At least, in metaphor and as well as paraffin, vigil candle light shines.

Fourteen years later, my sister, glad for home port, finds harbor in fair weather and calm seas.

TERMINUS
by: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

T is time to be old,

To take in sail:--

The gods of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: 'No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,--fault of novel germs,--

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,--

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.'

 

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

'Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.'

Friday morning rain; new window

Nobody.

Disturbed not.

Conscious Presence.

1. To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.   (~ e. e. cummings, from A Poet's Advice, 1958) 

2. Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen. (~ Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher) 

3. If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are – the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined. Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence.                                           ...    In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem And true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.       (--pp.108-109, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 2005)

Presence, conscious -- not disturbed -- nobody.

Turn around!

Once I thought I was sane

Illusion is what fronts for truth. Don't ask about truth. Ask rather what is the cost of illusion. Truth is free. Illusion costs.

Ask congress.

Ask anyone.

Tonight truth sleeps where it always sleeps.

Inside.

Everything.

Where no one looks.

Updating deficiency

Literature points it out.

WAR IS PEACE. 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

George Orwell's 1984 was short by 20 to 30 years.

The Republicans and Democrats are trying to update the horror and terror of our mental/rational dissonant deficient projection. 

Rewards of long hike

Four deer run from woods darting across low tide beach at New River as sun wades into western end of stretching bay.

Wood deck, wood table, Water Street

It was Thanksgiving.

The day(s) in Canada.

For which we're grateful.

Apple pie, please

Thanksgiving eve in Canada. 

Sumatran coffee? Check. 18% coffee cream out of St. John's? Check. 

Walk around and through point of penninsula at St. Andrews by the Sea? Check.

Awareness alone, Rupert Spira wishes us to know.

Along with the quiet of pine boards holding mirror window shy.

Where does poetry hide? Is it time to eat?

Far right wing christian fundamentalists want America to fail and fall so that Jesus will return to earth in triumph to rule and judge, condemn and purify the sinful landscape of liberal terrestriality.

It may be an unreasonable hypothesis, but, it is delusional as well.

And it is gaining sway over sensible and concrete discourse in our body politic.

It is time to move to a new country. Perhaps a new planet. 

Let's try Earth!

Surely the soil there is not contaminated by besotted illusory belief!

Surely there's a poem still hiding in a sane and intuitive psyche!

The map is not the territory.  

The father of general semantics, Alford Korzybski stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness". What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our "map".  

No two people can have exactly the same map. While we all have similar neurological structure, it functions differently in all of us. This is the basis for our problems in communication when we try to impose our map upon another person. Learning to recognize the structure of another person's map allows us to "see the world though their eyes" and therefor understand and relate to others respectfully and accurately.  

Our maps are created through gathering data through the five senses. Our senses bring certain aspects of the world to our attention, which go through neurological processes or filters, forming our values, beliefs, criteria (rules), and capabilities. These are often expressed consciously, yet most of the time they operate outside of our awareness and we don't realize that they can be changed to serve us in better ways.             (--from, The Map Is Not The Territory, by Rex Steven Sikes,  http://www.idea-seminars.com/articles/map.htm)

Surely there is something which is itself! 

Which is, and recognizes, that to be itself is to be no idea, no thought, no other. 

Only itself. 

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher, said, "The description is not the described." No description of food satisfies; it is not food. A hungry person wants food.

Be food.

Be poem.

Find one . . . another! 

to see or not to be

If mind is malfunctioning, you devolve into deficient cynical extremist opportunism extolling fear of the nonexistent.

Warn those who are rich in this world’s goods that they are not to look down on other people; and not to set their hopes on money, which is untrustworthy, but on God who, out of his riches, gives us all that we need for our happiness. Tell them that they are to do good, and be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share – this is the way they can save up a good capital sum for the future if they want to make sure of the only life that is real.
(1Timothy 6:11-21, first reading, Office of Readings, Saturday, week 27)

If mind is clear and healthy, you become gracious and generous appreciator of things that actually sensibly exist.

Pasture gate is left open

The cow has slipped its bell.

The bell withholds its sound.

When, unbeknownst, clarity

Sometimes the pieces fit the puzzle.

Othertimes the pieces are the puzzle.

pre-amble-edge

 Where does dream go?

93 million miles sunlight travels through water bottle to edge of bookcase, edge of bed, spine edge of prison conversation writing book, where it stops to rest.

In dining room of hermitage sunlight kisses plants edging empty table.

Sunlight visits chapel/zendo where candle-fire holds place for morning prayer edging into day.

Mt. Battie, (me batty), Camden, Maine

Archaic.

Magical.

Mythic.

Mental.

Integral.

Rock, ground, tree, water, sky.

I'm just sitting here

Watching the world go round...

And you

Sunrise, surprise

Green spot of light off to side.

A contemplative's passing gaze.

Μάρθα Μάρθα, μεριμνᾷς καὶ θορυβάζῃ περὶ πολλά, ὀλίγων δέ ἐστιν χρεία ἡ ἑνὸς· Μαριὰμ γὰρ τὴν ἀγαθὴν μερίδα ἐξελέξατο ἥτις οὐκ ἀφαιρεθήσεται αὐτῆς.
“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.”(--from Gospel, Luke 10:38-42)

Take nothing.

No -- take it all.

What is this "only one thing"?

Is that, too, gone?

with a view

The deficient mental structure of consciousness divides everything, evaluates the divided against an artificial benchmark, judges, then sentences the object of its deconstructed assessment to a consequence established by the analytic mind functioning as sifter, sorter, and separator.

Welcome to the 20th and 21st centuries! Two world wars, terrorism, prison-laden societies, national security states, coups, assassinations, uncompromising fundamentalism, moral rectitude, religious fanaticism, political stalemate, and domestic nihilism.

Be ready to leave those places.

They are dead ends.

Step out.

Spacious Mind 

Noticing the space around people and things provides a different way of looking at them, and developing this spacious view is a way of opening oneself. When one has a spacious mind, there is room for everything. When one has a narrow mind, there is room for only a few things.                

 (- Ajahn Sumedho, “Noticing Space,” Tricycle)

Do not ice space.

Rather, do notice space.

Step in.

Change the world by changing your view of it.

What you see is, indeed, what you get.

Unlock window of perception.

Look out.

See things.

Clearly!

keeping silence real

Bruno (1030-1101) was a solitary.

Solitaries consider everything in the world to be alone/itself.

Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And you are! Every time you love someone, you have agreed for a part of you to die. You will soon be asked to let go of some part of your false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and essential! 

You know God is doing this in you and with you when you can somehow smile and trust that what you lost was something you did not need anyway. In fact, it got in the way of what was real. 

Many of us were taught to say no without the deep joy of yes. We were trained to put up with all  the “dying” and just take it on the chin. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God or please anybody. There is too much resentment and self-pity involved. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you—so much so that you can absorb the usual noes—then it is God’s full work. 

(Richard Rohr, OFM, director of the Center for Action and Contemplation)

To be alone/itself is to choose what is real over that which is not.

What is not? (Did you think I would say: "What is not 'real'.") 

re·al
adjective\ˈrē(-ə)l\: actually existing or happening : not imaginary
: not fake, false, or artificial
: important and deserving to be regarded or treated in a serious way
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real

We need to continually explore the sensible and concrete. It is tempting to revert to the abstract, speculative, and ideological. There, things are certain and non-debatable. "It's my speculation, there's nothing you can do about it." 

And if I am not what I am?

“If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.” (James Baldwin)

If I am not what I am it doesn't matter what you think.

But if you think not at all about me, am I, then, real as I am?

The same can be said of the society wherein we live. It is an odd, abstract, and amorphous notion in the minds of too many folks, a notion that is becoming unfeeling and unconscious -- two attributions too often worn as a badge of achievement.

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.   (Edward Abbey, 1927-1989)

Today there are Carthusians because Bruno inspired the life.

They keep, mostly, silence.

They give away, you might say, noise and dissonant ideas about life and God that are not worth living.

  A traditional representation of the Saint Bruno Chapel, which marks the location of the original hermitage founded in 1084 and destroyed in 1132 by an avalanche. Carthusians have always favored secluded high mountain valleys for their hermitages.                    http://transfiguration.chartreux.org/Bruno-Bonitas.htm 

Solitaries keep silence real by keeping real silence.

You sense such a reality.

Charles Bukowski poem "Dinosauria, We," meet Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road"

Bukowski:

Dinosauria, We

born like this
into this
as the chalk faces smile
as Mrs. Death laughs
as the elevators break
as political landscapes dissolve
as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
as the oily fish spit out their oily prey
as the sun is masked

we are
born like this
into this
into these carefully mad wars
into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
into bars where people no longer speak to each other
into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

born into this
into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

born into this
walking and living through this
dying because of this
muted because of this
castrated
debauched
disinherited
because of this
fooled by this
used by this
pissed on by this
made crazy and sick by this
made violent
made inhuman
by this

the heart is blackened
the fingers reach for the throat
the gun
the knife
the bomb
the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

the fingers reach for the bottle
the pill
the powder

we are born into this sorrowful deadliness
we are born into a government 60 years in debt
that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
and the banks will burn
money will be useless
there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
it will be guns and roving mobs
land will be useless
food will become a diminishing return
nuclear power will be taken over by the many
explosions will continually shake the earth
radiated robot men will stalk each other
the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms

Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
the sun will not be seen and it will always be night
trees will die
all vegetation will die
radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
the sea will be poisoned
the lakes and rivers will vanish
rain will be the new gold

the rotting bodies of men will stink in the dark wind

the last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
the petering out of supplies
the natural effect of general decay

and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

born out of that.

The sun still hidden there
awaiting the next chapter.

         (Poem, "Dinosauria, We" by Charles Bukowski)

McCarthy:

“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.” 

                       (Cormac McCarthy, from, The Road)

Walt said it at Quarry Hill, I heard it; Saskia read the Canticle ofthe Sun, which mentioned mortal sin, at FrancisFest at Hermitage

Viva la Vida  (live life) 

1. Pecado mortal es de rechazo vivir, ve a ver, vida cotidiana.Mortal sin is the refusal to live, to go through, and see, everyday life.        (--wfh Feast of Francis 4Oct2013)

             2. "Many residents I know are having difficulty letting go." (--wle, age 92)

If you don't 

  dwell

     on it 

You lose  

   sight

     of it --  

You live

     through 

           it 

(--heard poem, by wfe, 4oct2013)

 “When we are living our own great story, it may be exhilarating in some ways, but there is also always an ‘of course’ quality to it. It is just ourselves that we are being, so it just feels right… there is  no way to be happy except to live out our own deep, great story. No life, no matter how successful and exciting it might be, will make you happy, if it is not really your life. And no life will make you miserable if it is genuinely your own."

(--Carol S. Pearson in Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World.)

St Francis Day

Peace and All Good!

Happy 6th Birthday, Rokpa!

Eve of Francis

He saw no difference.

He was one of us, one with this, transitus.