no, why

I live

I die

I wonder

Why

when nothing seems right

Yes.

No matter how many no’s.

Yes!

mixed blessing

Monk, mystic, maniacal fool!

This is what is required today.

Pray for the grace to be an idiot in service to compassion and forgiveness, acceptance and radical complexity consciousness.

And may all cynical power sluts be retired from their offensive offices!

don't believe, see

Roethke wrote, "In a dark time the eye begins to see."

If so, now is the time to open eyes.

watch your

Steps:

1. Recognize that which is wrong.

2. Receive the reality as it is.

3. Respond with transformation from within.

4. Retrieve what is good.

5. Give up all hope of exterior reality changing.

6. Practice enlightenment.

7. Embody practice.

it's us

Scholars say -- yes, this is America.

Not much has changed. We're still prejudiced. Still phobic about folks from away.

So, we find a cushion, bow, sit, and observe breath. Maybe someone reads a psalm or Panikkar or Rohr.

We read, pause, think, dialogue, and say thank you.

The really hard work of democracy is moving through anger and depression to pragmatic creativity.

ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding

through the night
                       (a haiku for Richard S.)

first watch, sailor so-
los, eight bells topside, logging
journey together

                            [26june18, after death of wife Nancy S. 3 days earlier]

asked of us today

Interesting relationship between fear and bureaucracy.

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today with literary historian Lyndsey Stonebridge, exploring the present-day resonance of the 20th-century thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in her 1963 book about the Jerusalem trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann.
[music: “Dance of Death” by Andrew Bird] 

MS. TIPPETT: So one of her famous phrases is the “banality of evil,” which was an observation she made about Eichmann, and that was controversial. But you said something about the bureaucratization, which was part of that banality, a refuge for — instead of thinking, you are part of the system, and you follow the rules, and you enact the rules. 

And again, I really would not compare Eichmann to anyone alive right now in full, but the revulsion and the sense of alienation people all over the place have from bureaucracy, which in our age is globalized, right? The way the phrase “the government” will be received in many places in the U.S., the way the phrase “the E.U.” is received in England, there are echoes of something that goes wrong in human societies that were still with us or we’re feeling again. I don’t know. 

MS. STONEBRIDGE: One of the first things Arendt did when she finally got to New York, one of her first jobs was to help edit Kafka’s diaries. You remember the story of The Castle, the stranger — it’s certainly a migrant story. The stranger arrives in a new place, he comes for work, and then he can’t work out what’s going on, and he can’t settle, and he’s blocked by this bureaucracy that no one understands. 

Anyone who’s worked with refugees or migrants in the last ten years will know all too well K’s experience as he tries to make good on the offer of work for the castle. I think it’s very interesting that she actually chose that. She chose it because it resonated with her experience. But it goes back to the earlier conversation. I suppose the more we become fearful for what we call life, the more we try to bureaucratize to keep other people out, the worse it gets. And also with the logic that is no logic. That’s the other thing. It’s the capricious nature of bureaucracy. If I think about the E.U. 

MS. TIPPETT: Even well-meaning bureaucracy takes on these dehumanizing characteristics. 

MS. STONEBRIDGE: Well, this is the very interesting. Exactly. Humanitarianism is a very good example of — how do we administer for human life? And once you start to administer human life, you have very difficult decisions to make. And before you know it, you are in a situation where you’re running very close to not committing atrocities but getting very, very close to causing harm rather than doing good.

(--Lyndsey Storebridge, The Moral World in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now, On Being with Krista Tippett)

Is it better to be organized well? Or to face the fear uncertainty brings?

What of the alternative? The person wishing to destroy everything and replace it with a cult of individual personality wherein nothing matters but the appeal of the person at center of attention?

The choice is earthshaking.

Perhaps the compromise is to give to no one the power to dictate your life. Not a person, not an organization, not a congregation of other individuals (demos) whose opinions coalesce into popular custom and habit.

As I said, a significant and earthshaking choice.

Asked of us today.

while sitting in a blue chair in my home

68.5 million people, worldwide, are displaced. (Interfaith Voices) 

what I am here to do.

We connect with words.

Rama Kandra: Karma's a word. Like "love." A way of saying "what I am here to do." I do not resent my karma - I'm grateful for it. (The Matrix)

They help our thinking. 

when you have to go there

First we go out. Then we return in.

“Let each of you make your home a church.” (—John Chrysostom, On Genesis, p.53)

IT SEEMED THE BETTER WAY 

It seemed the better way When first I heard him speak But now it's much too late To turn the other cheek It sounded like the truth It seemed the better way Though no one but a fool Would bless the meek today I wonder what it was I wonder what it meant This rising up with love This lying down with death Better hold my tongue Better know my place Cup of blood with everyone Try to say the Grace

Copyright © 2001, 2003 Leonard Cohen.

We hear the question: "Do you attend church?"

Often the response: "No, I stay home." 

"Home is where the heart is" said Pliny the Elder.

I'd like to go home.

She said, he said, to him “I love you”

Yes

Sitting with the dying woman

Midday

I am thanked for my interest

Taking my leave

bye bye

I have an idea

Every family must give up one child

To be taken away and put somewhere

Without hope they’ll ever be returned

Ok...
Let’s start

That one, that one, that one, that one.

Thank you for your cooperation

a spit of cheer amid a continent of sludge.

Philosophers say there is clear thinking, and, there are mere opinions.

The events of everyday politics, especially here in America, are not just the foolish meanderings of a vain and ideological narcissism. There is a massive governmental collapse of thinking. We witness this aberration with alarm and anger.

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma 

see no Dharma in everyday actions.  

They have not yet discovered that there are 

no everyday actions outside of Dharma. 

—Dogen

What is the dharma* of America’s actions?

* Origen & History: dharma — 1796, in secular sense, "caste custom, right behavior;" in Buddhism and Hinduism, "moral law," from Skt., "law, right, justice," related to dharayati "holds," and cognate with L. firmus, all from PIE base *dher- "to hold, support" (see firm (adj.)). (Dictionary.com)

I cannot ‘hold’ or ‘support’ the cruel politics of this administration.

“Be reasonable and demand the impossible now.” With jam, added!
(Be Reasonable by Robb Johnson, https://youtu.be/0SR2cKkr-SA)

A spit of cheer amid a continent of sludge.

aphasia

Hermit days. 

Just reading.

And so, in the quiet days that followed the crash, Emilio Sandoz turned inward for a time and probed the sense of mourning that had come over him, tried to understand why he felt so strongly that something inside him was dying.        (--p.305, The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell)

The end of spring. Comes summer. 

This quiet — 

como dices "¡para!"

Silence, as prayer, deepens inquiry.

Silence, in law & politics, means consent.

Right now is no time for silence.

Speak now! 

Reunite children with parents.

Find lost voice of compassion.

Admonish this administration.

searching zen

Q: Where will you go?

A: There is nowhere to go.

Q: Is this where home is?

A: This? Yes!

yes

   Juneteenth
 

January 1, 1863 was the official day for President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation;

But, it was two and a half years later before the start of the freedom celebration.

Many attempts were made to explain this delay;

It has remained one of the great mysteries until this day.



One story says the messenger of freedom was murdered on his way to Texas;

This was supposedly the first one of the conspiracy theory nexus.

Another on reports the land owners censored the news to maintain their labor force;

One of the more popular stories, but who was the source?



Yet another tale of federal troops allowing another harvest of cotton;

Of all the dirty tricks, this one was the most rotten.

Regardless of whether any stories gives the correct news;

Many good people in Texas remained without freedom and singing the blues.



Finally in June of 1865, Major General Gordon Granger with a flag and a gun;

Stormed the shores of a Texas town called Galveston.

The Generals first order of business was to announce the news of freedom;

And this time he brought along enough Union troops to make the people heed them.



Some people reacted with shock, while others reacted with complete jubilation;

The news of this day finally spread all over the nation.

Most people could not wait to leave the plantation and start living free;

So, from their home state they started to flee.



Regardless of where they went, they were followed with freedom’s challenges;

These challenges came from making decisions and environmental changes.

They never forgot that joyous 19th day of June;

When people once enslaved could finally sing their freedom tune.



The celebration started with reassuring and praying;

The adults were eating and drinking while the children were playing.

It was also a time for the reuniting of family members;

It was one of the happiest days many of them remembers.



Today it is a day of pilgrimage to that town;

Let the shouts of freedom for all make a holy sound.

Soon the day will come when in unison we say;

“Forever and ever all Americans will celebrate Juneteenth, the freedom holiday”!

By Arthur Kroll

no one expected this, we’ll say

Of course he’s a genius. And America is a school child. 

The genius teaches desolation. The students cheer and lift their brews and toast the demise of boring, plodding democracy.

We’ll look back on this time, raise a glass to the Trump Family, and saunter to the shelters desolation builds. 

No one expected this, we’ll say.

Lets practice saying this.

We’ll grow used to it.

(—in response to We’ll  be  cleaning  up Trump’s  mess  for  generations,   bY Catherine RampellColumnistJune 18 at 7:43 PM, Washington Post)

experience is what a man does with what happens to him (ah).

I remember reading words about not being a saint. They were similarly phrased, attributed to two different French writers, and neither with source citation in their various appearances.

1. “Life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint”. - Charles Péguy
2. “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” - Léon Bloy

The above words came to me after reading in morning laze the patient novel hiding for months around the house.

“...it seems to me that sainthood, like genius, is rooted in a sort of inspired persistence. It’s a consistent willing of one thing. It’s that kind of consistency and focus I see at work in Emilio.”
( —p.251, in novel The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell)

I am not that. However much the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj or the Veda story with refrain tat tvam asi, try to suggest otherwise, I remain unconvinced, inconsistent, unfocused, and impersistent.

In my search for the source of the Bloy/Péguy quotes, I came across Huxley:

• The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.

• Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 5. Aldous Huxley

What is needed in a dark time are poets.

This is a dark time.

We need poets.

Perhaps what we really need is a way of engaging experience as one might welcome stranger crossing border into strange land. 

And here, again, “It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating.“ (Ibid, Huxley)

There are many unsaintly people living in a country run by other profoundly unsaintly people.

No one feels welcome.

Our experience is unfruitful.