111230 04:46
Days of obligation and fasting. When it comes to food the act is enforced by political folly and theft. When it comes to information the issue is choice.

My primary venue for news, National Public Radio, became so by chance. At first hearing was a feature on Thomas Merton. I had heard of him and retained a nominal intention to read him. The motive was accelerated by a broadcast defining him as human. He was: Sinner become Saint.

I have abandoned, or boycotted, an unconscious addiction initially based upon the rhetoric of politicians seeking election. Flowing into the silence is time become eternal, infinite, immeasurable.  Prized and parsed by the rising sun and setting moon. Occasionally punctuated by the stars revolving in their courses.

Geek Term: Garbage in garbage out

What we allow into the virginity of our souls is significant. For the most part it defines what we are for or against. Trash talk, potty mouth, buy this, see God if you inject/ingest that, is not helpful; more often destructive.

We seek utopia or dystopia allowing others to define the terms and path. Brand Name institutions fail us and the cost of admission is often higher than we can afford. No society, culture, or ideal can survive morbidity yet each in its turn has been for some a threshold to wholeness. The issue is not holiness for you or me but us.

There is a traditional question for those who seek enlightenment, integration or wholeness: To speak/act in real time or reside silent in communion with what is presumed holiness. Or in my terms to: Dance with God. Whatever you or I think God is, or is not, is  irrelevant. What is important is that God allows each of us, for good or ill, to work out our redemption or damnation individually. Regardless our station in life:  “I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day..”--Albert Camus

Recently discovered: It was politicians who created the fertile ground in which Adolph Hitler grew to power. Not those in Germany per se but the Victors in World War 1. One futility begat another.

I will tear a page out of yesterdays journal, not published: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” --Acton on Moral Judgements in History . . . full text: http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1407&Itemid=283

I am not interested in politics though it plays a role in everything from elections to romance. I do not subscribe to the Judeo-Christian definition of who, what, why or where God is. WE, you and I, have an opportunity to move into an experiential definition of love, mercy, compassion and kindness without condition or boundary. Sift through the suit of hair my life is I discover the height, width, breadth and depth of passion: what drives compassion. Anger has a purpose, but there is no excuse for murder or to do harm. I wonder about “Unto whom much is given much will be asked.” My wealth has been suffering and the loss of two children. In that loss I discovered our family of all persons and life.

Tithe or ten percent of our resource is a small price to pay for all our gifts . . . my daughter taught me to give twenty percent to which I have added another five. Ten percent is for being served poorly.

Let me close my Sermonette, Dial-a-Prayer, with this inspired thought: Greed is a need impossible to fill. . . .Serial onanism with your purse as a fetish

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

111228 07:52

Were I a tree fallen in a forest bereft  of sentient hearing
would I have made a sound or merely succumb in silence?
The consciousness, I adore and call God, hears.

The center of my attention resides as much in the wise as the silent unknown. Their legacy is acted out in behaviors their progeny loudly proclaim.  Wonder. What would the actual return of Jesus look like? Would He thrive or be crucified by indifference or otherwise torn asunder?

The world into which we have being is rent with conflict and holds the ability to render itself extinct. We have the collective consciousness of what can turn the tide towards linear creation versus universal annihilation. 

Let Mikey, Jesus or God do it? Really!

We individually hold the divine within us. Some small particle smothered beneath fear, driving addictions for material wealth. Rituals of avoidance celebrated: theft, murder, rape enslavement applauded and institutionalized codified. Our hands, eyes, minds are all that God has to make a world in which love is possible. Not impossible.

Curious about who God really is I swim cross current through the rivers of other ideologies--conflicted in competition to prevail. And sense that it is we, here and now, who could become the prophets we followed to one another instead of killing another.

There are many wisdom books, none is definitive, addressing our current truth. Laws create more offenders yet kindness, empathy, mercy, forgiveness and compassion create and sustain life.

There is no all inclusive Brand Name for that.
Yet

111228 09:44

I wonder why hospice hasn’t kicked me to the curb or thrown me beneath the wheels of a passing bus. With each degree and kind of death I’ve experienced there the net result has been a rebirth newly configured. In this regard I’ve chewed on the rock of Jesus’ remark to Nicodemus about being “born again.”

I was recently given a cease and desist order from hospice not to post images collected there. The concern was voiced that it would provoke HIPPA equerries regarding privacy.

I wonder now, and while expunging the images so lovingly collected, at my peace. Nearly 24 hours later, absent any wondrous insights, I am convicted that it is the patients not the institution or myself that I care about. And at that, no matter what I photograph, it is like throwing marshmallows against a stone wall. The best camera I own is between my ears.

My memory is like a vault filled with images/videos, of what I’ve seen. Impossible to publish otherwise than describe. Yet in the process of keeping a journal since 1985 I’ve discovered that it is not me but WE who matter most. Photography places a frame around truth and freezes it in time. Time, being fluid, moves on and the evidence remains locked. Writing on the other hand invokes a fluid and expansive universe of possible directions.

I’ve been told; “If you want to write: read.” I don’t have any sense of success with writing or photography save in that with time, effort, maturity and more reading, I’m better able to discern the bits and pieces of potential that make more sense in a context outside myself. The best part being that the experience of joy is greater than anything I can share by way of ‘evidence.’

Being “Born Again” is something I am acquainted with. I liken the experience to a skipping rock. As wonderful and astonishing as they were, they never lasted. No one can sustain ecstasy forever. Joy--yes. Being a rock flung across the still pond of my silence, skipped once, twice and maybe a few more until entropy submerged my consciousness into the mirrored depths beneath my flight. Of late the rock has skipped and then disappeared--evaporated--ego become vapor.

Through my lies to others, worse to myself, I’ve stumbled and lurched into print; image or word. I do not want your acknowledgment of me. I do what I do because I want you to see yourself as precious and free; beloved of God with no should's or ought's. To know God we need to accept the height, width, breadth and depth of ourselves with acceptance then loving action.

--Horace
"Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth."
“He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.”

--Henry Miller (1891-1980)
"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."
"Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal."
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
“No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.”
“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.”
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
"The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts."
"When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently."

111226 01:38

What Child is this . . . ?
The Star!
Angels?
Christmas Day at Mesilla Valley Hospice’s La Posada

In this fleeting opportunity to celebrate Denae’s eyes, smile, and the magic of her innocence. I unconsciously saw her as infant, nubile, crone and my daughter Johanna’s eyes; donated to another. All that remains otherwise; ashes at the root of a rose bush in Maysville, Kentucky high above the rivers flood.

Angels abound among us.

PRACTICAL & PRAGMATIC: I carry a camera with me, now, everyday and everywhere. A gift of Minnette Rich, Mesilla Valley Hospice Volunteer Coordinator who asked that I photograph other volunteers; resurrecting my otherwise dead career. I’ve fallen in love with two pocket cameras, Ricoh’s Caplio GX100 or Panasonic anything. They allow me to be an innocent old man with a hobby and not the shark I am. Each are superior to cellular telephones with capture capacity.

I gave up on the full potential of my former weapon of choice: Canon professional cameras. It is difficult to care for someone, or their bed pan, while wearing a Bazooka.

Last time I saw Aaron Siskind we laughed about getting too old to carry even a Hasselblad. Then I saw Harry Callahan, retired, in a documentary, using a Nikon point & shoot. . . .So much for my concerns about being a “Serious Photographer.”

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: If I have to be concerned about theft and being identified as a photographer then I refuse to use it. Add to which I sold off, finally, my fourth Hasselblad system and all my Canon equipment. Not simply because of bulk and weight but in submission to the fact that I’ll never earn their costs--not in this lifetime. For contemplative use I have Olympus E series with a host of lenses. For software I use, and endorse, Sage Light. Rob Nelson’s genius has taught, and is  still teaching, me all that I know about digital photography. It has put wings on my eyes where I was blind with confusion using PhotoShop.

111224 08:10
Joy to the World?
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”
"Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store."
"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." --Dr. Seuss

My favorite gem is a pearl. It is formed around agitation within an oyster--more organic than a diamond. Thinking back at my manifold dysfunctions; sexual, interpersonal, experientially self-denigrating--malevolently so. I see the armor of an oyster's shell better describes my defenses than any other thing or process.

The first quote is healing, salvific, unitive. Healing is not something you can buy it is process and transformation. At this time of year I know this from people who casually ask; "Are you ready for Christmas?" When I reply in a sincere and transparent way, I find that they too find this seasonal event: The Kid's Birthday!

Difficult.

A child does not know these things. Randy, my son did. On Black Friday I took him to purchase a remote controlled toy Porsche. He looked up at me when I handed it to him and asked; "Why?"

I cannot now remember, thirty-five-years later, if he could see my tears or maybe he was as intuitive as I am.
He replied; "Oh." We had been told that he would not see Christmas that tenth year of his life.

I could not find work as a photographer, my reputation at the time precluded any confidence that I would do menial job-lot photography for any employer. I was working, happily so, as a carpenter compelled to take a salary of $75.00 @ week by Supplemental Security Income received for my son. I refused to "work under the table" (receive my normal pay) but would occasionally take, or assist in, "spare time work." We lived by the gifts given us by friends from our Christian community: car, rent, food and finally a donated plot, head stone and Styrofoam coffin.

Advent is difficult for me yet I rejoice that I had the time with my children. I am even more joyous now that I never followed though cutting my throat in the bathtub or flicking my Bic while drenched in gasoline.

Grief is a very personal, specific and explicit experience. It did not help that I was summarily informed that I was a "Kill Joy" throughout my dysfunctional family times. Then I heard that I had F**ked Up the Christmas of my wife for years; implied or inferred before and after Randy's departure.

I was an emotional cripple eating the dreck of my parents, then wife(s) lovers, et cetera. I had learned when in conflict to shut down. The feeling was electrical, like a short circuit; a white noise that eclipsed everything. Yet I persisted in pretending to still be alive. Love can heal that but it only works if you accept yourself totally. Breaking though the defenses and becoming fertile soil for love to grow.

Recently I discovered:  "But faithfulness can feed on suffering, --George Eliot.
. . . axiomatic to me, now, looking back, never to return. I chose my mates and if they did not replicate the distrust I had of my mother--I made them so.

Do not harm yourself, as I continue to smoke, as I said malevolently self-neglectful. It is difficult to receive love since I am constantly trying to define what love actually is. The best I can do, reductively, is accept myself exactly as I am. Becoming more fertile ground by the grace of All Creation, The Kid whose birthday is celebrated tomorrow and the loving friendships given and received.

Adapt, improvise, prevail.

If you cannot negotiate a settlement; Walk away.

Healed/healing I can heal others something like The Kid . . . and there are others but you need to ask, look for and care enough to do something besides cry. Always remember there is no quick fix or magic bullet. God loves you just as you are but you need to work on growing large enough to receive it.

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within him(her)self, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”

"Peace in ourselves, peace in the world."  –Thich Nhat Hanh

"No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."  --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
. . . my take on Matthew 13:45-46

It all starts with you.
Stop being a victim.
NOW! . . . do no harm, love your enemy as yourself.
I spent time with a woman doing a life sentence for setting her sleeping husband on fire after dousing him with lighter fluid.
Only God knows true justice.

111222 06:55

A grief healed . . .

Until very recently had we met face-to-face and you queried “who are you?” I would reply; “I am the parent of two dead children.”

Remember the story; a sailor home from the sea free at last of the sometime terror of that life. Walking inland with an oar over his shoulder continuing on until someone asked; “What is that upon your shoulder?” And the sailor was home at last.

My grief was like the dead Jesus walking after death dragging His cross. We do that, you and I, wear the symbol as decoration oblivious of the resurrection--He arisen--ever present.

There is an end to grief; not a goal or termination. The sledge hammer blow fracturing everything we seek to keep sacred, safe and secure remains--accepted, integrated--not bowed. Most hide, isolating themselves for no one else can know the specificity of our pain. Neither in kind nor degree. And those who we seek comfort from are terrified to confront their own mortality. It is for us, we the left behind, that I seek to heal by what I write.

You and I, all of us, are precious, unique, like snow flakes--none alike--yet no better, or healthy, than the secrets we keep from ourselves. We melt too. Falling into the warm river of the cosmos flowing towards what we do not and cannot know.

I am finally at peace. The pain become a dull constant beat in my heart. My rage over the loss knew no boundaries in height, width or breadth. I am finally able to laugh, and cry with joy for the gift of those children. And I am no longer a victim but grateful for their gifts to me. I am equally aware of the people lost without any accounting; simply disappeared and wonder at their pain.

With agony I remember the times when Jodi, our adopted daughter, would cry inconsolably in my arms. Her mother gone with the sick child to distant places for extraordinary attention. It helps me now to remember all the other siblings left behind bereft of both their missing family member. The loving attention diverted to the child in crisis. Sometimes life is more difficult than dying and death.

At times I recall the heroes of legend set adrift. Abandoned to a fate unimaginable by those who chose, of need or neglect, to set them loose. What does not kill us makes us stronger. Eventually.

Those taken in addiction, children with drugs, adults for whom there is never enough, money, sex, love, housing and warriors broken in combat. I know from what they flee attempting to save themselves from the inevitable.

Pain is a given, suffering is optional.

You might find, as I did, succor in giving small gestures of kindness--acceptance--attention. Compassion, not sympathy, for someone walking the same path. I do not celebrate the suffering of my children any more that I do that of Jesus or any other convicted of crime. We are a people beyond the veil of illusory normalcy grown strong in love for all life. It is those who left us their legacy. Honor that.

I wish I had the ability to share in words what in reality has happened to me. For some bereaved religion is the key, others, science or drugs, money, sex or even self-inflicted death. We are all works in progress. I love the potters craft. Think in terms of clay from which we arose to where we return. Some broken and mended others ground into dust and recreated. Or is that resurrected?

Love does no harm, does not murder.
Find this within the clay we are and infinity will be your daily bread.
. . . at times I find God better through a sense of absence than presence--as shadow revels form when lit.
May the Peace that passes all understanding be with you all your days and beyond

12-year-old music prodigy. [VIDEO]

12-year-old music prodigy. [VIDEO]
"I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy" --Ludwig van Beethoven

A simple request listen yes! But equally attend your own genius whether it be to cook, bake, fix a washing machine . . . seek and be that gift you are. As for me I am, at times, happily/joyously merely an audience.

There is an overwhelming synchronicity explicit within this forward to me.

I have a friend purportedly dying who now walks and no longer needs assistance--he will die sooner or later--but never gave up on himself. To him, in conversation yesterday, I described what this young person incarnates and manifests through the agency of our current common technology.

Intellectual property issues are attempting to bend the will of Congress to limit free access to the World Wide Web. In my estimation it is the greatest teaching tool since television. I beg you to not allow that censorship. Since in plain reality television has become a sewer of commercial intent deforming the minds of our children. As for adults there is no objective news. Infotainment prevails. I fervently believe it is not the audience who sets the standard but we the people who have been drugged senseless by the addiction: power and greed.