old cow in hudson valley hollow

full moon 

cool air

in maine dooryard

dog foursquare

pees by leaf pile

the boys together

I've never found

God anywhere

I am just here

I don't know God

don't know (as Doris

says) is most intimate 

circus is in town

Sometimes it’s silly

carnivals of opinion

elephant droppings

brooms sweep the poop right away

wagons cart up to news desks

the ritual of bondage and accusation

 We live in the prison of our enclosed mind. We are our own jailers. We set the sentence, the emotions, and the conditions of our incarceration.

No one has put us there. We walk in and lock the door. We sit and stew. We plead guilty.

Tonight is a good night. To release the prisoner we have only to shut up, do not confess, step away from the scene and conditions of the crime we commit against ourself, and go home.

We imprison ourselves.

Come clean.

Don’t rat yourself out.

Don’t be a patsy.

Rehabilitate yourself.

Get out of jail, free.

earth day — the body serves, entering the earth

Heather Cox Richardson on the background of Earth Day. 

I look out window and there it is. Earth! What a joy!

I’ll add my ashes to this beautiful home. This body knows where it belongs.

Last evening at practice we read  “Water the earth with the tears of your joy”: An Earth Day Reflection from 2020 by Jim Friedrich. Wonderful piece. (Be sure to watch the 2.5 minute YouTube piece at end.)

That piece and this poem by Wendell Berry capped an intimate meditation into our incorporative participation with what is going on with Earth.

        Enriching the Earth

                by Wendell Berry

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass

to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song. 

-- from The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982, by Wendell Berry

There's something worth our undivided attention to attend to our very nature emerging from and as Earth.

first things first

 Earth 

Is where

God has gone

Disappearing

Until you and I

Become human

We don’t need

To find God

We need

To find out 

what being 

human means

Thus

Reappearing

God

writing home every day

I have

run out

of words

Into 

stone silent

gaze

Remember

Africa is a

continent

Although

hard to 

believe

There is

anything

outside of

Maine

Outside 

this looking

to do, absurdly, that which we are, given, to do

Prayer becomes the subtle intake and outflow of breathe. 

It becomes a simple dedication of intention for the wellbeing of others.

 It becomes difficult to pick a goal -- do good and avoid evil, pray for the salvation of souls, the end of terrorism, the diminishment of hate, the cessation of war and violence. 

All worthy of prayer.

But prayer to whom? To implore God to assist good and eliminate evil? Does God need such prodding?

Given the way the world is, perhaps to pray that my fellow humans choose well. Choose between thoughtless unkindness and thoughtful compassion.

It feels a little ridiculous that we human beings have to beg some all-powerful divine being to activate their attention and assist in the diminishment of cruelty, hateful acts, dishonest manipulation of others, and violent acts one upon another.

What kind of divinity requires subservient imploring of intervention?

No.

As long as I continue to breathe I can hold such activity as prayer focused upon my fellow beings to choose well between good and evil.

I don't think the traditional Judeo-Christian God is measuring whether the scale of prayer is tipping enough for heavenly response and intervention.

I suspect, rather, that if I were to understand prayer, it would be a desire for our attentive presence toward one another. A vibrational energy of interconnection evoking a longing for the wellbeing of each and every being in this existence.

Perhaps gratitude.

For being-alive.

Toward being-here.

I do not comprehend the notion of "God". Unless, God is that which is. Unless God is that which is coming to be.

Are we essentially praying toward that which we long to be with one another?

To be with one another in wholeness?

Is God the longing for attentive presence and compassionate wholeness? Not "out there" somewhere, but on its way up from within those beings intent on realizing the emerging wholeness that encompasses and serves all-being in its evolving into what it is meant to be in this realm of appearance?

Meetingbrook is an absurd intention to contribute to the emergence and awareness of those with whom we share the journey through this awkward experience of existence and consciousness.

We try to do, absurdly, that which we are, given, to do.

And so, we pray for each other, for one-another, intending our common breathe and breathing to be beneficial, benevolent, and sufficient for this time.

ecpc — as friday gives way to saturday — stephen dunn

Poetry as door to the invisible. 

Here and Now

            Stephen Dunn 1939 –2021

            for Barbara

        There are words

I've had to save myself from,

like My Lord and Blessed Mother,

words I said and never meant,

though I admit a part of me misses

the ornamental stateliness

of High Mass, that smell

        of incense. Heaven did exist,

I discovered, but was reciprocal

and momentary, like lust

felt at exactly the same time—

two mortals, say, on a resilient bed,

making a small case for themselves.

        You and I became the words

I'd say before I'd lay me down to sleep,

and again when I'd wake—wishful

words, no belief in them yet.

It seemed you'd been put on earth

to distract me

from what was doctrinal and dry.

Electricity may start things,

but if they're to last

I've come to understand

a steady, low-voltage hum

        of affection

must be arrived at. How else to offset

the occasional slide

into neglect and ill temper?

I learned, in time, to let heaven

go its mythy way, to never again

        be a supplicant

of any single idea. For you and me

it's here and now from here on in.

Nothing can save us, nor do we wish

to be saved.

        Let night come

with its austere grandeur,

ancient superstitions and fears.

It can do us no harm.

We'll put some music on,

open the curtains, let things darken

as they will.

From Here and Now, published by W.W. Norton. Copyright © 2011 by Stephen Dunn. 

Where nothing can save us. 

Nor do we wish to be saved.

a world view

Is it 

Our choice —

Good or evil?

what is behind nothing

Kerry Ellen, 

Becca & Megan, 

and Lisa Jean

in Rockport Harbor

of a Thursday

After coffee milk

And blueberry lemon

Slice

Next to white van

Topped with green canoe

Driver listening

To some audio novel

As I do to Dr No

by Percival Everett 

It occurs to me

We are each

Appearing

As if from

Behind 

What is in front

Nothing Being written 

by the nothing that is

And the nothing

That is not — call it

Creatio ex nihilio

and that's that

winter is winter

spring is spring

each belongs

to itself

and one-

another

if there are 

no questions

I'll say 

goodnight

in this dreamworld

This: 

At the sound of the bell

in the silent night, 

I wake from my dream 

in this dreamworld of ours. 

Gazing at the reflection 

of the moon in a clear pool, 

I see, beyond my form, my real form.

—Kojisei (circa 1600) 

 That. 

by their sweet questionings

Chris at Tuesday Evening Conversation brought up revealed truth.

Perhaps, that which can’t be reached by ordinary thought or logical inference.

What is it?

Try this . . .

If Reality is a unified extension of Being, (or vice versa) and if what is whole is the background Source of What Is, do things emerge out into appearance as surprising isomorphic realizations of already inter-existing relational phenomena whose form and formlessness blink on-and-off, in-and-out, throughout time and space, dimensions and imagination revealing Itself by means of Attention and/or Ritual Faith?

Theologians have their word, transubstantiation. One thing becomes another thing even as appearance seems to indicate it is what it was, and (let’s call it) faith seems to hold that it is now what it really is.

“Hocus Pocus” is a diminutive phrase coming from “Hoc est enim corpus meum,”  the words traditionally used at the consecration in Catholic liturgy. One level of reasoning, however incomprehensible, is that bread is no longer bread, wine no longer wine, but, now, body and blood of Jesus the Christ. This contention, patently absurd on its surface, haunts the imagination of nonduality and non-separative wholeness of being.

Perhaps, in effect, the reality of transubstantiation is not really about change, but rather, about pointing to the very nature/fact of what something is.

We acknowledge ordinary temporal and spatial change. Winter becomes spring. Bare trees flower. Youthful bodies become aged bodies.

But what of non-temporal and non-spatial metamorphosis? “Form is emptiness, emptiness form.” The Heart Sutra also claims there is “no old age and death and also no extinction of them.” 

Night becomes day, day becomes night. Things change, we say. 

Woodpecker dismantles tree trunk. Dozens of cars occupy the same space only seconds apart. The 18 year old who rebounded and jump shot is now the 80 year old watching the Warriors end their season with bad shooting losing to the Kings with Klay Thompson 0 for 10 and scoreless in defeat.

But let's re-translate plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”).(wiktionary) -- usually translated "the more things change, the more they stay the same"

Let's put forward this translation: "The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself."

Hundreds of thoughts and emotions occupy the same physical emotional intellectual space only milliseconds appending in tandem.

Cats are hungry and watchful at same time. Dog stares and pees at same time. What we call (in ignorant appellation) human and divine, matter and form, one and many, this and that, mine and yours — are separative words for one reality done distinct and believed to be different.

Which brings me back to transubstantiation. Our personal preference hubris makes of one two. (See e.e. cumming’s poem.) Still, I am confounded as to how singularity, morphic resonance, and quantum entanglement figure with the notion that each thing is each thing — and yet each thing is part of and belongs to Itself-as-Itself, one thing as another, another as one thing.

Separation is a great excuse for war, injustice, crime, and punishment. 

Metaphors abound. Is “the body of Christ” a metaphor for what is whole, entire, without beginning or end,  eternal (no time), infinite (without boundary) and non-imaginal (without an image)? 

Our imagination creates worlds. God’s, we say, created this world. (Explain that to someone sitting in a cafe with a New York Times.)

Let Wallace Stevens have his stanza:

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

(From poem, Sunday Morning, by Wallace Stevens)

The mystic looks without discrimination. 

Mystics see what is there to be seen.

Is that awkward word "transubstantiation" a finger pointing to what is, being, revealed?

settling arrears

 Do I think

There’s anything

After death?

I won’t know

So why

Guess.

Lights out

Fire ashes

Scattered

If I owe you

Five bucks

Check coin can

where to live

Dwell here

Go nowhere

Else

There’s

Nothing 

There

it comin’, رِدَّة (ridda).

Let’s consider

Nobody cares

In 100 years

Earth be ridda 

Us

Shaken off

de die in diem *

We dwell from day to day. *

Word is brought back about a gathering at Camden Opera House for Dean J. this afternoon.

Images and music, videos of his singing opera pieces, incidences of his theatre work, stories by those who knew him. It was lovely, I'm told.

What is it about those who sing? Even if, when asked, say nothing about the religious implications of their song?

I suspect the very act of song is value dispersed and dispensed throughout, over, and within those surrounding that which is sung.

Dean was an aspergent.

Earlier the contemplative nuns from Neumz set out this Missa--Coommunio:

Cantáte Dómino, allelúia:
            Sing to the Lord, alleluia:

cantáte Dómino, benedícite nomen ejus:
            sing to the Lord and bless his name: 

bene nuntiáte de die in diem salutáre ejus,
            Announce his salvation from day to day,

allelúia, allelúia.
            alleluia, alleluia.

Had they sung it at his memorial, he'd nod his head at their art. 

occursus

Altar ego 

Lives in monastery

Coming and going

To chant of hours

Clumping of feet

Into wooden stalls

Each of us

An occursus

Of who we are and

Who we really are

persistent inquiry

Woodpecker telephones 

from tree

It rings and rings 

through morning light

brrdrrdrr brrdrrdrr brrdrrdrr

Does not go 

to answering machine

No one home 

No one

wishes to pickup 

ecpc -- "e contrario-poetica-cogitatio" --welcome to american zen

At Friday Evening Conversation, this:

Song

God give you pardon from gratitude

and other mild forms of servitude—

and make peace for all of us

with what is easy.

(—poem by Robert Creeley, {1926-2005} p.186, The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 2008; originally in For Love, Poems 1950-1960)

From time to time, usually at Tuesday Evening Conversation, the question has been raised as to what American "Zen" will ultimately come to look like. We know Indian Buddhist meditation (dhyana), Chinese (chan), Japanese (zen), Korean (seon).

After last night’s (wonderful) conversation I’m beginning to think it will resemble something like 

"e contrario-poetica-cogitatio" (ie, on the contrary-poetic-thought) —or, as the acronym of the Latin  

"e contrario-poetica-cogitatio" would look like “ecpc” — (phonetically: easy-peasy).

zzzz

what comes this way will stay

In 1971 this date was Easter.

Outside NYU chapel in Greenwich Village a street person smiled from a small group on their way back to Brooklyn -- and then, fewer, on to highway west. 

It was spring.

Bend down and there it is:
No need to wrest it from others.
With the Way in complete agreement,
The mere touch of a hand is spring:
The way we come upon blooming flowers,
The way we see the year renew itself.
What comes this way will stay;
What is gotten by force will drain away.
A secluded person on an empty mountain,
While rain falls, picks some blades of duckweed.
Freely feeling the flash of dawn:
Leisurely, within the celestial balance.

–Ssu-k’ung T’u (837-908)

Life together.

Curious, isn't it?

It's less a promise than a fact.

That's what life is -- even when seeming separation tries to convince the opposite.

What seems to be is no substitute for the depth of what is.

one thing / done, the / rest follows. (creeley)

Cats fed

Now look around

Where morning nap

no sound from bamboo chime

rain again

sitting alone

dusk lowering

cracked open

sunflower shells

on wood walk

when sound is heard with the eye

Trying to see.

Where would I go?

Anywhere, everywhere, is a teacher pointing to something worth considering, a deepening of the dharma, a telling of the gospel, a recitation of torah, a poetry of creativity, one final glimpse of a vanishing cosmos whispering sweet melody through empty space.

How amazing, how amazing!
Hard to comprehend that
Nonsentient beings expound Dharma.
It simply cannot be heard with the ear,
But when sound is heard with the eye,
Then it is understood.

—Tung-shan (807-869)

Whoosh of cars passing along Barnestown Road.

In the dream two dinghies swept under waterfront (my childhood church?) are suddenly gone as I try to figure how to get them up and out to be used again. 

Then they’re not there. My socks wet and torn in the grisly bottom of receding water trying to avoid shards of iron, glass, and ragged stone now exposed.

There’s no floating away. No air pump to inflate the no longer there green edged inflatable.

The childhood wooden church was torn down leaving demolition site between 61st and 62nd street just up from Bay Parkway. I’d spent many hours in silence in that creaky snap-settling building after shutting it down evenings after working answering door and phones in rectory during school years.

The red candle in sanctuary.

The bicycle ride home in the dark along 21st avenue.

The smell of Lima beans from Nana’s stove lingering up basement stairs.

instanding near

 too visible

I lose interest

looking up names

I've known

everyone wants

to be known 

it's the ones

not found

instanding 

near, undetected

time to dash off

What is

This?

This is

What is

Taking place

Between us…

Re-

Lation-

Al-

Ity

now that moon blocked out sun, rebound

 I’m nearly ready

To die

All I have

To do

Is pick up

Pile of

Laundry from

Behind door

Clear off

Desk in room

Where no

Poems litter

Old pens

Dried ink in

Dusty cans

Pistachio shells

Vacant abandoned

Behind unread book

Body checking

Out going off

Across road

Where crumpled

Debris in ditch

Unpicked

By house with

No letterbox

askance sighting

 With back to sun

dooryard sumie strokes

high trees on gravel-dirt

don't look at god

look at what god is

looking at

tell me when it’s happened

Someone said there will be an eclipse of the sun.

I wonder if it’s ok not to care…

Wonder is good.

least ourselves remembering

Math is not my strong suit.

Hardly anything adds up.

Here's e e cummings: 

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:

one's not half two.  It's two are halves of one:

which halves reintegrating,shall occur

no death and any quantity;but than

all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous

this every truth-beware of heartless them

(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;

or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:

all murdering lies by mortals told make two.

Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;

we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering

love only rides his year.

                          All lose,whole find

(Poem by e.e.cummings) 

Last line cheers. 

Lose it all, find the whole. Lose all, find whole. When everybody loses, the whole is found.

In prison today, gelassenheit.

A good word.