Homeward Bound

SIMON & GARFUNKEL 

"Homeward Bound"

I'm sitting in the railway station.
Got a ticket to my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and guitar in hand.
And ev'ry stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band.
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

Ev'ry day's an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines.
And each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories
And ev'ry stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be,
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

Tonight I'll sing my songs again,
I'll play the game and pretend.
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me.
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.
Silently for me.

Amazon Review: Joan Tollifson, Nothing to Grasp

This is a Grasping expression of non duality....teaching that there is nothing to grasp, and so no adequate expression!!  As this may be liberating enough, I could stop right here with the 5-star rating, and that should be sufficient.  Yet, we need to make concessions to duality because many will not believe Silence (or the whiteness behind this printing) to be an effective teaching approach.  Joan Tollefson, with a great efficiency in word usage, and backed by her own awakened experience, has given us a gift of immense value.  Like all good teachers of non duality, she places herself in our shoes and asks the questions that must be asked to grow into this teaching, approaching an understanding of Consciousness which is critical for our time...and for the Happiness of each of us.  Please read, and re-read, until Grace arrives!!  Now..!!

Walking on a sandy path

Walking on a sandy path

Uneven with bumps and sinking

required attention to foot placement

some loss of control

unpredictability

as each grain of sand

in its universe 

resisted in a special way..

Meditation might find

that there is a smoothness

shining through

these steps on uneven

regularity...

SSS...Februaary 29th, 2016

Soup, Salad & Scripture

February 29th, 2016

Prayer: Ron Johnson
(3/7 is Dick Longstaff, 2/14 is Jim Austin)

Attendance Sheet...Who do we need to contact?  

How are you?

Marta will be preaching on March 6, based on 
the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:  11-32)

Questions...

1.  What is a parable?

2.  How do you identify the various characters:

Father, Son, Older Brother?

3.  Do you see yourself in any of these roles?

4.  What might it mean that Jesus spoke only in parables?

5.  How does the parable relate to other Bible stories?

To the Kingdom of God?  To Our Common Purpose?

6.  How might we bring this parable into the 21st Century?

7.  How does the parable relate to remembering and forgetting?

Luke 15:11-32  New King James Version (NKJV)

The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. 13 And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. 14 But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. 15 Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’

20 “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; 24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

25 “Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’

28 “But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. 30 But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’

31 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. 32 It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”

Thomas Merton and Zen

Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness. It is therefore in a sense "void".

But it can shine through this or that system,  religious or irreligious,  just as light can shine through glass that is blue, or green, or red, or yellow.

If  Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."

Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)


A century ago, at the beginning of the Great War, which Pope Benedict XV termed a “pointless slaughter”, another notable American was born: the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton. He remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people. In his autobiography he wrote: “I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God, and yet hating him; born to love him, living instead in fear of hopeless self-contradictory hungers”. Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.
~~~Pope Francis, Address to the U. S. Congress, September 24th, 2015

Coming Home

Coming Home

 Let us now go forth into the world in peace,

Home was Peace

but he longed to experience

 the Other out there..

being of good courage,

An inheritance of Peace was freely given

and he embarked in joy and  expectation..

holding fast to that which is good,

That which is good never left him

but became veiled from his sight on the 

path which he chose..

rendering to no one evil for evil,

The veiling he endured was his

dressing of evil 
appearing in his place 
 of squander and hunger..

strengthening the fainthearted,

Fainthearted he became in

his poverty and suffering

supporting the weak,

His weakness overwhelmed

helping all persons,

For assistance he begged..

loving and serving the Lord, and

At last, in one instant, he remembered
what he had forgotten on his journey

 the Home he and his brother
have never departed..

 rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Layers

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

 (Stanley Kunitz, from his book, The Wild Braid)