And back again

Bro. Simon was observing my mindlessness today and as I was lost in chewing a bite of my tuna sandwich, he spoke out loud, not even facing me, but as thought speaking to himself, saying, "When one can look at nothing and see everything and listen to nothing and hear everything, then one will realize the power of mindlessness." Then without another word, he took a first bite from his tuna sandwich, then rose and left with sandwich in hand. Watching all this (I'm afraid in my mindlessness I was becoming acutely aware of my surroundings, almost mindfully aware!) was Bro. Sedwich, who with crossed arms, glanced from the departing Bro. Simon and then back to me, then said, "Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.” He then stood and with his tuna sandwich headed for the door, but paused long enough to say, "Saint Augustine." And I must say, it was difficult to remain mindless for my mind would not let go of those words, but I was able to let them go. That was yesterday, and now today I can mindfully ponder those words, because today they seem to pour into me as into an empty vessel.

A Mindful Experiment

Upon awakening and after the first blink or two, I reminded myself of the mission for the day, to will myself to be mindful with every breath I take. Suddenly I find myself staring at the unlit candle, the candle that just hours before reminded me to abandon my mindfulness. Now as I light the candle and wait for the sun to break the horizon and announce the new day, then I and we will take that cue and celebrate with break fast. But now I'm getting ahead of the here and now. Recently I've been considering vision and sight and the world outside my skull and the world inside my skull and trying to think how they are different, yet the same. I've talked about vision and here I may repeat myself, but as I found yesterday, repetition can be fun! So I repeat what I think transpires when one looks at a candle flame. A kind of miracle that occurs everytime you open your eyes. It amazes me to consider it. Yet again and again I do. Right now in the predawn darkness I am viewing a candle at arms length, burning, and yes the photons from the flame strike my retina and all the rest of the optical mechanics that take place until the electro-chemical coded message is translated in my brain as a dancing flame, but then the miracle continues, my mind takes that interior dancing flame from the mush of gray matter and projects it at arm's length in front of my nose, and the flame I think I see before my nose is actually the 'projected flames' dancing perhaps a nanosecond in time behind the actual dancing flame before my nose. And to complete the trick, my mind makes me think the projected flame and the actual flame are one and the same! Yet the real flame, or I should say, the flame I 'see' is the imaginary flame hidden in the darkness in the center of my skull, a flame sans photons. A black flame? Hmmm, now I'm hungry and must break my fast.

A Mindless Experiment

A day of mindlessness isn't as easy as one would think. What makes it so ironic is that I had to awake and in those first blinks I had to be very mindful of what I had planned for the day, I had to force my mind to let go, and that was only the first minute of the new day. To be mindless one must already have a knapsack full of habits, full of comfortable routines, full of structure that you or others have already put into place. For without all these built-in paths and well-worn trails, one would awake to a world demanding thought and consideration from the very first blink of the eyes. I kept thinking, and like a mosquito, I would slap at the very thought of thought and hurriedly follow the familiar paths, and my first prayer became the Lord's Prayer repeated again and again, for the numbing rote of it caused my normal consideration of each word to be instead a gong of sound, the words became like meaningless notes resonating from the gong, meaningless for a reasoning mind, yet meaningful to the mind entering a meditative state. Hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... and the sound and the vibrations and the meaninglessness of the uttered sound soon startled me when it became a sacred chant that revealed the uttered word, as though the repetition somehow worked like a can opener to cut its way around 'hallowed' until like a punctured can of coffee releasing a wonderful whiff of aroma -- 'hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed' released a most fragrant sound that was more sacred than even my reading of that word. The essence of 'hallowed' was finally released to me and it was not my mind that was jolted, but my nose! In the still darken predawn chapel I smelled a bouquet of flowers where when the first light of day revealed not a blossom. Well, that was but the first hour of my mindless day today, I now feel too tired to put into words the rest of the day, for I'm cheating while writing all this, I fear this makes my experiment not very scientific, and right now just a candle before me burning and the dancing flame is calling me to dispense with this mindfulness. And I will.

Mindful or Mindless?

My morning walks have gone from mindless to mindful, and back, and forth again. The 'good' mindlessness of our everyday life is what some would call all that which we do on 'autopilot' or the necessity of letting go of control and allowing the parts of the brain to do what they were designed to do, to take care of the million things that our conscious mind would only get in the way of. And of course all that which our conscious mind has no control over, or so we think, all the inner workings of our own body. Sometimes when we confuse who controls what is when we get into trouble, like letting the unconscious mind take care of the heart, and usually that works just fine, we think not of the heart beat and by not thinking of it we have a regular beat, but once we dwell upon it is when the trouble starts. So mindlessness in this respect is something we depend upon to survive. I said before that the goal of Buddhism is a kind of mindlessness, yet the irony is that to attain that state one must practice mindfulness. The Zen Buddhist meditates in a very mindful way, even becoming hyperaware of each breath, seeking to become aware of the moment, or living in the here and now, which sort of shoves the past into the background and leaves the future where it rightly belongs, in the realm of the unknown. Bro. Simon gave me this teaching from Buddha (I think because he has reservations about my thoughts on mindlessness).

Bhaddekaratta Sutta
(Buddha’s teaching on living in the present)

Do not pursue the past,
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is,
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is, in the very here and now.
The practitioner dwells in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today,
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly,
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls on the person who knows how to dwell in
mindfulness, night and day.
One who knows the better ways to live alive

And Jesus saying:
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
Matthew 6:34

So does that mean we are to be mindless about the future? Or does it mean that we are to practice mindfulness in the present, mindfulness daily, hourly, each minute, each second, and then this mindfulness when approached from a right heart (for too a criminal can be mindful in planning a crime), the good mindfulness of living in the moment, being aware of the moment, doing the right thing each moment, this kind of mindfulness changes the mind and heart in tiny increments, until we find ourselves mindlessly doing mindful things.

Mindlessness and mindfulness

This morning I began a pre-dawn walk that allowed me to follow some meandering trails that lead to no particular place and it was when the dawn was breaking that I began to consider the difference between being mindless and mindful. I suppose one could consider being mindless as allowing your environment to govern your behavior and further that this would be a less than satisfying state of being, but in Eastern spirituality, I'm now thinking Zen, this mindlessness is considered a positive, in fact, isn't that the goal of Buddhism? To become so mindless that the governing environment and you become one. (I'm thinking of environment in its broadest sense, physical, mental, natural, artificial) So one forfeits one's apartness for unity with the all. Yet being mindful is when one seeks to understand the environment one finds oneself in and then seeks to understand it and in the understanding seeks to make ones behavior guided by this understanding. That is, mindlessness is allowing your environment to guide your behavior, mindfulness is seeking to guide your behavior by understanding your environment. Mindlessness seeks unity. Mindfulness seeks apartness. Hmmm, as I was returning to the monastery, these thoughts seemed to swirl before me, and I must admit, both seem attractive. For break fast Bro. Simon fried up some tofu that was dipped in egg and sprinkled with lots of pepper, both black and red, and I became very mindless and just took everything in.

Feeling of rightness

Alas, I've been away for a few days and upon my return I have found that the labyrinth project had been in disarray, for I'm told that Bro. Juniper had changed his mind when he felt the rock and stone labyrinth wasn't taking shape as the imaginary labyrinth that he had constructed in his mind, which after much discussion he was able to persuade the other brothers that the care and placement of each rock and stone would make all the difference in the world, for the former piling of rocks in a sort of jumbled manner gave the appearance of not love and care, but haste and carelessness, and after constructing a sample of what he had in mind, that is, he carefully laid similar sized rocks (a bit larger than fist size) in a short course to demonstrate his vision. I should note that he wanted the natural desert varnish of the rocks to be face up, in other words, the rocks when placed would have the similar surface color which he feels helps to keep the course of rocks in harmony and from having a "spotty look" that would distract the eye. I'm told that the other brothers agreed after taking in his sample course of rocks. So you can imagine the extra work of removing all the previously placed rocks and stones, and then on top of that, Bro. Juniper personally going through the piles and making selections and rejections, with Bro. Sedwick volunteering to take the rejected rocks and stones and returning them, in a natural manner, back to the desert, meaning that each be placed with the desert varnish facing up. Well, I returned to find the labyrinth, the new labyrinth, about twenty percent completed, and my first view was at sunset and I must say that I'm amazed at the difference, and am thankful that Bro. Juniper not only recognized the errors of our ways, but held to his vision and I can see now that that vision is worth the extra effort of all. Bro. Sedwick added that anything worth doing is worth doing right. Which gave me pause to ponder what exactly is right and knowing the rightness of what one is doing or about to do, yet mediating upon the sunset light upon the varnished desert stones I feel the answer within, the rightness of anything we do is when we do it and live it in God's shalom, and only then does our feeling of rightness become real.

A journey right here and now

I must admit the race may seem a bit futile, but I've noticed many of the brothers have been walking over to a thermometer that is mounted on the side of the tool shed to sort of verify that indeed, summer is fast approaching. But back to my race, a few of us have decided to construct a labyrinth on a rather flat patch of dry and crusty earth right outside the east wall, a sort of replica of the Chartres labyrinth, only this one is being constructed from collected rocks and stones. I would guess the diameter being about 100 foot, maybe even larger, for Bro. Juniper did all the calculations and for a couple of days was there with his kite string pegged to the center and scratching circles onto the ground. Then he went about stretching string across the entire area into a grid, for his reference drawing of the Chartres labyrinth he has also drawn a grid upon. Then with the drawing in hand, he went about, with a can of white spray paint, spraying reference points, then after that, began spray painting the entire Chartres labyrinth onto the desert floor. All that took about three days. Then taking turns with the wheelbarrow, each of us began the gathering of rocks and stones, with instructions from Bro. Juniper to make sure they are large enough, yet not too large, and not too small. Well, our mountain of rocks and stones is growing, and all the while Bro. Juniper is carefully placing rocks and stones, one by one, atop the white lines. I would guess that the labyrinth is about twenty percent complete. But even now it is becoming an impressive sight to behold, especially in the twilight when the rocks and stones reflect the waning light after sunset. I should also note that Bro. Clarence has been away for several weeks, he departed on a journey to research desert building materials, he is keenly interested in straw bales.

Of birds and scientist

Bro. Juniper was explaining to me how bird nests are tiny histories of the local flora, for the birds collect whatever twigs to construct their nests from the local supply, so that the nests collected a century or two ago may contain twigs from trees and shrubs that no longer grow in the area. Most of America has been invaded (or evolved?) with non-native plants since the migration of Europeans, so a nest collected in the mid-1700s may have twigs of trees that have since disappeared, well perhaps disappear is too mysterious of a term, for there is no mystery, the pioneers felled the trees to "clear" the land, to make room for farming. So while these hardy pioneers were chopping the trees down, the frantic birds were like tiny scientists, hurriedly collecting specimens before it was too late.

Before it is too late

Extremely busy. Bro. Sedwick deemed that the warming globe will produce a devilishly hot summer, and with little time left, he had us go to work cleaning and repairing all the swamp coolers. A most devilish task, indeed, especially the ones atop the roof. So far I have collected six very well constructed nests which I gave to Bro. Juniper, for he is a nest collector.

Just Imagine

Last evening many of us were seated around the large table, still in the courtyard. Just enough light for a few of us to thumb through some books of quotes and still be able to read the tiny print, although Bro. Simon lit a candle and let it drip a bit before affixing it to the table top (I should note that the large table was constructed years ago from heavy raw cottonwood planks and the surface is now as complicated as a topography map with scars and markings that have become our history). Before long those of us with books were seated beside Bro. Simon, and with but candlelight were able to find several quotes that stirred our imagination.

"Imagination is more important
than knowledge, for knowledge
is limited while imagination
embraces the entire world."
-- Albert Einstein

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination
and in the courage of those who
dare to make dreams into reality."
--Jonas Salk

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge --
that myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts --
That hope always triumphs over experience --
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death."
--Robert Fulghum

"Imagination is the eye of the soul."
-- Joseph Joubert

Nor do I hear in my imagination the
parts successively, I hear them all at
once. What a delight this is!
All this inventing, this producing, takes
place in a pleasing, lively dream."
--Mozart

"Only in men's imagination does every truth
find an effective and undeniable existence.
Imagination, not invention, is the
supreme master of art as of life."
--Joseph Conrad

"The man who has no
imagination has no wings."
--Muhammed Ali

In His Image, In His Imagination!

Isaiah 11:6-9

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.

The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox.

The baby shall play by the cobra's den, and the child lay his hand on the adder's lair.

There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea.

----------

All week Bro. Juniper has been carefully painting with a small, narrow brush white paint atop the numerous chalked poems and quotes that now cover nearly every inch of the concrete floor of the dining hall. The grand wooden table and chairs are all still outdoors in the courtyard, but now with the rapidly rising desert temperatures, we decided that our days of meals outdoors are numbered. It seems we all have been reluctant to move back into the dining hall and erase with our sandals the spontaneous outpouring of chalked words to earth that we all delighted in doing for a short few days. I'm afraid if we had a larger expanse of concrete floor we would still be marking the earth with imaginations. Imagination. That got me to thinking, for if we had no imagination, then this life and this universe would be a terrifying place indeed. I have already described the reality of what takes place within ourselves, and all around us -- violence! If one were to take a microscopic look into our own body, and the same close-up view of our immediate surroundings, one would be shocked at the countless wars going on, wars of survival. Yet we humans were given by God imagination. Just as Isaiah imagines a peaceful kingdom, we go about our daily lives with imaginations of peace, and these imaginations keep us from returning to the animal state. If we can imagine peace, we can move toward peace, we can even become peaceful, even while dwelling among the unpeaceful kingdom that surrounds us. Don't sell imagination short. Imagination isn't self delusion. Imagination isn't fantasy. Imagination isn't untruth. Imagination is what motivates the scientist, as well as the artist, as well as the theologian, as well as the little child. Thank God for being created in His Image, in His Imagination!

Violence begets violence?

Matters such as "violence" and our response to it as humans, as children of God, as Jews or as Christians, is a constant "battle" in our minds. And how ironic, our minds must battle thought in order to quell our troubled actions. I believe "violence" was an evolutionary necessity that got us to the point of evolving from animal to human, where now as humans we can look at all other creatures yet cannot condemn them for their every moment of their life of violence, for violence is survival -- the tiger brings down the gazelle, the hawk takes the hare, the trout the caddisfly -- it is God's way for creatures to survive. But by the breath of God we became human with minds that are self aware and imaginative and are capable of figuring out how not to live violently. Yet here we are, with some of that DNA that still carries the violence of the animal kingdom, yet stamped with the image of God that gives us the potential to be peaceful humans. And so with that war within us the question becomes, will we be guided by our genes, or by God's want for us?

May Day!

This morning I found that the large wooden dining table and all the wooden chairs are now in the courtyard, I fear the dining room has been transformed into a huge chalkboard! This one caught my eye, for someone had chalked William Blake's poem in a spiral, the word "I" begins in the center and around and around the words go! I wish I could duplicate the spiral poem here, but the message is revealing enough, I have been pondering it all morning.

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Almost May Day

Bro. Sedwick is a bit of a poet and pointed out that W.H. Auden wrote of the Romantics, and he thinks now of William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" and how they thought the opposite of today's scientific age of reason trumps all. Auden wrote: "... imagination, not reason, is man's defining power, and his gift from his creator - the divine element in man is now held to be neither power nor free will nor reason, but self consciousness." I must say, I had Bro. Sedwick repeat that very slowly so that I could write it all down, for all I had was a stick of chalk and I hurriedly printed each work onto the concrete floor of the dining room. Right now I have the chalked marks surrounded by a circle of paper cups inverted, so as to keep the words from being trampled upon. Now this morning I find that others have added more chalked text to mine. First is this quote by Blake, "I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination." And then chalked in another hand this, "I know of no other Christianity, and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination: Imagination, the real and eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more." I can see that if more chalk quotes are added to the concrete floor and the circle of cups continues to expand, then we all may be outside for our noon time meal, yet again, if it stirs our imaginations a bit, then I would say it all worthwhile. We'll see.

Anticipating May

Auguries of Innocence

By William Blake  (1757–1827)
  
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

April is the cruellest month?

Out for an extended walk and what can one say when one witnesses so much violence, I mean my every observation today seemed to lay bare cruelty to the extreme, and the world I speak of is that which surrounds us (and inhabits us?), all the very tiny creatures that bring life (and death) to all the earth. Fire ants, or as I called them as a child, red ants, march with so much purpose that woe to the critter that stands in the way, and as I stooped, then knelt on the crusted sand, the lizard had since expired and the red ants seemed puzzled at so great an offering, around and atop this huge creature they danced in tiny circles with some so in a frenzy that I pitied the next to happenstance upon their ceaseless march. And over there a Loggerhead Shrike, as cute as a sparrow and about the same size, yet woe to the critter -- even a small mouse! -- that this bird manages to hold, but being so small the Shrike cannot hold the struggling prey for long, so in a bit of ingenious cruelty it impales the prey on a cactus spine! And no need to speak of the snakes and all the strategies up their sleeves. But they beware of the Roadrunner, the unruly bird will circle even a rattlesnake and faint injury, luring the snake into thinking a quick meal, but that long and sharp bill can snatch snake and fling it into the air, then will fling it and beat it against a rock. Yes, to witness this affair is most unpleasant, yet it and all the other countless acts of violence surround me every minute of every day. Yet, daily my mind prays to God and thanks God for all creation. Does not God think I joke?

Fishing in a sea of sand

Years ago I viewed a Zen rock garden, with not a petunia in sight, just sand raked into swirling patterns of the sea, and a few large rocks here and there, I guessed then they represented islands, the sand the watery sea, with the raked swirls that which created the metaphor in my head of watery sea, and not simply bone-dry sand miles from any body of water. I returned a few times to that garden, once watching a solemn monk carefully dragging a rake as he first made a course around one large rock, and then the others, and then seemed to have a course already memorized, for he dragged that rake as I recalled I used to push a lawnmower in my youth. In the backyard I would not cut the lawn as my older brother did, in careful, overlapping rows, but I would push that old lawnmower in circles and swirls and zigzags, anything but in straight lines. It was fun, drawing with a lawnmower, I would stop to admire the meandering course cut through the tall grass, but in the end I would always have to do a quick back-and-forth to clip all the tall grass, all before my father returned home from work. The Buddhist dragging the rake didn't appear to be having as much fun as I did pushing a heavy lawnmower. I wondered why. At the time I supposed it had become ritual to him, and sand patterns did create looks of awe on the faces of visitors when they first came through the wooden gate. So in the spirit of pushing a lawnmower in a carefree manner, and in the spirit of the look of a Zen rock garden, I fashioned myself a wooden rake and outside the monastery, perhaps a quarter mile away, I discovered a small dune of sand that I have often gazed at, for the wind-created patterns are always a delight for me. So it was with a bit of trepidation (and boldness?) that I first began to drag the wooden rake over the dune in a pattern that I recall from that Zen garden. My thoughts when raking the dune:

A small sand dune suddenly grows large when one takes a rake to it.
What animal was missing from Noah's ark? The fish!
What is the only meal that Jesus prepares? Fish!
Sandals are useless on a sand dune, barefoot better. In April yes, in July no.
Jesus said to them, "Come and eat breakfast."
Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them,
and likewise the fish.

Sitting on a boulder and taking in the raked sand, I see that I seem to have a penchant for spiraling swirls. And God seems to have a penchant for rather beautiful waves of sculpted sand. I say that for the wind was kicking up and before my eyes I could see the fine sand slowly erasing my efforts, and after an hour or so of silent meditation, I had to admit, indeed, I have much to learn, for my sea motif of dervish lines now seemed so out of place, yet before I could return to rake the sand back in place, the wind picked up, sending me on my way.

I read the news today oh boy

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul

--Leonard Cohen

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

I heard a cock crow
this morning in a new light
Tyrannosaurus rex!

-----

Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures
--Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274

-----

cock-a-doodle-doo - English
kykyliky - Danish
kukeleku - Dutch
kukko kiekuu - Finnish
cocorico - French
kikeriki - German
coo-koo-ri-koo - Hebrew
chicchirichí - Italian
ko-ke-kok-ko-o - Japanese
kukareku - Russian
quiquiriquí - Spanish

We now call him Sir Charles

Bro. Juniper is the keeper of the chickens and his hen house provides us with a continuous supply of break fast eggs, but outside the chicken coop he allows Charles, a New Hampshire Red, to wander about the monastery, and that he does, a regal cock of the walk if there ever was one. Now this morning as I was staring at two yolks, over easy, I heard Bro. Clarence clear his throat, a signal to all that something was afoot. He told of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone being found in Montana and what was unique about this bone was that some soft tissue was still present. Unique indeed, after 68 million years! But the amazing part, the scientific part, is that some of this soft stuff produced genetic material that was decoded, and more so, when they sought the closest match to modern-day creatures, they discovered the closest match to be ... to be that of a chicken bone! From T-rex to Charles in 68 million years? So it was a sight to see, after break fast many of the brothers sought out Charles, and from a distance, just observed, observed the child of the dinosaurs. So with that, Bro. Juniper renamed our regal cock of the walk, Sir. Charles.