the time we live in

 Some stinky animal

Fumes up barn space

I open back doors

Blowing through 

Monday morning

As God Itself does

Our defumable mind

Our defamable time

sun comes out

"Do not waste your life," he respectfully says.

Zen group in Augusta is chanting.

Elsewhere:

When you realize the fundamental,

You perceive mind;

When you perceive the mind,

You see Buddha.

This mind is Buddha;

The Buddha is mind.

If you want to realize

Early attainment,

Discipline your mind,

Regulate yourself.

When you purify your habits

And purify your mind,

The mind itself is Buddha;

There is no Buddha other

Than this mind monarch.

Fu Shan-hui (487-659)

Back to sitting.

five by five by five — pentalogical mythopoesis

Black people are black

Brown people are brown

Red people are red

White people are white

Yellow people are yellow

In America all are Americans

Every color is its own color

Each race belongs to itself amid all

Each ethnicity it’s own among others

Each religion itself while neighboring

Each agnostic and atheist holds their own

Each gender/sexual identity identifies

Each human expression entering the mix

— Here is what I say — keep your preferences

Hold onto your opinions —live well together

a heuristic in eighty-six seconds

He has been attenuated

There you are

An etymological coup

Is effectuated

No residuals

Mere obviation 

Ah . . . condolences 

Still, like him

I must be gone

Now

As I am

Pleroma’d

There being

No place else

To be

Snookered 

By that schnook

No more

No remorse

No

Recourse

….  …   …

Its heuristic principle would be St. Augustine's axiom that the Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New concealed in the Old …—V. B. Leitch,  American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties,  1988

 Etymology, Adjective and Noun

German heuristisch, from New Latin heuristicus, from Greek heuriskein to discover; akin to Old Irish fo-fúair he found

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heuristic

without predicate

That’s what Philo said. God is that which is without predicate.

Mere, or pure, a divine simplicity, undivided —

Nothing comes after. Nothing precedes.

όχι σήμερα*

 Some days

You look out window

At rain

And think, “no, 

Not today*”

last i noticed was seventy years ago

 Felt bad for Celtics. 

Wished Knicks would ease up, substitute out their starters, give bench the cleanup.

Felt like they were kicking downed adversary long after certain defeat, unnecessarily.

But who am I to say?

At 6’2” I was center on my college team. That was over sixty years ago. Didn’t dunk, ran slow, seldom got past mid court after rebound, outlet pass, fast breaking teammates did their magic. We averaged over 100 points a game. Played huge farm kids at junior colleges, incredibly street-athletic prison inmates, desultory seminary scholars in New York (where I had 20 points in first half, then they noticed me and shut me down.).

But that was long ago. I still travel with an under-inflated black basketball from GoodWill behind driver’s seat in pickup truck. It’s not seen a rim yet since moving in with me.

It was 1956-57 and there was Carl Braun, Ritchie Guerin, Willie Naulls, Dick McGuire, and Kenny Sears (the skinny knick). Back then Manhattan was a different country.

Still … Nice to see Bill Bradley in attendance at Madison Square Garden.

language; fate

In prison this morning a conversation on 

Amos Wilder’s words: 

“The language of a people is its fate.”

How will we word our future?

How word our identity?

How word what is true?

not in my neighborhood you wouldn’t

What do Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and James Comey have in common?

The ire of the man occupying the position of resolute desk sitter on Pennsylvania Avenue.

We are in grammar school.

It is lunchtime.

A sulking self-proclaimed big shot looms over kids at lunch table. 

He is menacing.

Suddenly he realizes something, he recognizes it is his lunch they are eating.

He is despondent.

He calls his mommy and daddy.

He wants them arrested and thrown out of school.

He is every wiseguy bully I’ve ever seen walking streets of Bensonhurst and Bath Beach.

Except -- he is a paper mache mask that hides a toxic visage looking out from deep victimhood.

It doesn’t make him a bad person, only a very sad and lonely person for whom fear is sole asset.

mirroring reality

 One changes everything

Not two

Everything changes one

vespers

 Day dims

Sitting on porch

Light folds in

movement, not explanation

God doesn’t explain 

God presents

We don’t know what 

To do with God

We don’t know how

To move with God

at end of tether, twisting in wind

The American administration 

hurts the American people -- there’s

something very wrong with this --

but nobody has any idea how to correct

such blatantly fraudulent criminality --

a staggering situation, a terrible reality,

a good time to abjure

cat sits, everything flows

sit zazen with panta rhea

on porch --

nothing to report

quibla

 where do all signs point?

    I know! I know!

  They point to where God is...

    has been, will be

the sound tree will put forth new leaves,

Of course I have complaints about my Catholic ethos, history, and serious ruptures of trust and confidence.

So I read historian Pelikan’s words with curiosity. 

“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.”

― Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

 Merriam-Webster has it:

tradition, noun

Synonyms of tradition

1. a. : an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom)

  b : a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable.   … the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet … —J. L. Esposito

2 : the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction

   3 : cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions

   4 : characteristic manner, method, or style in the best liberal tradition

The Online Etymological Dictionary has it:

tradition(n.) 

 

late 14c., tradicioun, "statement, belief, or practice handed down from generation to generation," especially, in theology, "belief or practice based on Mosaic law," later also of Christian practice, from Old French tradicion "transmission, presentation, handing over" (late 13c.) and directly from Latin traditionem (nominative traditio) "a delivering up, surrender, a handing down, a giving up" (also "a teaching, instruction," and "a saying handed down from former times”).

This is a noun of action from past-participle stem of tradere "deliver, hand over," from trans- "over" (see trans-) + dare "to give" (from PIE root *do- "to give"). Tradition is thus a doublet of treason (q.v.).

The meaning "a long-established custom" is from 1590s. The notion in the word is of customs, ways, beliefs, doctrines and such things "handed down" from ancestors to descendants.

Used by 1718 in reference to the hadiths of Islam and doctrine supposed to have been revealed but not written down. In the fine arts and literature, "the accumulated experience and achievements of previous generations." 

 

What I mean by tradition involves all those habitual actions, habits and customs, from the most significant religious rite to our conventional way of greeting a stranger, which represent the blood kinship of 'the same people living in the same place'. ... We become conscious of these items, or conscious of their importance, usually only after they have begun to fall into desuetude, as we are aware of the leaves of a tree when the autumn wind begins to blow them off—when they have separately ceased to be vital. Energy may be wasted at that point in a frantic endeavour to collect the leaves as they fall and gum them onto the branches: but the sound tree will put forth new leaves, and the dry tree should be put to the axe. [T.S. Eliot, "After Strange Gods"] 

 

The senses of tradition and treason still overlapped as late as 1450s, when tradition could mean "betrayal," and Middle English traditour was "betrayer, traitor." Traditores in early Church history was the (Latin) word for those who during the persecutions surrendered the Scriptures or holy vessels to the authorities, or betrayed brethren. 

 T.S. Eliot’s referencing Matthew 3:10 and Luke 3:9 -- "but the sound tree will put forth new leaves, and the dry tree should be put to the axe” stands out for me.

It is spring. New leaves emerge. 

This is not a repudiation of the past. 

It is the continuity of what has been into what will be.

If I surrender.

As I am wont to do.

Were I willing.

If “I” as separate consideration were to fall away.

check them at the door

 Watching congress question administration leaders.

The hostility of the exchanges.

Glad they don’t allow guns to be carried.

as moon rises

 When the breeze

Carries no sound

Creator is passing

not another word

I like it that people want to be more mindful

I like it that there is more concern about lies and deception.

I like it that interest in God seems on the rise.

Everyday life is enough for me. Getting up, going to bed

Truth is also interesting, not worrying about bald-faced lies

And God, the unseen sustaining reality, seems unreachable

I’m glad there’s an American/Peruvian, Augustinian pope

I’m sorry Jason Tatum was injured in game four in New York

I’m not a Celtics fan, not for a long time, it’s awkward

I’m unchurched these days, a hermit who stays close at home

I read religion, poetry, philosophy, current political absurdity

finding myself praying and meditating whenever silence calls

I’m sure I’ll be dead soon, it’s just the way things go, we die

I don’t expect to see God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor nothing

A time will come no one will call my name, I’ll not answer 

When spring buds stretch out on mountain, birds come and go

cars pass on Barnestown road, cats and dog snooze and stretch

I’ll not answer because I am gone, no need to say another word

crucify them

 It’s an odd time

I’d rather

We were sane

But, no, we are 

Insane — look

At us, and weep