only for a while

Overheard words from hospice nurse to respite care person unhappy to be there:

You're not going to be here forever. 

Only for a while. 

Then you will go home.

Those words could be a card sent to every human being showing up on earth in this existence.

Sounds right to me.

Wherever home is.

present itself; a presentation of presence

Gospel 

LK 2:22-40 

When the days were completed for their purification
according to the law of Moses,
Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to 
to present him to the Lord,
just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
and to offer the sacrifice of
a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. 

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.
This man was righteous and devout,
awaiting the consolation of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he should not see death
before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. 
He came in the Spirit into the temple;
and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

"Now, Master, you may let your servant go 
in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel."

The child's father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
"Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
Band you yourself a sword will pierceB
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."
There was also a prophetess, Anna,
the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
She was advanced in years,
having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,
and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.
She never left the temple,
but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.
And coming forward at that very time,
she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions
of the law of the Lord,
they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.

The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
and the favor of God was upon him.

...   ...   ...

Comment:

What is the mystery of presence? 

When that-which-is becomes what-is-itself in ordinary immediacy.

Without the hoopla, Groundhog Day and the feast of the Presentation collapse wonderfully into seeing the next face that appears and nears us

words just show up

Something haunting and delightfully solemn about traditional Latin Compline.

APERI, Dómine, os meum ad benedicéndum nomen sanctum tuum: munda quoque cor meum ab ómnibus vanis, pervérsis et aliénis cogitatiónibus; intelléctum illúmina, afféctum inflámma, ut digne, atténte ac devóte hoc Offícium recitáre váleam, et exaudíri mérear ante conspéctum divínæ Majestátis tuæ. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum. R. Amen. 

Dómine, in unióne illíus divínæ intentiónis, qua ipse in terris laudes Deo persolvísti, hanc tibi Horam persólvo. 

V. Jube, Dómine, benedícere. 

Benedictio:  Noctem quiétam, et finem perféctum concédat nobis Dóminus omnípotens.  R. Amen. 

Lectio brevis, 1 Petri 5, 8-9
FRATRES: Sóbrii estóte, et vigiláte: quia adversárius vester diábolus tamquam leo rúgiens círcuit, quærens quem dévoret: cui resístite fortes in fide.  Tu autem, Dómine, miserére nobis.  R. Deo grátias. 

V. Adjutórium nostrum in nómine Dómini.  R. Qui fecit cælum et terram.

(--Compline (Latin) · The Monks of Prinknash Abbey) youtube

I must concede the saying that showed up at my feet a long time ago:

on revient toujours a son premier metier 

As did this fragment:

hasta esto momento nohay absolutimente cambio alguno 

Words, in whichever language, just show up when aware or unaware, listening or ignoring.

They stay.

These two instances, over life span decades wandering, aporia wondering, alone-with-others eremetic communality, are proof positive of the unfathomible creatus/creans of the ineffable and wholly effective utterance of word.

when does the first become the one

February one --

will greed-hogs see

their portfolio reflection

in eyes of poor brothers/sisters

then tuna on cheese bread

poet sends winter hokku —

white dog in freezing wind

carries brown stick to black car

what do you see

The Italian speaker says we are not our body. We are not our brain.

We are the extended physicality — we are relative consciousness.

He says: "We are the world we perceive.' (—Riccardo Manzotti)

as snow falls

Yoghurt at 2am

Wood into stove

500mg acetaminophen with water

time will tell

Maybe this will pass.

What is this?

an excerpt

pain is tedious
like sleepless hours
middle of night —
staying put

objectless awareness

Bell is invited.

<<<   b o n g   >>>

Everything is born.

Reverberation fades.

>>>   s i l e n c e   <<<

Everything dies.

Still, the bell is still here as it was before being invited and after reverberation fades.

To return to your original state of being,
You must become a master of stillness.
Activity for health’s sake,
Never carried to the point of strain,
Must alternate with perfect stillness.
Sitting motionless as a rock,
Turn next to stillness of mind.
Close the gates of the senses.
Fix your mind upon one object or,
Even better, enter a state
Of objectless awareness.
Turn the mind in upon itself
And contemplate the inner radiance. 

- Anonymous (dailyzen.com)

Bell is life itself.

No birth, no death.

Sound when it sounds, silence when it falls silent.

morning light, dawning

In prison yesterday remembering a card with four squares and the words “you are not alone.”

How the first letters (ya na) seem to ask question, “yes?”, “no?”

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. (—Matthew 14:23)

The thought occurs— you are not alone, god is alone.

If we elide “alone” from either side of the comma, it reads— you are not, god is.

You are not — alone is.

Only alone.

So it goes!

Perhaps this is why so few people have faith in god, so few people actually believe, and move, and have their being in god,

God is all there is. God is “here.” Here is all there is.

I hear, differently, Gertrude Stein’s “There’s no there there.” Every there becomes here to someone thinking they’re going there.

Every child on a trip, so goes the meme, asks “Are we there yet?” Parents lie and say, “Almost!” Or “Soon!”

But there is no-there there. Here is no-there.

Or, perhaps, “here is not-here.”

The absence of god becomes clearer.

The death of god, to our thinking, becomes present.

God is present in this absence.

We are all alone; we are not alone.

We are all; we are not.

The objective disappears.

Nothing other appears, and there is nothing to be seen.

Matthew says, “...he was there alone.”

And so, you are not alone. You are not there.

Jesus did there in.

You are here.

“Here” is the name of god.

Goethe wrote: Names are but noise and smoke / Obscuring heavenly light.

Outside this window, morning light, dawning!

announcing temporary end to senseless shutdown

Wallman perseverates

his repetitive
his repetitive
his repetitive

wall-points

again
and again.

God help us, this is so tedious!

friday afternoon haiku

Winter tree —

Scarf of snow wrapping trunk

Bare ground, January thaw

lies and liars

Thinking about mendacity and this country's leader(s):

Big Daddy: Now, why do ya drink?!   Brick: Give me my crutch.  .Big Daddy: Tell me first.   Brick: No, you give me a drink first and I'll tell ya.   Big Daddy: Tell me first! First you gotta tell me!   Brick: All right, disgust!   Big Daddy: DISGUST WITH WHAT?   Brick: You strike a hard bargain.   Big Daddy: Boy, do you want liquor that bad?   Brick: Yes, sir. I want liquor that bad. [Big Daddy hands him his crutch]           Big Daddy: Now tell me, what are you disgusted with?   Brick: Mendacity. You know what that is. It's lies and liars.   Big Daddy: Who's been lyin' to ya? Maggie? Has your wife been lyin' to ya?   Brick: No. Not one lie, not one person. The whole thing.          Big daddy: Mendacity. What do you know about mendacity? I could write a book on it...Mendacity. Look at all the lies that I got to put up with. Pretenses. Hypocrisy. Pretendin' like I care for Big Mama, I haven't been able to stand that woman in forty years. Church! It bores me. But I go. And all those swindlin' lodges and social clubs and money-grabbin' auxiliaries. It's-it's got me on the number one sucker list. Boy, I've lived with mendacity. Now why can't you live with it? You've got to live with it. There's nothin' to live with but mendacity. Is there?   Brick: Oh, yes sir. [Lifting his glass] You can live with this.   Big Daddy: That's not livin', that's a-dodgin away from life.       Brick: I want to dodge away from it.   Big Daddy: Then son, why don't you kill yourself?   Brick: 'Cause I like to drink.   Big Daddy: I can't talk to you.  Brick: I'm sorry.

(--from Cat on the Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams) http://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof/quote_4980.html 

It is a despicable time of American presidency. 

this existence brings

We are all afraid. We don’t know.

The only choice is to be frozen stiff with fear, or

Move step by step through fear to the next arriving place.

To move is to exercise faith.

To remain frozen is to enshrine fear.

This is our fate.

What to do with the fear being alive in this existence brings?

how is the patient

"The bomb can't be used unless civilization dies first." (--in Harlot's Ghost, by Norman Mailer, ch.33)

that which is moving and adopts

What endures?

Bergson suggests, our self.

As the new school year of 1901-1902 began, their desperate search was rewarded when Charles Peguy led them across the street from the Sorbonne to the Collège de France to hear Henri Bergson lecture, and in Bergson's elegant lectures they heard the beginning of the message they had been waiting for. When they listened to him they understood him to say, as Raissa put it, "that we could truly, absolutely, know what is." That Bergson was speaking not of the intelligence or reason, but a faculty that he called intuition that was opposed to the intelligence and its concepts did not matter to them then, but later it was to become a critical issue. No doubt they were hearing words like the inspiring words that were to fill Bergson's essay, "An Introduction to Metaphysics" which was to appear in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale in January of 1903: "...an absolute could only be given in an intuition, whilst everything else falls within the province of analysis. By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. (9) ... There is one reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and not by simple analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing through time - our self which endures. (10) ... What is relative is the symbolic knowledge by pre-existing concepts, which proceeds from the fixed to the moving, and not the intuitive knowledge which installs itself in that which is moving and adopts the very life of things. This intuition attains the absolute." (11) 

(--Arraj, James (2011-11-06T22:58:59). MYSTICISM, METAPHYSICS AND MARITAIN: On the Road to the Spiritual Unconscious . Inner Growth Books and Videos, LLC. Kindle Edition.) 

 Yes, Bergson's words :"...intuitive knowledge ... installs itself in that which is moving and adopts the very life of things."

All aboard! 

after the religion medal at 8th grade graduation at St A's

An excerpt, sixty two years later:

EMPTINESS IS 'I' 

 It is not that "I am empty," but rather, that "emptiness is I" (Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 13) 

To be religious is to live from the standpoint of emptiness

Carter [Robert E. Carter, in The Nothingness Beyond God] quotes the following well-known epigram by the 9th century Chinese master Qingyuan Weixin: 

Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen, I said, ‘Mountains are mountains, waters are waters.’After I got an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, I said, ‘Mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters.’But now, having attained the abode of final rest [that is, Awakening], I say, “Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters.” 

At first, mountains and waters are just mountains and waters, real objects out there in the world. Then, they are no longer mountains and waters, just names. For the awakened, mountains and waters are again mountains and waters, but “lined with nothingness.” Both real objects and names at once, to be seen through the “double aperture,” which is two and at the same time one. This again is the meaning of the title Carter chose for his book on Nishida: The Nothingness Beyond God. The reference here is to Meister Eckhart, whom Nishida read, along with the most significant Christian thinkers, who posited a Godhead he saw as nothingness above God the Creator, acknowledging a deeper Dao-like source of non-being out of which God created the world of being. Nishida’s disciples, Nishitani, Keiji and Ueda, Shizuteru regarded Eckhart as close to Buddhism in his interpretation of Christianity. Ueda spent time in Germany to write a doctoral dissertation on Eckhart. In his last writings, Nishida seems to have hoped that the West finds its own way to his philosophy of nothingness through a recovery of its own religious tradition. He suggested parallels between Christianity and the Pure Land School of Buddhism, which are both devotional, that is, relying on the “other power” of a deity. In Japan, the two paths, Zen’s reliance on “own power,” and Pure Land’s reliance on “other power,” are seen as equally able to lead practitioners to awakening. Could Christianity learn to see itself as the same as Zen? Could philosophy and science see being and reason as enveloped by a broader “religious” logic of the place of nothingness? I wish I could believe that it can happen. The East, however, which has mastered Western ontology and objective thinking, while most of the West is still happy to remain ignorant of Asian nothingness and the concrete experience of actual reality in the present moment, will most probably get there before the West does!

(--by Nick Bea, from Kyoto School of Philosophy website,) https://thekyotoschoolofphilosophy.wordpress.com/emptiness-is-i/ 

It has always intrigued me, the question: What holds us together?

Now, nothing.

who will care for the baby

Red hats
Native American drums —
many versions Rashômon the air

Looking and listening
silently —
what a fool I am

can nothing be something

There's missed calls everywhere

black men shot by police

banks taking homes from poor


women overpowered by men

bodies defeated by cancer

institutions crushing individuality



     a missed call in a championship football game



what's not right is never made right, not

by assertion or saying what's done is done

nothing's done


it all slip-slides down the road

folded paper in back pocket

documents placed in courthouse folders



     there is no defense for what's not right



what's right

is each time

created new


when what may be

comes about

in our seeing



     what has never been



become  

what is  

now here


where faith

reduces everything

to unknowing yet caring gaze