of 2012, even with the majority of Americans against the war, would not help Obama in the voting booths a few months later. So he compromised: enough withdrawals to keep his liberal base in line; not enough to risk an Afghan collapse before the presidential elections.

As Pat Buchanan, the original conservative Republican - he was against both the Iraq and the Afghan adventures - put it, "our president did what comes naturally: he cut the baby in half."

True, but give Obama credit: the baby was already dead.

In January 2009, when Obama was sworn in, Bush had left him two lit dynamite sticks: the rapidly disintegrating economy and an equally rapidly disintegrating war in Afghanistan. He had to make sure both didn't explode at once. The "surge" then was a short-term political fix to a double whammy he had inherited. (Ibid)

I used to wonder whether war was merely an awful necessity. Now I sense it to be just another strategy option for political purposes.

War is a brutal choice to sacrifice lives for political gain.

What's wrong with war is our unenlightened mind. It's stupidity is breathtaking.

We need to remember to breathe.

To become enlightened.

To end war.

What do you say, baby?

We finish four weeks at Rockland Public Library leading conversations after four episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Delightful circles!

Why practice quiet sitting?
So you can really get a look
At your original mind.
You look at it coming, look at it going,
And then you know you're the original person.
This latter age has no deep faith,
No one practices the
Direct road to understanding.
All they do is flap three inches of tongue
And lose themselves in the muddle of the mind.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

Listen and see.

There was a line in the early episode spoken by God who said he doesn't appear, Joan sees him.

The more we listen the more we see.

Life, death, pain, suffering, joy, loss, grace, why?

We might never know, but we can feel.

15 years ago today on the feast of Peter and Paul we opened meetingbrook bookshop & bakery on Bayview Street by the harbor in Camden.

When we lost our lease due to the building being sold two years ago we decided, after briefly considering finding a new site, that we would fold back into the hermitage at Ragged/Bald mountains at the Snow Bowl to deepen the contemplative life we'd been living in the open the prior 13 years.

Some loss and some gain accompany every change. We've been happy. We miss the spontaneous encounters with market place 'pilgrims'. (I am reminded of this, playfully, when yesterday Brad P. extends his arm from Volvo window as I cross Atlantic avenue to library, places small sea shell into my hand, saying one word, 'Pilgrim!' before driving toward Sea street. How the reminders come!)

We enjoy the freedoms and solitude of release from so many external demands.

Tonight, at conversation, we continue the Wednesday evening Laura soul-friend conversations begun back then.

The cake Saskia made for evening conversation, and the fruit crepes this morning, were a lovely luck-of-the-draw celebration shared by Susan, Myles, Dean, Jayen, & Dirk. The invisible guests will have to remain anonymous -- with our thanks for their loving memory and belonging over the years.

Well tasted, with gratefulness, for the time.

There are times that any comment, save silent invocation of Mystery, is one too many.

The headline read: U.S. War Costs Reach At Least $3.7 Trillion And Counting

Like some text or scripture read in our daily hermitage practice, perhaps this piece deserves to be read without comment. Followed by silence. And reflection.

The President of the United States has told the American people and the rest of the world that even as the U.S. withdraws some troops from Afghanistan and continues to withdraw from Iraq, the wars will continue for some years. The debate over why each war was begun and whether either or both should have been fought continues.

What we do know, without debate, is that the wars begun ten years ago have been tremendously painful for millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and the United States, and economically costly as well. Each additional month and year of war will add to that toll. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive accounting of the costs of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The goal of the Costs of War project has been to outline a broad understanding of the domestic and international costs and consequences of those wars. The Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University assembled a team that includes economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis.

We asked:

• What have been the wars’ costs in human and economic terms?
• How have these wars changed the social and political landscape of the United States and the countries where the wars have been waged?
• What will be the long term legacy of these conflicts for veterans?
• What is the long term economic effect of these wars likely to be?
• Were and are there alternative less costly and more effective ways to prevent further terror attacks?

Some of the project’s findings:

• While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.
• At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.
• The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
• Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.
• Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.
• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.
• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed. For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.

The website with additional information is http://costsofwar.org/

Sophia, orthia!

If I have no opinion about a particular belief, then I cannot be a heretic. A heretic is someone with a different opinion. None had; none different.

Men will therefore see God if they are to live; through the vision of God they will become immortal and attain to God himself. As I have said, this was shown in symbols by the prophets: God will be seen by men who bear his Spirit and are always waiting for his coming. As Moses said in the Book of Deuteronomy: On that day we shall see, for God will speak to man, and man will live.
(--From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop)

I'm never sure what the problem is people have with God.

Perhaps it is their opinion God causes good or evil. I don't have that opinion.

God is the uncaused good. And evil is not that.

An opinion would be other than that.

I've none.

There is no other.

Live this well!
.