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Hermitage Update, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage

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April 2010: Spring Comes and the Grass Grows by Itself

The time comes. The new bookshed is completed. We're moving the books in.
There will be an official 'Bookshed Warming" gathering on Sunday, 23May2010 from 12:30pm to 3:30pm.
You, of course, are invited.



February 2010: This and That -- Sufficient For Now

Days lighten and warm. The gas heater stove is installed in bookshed. Our well pump gives up its long life leaving us sledding water buckets from brook further up the mountain. Winter begins to loosen its grip. (21Feb2010)

Saturday, February 13, 2010
Practice Ahimsa, do no harm, avoid violence,

I've never been fond of violence, sacred or profane. Violence is too easy to perform, too easy to rationalize.

I dislike violent terrorist attacks on people and places. I dislike violent retaliatory attacks on people and places.

I dislike that the United States is engaged in two wars, or that we conduct assassinations, coups, secret hostilities in at least three other 
MiddleEast countries. I dislike that we are the major provider of guns and money to powers using both against their people or neighbors. These are troubling times.

I dislike cynicism and simple-mindedness, mine and others'. I cannot see any upside to the meanness and 
intransigency of right-wing propagandists and divas. I shake my head at the lack of resolve and courage on the part of left-wing placaters resulting in meaningless half-steps. I'm afraid slogans and placards have replaced the practice of reasonable dialogue.

I think we regress to a primitive and dangerous place when the only strategy used by ideologues and pretenders is fear and violence.

In the Christian metaphor, who understands the cross and crucifixion? Perhaps not even Christians. Which makes the task of moving beyond belief and 
egoic delusions of divisive duality desperately difficult.
Sacred Violence
No summary could convey the subtlety of the 
Girardian theory, and an oversimplified presentation of it would lead to misconceptions, defeating the very purpose of an introduction. Suffice it to say that Girard has uncovered the role violence plays in archaic religion and the role these religious systems play in human culture. Human history is the relentless chronicle of violence that it is because when cultures fall apart they fall into violence, and when they revive themselves they do so violently. Primitive religion is the institution that remembers the reviving violencemythologically and ritually reenacts its spellbinding climax. Primitive religion grants one form of violence a moral monopoly, endowing it with enough power and prestige to preempt other forms of violence and restore order. The famous distinction between “sacred” and “profane” is born as the culture glorifies the decisive violence (sacred) that brought an episode of chaotic violence (profane) to an end and made warriors into worshipers. Distinguishing these two forms of violence is always an extremely arbitrary affair, but that does not keep the distinction from having beneficial effects. Religion makes possible these benefits by bestowing sacred status on a socially tolerable form of violence to which the culture can resort as an alternative to greater and more catastrophic violence. “It is better that one man should die,” said Caiaphas of Jesus, “than that the whole nation be destroyed.”

Caiaphas was invoking a mechanism for preserving culture that is as old as culture itself. Whether it is the 
Assyro-Babylonian myth declaring that Marduk created the world by killing the monster Tiamat; or the Teutonic myth telling how Odin formed the world by raising the corpse of Ymir from the sea of Ymir’s own blood, or Pope Urban II declaring that God willed the first Crusade; or Thomas Jefferson saying that the tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants; or Lenin saying you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs — cultures have forever commemorated some form of sacred violence at their origins and considered it a sacred duty to reenact it in times of crisis. The logic of sacred violence is nowhere expressed more succinctly nor repudiated more completely than in the New Testament, where the high priest solemnly announces its benefits and the crucifixion straightaway reveals its arbitrariness and horror. The New Testament account of the crucifixion reproduces the myths and mechanisms of primitive religion only to explode them, reveal their perversities, and declare allegiance to the Victim of them. As the theologian Robert Hamerton-Kelly, one of Girard’s most astute interpreters, puts it: “Christian theology provides a trenchant critique of religion.”
The Waning Of Scapegoating Violence
There was, however, something profoundly true about what Caiaphas said. Up to this very day, cultures rely on scapegoating violence to a far greater degree than we realize. The reason culture is now in such disarray, however, is that this ancient recipe for generating social solidarity has ceased to have its once reliable effects. It has been gradually shorn of its religious mystifications, and, as a result, its ability to promote cultural order has waned. By mystifying human violence and attributing it to the gods, archaic religion endowed a certain form of physical might — usually the most powerful form — with metaphysical significance. As long as the myths that mythologized certain human violence remained in effect, this sacralized violence was able to ward off other violence or crush it with religious conviction when it arose. As the myths that divinized the violence were weakened, the difference between order-destroying violence and order-restoring violence likewise began to break down.

Which brings me back to the hole in the parlor floor (a metaphor used by the poet Richard Wilbur whereby a carpenter’s work in progress allows the observer to see the foundation of the house). As 
Girard explained in his next book — Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World — the hole in the parlor floor into which he had peered in Violence and the Sacred was made by the Galilean Carpenter who was publicly executed outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. As profoundly novel as Girard’s insights seem, he insists that they simply clarify and explicate a revelation of sacred violence that has its seeds in the Hebrew Scriptures and its stunning climax in the New Testament passion story. The Carpenter made a hole in the parlor floor and Girardsimply looked into it and saw there things hidden since the foundation of the world. “Thus,” writes Robert Hamerton-Kelly, “Girard points us to a possible restatement of biblical faith that places it at the center of the struggle for a culture beyond violence.”
(--from: paying attention to the sky, blog, an entry quoting Gil Baille's book Violence Unveiled, Humanity at the Crossroads, interpreting Rene Girard's work on violence.)
http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/12/gil-bailie-interprets-rene-girard//
The carpenter for the bookshed leaves with his dog. He is nearing completion. He has done good work.

There's a used fed-ex truck for sale. It tempts as a bookmobile/bakemobile. It's the right size and right price. We'd have to have someone look at the engine and chassis and save us from ourselves.

Trying to be in the world nonviolently involves awareness of the impulses and thoughts urging violent responses to disrespect, dishonesty, and debilitating hypocrisy. To long for heaven is to long for a change in one's personal response so as to permit others to change their personal attacks, to change one's personal attack thoughts so as to invite others to change their responses.
To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be. The place where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime, with anybody.
(from Ch.1, God Wears Lipstick, in book Sex God, Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality
I hope we haven't grown weary of the longing for heaven. Even setting aside wrong-minded location and direction, the longing itself speaks to us through deep silences. We continue the vigil. We are looking for nonviolent relationality rooted in respectful appreciation engaging dialogic solving of problems encountered in this world.

A heavenly embodiment; an emergence worth awareness!

Even here.

At this very moment.

With one another.

posted by Bill 4:24 PM


December 2009: The Metaphor of Embodying Wholeness

Wednesday, December 23, 11:48pm
When asked what a hermitage is I say it is a place for solitude, meditation, and prayer. 

There is a quiet in the air tonight. The night before Christmas Eve. We insulate the 1st floor of the bookshed all day. There is light snowfall outside.

Christianity is the metaphor of the embodiment of wholeness. It is a good feast, Christmas. It is the choice one makes to see humanity as good, as worthy of itself, as poised always on the edge surrounding the center, ready to fall into it's very heart.

Jesus has been the property of churches, saved enthusiasts, and powerful politicians both secular and ecclesiastical.  They own the brand. But the reality, the personal intimacy beyond platitude -- that belongs to the unsuspecting, the stranger, the open-hearted. No ritual, no dogma, no creed, no special invitation, no fuss. The child is born. The earth has received it's own. The pretentious rift between matter and spirit, heaven and earth, and secular and sacred is healed and dissolved.

We're at home now.

Midnight passes.

Wholeness nears.

Merry Christmas!
, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook


November 2009:  A Circumstance of November

Monday, November 16, 2009 
I look around and through what stands around me and you.

Cabin was like a sweat lodge at Sunday Evening Practice. The wood-stove cranked hotter than the moderate outside temperature called for. And the candles went out one by one. The cardiologist from Antigonish and the homeopath from Rockport sat beside the artist from Vermont and the carpenter now living in Illinois, the lay monastic auditor/baker from Toronto and the mendicant with motto 'ama nesciri' from the country of Brooklyn rounded out the meditation cabin with white dog with black spot with herding stock from Pennsylvania and New York.
A man of the Way comes rapping
At my brushwood gate,
Wants to discuss the essentials of Zen experience.
Don't take it wrong if this mountain monk's
Too lazy to open his mouth:
Late spring warblers singing their heart out,
A village of drifting petals.

- Jakushitsu Genko (1290-1367)
Table reading was Sharon Salzberg's dharma talk "A More Complete Attention" in current issue of Tricycle. It seemed just right. As did the lentil soup (with or without sausage and beef). Rokie did his weekly plaintive wail for the lost ball deep under bookshelf in corner of dining room.

Poet Charles Olson wrote, "The is no intelligence the equal of the situation." Jacque Ranciere wrote that, "All have equal intelligence." The idea seemed right that intelligence and compassion are less a matter of who has them, but more a matter of who responds to them as they present themselves within each situation. Thus, what a person is to do is to show up in each situation, attend to the reality revealing itself, respond to/with the intelligence and compassion found there, and cease considering yourself 'other' than the situation.

We are standing around what is standing around with and for us. Circumstance -- of which we are not-other.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) wrote, "
Jo soy jo y mi circunstancia."
Philosophy
Circunstancia

For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. In order to accomplish such task the philosopher must, as Husserl proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega proposes that philosophy must, as Hegel proposed, overcome both the lack of idealism (in which reality gravitated around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (which is for him an undeveloped point of view in which the subject is located outside the world) in order to focus in the only truthful reality (i.e. life). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me, I (human being) can not be detached from my circumstances (world). This led Ortega to pronounce his famous maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am myself and my circumstance") which he always situated in the core of his philosophy. For Ortega, as for Husserl, the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality -- therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system where life is the sum of the ego and circumstance. This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical exchange of forces between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom. In this sense Ortega wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom "is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny." In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a "project of life" --thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project
.
(from AllExperts, About.com, Free Encyclopedia)           http://en.allexperts.com/e/j/jo/josé_ortega_y_gasset.htm
"I am myself and my circumstance." (Ortega y Gasset)

So,
(Question): Where do we find ourselves?
(Response): Where are you?

Who am I?
What are you doing?

Am I free?
You choose!

The rain has stopped. We had flooded celler and leaky roof (which is not quite finished being re-shingled). The Irish workman left the west side of dormer completely unprotected last season. The Scot temporarily cut and nailed an obtuse triangular temporary cover of plywood earlier this season. The roofer from Hope hadn't gotten to it yet last week. But the torrential rain coming from southwest did get to it. For hours of slashing downpour. The upstairs and downstairs bathrooms danced with dripping water through wall and ceiling. Pots and pans and multicolored towels bravely stood their ground during the deluge. Saskia fortified the troops. The battle subsides. All is well. And wet.

The brook roared and edged its limits under our footbridges. Big stones grumbled under water-falls. The sluice dug two months ago took runoff down Ragged Mountain that would have hit barn off to the other side of septic mound and under the road. I build make-shift earthen diverter dams to help water go away from new gambrel book-shed being built askew barn. Hosmer Pond was profoundly beyond its normal limits, flooding fields and backing toward road by 20-30 feet. Where we keep the green canoe on wood frame by pond was two feet too deep for our boots to approach -- so we turned back with life jackets hanging from paddles over shoulders.

November is warm this week. Many dogs ran the Snow Bowl. Color has fallen from trees to mountain mulching. Dawn gives light. I wake up early.

This.

All of this.

And you.

This is what I am.

Thank you.

With heartfelt gratitude!
, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook



September 2009: Working with the Earth

Nine tons of crushed stone are shoveled and wheel-barrowed onto the site for the book-shed.  Large stones are rolled onto handcart and wrestled to stone wall being built as retaining wall. The excavator dug out and leveled the land. Beams are hewn for sills. Earth is fragrant and rich as summer drifts north.

Morning sitting is fresh and quiet. One or two or three or four arrive and sit and leave. As the day goes on different individuals stop by -- some to visit the meditation cabin, some for coffee or cookie and some words. 

Evening conversations are robust and delightful. There were 12 tonight. There were 10 at last Sunday's Evening Practice. The sutra chant was overpowering and strong.

University classes begin. Temperatures drop at night. Darkness comes early after conversation and stays later in the early morning. 

Friday "Poetry Tea and Thee" conversations begin at one of the nursing homes. 

We are not pleased with the rancor of politics. We think we are a better people than the stridency suggests.

We are trying to understand the enormous depths of the word-reality surrounding "this."

 This is our life.

, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook


August 2009:  Summer arrives -- a little late but lovely

It seemed summer arrived this year on the first of August.

Cedar siding crawls up kitchen and barn. Meditation cushions hold still those who come to sit. Words and images dance the circle five evenings a week in conversation. The hermitage settles nicely, thank you, into itself.

Week by week we are contacted by some who've wandered down to the cape by the harbor where a vacant store space looks out blankly to their looking in. A very few research and find us here, most, I suspect, shake their heads and say 'It must have been the economy.' It wasn't, exactly. But now taking a longer view, it appears it was a good time to have our lease not offered to us for renewal. 

We sell some books online. Some ask us to get books for them. Saskia baked ten dozen lobster cookies individually wrapped for a wedding at Whitehall Inn.

We are surprised and delighted at how life as hito/mono (hermits in the open/monastics of no other) continues and deepens.

Saskia works on program for 350.org's 24October celebration. I order textbooks for two fall courses on East Asian Philosophy and Comparative Religions. Rokpa runs with Wallace at Snow Bowl and tries to get the elder Oscar to return the tennis ball when he comes with Jay to do some siding. Mu-ge lays in wait for the cabin mice, feigning meditative posture but ready to pounce. The Korean Zen Master would have approved.

The rain has let go its damp hold. Drying breeze skirts and lifts even the dripping sodden cellar. It feels that an early autumn approaches with night cooling.

All is well.

Everyone is a remarkable blessing.

Aren't you now?


, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook


................

July 2009: How Goes Change from Harbor to Mountainside?

Boardwalk built up to meditation cabin, seven sections of eight foot lengths strapped by thirty inch pressure treated boards. At the door of Wohnkuche to gravel drive, another two sections built with cedar planking with huge step-stones in middle angle change and at entrance to sliding door. Cedar shingles go up on dooryard side of kitchen. The fragrance in morning sun is delicious.

Evening conversations continue, well attended. Just because we practice deep listening and loving speech, it doesn't mean the conversation isn't spirited with good arguing when called for. Like potatoes in a pot, we brush the unnecessary edges from our thick or thin skins.

Saskia finishes a women's week at the Carpenter's Boat-shop in Pemequid taught by Bobby Ives and Mary from Connecticut. She comes home tired and happy with Shaker boxes and Shaker step-stool. She was delighted to be there with two women she knew and others she met. The community there inspires.

The change goes well. We need to build a Book Shed, a gambrel approximately 12x20 to house the books for resale. A plan has been made. We'll look for volunteer help and the seven thousand to cover materials, foreman, and food to feed us all. The wet and damp month of June threatens the boxes in the barn. We need to start.

The hermitage feels like a hermitage, even as visitors are happily welcomed for hospitality, meditation, and conversation practice. The shop by the harbor goes away. The hermitage between mountains, long sleepy, awakens and comes to be.

May each and all be well!

See you soon,             


, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook,





.....................

 Theme: Visit Meetingbrook Hermitage, A statement of change

    Meetingbrook  Dogen & Francis  Hermitage

Between Ragged and Bald Mountains; Between Buddhist and Christian Traditions   



V  I  S  I  T           M  E  E  T  I  N  G  B  R  O  O  K           H  E  R  M  I  T  A  G  E                    


                                                   


        Background:     

                                         On 1May2009 Meeetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery returns to origin and source at Meetingbrook Hermitage on Barnestown Road at Ragged Mountain. From 29June1996 to 30April2009 Meetingbrook had a market face to its hermitage vocation. The bookshop and bakery existed as a place of hospitality and conversation at the harbor in Camden. The building we were leasing was sold in Spring 2009, we lost our lease, and have folded back home. 


We need new forms of being-with one another, a cosmotheandric spirituality, one that celebrates union with God & unity with Earth, Nature, & all Sentient Beings.


Meetingbrook Hermitage is a contemporary lay monastic practice & place of collation & recollection.  A  monastic is someone who longs for a simple and inclusive communion with life, love, and wisdom. We invite visitors to attend the times of these practices of conversation, meditation, and hospitality.  These 3 practices, often interchangeable, inspire radical originality. 


Blend and comprehend what, scattered, aches for wholeness.


To listen, to speak, & to be aware of the silence and stillness which are the ground of our presence in the practice of conversation, meditation and hospitality -- this is how we practice. We continue hospitality and conversation along with mindfulness practice in our newly transformed ‘Wohnkuche” (living-in kitchen). The Waterford wood stove is encircled by comfortable chairs and seating for at least 14 people with room for more. There will be coffee, a kettle for tea and hot chocolate, along with offerings of Saskia’s baked goods accompanying the gatherings.


Here is One - 

Another Itself.


With our chapel/zendo cabin just up from the barn, quiet meditation room in the house, and soon to-be retreat cabins, we continue our practice inviting the larger community to stop by and join in as you wish. Books & gifts are available from our online collection to purchase, as well as a large lending library. Baking goods waft the grounds. Bakery orders are taken. Stop by, sample.        


May all words and every silence engage us in deep listening and loving speech!


        Foreground:

 

Meetingbrook Conversation Practice: these are an hour long each evening, & comprise of      
  three parts: a time of reading around or sharing experience of personal journeying;  a brief  
             silence; an open time of conversation followed by a concluding final circle.  
 Meetingbrook Meditation Practice: these comprise of three parts: silent sitting; walking, 
reading, chanting;  collation and conversation.
 Wednesday Morning Open Hospitality: 8:00am-10:30am. Come by for breakfast. 
 Sunday Noon Open Hospitality:12:30pm to 3:30pm. Come by for brunch or just coffee   `       
             and tea. Catch up with neighbors, friends, or strangers. 


All events at Meetingbrook are, free, open, and informal.


 Quarterly Retreat Days: All day mindfulness retreat practicing looking, listening, & silence 
 Quarterly Festivals of Art, Music, Poetry, and Eco-spirituality: Gathering celebrating the seasons.


 Here’s the schedule for conversations and meditations. Conversations are 5:30pm-6:30pm

 Tuesday Evening Conversation: Theme: Buddhist: thought, meditation, and practice.
 Wednesday Evening Conversation: Theme: Personal: paths/practices, delights/ difficulties,
 Thursday Evening Conversation: Theme: Christian: thought, contemplation, & practice.
 Friday Evening Conversation: Theme: Creativity & Peace: the ways of art, spirituality, 
music, peace-making, poetry, and nature. Also a night for films and performances.


Meetingbrook’s promises are contemporary versions of the traditional counsels of poverty, chastity, & obedience. Ours are called contemplation, conversation, & correspondence. They encourage us to look, to listen, and to respond with oneself.


 Saturday Morning Practice: 7:00am - 8:30am  Involves: silent sitting; reading from different scripture or sacred text Lectio style; speaking to what is heard; collation at table.
 Sunday Evening Practice: 6:00pm - 8:00pm  Involves: silent sitting; walking meditation; 
chanting; table reading; mindful eating in silence soup, bread, and dessert; conversation.  


Collation is literally “to bring together”; an offering of  light fare to eat & drink.

 Recollection is a tranquil recalling to mind -- remembering who we really are. 


        Ground:

                                Our personal practice focus involves the Buddhist Meditative, the Christian Contemplative, and the Engaged Service flowing from both. Our wider interest is keen and open,  inviting all interreligious or nonreligious exploration and inquiry into wonder & wholeness,


Love one an-other;   for, when we do,   there is no-other.


Visit the hermitage anytime to converse, be silent, laugh or cry, be mindful or explore no-mind.. Let’s  learn with one another in a spirit of profound humility. We look forward to engaging such community of being-with-care that is ordinary, accepting, & forgiving. 


May the heart/mind of the Christ & the Bodhisattva deepen our lives & ground us in service that is diverse, practical, diffuse, & real, 


 Donations to Meetingbrook are always gratefully accepted & happily received.  



Directions: Hermitage is 4 miles from Camden or Rockport town centers. Follow signs to Snow Bowl. We’re 3rd driveway on left past Snow Bowl. You’ll see barn gate (open it), oar, & “M” on post. 



We encourage you in your practice and prayer. Let us be with one another in heart and mind ...now.


See you soon,            


, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook,


Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for Another


64 Barnestown Road, Camden Maine 04843

    www.meetingbrook.org    207-236-4346, or, 236-6808   mono@meetingbrook.org




...............




4 April 2009, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update

Theme:  Not Something To Be Grasped


The Bookshop and Bakery will be ending it's stay where it has been these 13 years. The new owner of the building on harbor edge wants the place for himself. So, on the 30th of April, we'll exit and he'll have it.

Paul in Philippians, said:
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, 
Who,  though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. 
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
                (--New American Bible, from Philippians 2)
The Palm Sunday reading is good reminder.  We no longer grasp what will become of our market face. We look about for another site. We think about a bookmobile. We concede the backup plan -- to fold back into the Barnestown Road hermitage site. It all seems possible, and impossible. It's out of our grasp.

Still, the longing is there to continue a life of prayer, meditation, hospitality and service. That we'll do. What form it will take, where we will locate ourselves, what we will look like -- all this is unknown. When thought about, it resembles the mythological problem confronting the psyche face to face with the Jesus story and Christ event.

What form after death of body? Where will Christ be found? What will the resurrected Jesus look like?

Our mythic journey is not in the same category as the one beginning with the narrative of Palm Sunday through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and culminating Easter Sunday. But the narrative of our lives, all our lives, is not separated from each other. We are companions on the journey.

So, keep in touch. More information when it reveals itself.

There's not much we can hold on to, not much to be grasped.

We'll just fall into the empty, into the service of our human family, and all nature, humbled to have been able to be anywhere for so long.

With love,

, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook,
  4 April 2009