*telling the truth sometimes involves abandoning your friends.
-New Statesman



living trust

times there are when words are spittle spat upon waves from mouths spewing lies and we are drawn to drink it in

times there are when we sit in boats floating towards a distant rock no rudder no oar to move us from the shore

times there are when we walk on thread juggling our lives beneath safety nets as a fog creeps in to steady our feet

times there are when speakers stammer to speak new words from texts that hammer faithful trust beyond imprecisions

times there are all too much but we carry them with heads held up our bodies broke our spirits intact



Jazz and a Spring Bulb

Tombed in the sterile womb
with dead life forms the wintery scene-
blanketed o'er like a fluffy quilt.

Star light and moon light with
sun light; coolness and chilly with
the warm heat - 'neath a cancerous belt.

Footprints painted on a paper cup
and transmigrating the seasons time
dopish, sleeping in the new spring time.

Ambrosia drunk (the god's own dew)-
staggered - and ermined in the
Tabor splendor: garmented bright.

"It is good for us to be here." - Voice
mad thunder clouds on a windy day;
marriage, love, impregnated earth.

Partition! Break and quiescent pain;
lab'ring joy - (stretched up, a limb);
a late resurrection - but Resurrection.

...with an eye on the Divine

 

Questions

Are these but so many meanderings
so many waters coursing the pounded rocks
so many streams flowing deep in the earth?

Are these but so much ink dried on yellow skins
so many parchments witnessing the age-long quest
so many hands penning tales of journeyed souls?

Are these but so much clay pressed upon the wheel
so much mud spun into the shapes of Man
so many palms molding pots for drinking Life?

I know not but wonder while observing all
peaking into the heart of Matter's bubbling stuff
the stuff our life-course is shaped, by and by.

O God, Player, Redeemer, Word of Life, Son
nestled in the flesh of every womb-borne child
speak your glad-tidings that we-explorers may know
may create the questions whose answers are You.

...and then comes the glory

 

*The Homelessness of the Wise

The three wise men or women,

 if you will 

had to leave home 

to go in search 

of the Great Mystery 

calling to them 

from the night sky.

To seek the divine 

in the human

is, always, to leave home - to leave

those comfortable ways 

of thinking 

and feeling 

that are no longer 

enough.

This is the homelessness 

of the wise 

who find new birth 

again and again.  

This is gift.

This is the Christmas story

You and I.

-Jerry Schroeder,  Cap.

 

What are you looking for?

dark, my doubt; skim, my muttered faith

I walk the damp corridor of shaded and filtered light

bearing in mem'ry the martyrs of Japan

their Rising Sun

empty dreaming, ones response to fate

helpless forgetting the torture-plight

for what would I say standing before the inquisitor's mace

coaxing me to renounce my faith

is Jesus alive enough that I'd offer my life to death

I can only hope the coward in me would sputter Yes

Following Night's yonder star

Through the woods you lead me

along my path to Dawn

to your Tree uplifted

to say "Into your hands"

Along that road to Daybreak

through the dark-wood beckoning

with tears during the trekking

and visions ever harkening

I stare straight through the Night

along the challenging journey

entrusting myself to your Spirit

the compass for my wandering

I stumble into Dawn

saying farewell to my crutches

to the landmarks I had chosen

walking where you've led

following Night's yonder star 

 

*...the world is the creation of the God who is incarnate in it.  God became incarnate historically in a local symbol to draw our attention to the truth about the world: that in reality the flesh is good enough to be God's own garment, good enough to be loved into conformity with the divine will.  St. Paul could say that everything is good when received with thanksgiving, for thanksgiving is the acknowledgement, the realization that everything has God as its source and its incarnate principle.
-Alan Watts

calvin klein could never veil 

what i see

you

 show beyond the threads 

or swash of cotton cloth 

"clothes make the man" 

they say 

but it's soul 

your soul 

that's real 

supporting flesh 

as beautiful as yours  

"go naked" 

is more than a Mystic phrase 

it's core 

where God begins 

and we end 

undress man 

and know yourself 

for once

 

*Our personalities, individuality's along with our dysfunctions make life interesting, frightening  and humorous...and God loving all in the midst of it.

*Self-improvement is always a personal project which may affect another positively.

a laughable matter

it seems that...

and no matter what...

things continue...

since we are caught...

our own intransigence...

cause sin is real...

and own the truth...

cutting ourselves off'...

separating us from ourselves

and the God of our creation

engulfed in our darkness

trying to unblock the Light

Go 'round

Skirt the box at the core

in the center of the street of our lives

the one holding the secrets

the shadows of our lives.

Lay it in another's yard.

Blame them for the contents veiled.

The beauty of its packaging

will surely draw a reply.

Paint it invisible.

Cover it with the greenery of hope

that in time it'll disappear

fly to the stratosphere of Aeon

removing reminders of our faults.

Such the difficulties of truth-owning

the defects of flawed perfections

the problem of nudes midst the naked

honoring the box in the square.

Lord, I want to see

 

We write back and forth
with greetings of friendship
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.

Our smile is broad
upon receiving a letter
but wait we will
till our eyes spy the other.

We melt into our ages
our flesh altering with time
doing the predictable everyday
till a face stands at our door.

A stranger-friend rings from the porch
awaiting a reply, an opened door
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.

So how shall I smile
unsure of our bonding
peering through that face
since the longing is gone?

how i wish

how i wish the tree was your friend 

your companion-mother 

in whose lap you'd rest 

to dream and talk 

to suck and sulk 

to grow into yourself 

and find your gift 

and be affirmed when it speaks with you

 and know that God loves you there

and here

 and ev'ry place you'll be 

cause God loves trees 

and ev'ry child out there 

ev'ry you 

where'er you'll be 

who e'er you art

*"Unveil our eyes, give us confidence, do not let us be ashamed or embarrassed, do not let us despise ourselves.'[old Christian prayer]  The opening of our eyes should go with a more total acceptance of God's world, even as it is now, still incomplete, still in the making; and part of that acceptance is the acceptance of ourselves in our totality.  Nothing less that this totality can sustain the integrity which should ultimately be ours.

-Simon Tugwell

...with an eye on the Divine

 

*Neurosis is another word for describing a complicated technique for avoiding  misery, but reality is the misery.

...to see reality one must die and be reborn.

...What does it mean "to be born again for humankind?" It means for the first time to be subjected to the terrifying paradox of the human condition, since one must be born not as a god, but as a human, or as a god-worm, or a god who shits.  Only this time without the neurotic shield that hides the full ambiguity of one's life. And so we know that every authentic rebirth is a real ejection from paradise, as the lives of Tolstoy, Peguy, and others attest.  It takes people of granite, people who were automatically powerful, "secure in their drivenness" we might say, and it makes them tremble, makes them cry-as Peguy stood on the platforms of Parisian busses with hot tears rolling down his cheeks while he mumbled his prayers.

-Ernest Becker

water scene

i.

you smile edging toward the ledge

you tease Death laughing into the deep 

tempting Neptune to kidnap you 

to grab you a diver 

at no risk no pain 

an explorer with sleep to gain

ii.

shall i leap into the water 

ask the sea to be my mother 

or should i sit on the rock 

and relish its stability 

till the typhoon flies 

or a branch brings peace

Broken

 

I hold you, scarred one

as you press against my chest

a John against a Jesus 

a needful youth of twelve

for warmth, embrace, certain

of unpaining love and care

Your bereft hands finger 

those of mine and arms as well  

affirming that flesh's soft 

in a zoo of rhinos on the prowl

You slouch like a new champion 

who's run the course of life 

in want of some elusive prize 

so long slipped from your grasp

But now, for one moment 

however brief or short or long 

your heart has banished panic 

your face bright-full of quiet 

while comforting peace enfolds 

the frantic frame in search of home

You're held secure

i recall the tears of '68 

viewing Pelle and his Fa 

but without mine 

in a theater full and dark

a single beam of images 

broadened wide the silver mind 

'pon which mem'ries drummed 

played in still successions 

as i wiped my tears

each tear's lost remembrance 

fell free from needled ducts 

that rolling into this night 

when dad slips to my mind 

once more

he is here...

yet we aren't...

...the tears having fed 

the growing need of us

*A problem is, more essentially, a unique situation calling for expression.  It calls for a poet, a painter, a composer.  And sometimes in God's providence, we may be that poet or painter or composer.  Each individual situation in our world is an artistic, rather than an administrative challenge.

-Simon Tugwell

 

Black boys are dying

Racism USA

I see changes coming

but fear we may forget 

the kind of people we've already been

Behind our smiles of comradeship

social accommodations are easily breeched

and the return to bias is conveniently brief

Scapegoating rises easily from our souls

with simple gestures and rapt remembrance;

a familiar tale will toss us back 

to patterns germinating within our flesh

One nagging itch

releases the venom of the past 

warming our memories 

gathering the fragments of hate'

Carnival masks are donned, dusted 

patched and polished to spite; 

facades, reshaped, hide our face 

guarding our eyes lest they show ugliness

Racism is the easiest cover-up of national sin 

once we're convinced that every one's in

*The ultimate goal of everything is God, and God cannot be caught by our scheming.  To quote Meister Eckhart again, 'Anyone who looks for God in any particular way, gets the way and lets go of God.' Just as the source of everything is to be situated ultimately in the incalculable spontaneous gift of God, so too its fulfillment depends on God.

-Simon Tugwell

*...the only achievement required for an inheritance is the achievement of a death.

-Simon Tugwell

*People's lives are changed by casual sayings that they misunderstand or mishear.

-Simon Tugwell

 

*out

of light

of darkness

of every

I am

at play

on the edge

of the deep

I miss

being

in

but more

and more

I miss

being 

out!

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Voice Lessons

out of suitable

silence, a cave

perhaps, a mist

you come to

the awe

hiding in loneliness

out of infinite

attention to nothing

above

or beyond you

you

sound

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Meister Eckhart insists that we must be so united with God that we act from the very ground of our being, which is identical with the ground of God's being, so that, like God, we require no further reason why than God does.  'If anyone were to go on asking Life, "Why do you live?", for a thousand years, they would get no other answer (supposing Life could answer) than this: "The reason why I live is that I live".... If anyone were to ask a true person, who acts from their own (inner) ground, "Why do you perform your actions?", if they answer correctly they will say nothing other than this, "I act because I act."'

-Simon Tugwell

 

*We can get into the way of thinking that everything that we do needs some kind of extrinsic justification.  Asking 'Why?' can become addictive.  We have, by and large, become suspicious of people just doing things because they want to.  When all else fails, we resort to curious pseudo-justifications, like going for walks 'for the exercise' or riding the motor bicycle 'for the experience'; worse still, we go all solemn and declare something to be 'important'.  So we decorate harmless occupations with high-sounding significances, like taking tea with someone 'just to keep the contact' or 'in case he wants to talk'.

...we can forget that no amount of trying ever automatically produced the desired result.
-Simon Tugwell


*If we are to be and to  act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecessariness.  We must learn to pay attention to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.
-Simon Tugwell

a prayer

brace boy the wood

that Jesus now thrusts 

at your brawn, brown shoulder.

slave the bar crossed as "t's" 

stationed in "death".

know once again 

what care and choosing love 

would bear to son you 

an Adam-signed creep

plodding the earth

important worth with the Spirit

in to live-forever.

sine aqua

cactus plant 

dried out reservoir 

staring prickly toward the calm sky blued 

and cleared of rain-clouds___

un-whetting souls gorge with eyeballs 

your lot of earth pleasuring 

toward mirages mirrored from your root

it is a gravitial fixation 

of the spirit's parching thrust of vapors 

clinging to atoms away on tour.

prince charmings of fairy cattle

and tales that happily end 

ne'er knew the bleached-bone whiteness 

that staid cacti present

*If we are to be and act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecessariness.  We must learn to pay due attention to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life, too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which we are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.
-Simon Tugwell

 

*Forgiveness is reckless. It squanders itself upon rogues who have no intention of improving themselves. All it asks for is that it be received. The only unforgivable sin is the sin against forgiveness, the sin which directly and immediately refuses forgiveness.

Now it is in this spirit that forgiveness must be received too. We must enter into the spirit of it, and that is the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit poured out into all the world.  We must not try to pretend that somehow we are forgivable and that that is why we are forgiven. We are no more and no less forgivable than anyone else. If we try to privilege our claim to forgiveness, it is not forgiveness we are looking for, but some other kind of recognition. If it is truly forgiveness we are after, then it must be unconditional and unlimited forgiveness. And we can receive that only if we are prepared to accept the company that forgiveness places us in. It is no good wanting to be forgiven and then reserving the right to look round disapprovingly on all the other (people).

This is why forgiving is so inseparable from being forgiven.
-Simon Tugwell



*Even if you've got shackles on your feet, go.  Be fearless and walk.  Stand for your cause even if you are martyred.
-Faiz Ahmed Faiz



*Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgment that something else is more than fear.  Enjoy what you do.  Enjoy Life.
-Chandan

 

the clay vessel

mud-mass

once scooped from earth 

by artisan hands

for lathering to a vessel of clay

spun and rounded round and round 

a russet face smiles broad; 

kilned and polished to beauty-best 

a finished art glints forth.

timbered bowl coated and sold 

to a lord for a flower-not 

but unctuous nard to hold.

unshelved to incense nooks 

of the house empty with stale air 

this once earth-slush 

now eye-chalice of the lord.  

grace-burned vessel 

and chosen nard phial

doth yeast the house with scents 

of its soul breathing through clay.

*...even with its deficiencies, sin itself can be put to work by God; granted that it happens, it at once begins to function as part of the providential ordering of all things for our good.  This is true even of our own sins.   To be humbled by our sins is, in the long run, far more profitable for us than for us to become conceited because of our moral success.

...in God there is no darkness at all (1 Jn. 1:5).  God does not see good and evil, as it were, sitting side by side, and choose between them.  God sees all that (God) has made, and it is very good (Gen 1:31).

*Simon Tugwell  

 

the well down deep

there's a war and riots and power black

to blacken black the hearts of all.

"more then?", quiz the screaming tongue

of peace and joy and hope of love;

turbid sounds spill o'er now chapped lips.

comes the prize ablaze

though black be speckled blood in red:

placards high 'neath concreted soles

with beards and hair strung for an avant-garde,

all unknowing  the Known once known

but hence the dead, the vaulted God.

our scene rests by the well down deep

wherein through which a tree-scarred lad

a pebble loosed to its thirsting floor

while weeping toward the nimbused sky.

*In moments of despondency we may perhaps look around and think that we should be much happier if we gave up trying to be good, if we could enjoy all the vices of the world around us.  But that is only a fantasy. The desire for goodness is really a much more robust desire than any alleged desire for evil.  And it is the desire for goodness which we must cherish.  Sometimes we can be too much occupied with seeming good, even with being good in the sense of conforming our outward behavior to external standards of correctness, and as a result ignore our own real needs.  We must be content to grow slowly towards goodness, taking, if need be, a long time to convalesce.  Most of us, maybe, will still be barely at the beginning of our recovery even when we die.  But that is better than killings ourselves pretending to be healthy.

We have trivilized ourselves, fobbing ourselves off with trinkets when we wanted a kingdom.

*Simon Tugwell

 

looking at the world ass-backwards

looking, I was looking out

 into the ever-fresh fields of rude

 magnolias flipping in the breeze of 

the summer days shouting Yellow

 Yellow, as brilliantly as they can

 to distract the hedge-trimmers with

 scythes in hand and I knew as they

 knew that their days were trim, that

 they'd be trimmed by the noon of 

day so they'd laugh and laugh

 with the brilliance of the hurricane 

rains smacking their heads against

 the shorelines of the patient land

 where the grasses wept when the

thatchers hewed the flowers gone

 the grasses chewed but waited till

 these immigrants would again depart

before coming forth again to pester

them in nature's ever-rule of land

and always win yes always win

 yes win their effort to control the mass

*It is the cross and only the cross that provides a constant point of reference in the chaos of our world, because there is all poverty and helplessness and pain, in our yearning and all our mutual injustice, taken up into the stillness of God's everlasting love and made into the instrument and revelation of God's unchanging will.  So in all of it, beatitude is formed in the depth of our individual and churchly lives, giving us at least a courage to persevere until all joy is revealed.  And so our hope comes to be focused on God's rule rather than on our own, and it comes also to expand, reaching far beyond the widest dreams of earthly planners, because it homes in on the fullness of blessing which God has in store for those who love God, which 'eye has not seen and ear has not heard and it has not entered the heart of humankind to conceive, (1Cor.2:9). 

*Simon Tugwell

 

a brand new fright

where do you stand when you want to sit

when anything that moves you is still

and the next motioning is toward the edge of tomorrow

toward the edge of the past day awaiting something new

i wonder where to sit from time to time 

where all that moves is a flat grill of chill

and everything that chills is hot

hot with the cold-edge of dynamite still

so i write empty words on crowed papers

on the edge of scraps that seem newly fresh

pretending that i'm the sane biographer

of another genius who was recently lost

unknown to himself or any one else

waiting for release from the insanity bin

go then, go to wherever your int'rest drags you

to the harbor lights where nights get high

on to the daylight's somber attractions

where nothings drawn but another goodbye

seize the appropriate greeting

when whatever arises enters ones mind

when sweet-words seem full of tired urgings

that vomit like spent monies exiting a bank

i don't know what to tell you

when ten flies sit atop some barbecued manure

except that it stinks with the aroma of shit

knowing its the refuse of well-ground, discarded food

on we move while scenery blinds the sun anew

awaiting the rain that with thunder will erupt

awakening light beyond our present sight

into the delight of a brand new fright

*It is in the light of Calvary that we can see what it means for us to confess our poverty and our helplessness and to renounce the attempt to overcome them of our own.  It is there that we accept our suffering and turn it into a compassion with all the pains that people bear, bundled together as they are in the suffering of Christ. It is there that we discover and fortify our charitable earning for all rigtheousness to be reveled, while at the same time tempting ourselves and which we hope to share with all humankind.  And so we come imperceptibly to see everything more purely in the light of God's seeing of all  that God has made, and so we come to be able at least to whisper the truth of the infinite peace of God's will even  in the midst of the storms and contentions of life in this world.

*Simon Tugwell

Letting go

 

in a nowhere kind of land

being a somewhere kind of people  

in a nowhere kind of land  

is nothing special but ordinary 

ordinary like the work place 

of daily struggles to live 

and love to be good and make sense

 to fight for right, avoid evil and 

yet to know that each of these 

is territory of the normal 

the damned and the cursed 

the struggling poor for might  

for spouse and children

for fam'ly and kin 

for all those values that other people have 

wanting to be rich and happy  

bearing peace and health 

of watching children get married 

of going to war and burying our dead 

shedding tears, relishing a drink 

wearing a smile, avoiding the frown 

and be, just being...a ME wherever found 

in the hood or in the ground 

being a somewhere kind of person 

in a nowhere kind of land

*[The] process of declaring and making present God's peace and love into our world is the way in which we are brought more deeply into the truth of what we are as God's creatures and so, however much pain it causes, it will also inevitably bring us ever closer to the source of genuine vitality within us. If we jump for joy, it is because, in spite of everything, we discover the fountain of life bubbling up within us. The truth will set us free, as our Lord said; the truth of what we are will set us free from our stiffness and our grim propriety.  And even if it takes a bit of persecution to get us to the point of truth, we shall surely find an urge within us to give vent to our freedom and our sense of being alive.

*Simon Tugwell 

 

on watching a cloud in the wind

how unlike 

a cloud 

in the wind 

am i 

when 

what i 

use 

to shape 

my world 

my self 

my god 

ceases 

to blow 

in 

the wind

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

ode to an owl

who 

who 

who 

are you 

we 

ask 

eye 

to eye 

two 

appetites 

in 

the night 

one 

on a branch 

the other 

on delight

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

 

o ghost of rocker-chair longing

awaiting mem'ries to seat themselves

and ride the ridges of the hours 

into dusk or into death 

into stories told upon porches

 or only in ones head

stories of grace and sadness 

tales of joy and of pain 

tidbits of Life's strange myst'ries 

packed into the flesh of years

here you sit with empty seating 

and with the breeze of ev'ning sway 

until the passing of your season 

neglected and decayed

*Thoughts from Jean Sulivan

    Our spiritual struggle never ends.  No one knows from what direction the Spirit will emerge.

    When faith becomes what it is, interior liberation, it is spontaneously creative.  the Gospel is corrosive; had     you forgotten?

    By looking on Jesus as a free person I am able to make myself his ally, because he is on the side of               the poor and the weak, and against the multinationals and the oil companies and the coffee lobby-that is,       against everything that keeps men and women from being neighbors, from becoming close to each other in     the present moment,

    The absence of Jesus is the sign of God's love.  It prevents any of our cherishes schemes from becoming       finally installed.  The world is caught up in the wake of the impossible-which is also the necessary.

 

 a misty episode

i read book that's writing me 

a novel autobiography 

recorded in my bones 

nestled in my mind 

faded o'er the passing years 

arisen through a quickened dream

it lit like fire burning in the night 

my limbs and soul aflame 

like some ancient prima dona 

desirous to be thunk again 

her arms a watery flab 

her toes weakened by weight

the text fell softly 

like shavings from a sharpened lead 

preparing to jot another chapter 

onto the pages of my awakening mind

the story held briefly 

images bunching in a continuous stream 

that upon my arousal 

floated into ghosts exiting Halloween 

twas a misty episode 

playing out some phases of my life 

authored by my deeds undone 

and deeds seeking repeat

ghostly phrases now write themselves 

as images to be read some future night

*Evil cannot be destroyed; it can only be redeemed.

-Anon

*To kill evil one must kill the significance.

-Anon

*Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

 

giv'away

i can't give you ev'ry piece*

i need some reminder

some visual recollector

calling me Home

i am child of tangibles

the touchy-feely movement of life

it anchors the "not-enough"

it's ev'rything though not All

i need turn to Silence

 to Nothing hanging in the air

in doors beyond the sensate

to That to which all points 

i need 

i need - blindness

to pass ev'ry need and gadget

  ev'ry madness of addictions

ev'ry self-binding prison

barring me from Life

to gain myself again

and give myself away

to lay stretched before the Light

 in which the world proceeds:

there in that Void 

is where i need to flow

no, i can't give you ev'ry piece

i might then lose my soul 

*religious art

*Leper

i do not

touch  

nor am I

touched

by all that 

is

beyond my

grasp

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

 

the new normal

with the new normal

 our want of security

 we talk round and round our sore 

so that all else is prattle 

words passing by 

but never through

ours are shallow reckonings 

weak and slaughtered

enough to humor  

pretend we're alive 

grasping for a cord of life

we induce suicide 

leaping past pain 

and splattering of blood

 the flooding tears

so, round and round we talk  

with the cool hatred of cowards 

our scabs hardening into rock 

until, until...until

the closet door is open

we  can grab our coats and run

or sit together and still

until, until...until

there is a new beginning

altered wills that free our hearts

our armored shells that blast apart

until, until...until

we prep our mouths to move again

adjust our eyes to see again

relax our lives and breathe again

until, until...until

we shut the door again

Terror comes instead

 

war it's said

war it's said 

is rape

is pleasure for pain

to kill spirits and flesh 

to burst open 

the web of trust 

to disguise care 

like a mother nursing 

her young to grow 

as human

war it's said 

is laughter abolished 

smothered in blood

coloring relations 

and painting fences 

'round prisons of freedom 

and the healthy society 

war it's said 

is fun for children 

and worth the expense 

of shaping economy

and ev'ry murder 

to save the immaculate nation

from the scourges of war 

it's said

war's Hell 

i said

Life is more difficult than death