Ezekiel 36:26

" A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. "

Metanoia

"Saying a thing does not make it so.
Thinking a thing does not make it so.
Feeling a thing does not make it so.
Believing a thing does not make it so.

That which is—is.
That which is not—is not.

That is the beginning of wisdom.
Pray we never see its end."



Motto from the blog of Fr Troy Pierce

To whom I dedicate prayers of wellness, today.

Pax et bonum.

Living In Culture, Not In Time

The intriguing statement above is taken from an interview with Drasko Dizdar on 'The Spirit of Things' hosted by Rachael Kohn on ABC National here in Australia.

The interview held me spellbound - Drasko Dizdar is a Theology lecturer with a PhD in hermeneutics, and he is birthing a monastic community in Tasmania based on the ecumenical community of Taize and the Camaldolese Benedictine Monks. The Camaldolese are the oldest continuing Benedictine Order, and Drasko speaks of the teachings of Romuald, who banded together a bunch of eccentric hermits about 1000 years ago and gave them a basic structure for praxis.

With the Tasmanian community, the idea is that the younger generation, today, are experiencing a Christian 'renewal', of sorts, and the community aims to be syncretic in it's approach. Ideally, the path for the novitiate is built via a formation, then a deeper solitude at the Hermitage and finally the monk takes a missonary-like role, back out in the wider community.

He also speaks of the new appeal of the Liturgy to young people, where ritual becomes language, and ongoing expression of God's presence here on earth. My thrill with his statement in the blog's title comes with the notion that the younger (sub 40) generation today no longer live with a sense of history, they live devoid of time, they live in culture.

Further into the interview, the blending of the cosmic, the personal and the historical is the genius of Judaic liturgy is discussed.

The orthodox Catholic church belongs to the part of the Christian world that aligned itself with Temple Judaism - a priestly religion. This was the dominant form of Judaism during Jesus' humans life - Temple religion was destroyed by Constantine and the Romans. They discuss the work of Margaret Barker, who purports that the Temple shapes the whole of the New Testament. The Temple represented the whole of the Cosmos - time before time, space before space and matter before matter, this in which God abides and from which flows everything else. The Universe is recreated at the atonement - the Lord reconciles the world to himself, mysteriously through the person of the High Priest. In speaking the unutterable (ineffable) name of God, the whole microcosm is transformed...

'Do you not know that you are the Temple of the Holy Spirit?, says St Paul.'

But about the community:

"Now my hope is to establish a community of well let's say a handful of people who are dedicated to this way of life, more or less permanently, but certainly indefinitely, as long as it seems right to indeed live like this.

Now that's how the early monks were doing it. There weren't vows and there weren't institutions, there wasn't any canon law controlling it. They were people moved by the spirit to go into the desert to live this life and to live it generously. Because this is what they were called to. So my hope is bring together say a handful who would do that, but around that handful a much larger group of young people who to varying degrees come and live this life for a period of time, whether it's for a short time of a week or so, whether it's up to a year, but really seriously live it and experience it. And then go out and do whatever."

(Dare I say this? She grins, always the dreamer...)

Hopefully there are a few, just a few, who might think Sydney is an inordinately good place to adopt a similar style of vocation. Someday.

Medicine Buddha Mantra

In Tibetan images of the Medicine Buddha the left hand typically holds a blooming myrobalan plant. Tibetan medicine recognizes three basic types of illness, the root causes of which are the conflicting emotions -- passion, aggression, and ignorance. Myrobalan is the only herb in the Tibetan pharmacopoeia that can aid in healing each of these three types of diseases. This is like the action of the Buddha of Healing, who has the power to see the true cause of any affliction, whether spiritual, physical or psychological, and who does whatever is necessary to alleviate it.

Tad-ya-ta: Om Be-kan-dze Be-kan-dze Ma-ha Be-kan-dze Ra-dza Sa-mung-ga-te So-ha!

The first bekandze eliminates all the problems of body and mind, including old age and sickness.

The second bekandze eliminates all the true cause of suffering, which is not external but within the mind. This refers to karma and disturbing thoughts.

The third phrase, maha bekandze, or “great eliminating,” refers to eliminating even the subtle imprints left on the consciousness by disturbing thoughts. The Medicine Buddha mantra actually contains the remedy of the whole graduated path to enlightenment. The first bekandze contains the graduated path of the lower capable being in general; the second bekandze, the graduated path of the middle capable being in general; and maha bekandze, the graduated path of the higher capable being.

Ego & Soul - John Carroll

I'm enamoured with this book by an Australian sociology professor, John Carroll.

It looks at the meaning we attempt to create in our always uncertain modern life, somewhere amidst the liberal left which tell us that we're suckers for capitalism, and the conservative right that says the demise of the nuclear family will be the nuclear holocaust of our society.

He proposes five theses as to the way our modern active life can be construed as a search for meaning:

Thesis One - Unconsciously, all humans know the true and the good, and are inwardly compelled to find what they know, through their lives and what they see. They sense that there is a higher order framing their existence. The West continues to grope for the frayed metaphysical tissues.

Thesis Two - Culture is those myths, stories, images, rhythms and conversations that voice the enternal and difficult truths on which deep knowing, and therefore wellbeing, is dependent.

Thesis Three - Cultures are singular. Fundamental moral laws and human rights are universal. The crisis of meaning in the modern West is an issue of culture, not of morals.

Thesis Four - A triple neo-Calvinist logic drives through modernity: individual conscience, worldly vocation and anima mundi.

Thesis Five - Western progress has been through ego, sometimes at the expense of soul. While the East emphasises soul at the expense of ego, the West was founded on a balance of the two that was formulated by Greek tragedy and revitalised in Protestantism.

All Flowers in Time

My eyes are
a baptism
I am fused

And I sing her
Into my face
Oh phantom elusive thing

All flowers in time
bend towards the sun
I know you say there's no one for you

Here is one

All flowers in time
Bend towards the sun
I know you say there's no one for you
Here is one,
Here is one.

Favourite Things #173

I used to hang out in the middle of parks in the darkness of eve to use the cloak of nightfall to leverage some chemical buoyancy of spirit (or, more usually, scaffolding off a hefty dose of spirits).

These days, one of my favourite things to do is to buy some time out, get my butt to a park after dark, stand there for a bit, and breathe in all that space.

Staring at the moon, deriving the length of that great big gap between Her, and Me, I get reminded of how completely insignificant, completely irrelevant I am, to the cosmos and her functioning, which was before, is now, and will be ever after me.

At the same time, to drop, completely, into a sensed expression of the body, and to know, right there, that hard determinism has little to do with the life force that I am graced with day after day as I return to, and move through, the tiny layer of air that supports my very life function as I, as we, pick up our feet, and walk.

Heredity plus environment? Hah. Heredity plus environment plus soul, baby.

Bring on that libertarian nonsense, I say.

Ode 19 - the Odes of Solomon

1. A cup of milk was offered to me, and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness.
2. The Son is the cup, and the Father is He who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him;
3. Because His breasts were full, and it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released.
4. The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom, and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father.
5. Then She gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.
6. The womb of the Virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth.
7. So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.
8. And she labored and bore the Son but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.
9. And she did not require a midwife, because He caused her to give life.
10. She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the Great Power.
11. And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur.
    Hallelujah.

The Holy Trinity

Rublev

One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,

slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,

said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.

I said, Here is the blood of all our people,

these are their bruises, blue and purple,

gold, brown and pale green wash of death.

These (god) are the chromatic pains of flesh,

I said, I trust I make you blush,

O I shall stain you with the scars of birth

For ever. I shall root you in the wood

Under the sun shall bake you bread

of beechmast, never let you forth

To the white desert, to the starving sand.

But we shall sit and speak

around one table, share one food, one earth.

Rowan Williams

Proverbs 3:19-20

19. The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

20. By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

Forgiveness

" Forgiveness is, in the first place, something that is begged from others, especially from the victim. And whoever sets out to beg forgiveness has to be prepared to meet with refusal. To enter the realm of forgiveness is to accept a confrontation with the always-open possibility of the unforgivable. Forgiveness begged for is not forgiveness that is due. It is in the price of these restrictions that the greatness of forgiveness manifests itself. In it comes to light what one might call the economy of the gift, if one categorises the latter in terms of the logic of superabundance which distinguishes love from the reciprocity of justice"

Paul Ricouer

Forgiveness. Maybe the ultimate act of freedom in co-agency.

That Fleeting Feeling

Abandon evildoing;
Practice virtue well;
Subdue your mind:
This is the Buddha's teaching.

Like a star, an optical illusion, or a flame,
A magical illusion, a dewdrop, or a bubble,
Like a dream, a flash of lightning, or a cloud--
So should one consider all compounded things.

While reciting [Shantideva's] words, we should reflect on impermanence and the lack of reality in phenomena. . .


--The Dalai Lama, in A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night