No plans

 

S pic

To be

On yesterday’s walk

Lee Substack daily five today, I will be here,

“ Where will I find myself today? 

I do not know. 

Yet through sorrow and sensation, 
and breathing and joy, 
and grace and goodness, 

and glory, 

I will be here.”

Dream fragments:  on a n excursion with C. Memory of Lazarus store, now converted into dark old wood interior, coming down escalator to first floor by front entrance. This used to be cosmetic counters I bought a perfume here-was it volcane de nuit?  The sales clerk looked like a countess, but sounded like a hillbilly—shocking.  Go to pay—12:00 to 5:00 looks like , the man (BE?) says jovially. A has two square, hefty light machines $5/600 @. Oh.  I see you came prepared. You planned to get these. 

Missed 10-7

 

6-19-24. To commemorate Israel’s 9-11. 

The days just go too fast. 

  Odd we read Samuel and shuddered over David’s murderous conquest  of the kingdoms surrounding his with Jhwh’s approval yesterday

  You are mysterious, Hashem, what we know of you. What can we know of you?

  RB said last night GIG reconstructed God not as Judeo Christian version and he likes it, GIG got it right (my paraphrase). Not me I prefer JWHw and Jesus and Holy Spirit rather as I learned and know them. God help me. iJN

  Baruch said last night there are 76 wars currently being fought. I can only name two, but my time on earth has never been free of war. GIG says repeatedly that the urgent need for mutual destruction is the chief feature of humanity’s psyche. Not wrong there,  but once it’s said, can’t ask why or will you help us stop that, God. David’s career is one example of the belief that God approves and ordains war. Maybe RB has a point. What do I really know or do think I can know about the Absolute?  I can only and do ask for guidance. And forgiveness for this shared human condition. IJN

  Also YouTubed Rabbi Yehoshua Gordon’s Chumash on Chabad.org about Cain and Abel. I love these readings and interpretations of Torah. So different from Christian views, so many details that aren’t written in Genesis/Bereshit. So much certainty in the man and the group’s belief. TNJ

Alleluia

 

Oct 3,  our trail

Oct 4, our beautiful daughter

From Lee daily five Oct 5 Substack, Alleluia 

For what better hand can I put my own hand in? 

There is no other. 

And this is why it is said, 

Lord, have mercy. 

For the Lord is goodness and strength and love. 

And if I open my heart, help will truly come. 

I begin here, 

coming from nowhere, 

dwelling in nothing 

and yet The Lord is here with me. 

Alleluia. 

Alleluia. 

Alleluia. 

Dread

 

In the park yesterday 4:30

I hate waking with dread and worry. That can’t be good for my heart. Or my wish to be and to live on.  Yesterday was an argumentative day with A. S would not talk to me on phone. Fear of stuff, material goods— acquiring and disposing,, the albatross round my neck.  Intentional suffering?  PkdDg duty?  Plain old suffering?  

But blended with joy? ie the walk in the park yesterday early evening and all the people we encountered, all immigrants. I so enjoyed chatting with the friend family group of black haired boys Saggiga plus I Canadian blonde. “Guess where I’m from?” “Middle East. Lots of co there. Syria?” “Iraq! And him”. “Could also be Middle East, but maybe South America.”  “He’s from Brazil”. “How about me?”  “Central Africa.” Yes  “Rwanda?” “What? I thought you said Lugonda. I’m from Angola.”  “Angola! Weren’t they in a war once?” “I don’t know. Don’t remember.”  “How about me do I look African?” “Sure you do in this family. Are you from Westbrook?”  “ No. Canada.  He explained how he was here, but I can’t remember.  And last was Chris who lingered after the others said a kind goodbye, including “God bless you” and “he can’t really talk”  But he could, despite his drooling ill shaped mouth, with many comments about Red and my cane, which breakdown I demonstrated before he strolled away.

   God bless them all with good lives, and thank you especially that they are not spending their youth in an active military And how odd as I think of it that I am somewhat proud? or just curious? regretful? that my father enlisted at 15. during WWII 

   God bless and heal S and now C’s grandson J in his surgery today. Bless all my family and me with what we need. Live in my thoughts and heart today.  IJN

Ibrahim redux

Color deepens. Nuances too. 

This morning 7:33am

   Ibrahim still on my mind, in a neutral way. He-this encounter-has become an impression to cogitate, a story to tell all my peops. How to craft it?  As a joke, as a victim, to startle my listeners as I first was. But I realize I have sympathy and empathy for a man I see as old and ugly, like me, and i imagine him as an old Arab ripped from his birth land through God knows what traumas—war? Little education? Bad dental health?😜 patriarchal authoritarian culture? Hates his job in the land called the Great Satan? Lack of empathetic imagination?  He can’t consider my possible problems. I do and I don’t consider his—I’m willing to trumpet as a story of personal and foreign rudeness what to anybody I know, while I can’t say that he considers the encounter at all past its moment.  Internalconsidering on both sides

  From Lee, Daily Five Substack:

“For life to be open, the body must be open to life. 

For the body to be open to life, sensation must be open to being. 

For sensation to be open to being, it must become primary

so that life is not a thing of the head and emotional reactions, 

but a thing of the heart and the way it beats. 

Life and sensation, 

dwelling in the blood of the body. 

Searching for a seat in the heart of love. 

Denying every force that would hijack them, derail them, 

and move them into territory 

other than that of love and kindness, 

So that the roots of sensation and being can reach deeper, 

deeper into the body 

in their search or contact with the soul. 

And this is a practical matter to be investigated 

here and now 

through breathing and through the circulation 

of the energy of sensation throughout the body,

which distributes itself equally to every particle, 

without preference, without hesitation. 

So that the body and blood become a whole thing here, 

within life and being….

Here we are. 

Life and being made one 

through the sensation of the body; 

and this is the place where secret songs are sung. 

Songs of subtle feeling filled with love and goodness

which penetrate everything at the root of creation. 

Here within us, now. 

The question is always whether I can resist my negativity

and put the sensation of being before all other things

as the rule and the law. 

As obedience and intelligence,

so that goodness and glory 

may have a firm place to stand in being. 

Lord, have mercy.”

   God the whole world adores you in the beauty of its creation. And I am shy to acknowledge and say I Adore you. I can see my sins and I ask your pardon. I thank you forI ask health and cleaning and light for S today and every day. I pray your aid for all my loved ones. I pray your blessings on Ibrahim IJN

A shock?

 

Still life here and now

Trash. You get to take it out then, Mr Goodwill from the Middle East   Guess I’m stung   This is anger   At all my losses  Those frames are actually material evidence of a broken important octave spanning many years and finally admitting it was over  he looked like a devil laughing in my face, T my attempt to salvage some grace from it  

Really?  We are loved equally?  Help me realize that, lord. 

Like I said, in the other blog, some of us keep our meanness inside a little more carefully.  Others let it fly and there’s the shocks. But I’m only now recognizing my lawful anger