Ascend to the Light
Part V: Zero Summer
(Summer 2021)
Contents
A. Introduction
1. Sotto dura staggion
2. On the Summer Solstice
B. A Nietzschean digression
C. A truer way
3. In memory of an American hero
4. Come out of her
5. Related questions
6. Suppose
7. Vir dei
8. An early morning meditation
9. On the feast of St. Benedict
10. Death of a bird
11. Dirge for a dying regime
12. Wisdom of a man defamed
13. Zero summer
14. The kind of person
15. Summer-winter
16. Pain and pleasure among gemelli
17. Blissful days
18. Teaching
19. In a sea of suffering
20. Pleasure to distract
21. Silent ode to a friend—I
22. No distracting
23. The rescuing ladder of hope
24. Silent ode to a friend—II
25. Sunday morning service
26. Rain—I
27. Rain—II
28. Love’s irresolution
29. Pain at rising
30. Hope for the world
31. In a moment
32. A drop of honey
33. Overcoming
34. A oneing remembered
35. On experiences remembered
36. Remembering in gratitude
37. Return of the raiding ants
38. À la recherche du temps perdu
39. Simple joys
40. Keep moving
41. Sleep-killing pain
42. For Elijah who kept watch
43. Towards a more sober assessment
44. A simple soul
45. What is to be done?
46. Ice
47. Rain
48. Forward
49. Zero summer ending
50. A diagnosis
51. The noonday demon
A. Introduction
1. Sotto dura staggion
Summer unveiled
in two opening notes
a descending minor second
the essence of summer
through Vivaldi’s imagination
the beginning of his violin concerto
“L’estate,” “Summer”
from le quattro stagioni.
To accompany his concerti
the priestly composer published sonnets
detailing his intentions.
From summer:
Sotto dura Staggion
dal Sole accesa
langue l' huom, langue 'l gregge,
ed arde il Pino;
Under a hard season
the Sun blazing
languishes the man
languishes the flock
and burns the pine.
A single note followed wearily
by another, a half-tone lower
a reluctant tired sigh
in a hard season
hot and burning.
2. On the Summer Solstice
The sun appears to stop
as a pendulum at either end of its swing
and daylight that had been lengthening
will now begin to shorten
long days of a naked porno sun
burning up springtime’s green
trying the patience of man and beast
ripening and scorching the grain
relief as daylight fades to evening
eventide into awaited night
stilled the body stilled the mind
dulled by hours of over-much heat
As freezing winter draws the spirit
into the chamber of the ever-waiting
so summer’s fire drives a man
into the shade of the protecting oak
And every mind-soul seeking God
is one in loving response
to that which is without appearances
unseen unknown yet hoped for longingly
Summer a time not for mindless vacating
but to work with earth’s nourishing forces
to bring forth for oneself and others
rich fruits from earth’s warm bosom.
Intermittent drizzle
a wet robin rips up a worm
“everything’s eating everything else,”
as Daniel said of old.
A day reminiscent of early summer
in Crestwood with lush green trees
rain gentle and nourishing
even in a middle-class suburb of New York.
B. A Nietzschean digression
1. The reason nearly all university students, professors, mass media mouths, bureaucrats, Hollywood pretenders, Silicon Techies, and corporate Fat Cats are hard core left wingers—even Marxist and borderline Communist-totalitarians—is because most of the rest of them are. These relatively ungrounded minds simply move with the herd, think or non-think with the herd, smell and look like the herd. No one in contemporary society who genuinely thinks for himself or herself is a hard core leftist. There is a far right herd as well, but it is much smaller and politically and socially inconsequential, a marginalized herd, with its trembling members easily picked off, one by one, or by the thousands.
2. Anyone who thinks for himself must steadfastly refuse to be herdilized. One begins to think for himself by breaking with herd mentality in its predominant forms. That means that one must accept being marginalized, and increasingly vilified. The American-totalitarian herd seeks to destroy any significant voices that contradict its dominant thrust, its over-weening will to power.
3. When a man is devious, he becomes a criminal, a slick lawyer, a politician, or a peddler of spoiled goods. If a woman is devious, she may be just a devious woman.
4. Liberals from the 1930’s into the 1970’s now appear as antiquarians, unwelcomed voices to be drowned out by the totalitarian herd. There is nearly nothing “liberal” about the predominant herd except its tolerance of most forms of highly deviant behavior, much like the super-left “hippies” of the 1960’s—or the Weimar avant-garde, or the perverse National Socialists. The hippies wanted the masses “free” to “be themselves,” to “do their own thing.” The new hard left insists that everyone think and act like them. “Freedom” is bourgeois, or in present terminology, “white supremacist” or “racist.”
5. Among the totalitarian herd in America, the more perverse, counter-reasonable, ungrounded in reality the one is, the more they are praised. Even six year olds who claim that they want a “sex change” get praised for being “courageous.” In reality they are ignorant fools being used by the main herd to destroy every conceivable tie to reality and to traditions that were developed in accordance with nature and its laws. Whatever is unnatural, and destructive of the truly human, is worshipped by our “educated elites” as original, liberated, and above all, “woke.”
6. If a man or woman openly professes loyalty to the prevailing leftist mob, then they are free to say and do whatever they wish—even make openly racist or sexist statements, because the herd chooses to ignore their little peccadillos. “That’s just old Uncle Joe being himself,” as he sniffs another woman or makes ugly racist comments, such as asking a black man who dared to question him, “Hey, man, are you a junky?” Because Uncle Joe swore allegiance to the totalitarian herd, he is given a complete pass to be a complete ass. He plays that role very well.
7. The totalitarian herd in America tolerates no rivals to itself within this “society,” or within any possible scope of their operations. That is how it immediately shows itself to have broken radically from its liberal origins. Genuine liberals tolerate and encourage diversity of thought, opinion, expression. The totalitarians in our midst seek to squelch or to destroy any opposition. The way they treat their critics amply shows their true totalitarian, power-hungry credentials. We see in the totalitarian hard-left herd exactly when Alexis de Tocqueville found within American democratic society: “the tyranny of the majority.” It is not only tyrannical, but a majority at a very low cultural and intellectual level.
8. “Don’t get in the way of a falling knife.” Don’t get in the way of an American Commo-Nazi who has set his site on your back. He or she has no qualms about pulling the trigger, and throwing your corpse into an oblivion hole, as a good Positivist would do. You will be as if you never existed: erased from the consciousness of the herd.
9. What is the end state of our totalitarian herd? It is the creation of an all-power, all-knowing, all-controlling Mega State, which subsumes everything into the vortex of its will to power, to dominate. The Idol State of the Soviets and the Nazis is small and relatively impotent compared to the Mega State being concocted in our midst by the mindless herd. “All power, honor, obedience, glory to the State!” And all say, “Amen and A-women.” (Can our prevailing herd become much more stupid? Watch. There is no bottom in their abyss of perversity.
10. “I’m not a prophet, nor was meant to be.” I’m no Zarathustra, no Nietzsche the knower who presents his teaching to replace centuries of the unfolding of divine wisdom. No, I’m not a prophet, and no Gnostic “knower,” but one seeking to love the God who seeks me to love. And so ends this Nietzschean digression, a mere moment, not of love, but of disgust at what we Americans are making of ourselves. I admit feeling profound shame for what we have done, and are doing, to ourselves, and to the world at large. As noted, bottomless is the abyss of our perversity, and limitless our collective will to dominate. America, behold the beast you have made yourselves to be.
C. A truer way
3. In memory of an American hero
“You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey.”
General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)
In times past, our country was blessed
with some noble men and women
knowledge of whom shames us--
if we are still capable of feeling shame--
we who are often jumbos without and dwarfs within.
Where is the soul we have squandered?
Where are genuine manliness and womanliness
sustained by profound Menschlichkeit,
not founded on the sand of self and passing whims
but grounded and nourished through sustained obedience?
What have we done to ourselves, fellow Americans?
How have we squandered our inheritance?
We who elevate noisy rabble into public gods
and ignore or tear down reminders
of those who’ve shown us most noble lives.
America has become a land of ignorance--
minds and souls closed to what endures,
hardened against the truth that convicts us
of our wanton pettiness, littleness of character--
we narcissists enchanted by our ugliness.
I have known few or none in my life
who steadily display the manly and noble virtues
embodied in the soldier, Robert E Lee.
To see and know Lee as he truly was
is to see oneself as one is not--
falling far short of nobility.
Although one’s character displays itself early
rarely undergoing major changes in life
some degree of genuine improvement
is ever possible for one attuned to God.
First one must come face to face
with who or what he has been and has become.
Your life is not as true or noble as you thought,
nor are you the good person you think you are.
Let the light of a genuinely good man
expose the failures and flaws in yourself,
and then you may begin to grow
into the man you ought to be.
“O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross”
your shrunken littleness
by examining the life of the truly noble--
of Lee or another exceptional human being
who did his duty despite his feelings,
who accepted ignominy and failure
with grace and unfeigned human kindness
genuinely serving and inspiring.
“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.”
Robert E Lee
4. Come out of her
“Come out, come out of her my people,”
echo voices heard while driving on city streets,
in crowded stores strewn along 10th Avenue,
echoing through the gorgeous gorge
connecting Great Falls to Helena,
down the Highwoods and the Little Belts,
along the cascading Missouri and serpentine creeks,
across the wheat fields of the Golden Triangle,
through the Rockies of Montana and her varied valleys,
resounding in Missoula, the Bitterroot, and Kalispell.
“Come out from the mess and press
of aging outdated institutions
out from the churches and religious bodies,
out from all sorts of social groupings,
out from public madness and maddening noise,
out from human deceits and pretentious conceits,
out from the decadent, the comatose, the dying,
out from nation-states as organized societies,
out from the decrepit novus ordo seclorum,
grown feeble, gangrenous, moribund, and rotting.
“Make a break from your native country
neither loving nor embracing what it has become
observing its rapid transmogrification
in processes beyond all rational control.
One need not renounce citizenship
to stand apart from the trans-borderline insanity
avoiding all attachment to the dying beast
whose body is ravenously devoured by
the all-consuming malignant Babylonian head
metastasizing along the tidal Tigris-Potomac.
“Turn away without futile rebellion
from the Chosen People or any People,
from holy mother church or any church,
from the rites, rituals, and too-grasping hands
seeking monies to run all-too-clever programs,
with over-stuffed hierarchs imprisoned
in dying unloved unwanted institutions;
turn away and walk quietly into the night
that’s descending over this land and its people
into bodies encaging time-bounded dying souls.”
5. Related questions
With any time remaining
to this earthly Adam
this passing shadow
what is the best to do?
What ought not be done?
What can be left undone?
What are the essential duties
that must be done
and what is most noble to do
before striking the tent?
6. Suppose
Suppose writing non-poetic poems
is neither especially fitting for me
nor a productive way to spend time.
If I continue to write--
for writing has been a means to think,
clarifying thoughts and developing them--
How could I most profitably write,
whether for my benefit
or perhaps for another’s?
Also consider that these strange poetic forms
force a concentration of words,
an economy often lost in wordier prose.
If I continue to write in poetic forms,
are some forms more suitable for me than others?
Note that strict meter and rhyme faded away
and in their place I offer questions,
phrases, possible insights, heuristic images
meant to communicate from mind to mind,
allowing thought and intended meanings
to take precedence over form and beauty,
for both of which poets often sacrifice truth.
“Poets are liars,” I’ve read--
perhaps in Heracleitos, perhaps in Nietzsche--
and it contains a simple truth:
Often for the sake of sound or beauty,
a poet stretches meanings or even fabricates,
sometimes at the expense of experienced truth.
Yet truth is more noble than beautiful expressions,
unless those word formations are also true,
as one often finds in Shakespeare or in Aeschylus,
or in the great Hebrew prophets,
all of whom were gifted poets
as well as speakers for the God they served.
“Have you not seen? Have you not heard?
Yahweh is the everlasting God,
the creator of the ends of the earth.”
How magnificent, how inspiring
is the poetic prophesying of the unknown prophet
conventionally known as “Deutero-Isaiah.”
Such a marriage of meaning and beauty in speech
require a profound spirituality
and a remarkable intellect and word sense.
Perhaps if I wrote less, studied and thought more,
my writing could become truer and more beautiful.
Perhaps silence is what I most lack.
Take heart: a long deep silence awaits me.
7. Vir dei
Faithful and just was the man,
grounded on the ageless rock,
who accepted suffering without flinching,
ill-treatment without complaint.
In the morning, before the sun appeared,
he turned his mind towards the unseen,
and listened without any expectations
for the one he faithfully served.
In his selfless strength, he absorbed blows
and words ill conceived and poorly spoken
without anger or any recriminations,
without retaliatory accusations.
His leathered hands no longer washed clean,
toughened by labor, scarred, and oiled;
and with these hands he continued to work
in heat, in cold, without a complaint.
His obedience was ever immediate,
without hesitation or self-serving excuses.
At the call of his duties to others
he dropped at once what he was doing.
Here was an unwavering man of God
whose goodness was a clear and steady stream,
whose gentleness showed his inner strength,
whose solidity of character never softened.
***
“Morning by morning he opened my ear.”
“When I said, `Ah, I can’t find you, where are you?’
I heard the question, “Have you lost your ability
to let yourself be found?”
“Mockingbirds are better thought of as praising birds.”
“My goal with you is to put myself out of business.”
“I could not start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
So I took a magnifying glass, placed it over some dead leaves,
concentrated the rays of the sun onto the leaves--
they smoked and quickly burst into flame.”
8. An early morning meditation
In the silence before dawn, in solitude,
allow words to arise into consciousness:
“He is mind and only mind, holy and ineffable.”
“Fear not, you are mine.
I AM with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
“A little mistake in the beginning leads to a far greater one later.”
“You who are thirsty, come to the waters.”
“All flesh is as grass.”
“Because you are precious in my sight, and I love you.”
“Happiness is an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue.”
“I AM; all that exists passes away.”
“Because I live, you also live.”
“Come to Me, you who labor and are heavy burdened,
and I will refresh you.”
“Who are you, LORD?”
“Where else shall I go? You have the words of eternal life.”
“In his light we see light.”
“Before you call, I AM with you.”
“Thought thinking thought;
mind minding mind,
nous nous-ing nous.”
A small stream flowing out from between rocks.
“Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.”
“Moses, Moses.”
“Here I am.”
Here You are.
“I in you, you in me.”
All utterances fade away. Long silence. Then:
“I must down to the seas again,
to the lonely seas and the sky…”
9. On the feast of St. Benedict
(11 July 2021)
“Listen o son to your master’s precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart.”
So Benedict begins his Rule
with words profound inviting puzzling.
Not wishing to imitate the squirming lawyer
who sophistically asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
still I wonder and ask, “Who is my master?”
I think of God and of Christ, and of right reason,
and so many others in life have some claim
to authority over me, to be masters in some way.
For a monk it surely includes the Rule itself,
and the Abbot, and even the monastic community.
And in the Rule it includes the local bishop
as having jurisdiction over the monastery
(in some matters, on some occasions),
and presumably the master includes civil authorities,
when they are civil and when they are uncivil and petty.
It could well include one’s own conscience,
especially to the extent it has been well formed,
is grounded in reality, truth, goodness,
not merely in private opinions and judgments.
Such a list of masters can be extended
seemingly endlessly if one wishes
reflecting on those to whom obedience may be due.
“Listen to your master’s precepts,” instructions, lessons.
“And who is or are my masters?”
First and foremost the Almighty, the Creator,
with the Christ in union with God,
with the holy Spirit at work in human spirits,
with reason open to divine movements,
attuned to nature, to the fullness of reality,
and not merely one’s inner yammerings.
***
“Your master’s precepts.” Magister is the word
translated here as “master,” as I recall.
With the root magnus, magi, greatness
can be felt. The secondary meaning in Latin
is an authoritative teacher, as was Benedict,
as were the Greek philosophers who did not “teach”
so much as instruct in the way of seeking truth,
provoking and guiding a mind in its ascent.
Within the Christian community, Christ himself
is the teacher par excellence; “the rest are learners,”
in Greek, mathētoi, often translated as “disciples.”
Then there is the magisterium of the church,
the teaching authority of those in communion with Christ.
In all cases, according to the father of western monasticism,
one must “incline the ear of the heart,”
which means “receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience
you may return to him from whom you had departed
by the sloth of disobedience.” Return to whom?
For Benedict, return to God, under the leadership
of Jesus Christ, and his appointed spiritual father,
the abba, in the monastery. Return to God, return
to the One from whom all beings come forth,
and to whom all will return willingly or by death.
***
“Speaking and teaching belong to the master;
the disciple’s part is to be silent and to listen.”
No doubt there is practical wisdom in these words,
but they seem to display a misunderstanding of learning.
How does one gain insight without questioning?
How often in my life have I appreciated someone’s questions?
Real learning is more dialogical than St. Benedict teaches,
and his assertion fosters a lack of intellectual inquisitiveness
hence subduing the movement towards truth.
Of all the words in St. Benedict’s Rule,
this saying is the one that most bothered me,
and which I knew I could never accept.
Socrates or Plato or Aristotle, or Thomas Aquinas,
would never make such a claim,
for they all encouraged good questioning.
Monastic life does not encourage questioning,
but fosters a mental staleness and lack of openness.
A society without open questioning stifles the spirit.
Moses asks Yahweh, “and if they ask me,
`What is his name?’ How should I respond?”
Imagine a monastic version of Yahweh:
“Do not think, do not question.”
Such was the response of young Karl Marx
to a hypothetical questioner, “Why is there something?”
The forbidding of questions, the failure to see
questioning as a gift of the divine Mind
discloses the closure at the heart of much “religious” life.
10. Death of a bird
Opening my front door before dawn,
a small bird was seen huddled in the corner
where the door frame meets a wall.
He moved slowly, did not fly away.
An hour later, the fledgling had turned around
still standing within inches of the corner.
Gently I picked him up, set him in the grass,
and watched him struggle to move.
He could flap his wings slowly, barely crawl.
The little brown bird seemed helpless.
Two hours later when we returned
from my breakfast with Bob and from the cemetery
where Moses walked ever so slowly
and Elijah played ball, despite the early heat,
there in the grass lay the bird,
unmoving, seemingly lifeless, dead.
Unsure, I set the bird in cooling shade.
Returning several hours, I could see
that the little creature had not moved.
His lifeless body bespoke his death.
Back in the house, I stooped down to Moses,
lying nearly motionless, for he struggles
to rise from his mat, struggles to walk,
and I know what is awaiting us.
11. Dirge for a dying regime
Sodom and Gomorrah writ large
across the war-torn pages of history:
fools who dishonor your most noble
while praising the wicked to the skies.
“Son of man, can these bones live?”
You know, o LORD… surely I do not.
12. Wisdom of a man defamed
“…Take a happier view of things
and do not be dissatisfied
because they do not accord more nearly
with your views and wishes.”
13. Zero summer
White-blossoming Italian oregano
peppermint, spearmint, gingermint
swimming naked green in a sea of clover
beta grape vines and Virginia creeper
grass competing with years of pine needles
honey locust sprouting up from subterranean roots
feeding a marauding deer or two.
“Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer
nur ein Schlummer, Jesu
durch dein Schweißtuch sein.”
Gentle be the sorrow of my death
only a slumber, Jesus,
through the cloth that wiped your face
through the veil of this sweet encounter
death never far from my thoughts
not death abstractly considered, but my death
drawing ever nearer day by day
passing moment to passing moment
dying moment to dying moment
as I feel you pressing into my flesh
and loosening the anchors of consciousness
Death foreshadowed by pain
at times excruciating
as your lower back, buttock, left leg
ache or throb from sciatica:
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding”
shattering your falsely secure self-knowledge
as daylight breaks in zero summer
well before the blessed night
has cooled the generating burning earth
coloring orange the waning crescent moon
summer and pain together
teaching acceptance of what is--
of that which one cannot change
“And all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well”
even as Moses pants and walks restlessly
not far from his body’s cessation
old for a Lab completing fourteen years
loyal kindly most gentle Moses
so attuned to whatever whoever I am.
***
Years ago I came to accept Montana’s winters
cold still colder frozen solid land seemingly unendingly
the choir of stars singing brightly in frigid blackened skies
Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and the wayward Moon
often with wind to chill one’s passing fantasies
returning a lone wanderer to stark reality
accepting winter as a welcomed guest, an unexpected gift.
Summers flare intensely climaxing in a fire
of naked-sun heat and burning forest smoke
bright brighter searching penetrating light
almost to the point of madness or insanity
to one who refuses to accept what is as it is
while yearning for winter’s chills in summer’s burnings,
and summer heat in winter’s icy blasts.
With far more days above ninety so far this year
than the accustomed pattern in central Montana
zero summer seemingly reaching out into eternity
beating repeating days of wave after wave of naked sun
here and now and not in a gentler summer
I’ve made my peace with the season of heat
Accepting these passing days for what they are
an often unappreciated gift from the unseen giver of good
even now today before the silver cord is severed
and the golden bowl is shattered
and spirit returns to Spirit, breath to Breath,
and dust returns to earth-bound dust.
14. The kind of person
When I had my first Labrador retriever--
whom I named Rumsfeld, “Rummy,”
during Bush-Rumsfeld’s invasion of Iraq--
friends could see how taken I was
with my most gentle, diplomatic dog
(whom I described as “Rumsfeld’s shadow”).
One of these friends, perhaps Kelly O’Brien,
gave me a wooden sign that reads,
“My goal in life is to be the kind of person
my dog thinks I am.”
I pondered the words, and several years later,
after Rummy had died at four of kidney failure
and now I had Zoe and young Moses,
I made a few small emanations to that sign,
crossing out a word or two and adding a few.
It stands in my kitchen by the sink and reads:
“My goal in life is to be the the kind of person
that I think my dogs are.”
So much truer, for they are noble creatures,
and I, a wounded work in progress.
15. Summer-winter
Summer’s the season for activities,
Winter the time to contemplate.
Under a blazing sun one labors
nurturing nature to bring forth abundantly
its life-sustaining fruits and seasonings
mindful of one’s passing place within the cosmic whole.
Contemplation, theoría, takes various forms:
diligent study and quiet reflection;
closely attending to nature, art, music;
walking alertly, sitting still, being thankful;
remembering the One beyond all and in all;
examining oneself in light of divine goodness;
renewing inner self-surrender.
Contemplation is activity engaging the whole person,
from the body and feelings to thinking and insight,
including love of what is good and beautiful,
to what is transitory and what endures.
In contemplating, winter becomes a season of growth,
inner growth, nourishing fecundity from the hidden depths
into the body’s body and hence out into the world
through action costing of self.
Through contemplation, the divine presents itself,
pouring itself into receptive human beings
and thence out into the waiting whole.
16. Pain and pleasure among gemelli
Sometimes a painful itch, sometimes red
even bleeding patches of skin
cracking, flaking, inviting scratching
sensations ranging from slightly painful
to deliciously pleasant
whether accompanied by other stirrings
or not.
Sicknesses yield their blessings
to those who still wonder.
17. Blissful days
All our days are young and bright and filled with sun
delightful to see, to hear, to smell, to feel,
and you and I know nothing of sickness, suffering, and death,
had never conceived that life might be dukkah
For we live blissfully among the blissful butterflies
sweetly among delicious dark chocolates
youthful and filled with dreams among radiant young dreamers
knowing nothing of lugubrious sobriety
while walking in a grove of green grass and granite monuments
we pause from our light-hearted jesting to read inscribed words:
“What you are now, I once was;
what I am now, you will be.”
And laughing we shrug off such seeming pleasantries
as someone’s little joke written in sparkling stone,
for everyone knows well that we are forever as we are now,
and not some other way—no other way at all.
18. Teaching
Night light
pleasant painful
growing decaying
living deceasing
goodness evil
beauty ugliness
you it
unbounded bounded
here not here
being not being
there not there
one many
all none
All teaches one
with ears to hear
and eyes to see
the truth and beauty
of unfolding reality.
19. In a sea of suffering
In the emergency room
babbling nearly unintelligibly
bubbling up from a spring of delirium
pain, unending pain, interminable pain
Or is it? All things pass.
Pain absorbing all consciousness
blocking out all subtleties
forcing you to know your littleness
fragility mortality mere nothingness
adrift in a boundless sea of suffering
submerged in an ocean of pain.
“Life is dukkha. Old age is dukkha…”
“And death is swallowed up in Life.”
20. Pleasure to distract
Seeking pleasure to distract from pain
mental pleasure of forming images
arising into consciousness
willing molding by desires
working through fragmented memories.
Pleasure intense enough
to drown out, even for a moment
this unrelenting pain of sciatica.
A white-bearded time-chiseled face
a chest clothed in white and gray
strong shoulders supporting
and a breast to embrace
a chest to rest one’s head on--
More than this I do not need
lower down than this I need not venture
touching embracing resting my whole being
quietly letting me be quietly
with years of submerged suffering
washed away on the soothing chest
of your most noble goodness
listening to the wisdom of your beating heart.
Writing now’s a substitute for tactile action
and also an attempt to distract the mind
from unrelenting pain in my left buttock
in a lateral hip muscle, perhaps the piriformis
as the physician’s assistant reported
to explain these waves of muscular pain
spasming around the left sciatic nerve
and sending pain chasing hounding pain
down my aching tingling numbing leg and foot.
The pleasure of study also distracts the mind
from more fleeting pleasures and pains of life
yet study also requires concentration
the kind of mental focus rendered difficult by pain--
by the fruit-flies of mental anxieties and grief
and by the incessant wagging nags of physical pain.
I have little doubt that Plato or Aristotle
could seek truth even in the midst of bodily pain,
as Voegelin dictated his final meditation
on his deathbed nearly to his final breath.
Learn from the trials and pains of life:
“You are a man and only a man,
and not a god.”
And “all flesh is as grass,”
And “all things must pass.”
21. Silent ode to a friend—I
That you have true love for me
and I have love for you, my friend,
I do not doubt.
Your love and mine are not the same.
How could they be
given our real differences?
And so I shall not ask
what you may well prefer not to give:
I shall not ask to rest my head on your chest
for you may not understand this desire.
Each one has his limitations.
I shall not ask, but here and now
in the silent recesses of my longing heart
urged on by the body’s constant pain
I choose you, dear friend,
as the one on whose chest
I will give myself to God
in utter surrender unto death.
I choose to picture you naked
from the waste up but not below;
and on your bare and well-seasoned chest
I rest my head, laying down all my weariness,
and gratefully I surrender in love
to you and through you
to the one who is Love unlimitedly,
whose heart I now hear alive and beating
in the beating of your manly heart.
And I dissolve with years of needless agonies
at home at last
at home at last at home.
22. No distracting
Awoke before dawn with pain
as intense as it has been,
indicating that the meds may help
may relieve pain for a while
but they are not healing me.
How to heal? Pain relief is good,
but positive healing would be far better.
When pain so overwhelms the body
and consciousness, one must wait.
Wait with hope for healing at some point
Wait trusting that it could become far worse,
that Jesus suffered far more intensely
in Gethsemane and on Calvary.
My character is now on display:
trust and wait patiently for God’s time,
or “curse God and die,” which profits nothing.
I choose to trust that the good physician
knows what he’s doing, and in the fire,
in the midst of the consuming fire to say
“The LORD has given, the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD.”
23. The rescuing ladder of hope
Truly pain isolates by drawing one’s resources
back into the bodied self and immediate needs;
but spirit can lift the psyche from the chains of pain
into freer realms, including human communion.
By the power of will and memory, even now
I remember those around the world gathered in prayer
gathered in communities to be mindful of God,
to thank the creator, to seek his face and his benefits.
In Christ the head of humanity, no man is fully an island,
no one is cut off beyond the range of hope,
beyond the liberating love of the Almighty.
In the beginning was not pain; “in the Beginning, God…”
“And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Without hope, there is only darkness;
With hope, rays of light penetrate that darkness,
transforming even purgatorial fire into heavenly healing.
The One who is all good, who loves and tends each creature,
offers each one here and now a ladder of hope
by which to ascend out of oneself and whatever befalls,
and be pulled into the waiting arms of the Lover.
24. Silent ode to a friend—II
Right now I have a choice to make:
strong is the pull to gratify myself
while thinking of your outer beauty
imagining myself drinking at your well.
Gentle is the pull, and sweet the voice,
that bids me not to use you in my heart
but give to you the best I can
the best I have to give.
And that best is friendship with chaste affection,
not using you for physical or emotional pleasure.
If only I could find a lover who would willingly receive
the kinds of love I have to give--
Then again, rather than follow the ways of lust
to their kinds of unfulfillable fulfillment,
why not be content to rest now in peace
upon this special friend’s chest--
not naked and not physically present at all
but to rest contentedly in his brotherly love.
Why seek what you do not wish to give
when I do not receive gratefully what you freely give?
When you give me a welcoming or farewelling hug
your arm outstretched to embrace me
is there anything lacking I truly need?
You show acceptance of me as I am
and I would do well to be satisfied
with this freely given token of affection.
Love that accepts what the other gives,
demanding nothing else, nothing more--
than what you initiate.
25. Sunday morning service
“Is there no balm in Gilead?”
Of such a balm I may not know, Jeremiah,
but of the divine balm one can be assured.
“There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin sick soul…”
“O happy day
when Jesus washed our sins away…”
“Veni sancte Spiritu…”
26. Rain—I
It rained today in central Montana, here in Great Falls,
the first real rainfall I can recall in months of drought--
indeed, we had nearly no rain during my sojourn in Sheridan,
and only a few showers this spring back here in Great Falls.
People in India with Monsoons may tire of rain.
Even Arcanum, Ohio, has had a rainy summer,
and my friend José Jesús in the Rio Grande
told me that they had a much wetter than usual summer.
Ours has been hot and dry, turning the maple leaves brown
in the front yard, and giving scant cause for growth on evergreens.
Our land has been parched thirsty hot and dry, sunbaked,
more like a dessert than the high plains of central Montana.
My retired plumber-friend Jim, who’s lived here over eighty years,
said he’s never seen such a hot and dry summer as this one.
But now, for some glorious twenty minutes or so, we had rain--
recorded as 0.1”, which comparatively’s a rich abundance.
It started suddenly, stopped suddenly, although Siri tells me
that more is expected this evening, with temperatures down to 50.
It was like a good shower after a hot, sweaty day of work,
and like such a relaxing shower, this one felt delightful.
The gift of rain—how many take it for granted? How many disdain rain?
Such a rare gift to us, as if diamonds were falling from the sky.
Even the little rain we had may help to spare our maple leaves early death
before they have a chance to turn color with the fading of summer.
The weather in Montana is extremely variable, so unlike coastal California,
and so dry compared to “the nation’s capital.” As I asked folks in 1979
when I moved from Santa Barbara to D.C., “What’s the difference between
Washington and Babylon?” “It rains in Washington,” I quipped.
And it does.
27. Rain—II
It falls from heaven to earth
as mercy on a parched and weary land
rain and your love, my love.
28. Love’s irresolution
The quintessence of Romantic yearning
the essence of eros untethered from reason
tension without resolution
irreconcilable restlessness
never ending conflict of erotic love
found its disturbingly fitting
and exquisite embodiment
in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
a crowning jewel of Romanticism.
The famous Tristan chord does not resolve--
cannot be resolved--
unless and until death intervenes.
Death alone, death as unconsciousness--
unbewusst sein--
höchte Lust--
highest bliss
death as complete and utter
annihilation.
He understood Wagner too well, perhaps--
der Führer--
as he sought to bring down doom
sheer and utter annihilation
on the world, the cosmos
and ultimately on the German people
“for they proved unworthy of Me.”
Such is eros tyrannos, tyrannical love,
self-exalting hence self-consuming
love ungrounded
in self-emptying amor dei.
29. Pain at rising
It awakens me shortly after midnight
as I try to roll over in bed.
For a few minutes, I struggle to get comfortable.
It’s a lost battle. Sciatica, the nerve
apparently squeezed by cartilage, or by bone,
or perhaps by the piriformis muscle.
Whatever the exact cause, sleep is now impossible.
I arise by 0030, tired but realizing pain killed sleep.
Cane in hand, I force myself to rise.
Pain drives me as I pull on coveralls,
and sitting on the edge of the bed
sock each foot in turn.
Now to hobble downstairs safely.
Cane again in hand, thumping fairly loudly
as weight is placed on my left leg,
I see Elijah awaken and look around.
The cane and I make it downstairs to the kitchen,
run some tap water, and take medication
for low thyroid. I begin to make coffee
then retrieve a bottle of iced water from the freezer,
fill it with tap water, obtain the ice compress,
and hobble to my living room chair.
So begins another day.
Nearly as painful as every other morning
since mid July, only once today calling out
suddenly for divine assistance.
Sharp and recurring pain must be lived with,
as cursing the pain or one’s fate is pointless.
It could indeed be worse, and in time, will be.
Now as I sit in an easy chair writing
I prepare to turn my heart and mind towards God,
grateful to be alive, unlike the insect just squashed
by my cane as it raced across the carpet.
You in whom all exist, from whom all derive being,
Who alone are fully good, wise, and loving,
thank You for giving me this day to seek You,
this day to love You more truly,
to do the tasks set before me.
For my friends, for their peace, health, life.
For the return in love of José’s son,
For all whom I love who have died,
that they are filled with the joy of knowing You,
loving You forever.
LORD God, if it be your will, heal the injury I bear,
and in the process, humble me,
and make me truly grateful to exist at all.
Help me draw wisdom, understanding, compassion
from this pain, a reality shared by all being-things,
all creatures great and small, in many ways
as we travel our courses between time and eternity.
To You be honor, thanksgiving, and love
now and forever. Amen.
30. Hope for the world
Hope for the world lies more in India
methinks, than in Rome.
31. In a moment
In a flashing moment he appeared
Gotama the Buddha
rooted and grounded within
Upanishadic wisdom.
In reflection one beholds the man
Jesus of Nazareth
rooted and grounded within
YHWH’s Mosaic covenant with Israel.
In moments in and out of time
one may glimpse You
within the transitory self;
in a single moment I glimpse You
even within me.
In the You of every I
lies the pearl
the eternal hope of humankind.
32. A drop of honey
In the stillness of midnight
I slip away
and enter into You unseen.
In the silence of midnight
You slip away
and take me with You.
The breath of night breathes still
as You and I melt away
like a drop of honey in the sun.
33. Overcoming
In overcoming grief
one overcomes oneself.
In overcoming pain
one overcomes oneself.
In overcoming love
one dissolves.
34. A oneing remembered
In surging waves of pain
one may be carried out to sea
submerged and gasping for air
or one may gratefully remember.
And yet these wonder-filled memories
treasured by a heart in lonesome solitude
often arise charged with conflicting feelings
fleeting shadows shading fleeing years.
Or in letting an ant continue living
prancing proudly across your countertop
you find your fleeting self less ebbing away
in the swirling and receding waters of time.
On pinions of pain the mind may rise
from currents of dissipating time towards You
without beginning and without end
recalling acts of self-forgetting, generating love.
When the gray-white bird appeared
as if released from confining captivity
it spread its agèd wings
and took celestial flight
suddenly and unexpectedly
a most sweet song poured forth from his throat
a swan song of late-engendered love
as we listened, you and I, enwrapped in silence
stirred undisturbed and undisturbing
the ecstatic sound effortlessly bursting forth
awing you and me together
and at least for one became becoming-one forever.
What the bird intended then
I’ll willingly and longingly ponder
receiving and conceiving
afresh through waters of waking time
an ever-resurgent generating gift
shared now with you from beyond the grave
where buried love most truly lives
and does not lie, nor ever die.
What untimed You intend in still unfolding history
enwrapped in being’s sacred solemn mystery
may lie beyond the tempering limits
of transitory consciousness.
What you intended and felt while standing there
beneath the upward thrusting bird
we can discuss together in dialogue
between the mortal-living and the deceased-alive.
What I experienced then and now recall
tastes of eternal co-creative love
effecting a most delectable union
a realized spiritual communion.
Did this experience embody divine union
of love undying, or am I misconstruing it
for purposes yet unknown to me?
Have I missed the meaning of that evening
in and out of time?
Why did this wondrous strange event occur at all?
It seemed to be without before or after--
a sudden erupting of the timeless into time--
as we watched and listened in shared silence.
In my awe and underlying love for you
You and you penetrated the womb of my heart
in a spiritual union free from human clutching
and we became as one in the Beginning.
Am I mis-taking this unique moment too personally?
Should a human being feel such oneness with another
and not treasure the most blessed sacred union?
In any case, in every case, be thankful,
for to one who is ever-waking every moment
and especially such intense rare moments
are filled with unfathomable riches,
truly unendingly-divinely graced.
35. On experiences remembered
Whatever happened, whatever was experienced,
whatever was real or imagined or both blended together
the temporally incompletable task ever remains:
to seek to understand, and to find the unfindable.
In the intricacies of intimacies the hidden One awaits.
In the moments of our lives, divine fullness is present
even as ever only partially understood
ever imperfectly surrendered to in love.
A gift freely given requires a receptive receiver
and the receiver, being in time, is in a state of constant flux;
what originally occurred, and how it is received
necessarily fluctuates in time with the ever-changing receiver.
Quidquid recipitur, secundum modum recipientis recipitur.
A truly beautiful and momentous life-experience
requires the receiver to approach the experience afresh,
deriving from it further insight, love, understanding--
not as recalling static and discretely dangling memories
nor as trophies surfaced from the depths to hang on chamber walls
but as ever-renewing invitations to plunge naked into the abyss
the silent sea of mystery, the ocean of cosmic-divine reality.
As one summons into presence these memories of times past
seeking to rescue from the oblivion of forgetting what once was given
the heart and mind are renewed, bathed afresh in salutary waters,
and the human being is being prepared for its further ascent.
Your past is my past as well, to an extent, and in reality’s unfolding
especially in the process between time and eternity
often called by us “human history,” an open process in reality
in which we come to be more truly who and what we are.
I have no doubt, but sometimes too little empty-hearted faith,
that you, dear friend, who shared with me that night of singing
have long been a sacrament of the eternal to me
a living embodiment of that which we call “Christ” or “God.”
For years you knew of my awareness that in touching your hand
I was touching Jesus Christ, glowing within at this spiritual communion
not abstractly conceived, but as real flesh and blood
unique in the greased and leathered hands of an old mechanic.
Now I cannot touch your hand, for you perished into night
when I was far away in space-time but ever near in love--
passing into that undiscovered realm a mere heart-beat away
entering divine fulness beyond confining time and space.
“Your hand can do all things for me,” because it was the hand of Christ.
And behind your graying beard the radiating face of Jesus
whose genuine love for me became palpably alive and real
through your bodily presence, nourishing words, and noble deeds.
Given this divine-human reality, immortal belovèd friend of mine,
on the night the bird sang its song rising upwards towards death
I beheld in awe the pro-creative potentials of the All-Creator,
experiencing within a union unachievable by flesh alone
yet present even in this transitory-mortal flesh,
present to the heart and mind opened and bared by love
to see the out-pouring in-pouring of love itself
flowing freely into my waiting and awe-filled soul.
In that moment a seed of co-creating life entered into me
a seed of divine life through the flesh of that bird
penetrated my inmost heart in rapt attention
when You and you and I communed as one.
You abide in me perhaps, even if I should forget.
In remembering that makes present and alive again
I behold and taste the fruit of fertile fruitfulness,
my very flesh partaking of in-bred divinity.
36. Remembering in gratitude
I must retreat into the recesses of my house alone
stilled in the stillness of this holy night
to bring back into consciousness the generous self-gift
as I remember you in recollected harmony.
Herein lies a difference:
the bird that sang that night surprised us both;
but I, now alone except through active memory,
will sing together with you and the bird in harmony.
A gift remembered is a renewing gift, a blessing
to be savored and cherished between time and eternity.
“The LORD has given, the LORD has taken away,”
and blessed be the one who dwells in gratitude.
37. Return of the raiding ants
Another ant appeared, and then another
dancing and prancing across the counter-top.
One little fellow may have met his maker
or may have returned to “the potency of matter.”
38. À la recherche du temps perdu
Without strength of mind or will or artistic memory
without time to write an ever-unending reverie
without the story-teller’s art or mind or fantasy
I must limit myself to writing short pieces, if at all.
As for “lost time,” how is anything lost in that which simply is?
We can unwillingly forget what ought to be remembered,
we can deliberately let essentials pass away in oblivion,
but what in truth could ever be lost forever in God?
What is lying there to be found again and yet again?
What is present in the there that’s here to be found again?
39. Simple joys
Sweet and peaceful these golden hours
between years of working and eternity’s dawn.
In this state of quiet peace and gentle bliss
all that I experience is tinged with beauty’s kiss
savoring of liquid sweetness
flowing in a stream of gratitude.
Lovely and peaceful these golden days
between zero summer’s flaming heat and winter’s freeze.
In nature’s feast of kaleidoscopic earthy colors
we delight in autumnal bounty overflow
refreshingly cool mornings
and languid warming afternoons.
40. Keep moving
At least since high school’s late teen years
when rheumatoid arthritis first manifested itself
I have been unable to sit or lie down comfortably.
Rheumatism’s “in remission” supposedly
but with advancing age, degenerative arthritis
has attended nearly every waking moment.
Lying in bed is painful, and so is sitting in a chair.
Least painful in my adult life has been walking.
The present issues with sciatica intensify pain
rather than qualitatively change what I must live with.
Most painful now is rising from bed on waking,
and then rising from a chair after half an hour’s rest.
Family invites me to visit them in San Diego
or on Molokai, where they live in nice homes
and in more equitable climates than Montana offers.
In addition to the problem of not be willing
to board my dogs lest they suffer neglect,
I recoil at the prospect of being cooped up to travel.
I must move my body through space-time frequently.
Half an hour sitting down is all I can endure.
Lying in bed is bearable if and only if I’m asleep,
and then pain manifests itself in dreams or waking.
What am I to do? I must keep moving
walking, climbing stairs, bending with physical work.
Perhaps I must limit visits to San Diego or Molokai
to what can be achieved through mobile phones and video.
Traveling far is presently out of the question,
unless I can walk about at least five or ten minutes
every hour. To move less often guarantees aching joints
and a sense of being trapped in pain. So move
and keep moving!
41. Sleep-killing pain
No more than an hour of fitful sleep
before the pain of sciatica forced me up.
Cane in hand, I hobbled downstairs
to take a muscle relaxant, to apply ice,
to sip a cup of delicious hot black tea,
and write when I can do little else.
My Apple Watch assures me with a purple 219
that it is “very unhealthy” outside.
Not so healthy inside, either, not for me,
not for a man now sitting with intense pain.
Hot tea, sipped right at midnight,
MacBook open on my lap, composing,
typing words that so insufficiently distract
from the raging pain in my butt and leg.
Could I meditate into the pain mindfully?
I do not even care to try now.
Forming phrases, finding words,
provides a minuscule distraction
on a sea of fluctuating agony:
Jesus, have mercy on me, a mortal.
42. For Elijah who kept watch
You’ve kept watch with me tonight, Elijah
in the moonless midnight of my Gethsemane,
not in the mental-spiritual anguish Christ endured,
but in a long and purgatorial night of physical pain
endured at times by all our fellow transient beings.
For to have a body is to be subject to pain after pain
stretched out on the rack of this dying world
passing within a realm of beauty, truth, and goodness
both here before us and beyond our fleeting grasp
even as pain fills and for a time becomes our consciousness.
You’ve kept watch with me, Elijah, my son,
as I keep watch for you, eternal Eli-yah--
Yahweh of Israel who has not forsaken me,
who even now keeps watch in and with me
in this garden of Gethsemane that soon may be
“another Eden, a demi-Paradise,” a place where roses bloom,
where human beings may taste on earth the bliss of heaven
being one with Christ in agony and in Life’s victory
in suffering, emptiness, and in transitoriness,
employing all that passes to draw us to Yourself.
You keep watch with me tonight, young Elijah,
as Moses ever keeps watch, unable to sleep deeply,
his aged body wracked with pains that are his rack,
his eyes closed, ears dulled, yet ever alert to all in me,
ever a reminder of You whom I often forget.
Come, eternal husband of creation, bride of creative night
when sufferings force a soul to rise from sleep;
and though not attending to you directly,
is mindful of your proximity and assistance
making Gethsemane and Calvary gateways home to You.
43. Towards a more sober assessment
Having recalled and worked through a oneing experience
with my spiritual father when we heard a bird sing gloriously
now it seems to be the part of wisdom to let go
of all I thought happened, of any claim to oneness
with a man of God who has left the world of space-time.
In truth, I am not capable of real union with Daniel.
His simple and clean soul so transcends my soul
that I do well to appreciate the degree of closeness we had,
and that this man has received in eternity a oneing far greater
than anything friendship with me could offer.
And yet, at least I made the effort again and again
to seek out this man of God, to be humanly close to him,
to experience the presence of Christ in and through him.
How many of his brother monks took a sniff and passed by?
How many were put off by sweat and grease
and neglected to befriend this unique friend of God?
Truly I am thankful that I did not just pass by,
and humbly realized that this outwardly smaller man
was in truth a spiritual giant, a gem of saintliness,
a man of exceptional virtues despite appearances.
I neither belittle myself nor bewail my fate;
rather, I know my character flaws fairly well,
often having to apologize for my failures to do the good.
Not so for Daniel, whose character was rock solid,
and who never in my hearing spoke a word in anger or in haste.
I am not belittled by recognizing true human nobility.
I would be belittled if I pretended to be this man’s equal
in any sense except as equally loved by the God of all.
We were so different in character, Daniel and I,
that it would be foolish to assume that friendship was possible
except through the bending of grace to the lowly,
a morally superior man having mercy on a deformed brother.
Out of his profound goodness, Daniel tended me lovingly
despite my weaknesses, not on account of internal goodness.
In Daniel’s care for me I experienced not divine union per se
but the undeserved mercy of God who bestows his gifts on those
who freely and wittingly humble themselves with truthfulness.
With no right or foundation to claim a true oneness with Daniel,
I freely release the memory of the night the bird sang,
and gratefully acknowledge my need for tender mercies.
Daniel loved me, not because of me, but out of divine goodness.
I love Daniel not because I deserve such a friend,
for I do not, but because the eternal God drew us together
and dressed my wounds and nourished me
through the ministrations of this monk, this man of God.
To my spiritual father and brother now living in eternity,
I give heartfelt thanks for your patience with me,
who often treated you harshly and unfairly,
who in effect slapped the face of the Good Samaritan
who had mercy on the man who had fallen among thieves.
From you, Abba Daniel, I humbly ask your forgiveness,
even as I imagine you still reaching out to lift me up.
You never asked me to humble myself before you;
you showed me by example to humble myself before God alone,
and receive with thanksgiving genuine gifts of grace.
Perhaps you had mercy on me, Daniel, for you understood
that unlike you, “I was entangled in a world of strife,
before I had the power to change my life.”
You discerned that I was working with a defective foundation,
having suffered many woundings in my tender years.
I ask your further assistance, man of God, as I approach eternity.
My time on earth has grown short, for I am seventy
and my body registers the effects of aging and improper care.
My soul, my character, my way of life, all have been defective;
pray your blessing, my father, that I am humble before the LORD,
and receive with thanksgiving God’s gifts of mercy and of love.
Keep guiding me back to the presence of the living God--
not only beyond death, but here and now in this transitory life.
Guide me into genuine obedience and worship of God,
and away from all the failures of my idle idolatry.
To the One who is all-good, all-wise, all-loving, all-just,
to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to the God of Moses;
to the God of Jesus Christ and to the God of Christ’s servant,
be honor and humble obedience now and forever,
even here in this too-often foolish but loved little man.
44. A simple soul
“Daniel is a simple soul, Paul. You are not.”
Words of truth spoken by Abbot Aidan to me
after I had been long attached to Daniel.
A soul is simple that is essentially good;
defects of character render one complex
as fractures in a gemstone disturb the light,
and may even render a crystal useless.
“LORD, I am not worthy to receive you,
but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”
“Fear not, for I AM with you, to deliver you.”
Pride ruled me as I considered myself Daniel’s friend.
I was indeed a man who had fallen among thieves,
a man deformed in his inmost soul, his character,
wounded by abuse and by self-inflicted wounds,
in no way qualified to be the friend of goodness.
Proudly I wrote of our spiritual union, when in truth
I should have written of disunion by immaturities,
and seen myself as Daniel’s friend because of mercy--
because of undeserved benefits bestowed on me,
on a man too corrupt to be a friend of a godly man,
living in a monastery where I did not belong,
for I was and am unable to live in peace,
so unlike Daniel who sought and brought no conflicts,
who achieved the good out of self-forgetting obedience
and who love even such a defective, wounded brother.
Daniel loved me, not because I am good,
but because he is good, a true man of God.
Now I live outside of my monastic community,
unworthy to reside there, unable to live in peace,
best kept apart for the common good of all.
A simple soul loves simply and ungraspingly,
asking nothing from the other, but freely giving.
A deformed soul does not conform to goodness,
but follows the pulls of its own dis-eased heart,
lurking and jerking one way and now another.
45. What is to be done?
Given this existential reality, what am I to do?
What is the best that I can do with who I am,
with what I am, and with what I have?
That seems to be the recurring question
that urges itself into my mind,
deserving to be pondered.
Pain intervenes, and at least at times,
thinking at times useless or impossible or barely rational.
These questions deserve better than I can offer
in a state of near-delirium.
46. Ice
An hour lying down was all I could endure.
Asleep, pain filled my dream until I awoke.
Then pain drove me from bed downstairs
To get ice on the area of my buttock
where the pain feels most acute. 11 p.m.
Ice. Slowly numbing the pain, slowly.
Moses feels pain, too, and groans.
Elijah sleeps quietly near me.
I’m exhausted, kept awake by pain.
Moses is groaning in sleep now.
Half an hour to midnight
when I can take two more ibuprofens,
but if taken now I would be over-dosing
according to what’s written on the bottle.
I wait for midnight, sitting on an ice bag.
Slightly nauseated, struggling to stay awake
Ice numbing the piriformis muscle (I hope)
eyes barely open, tiny slits.
This chair, Daddy’s black chair, is too short,
offers no support for neck and head.
Awake asleep dreaming I barely know
dazed eyes keep closing pain lessening
images of Afghans at the Kabul airport
clinging to an American cargo plane
taxing down the runaway, men falling off.
Midnight, head bobbing, eyes still slit
exhausted I will rise for two ibuprofens
rise am I asleep? Fragments of dreams
dreaming I need water. Two swigs
of iced water, some dripping down my chin.
I can still count to five, eh?
Rise and get the pills.
Where’s my cane? Floor besides me.
I cannot sustain this, not awake--
arose and opened windows
cooler out than in, caned my way
upstairs to turn off the A/C
walking better than I did at 2300
icing my hip, left leg still hurts, foot numb
I’m nearly asleep. On ice.
Images of Kabul, thoughts of Taliban
Muslim fundamentalist-extremists--
they blew up ancient statues of the Buddha
in their ignorance and malice;
and they’ll seize the girls for sex slaves.
My left leg aches badly sickeningly
hasn’t ice taken effect yet?
How woke we are abandoning girls
and women to hungry Taliban men,
so much for women’s rights, eh?
Have you no shame, America?
Abandoning those who assisted you
in Afghanistan. One Gnostic empire
dominated by globalist wokes
shamelessly abandoning those in need.
Ecumenic empire spreading destruction
and death, America the self-righteous woke,
self-absorbed claiming we are enlightened,
how much evil we do. How shameful.
At least that distracted myself for a minute.
***
I’ve been delirious. The Marx brothers
flip in and out of mind between train cars
of pain after pain circling around mountains.
I cannot keep my left leg still.
An add for restless leg syndrome?
icing and ibuprofen have not done much
have they? It is now 0100 two hours of pain
intense pain. Am I having muscle spasms?
Sudden sharp pain in the lower back / hip
images keep floating around deliriously
Sipping hot Earl Grey tea, a favorite
How good it tastes, distracts
I’m in no hurry, have no desire
to return to Sheridan or Virginia City
or the hanging judge Fellen and desert land.
The dry landscape shots around Kabul
remind me of the Sheridan wasteland.
In some ways, Sheridan had beauty,
as when lying under fresh-fallen snow.
For a brief moment, I began to dream
and then a shooting pain from the left buttock
down the leg and no sleep no dreaming again
still icing on the lower back, the hip area,
on the left buttock and falling asleep.
Sleep and wake and dreaming all blend,
all dance together.
47. Rain
A rare delight:
to lie in bed at night
and hear the rain--
uncommon rain
refreshing rain
blessing rain.
And I, dry.
A rare delight.
48. Forward
Whether ascending or descending
the way forward includes the way back,
and returning means rediscovering
and seeing anew what was taken for granted.
I fare forward into dark and into light
into that which is present
into the unknown that may become known
or may be missed altogether.
To fare forward is to stretch into
the ever-present presence
in the moment, now
in the silence between two waves.
I fare forward by being where I am
not wishing to be elsewhere
not wishing to be what I am not.
I fare forward into that which is
and at times into that which is not.
49. Zero summer ending
Summer zero swiftly swiftly ended
pleasantly slipping into autumn
falling into fall suddenly falling
from 95 Fahrenheit two days ago
to rain upon rain at 48 degrees.
We shall feel warm days again
both you and I beneath the sky
before winter descends upon Montana.
The warmth of the sun too-swiftly passing
short-lived farewell caresses in the afternoon
yielding to evening cool then night chill
sun descending to a lower slant
upon the trees and grass and flowers
that soon will be withering
leaving behind desiccated leaves.
Rain is falling noisily even for old ears
rapping and tapping on my windows
and on the skylight overhead
rain after rain liquid life-giving rain
singing a sweet song of passing sorrow.
50. A diagnosis
What an x-ray could not reveal
has shown up in an MRI
magnetic resonance imaging
that scanned my torso noisily
and brought to light an injury.
“Disc bulge and superimposed protrusion
results in severe thecal sac stenosis
at L4-L5,” the lower lumbar region.
Other medical terminology appears
including “abutment upon the left exiting nerve root.”
I do some research at medical online websites.
More to the point is a warning from my physician
that without proper attention from a neurosurgeon,
I could lose movement in my left leg,
loss of control over urinating and excreting.
He warned me that nerve damage has occurred
a fact supported by numbness in my left foot,
sharp pain in my angle and shins,
and constant pain, in one degree or another,
from my lower back across my buttock and hip.
Surely I prefer not to lose the freedom to walk,
nor control of the body’s excreting functions.
Willingly I will cooperate with the surgeon’s plan,
and hope for a good result for a healthier life
before I lose all motion altogether.
51. The noonday demon
The noonday demon sneaks in--
akedia, dressed as drowsiness
urging respite from the day’s tasks,
a peaceful break from busy cares.
Is not a nap an often much needed gift
allowing the thoughts and work of the day
to be sloughed off like a snake’s skin,
refreshing the beast in the process?
How lazy to nap when one’s nightly sleep
has been two to there hours for days?
And even after a good night’s sleep
a short siesta refreshes mind and body.
So I’ll take a nap as a gift of nature
and of nature’s God, and not a demonic distraction.
It’s rained much of the past twenty-four hours
an unusual even in central Montana
much welcomed not only for relief
from excessive heat, but even more:
for the bountiful blessing rain bestows
upon the parched and sun-weary land,
and a good soaking rain for thirsty trees.
And now my friend, turn off the light
and welcome Morpheus, descending with him
into the chambers of an inner world
into a realm of shadow reality
shaded from your burdening cares.
End of “Ascend to the light: Zero summer,”
21 August 2021
José on 21 August: “Our time is short, amigo. Do what you love.”
A. Introduction
1. Sotto dura staggion
2. On the Summer Solstice
B. A Nietzschean digression
C. A truer way
3. In memory of an American hero
4. Come out of her
5. Related questions
6. Suppose
7. Vir dei
8. An early morning meditation
9. On the feast of St. Benedict
10. Death of a bird
11. Dirge for a dying regime
12. Wisdom of a man defamed
13. Zero summer
14. The kind of person
15. Summer-winter
16. Pain and pleasure among gemelli
17. Blissful days
18. Teaching
19. In a sea of suffering
20. Pleasure to distract
21. Silent ode to a friend—I
22. No distracting
23. The rescuing ladder of hope
24. Silent ode to a friend—II
25. Sunday morning service
26. Rain—I
27. Rain—II
28. Love’s irresolution
29. Pain at rising
30. Hope for the world
31. In a moment
32. A drop of honey
33. Overcoming
34. A oneing remembered
35. On experiences remembered
36. Remembering in gratitude
37. Return of the raiding ants
38. À la recherche du temps perdu
39. Simple joys
40. Keep moving
41. Sleep-killing pain
42. For Elijah who kept watch
43. Towards a more sober assessment
44. A simple soul
45. What is to be done?
46. Ice
47. Rain
48. Forward
49. Zero summer ending
50. A diagnosis
51. The noonday demon
A. Introduction
1. Sotto dura staggion
Summer unveiled
in two opening notes
a descending minor second
the essence of summer
through Vivaldi’s imagination
the beginning of his violin concerto
“L’estate,” “Summer”
from le quattro stagioni.
To accompany his concerti
the priestly composer published sonnets
detailing his intentions.
From summer:
Sotto dura Staggion
dal Sole accesa
langue l' huom, langue 'l gregge,
ed arde il Pino;
Under a hard season
the Sun blazing
languishes the man
languishes the flock
and burns the pine.
A single note followed wearily
by another, a half-tone lower
a reluctant tired sigh
in a hard season
hot and burning.
2. On the Summer Solstice
The sun appears to stop
as a pendulum at either end of its swing
and daylight that had been lengthening
will now begin to shorten
long days of a naked porno sun
burning up springtime’s green
trying the patience of man and beast
ripening and scorching the grain
relief as daylight fades to evening
eventide into awaited night
stilled the body stilled the mind
dulled by hours of over-much heat
As freezing winter draws the spirit
into the chamber of the ever-waiting
so summer’s fire drives a man
into the shade of the protecting oak
And every mind-soul seeking God
is one in loving response
to that which is without appearances
unseen unknown yet hoped for longingly
Summer a time not for mindless vacating
but to work with earth’s nourishing forces
to bring forth for oneself and others
rich fruits from earth’s warm bosom.
Intermittent drizzle
a wet robin rips up a worm
“everything’s eating everything else,”
as Daniel said of old.
A day reminiscent of early summer
in Crestwood with lush green trees
rain gentle and nourishing
even in a middle-class suburb of New York.
B. A Nietzschean digression
1. The reason nearly all university students, professors, mass media mouths, bureaucrats, Hollywood pretenders, Silicon Techies, and corporate Fat Cats are hard core left wingers—even Marxist and borderline Communist-totalitarians—is because most of the rest of them are. These relatively ungrounded minds simply move with the herd, think or non-think with the herd, smell and look like the herd. No one in contemporary society who genuinely thinks for himself or herself is a hard core leftist. There is a far right herd as well, but it is much smaller and politically and socially inconsequential, a marginalized herd, with its trembling members easily picked off, one by one, or by the thousands.
2. Anyone who thinks for himself must steadfastly refuse to be herdilized. One begins to think for himself by breaking with herd mentality in its predominant forms. That means that one must accept being marginalized, and increasingly vilified. The American-totalitarian herd seeks to destroy any significant voices that contradict its dominant thrust, its over-weening will to power.
3. When a man is devious, he becomes a criminal, a slick lawyer, a politician, or a peddler of spoiled goods. If a woman is devious, she may be just a devious woman.
4. Liberals from the 1930’s into the 1970’s now appear as antiquarians, unwelcomed voices to be drowned out by the totalitarian herd. There is nearly nothing “liberal” about the predominant herd except its tolerance of most forms of highly deviant behavior, much like the super-left “hippies” of the 1960’s—or the Weimar avant-garde, or the perverse National Socialists. The hippies wanted the masses “free” to “be themselves,” to “do their own thing.” The new hard left insists that everyone think and act like them. “Freedom” is bourgeois, or in present terminology, “white supremacist” or “racist.”
5. Among the totalitarian herd in America, the more perverse, counter-reasonable, ungrounded in reality the one is, the more they are praised. Even six year olds who claim that they want a “sex change” get praised for being “courageous.” In reality they are ignorant fools being used by the main herd to destroy every conceivable tie to reality and to traditions that were developed in accordance with nature and its laws. Whatever is unnatural, and destructive of the truly human, is worshipped by our “educated elites” as original, liberated, and above all, “woke.”
6. If a man or woman openly professes loyalty to the prevailing leftist mob, then they are free to say and do whatever they wish—even make openly racist or sexist statements, because the herd chooses to ignore their little peccadillos. “That’s just old Uncle Joe being himself,” as he sniffs another woman or makes ugly racist comments, such as asking a black man who dared to question him, “Hey, man, are you a junky?” Because Uncle Joe swore allegiance to the totalitarian herd, he is given a complete pass to be a complete ass. He plays that role very well.
7. The totalitarian herd in America tolerates no rivals to itself within this “society,” or within any possible scope of their operations. That is how it immediately shows itself to have broken radically from its liberal origins. Genuine liberals tolerate and encourage diversity of thought, opinion, expression. The totalitarians in our midst seek to squelch or to destroy any opposition. The way they treat their critics amply shows their true totalitarian, power-hungry credentials. We see in the totalitarian hard-left herd exactly when Alexis de Tocqueville found within American democratic society: “the tyranny of the majority.” It is not only tyrannical, but a majority at a very low cultural and intellectual level.
8. “Don’t get in the way of a falling knife.” Don’t get in the way of an American Commo-Nazi who has set his site on your back. He or she has no qualms about pulling the trigger, and throwing your corpse into an oblivion hole, as a good Positivist would do. You will be as if you never existed: erased from the consciousness of the herd.
9. What is the end state of our totalitarian herd? It is the creation of an all-power, all-knowing, all-controlling Mega State, which subsumes everything into the vortex of its will to power, to dominate. The Idol State of the Soviets and the Nazis is small and relatively impotent compared to the Mega State being concocted in our midst by the mindless herd. “All power, honor, obedience, glory to the State!” And all say, “Amen and A-women.” (Can our prevailing herd become much more stupid? Watch. There is no bottom in their abyss of perversity.
10. “I’m not a prophet, nor was meant to be.” I’m no Zarathustra, no Nietzsche the knower who presents his teaching to replace centuries of the unfolding of divine wisdom. No, I’m not a prophet, and no Gnostic “knower,” but one seeking to love the God who seeks me to love. And so ends this Nietzschean digression, a mere moment, not of love, but of disgust at what we Americans are making of ourselves. I admit feeling profound shame for what we have done, and are doing, to ourselves, and to the world at large. As noted, bottomless is the abyss of our perversity, and limitless our collective will to dominate. America, behold the beast you have made yourselves to be.
C. A truer way
3. In memory of an American hero
“You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey.”
General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)
In times past, our country was blessed
with some noble men and women
knowledge of whom shames us--
if we are still capable of feeling shame--
we who are often jumbos without and dwarfs within.
Where is the soul we have squandered?
Where are genuine manliness and womanliness
sustained by profound Menschlichkeit,
not founded on the sand of self and passing whims
but grounded and nourished through sustained obedience?
What have we done to ourselves, fellow Americans?
How have we squandered our inheritance?
We who elevate noisy rabble into public gods
and ignore or tear down reminders
of those who’ve shown us most noble lives.
America has become a land of ignorance--
minds and souls closed to what endures,
hardened against the truth that convicts us
of our wanton pettiness, littleness of character--
we narcissists enchanted by our ugliness.
I have known few or none in my life
who steadily display the manly and noble virtues
embodied in the soldier, Robert E Lee.
To see and know Lee as he truly was
is to see oneself as one is not--
falling far short of nobility.
Although one’s character displays itself early
rarely undergoing major changes in life
some degree of genuine improvement
is ever possible for one attuned to God.
First one must come face to face
with who or what he has been and has become.
Your life is not as true or noble as you thought,
nor are you the good person you think you are.
Let the light of a genuinely good man
expose the failures and flaws in yourself,
and then you may begin to grow
into the man you ought to be.
“O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross”
your shrunken littleness
by examining the life of the truly noble--
of Lee or another exceptional human being
who did his duty despite his feelings,
who accepted ignominy and failure
with grace and unfeigned human kindness
genuinely serving and inspiring.
“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.”
Robert E Lee
4. Come out of her
“Come out, come out of her my people,”
echo voices heard while driving on city streets,
in crowded stores strewn along 10th Avenue,
echoing through the gorgeous gorge
connecting Great Falls to Helena,
down the Highwoods and the Little Belts,
along the cascading Missouri and serpentine creeks,
across the wheat fields of the Golden Triangle,
through the Rockies of Montana and her varied valleys,
resounding in Missoula, the Bitterroot, and Kalispell.
“Come out from the mess and press
of aging outdated institutions
out from the churches and religious bodies,
out from all sorts of social groupings,
out from public madness and maddening noise,
out from human deceits and pretentious conceits,
out from the decadent, the comatose, the dying,
out from nation-states as organized societies,
out from the decrepit novus ordo seclorum,
grown feeble, gangrenous, moribund, and rotting.
“Make a break from your native country
neither loving nor embracing what it has become
observing its rapid transmogrification
in processes beyond all rational control.
One need not renounce citizenship
to stand apart from the trans-borderline insanity
avoiding all attachment to the dying beast
whose body is ravenously devoured by
the all-consuming malignant Babylonian head
metastasizing along the tidal Tigris-Potomac.
“Turn away without futile rebellion
from the Chosen People or any People,
from holy mother church or any church,
from the rites, rituals, and too-grasping hands
seeking monies to run all-too-clever programs,
with over-stuffed hierarchs imprisoned
in dying unloved unwanted institutions;
turn away and walk quietly into the night
that’s descending over this land and its people
into bodies encaging time-bounded dying souls.”
5. Related questions
With any time remaining
to this earthly Adam
this passing shadow
what is the best to do?
What ought not be done?
What can be left undone?
What are the essential duties
that must be done
and what is most noble to do
before striking the tent?
6. Suppose
Suppose writing non-poetic poems
is neither especially fitting for me
nor a productive way to spend time.
If I continue to write--
for writing has been a means to think,
clarifying thoughts and developing them--
How could I most profitably write,
whether for my benefit
or perhaps for another’s?
Also consider that these strange poetic forms
force a concentration of words,
an economy often lost in wordier prose.
If I continue to write in poetic forms,
are some forms more suitable for me than others?
Note that strict meter and rhyme faded away
and in their place I offer questions,
phrases, possible insights, heuristic images
meant to communicate from mind to mind,
allowing thought and intended meanings
to take precedence over form and beauty,
for both of which poets often sacrifice truth.
“Poets are liars,” I’ve read--
perhaps in Heracleitos, perhaps in Nietzsche--
and it contains a simple truth:
Often for the sake of sound or beauty,
a poet stretches meanings or even fabricates,
sometimes at the expense of experienced truth.
Yet truth is more noble than beautiful expressions,
unless those word formations are also true,
as one often finds in Shakespeare or in Aeschylus,
or in the great Hebrew prophets,
all of whom were gifted poets
as well as speakers for the God they served.
“Have you not seen? Have you not heard?
Yahweh is the everlasting God,
the creator of the ends of the earth.”
How magnificent, how inspiring
is the poetic prophesying of the unknown prophet
conventionally known as “Deutero-Isaiah.”
Such a marriage of meaning and beauty in speech
require a profound spirituality
and a remarkable intellect and word sense.
Perhaps if I wrote less, studied and thought more,
my writing could become truer and more beautiful.
Perhaps silence is what I most lack.
Take heart: a long deep silence awaits me.
7. Vir dei
Faithful and just was the man,
grounded on the ageless rock,
who accepted suffering without flinching,
ill-treatment without complaint.
In the morning, before the sun appeared,
he turned his mind towards the unseen,
and listened without any expectations
for the one he faithfully served.
In his selfless strength, he absorbed blows
and words ill conceived and poorly spoken
without anger or any recriminations,
without retaliatory accusations.
His leathered hands no longer washed clean,
toughened by labor, scarred, and oiled;
and with these hands he continued to work
in heat, in cold, without a complaint.
His obedience was ever immediate,
without hesitation or self-serving excuses.
At the call of his duties to others
he dropped at once what he was doing.
Here was an unwavering man of God
whose goodness was a clear and steady stream,
whose gentleness showed his inner strength,
whose solidity of character never softened.
***
“Morning by morning he opened my ear.”
“When I said, `Ah, I can’t find you, where are you?’
I heard the question, “Have you lost your ability
to let yourself be found?”
“Mockingbirds are better thought of as praising birds.”
“My goal with you is to put myself out of business.”
“I could not start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
So I took a magnifying glass, placed it over some dead leaves,
concentrated the rays of the sun onto the leaves--
they smoked and quickly burst into flame.”
8. An early morning meditation
In the silence before dawn, in solitude,
allow words to arise into consciousness:
“He is mind and only mind, holy and ineffable.”
“Fear not, you are mine.
I AM with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
“A little mistake in the beginning leads to a far greater one later.”
“You who are thirsty, come to the waters.”
“All flesh is as grass.”
“Because you are precious in my sight, and I love you.”
“Happiness is an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue.”
“I AM; all that exists passes away.”
“Because I live, you also live.”
“Come to Me, you who labor and are heavy burdened,
and I will refresh you.”
“Who are you, LORD?”
“Where else shall I go? You have the words of eternal life.”
“In his light we see light.”
“Before you call, I AM with you.”
“Thought thinking thought;
mind minding mind,
nous nous-ing nous.”
A small stream flowing out from between rocks.
“Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.”
“Moses, Moses.”
“Here I am.”
Here You are.
“I in you, you in me.”
All utterances fade away. Long silence. Then:
“I must down to the seas again,
to the lonely seas and the sky…”
9. On the feast of St. Benedict
(11 July 2021)
“Listen o son to your master’s precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart.”
So Benedict begins his Rule
with words profound inviting puzzling.
Not wishing to imitate the squirming lawyer
who sophistically asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
still I wonder and ask, “Who is my master?”
I think of God and of Christ, and of right reason,
and so many others in life have some claim
to authority over me, to be masters in some way.
For a monk it surely includes the Rule itself,
and the Abbot, and even the monastic community.
And in the Rule it includes the local bishop
as having jurisdiction over the monastery
(in some matters, on some occasions),
and presumably the master includes civil authorities,
when they are civil and when they are uncivil and petty.
It could well include one’s own conscience,
especially to the extent it has been well formed,
is grounded in reality, truth, goodness,
not merely in private opinions and judgments.
Such a list of masters can be extended
seemingly endlessly if one wishes
reflecting on those to whom obedience may be due.
“Listen to your master’s precepts,” instructions, lessons.
“And who is or are my masters?”
First and foremost the Almighty, the Creator,
with the Christ in union with God,
with the holy Spirit at work in human spirits,
with reason open to divine movements,
attuned to nature, to the fullness of reality,
and not merely one’s inner yammerings.
***
“Your master’s precepts.” Magister is the word
translated here as “master,” as I recall.
With the root magnus, magi, greatness
can be felt. The secondary meaning in Latin
is an authoritative teacher, as was Benedict,
as were the Greek philosophers who did not “teach”
so much as instruct in the way of seeking truth,
provoking and guiding a mind in its ascent.
Within the Christian community, Christ himself
is the teacher par excellence; “the rest are learners,”
in Greek, mathētoi, often translated as “disciples.”
Then there is the magisterium of the church,
the teaching authority of those in communion with Christ.
In all cases, according to the father of western monasticism,
one must “incline the ear of the heart,”
which means “receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience
you may return to him from whom you had departed
by the sloth of disobedience.” Return to whom?
For Benedict, return to God, under the leadership
of Jesus Christ, and his appointed spiritual father,
the abba, in the monastery. Return to God, return
to the One from whom all beings come forth,
and to whom all will return willingly or by death.
***
“Speaking and teaching belong to the master;
the disciple’s part is to be silent and to listen.”
No doubt there is practical wisdom in these words,
but they seem to display a misunderstanding of learning.
How does one gain insight without questioning?
How often in my life have I appreciated someone’s questions?
Real learning is more dialogical than St. Benedict teaches,
and his assertion fosters a lack of intellectual inquisitiveness
hence subduing the movement towards truth.
Of all the words in St. Benedict’s Rule,
this saying is the one that most bothered me,
and which I knew I could never accept.
Socrates or Plato or Aristotle, or Thomas Aquinas,
would never make such a claim,
for they all encouraged good questioning.
Monastic life does not encourage questioning,
but fosters a mental staleness and lack of openness.
A society without open questioning stifles the spirit.
Moses asks Yahweh, “and if they ask me,
`What is his name?’ How should I respond?”
Imagine a monastic version of Yahweh:
“Do not think, do not question.”
Such was the response of young Karl Marx
to a hypothetical questioner, “Why is there something?”
The forbidding of questions, the failure to see
questioning as a gift of the divine Mind
discloses the closure at the heart of much “religious” life.
10. Death of a bird
Opening my front door before dawn,
a small bird was seen huddled in the corner
where the door frame meets a wall.
He moved slowly, did not fly away.
An hour later, the fledgling had turned around
still standing within inches of the corner.
Gently I picked him up, set him in the grass,
and watched him struggle to move.
He could flap his wings slowly, barely crawl.
The little brown bird seemed helpless.
Two hours later when we returned
from my breakfast with Bob and from the cemetery
where Moses walked ever so slowly
and Elijah played ball, despite the early heat,
there in the grass lay the bird,
unmoving, seemingly lifeless, dead.
Unsure, I set the bird in cooling shade.
Returning several hours, I could see
that the little creature had not moved.
His lifeless body bespoke his death.
Back in the house, I stooped down to Moses,
lying nearly motionless, for he struggles
to rise from his mat, struggles to walk,
and I know what is awaiting us.
11. Dirge for a dying regime
Sodom and Gomorrah writ large
across the war-torn pages of history:
fools who dishonor your most noble
while praising the wicked to the skies.
“Son of man, can these bones live?”
You know, o LORD… surely I do not.
12. Wisdom of a man defamed
“…Take a happier view of things
and do not be dissatisfied
because they do not accord more nearly
with your views and wishes.”
13. Zero summer
White-blossoming Italian oregano
peppermint, spearmint, gingermint
swimming naked green in a sea of clover
beta grape vines and Virginia creeper
grass competing with years of pine needles
honey locust sprouting up from subterranean roots
feeding a marauding deer or two.
“Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer
nur ein Schlummer, Jesu
durch dein Schweißtuch sein.”
Gentle be the sorrow of my death
only a slumber, Jesus,
through the cloth that wiped your face
through the veil of this sweet encounter
death never far from my thoughts
not death abstractly considered, but my death
drawing ever nearer day by day
passing moment to passing moment
dying moment to dying moment
as I feel you pressing into my flesh
and loosening the anchors of consciousness
Death foreshadowed by pain
at times excruciating
as your lower back, buttock, left leg
ache or throb from sciatica:
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding”
shattering your falsely secure self-knowledge
as daylight breaks in zero summer
well before the blessed night
has cooled the generating burning earth
coloring orange the waning crescent moon
summer and pain together
teaching acceptance of what is--
of that which one cannot change
“And all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well”
even as Moses pants and walks restlessly
not far from his body’s cessation
old for a Lab completing fourteen years
loyal kindly most gentle Moses
so attuned to whatever whoever I am.
***
Years ago I came to accept Montana’s winters
cold still colder frozen solid land seemingly unendingly
the choir of stars singing brightly in frigid blackened skies
Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and the wayward Moon
often with wind to chill one’s passing fantasies
returning a lone wanderer to stark reality
accepting winter as a welcomed guest, an unexpected gift.
Summers flare intensely climaxing in a fire
of naked-sun heat and burning forest smoke
bright brighter searching penetrating light
almost to the point of madness or insanity
to one who refuses to accept what is as it is
while yearning for winter’s chills in summer’s burnings,
and summer heat in winter’s icy blasts.
With far more days above ninety so far this year
than the accustomed pattern in central Montana
zero summer seemingly reaching out into eternity
beating repeating days of wave after wave of naked sun
here and now and not in a gentler summer
I’ve made my peace with the season of heat
Accepting these passing days for what they are
an often unappreciated gift from the unseen giver of good
even now today before the silver cord is severed
and the golden bowl is shattered
and spirit returns to Spirit, breath to Breath,
and dust returns to earth-bound dust.
14. The kind of person
When I had my first Labrador retriever--
whom I named Rumsfeld, “Rummy,”
during Bush-Rumsfeld’s invasion of Iraq--
friends could see how taken I was
with my most gentle, diplomatic dog
(whom I described as “Rumsfeld’s shadow”).
One of these friends, perhaps Kelly O’Brien,
gave me a wooden sign that reads,
“My goal in life is to be the kind of person
my dog thinks I am.”
I pondered the words, and several years later,
after Rummy had died at four of kidney failure
and now I had Zoe and young Moses,
I made a few small emanations to that sign,
crossing out a word or two and adding a few.
It stands in my kitchen by the sink and reads:
“My goal in life is to be the the kind of person
that I think my dogs are.”
So much truer, for they are noble creatures,
and I, a wounded work in progress.
15. Summer-winter
Summer’s the season for activities,
Winter the time to contemplate.
Under a blazing sun one labors
nurturing nature to bring forth abundantly
its life-sustaining fruits and seasonings
mindful of one’s passing place within the cosmic whole.
Contemplation, theoría, takes various forms:
diligent study and quiet reflection;
closely attending to nature, art, music;
walking alertly, sitting still, being thankful;
remembering the One beyond all and in all;
examining oneself in light of divine goodness;
renewing inner self-surrender.
Contemplation is activity engaging the whole person,
from the body and feelings to thinking and insight,
including love of what is good and beautiful,
to what is transitory and what endures.
In contemplating, winter becomes a season of growth,
inner growth, nourishing fecundity from the hidden depths
into the body’s body and hence out into the world
through action costing of self.
Through contemplation, the divine presents itself,
pouring itself into receptive human beings
and thence out into the waiting whole.
16. Pain and pleasure among gemelli
Sometimes a painful itch, sometimes red
even bleeding patches of skin
cracking, flaking, inviting scratching
sensations ranging from slightly painful
to deliciously pleasant
whether accompanied by other stirrings
or not.
Sicknesses yield their blessings
to those who still wonder.
17. Blissful days
All our days are young and bright and filled with sun
delightful to see, to hear, to smell, to feel,
and you and I know nothing of sickness, suffering, and death,
had never conceived that life might be dukkah
For we live blissfully among the blissful butterflies
sweetly among delicious dark chocolates
youthful and filled with dreams among radiant young dreamers
knowing nothing of lugubrious sobriety
while walking in a grove of green grass and granite monuments
we pause from our light-hearted jesting to read inscribed words:
“What you are now, I once was;
what I am now, you will be.”
And laughing we shrug off such seeming pleasantries
as someone’s little joke written in sparkling stone,
for everyone knows well that we are forever as we are now,
and not some other way—no other way at all.
18. Teaching
Night light
pleasant painful
growing decaying
living deceasing
goodness evil
beauty ugliness
you it
unbounded bounded
here not here
being not being
there not there
one many
all none
All teaches one
with ears to hear
and eyes to see
the truth and beauty
of unfolding reality.
19. In a sea of suffering
In the emergency room
babbling nearly unintelligibly
bubbling up from a spring of delirium
pain, unending pain, interminable pain
Or is it? All things pass.
Pain absorbing all consciousness
blocking out all subtleties
forcing you to know your littleness
fragility mortality mere nothingness
adrift in a boundless sea of suffering
submerged in an ocean of pain.
“Life is dukkha. Old age is dukkha…”
“And death is swallowed up in Life.”
20. Pleasure to distract
Seeking pleasure to distract from pain
mental pleasure of forming images
arising into consciousness
willing molding by desires
working through fragmented memories.
Pleasure intense enough
to drown out, even for a moment
this unrelenting pain of sciatica.
A white-bearded time-chiseled face
a chest clothed in white and gray
strong shoulders supporting
and a breast to embrace
a chest to rest one’s head on--
More than this I do not need
lower down than this I need not venture
touching embracing resting my whole being
quietly letting me be quietly
with years of submerged suffering
washed away on the soothing chest
of your most noble goodness
listening to the wisdom of your beating heart.
Writing now’s a substitute for tactile action
and also an attempt to distract the mind
from unrelenting pain in my left buttock
in a lateral hip muscle, perhaps the piriformis
as the physician’s assistant reported
to explain these waves of muscular pain
spasming around the left sciatic nerve
and sending pain chasing hounding pain
down my aching tingling numbing leg and foot.
The pleasure of study also distracts the mind
from more fleeting pleasures and pains of life
yet study also requires concentration
the kind of mental focus rendered difficult by pain--
by the fruit-flies of mental anxieties and grief
and by the incessant wagging nags of physical pain.
I have little doubt that Plato or Aristotle
could seek truth even in the midst of bodily pain,
as Voegelin dictated his final meditation
on his deathbed nearly to his final breath.
Learn from the trials and pains of life:
“You are a man and only a man,
and not a god.”
And “all flesh is as grass,”
And “all things must pass.”
21. Silent ode to a friend—I
That you have true love for me
and I have love for you, my friend,
I do not doubt.
Your love and mine are not the same.
How could they be
given our real differences?
And so I shall not ask
what you may well prefer not to give:
I shall not ask to rest my head on your chest
for you may not understand this desire.
Each one has his limitations.
I shall not ask, but here and now
in the silent recesses of my longing heart
urged on by the body’s constant pain
I choose you, dear friend,
as the one on whose chest
I will give myself to God
in utter surrender unto death.
I choose to picture you naked
from the waste up but not below;
and on your bare and well-seasoned chest
I rest my head, laying down all my weariness,
and gratefully I surrender in love
to you and through you
to the one who is Love unlimitedly,
whose heart I now hear alive and beating
in the beating of your manly heart.
And I dissolve with years of needless agonies
at home at last
at home at last at home.
22. No distracting
Awoke before dawn with pain
as intense as it has been,
indicating that the meds may help
may relieve pain for a while
but they are not healing me.
How to heal? Pain relief is good,
but positive healing would be far better.
When pain so overwhelms the body
and consciousness, one must wait.
Wait with hope for healing at some point
Wait trusting that it could become far worse,
that Jesus suffered far more intensely
in Gethsemane and on Calvary.
My character is now on display:
trust and wait patiently for God’s time,
or “curse God and die,” which profits nothing.
I choose to trust that the good physician
knows what he’s doing, and in the fire,
in the midst of the consuming fire to say
“The LORD has given, the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD.”
23. The rescuing ladder of hope
Truly pain isolates by drawing one’s resources
back into the bodied self and immediate needs;
but spirit can lift the psyche from the chains of pain
into freer realms, including human communion.
By the power of will and memory, even now
I remember those around the world gathered in prayer
gathered in communities to be mindful of God,
to thank the creator, to seek his face and his benefits.
In Christ the head of humanity, no man is fully an island,
no one is cut off beyond the range of hope,
beyond the liberating love of the Almighty.
In the beginning was not pain; “in the Beginning, God…”
“And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Without hope, there is only darkness;
With hope, rays of light penetrate that darkness,
transforming even purgatorial fire into heavenly healing.
The One who is all good, who loves and tends each creature,
offers each one here and now a ladder of hope
by which to ascend out of oneself and whatever befalls,
and be pulled into the waiting arms of the Lover.
24. Silent ode to a friend—II
Right now I have a choice to make:
strong is the pull to gratify myself
while thinking of your outer beauty
imagining myself drinking at your well.
Gentle is the pull, and sweet the voice,
that bids me not to use you in my heart
but give to you the best I can
the best I have to give.
And that best is friendship with chaste affection,
not using you for physical or emotional pleasure.
If only I could find a lover who would willingly receive
the kinds of love I have to give--
Then again, rather than follow the ways of lust
to their kinds of unfulfillable fulfillment,
why not be content to rest now in peace
upon this special friend’s chest--
not naked and not physically present at all
but to rest contentedly in his brotherly love.
Why seek what you do not wish to give
when I do not receive gratefully what you freely give?
When you give me a welcoming or farewelling hug
your arm outstretched to embrace me
is there anything lacking I truly need?
You show acceptance of me as I am
and I would do well to be satisfied
with this freely given token of affection.
Love that accepts what the other gives,
demanding nothing else, nothing more--
than what you initiate.
25. Sunday morning service
“Is there no balm in Gilead?”
Of such a balm I may not know, Jeremiah,
but of the divine balm one can be assured.
“There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin sick soul…”
“O happy day
when Jesus washed our sins away…”
“Veni sancte Spiritu…”
26. Rain—I
It rained today in central Montana, here in Great Falls,
the first real rainfall I can recall in months of drought--
indeed, we had nearly no rain during my sojourn in Sheridan,
and only a few showers this spring back here in Great Falls.
People in India with Monsoons may tire of rain.
Even Arcanum, Ohio, has had a rainy summer,
and my friend José Jesús in the Rio Grande
told me that they had a much wetter than usual summer.
Ours has been hot and dry, turning the maple leaves brown
in the front yard, and giving scant cause for growth on evergreens.
Our land has been parched thirsty hot and dry, sunbaked,
more like a dessert than the high plains of central Montana.
My retired plumber-friend Jim, who’s lived here over eighty years,
said he’s never seen such a hot and dry summer as this one.
But now, for some glorious twenty minutes or so, we had rain--
recorded as 0.1”, which comparatively’s a rich abundance.
It started suddenly, stopped suddenly, although Siri tells me
that more is expected this evening, with temperatures down to 50.
It was like a good shower after a hot, sweaty day of work,
and like such a relaxing shower, this one felt delightful.
The gift of rain—how many take it for granted? How many disdain rain?
Such a rare gift to us, as if diamonds were falling from the sky.
Even the little rain we had may help to spare our maple leaves early death
before they have a chance to turn color with the fading of summer.
The weather in Montana is extremely variable, so unlike coastal California,
and so dry compared to “the nation’s capital.” As I asked folks in 1979
when I moved from Santa Barbara to D.C., “What’s the difference between
Washington and Babylon?” “It rains in Washington,” I quipped.
And it does.
27. Rain—II
It falls from heaven to earth
as mercy on a parched and weary land
rain and your love, my love.
28. Love’s irresolution
The quintessence of Romantic yearning
the essence of eros untethered from reason
tension without resolution
irreconcilable restlessness
never ending conflict of erotic love
found its disturbingly fitting
and exquisite embodiment
in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
a crowning jewel of Romanticism.
The famous Tristan chord does not resolve--
cannot be resolved--
unless and until death intervenes.
Death alone, death as unconsciousness--
unbewusst sein--
höchte Lust--
highest bliss
death as complete and utter
annihilation.
He understood Wagner too well, perhaps--
der Führer--
as he sought to bring down doom
sheer and utter annihilation
on the world, the cosmos
and ultimately on the German people
“for they proved unworthy of Me.”
Such is eros tyrannos, tyrannical love,
self-exalting hence self-consuming
love ungrounded
in self-emptying amor dei.
29. Pain at rising
It awakens me shortly after midnight
as I try to roll over in bed.
For a few minutes, I struggle to get comfortable.
It’s a lost battle. Sciatica, the nerve
apparently squeezed by cartilage, or by bone,
or perhaps by the piriformis muscle.
Whatever the exact cause, sleep is now impossible.
I arise by 0030, tired but realizing pain killed sleep.
Cane in hand, I force myself to rise.
Pain drives me as I pull on coveralls,
and sitting on the edge of the bed
sock each foot in turn.
Now to hobble downstairs safely.
Cane again in hand, thumping fairly loudly
as weight is placed on my left leg,
I see Elijah awaken and look around.
The cane and I make it downstairs to the kitchen,
run some tap water, and take medication
for low thyroid. I begin to make coffee
then retrieve a bottle of iced water from the freezer,
fill it with tap water, obtain the ice compress,
and hobble to my living room chair.
So begins another day.
Nearly as painful as every other morning
since mid July, only once today calling out
suddenly for divine assistance.
Sharp and recurring pain must be lived with,
as cursing the pain or one’s fate is pointless.
It could indeed be worse, and in time, will be.
Now as I sit in an easy chair writing
I prepare to turn my heart and mind towards God,
grateful to be alive, unlike the insect just squashed
by my cane as it raced across the carpet.
You in whom all exist, from whom all derive being,
Who alone are fully good, wise, and loving,
thank You for giving me this day to seek You,
this day to love You more truly,
to do the tasks set before me.
For my friends, for their peace, health, life.
For the return in love of José’s son,
For all whom I love who have died,
that they are filled with the joy of knowing You,
loving You forever.
LORD God, if it be your will, heal the injury I bear,
and in the process, humble me,
and make me truly grateful to exist at all.
Help me draw wisdom, understanding, compassion
from this pain, a reality shared by all being-things,
all creatures great and small, in many ways
as we travel our courses between time and eternity.
To You be honor, thanksgiving, and love
now and forever. Amen.
30. Hope for the world
Hope for the world lies more in India
methinks, than in Rome.
31. In a moment
In a flashing moment he appeared
Gotama the Buddha
rooted and grounded within
Upanishadic wisdom.
In reflection one beholds the man
Jesus of Nazareth
rooted and grounded within
YHWH’s Mosaic covenant with Israel.
In moments in and out of time
one may glimpse You
within the transitory self;
in a single moment I glimpse You
even within me.
In the You of every I
lies the pearl
the eternal hope of humankind.
32. A drop of honey
In the stillness of midnight
I slip away
and enter into You unseen.
In the silence of midnight
You slip away
and take me with You.
The breath of night breathes still
as You and I melt away
like a drop of honey in the sun.
33. Overcoming
In overcoming grief
one overcomes oneself.
In overcoming pain
one overcomes oneself.
In overcoming love
one dissolves.
34. A oneing remembered
In surging waves of pain
one may be carried out to sea
submerged and gasping for air
or one may gratefully remember.
And yet these wonder-filled memories
treasured by a heart in lonesome solitude
often arise charged with conflicting feelings
fleeting shadows shading fleeing years.
Or in letting an ant continue living
prancing proudly across your countertop
you find your fleeting self less ebbing away
in the swirling and receding waters of time.
On pinions of pain the mind may rise
from currents of dissipating time towards You
without beginning and without end
recalling acts of self-forgetting, generating love.
When the gray-white bird appeared
as if released from confining captivity
it spread its agèd wings
and took celestial flight
suddenly and unexpectedly
a most sweet song poured forth from his throat
a swan song of late-engendered love
as we listened, you and I, enwrapped in silence
stirred undisturbed and undisturbing
the ecstatic sound effortlessly bursting forth
awing you and me together
and at least for one became becoming-one forever.
What the bird intended then
I’ll willingly and longingly ponder
receiving and conceiving
afresh through waters of waking time
an ever-resurgent generating gift
shared now with you from beyond the grave
where buried love most truly lives
and does not lie, nor ever die.
What untimed You intend in still unfolding history
enwrapped in being’s sacred solemn mystery
may lie beyond the tempering limits
of transitory consciousness.
What you intended and felt while standing there
beneath the upward thrusting bird
we can discuss together in dialogue
between the mortal-living and the deceased-alive.
What I experienced then and now recall
tastes of eternal co-creative love
effecting a most delectable union
a realized spiritual communion.
Did this experience embody divine union
of love undying, or am I misconstruing it
for purposes yet unknown to me?
Have I missed the meaning of that evening
in and out of time?
Why did this wondrous strange event occur at all?
It seemed to be without before or after--
a sudden erupting of the timeless into time--
as we watched and listened in shared silence.
In my awe and underlying love for you
You and you penetrated the womb of my heart
in a spiritual union free from human clutching
and we became as one in the Beginning.
Am I mis-taking this unique moment too personally?
Should a human being feel such oneness with another
and not treasure the most blessed sacred union?
In any case, in every case, be thankful,
for to one who is ever-waking every moment
and especially such intense rare moments
are filled with unfathomable riches,
truly unendingly-divinely graced.
35. On experiences remembered
Whatever happened, whatever was experienced,
whatever was real or imagined or both blended together
the temporally incompletable task ever remains:
to seek to understand, and to find the unfindable.
In the intricacies of intimacies the hidden One awaits.
In the moments of our lives, divine fullness is present
even as ever only partially understood
ever imperfectly surrendered to in love.
A gift freely given requires a receptive receiver
and the receiver, being in time, is in a state of constant flux;
what originally occurred, and how it is received
necessarily fluctuates in time with the ever-changing receiver.
Quidquid recipitur, secundum modum recipientis recipitur.
A truly beautiful and momentous life-experience
requires the receiver to approach the experience afresh,
deriving from it further insight, love, understanding--
not as recalling static and discretely dangling memories
nor as trophies surfaced from the depths to hang on chamber walls
but as ever-renewing invitations to plunge naked into the abyss
the silent sea of mystery, the ocean of cosmic-divine reality.
As one summons into presence these memories of times past
seeking to rescue from the oblivion of forgetting what once was given
the heart and mind are renewed, bathed afresh in salutary waters,
and the human being is being prepared for its further ascent.
Your past is my past as well, to an extent, and in reality’s unfolding
especially in the process between time and eternity
often called by us “human history,” an open process in reality
in which we come to be more truly who and what we are.
I have no doubt, but sometimes too little empty-hearted faith,
that you, dear friend, who shared with me that night of singing
have long been a sacrament of the eternal to me
a living embodiment of that which we call “Christ” or “God.”
For years you knew of my awareness that in touching your hand
I was touching Jesus Christ, glowing within at this spiritual communion
not abstractly conceived, but as real flesh and blood
unique in the greased and leathered hands of an old mechanic.
Now I cannot touch your hand, for you perished into night
when I was far away in space-time but ever near in love--
passing into that undiscovered realm a mere heart-beat away
entering divine fulness beyond confining time and space.
“Your hand can do all things for me,” because it was the hand of Christ.
And behind your graying beard the radiating face of Jesus
whose genuine love for me became palpably alive and real
through your bodily presence, nourishing words, and noble deeds.
Given this divine-human reality, immortal belovèd friend of mine,
on the night the bird sang its song rising upwards towards death
I beheld in awe the pro-creative potentials of the All-Creator,
experiencing within a union unachievable by flesh alone
yet present even in this transitory-mortal flesh,
present to the heart and mind opened and bared by love
to see the out-pouring in-pouring of love itself
flowing freely into my waiting and awe-filled soul.
In that moment a seed of co-creating life entered into me
a seed of divine life through the flesh of that bird
penetrated my inmost heart in rapt attention
when You and you and I communed as one.
You abide in me perhaps, even if I should forget.
In remembering that makes present and alive again
I behold and taste the fruit of fertile fruitfulness,
my very flesh partaking of in-bred divinity.
36. Remembering in gratitude
I must retreat into the recesses of my house alone
stilled in the stillness of this holy night
to bring back into consciousness the generous self-gift
as I remember you in recollected harmony.
Herein lies a difference:
the bird that sang that night surprised us both;
but I, now alone except through active memory,
will sing together with you and the bird in harmony.
A gift remembered is a renewing gift, a blessing
to be savored and cherished between time and eternity.
“The LORD has given, the LORD has taken away,”
and blessed be the one who dwells in gratitude.
37. Return of the raiding ants
Another ant appeared, and then another
dancing and prancing across the counter-top.
One little fellow may have met his maker
or may have returned to “the potency of matter.”
38. À la recherche du temps perdu
Without strength of mind or will or artistic memory
without time to write an ever-unending reverie
without the story-teller’s art or mind or fantasy
I must limit myself to writing short pieces, if at all.
As for “lost time,” how is anything lost in that which simply is?
We can unwillingly forget what ought to be remembered,
we can deliberately let essentials pass away in oblivion,
but what in truth could ever be lost forever in God?
What is lying there to be found again and yet again?
What is present in the there that’s here to be found again?
39. Simple joys
Sweet and peaceful these golden hours
between years of working and eternity’s dawn.
In this state of quiet peace and gentle bliss
all that I experience is tinged with beauty’s kiss
savoring of liquid sweetness
flowing in a stream of gratitude.
Lovely and peaceful these golden days
between zero summer’s flaming heat and winter’s freeze.
In nature’s feast of kaleidoscopic earthy colors
we delight in autumnal bounty overflow
refreshingly cool mornings
and languid warming afternoons.
40. Keep moving
At least since high school’s late teen years
when rheumatoid arthritis first manifested itself
I have been unable to sit or lie down comfortably.
Rheumatism’s “in remission” supposedly
but with advancing age, degenerative arthritis
has attended nearly every waking moment.
Lying in bed is painful, and so is sitting in a chair.
Least painful in my adult life has been walking.
The present issues with sciatica intensify pain
rather than qualitatively change what I must live with.
Most painful now is rising from bed on waking,
and then rising from a chair after half an hour’s rest.
Family invites me to visit them in San Diego
or on Molokai, where they live in nice homes
and in more equitable climates than Montana offers.
In addition to the problem of not be willing
to board my dogs lest they suffer neglect,
I recoil at the prospect of being cooped up to travel.
I must move my body through space-time frequently.
Half an hour sitting down is all I can endure.
Lying in bed is bearable if and only if I’m asleep,
and then pain manifests itself in dreams or waking.
What am I to do? I must keep moving
walking, climbing stairs, bending with physical work.
Perhaps I must limit visits to San Diego or Molokai
to what can be achieved through mobile phones and video.
Traveling far is presently out of the question,
unless I can walk about at least five or ten minutes
every hour. To move less often guarantees aching joints
and a sense of being trapped in pain. So move
and keep moving!
41. Sleep-killing pain
No more than an hour of fitful sleep
before the pain of sciatica forced me up.
Cane in hand, I hobbled downstairs
to take a muscle relaxant, to apply ice,
to sip a cup of delicious hot black tea,
and write when I can do little else.
My Apple Watch assures me with a purple 219
that it is “very unhealthy” outside.
Not so healthy inside, either, not for me,
not for a man now sitting with intense pain.
Hot tea, sipped right at midnight,
MacBook open on my lap, composing,
typing words that so insufficiently distract
from the raging pain in my butt and leg.
Could I meditate into the pain mindfully?
I do not even care to try now.
Forming phrases, finding words,
provides a minuscule distraction
on a sea of fluctuating agony:
Jesus, have mercy on me, a mortal.
42. For Elijah who kept watch
You’ve kept watch with me tonight, Elijah
in the moonless midnight of my Gethsemane,
not in the mental-spiritual anguish Christ endured,
but in a long and purgatorial night of physical pain
endured at times by all our fellow transient beings.
For to have a body is to be subject to pain after pain
stretched out on the rack of this dying world
passing within a realm of beauty, truth, and goodness
both here before us and beyond our fleeting grasp
even as pain fills and for a time becomes our consciousness.
You’ve kept watch with me, Elijah, my son,
as I keep watch for you, eternal Eli-yah--
Yahweh of Israel who has not forsaken me,
who even now keeps watch in and with me
in this garden of Gethsemane that soon may be
“another Eden, a demi-Paradise,” a place where roses bloom,
where human beings may taste on earth the bliss of heaven
being one with Christ in agony and in Life’s victory
in suffering, emptiness, and in transitoriness,
employing all that passes to draw us to Yourself.
You keep watch with me tonight, young Elijah,
as Moses ever keeps watch, unable to sleep deeply,
his aged body wracked with pains that are his rack,
his eyes closed, ears dulled, yet ever alert to all in me,
ever a reminder of You whom I often forget.
Come, eternal husband of creation, bride of creative night
when sufferings force a soul to rise from sleep;
and though not attending to you directly,
is mindful of your proximity and assistance
making Gethsemane and Calvary gateways home to You.
43. Towards a more sober assessment
Having recalled and worked through a oneing experience
with my spiritual father when we heard a bird sing gloriously
now it seems to be the part of wisdom to let go
of all I thought happened, of any claim to oneness
with a man of God who has left the world of space-time.
In truth, I am not capable of real union with Daniel.
His simple and clean soul so transcends my soul
that I do well to appreciate the degree of closeness we had,
and that this man has received in eternity a oneing far greater
than anything friendship with me could offer.
And yet, at least I made the effort again and again
to seek out this man of God, to be humanly close to him,
to experience the presence of Christ in and through him.
How many of his brother monks took a sniff and passed by?
How many were put off by sweat and grease
and neglected to befriend this unique friend of God?
Truly I am thankful that I did not just pass by,
and humbly realized that this outwardly smaller man
was in truth a spiritual giant, a gem of saintliness,
a man of exceptional virtues despite appearances.
I neither belittle myself nor bewail my fate;
rather, I know my character flaws fairly well,
often having to apologize for my failures to do the good.
Not so for Daniel, whose character was rock solid,
and who never in my hearing spoke a word in anger or in haste.
I am not belittled by recognizing true human nobility.
I would be belittled if I pretended to be this man’s equal
in any sense except as equally loved by the God of all.
We were so different in character, Daniel and I,
that it would be foolish to assume that friendship was possible
except through the bending of grace to the lowly,
a morally superior man having mercy on a deformed brother.
Out of his profound goodness, Daniel tended me lovingly
despite my weaknesses, not on account of internal goodness.
In Daniel’s care for me I experienced not divine union per se
but the undeserved mercy of God who bestows his gifts on those
who freely and wittingly humble themselves with truthfulness.
With no right or foundation to claim a true oneness with Daniel,
I freely release the memory of the night the bird sang,
and gratefully acknowledge my need for tender mercies.
Daniel loved me, not because of me, but out of divine goodness.
I love Daniel not because I deserve such a friend,
for I do not, but because the eternal God drew us together
and dressed my wounds and nourished me
through the ministrations of this monk, this man of God.
To my spiritual father and brother now living in eternity,
I give heartfelt thanks for your patience with me,
who often treated you harshly and unfairly,
who in effect slapped the face of the Good Samaritan
who had mercy on the man who had fallen among thieves.
From you, Abba Daniel, I humbly ask your forgiveness,
even as I imagine you still reaching out to lift me up.
You never asked me to humble myself before you;
you showed me by example to humble myself before God alone,
and receive with thanksgiving genuine gifts of grace.
Perhaps you had mercy on me, Daniel, for you understood
that unlike you, “I was entangled in a world of strife,
before I had the power to change my life.”
You discerned that I was working with a defective foundation,
having suffered many woundings in my tender years.
I ask your further assistance, man of God, as I approach eternity.
My time on earth has grown short, for I am seventy
and my body registers the effects of aging and improper care.
My soul, my character, my way of life, all have been defective;
pray your blessing, my father, that I am humble before the LORD,
and receive with thanksgiving God’s gifts of mercy and of love.
Keep guiding me back to the presence of the living God--
not only beyond death, but here and now in this transitory life.
Guide me into genuine obedience and worship of God,
and away from all the failures of my idle idolatry.
To the One who is all-good, all-wise, all-loving, all-just,
to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to the God of Moses;
to the God of Jesus Christ and to the God of Christ’s servant,
be honor and humble obedience now and forever,
even here in this too-often foolish but loved little man.
44. A simple soul
“Daniel is a simple soul, Paul. You are not.”
Words of truth spoken by Abbot Aidan to me
after I had been long attached to Daniel.
A soul is simple that is essentially good;
defects of character render one complex
as fractures in a gemstone disturb the light,
and may even render a crystal useless.
“LORD, I am not worthy to receive you,
but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”
“Fear not, for I AM with you, to deliver you.”
Pride ruled me as I considered myself Daniel’s friend.
I was indeed a man who had fallen among thieves,
a man deformed in his inmost soul, his character,
wounded by abuse and by self-inflicted wounds,
in no way qualified to be the friend of goodness.
Proudly I wrote of our spiritual union, when in truth
I should have written of disunion by immaturities,
and seen myself as Daniel’s friend because of mercy--
because of undeserved benefits bestowed on me,
on a man too corrupt to be a friend of a godly man,
living in a monastery where I did not belong,
for I was and am unable to live in peace,
so unlike Daniel who sought and brought no conflicts,
who achieved the good out of self-forgetting obedience
and who love even such a defective, wounded brother.
Daniel loved me, not because I am good,
but because he is good, a true man of God.
Now I live outside of my monastic community,
unworthy to reside there, unable to live in peace,
best kept apart for the common good of all.
A simple soul loves simply and ungraspingly,
asking nothing from the other, but freely giving.
A deformed soul does not conform to goodness,
but follows the pulls of its own dis-eased heart,
lurking and jerking one way and now another.
45. What is to be done?
Given this existential reality, what am I to do?
What is the best that I can do with who I am,
with what I am, and with what I have?
That seems to be the recurring question
that urges itself into my mind,
deserving to be pondered.
Pain intervenes, and at least at times,
thinking at times useless or impossible or barely rational.
These questions deserve better than I can offer
in a state of near-delirium.
46. Ice
An hour lying down was all I could endure.
Asleep, pain filled my dream until I awoke.
Then pain drove me from bed downstairs
To get ice on the area of my buttock
where the pain feels most acute. 11 p.m.
Ice. Slowly numbing the pain, slowly.
Moses feels pain, too, and groans.
Elijah sleeps quietly near me.
I’m exhausted, kept awake by pain.
Moses is groaning in sleep now.
Half an hour to midnight
when I can take two more ibuprofens,
but if taken now I would be over-dosing
according to what’s written on the bottle.
I wait for midnight, sitting on an ice bag.
Slightly nauseated, struggling to stay awake
Ice numbing the piriformis muscle (I hope)
eyes barely open, tiny slits.
This chair, Daddy’s black chair, is too short,
offers no support for neck and head.
Awake asleep dreaming I barely know
dazed eyes keep closing pain lessening
images of Afghans at the Kabul airport
clinging to an American cargo plane
taxing down the runaway, men falling off.
Midnight, head bobbing, eyes still slit
exhausted I will rise for two ibuprofens
rise am I asleep? Fragments of dreams
dreaming I need water. Two swigs
of iced water, some dripping down my chin.
I can still count to five, eh?
Rise and get the pills.
Where’s my cane? Floor besides me.
I cannot sustain this, not awake--
arose and opened windows
cooler out than in, caned my way
upstairs to turn off the A/C
walking better than I did at 2300
icing my hip, left leg still hurts, foot numb
I’m nearly asleep. On ice.
Images of Kabul, thoughts of Taliban
Muslim fundamentalist-extremists--
they blew up ancient statues of the Buddha
in their ignorance and malice;
and they’ll seize the girls for sex slaves.
My left leg aches badly sickeningly
hasn’t ice taken effect yet?
How woke we are abandoning girls
and women to hungry Taliban men,
so much for women’s rights, eh?
Have you no shame, America?
Abandoning those who assisted you
in Afghanistan. One Gnostic empire
dominated by globalist wokes
shamelessly abandoning those in need.
Ecumenic empire spreading destruction
and death, America the self-righteous woke,
self-absorbed claiming we are enlightened,
how much evil we do. How shameful.
At least that distracted myself for a minute.
***
I’ve been delirious. The Marx brothers
flip in and out of mind between train cars
of pain after pain circling around mountains.
I cannot keep my left leg still.
An add for restless leg syndrome?
icing and ibuprofen have not done much
have they? It is now 0100 two hours of pain
intense pain. Am I having muscle spasms?
Sudden sharp pain in the lower back / hip
images keep floating around deliriously
Sipping hot Earl Grey tea, a favorite
How good it tastes, distracts
I’m in no hurry, have no desire
to return to Sheridan or Virginia City
or the hanging judge Fellen and desert land.
The dry landscape shots around Kabul
remind me of the Sheridan wasteland.
In some ways, Sheridan had beauty,
as when lying under fresh-fallen snow.
For a brief moment, I began to dream
and then a shooting pain from the left buttock
down the leg and no sleep no dreaming again
still icing on the lower back, the hip area,
on the left buttock and falling asleep.
Sleep and wake and dreaming all blend,
all dance together.
47. Rain
A rare delight:
to lie in bed at night
and hear the rain--
uncommon rain
refreshing rain
blessing rain.
And I, dry.
A rare delight.
48. Forward
Whether ascending or descending
the way forward includes the way back,
and returning means rediscovering
and seeing anew what was taken for granted.
I fare forward into dark and into light
into that which is present
into the unknown that may become known
or may be missed altogether.
To fare forward is to stretch into
the ever-present presence
in the moment, now
in the silence between two waves.
I fare forward by being where I am
not wishing to be elsewhere
not wishing to be what I am not.
I fare forward into that which is
and at times into that which is not.
49. Zero summer ending
Summer zero swiftly swiftly ended
pleasantly slipping into autumn
falling into fall suddenly falling
from 95 Fahrenheit two days ago
to rain upon rain at 48 degrees.
We shall feel warm days again
both you and I beneath the sky
before winter descends upon Montana.
The warmth of the sun too-swiftly passing
short-lived farewell caresses in the afternoon
yielding to evening cool then night chill
sun descending to a lower slant
upon the trees and grass and flowers
that soon will be withering
leaving behind desiccated leaves.
Rain is falling noisily even for old ears
rapping and tapping on my windows
and on the skylight overhead
rain after rain liquid life-giving rain
singing a sweet song of passing sorrow.
50. A diagnosis
What an x-ray could not reveal
has shown up in an MRI
magnetic resonance imaging
that scanned my torso noisily
and brought to light an injury.
“Disc bulge and superimposed protrusion
results in severe thecal sac stenosis
at L4-L5,” the lower lumbar region.
Other medical terminology appears
including “abutment upon the left exiting nerve root.”
I do some research at medical online websites.
More to the point is a warning from my physician
that without proper attention from a neurosurgeon,
I could lose movement in my left leg,
loss of control over urinating and excreting.
He warned me that nerve damage has occurred
a fact supported by numbness in my left foot,
sharp pain in my angle and shins,
and constant pain, in one degree or another,
from my lower back across my buttock and hip.
Surely I prefer not to lose the freedom to walk,
nor control of the body’s excreting functions.
Willingly I will cooperate with the surgeon’s plan,
and hope for a good result for a healthier life
before I lose all motion altogether.
51. The noonday demon
The noonday demon sneaks in--
akedia, dressed as drowsiness
urging respite from the day’s tasks,
a peaceful break from busy cares.
Is not a nap an often much needed gift
allowing the thoughts and work of the day
to be sloughed off like a snake’s skin,
refreshing the beast in the process?
How lazy to nap when one’s nightly sleep
has been two to there hours for days?
And even after a good night’s sleep
a short siesta refreshes mind and body.
So I’ll take a nap as a gift of nature
and of nature’s God, and not a demonic distraction.
It’s rained much of the past twenty-four hours
an unusual even in central Montana
much welcomed not only for relief
from excessive heat, but even more:
for the bountiful blessing rain bestows
upon the parched and sun-weary land,
and a good soaking rain for thirsty trees.
And now my friend, turn off the light
and welcome Morpheus, descending with him
into the chambers of an inner world
into a realm of shadow reality
shaded from your burdening cares.
End of “Ascend to the light: Zero summer,”
21 August 2021
José on 21 August: “Our time is short, amigo. Do what you love.”