come apart, and rest awhile

 We might have to consider adding “monai” after “m.o.n.o.” --

Here we need to revisit a point we made earlier. What does Jesus mean when he declares that there are “many dwelling places” in his father’s house? 4 This has regularly been taken, not least when used in the context of bereavement, to mean that the dead (or at least dead Christians) will simply go to heaven permanently rather than being raised again subsequently to new bodily life. But the word for “dwelling places” here, monai, is regularly used in ancient Greek not for a final resting place but for a temporary halt on a journey that will take you somewhere else in the long run.
(--from, Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (p. 150). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.) 

Monastics of no other - dwelling places!

Would that make us mono-monaical instead of monomaniacal?

I’d prefer to stay right in this ever-here this ever-changing unpredictable and chaotic ephemera we call our earthly dwelling places with no otherness but clear and interconnected new forms of relational self.

It is Easter Saturday.

Heaven is no longer separate from earth -- not has it ever been.

None of us are any longer separate from God -- nor have we ever been.

Resurrect awareness and attention. Embody this new form of life...

Christ has.

Easter Friday

One more waking from sleep.

One more toasted English muffin.

Wind gusts

At window

A morning meditation.

"When it’s time to suffer, you should suffer; when it’s time to cry, you should cry. Cry completely. Cry until there are no more tears and then recognize in your exhaustion that you’re alive. The sun still rises and sets. The seasons come and go. Absolutely nothing remains the same and that includes suffering. When the suffering ends wisdom begins to raise the right questions." (—Seido Ray Ronci, “The Examined Life” -- in Tricycle)

For a brief while we are here.

"You practice the piano not in order to perform but for the sake of practicing the piano. With music, you don’t practice and then one day become a concert pianist. You are that. Practice is as much an expression of that as of practice itself." (—Philip Glass, “First Lesson, Best Lesson” -- in Tricycle)

and then...

In silence, everything is heard.

Say it again ... (haiku interrupted) ... but without words this time

1.

universe next door

is connected; no, more: it

Is inside (this) one

2.

resurrection is

not after this life; it is

Inside (as) this life

Silence, haiku

If Christ is risen

everything becomes itself --

Now -- no other sound

Easter Monday haiku

When life saw itself

It was as if a Christ saw

What is his to do

bitte noch einmal

“We just die into silence. Die to the past. Die to the future. Die to the breath. Completely let go. The silence reveals itself as refuge, as awareness that can be trusted, tenderly loving and resounding with the majesty and the mystery of the sacred.”
(--Adapted from “Living in the Light of Death” by Kathleen Dowling Singh)

Life after life after death (N.T. Wright's phrasing)

With sunrise.

Drying socks.

The rising ordinary.

Putting the plates on second shelf.

Every thing appears as it is.

not words

Poems are not words. 

Poems are where words go to die; 

then to resurrect into 

contemplation.

unworded silence, light wind touches bowing branches

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled." (--from An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday)

Broken Open Haiku

Once coyotes yelped
through poem of
          Old Fox
          on Good Friday --

Now, barely able to
find words
          he offers stealth blood
          and water silence

(--for fr Robert, ocso, Good Friday 2014)

"For-you" is a new way to see life and bread

As the story is told, it is as if Jesus was asked, "What is this?" at table when he took bread and looked at them.

"This?" he responded. "This is for-you."

"For me?" one asked.

"No."

"For us?"

"No." Jesus answered. It is for-you."

They looked at him.

bread?

Yes.

Thank you!

Morning snow; nothing to see here

Maine midcoast, April 16, snow.

New York Times has investigative story of alleged rape and sexual assault by Heisman Trophy winning national champion quarterback at Florida State University in Dec. 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jamies-winston.html?hp&_r=0

Neither snow nor the privilege of athletes seem to go away.

Law enforcement and university officials know their place.

Shovels bury, they don't remove anything.

It's why we have blinds. 

Limiting our looking.

Intimately

To suffer is to enter what is real.

Numb is false.

Real is life.

So, we suffer.

and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything

From India, about Amma, a perspective.

Excerpt:

Darshan is the intimate process of seeing and being seen by a deity. Hindus describe darshan not as the detached, passive sight of aesthetic observance but with the active transitive verbs of taking (in Hindi, darshan lena) and giving darshan (darshan dena). In modern usage, the term darshan signifies the moment when humans view the supernatural, whether through an icon of a deity (murti), a sacred site (tīrtha), or a living embodiment of the divine (avatār). Through darshan, the deity and the devotee engage in a mutual seeing in “a moment of dramatic spiritual interaction.”7 This interactive process symbolizes the “desire for fusion— for the subject/object dissolution of the ‘double sensation.’ ”8 As Isabelle Nabokov/Clark-Decès explains, “The act of darshan . . . also becomes a form of absorbing, so that any objectification of a supernatural is always a form of assimilation as well.”9 It is in such moments of Hindu devotional ritual that the individual both recognizes divinity and is recognized as divinity.10 In Hindu practice, it is through darshan that humanity gains the opportunity to experience the divine on earth. Ideally the darshan experience dissolves the individual ego into cosmic unity with divinity. When interpreted through the advaita vedantic theological ideal of nonduality, the moment of darshan between guru and devotee provides the opportunity for the dissolution of the individuated ego, the symbolic union with divinity, and the intense physical expression of metaphysical cosmic oneness that eradicates duality. Ideally, darshan transforms the individual through these temporary suspensions of the sense of self and individuated difference that incite the recognition of the ultimate similitude between the self and divinity. 

Through darshan, devotees not only see the image of the deity but infuse themselves within it in an active process of becoming. Devotees aim to absorb the gaze of the deity and in the process be transformed. As Lawrence Babb suggests, there is a parallel between the impulse be- hind eating blessed food (prasad), wherein “you become what you eat,” and the process of darshan, in which “you somehow become what you see.”11 Thus darshan should not be explained in terms of being merely an aesthetic experience—something that one passively witnesses—but, rather, as an agentive interaction—something in which one actively engages, a transformative and participatory process. A devotee of Mother Meera understands her unique method of silent visual darshan in highly active terms of transformation. She says, “Along with the gaze from Mother Meera’s eyes comes an infusion of light, light designed to heal wounds within the psyche and give a person sufficient power to move from the perspective of the personality to a divine perspective. . . . This is not one woman staring as the other stares back. Instead, one offers the gift of her soft, penetrative gaze, and the other offers the gift of acceptance.”12 In the Radhasoami tradition the compassionate gaze of the guru during darshan is believed to assist devotees in their spiritual de- velopment: “the drishṭi, the ‘seeing’ or ‘glance,’ of the guru aids the devotee in achieving deliverance.”13 Devotees of Sathya Sai Baba experience darshan as “a moment of ultimate self-transformation by which they are ‘captured’ spiritually and experience a ‘complete immersion in Sai Baba’s love.’ ”14 

Amma’s devotees relate similar experiences of the dissolution of indi- vidual boundaries, immersion in divine love, and cosmic awakenings. Shanti relayed a particularly powerful experience of her darshan during one Devī Bhāva night: “As we knelt in front of Amma, she put our heads together, cheek to cheek, and looked straight into our eyes, the right eye on me and the left eye on Caleb. I remember thinking, Oh no! here we go!!! I lost all track of where I was . . . there was no sense of time, the universe was swirling to life in her eye, and then I was in the universe and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything that has ever been and every thing that will ever be in one second. She pulled back and it was over. I totally lost track of where I was for a second. But as soon as she disengaged I was back with no confusion.” Devotees long for the darshan experience because of the potential for this type of transformative experience, the possibility of experiencing a glimpse into the cosmic reality of the divine, and the efficacy of darshan for catalyzing spiritual awakening. 

(--from Chapter 1, A Darshan Embrace, Experiencing Authenticity and Feeling Witnessed, in  Reflections of Amma, Devotees in a Global Embrace, Amanda J. Lucia (Author) http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/12560.ch01.pdf)

Broken open; gathering with-us

Two names arrive at table Sunday Evening Practice: Dirk and Kali.

The word hospice accompanies.

Gathering us into prayer.

With them.

Gott mit uns; Dasein mit uns.

Univocally holy; week

No one is doing something to us or for us. 

What is being done is being done with us.

Realization

If it is trust, you know it's not ego.