bread & water

can so easily be

toast & tea

Nunc caepit, Domine, nunc caepit.

Now I begin, O Lord, now I begin.


Perservering in the practice of love.....and prayer requires us to repeat this over and over. Kevin Hunt, a Trappist from St. Joseph's Abbey, says this has been an invocation of monks for centuries. Today is a new day. Let us begin again.

I find myself easily caught by the enticements of secular consumer culture: new cars and tables and shampoo all do make me feel much better about myself, and even provide a more secure sense of my false self, but this self is fleeting. It needs to continue to be upheld by neverending amounts of stuff.

One of the other stay at home dads, Ted, was a lawyer. He worked at a firm downtown and had graduated from U of M law school. Ted keeps up with seven of his fellow classmates all of whom moved to Chicago and got jobs at big law firms. All seven of them either have a drug/drinking problem and/or are divorced. But they all drive nice cars and have plasma TVs.

How much of what I buy do I truly need? How much of our lives are spent working for empty stuff that doesn't satisfy on any level?

A poet, Andrei Codrescu, had a short piece on NPR's All Things Considered. While I am always pondering these ideas, this piece spured yet another reflection on them. You can read his commentary HERE.

be well,

Chris

Gratitude

If the only prayer you said

in your whole life

was, "thank you,"

that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart

I've been participating in a hundred day practice period via the internet with a teacher from Minnesota. His blog is interesting, wildfoxzen.blogspot.com, and I've found the study to be interesting. We are reflecting on a piece by Dogen, the Japanese father of Zen. Here is one of my comments on the 'training blog'.

"When all dharmas are the Buddha‑dharma, there is illusion and enlightenment, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings."I have a tough time with this one. Listening to Lenoard Cohen's 'Anthem' seems to express my feelings wonderfully: "Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything...." I find that I attempt to chase the quiet mind (my mind is rather active) and the 'perfect' activity. This if only mind really leaks into everyting I do. My practice is alright how it is. How I do the dishes is alright. How I blow my nose, etc...is all ok. Being chained to the present moment or any idea of how it should be is filled with ego. If only I could drop it.....

The dead do not want us dead;

such petty errors are left for the living.

Nor do they want our mourning.

No gift to them --- not rage, not weeping.

Return one of them, any one of them, to the earth,

and look: such foolish skipping,

such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!

Even a cucumber, even a single anise seed: feasting.

--- Jane Hirschfield, "The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead"