the burninghand blog

January 22, 2025

There is no way out of the spiritual battle
There is no way you can avoid taking sides
There is no way you can not have a poetics
no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher

you do it in the consciousness making
or not making yr world
you have a poetics: you step into the world
like a suit of readymade clothes...

There is no way out of the spiritual battle
the war is the war against the imagination
you can't sign up as a conscientious objector

the war of the world's hangs here, right now, in the balance
it is a war for this world, to keep it
a vale of soul-making...

-- Diane di Prima (Excerpt from Rant)


Diane di Prima, perhaps my favorite Beat poet, with this excerpt from my favorite poem, Rant, points the way... To be sure, Mr. Trump deserves Rant, probably more so than any other President in our nation's history": likewise, this is a poem for every American, regardless of gender, race, or which one of the America's that you came from... This poem is for us at this moment in time because our national imagination is @risK. Trump and the extremists of the political / religious "right" deeply desire a white America, clearly ruled by white men, subject to the will of the billionaire class: wearing the disposable garments of the Christian faith: they can't stand the imaginative idea of a nation dedicated to the conviction that the best government is one of equals before the law, with no one person or group "too high", and no one person or group "too low": imagination pointed the way to an experimental democracy: and only the will to imagine a working-union of opposites can lead us into our possibilities... The "right" can't see beyond their inability to engage their imaginations: They despise differences of color, gender, choice, freedom, and personal identification: to the "right" these differences are intimidating, they cower in fear of women most of all... A woman who dares use of the word "patriarchy" makes them wet their collective diapers...

Billionaires and their lust for total control and domination have virtually eliminated access to land: just a few corporations control nearly all of the former small-town newspapers: media is controlled by a few: food production is controlled by a few: seed, water, publishing, you name it, and the only remaining freedom that most people have is related to the few extra bucks they might have at any given time... Corporations like FOX lie, distort, and manipulate... free-thinkers are themselves hooked to the system that is only good for using and abusing... So, who is truly free? Who can sort through the lies and bullshit for truth? Who isn't being manipulated and deceived? Who genuinely trusts Musk or Meta? When, do you think, that Trump has told the truth and nothing but the truth? This nation has always wrestled with truth and justice: we had the collective ability to wonder why the Native "Americans" had the gall to consider this land "theirs" before we got here... Slavery built this country... when it was "officially" outlawed, we thought up ways to keep it going: Jim Crow laws, no access to land from which to be independent, and low-wage-slavery... Women have fought for the right to vote: and continue to fight for equality today: gays and lesbians have had to fight, march, and occasionally riot for equality and freedom: diversity, the hallmark of imagination and freedom celebrates all of the "strange" beauties that we are... And the capstone on the "right" is the "will to theologically provoke the Second Coming by destroying our home planet": imagine that!

Trump is a farce in masquerade. Musk knows what he is doing. And all the little men in the backrooms who serve the Master as puppeteers get their small man kicks out of cruelties imposed on the "weak"... But what really makes me chuckle is my reading of the "alternative" American history: sure, a whole lot of us have been downright bastards, but eventually, all of us being Americans, we get together to get back on course: the Irish, the Pole, the Italian, the Jew, the Black, the Asian, the Muslim, the Mexican, (not intentionally leaving anyone out) they have all made us stronger and truly more beautiful, as do the gay, the lesbian, the trans, the queer, all of us, together are the United States of America with no one left out and no one left behind... Trump can dance, spout his stupidities, and maybe even trip into doing something good, whatever... but what he can't do is stop all of us from thinking, from using our imaginations, and from knowing that we shall overcome! We will not only survive, but the day is sure to come when we will all thrive, all for one and one for all!


January 19, 2025

"We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." -- Simone Weil

This quotation from the writings of the French philosopher-mystic, Simone Weil, has long been an inspiration, no, it's been more than an inspiration to me: it has guided and molded my spiritual-political philosophy: for if this aphorism is true, then it means something! We have long read in the Christian Scripture's that "God is Love"... but truthfully, we live and practice the opposite of that supposed reality...

A vigorous and pointed truth that is deeper and more rEvolutionary than that of Simone Weil's: is: we were created by loving, for loving, to become loving! That this is not even an obvious option for mainstream Christians (let alone nearly anyone else), is an abomination of faith! "Faith without works is dead" -- now, who wrote that? "Works" does not mean converting folks to one's own version of faith, rather, it means the personal translation of "love" into "loving": loving is love in action: not to change someone's mind, but the required effort to actually make someone's life worth living, not by a formula, but by solidarity, by purposeful work, by quality education, by good food on the table, by safe housing, by a regenerating environment: by an end to sexism, racism, injustice, cruelty, and all violence!

Loving-in-action would never vote for any neo-fascist to any political office! And, it should go without saying, but it is also way past time for supporting anyone who is bound, hook-line-and-sinker, to a predatory-destruction-of-the-planet-capitalism: we need a decentralized democracy, social justice, equality for women and all citizens, regenerative agriculture, and the intentional cultivation of a nonviolent culture: this is loving-in-action!

It has been estimated that roughly a thousand species go extinct every day of every year now: how is that honoring the "God is love" centerpiece of Christian "civilization"? Most folks can't abide by my honesty (not just another perspective!). Nevertheless, like the hero in Dostoevsky's story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, I will go on with my preaching of the radical notion that everything could change in a day, a minute, a moment, if we just started loving one another... So, we go from a President who facilitated genocide to a President who will likely push for global ecocide: while the seeming majority of Christians dither their days, minutes, and moments when Paradise could be within our sacred, gentle, grasp... Truly, it is all about loving...

Obviously, no one can simply turn around and become a bold lover-of-loving. As with anything magical-mystical, becoming a bold lover-of-loving takes some significant effort. A good place to start is with your breath: breathing in gratitude and exhaling fear is essential: all "going against the current" is difficult, but cultivating gratitude is the beginning... Nurturing "right desire" is an aspect of gratitude and marginalizing fear: with right desire time becomes a friend instead of a daily loss: cultivating depth in relationships, by conversations (deep), by walking instead of speeding in vehicles, by gardening, by meditation, and by nurturing the sacredness of pleasure with one's partner(s) can redirect from vapid-consumption to the conservation of both time and effort... and thirdly, the cultivation of the awareness of the Grand Flow of the Universe begins to attune and consecrate one's heart-mind to Spirit, the Tao of the Divine Mother: loving is the fulcrum of evolution: to become conscious of both Gift and Grace is to become an agent of Loving... Anyway, by starting here, you can nudge us all another baby-step up the ladder of evolution...

January 17, 2025

​"I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?"

-- Langston Hughes, "Tired"








January 16, 2025

This morning, while walking the dogs around our small city lake, renamed by me as "Goose Pond" after the great number of Canada Geese that reside there year-round, I observed about a dozen Mergansers take off in their striking flight... Mergansers in flight are a pleasure to watch, sleek, often flying inches above water, I wondered if they would be returning, as Goose Pond is now nearly frozen over... the Geese were huddled together in and around a small pool fed by the warmer incoming river waters... At thirty-two degrees, the morning was a Wisconsin-winter-balmy...

Near our front porch stands an evergreen tree, planted by us about ten years ago, a welcome-green that hosts a few Black-capped Chickadees through the winter. Their glad chirping, even on the coldest of days, is a daily reminder of the gift of hope and gratitude: they feed on the sunflower seeds we fill the feeders with, and similarly, we feed on the seeds of loving that entertain and enliven our lives... Lao Tzu, hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, and in China rather than Palestine, counseled to embrace simplicity while later Jesus taught simplicity by referencing the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap... and further, blessed are the poor...

In chosen simplicity there can be a rich abundance, through the gift of sharing and mutual aid: such is life in our home... if it can be so here, why can it not be so everywhere? It seems to me that too many of us (while not practicing embrace simplicity on any level) do not appreciate the subtle layers of the simplicity and "poverty" espoused by both Lao Tzu and Jesus... Further, it seems to me, that the simplicity of their Way is layered upon a deepening simplicity of mind and that the poverty we need is the elimination of an ever-expanding egoic-mind... The Sabbath Poems of Wendell Berry and the Small Is Beautiful philosophy of E. F. Schumacher point in the direction into which I am leaning...

We live in a time in which the sum-total of all human knowledge supposedly doubles every six months, but we are increasingly unhappy, depressed, and hunkering down into all sorts of indignations and fundamentalisms... Systems always insist "believe this" or "believe that"... "do this" or "do that"... finally, where is the system that says, "practice your happiness" or "delight in your life"? Unhappy people follow the crowd. Unhappy people too often vote for fools. Unhappy people can and do find it easy to justify all sorts of abhorrent behaviors: they find it easy to be sexist, racist, greedy, cruel, and violent. They grasp for privilege, for profit, and for power... Quite the opposite of Lau Tzu and Jesus... What is there to do but to practice, in the small circles of our lives, the elegant simplicities of "good enough", "less is more" and "let's take a bath and make love" (Frida Kahlo) ... 

Happiness is likely rooted in "knowing less and applying it best"... which is, of course, the Way of Geese, Mergansers, Chickadees, and the holy folks of all the ages...


January 14, 2025

Once we have found the Mother,
we begin to know what Her children should be.
When we know we are the Mother's child,
we begin to guard the qualities of the
Mother in us. (Tao Te Ching, 52)

I came across the photo on the left some time ago, where I can no longer remember, but I sure do like it: two beautiful people "moving to the country", an important aspect of the "hippie movement" as it continues to be for the Catholic Worker movement... In the adventure of Christianity, there was a time in which followers of "the Way" lived as best they could the core teaching of Yeshua bar Alaha (Jesus of the Beloved): the Kingdom of Heaven is within you... This sense of the Presence, one could call it Spirit, pervaded their everyday lives... No doubt even influencing the ways in which they made love, because love was / is a living thing. 

Later, as Christianity got into bed with Constantine's Empire, love became an idea (optional) and no longer original... Instead, that which became "original" was sin and separation, each and every one from the "other"... and the so-called saint, Augustine, convinced everyone that that which was original was no longer the abiding kingdom of heaven within and among, but rather, the right and the might of Empire (in his case the "Holy Roman Empire", and later the "Holy Roman Catholic Church"... We've been chasing the tail of Original Sin and Empire ever since...

Essential outcomes are important: Empire always means an abiding and powerful aristocracy, always the primacy of obedience and control, always the primacy of greed and unlimited acquisition and greed, and always the removal of the peasantry from the land... Successful religion like successful political parties and politicians always, to one degree or another, toe the line of Empire... One need to only quietly lift the social blinders from covering one's eyes, and consider with some clarity of thought, that this is sadly (from my perspective) only too true... And like the Borg would say in Star Trek, "Resistance is futile"... But is it really? 

Regardless of the number of times the Gospel writers said, or implied, that the "Jews" killed Jesus, he was instead, killed by Empire... and while it could go without saying, even today, the long reach of Empire continues its manic violence: against the poor (everywhere), against women (nearly everywhere), and against the very well-being of the planet upon which we all live. Warring against migrants, while ignoring the historical and factual rape of indigenous systems of relationships (villages, small markets, and access to both land and water), and at the same time causing the destruction of global environments by predatory and unlimited greed... and there you have the world-wide crush of vast numbers of real human beings in migration for food and water and the simple right to live... And mass deportation becomes the "holy mantra" of the servants of Empire... 

On the other hand, there is that photo again: there stands a young woman and a young man... a sort of "holy card" of resistance will never be futile so long as there are some folks who will not bend the knee to the Unholy Trinity of Privilege, Profit, and Power. Let's pretend that they, together and with a few friends, decided to believe in the radical words of Jesus' the kingdom of heaven is within you... Let's further pretend that someone else brought along a copy of the Tao Te Ching, and read out loud these words, embrace simplicity, put others first, and desire little, with the suggestion that that sounded like a sane way of life... And still another person in their midst noted the word way with the comment that that was the name the first Christians gave themselves: way is Way, Tao is Gospel, so the Kingdom of Heaven never actually left us! And suddenly maybe! becomes a very big word! And the rEvolution happens! 

Note: but here is the Key: it has to happen with each one of us, with many small groups, living now the conviction that Jesus wasn't a liar...

Note Two: the great saint, Fr. Bede Griffiths while nearing death, counseled his friends to remember the Mother... a deeply feminine spiritual / political / economic / and cultural remembrance is required: the Mother cares equally for all of Her children! We don't need mass deportations but a mass transfiguration into servant-builders of equality, social justice, environmental reverence and regeneration, and applied nonviolence: making the kingdom of heaven within us, among us, and everywhere around us real!


December 26, 2024

Well, the odds are that Elon Musk has gotta be right about something... wouldn't you think so? This would, of course, likely mean that I am also wrong about nearly everything... How about we start with our visions of the future? As far as I can tell, Musk wants to minimize the role of government in our lives (not necessarily a bad thing); Musk seems determined to exalt and enhance the privileged position of the billionaire class; Musk seems to have little (to no) reverence for the natural world, resources, or biodiversity; and finally, Musk seems to desire a world economic system of unlimited profits and power for the few... How do you see Musk, and by political extension, Trump? Musk / Trump serve the Ultra-Right-Wing Ideology.

My vision of the future? Right off the bat I have to state that I believe in a political and economic system "of the people, by the people, and for the people"... Democratic institutions 
exist to serve and facilitate the full growth and development of every person: so too, does the government. Next, I believe that the economic "void" separating the top from the bottom should be reduced to, say four to one... economic inequality is a choice, not in any way a requirement of any person's well-being. I believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is Green: as it is in Heaven, so too should it be on Earth: certainly, you can imagine Christ saying, "I am the Earth, Every Person, Every Creature, and Everything, so whatsoever you do to the least among you, you do to me." Finally, all profit, and the exercise of any power exists, fundamentally, for the service of the Common Good: The Good of All is dependent upon the Good of Each One... So, I am way beyond "left-wing"... You can if you wish call me crazy, freak, or whatever: but if you are a person of an exploratory / experiential life or faith: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Theist, Atheist, Anything / Everything: I am simply giving voice to the Perennial Wisdom of the Ancient Sages: love one another as I have loved you, leaving no one and nothing behind! 

A civilization, worthy of the word, is a living practice of compassion, social and environmental justice, nonviolence, and a radical reverence for anyone or anything considered "other"... I imagine and serve the dream of peace on Earth (no profit off weapons or war), the equality of all persons, and the sanctification of the small, the creative, and the beautiful: I believe in the absolute necessity of a resurging counterculture, a "from the bottom to the top" cadre of servant-builders of soil, community, and culture: this is where the Spirit, the deep soul, of Planet and of Person resides... It is our destiny to link up and reinvent the meaning and purpose of Being Human... with and for each other and for everyone! 

 
December 16, 2024

Way, way, back a friend and I were hitchhiking in Northern California, thumbing in the direction we wanted to go. With no luck, we decided to cross the highway and head in the other direction. In short order, a VW van load of fellow hippies stopped for us. A driver and one passenger had the only seats with the rest of us sprawled on the rug-covered floor...

Years later, I bought myself a VW bus... the sweetest ride I ever had... and so it was that I looked forward to the word of a new VW bus in the making... recently released with a "beginning" price tag of $60,000 it will be leaving us old hippies on the side of the road, and the young readers of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, beats and hippies, will be wondering at the social / economic necessity of corporate profits without limits...

Of course, there are few "modern" beats or hippies, at least in the sense of folks living in the creative context of shared poverty, intentional community, and the sacred quest for spiritual illumination. That old VW bus that picked up my friend and I could very well have been a small crowd of angels on a mission of miracles...
Where to look for a similar small crowd of angelic miracle workers today? 

Where are the radical young people of today, with Dharma Bums in their pockets, questing their own illumination? Where are the young people of today who challenge conformity and convention, wear feathers from Salvation Army counters (thanks Leonard), and who intuit the connections between greed-violence-church? And the obvious solutions of scaling down the empire of wealth, returning to right-living-in-community on the land, and the neighborliness of knowing "enough" and "kindliness"... Old values of family, work, and land enough to feed and share may be out of style in this world of 60,000-dollar VW's: but the alternative is our current slide into artificial and no intelligence whatsoever: for God's sake what will we all do when work and place are never home again?


November 23, 2024

"Everywhere, every day, local life is being discomforted, disrupted, endangered, or destroyed by powerful people who live, or who are privileged to think that they live, beyond the bad effects of their bad work." --Wendell Berry (Home Economics)

If you are unfamiliar with the writings of American farmer, poet, and essayist, Wendell Berry, you really owe it to yourself, your children, and/or your grandchildren to invest a fair amount of your time to the reading and study of his thought. Couple Berry with the old Shaker hymn Simple GIfts, and you've got an analysis that cuts to the heart of "this is not working!"

This line from Simple Gifts is a sure pointer into the correct direction: "And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight."
Our great American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, would likely respond to the angst of our time with a cryptic, "Just follow the circles, yes, just follow the circles"... And where do the circles lead?

Of course, they all lead into the heart... into the heart of the individual person, but also into the heart of the family, and ultimately, into the heart of humanity... the circle is the place and work of home, of community, of abundant resources, of mutual aid and sharing and giving: where my need is met by your giving and likewise, your need is met by my giving, until the circle is completed... and a new one is begun...

A spiritually oriented psychologist might call this "soul work"... The Shaker Hymn presupposes the desire and then the ability to slow down... to focus on the small as the point of beginning... of following the natural flow... of centering in the holy breath... and most importantly, of letting the well-spring of our natural kindness overflow into the practice of beauty... everything is meant to flow from person to family, from family to community, and from community to region, nation, and finally into the care, preservation, and regeneration of Earth... How do we evolve from the lusting privilege, profit, and power of the current worldwide, dominant, interrelated system? 

I do not see an answer... but, I do see a Way... again, the beginning point is the person. And then, clearly, there needs to be an evolving network of persons consciously focused on the personal cultivation of the perennial wisdom of the ages: 1) There is an infinite, field, of Real Reality, within and around the world of our senses; 2) This Real Reality is the essential core of every human person; 3) The purpose of life is to discover this Reality experientially in the heart, and then to live and build communities of loving service, mutual aid, and a compassionate harmony... With every breath, there is a Presence. With every action, there is a Service. And with the conscious cultivation of compassion, there is a birthing of creative possibilities. This Way is not a closed "system". It is open. It is free. It is the natural abundance of a good life...


November 21, 2024

We had our first snowfall last night -- winter approaches -- perhaps it is true that all we can hope for is the grace and the courage to somehow stand as a sign of contradiction... Sure enough and whether we like it or not, this most precious and beautiful Planet Earth continues to spin, regardless of human hubris and flat-out stupidity... Make Love, Not War was one of the mottos of the hippie "movement", a spectacular failure, to be sure, but nevertheless, what might have happened if, in the intervening years, we would have taken it to heart?

There is no consolation significant enough to ease the burden of consequence for endless war... there are no longer sufficient justifications for all of the violence that political-power-policies perpetuate... 

​It was through reading Daybreak by Joan Baez that I first read about the nonviolence and life of Mahatma Gandhi: India is now a near-fascist world power: we are still supplying the world with weapons of war: and I am still reading Gandhi... You know, Gandhi was not just a revolutionary activist, but also always on the edge of revolutionary thought as well... He formed several "ashram" communities of service and solidarity; and, as important as the rest, he lived his "experiments in truth" as if "seeds" for future generations to develop and "farm", much like Jesus practiced and taught his Beatitudes of the Good Life...

I still have the copy of the Tao Te Ching that I purchased in the old Thunderbird Bookshop in Carmel Valley back when in High School. Composed well before the time of Jesus, and in the distant land of ancient China, the Tao sings of harmony, humility, and the cultivation of the spirit of "emptiness" and "openness" to the flow of nature and the natural life. The natural life? What does that mean anymore? Sudan and Gaza are both under siege and starving: tens of thousands of women and children have either been raped or slaughtered: and the living stumble day-to-day walking the vanishing line between life and death... The tiger gripping the throat of its prey is natural: is that the justification we need for the weapons we make, sell, and distribute? Holy Moly. Why can't "natural" become harmless? Why can't the kingdom of heaven, supposedly within us, have some degree of influence? 

I guess that I am just one more "lib" owned by the "Right"...

No, that's not right! While in the final analysis, we are all "nobody" (how could we be "somebody" when we are utterly stripped of our egoic centers?), that which really matters is how we lived our one precious life, isn't that true? If anyone "owns me" it is not the dumb-ass political Right! Mother Mary told Juan Diego "I am your Mother!" She is Mother of Jesus and All the Poor ones of the world: She is slaughtered with the Mothers and the Children in Sudan, in Gaza, and certainly in Israel as well. Wherever there is misery, oppression, and injustice, She is there: powerless to stop any of it! And yet, that very powerlessness is Her power! It cuts to the core of the Real Reality: the Intelligence of the Cosmos is about a burgeoning evolution towards coherence and the flowering of universal compassion: human "power" cannot bring about (nor prevent) this burgeoning evolution: we can, though, intentionally participate in it, which will further it, build it, and co-birth it: we can surrender to Her Immaculate Heart, while living, and working, for the inevitable coming of the Peaceable Kingdom: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us who are woke and active for the coming of the Nonviolent Gentle-Green Earth! And, Gentle Mother, how about nudging the Silent or the Sleeping into a consideration of love's possibilities!

 
November 19, 2024

​The scene in this photo is something that will likely repulse most viewers... perhaps you as well? I've seen this and so many similar ones played out in the Catholic Worker... Whenever I reference Dorothy Day as the Saint of the Gutter Beautiful it is because of the Real Reality that lurks just on the other side of that which most people think of as "real"... For the most part, Christian theology has its beginning in a "theology of Incarnation": meaning that the transcendent God deigned to become Man that we might be saved: and this Man is Jesus Christ... Dorothy certainly believed this to be an essential truth... But she also, I am certain, believed through her experience, that there is also a practiced "theology of Immanence"...

​Immanence, while at the same time a transcendence, is a "hidden wholeness" or Unity that escapes both articulation and contemplation -- so far as the mainstream Christian practice goes... Yet, the duality implied in traditional theology is a diminishment of the Divine, of the Tao, which is always both (and one might as well add) and neither... There is a Mystery here. But, it is real and it is true and it is the secret, yet explicit, teaching of Jesus Christ: the kingdom of heaven is within you... it is who we are... it is what everything is... This Unity is the Alpha, the Omega, and the Way of Travel and Being...

​Immanence is not easy! Whatsoever you do to the least person or thing among you, you do the same to me. This "no difference" is key to everything worth anything at all: the Tao is everywhere and always: within and without: always Unity, never Division. The Divine in me adores the Divine in you. This sacred Namaste is the only religion, culture, economy, and politics that connects to and with Immanence. To revere and to adore is the radical action that can save this Planet from the rapacious greed and violence of the itty-bitty "men" who intently play their games of power, manipulation, and domination, as if their power has some sort of fundamental meaning... No Emporer has any clothes: we should be laughing them out of their minds... and back into their hearts where they belong...

And so I (with Community, Friends, and Supporters) fed over two million meals to hungry and / or homeless people: along with many other projects (like free health care, shelters, jobs, field trips, reconnections with families, and more... One particular project, the goal of all the others, was to start a retreat center for homeless and other very poor persons. I failed three times. The first, after a year of "moving in" and conversation and planning, ended with the property owner agreeing to sign over his 200 + acres, buildings, creek, hills, animals, etc. if we would agree to only "bring in good Catholics" for retreats... What a temptation! My first thought, was that I could do this (plus, I knew that I could outlive the bastard)... My second thought was the part that I said out loud to his Board of Directors, "This breaks my heart, but I can't agree to this condition." I walked away, dejected...

My second attempt was also doomed: the ranch had no access to drinking water (water from the ocean had destroyed their wells)... The third was the hardest of all. After more years of trying to convince my Board of the merits of my idea, they finally agreed, with the caveat that I would have to raise the funds by myself. I was overjoyed! In six months, I successfully raised $465,000! We purchased two houses, 17 acres, and a small creek. Farm Worker girls volunteered to help us... The County approved our permit for a retreat center! However, "My" Board of Directors, after one year, changed their minds: they sold the Ranch: Ranch Paraiso... they sold it for a "healthy" profit... I silently vowed to leave as soon as I could do a couple of more things... Especially with Mia and Michelle's leadership, we opened an Emergency Shelter for Homeless Women (Women Alive!)... And then! And then! We successfully opened another shelter with Permanent Supportive Housing... (the Dorothy Day House of Peace)...

​Anyway, the upshot of all of this is the core of my Heart-Song: we are all walking-talking-breathing miracles... it might not look like it, but we are all a-swim in the Immanence of the Divine, the Holy, the Tao, the Presence... Namaste is the Word of Bliss: the Divine in me adores the Divine in you... Living for some time now in River Falls, almost like a married hermit, I practice surrender to the Immanence... do the chores as I am able, remember the blessings of the poor, occasionally write a poem... but always cherish Michelle, easily the kindest person I have ever known, and love with her our three amazing "beautifuls"... 

Not too bad for a life... not bad at all!   

 

 November 18, 2024

​This photograph is of Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful, getting arrested for the last time in her life. This time, for protesting with the United Farm Workers in California. (Photo by Bob Fitch). If Trump and Company actually begin to round up folks for deportation, I suspect that I'll be arrested again, like Dorothy, in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Christ... Be that as it may, there are certainly worse things that one can do with her / his life: like turning one's back on the Gospel and justifying it with "they should just come here legally"... Yea, like the Native Americans requested our immigration papers: our papers were bullets and genocide.. plus, we forcibly "immigrated" millions of black slaves to enrich "our" America... This country was built by genocide and slavery and oppression and endless war... (Oh and one more thing, we instigated a war with Mexico precisely to force them to give away half of their country -- how do you think that we got Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California?)

On another note, I hope that you enjoyed Roberto Chavez's "An American Story"... besides all the love shared and given through my thirty years on the streets of Salinas, having been able to likewise love and serve the migrant farm worker families of the Salinas Valley, likewise for the same thirty years, was always felt by me as an incredible honor... They were the kindest people I have known in my life...

For over ten years now, I have been writing and re-writing a book of poems and stories... another re-write is in the works... nearly done... nearly done! They are "The Hermit Poems... of Old Dan on Walking Green Mountain"... Besides this work, I continue to write other poems... the most recent is on the page entitled The Beat... the poem is "Hot Tea Dragon Cup"... 

Here in River Falls, it is chilly and we are anticipating our first snow arriving on Wednesday / Thursday... likely a poem will be showing up with the falling flakes... 



November 8, 2024

​If you haven't already figured this out, we live in a very jaded time: a time of a heart-felt pretend of religious and political fervor. Yes, I did write "pretend". It is pretend because what we really want , indeed what we most hunger for, is a wild, freeing and liberating passion: we crave the experience of an extravagant surrender!

And so we pretend and settle for the supposed surety of religion and the solace of political scumbags instead of rugged truth-tellers and agents of a brand new rEvolution... Our theologians give us ancient Creeds and mumbled Commandments when all we want is a way to experience truth, compassion, and kindness as we trip, stumble, and fall our way through life...

​It seems that no one is willing or able to cut through all the crap that is for sale, and simply state, in no uncertain terms, that it is love that we both want and deserve... Oh, it is true that there is and always has been a version or kind of love that is little better than a thief in the night: many, if not most, of us have had a tangle or two with that kind of love: but we don't want a tangle, not when words refuse to set us free: we want to utterly disappear into the Nothingness-Everythingness of Self-Abandonment into Loving... We want what a few of the great saints, poets, and lovers have had... If only...

​We want the radical, to the very roots of our being, the experience of the dynamism of love / loving... We somehow, as if by a magical spell, intuit that the heart-mind of the Cosmos just has to be about loving: we might not be able to say it, but in our heart-of-hearts, we know that we all deserve it! The core of the Really Real, and the core of every human life, and the one supreme "law", straight from the Cosmic Consciousness, is this: we have been created-manifested in order to consciously expand the Realm of Love...

Somehow the idea of "soul" is real. But, not as a "thing" that we possess or that is hiding within us. No, it is not our conscience. "It" is not an "it" at all. Soul is our itty-bitty unit of the Cosmic wrapped for awhile in a body of skin: we are as It Is. This is the entire root system of that which we call "Divinity"... We don't know what that exactly means, but somehow we "know" that we have been made to be revealed as infinite, as lovers, as "God-Makers"... Our skin is not simply the largest organ of our bodies, but it is an entire orchestra! As orchestras, "We have been created by Love, for Love, to become Love" (Simone Weil). As each a living orchestra, we are pervaded, mind-body-skin, as an energy field, alive with possibilities to enlarge the loving capacity of the universe, to experience Itself through our experiences and engagements with loving... whew!

​Love is not a shack in the woods of private concerns. Love instead, has no home but all of the wilds of earth, sky, minds, and the interactions of countless hearts. The very core of each one of us is as if a mirror that Cosmic Consciousness gazes into with rapt attention: not as a curious overlord, but as a Child curious about the revelations that we will contribute to the sum total of all loving. Creation is not the story-set of some sort of temporary sport or play presentation. Rather, creation is the physical manifestation of an unbounded curiosity and will to self-discover by means of loving. In still other words, it is not our task to differentiate between who we are from what we see around us or discover as living persons somewhere else on earth. Nothing can be separate from anything else: no one person can somehow be separate from every other person: in fact, extending through time either in the past or into the future, we are all inseparably connected... The Tao is both at the same time: the Void of Nothingness and the Manifestation of Isness...

​Love is the Will to Action. Love is the Will to Justice, Equality, Kindness, Service, Solidarity, and Compassion-in-Action. Love, or rather, all loving is the immortality, or, continuity of consciousness: love cannot die. Love cannot cease to continue its unique experience and gifting of loving. Love does not divide but unites. The "highest" loving is universal in essence and action: it knows no degree of separation... this loving is a communion that requires the expression of Divinity: it is universal and without limits: it knows no gender, no nation, no differences whatsoever. Loving reveals life as a harmony of being: the creation of truth, beauty, and goodness... Truth, beauty, and goodness compels the creation of communities of similar intention, knowing that this experience is meant for All / Everywhere... Finally, love and loving is the freedom to choose to love and to expand the personal and social boundaries of loving...  Such loving is not about "thinking oneself into existence" but rather, it is a sort of dying into the promise of an unrepeatable historical event, and the will to accept such a living-burden... and to make of it one's self-definition and purpose...


November 7, 2024

​Many people have their own idea of a perfect world. I do as well. (Do you?) This is where I start: where men are nonviolent, women are free, and everyone is wanted. And I suppose that this is where I would finish: and God walked and lived among them and fed everyone from Her Big Soup Pot...

​In a way, I am far too serious. I take too seriously the Beatitudes. I take too seriously the challenge of: whatsoever you do to the least person among you, you do to me... That, my friends is the "no more excuses" religion of Jesus. It's his Gospel, his politics, his economics, and his culture all boiled down into a fine, clear, broth, ready for us to complete the divine soup...

For all intents and purposes I have lived as a one-person-rEvolutionary all of my adult life: there were only a few "hippies" in Salinas when I was a young man, nevertheless. my hair was long and I was doing the little bit I could to oppose and resist the Vietnam War; I practiced yoga and meditation with Swami Satchidananda at UCSC; I boycotted lettuce and grapes; I volunteered for Sen. George McGovern; I studied in packs of "Free Universities"; I founded a Catholic Worker House and later a nonprofit; I fell in love, too many times over, with homeless and migrant folks; I wrote poetry and essays on culture, the environment, and religious experiences; I got arrested, handcuffed, and imprisoned at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site; I read Dorothy Day, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, Lanza del Vasto, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., feminist insights, gay and lesbian spirituality and justice, Fr. Thomas Merton, the Catholic Worker, and, of course, Mahatma Gandhi... I believed, then, and continue to believe to this day that we all need a rEvolutionary expansion of our collective consciousness, from the miniscule reality of our world historical culture, to the wild-wonderful-bliss of the kingdom of heaven is within you!  

You needn't tell me that I am quite peculiar, even weird. I have always known that! Everywhere and everywhen, I have always been the "outrider". Now, blessed with life with the kindest woman / person I have ever known and the beautiful love of our three offspring, I have "retired" into the life of the ancient Chinese hermit-poet I have long admired. I practice the many ways of loving. I cook. I wash the dishes. I walk the dogs. I meditate. I read the Benedictine Breviary. I meditate. I empty my mind-ego (slowly, to be sure). I read. I study. Seasonally I garden. I walk some more. I write on "theburninghand.com". I read Chinese poets. I read the Beat poets. I search for my own poems that yet lurk somewhere in my mind. I listen to music and Buddhist chants. In summary, I cultivate the literary Taoist life, sort of as a part-time hermit. I wait for Michelle. I wait for my family to return to our home. At night I dream of an old Soup Kitchen and all the folks I was so privileged to love...

The Cosmos-Earth is our Mother! The living Christ-Spirit is the rEvolution unpacked and free! The kingdom of heaven is here, is now: is not in some faraway-fantasy! As Patti Smith has sung: people have the power! We can choose to be nonviolent, free, and welcoming (all signs of the Beatitude life)... so I pray, so too, do I try to live...

 
November. 6, 2024​

Hot Tea Dragon Cup

​mallards lead goose parade
dark pond
dark shore-frozen leaves
dark distant wings
slap-slap
and me? my protest soundless
lost time
in half pursuit of Dark Enigma
lips touch hot tea dragon cup

​Waking up, one more time, to the disappointing realization that my fellow Americans do not, perhaps cannot, see the world as I see it. When I look out, I see a diaphanous shining just beyond the range of normal "seeing". This "seeing" is everyone's birthright, yet we pretend blindness and thus grope in the all-consuming loathing of perpetual night... Jesus could say I am the light until the cows came home, but it never really made any difference for they killed him anyway... Was that killing done not out of malice, but out of spite? How well did he understand that most of us actually prefer the perpetual night that hides our lives even from ourselves? How often have we hungered for a world in which we needn't have had to work so hard to simply love one another? Are we really so full of anger and hate simply because we are just too damned tired to care anymore?

And so a man, just barely on this side of madness, will once again occupy the White House, and we can all settle back on our sofas and watch Part Two of the national spectacle of Donald Trump on the loose... But, to be sure, there is a diaphanous light on just the other side of that which we conclude is reality. This light is the Really Real. It is within you, me, everyone, (even Donald Trump)... Jesus talked about the light a few times, just like he talked about the kingdom of heaven within us: Proud Boys killed him for it. Mr. Trump is likely to set them free, and like Jesus, our resistance will not be futile if we form communities of light and hope and courage, if we practice mutual aid, and if we live always knowing that the light needs us to engage and turn it on!

​The Saints, knew there share of adversity, but lived by the maxim that all things shall be well and all manner of things very well, if we enthusiastically do those things that have been given for us to do... Just ask a mother who has, or is, enduring childbirth: Life! Blessed Be Life! Blessed Be Every Life! In a sense, the entirety of the spiritual life is in "becoming" your own mother and giving birth to the person who, even now, is waiting in the diaphanous shining! You can be the light that the world needs! All of us can!


October 24, 2024

walking 
with forest leaves
-- in flight

"And so... and so..." is a moment out-of-time, resting as it were, in a hollowed space of the heart-mind... Of course, this "hollowing" is the one real work that we are all called to... What? You too are the poet of your life! An every-day appreciation for the beautiful, the stunning, and even the miraculous, is like handwashing your eyes with the holiest of waters. To breathe! To see! To feel! To kiss! My God, but you are a living glory!

​You are surrounded by, penetrated even, with the Humble-Adoring-Kiss-of-God (remember the core teaching of that Ancient Nut: the kingdom of heaven is within you! ) This is the poetry that you need to bring forth. Bathing, touching, kissing, dressing, working, building, serving, sharing, and most of all, breathing through your day and your night: it all can be the stuff that poems are made of! 

There is a painting of mine that hangs in our "Dragonroom", as there is a poem thumb-tacked to the wall beside it. I likely wrote the poem, but honestly, I no longer remember... Here it is:

​When Li Po Became an Immortal

​I wander   sweeping clouds
away   forgetting years
looking for the ancient Way
                                                                                                                      
resting against a tree
I listen to the murmuring stream

In the very midst of a world of noise, you can sweep the fallen leaves, and plan for a day and a year of holy peace... May it be yours... May it be for all of us! 


October 15, 2024

​From Seed Only I wrote "settle in... a giving home..."  And so it seems to me, that this simple idea is an indicator of a pathway worth walking: a solution to the temptations that beset us, both as individual persons, as institutions and culture, and still more widely, as nations... 
The central truth of both Gospel and Tao is the kingdom of heaven is within you... neither for sale nor for the taking... systems be damned! the kingdom of heaven is free! is here! is yours! is everyone's as natural as a next breath...

​"... settle in... a giving home..." is the Way of Universe and of Earth: it is the Way of Heart when mind has been free to calm, has been offered the satisfaction of enough and the bliss of giving... Back in my good old days, no one ever left Dorothy's Place without having received something to eat as a gift... and so we walked a simple pathway... the cultivation of the kingdom of heaven: neighborliness, compassion, justice, reconciliation, forgiveness, equality, a welcoming diversity, in short, we strove to live as home-makers on the street... 

​Through our eyes the Universe is seeing itself... through our hands, the Universe is discovering touch... through our loving thoughts, the Universe is coming to delight in loving more, in loving without limits... Through our conversion to this simple pathway of compassion, nonviolence, truth, and justice we participate in the building of the kingdom: not by power, not by privilege, and certainly not by profit, but by opening our hearts and hands: loving the earth, loving the stranger, and loving one another... This is the Tao. This is the Holy Gospel. 

"Come my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world"... the kingdom of heaven is within you... 



August 21, 2024

Of course, Michelle would somehow remember that it was on this date, twenty-five years ago, that she and I first met. It was easy for her to fall in love with the broken-lives who wandered through the doors of our Day Room Shelter and Soup Kitchen... Eleanor and her brother Jose became her best friends: both long-time guests and kitchen volunteers... I'll not delve deeper into their story except to write that if Eleanor had not died of cancer before we left California, she would be here in Wisconsin with us (no doubt still causing us as much grief as joy)...

But thinking back twenty-five years took me back, what?, fifty-some years, to shortly after my high school graduation. [Oops... I gotta run... be back later!]


August 18, 2024

​A sound mind, I should think, requires some semblance of heart consciousness. Or, if you prefer, some evidence of soul... The ego always insists that everything is about "me". A healthy adult, on the other hand, is capable of at least several layers of reasoned thought. From the outside looking in my life has been an original freak show... nevertheless, the organization that I started (by the time I had left) had served over two million meals, freely, to anyone in need... along with a free health care clinic, several shelters, a work co-op, community garden, art gallery, camps for kids, and other projects as well... and yet, once a freak, always a freak...

Beat poet Gregory Corso once said "If you're a poet, then you are saved"... Whew!  I don't have to be a MAGA cult Christian! 

If I am in fact free from the MAGA cult, what then must I do? If Ram Dass was looking over my shoulder I would think he'd be whispering "Write be not do!" You see, that's the key to heart consciousness and soul. To be means to view one's interpretation of reality through the lens of compassion, empathy, and mutuality (essential ingredients of the Kingdom of Heaven). Action follows after the lead of heart and soul. This is the living now of Kingdom ethics. To be is the practice of considering the well-being of every "other" in the context of both service and solidarity, for in truth, the good of any "one" requires the good every "other". We are inextricably bound, one to the other... this, in essence, is the genuine meaning of the Kingdom of Heaven...

Ah, but you want to be "saved" all the while ignoring and/or opposing the words and life of Jesus. Now that is just plain weird... 

All of this certainly begs the question of "how"? If I were a saint I would suggest that you make your life conform to the life of Christ: love others, serve others, live simply if not in poverty, feed everyone, and pray without ceasing. But not being a saint, I would say that you should strive to honestly love others, strive to serve others with openness and integrity, strive to live in the conviction that simplicity can be abundant, strive to build a community that includes the poor and others on the margins, and the best way to pray without ceasing is to link prayer with your breath... a simple breath prayer, is to mentally whisper "I love You" with your incoming breath, and "I thank You" with your outgoing breath... If you have doubts about that God-thing, so what? The prayer itself will cultivate your soul... no problem... 

​Everyone is welcome into the freak festival...!
​
                                                                                       
July 31, 2024

​Beat poet, Gregory Corso, wrote "If you're a poet, then you are saved." And Philomene Long wrote "We open a door. There is no road. We take it." I circled both of these quotes in Hard To Be a Saint In The City (The Spiritual Vision of the Beats) by Robert Inchausti because, in my reflections on life, love, and the pursuit of happiness they seemed to erase the boundaries of established religion, culture, and politics... Anne Waldman, in Beats at Naropa writes of the "outrider" tradition... She could just as well have said "reject", "cowboy", "hippy", "mad-monk", or any number of other labels indicating a person on the margins...

Or, such a person could simply be sane... Meanwhile, as the world continues to turn, profits are made, consumption is on over-load, power is pleasure, and pleasure is seldom divine and a deep-continuing-satisfaction... Outriders set the markers for sanity...

I'm not certain, but I think that I read once that Albert Einstein wrote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Isn't that us? "Us" being just about everyone on this precious blue Planet. Insane is the war on and in Gaza... There is simply no way in which Israel is safer or more secure with all of the death and destruction they have levied upon Palestinians... and it is no after-thought on my part to likewise write that the wanton violence of Palestinian warriors does nothing at all to further their cause of liberation and justice. What the hell does a divine child in Gaza care about a warrior's demand for liberation and justice when her Momma and Papa are dead and she sits alone in rubble?

​I am a poet and I don't care if I am saved or not. I want to open a door, with or without a road, and walk towards the peace-able-kingdom... I couldn't care less about the justifications that religions and politicians come up with for their endless violence, intolerance, hatred, and profits off the weapons they make-buy-sell-and-use. All of the Divine Children of Earth deserve a world without war, without guns on our streets, and bodies piling up... 

​Sanity is, both factually and mystically, loving each other up... such is the thought and marker this outrider sets...


June 28, 2024

​A fierce thinker, writer, and critic of every system of power and domination, wrote in 1972, "Ugly will not be made beautiful by increase of ugliness... The technocracy will not be overthrown. It will be displaced -- inch by inch -- by alternative realities imaginatively embodied." (Sources by Theodore Roszak) The construction of an alternative reality in relation to the homeless and marginalized poor of Salinas was, for thirty years, my life and vocation... But no matter how I look at it, it was never enough... One-by-one, there were many successes; but by the same token, one-by-one, there were many failures... Finally though, with the Chinatown Streets now in the rearview mirror of my life, I understand that I didn't just work next to the railroad tracks, I was factually on the right track...

​To imaginatively embody the revolution of heart that Dorothy Day always wrote and talked about is the only way forward into this dream of peace and justice for all: no one is somehow exempt from making their own personal commitment and contribution! Commit! Organize! Act!
And always plan on starting over!

​Page One, The Beat, is a rambling selection of quotations (I am a collector of insights from others). Any one, or all of them, could lead to hours of discussion and planning for possibilities. The Beat is the fertile soil of vision... and the Way to overthrow the Dominator Paradigm (read The Chalice & The Blade, and Sacred Pleasure by Riane Eisler)... but truly, the great work is in cultivating the revolution of heart in your daily life: center, contemplate, conspire with the saints, and do the small things with great love and attention: the Way is deep and through the heart... As one necessarily begins to opt out of the requirements of life in the Dominator Paradigm (you know, stop your creative mind from thinking deeply about anything at all, and when in doubt, just consume-consume-consume)... it seriously helps to build soil, to garden, and to find community (neither Jesus, his Mother, nor Lao-Tzu lived without soil-gardens-and-community...

​There is no "finally" to writing or living any of this: there is no "last word"... Instead, there has to be a gentle awakening into the sublime Mystery of the Beloved (as Rumi would put it). There is, at the core of every particle of matter and in every living being an evolutionary Light that hungers for a receiving heart-mind: this encounter is what is known as "the mystic"... our daily life is supposed to nurture and encourage the brightening of this Light... Living deep in this mystic-core, we will (must) tend towards nonviolence, harmony, equality, simplicity, and goodness... Adoration of the Divine, and the bodies-souls-lives of the people around us, infills our heart-mind with awe... and so the revolution truly begins...


June 26, 2024

​As a very young boy I saw a photograph of a Vietnamese girl-child running after having been hit with napalm dropped from an American bomber... the photo brought home to Americans the searing reality of the War in Vietnam... and galvanized an anti-war movement. Idealism was still alive in America -- but just barely... As much as a kid could, I volunteered in the campaign of Senator George McGovern running against war-criminals Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Of course, he lost to Nixon (idealism does tend to lose more often than it does to win)... To this day, America still has a very hard time squaring idealism with reality...

Photos don't seem to be working in regards to the War in Gaza: there is no burgeoning anti-war movement and protestors are quickly and easily marginalized. Propaganda is wide and deep in its decades-long, unflinching, support of Israel: even as it has built its own version of apartheid after the example of South Africa. Netanyahu is, like Nixon-Kissinger, another war criminal. Is Joe Biden? Is every American, who without question, supports budgets and actions that have built the Israeli war machine? Of course, we do know that our "friends" may have warts... but, we try to reason, Islamic nations and terrorists are devoid of any ability to be like us: reasonable... and so here we are...

Sorry, but I do have errands and tasks calling me... I'll be working but pondering these words as well... I'll be back!


June 21, 2024

​It's another rain-day here in western Wisconsin: everything is wet and very green: lusciousness abounds! While flooding is affecting some communities in the north, particularly in northern Minnesota, the rivers near us, the Mississippi, the St. Croix, and our own little Kinnickinnic,  are not yet flooding... Our home is on a rise so flooding for us is not a concern: but the slip and slide of mud certainly is! 

I'm thinking today about the "state" of the Christian Right and their obsession with the Ten Commandments... when Michelle and I first visited Duluth Minnesota (a favorite city on the banks of Lake Superior) we walked downtown and there was a big boulder with a plaque attached to it with the Ten Commandments on it. At first, jokingly, I expressed surprise that there was a Jewish group in Duluth that made a monument with these Ten Commandments on it... of course, Michelle and I knew that it wasn't Jews making a show of their religion, but rather, Christians who were (and are) wanting a show of these commandments: instead of the teachings of Jesus!

Jesus was Jewish, that is certain. But, according to the Gospel, he boiled the commandments down to two: love God with one's passionate being, and a second one "like it": love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus, so far as we know, never taught the Ten Commandments, rather, he modified them with his Beatitudes. And his sermons on the Mount, the Plain, and his parables, like of the Good Samaritan and the Last Judgment ("I was hungry and you fed me"). Why does the Christian Right never advocate for the display of Jesus' teachings and always opt for the Jewish Ten Commandments?

Might this be a clue? Jesus, many times over, taught pass no judgment to his listeners / followers. The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, always invite  the reader to pass judgment on the people around them and especially upon people they don't know but who might be "in the news". Judgment, as often as not, is rendered to differentiate "us" versus "them": the "good" from the "bad": the "saved" from the "unsaved": a narrow mind-set with no real connection with Jesus at all. So, again, why this radical disconnect?

I may very well be the only one, but I do think that this is very telling: one can imagine "telling" to be the point: "telling" the "authorities" that this person or that had an affair with a co-worker: or that "Joe" covets "Jill": or that "Donald" blasphemed against "God"... and so on... Won't everyone feel better when someone other than them is punished, perhaps even stoned to death, for some "crime" God abhors? Perhaps I am the only one, but I bet that the Christian Right skips over "Thou shalt not kill" because of the Second Amendment that declares guns an "unlimited" right: never mind the number of children killed by guns every year! Of course, it is very likely that Christians make the guns, invest in the guns, sell the guns, and with the profits might be even vacationing with us in Duluth!   

​Jesus' beatitude of blessing upon the poor, the humble, the generous, and the peacemaker is simply not as "liberating" as passing judgment upon sinners... Ah yes, in more ways than one, my phone is right: severe thunderstorms heading my way...                                                                                                                                                                                                   


June 6, 2024

A few weeks ago, Michelle and I had the occasion to walk around the Minnesota Arboretum; holding hands all day, walking and talking is such a delightful way of making love; we always joke that we are searching for the mysterious futon hidden amongst the trees, just for us and our love-play... Try to remember, if you love someone, cherish the moments... time passes so quickly... Leave nothing unsaid... Accept with gratitude the polishing of your heart-mind... And with a calm certitude, live in the dream-hope of an Eternal Now with your Beloved... That's what we do!

Love given, love received: if it is a genuine love, it inevitably must expand to include and embrace everyone and everything upon this Sacred Blue Planet, and beyond: no one and nothing forgotten, left out or left behind, or hopelessly unforgiven... We are Sacred Beings made from Holy Light and sent forth on an evolutionary journey into an endless heart-mind expansion... We might as well think of ourselves, everyone and everything, as swimming in the waters of the Divine Mother's Womb: we are embraced from within with the option of joining in this Cosmic Dance and give give give the stored up contents of our heart-mind: keeping nothing back "for ourselves" because we have come to the Gate of Holy Wisdom which declares, always: there is no "I" that remains in the Mother: it is always all about the "other"...

And so we practice: politics is now truly personal: "I" am the immigrant knocking at the door; "I" am the mother and child blown to smitherines by an American made missile in Gaza; "I" am the queer marching down the street; "I" am the black boy dreaming of living in the White House; "I" am the trans dreaming of living in peace, understanding, and equality; "I" am my own sworn enemy who understands nothing of this and wishes me silent, or better yet, dead... But "I" practice on...

"I" practice on because "I am You, You are Me, and we are together, One"...

And so, in our little house here in River Falls, we work everyday on this holy practice: this is our faith, this is our family-love... we garden, rabbits eat our kale and kill our apple trees, and yet we jump with an exclamation "Look! There's a bunny! They are so cute!" We plant more seeds, we plant another tree: why not? Most of the fun in life is in the happiness of the adventure! We practice gratitude and express our amazement on how lucky we are: out of the entire Universe with infinite possibilities, we found each other: as it is for us, so it should be for everyone! Stop the wars! Stop with the greed! Stop with the hate! Stop with the lies! Didn't Jesus say something like,"You are all so beautiful with your bucket-loads of imperfections! Just love each other up! That's all that I am about! And that's all that I do! Follow me!"


​May 31, 2024

​This has been an interesting day for me (but, then again, they usually are). Rising at 5:30 am to shower and prepare lunches for my ladies heading off to their respective schools: Rose to High School and Michelle to her class in the Public Montessori School... dropping them off, then walking the dogs, before returning home... Yesterday, of course, former President, Mr. Trump, was found guilty of thirty-four felony charges... On the one hand, I felt a certain amount of relief that a bit of accountability was heading his way... On the other, I felt a deep sadness...

That sense of sadness only increased throughout the day as I would occasionally tune into national news reports: Mr. Trump was doing his "normal" routine of manufactured rage: needing the feeling of victimhood to enflame his supporters (many of whom seem to share a similar sense of victimhood)... This was the point where a creeping sadness really began a deep descent upon me... More than anything else, that sadness was / is directly connected to what I think of as "the general loss of our place in the holy"... Oh, to be sure, many of us might "go" to one faith community or another, or we may feel somewhat grounded in a personal spirituality... but, have we found or lost our place in the holy?

How I wish that Mr. Trump could just take a break from the rage and then take a moment to give evidence of his "better angels"! Just for a moment to take the spotlight off of himself, pause, and simply say, "holy, holy, holy"...  (Can you imagine that?!) You see, perhaps you have an understanding that everything is connected... this sense of connection is our place in the holy... One need not believe in a God, or anything more or other than a simple sense of reverence for your home, your family, and your hope and dreams... this sense is the doorway of the kingdom of heaven is among you... Fortunately, or as the case may sadly be, unfortunately for you, the kingdom referenced by Jesus leaves no one out or behind... If you hate democrats, or if you hate republicans: if you seriously will to have others left out or behind: then you are in the ranks of Mr. Trump: not with Jesus!

​So, what are you and I going to do? We need to be vigilant with our thoughts. We need to replace every negative thought or judgment with something kind and positive. Secondly, we need to seek out visible connections with others, especially with marginalized folks... this practice of personal reverence for others and work for the grace of equality is essential in families, communities, and quite obviously for nations as well... Thirdly, we really should begin a deliberate practice of attention to the holy, however you might define that word... A conscious cultivation of holy, holy, holy will serve to awaken or deepen the connecting links of reason-able-ness and conscience: the ingredients of a functioning adult... and a much less divisive nation...

​'Tis a gift to be simple
'Tis a gift to be free
'Tis to come down to
Where we ought to be...

​Holy, holy, holy...

​
May 28, 2024

​The opportunity to practice the cultivation of serenity, of harmony, and of satisfaction is perhaps the most significant possibility for those of us blessed to be safe, "homed", and wanted... While a significant amount of energy must be directed to sacred activism, service, and nonviolent resistance, it is also necessary for the person dedicated to the awakening-heart-life to simply be...

The manic pursuit of success and pleasure is an opposite of being... As the goal, so is the way... It seems to me that a recognition of the essential nature of Earth and Universe as pansacramental is one door through which the unity of action and contemplation can be reconciled, in addition to the ideas of self-discipline and comfortable pleasure... If every moment is seen as it truly is: an opportunity to encounter the Divine, the deep Tao, then one can be always present in a condition of holy communion... 

Philosopher / Scientists like Ervin Laszlo and Amit Goswami expound on the essential nature of the universe as being an always evolutionary movement towards greater and greater convergence-connection: nothing as separate from anything else... Buddhism and Taoism both teach that everything is Mind: this is important to understand because of how nonduality is essential to the really Real... which is sort of like you really can have your cake, give it away, and eat it to!

The duality of "right and wrong" is a construct: we would all be much better off if we thought, instead, of "surface and deep"... Surface is all that we absorb from life around us: our name, our heritage, our social status, and our possibilities in life: and so most of us live within those expectations and boundaries. On the other hand there is the deep... Deeper and deeper we might go... closer and closer to the nub of our personal experiment with life: I / you can see life as an expanding process of convergence: I am you, you are me, and together we are all-one... The great environmentalist and tramp, John Muir, taught that it was impossible to pluck something out and have it somehow separate from everything else in the universe...

​We can soak in a tub of hot water, drink a glass of wine, rise up to an orgasmic encounter, slip back into the tub, and then rise up again to work in the garden, indulge in great wandering conversations, plan the cooking schedule and who will watch the kids when you're off to protest the manufacture, sale, and use of weapons of war...

​Life lived in the encounter of the be-atitudes is the freedom to actually live: pleasure is not the enemy: control, domination, power, and violence are... Realizing this, we are free to be both rEvolutionary activists and serene mystical lovers... serene, harmonious, and satisfied... A little bit of penance might be useful, but it is beauty and joy that will save the world...


May 27, 2024

​President Joe Biden will certainly never read this, but while I happily voted for him in 2020 because of the absolute idiocy of then President Trump: I will NOT vote for him again if he does not definitively shift course in his absolute support of Israel. War criminals abound in the Middle East: that much is quite clear: to support any of them is to partake of their idiocy! NO MORE!
​Stop the war! Israel must conform to international law. Palestinians must conform to international law. Israel must conform to the call of her prophets for social justice and begin to implement justice in regards to the human rights of Palestinians. Palestinians must likewise conform to the living spirit of Islam and renounce the use of violence to achieve a Palestinian state. Americans must stand up to a government that is so used to power and the use of violence to achieve its ends -- always in the supposed pursuit of "peace" -- and that government is our own. Americans are funding the slaughter of women and children in Gaza and the mad destruction of every public sector institution in Gaza: hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, museums, farms, roads, etc. NO MORE!  Memorial Day means nothing if we are only and all about arms production, arms distribution, and endless war. NO MORE! Stop the madness of violence-without-end! Here's one vote waiting for a worthy recipient.


May 24,2024 

​I have continued with my reflections on Dr. Riane Eisler's quote: "How we define what is sacred is integral to how we define reality"... I was aided in those reflections by resurrecting a banner from the way-back days of the Vietnam War: War is not healthy for children and other living things... Certainly, the boy Jesus heard from the mouth of his Sweet Momma recalling her vibrant summary of the core justice-ideas of the prophets before her: The mighty arm of God scatters the proud in their conceit, pulls tyrants from their thrones, and raises up the humble. The Lord fills the starving and lets the rich go hungry... Jesus would himself carry that same message with his: Blessed are the peacemakers... Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice... I was hungry and you fed me... Woe to you rich... and, Blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of God...

​Oh yes, it is so much easier and way simpler to "accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior" and be done with all that kingdom-life shit, isn't it?

Putin is a Christian, and so is Biden: then what the fuck are they doing? One attacks, killing, with apparent glee. The other defends, but does he get on his knees at night in remembrance of those he has assisted in their death? Ah, and then there is Israel: with a faith of prophetic messages: killing with abandon: and justifying each bullet and bomb with righteous abandon... and, of course, there is Hamas: likewise proclaiming a prophetic faith: also killing with abandon: and justifying each bullet, every rape, and each missle with their share of righteous abandon... 

​It is quite mundane to point out the obvious: the combination of "faith" and "men" is forever a deadly (but very profitable) enterprise... And we are supposed to always "go along" with our leaders and their "faithful" propaganda machines... But how many must die? How long must our beautiful blue planet be brutalized by the rapacious desires of civilizations of violent horror? To the point: what are you going to tell the young mother holding her infant child killed by a bullet that you bought?

Assuming that neither Jesus nor his Sweet Momma were lying dogs, our human history must eventually bend towards justice, peace, nonviolence, and compassion... Our genuine human development and liberation is supposed to be consequence of God's-Love-explosion into Time, with each one of us as activated participants... The Gospel announced and lived by Jesus, his Sweet Momma, and all of the saints, rEvolutionaries, and activists through time, was-is supposed to be our blueprint into the future dreamed for us by God-Tao-Nature-Universe-and-Intelligence-of-the-Cosmos... a Green-Blue Paradise on Earth to be justly shared by everyone...

So, why are we still killing, oppressing, and exploiting to end all killing, oppressing, and exploiting? Clearly, I am way too ignorant and simple to understand the forever-nuances of death...


May 23, 2024


This will likely be the most important blog that you have ever read, by anyone! It's going to be about all of the Big issues and topics of this day -- and of history itself: sex, religion, politics, power, money, and culture... to get you in the mood, I started with a comment and analysis of you, my blog readers...

​How about this quote from Dr. Riane Eisler: "How we define what is sacred is integral to how we define reality." While I am a life-long student of world religions, particularly of Hinduism and Taoism, I am most familiar with Christianity. I am an Episcopal Catholic, a practicing yogi and a Taoist... and for good luck, a little bit of Sufi... But perhaps most importantly, I am clearly of an heretical bent... Whenever one studies history and the growth of theologies, it becomes only too obvious that power, who has it and who does not, is the driving force of religion: not grace, and certainly not a day-to-day identification with the person of Jesus Christ (Yeshua in his language of Aramaic)... While the core teaching of Jesus was "the kingdom of heaven is within you" thus empowering the practice of nonviolence, simple living, and divine pleasure, the powers that became Christian theology made Jesus into a "savior" rather than a "liberator-practicing-winemaker"... Okay, so I am not just of an heretical bent, but an out-of-the-box-heretic...

Just because all of the priests and powers of the big-shot religions insist that sex is primarily, if not only, for the purpose of reproduction, this should be taken with multiple barrels of salt: a grain would not be enough! [Need I point out that this perspective is mostly that of so-called celibate men? who often, likely as not, still abuse women and children.] On the other hand, I believe that they are grievously mistaken: reproduction is one possible result from sexual relations (and a perfectly wonderful one at that). But for the vast majority of folks who have willingly, if not enthusiastically, engaged in sex, such relations were in the pursuit of pleasure: which I would call sacred or divine... Here's the crux of my argument: if sexual relations are not sacred, then nothing is...

​Because if the sacred intimacy of mutually desired sex is not considered a primary means of holy
​communion, then very little else is holy or worthy of being identified as sacred. If sex is not holy, the Planet itself is not holy: soil is not holy, water is not holy, the air that we breathe is not holy, trees are not holy, other people are not sacred images of the divine, and every living creature is ours to use, abuse, defile, and kill for whatever reason we choose, especially for that of profit... When sex is a transaction and not a cosmic connection, all of life (as it has) descends into an endless adoration  of I-Me-Mine... On the bohemian-other-hand, when sex is sacred pleasure all of life becomes an exercise in delight, in simple happiness, and in the cultivation of the beautiful...

​The kingdom of heaven is within you is an invitation into something of a grand simple beauty: naked bodies, no judgments, vibrant ecosystems, community gardens, enough food for all, the comfort of slow-cooking and sharing, an economics of partnerships, power structures of sustainable powerlessness, a universal participation in the arts, quality and personal communication, lazing about in the sun or the shade, homes of a simple bohemian luxury, consensus building, the freedom and non-exploitation of women, the delight of children, education for life and the reverence afforded by nonviolence, and a new national anthem of Simple Gifts...

Every social institution, in the spirit of the kingdom of heaven is within all and each one of us, has for its purpose the full development and liberation of every single person... Power is a very good thing: when every power is harnessed in service to the common good of every person, all life, and for the health and well-being of the entire planet... Economics is a very good thing: when the exchange and development of goods and services facilitates equality, justice, and harmony... And culture is a very good thing when it is both inclusive and diverse, when cultural exchange is celebrated, and when freedom of expression is understood to be a means of honoring all those things that make for a rich and vibrant community life... A bohemian heresy is the deep knowing and wisdom of both simple gifts and enough... when the kingdom of heaven is within you is the new hallmark of a vibrant Christian faith-expression and "going to Church" is a meeting in a vineyard for the harvest, the making of wine (just like the Master), and the holy is a celebration-without-end-every-day... ah, yes, the good life, the great sex, and the sweet satisfaction of living without fear...


May 20, 2024

​There are layers upon layers in the Eternal Now of Loving... Walking is one... While the abled can walk, I wonder just how many of us have the freedom to simply walk for the pleasure and delight that it holds -- and gives away freely? Are you one who exercises the freedom of walking? I Am...

And isn't it interesting that the God of the Ancient Hebrew Scriptures is self-identified as I Am?
Fr. Bede Griffiths describes I Am as being, consciousness, and bliss, indescribable and unknowable by any mind divorced from her heart-unity... In the Tao Te Ching, the first verse goes something like this: The tao that can be captured by words is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name. In other words, we are not in control. We do not have either the right or the power of domination... So, wisdom begins in silence and humility...

Walking, as a philosophical action, is a door through which we can access our own beginning, our entry into the vast fields of green that is silence and humility... every day can become for us a new birthing: beyond egoic-identification... such was the path of the ancient Taoist sage... not clinging to random thoughts or expecting the hoped-for insight. Rather, like any new-born child, caught in the only now, only this, nothing doing, simply walking, simply observing as an empty vessel would ...

After a week-end in Bloomington, Minnesota with Michelle, watching the dance competitions that our Rose of Sharon and fellow Dance Academy dancers were in, I was back today with our dogs walking a long-favored pathway here in River Falls... appreciating that after a few days of rain the Kinnickinnic River had a beautiful flow to it... robins and red-wing blackbirds flew or scampered about... canadian geese strutted with crowds of yellow-fluffies pretending to be birds... out in the lake, a momma mallard was followed be a bunch a tiny bobbing-browns... lavender and white wild flowers were tall in the green... dog bags in hand... three-times-bending to pick up their poop... nothing particular in mind... just walking... just listening... squirrels scolded us as is their ever-excited habit... stopping here... walking there... and back...

​That too, is a Divine Liturgy... as Leonard Cohen wrote and sang, God is Alive, Magic is Afoot... and waiting for you, me, and all of us on some pathway or some trail going somewhere, going anywhere... and if you are so blessed, maybe you will walk with a companion, a friend, or a lover (could be one person), you might even hold hands (my favorite), and for certain and for sure, poems will be written on the wind... (and you thought you were just going for a walk)...


May 17, 2024

​What do you do when grief explodes your brain?

I think of this often, mostly every day... what about you? 

Some people insist that the source of our suffering is our rampant desires... and if we tamp down our desires, our suffering will steadily decrease... Or, if I simply stopped reading the world news each morning, my days would be brighter... Somehow, I simply cannot agree with either of these opinions. Rather, I now think that we should summon the courage to desire more: to read the news with conviction and passion: to direct our heart-minds into a wild-heart-abandoment of loving more...

​The question "how did you get here?" is fundamental to loving more, or really, of choosing to love at all... While it is evidently true that everyone has a story, the sad fact of the matter is that few people have either the time or the inclination to listen to other people tell their stories... This social-psycholgical-spiritual isolation of being unknown, oftentimes by anyone at all, is the fundamental source of our interior divisions and our social problems...

​"Know thyself" is the great wisdom of the ancient Greeks... but the problem with that direction, is that we can only truly know ourselves through others: if you have no "other", no one with whom you can share "how did you get here?" stories, then you are truly homeless and alone, regardless of your income, confronting a mad-universe hungry for your bones...

I have alluded to grief exploding my brain (perhaps my blogs are proof of that)... While it is true that grief crushes, it is equally (and compellingly) true that we can, through the grace of a well-directed desire, choose how we might step into our next-moment-by-moment... The mystics insist that Jesus wasn't a liar (what?)... when he said to his listeners (including sex workers, alcoholics, and everyone else): the kingdom of heaven is within you and all around you wherever you look... and this before anything churchy like baptism, confession, or holy communion... the kingdom of heaven is right here-right now as we choose to become loving-without-limits... Not "love" but "loving-as-choice-as-action"...

This is the only way to carry whtever cross that we have been given... As St. Charles de Foucauld wrote, Father, I abandon myself into your hands... and the Universe awakens with you... 


May 14, 2024

​What is the Universe? In scanning the AP and CNN this morning, it's a challenge not to grieve about all the needless pain and suffering that we cause one another... If there are other planets with conscious life-forms, comparable to us humans on earth, should we even bother hoping that they are not as addicted to dumb as we are? Two brief pleas popped up in the Liturgy of the Hours this morning... Renew those who feel empty or anxious with the grace and beauty of your creation... and, Help us discern the hidden ways of love, that we may build a visible community of peace... 

"Renew and Help": how can we ever use those words with some degree of honesty, for truthfully, we don't really want either renewal or help... Rather, we yearn for "victory and domination"... It is precisely in the cavernous space between "renew and hope" and "victory and domination" that the I Am answer to "What is the universe?" resides... like a little Divine Clown kissing sparrows while fake prayers and violence wreak their havoc upon all life and the well-being of this precious blue Planet...

​To be sure Gaza is in the news right now, but there is no one somehow exempt from the mindless games and slaughter occuring there, and in so many "elsewheres"... And yet! And yet, there is the different Really Real: the little Divine Clown of the Heart-Mind, in the midst of lifting up in flight the little sparrows, is fully capable of awakening the heart-mind-life of anyone, everyone, willing and ready to change... Of course, that is the everlasting rub: willing and ready...

​Do you believe in nonviolence? The little Divine Clown, the "I Am" is not distant or separate from all of the woundedness of the world, but always with us, as our nonviolent lover, living within our breaking-broken-suffering-hearts... We can continue as we are: selling and buying the lies we are being told, sort of like drinking the foul water dripping into a sink-hole... Or, we can crawl-slide-slip-stumble-jump-dive into the little Divine Clown's Tavern of Delight, mosey up to the bar, and down a bleeding-heart whiskey! We can choose to change and each one of us can become a prophet of our response-ability and work for a nonviolent world... we can creatively build justice, regeneration, equality, and harmony within our family, community, nation, and world... all the while making love, dancing in the street, or drinking a glass of iced tea... or whiskey!

Awakening to the heart-life is not an act of penance, but rather a hike with a little Divine Clown...

​"I Am" is the Will of Evolution, Consciousness, and Bliss... 


May 13, 2024

​A Canadian wildfire and smoke drifting our way... a frequent occurance last summer... and starting, once again, although it is still spring... If nothing else, surely we must be realizing that this is the "climate of prayer" (to quote Thomas Merton)... Prayer, yes, and of course, of action...
Isn't it time to vote for Earth? for nonviolence? for equality? and for justice? If not in the up-coming election, when?

​Here's a quote from one deemed by many, ages ago, to being a heretic (hey, that's me!): It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him." (Pelagius, ca. 355 - 420) Nearly a thousand years before St. Francis and his "Franciscan" revolution in the Church and the society of his time. While most folks, when (if) thinking about this Saint from Assisi, think of either garden statues or of his radical (to the roots) poverty. But, truth be told, the meaning of his life was / is to be found in his complete identification with Christ... this identification illuminated his heart-mind into the bliss of intentional practice: why not strive to love without limits? Why not, indeed?

​Praxis is the spiritual and political determination to think, feel, see, and act with a revolutionary conviction... of course, to be of a truly revolutionary conviction, such a revolution must be personal, nonviolent, and just... the kind of revolution that a saint strives to live every day of her life... to live always (as practice makes possible) with a joyful enthusiasm, expecting the Divine to break through each and every veil or barrier our temptation to cowardice constructs... And then, suddenly, as if out of the blue, it happens! Perhaps for only the briefest of moments, the veil that separates you and the Real Reality of the Divine breaks through and you are catapulted to the "other side" and you see, as if before, you were just barely alive...

​Right at the exact moment, to keep it real, your phone rings, your baby wakes and cries for food, and there is a knock at your door... your neighbor asks if you forgot about your promise to watch her kids while she goes for her dentist appointment... what else to do but laugh! and carry on... and coming to mind is a quote that you read yesterday by Meister Eckhart: Each creature points you toward God and toward new birth and toward seeing the world as God sees it Transparently! Thus all things become nothing but God...

My dogs rest beside me, hoping for another piece of my breakfast bagel... why should two dogs and I have a bagel while children are starving? luck of the draw? or is it as St. Francis would insist, every moment is a God moment: justice and mercy are the attributes of Divine Wisdom that we can access through a determination to think, feel, see, and act with a revolutionary conviction... just like a saint... just like Mary sang in her Magnificat... and just like Jesus promised when he insisted "the kingdom of heaven is within you... 


May 8, 2024

​It's not yet eleven o'clock in the late morning and I am already closing in on 10,000 steps for the day... The dogs are laying about me panting their appreciation for getting out-and-about... A cup of Oolong tea is steeping here on my desk... And I sit, pondering the conversation that I had on Monday with Fr. Jayan...

Old stories came too easily to mind, mostly of my life in Dorothy's Place Hospitality Center in Salinas... seemingly, back then, a daily experience of both miracle and mind-numbing pain... with the clarity of sacred-hindsight, I hug my memories, every single day, in the secret depths of my heart-mind... Dorothy Day used to be fond of saying that "the Catholic Worker is a school of love": it certainly was for me! But life cannot either return to or live in the past: it always and inevitably, surges forward...

I told Fr. Jayan that what I miss the most of those Sacred Years, is living in intentional community: what a joy-pain-wonder-confusion-and-education! Entering a marriage, the prospective partners think, likely, that they are all now grown up: little do they know! So it is with intentional community: pretty much everything that you think you know has either to be tossed out a window or else massaged into something brand new... and still, my very best friends made that journey of community with me... (yeah, I'm thinking of you Michelle, Mia, Margaret, Michael, Brittany, and the homeless folks who moved into the Dorothy Day House of Peace with us)... 

​Here's how William Stringfellow described his dream community: Dynamic and erratic, spontaneous and radical, audacious and immature, committed if not altogether coherent. Eumenically open and often experimental; visible here and there, now and then but unsettled institutionally. Almost monastic in nature, but most of all enacting a fearful hope for society. The Northumbrian Community has embraced these words as something of a guiding light... and to take seriously, and yet playfully, the necessity of both Availabilty and Vulnerability (their Rule of Life)... which is exactly the Keys to both Marriage, and if I might be so bold, also to the Kingdom of Heaven...

​Love is not just big: it is HUGE! But, it is also very, very small, and very, very, fragile: since God is Love, God is very easily broken: eazzy-peazy dismembered, tossed, gathered, and buried... that's what hate does, what violence does, what greed does, what exploitation does, what racism does, what sexism does: everywhere you look, we are actively and intentionally dismembering the Divine One (perhaps we could count the number of guns we have and the number of bombs we sell and the number of bombs falling from the skies above the earth)... stare long and hard at our adoration of profits, privileges, and power... 

This is precisely where intentional community can make a difference: we can intentionally choose to support one another in making the difficult, yet necessary, lifestyle choices we need to regenerate this Sacred Planet: we can intentional build alternative institutions; institutions rooted in cooperation, partnership, compassion, and nonviolence; in sacred art, music, dance, and the poetry of the Universe... ah well, I know that my heart-mind lives in the clouds, but gee-whiz and holy moly, I can see how paradise is possible...


May 7, 2024

​"The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao." -- (Tao Te Ching)

"We are clusters of vibration in-formed by the intelligence of the cosmos." -- Ervin Laszlo

"Make love. Take a bath. Make love again." -- Frida Kahlo

Well, I got the make-love-take-a-bath-part done today... as for the make love again, the Tao, and Ervin, that's where this edition of the burninghand blog comes into play... The choice of the word play is very specific: our logical mind, in-formed by some degree of ability to reason, is of little use in trying to somehow get a handle on the mysteries presented by the Tao, Ervin, and indeed, the lovely Frida Kahlo... and so we must play...

​What if we weren't so busy? What if we lived in a situation in which freedom was the byword of the day, and not just the word for a day off? What if, like a Taoist master, we were free to play or not to play, to hike or to sleep, to study or to dance? What if work was a community endeavor that facilitated maximum pleasure for every worker? What if there was no drudgery to our days, and instead, we could actually pray, contemplate, and worship as essential, daily, freedom-habits? Now, obviously, these questions cannot describe the Tao. However, perhaps the doing-nothing-everything-gets-done philosophy of the Tao can serve as a marker-on-the-trail that points us in the direction of "proximity" to the Tao...

Similarly, Ervin's line about us being "clusters of vibration in-formed by the intelligence of the cosmos" is another marker-on-the-trail that points us in the direction of "proximity" to the Tao (or, the Really-Real)... Paul Simon, years ago, in one of his songs wrote about "all the crap he learned in high school". By now, he might be realizing that the "crap he learned" hasn't been limited to high school! Both the Tao and Ervin (and Frida) are pointing us to the necessity of cultivating the freedom of empty-mind... Empty-mind is a key term used by both Tao and Buddhism (and really, of all mystic arts) for the process of unlearning required for awakening...

​We are not the ego that inhabits our brain. We are not the "cluster" of cultural assumptions that were foisted upon us as infant-child-youth, and even now as adult. All of that is the grand illusion of the unreal that we are required to accept in order to be like everyone else: without ever seriously wondering why the fuck we are doing and living and slowly dying the way that we are? Frida's suggestion to make love again is the decision to unlearn, to empty-mind, to practice the freedom to become fully alive: in-formed, less and less, by cultural assumptions and requirements, and more and more, by the simplicity of delight, of mutual aid, and of lives of deep satisfaction and self-realization...

​To live any other way is to insist that the "intelligence of the cosmos" is little more than stupid... 


May 4, 2024

​"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." -- Rumi

This is, it seems to me, to be a perfect way to follow up my last blog... "Jesus was / is trans!" It is not too late in any of our lives -- or in the life of our planet -- to change our minds! Admittedly, such changes are very difficult, especially as we get older: but it is not impossible! "Let the beauty we love be what we do" is a crash course in change. Every single one of us is a "victim" of our culture, religion, social status / social expectations and the time in which we live. But isn't this also true for everyone who has ever lived?

​And yet... and yet... in every time... in every place... there have always been folks, even if just one or two, who stepped out of line... who somehow made the decision to be different... difference can be a logical choice: even if it requires great faith and even greater courage! Perhaps we simply need "permission" to apply our share of Sacred Imagination (the beginning point of everything)... Perhaps you can summon the personal courage to grab a piece of paper, and then proceed to write your own permission slip to begin the process of changing your mind... of changing your life to attune to the great minds and lives of saints and activists and become one yourself! 

There are enough business men and women, there are enough "influencers", there are enough war merchants and soldiers, as there are enough of everyday workers... but what the world needs right now are audacious lovers, students of the mystic arts, creatives of beauty, and activists leading into alternatives that promise a way into a liveable future for the entire planet... Really and truly, why not you? 


​May 2, 2024

​Jesus was / is trans! 

(And there you were, perhaps, thinking that while the Son of God, he was / is also a "normal" human-male!) I'll write it once more: Jesus was / is trans! While there are a few stories in the Lives of the Saints about holy people nursing at the breasts of Jesus, that is not specifically what I am writing about... Rather, I am pondering the Great Feast of the TRANSfiguration...

​Seriously, I am not trying to mess with you! Awakening to the depths of the heart-life requires our transformation... Many, many people are aghast at the number of folks coming out as "trans" this or "trans" that. Are they nuts? There are only two genders, right? (Scientically speaking, that "only two" is incorrect. But who cares about stupid scientists!) Responding from the deep heart-life, what does this matter, if a male identifies as a female, if a female identifies as male, and if by means of surgeries and hormone therapies, a person's physical appearance changes? 

​Did you catch the key word in that last sentence? No? Not sure? Here it is, person! Every human being, before any identification as either a female or a male is already and always a person! This never changes! This is what we always see when we look at another human being, or at least, that is what /whom we are supposed to see: a person! A boy cannot change into a non-person; a girl cannot change into a non-person: trans changes nothing of their essential, core, personhood! 

​Somehow, ultra-conservative folks choose to see gender first as the "be-all" of another human being: these base judgments translate into the choices to hate the brown immigrant begging for life and freedom at our borders or the terrifying spector of a tall black man walking through one's neighborhood. With ease, suddenly, everyone can be "trans"... 

​Why did Jesus decide to go "trans" when he climbed that mountain with a couple of fellow hikers? Similarly, why are "so many" folks suddenly "going trans"? Why it's enough to make someone choke on his coffee! For better or for worse, there is something in every human that can compel, sometimes out of the blue, a person to "hunger / need more": to climb a mountain, to peek behind a curtain, to find a new sexual partner, to learn to dance, to build a space ship, to wonder about "God", to learn to meditate: you name it, if given half-a-chance, we all will look for that "something more, something to touch our deepest hungers"...

From the depths of his always hungry, always breaking, human heart, Jesus tore down the walls of his consciousness, expanded his horizons into infinite loving possibilities: and his body followed right along with him: he transfigured into a being of pure light (or as the Sufis say, he "resurrected before the resurrection"). Amazed at the sight, his buddies wanted to sell tickets, heck, they could be rolling in the dough by the end of the week! Meanwhile, Jesus had something else in mind, "the kingdom of heaven is within you"... Can't you hear him say, "You saw me, now its your turn!"

​This is what I believe: we are at an inflection point in our humanity, in our history: as persons we are being invited to walk, climb, slide, dive, chug, jump, whatever-but-into-our-collective-transfiguration! Very small-minded men (mostly) would have keep the systems in place that require wars, exploitation, oppression, racism, sexism, eco-destruction, etc. because they make trillions of dollars off all of it! They use their media to get you to hate / judge the trans boy or girl, because so long as you focus on someone or something to fear or to hate you will close your thinking mind down, you will shutter your expansive heart-possibilities, and they will use your body and mind for their profit, their privilege, and their power... We really have only one choice and that is to go trans... straight on into our transfiguration...

​Finally, and briefly, here's the "working-trans" for you: the "transubstantiation" of Jesus in the Eucharist: as Jesus went trans on the hill, so too, he goes trans in the Holy Eucharist: somehow, the appearance of bread and wine become his "elongation" through space and time and becomes his body and his blood: yes, as a method for forgiveness for our abundant follies, but much more importantly, for our steady growth into our the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-within-you-transfiguration: not for ourselves, but for all persons (every person) in loving service and the transformation of the entire Planet into the Peaceable Kingdom... How is it going for your activated-heart-life? Your transfiguration awaits!

​[I should probably read over what I just wrote and look for clarity of thought, spelling errors, etc.
But I have dishes to wash and I'm late with my morning prayer / meditation... I hope to hear from you!] 


May 1, 2024

​May 1, 1933 the Catholic Worker paper, founded by Dorothy Day, began on the streets of New York City.

April 7, 1982 the Catholic Worker House in Salinas, California was founded by Robert Smith and a small cadre of volunteers serving sixty-five egg salad sandwiches to homeless folks on the Chinatown Streets (with a promise to return the next day...)

May 1, 2011 the Dorothy Day House of Peace opened in Salinas.

May 1, 2014 Michelle, Donovan, Devin, Rose of Sharon, and I receive the keys to our new House in River Falls, Wisconsin.

​Catholic or not, the Catholic Worker Movement offers a philosophy of life, faith, and action that is essential for the 21st century... the point being, how are you living your Activated-Heart-Life?



April 30, 2024

​It has taken me seventy years, but I think that I have, finally, written the truth. If you are curious, it is the section Now Read This on the Chop Wood page... "Heretic" wasn't the exact goal that I set for myself, but I suppose that it is my home and my resting place, willingly accepted, of course... It has been decades since I hammered my fists to a wall, bemoaning the fact that I have never been able to be like everyone else (of course, that is an exageration)... but that essential difference enabled my journey onto the streets of Salinas, and my meeting the Great Loves of my life... where and who would I be without all of the folks who somehow managed their way into "Dorothy's Place"? 

Alcohol, drugs, addictions, mental illnesses, violence-galore, and the utter confusion and "lostness" of homelessness... Most people have no idea as to the "whys" of homelessness, just as they have no idea as to "how" to "solve" the homelessness problem... but I do! First, let's all stop raping kids: the overwhelming majority of the street homeless population were sexually abused while little children... Secondly, "pass no judgment" is of fundamental importance. At Dorothy's Place we only required "good behavior" and no violence, alcohol, or drugs in the building. Of course, that was every-day a challenge, but generally speaking, folks made courageous efforts to be there better selves... Every person was treated with respect and dignity: as if they were a celebrity!

Third, if collectively we are serious and have initiated a good-faith effort to implement the first and second point, we need to really understand that homeless folks simply need to be safe and able to sleep, to shower, to eat, and to pee and shit in peace: only with these basic human needs met could either you or I (or anyone) even begin to consider what we might be able to do with the rest of our lives: might we be able to drop alcohol, drugs, loneliness, fears, and the horrible conviction of being, not just unwanted, but to-the-core unloveable and never-ever-good-enough? Hope only rises from the sliver of possibilty of that any life / every life matters... Kindness can nudge folks in the direction of and proximity to possibilities...

Lastly, each of these three points are a matter of timing! Studies show that if someone is street homeless for even six months, it is very nearly impossible to stop their slide. Studies are also showing that the sum total of human knowledge also doubles about every six months. An interesting coincidence don't you think? This brings me and us to the real problem: not everyone matters. Homed folks quite easily step over or walk around the unhomed all the time. Everything is connected to everything else: the United States is the largest arms dealer in the world and we throw away the most food... our streets, schools, and homes are full of blood and yet we celebrate guns... Ends and means are seldom, if ever, questioned... Following our example Hamas can kill and steal nearly fifteen hundred people... Following our example Israel can justify the revenge-killing of, so far, some thirty-four thousand people, mostly women and children... Thousands of women, children, and men seek entrance at our borders, desperate for peace and hope for their kids, only to become pawns and victims to Christian political hate... Really, what is there for a homeless person to live for?


April 16, 2024

​Gospel-Tao is a completely different -- radical-to-the-roots -- Way of Life: none of this "glory be" isolation from the mystic quest... "We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names." (Nikita Gill) While most religionists are theologically addicted to "sin", the mystic is most often very quietly going about the business of shedding one's cultural (socially constructed systems of conformity and control) addiction to ego consciousness... 

It is likely that a significant majority (?) of Americans are / sometimes "Christian", those who identify as turning to Jesus as a Wisdom Teacher are, in comparison, few in number. Faith, for most, is sort of like an Easter Egg without the hunt... but identification is like an interior consciousness-explosion... both are accents upon belief, but only one is rEvolutionary... So I ask you what is the core "wisdom" of Jesus? The answer is a humble intimacy with gospel-tao: the Kingdom of Heaven is within you... our living is the mystic-door to identification... Identification is the slow work of ridding our consciousness of our ideas of separation: we are not separate from anything in the universe... empty-mind is a meditation practice that extends through our skin into life and into everyone / and everything we encounter... 

​More, "Empty yourself of everything, let the mind become still. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the self watches their return. They grow and flourisn and then return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness which is the way of nature." (Tao Te Ching) This is a mystic-correspondence with Jesus' the kingdom of heaven is within you... Coherence is the quantum way of saying the same thing: since no one is somehow separate from anyone else, "I was hungry and you fed me" is the practical "policy" of conscious-coherence, while "I was hungry and you did not feed me" is the egoic-consciousness that sees only separation, feeds upon it, justifies it, and implements it even as an article of faith!

Meanwhile, the sound of rain upon our roof is presenting itself as an opportunity to surrender into a stillness... in silent simplicity...


April 15, 2024

​Wars-wars-wars... I continue sick in grief... grief does not make me better than anyone else, that much is for sure... but, though I have, throughout my life, pondered my very deep emotions-empathy for all those for whom to live means little more than suffering: there has proven to be no relief from my solidarity-suffering... no kidding, but I know with an intimate surety exactly why the Suffering Servant had no choice but to die in his evident solidarity with all of those who continue to live as the suffering poor: victims of violence, injustice, exploitation, and with every creature ever created... Every pain is the pain of this Suffering Servant... he may be "resurrected", but only into a resurrection of endless suffering: after all, he is the revelation of infinite Love... "one-and-done" is a theologians gaffe... We sad little humans (at least those living in adoration of the Unholy Trinity of Profits, Privilege, and Power) continue our sad little chant for his on-going crucifixion... by our silence, by our complicity, by our taxes, and by our votes...

We've no choice but to resist by loving as much as we can, as much as our courage will allow...


April 6, 2024

Greetings Friends,

My heart has been so heavy in recent months with the endless horrors of war that it has been difficult to write... nevertheless, I am going to try once more. ​Gospel-Tao is the root idea, or experiential philosophy, that deeply motivates my life / mind / heart. For years I struggled with my passions from the "either / or" perspective, but in my Thomas Merton studies, I've come to realize that, beyond the sectarian divides, there is an "earthy wholeness" to spirituality as it is lived, not necessarily as it is preached in the "one size fits all" churches. I look forward to exploring with you the heart-mysticism that is gospel-tao... 

​An essential aspect of gospel-tao is the Gandhian trinity of Truth, Nonviolence, and Simplicity... Can't you imagine how things would be so different if political, religious, economic, and cultural leaders and influencers were to sincerely practice truth, nonviolence, and simplicity? And yet, despite the fact that truth, nonviolence, and simplicity were at the heart of both the teachings of Jesus and of Lao Tzu, neither America nor China, nor most believers / followers,  are particularly interested in this Gandhian trinity...

How can that be?

While the core teaching of Jesus was the kingdom of heaven is within you, similarly, Lao Tzu presented the case for the humble, simple, natural human being in tune with the Mystery of both Life and Things: inter-abiding as with every human and with the Invisible Way... this core teaching has been marginalized through the pile-on of theologies and justifications for not doing the kingdom of heaven: not-doing presents the non-way of an easy-way of worship and of not-doing-in-a-vapid-circle-of-endless-repeat... When belief became a legitimate substitute for lives of awakened intention, "correct belief" not only became fighting words, but worse, excuses for living lives of incredible meanness and dullness...

​Tao is most often translated into English as "way", although Red Pine has made a case for "dark-moon-mother-rebirth": Te is understood to be "the way" or practice of and into the experience of Tao. Jesus identifies himself as Way as did his early followers, leaving little doubt that he and they were practicing the kingdom... The Beatitudes of both Matthew and Luke, along with the well-known parable of the "last judgment" (I was hungry and you fed me... or not) again indicate Way as both intentional practice and, as it were, a doorway into the kingdom of heaven life...

When the Anti-Trinity of Profits-Privilege-Power became the hidden "meaning" of both Gospel and Tao, we all have all suffered the horrible consequences and likewise confront a global future of horrible becoming horrific... Seeing this is to wonder with Dorothy Day as to how to bring about a true revolution of heart: if in fact Dorothy Day were here now she would, no doubt, ask why not cultivate a mass conversion into awakened intention and practice?

​Indeed, what if?

So here is another "definition" of the Blessed Trinity: What if? Why not? What Next?

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