Piss-poor, he said last night, our ability to convene a society both equal and equanimous.
No “ ism” will usher it in.
Rather, profundity of heart and depth of mind will assist the transformation needed to arrive at humanitarian value and spiritual largesse.
Or, we can just allow the AI community full leeway to replace humans via the singularity.
One hundred twelve years ago he was born on the East streets shoehorned between Flatbush and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. Today’s his birthday.
There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water — it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.
(-p.57, Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann)
That stream has disappeared into river, into ocean, into cycle of rainfall, thunder, puddles, and whooshing spray from passing tires.
He was a good man pummeled by demands of alarm clock, subway car, church societies, Rheingold and Schaffer, family history, along with loving attempts to hold together centrifugal forces of everyday whirling drip, drip, drip.
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
(-from e.e.cummings poem my father moved through dooms of love)
I light candle in his honor.
I burn incense stick.
I am grateful for the rain and flow through time to dripping eaves outside my window.
On poet Gregory Corso's (3mar1930-17jan2001) gravestone at the non-Catholic cemetery for foreigners at Via Caio Cestio in Rome Italy, there is written::
Spirit
is life
it flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea
(Excerpt from: "One Bird, One Stone: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories" by Sean Murphy. Scribd.)
Thinking of my sister, Patricia, today, anniversary of her death in 1999.
Wondering if life, (not thoughts about, nor experiences of), is it’s own nameless wholeness only realized in (wordless silent attention) looking, (at and as), nothing passing one another through (here and now) a glistening autumn morning in Maine (this 19th/20th of October).
That space between memory and imagination, that space — look for me there.
It’s an empty space.
Where I’ll be.
Something we do not yet recognize surrounds and informs all which is, whether seen or unseen, felt or unfelt, thought or unthought.
“The presence of inherent value in a natural object is independent of any awareness, interest, or appreciation of it by a conscious being.”
(—Tom Regan, “The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic,” Environmental Ethics 3 (1881), pp. 19–34)
We’re unsure what it is, what it is called, or how it does or might arise in our awareness.
But until it does, we remain poor passing facts and strangers to one, another, that which is below our feet, above our head, within and without, us.
Chris from Augusta sends Whitman:
Of The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances
by Walt WhitmanOf the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable
only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,
shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be
these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and
the real something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me
and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows,
aught of them,)May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they
indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and
might prove (as of course they would) nought of what
they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed
points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by
my lovers, my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while
holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and
reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am
silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of
identity beyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
"Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances" by Walt Whitman. Public domain)
Such a timely arrival, having just finished the Mike Flanigan limited series on Netflix.
The horror and "terrible doubt of appearances," of what we do and what we think about what cannot be grasped.
Tweet by Joan Halifax, 7:40pm, 10/15/2021
How can one meditate & not meditate at the same time? By leaving behind complicated notions of what we are doing on the cushion. In Zen, there is no call to become special. Instead, there is tacit consent to accept our experience of the moment & drop the project of enlightenment.
I’m good with this.
(— Theresa of Avila, 28 March 1515 —15 October 1582)
There are things to beware.
October 15 at 10:20 AM ET LONDON — A British lawmaker from the Conservative Party died after being stabbed multiple times in an attack Friday in his home district in southeast England. Police said a 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder and recovering a knife and said it was not seeking anyone else. David Amess, who represented Southend West in Essex, was meeting with constituents when he was assaulted.
John Lamb, chairman of the local Conservative party told Reuters before the reports of his death that “it’s not looking good” and said emergency workers were trying to stabilize him before moving him from the church auxillary where he was meeting with people from his district.
(—from, British lawmaker dies after being stabbed multiple times while meeting constituents, Washington Post)
Sentinel keeps watch as tide goes out.
A new courage is required.
A new time is revealing new dangers.
A new consciousness is now, and exquisitely, necessary.
Heart doc says recent echocardiogram says everything is ok.
A perfect time to keel over with heart failure.
Isn’t that the way things go?
This contrarian existence!
No reason to expect justice will prevail in holding accountable the former administration for crimes against decency and democracy.
Such ability to flaunt laws and ethics is, to some, what makes great this ambivalent country.
Tough call. On one hand, reprobates are reprobates. On the other hand, prison sucks.
I come down squarely on the side of law-abiding populace.
But the impotence of justice to hold reprobates accountable is astounding.
Justice works best against the poor, minorities, or anyone not an elected office-holder with huge fundraising schemes.
Cheer up, mr former chief executive, they’ll never touch you.
You’re untouchable.
Where to begin?
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, This is, and no mistake…
(—Henry David Thoreau)
This is
A good place.
Increasingly, threats are levied against town councils, school boards, hospital personnel, police, and emt’s in the context of COVID-19 protective measures intended to forestall and minimize harm caused by the virus and its mutations.
It is hard to ignore the stringent rhetoric and overt threats.
Elected figures exacerbate the dangerous tone and menacing innuendo in such a way that is difficult to discern their complicity or acceleration of potential violence and undermining of public good.
It is a curious and uncertain time.
More than that, it is a prefiguring of what is on the horizon for uncivil discourse edging toward national unrest and overt public danger.
No amount or personal or private meditation or practice toward equanimity will shield any individual from the threatening eventuality of menace and misuse of power.
Something dangerous and evil this way comes.
Que Dieu nous aide!
Sometimes, sitting still and wondering is all one can do.
The is the centerpiece of the daily morning and evening prayer services and is considered by some the most essential prayer in all of Judaism. An affirmation of God’s singularity and kingship, its daily recitation is regarded by traditionally observant Jews as a biblical commandment.
Structure
The first verse of the Shema, from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, is among the best-known in all of Jewish liturgy. It is recited at the climactic moment of the final prayer of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and traditionally as the last words before death. Traditionally, it is recited with the hand placed over the eyes.
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד
She-ma yisrael, eloheinu, adonai echad
Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One
This verse is followed by one line of text that is traditionally recited in an undertone:
בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד
Baruch shem kavod malchuto l’olam va-ed
Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever
The remainder of the Shema prayer is taken from three biblical sources:
וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽך
וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ
וּקְשַׁרְתָּ֥ם לְא֖וֹת עַל־יָדֶ֑ךָ וְהָי֥וּ לְטֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֥ין עֵינֶֽיךָ
וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזוּזֹ֥ת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
At other times, sitting still and wondering is all that needs be done.