Wendell Berry: The Blessing and Bounty of Intactness

"You don't miss your water til the well runs dry," sings soul songster William Bell. Wendell Berry's short novel, "Andy Catlett: Early Travels," is a taste of water from a deep, pure well gone dry; a sweet, profound refreshment that exists now only in memory and which, by dint of his Bodhisattva vows as a writer and Christian, must nonetheless be shared. Maybe that's why I spend most of my readings of Berry's novels on the verge of tears.

The time of the book is post-Christmas December 1943. It lasts four days and 140 pages. Nine-year-old Andy Catlett, Wendell's alter-ego, takes his first-ever trips to both sets of his grandparents alone. The reader accompanies him through the rounds of duties and pasttimes over those four days. Nothing happens that isn't normal, routine or expected. The book has a conspicuous lack of drama or tension. It reads more like an essay than a piece of fiction. It's insights are usually, but not always, the product of reverie rather than revelation. Nothing or no one is lost, except the entirety of the world those places and people belonged to.

Tolstoy's later fictions are allegories and parables. They have a flat, primitive beauty of didacticism. Similarly, Wendell's last two novels read like memoirs. Or you could look at their reduction of scale in terms of a painter's shift from oils to ink, brush to pen. But to lament the lack of dramatic tension is to miss the particular purpose and giftings of these books.

Most of all, for me, "Andy Catlett: Early Travels" is about intactness, a profound cohrence possible only in a world of small places where the art of living revolves around greater self-sufficiency than our world asks of us.

One especially difficult personal consequence of reading Wendell Berry is to realize my own lack of manual competence and my utter lifelong disdain for physical labor. That, perforce, makes Wendell, in all candor, a romantic for me; his books are romances since they take me to situations and sensibilities rarely known in my life. Sadly, ironically, his books are as much Arthurian legends to me as an adult as the books Andy takes refuge in as a child.

So I am handicapped by having to read this book as a legend. But maybe I am also rewarded for having to read it as such. For legends are stories that deserve telling no matter what world in which they are told. In my case, the legend runs like this: Since Andy is, at book's end, initiated into a vast competence possible in an agrarian world of self-subsistence, the book is a kind of American Paradise Found and Lost. Andy as a young boy finds the paradise of place by reliving the day he found it during a later time when it is lost forever and has given way to nothing that is comparable to, or compatible with, itself.

The book is also a war novel--not in the sense of a depiction of war, or a series of letters from the fronts on which it is fought, but a letter from the homefront for which it is being fought. Wendell, whom I think a pacificst, reminds us that there are no winners in war. America will become, he intimates, a war economy. It will never again be a peace economy. So the America of Andy's childhood is present and accounted for in an elder's adulthood during which it has gone missing. The small town of Hargrave, Kentucky, which in 1943 is the basic unit of democracy that is fighting for itself, is not to survive long into the peace that war brings. The wartime industrialization America will marshal to win the war will take root in the peacetime that follows.

Wendell does not spare us this outcome. But, out of compassion, he sequesters it in the distant future in which the book is created. The world of this wonderful short novel is allowed to exist confidently and rightfully in Andy's nurtured and nurturing innocence. This isn't Frank Baum's Kansas of fragilely facaded desolation. This is Wendell Berry's Kentucky of deep, resonant comfort.

So each of the book's three chapters is a ladleful of sweet well water. This is water for both drinking and ablution. Andy finds--and thus attains--on his own what T.S. Eliot describes as "the still point of the turning world." That still point here is a core intactness that spreads from home to field and street, everywhere a resident of that place might find him or her self. Wendell calls that intactness "quiet."

"When I was out of the house, standing on the walk in front, the quiet seemed still to be unbroken. I had come out of a smaller quiet into the one that contained it. The wind had laid. Every tree was standing still. The overcast had thinned, and under it the light had brightened. Down in town the road was empty. There was not a soul in sight. The fronts of all the buildings looked permanently shut.

"In the other direction, out toward the river valley, the country was as quiet, as still, as the town. One trance held everything. Under the gray sky, the light was strong. Every detail, every fencepost and tree, every door and window in every building, was steady and clear, luminous, as if the things of the earth had absorbed the light of the sky. On the farthest ridge, this side of the valley, I could see Uncle Virgil's cattle lying down. The whole country seemed to be meditating on itself, as if consciously submitted to whatever was to come. I remembered it was New Year's Eve. It was only another day, though already a little longer than yesterday, but I felt as if a great page was about to turn.

"Suspended in that rapt light at the edge of time, so that my footfalls made no sound, I crossed the road and went down to Jasper Lathrop's store. In spite of Granny's assurance, I was a little surprised when the latch gave and the door opened. I went in and shut the door as carefully as I had opened it.

"And then I had to stop and look. I had not been in there since Jasper got his call and went off to the army. I had not, I think, even looked in the windows. I remembered it fully stocked
with groceries and hardware, all the varied merchandise of a general store in those days, and occupied by shoppers and loafers and Jasper himself. Now it was empty. Completely empty. Every shelf and bin and counter was as bare of goods as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. The store contained only its share of the surrounding stillness, and the light starkly shaped and shadowed by the deserted furnishings." (pages 136-7)

It is in the back room, formerly the office, of this empty store waiting for, pun intended, restoration to itself after the war, that select elders of the community have gathered to pass their leisure time together in a communal waiting for war's end. Andy is admitted into their waiting midst which conjoined makes the space a waiting room of, pun intended, his most beautiful ruminations. As I read this section, and felt myself, as usual with Wendell, on the verge of tears, I asked my tear ducts to stay clear for a change so I could accompany Andy into the company of men. I'm glad I did because there, yesterday on my 65th birthday, Wendell gave me a clear-eyed gift I will cherish for the rest of this segment of forever in which I find myself. It would not be fair to quote any farther into this chapter. I invite you to travel there yourself. I promise replenishment.

Let me, however, as further inducement to reading this book, quote something 18 pages prior. This is possibly one of the most tender and triumphant passages in all of Wendell's writings. And what is said here is possibly a more common outcome, in terms of understanding, for people who were born of Andy's time and place. As soon as I read this, I knew it to be true and trustowrthy; I felt it a reward for accompanying Andy on his journey. I realize now I waited all night to share this with you:

"Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved--for all we know, it is halved--by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined. We believe the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny, or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time, through which. if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as child among the dead." (page 119)

--Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett: Early Travels, Shoemaker and Hoard, Emeryville, CA, 2006

The book ends with Andy's initiation into a complete, layered belonging to his family, community, place and time--first during a morning of work, and, then, as reward, during an afternoon of leisure with men in a general store whose owner is fighting overseas and which is converted now, temporarily, into a congregating place where fathers and friends of men serving overseas wait for news of their loved ones at war. They say, "In dreams begins responsibility." But for Wendell Berry, the converse is just as true, and maybe even more sustaining: "In responsibility begins dreaming." Nine bows, dear friend. Thank you for the foster home of Hargrave, Kentucky.

America is Israel's Partner in the Palestine War

Whether we like it or not, we must begin to see America as a suburb of Israel, and impose on ourselves a comprehensive view of the Middle East which admits that American citizens are shareholders in the occupations and fates of both Iraq and Palestine. The double--or two-front--war we are fighting should, I believe, be called the Iraq-Palestine War because both are expressions of the same hegemony. As long as Americans believe that Israel is solely responsible for the tragedy of Palestine, and that their own country derives no material or political benefit from this annexation, we will never have peace in the Middle East.

I used to think that Palestine was the spoils, the payback, we gave to Israel for being our main proxy in the Middle East. I used to think this was a purely secular and commercial transaction--a land grab that we tacitly supported in return for numerous other favors like taking out Iran's nuclear reactor. I know better now. Israel bombed Iran not only with our tacit consent, but, it can be argued, at our BEHEST.

Look, friends, the London Times revealed Israeli plans for a nuclear assault on Iran's suspected nuclear reactor sites. Of course, Israel denied this. BUT THEY NEVER DENIED THAT THEY HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO CONDUCT THIS ATTACK--IRONICALLY ON A COUNTRY WHICH EVEN THE CIA SAYS POSES NO NUCLEAR THREAT. Add to this the recent American fleet buildup in the Gulf and you have a joint American-Israel military exercise in full-dominance brinkmanship. Israel and America risk every life in the Middle East and Central Asia with this insane neocon/Likkudist bullying. This bullying is a tandem operation.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL AS AN OBJECT OF RELIGIOUS ADORATION
As a result of recent spiraling events, I see Palestine differently. To me, what is occurring is much more psychotic and terrifying than mere plunder. Please hear me out:

There is an angry, addled axis of religious fervor at work and play in America: the Christian-controlled Right and the Jewish-controlled Left. Our democracy has been taken hostage by religious minorities. Not surprisingly, the Jewish-controlled Left has done a far better job of controlling the spin on Palestine than the Christian-controlled Right has on Iraq--without, as far as I know, tapping a single phone. Maybe that's because American lives are lost in Iraq and, except for Rachel Corrie, only Israeli lives are lost in Palestine.

Want proof of Jewish lobby spin control?

Just look at the unrelentingly deceptive and defamatory attacks on Jimmy Carter and his Palestine book. No book that is as, or even more, critical of Iraq has taken such a beating. Indeed, the book stores are crowded with well-reasoned celebrity excoriations of the Bush/Neocon/Likkudist Middle Eastern Strategy. But one celebrity critique of Palestine is regarded as as much of a threat by the Jewish Lobby as a movie on the Virgin Birth would be (and, in the case of Jean Luc Godard, was) by the Catholic Church. Once religious forces become involved, things get murderously murky. Therefore I conclude: Intervention is needed as much in Israel as America. If we can brandish sanctions on Iran for an imaginary threat and North Korea for a pipsqueak nuclear arsenal, then isn't it rank hypocrisy to let Israel menace the world with a manifestly real nuclear arsenal? The same public that has risen up against the occupation of Iraq must rise up against the occupation of Palestine. Otherwise our leaders, and Israel's, will not listen.

It is my conviction that the subject of Palestine must be bathed in as much hard light as Iraq if the Middle East crisis is to have a just solution. If you look at both war zones, you will see certain fixed similarities that make them templates for each other. Start with the occupying armies of America and Israel--the world's two most active, belligerent nulcear powers.

ISRAEL & AMERICA: THE GERMANY & ITALY OF THE NEW CENTURY
Has it dawned on anyone how much the American-Israel axis resembles the German-Italian axis of WWII? Sadly, or maybe blessedly, America is Italy's twin. Right now, and for some time, America's army has been pinned down and largely ineffective. Israel, on the other hand, is as methodically efficient and ruthlessly successful at civilian pacification as the Germans. Yeah, some suicide bombers occasionally blow themselves up and lots of innocent civilians (although I hardly think West Bank land squatters and Gaza interlopers are entirely innocent) get killed.

Resistance is to be expected. If there were no Fatah or Hamas, Israel would invent them. In fact, there is evidence that Israel did finance Hamas as an anti-PLO force in its early days. Now I know my Jewish friends will be enraged by this suggestion. But that's what colonialists and imperialist do. Just think of Iran-Contra. Do you think Israel is above playing the same counter-insurgency games? I don't.

Rule of thumb: The Right Always Needs The Left. You always need Communists to blame for Reichstag fires. Israel's government provokes and then uses the resistance to justify more land confiscation, arrests and assassinations. Nazi Germany taught Israel well. Too well.

ISRAEL, ISRAEL, UBER ALLES
And now we come to the karmic part of this sequel, the part that makes it so excruciatingly personal for me.

I'm a Jew who has come to the sad conclusion that ethnic identity and nationalist garrison states are perpetuations of the hatred and oppression that beget them. Consequently, I no longer subscribe to a two-state solution, since Palestine is now 10% of the size it was supposed to be. I BELIEVE IN A ONE-STATE SOLUTION--WITH ALL LANDS AND RESOURCES SHARED, EVEN IF IT MUST BE IN A SERIES OF ETHNIC CANTONS.

A one-state solution offers Palestinians the only way to get their fair share of sovereignty and opportunity. It is the only way Israel (and America) will be forced to make reparations: they will be rebuilding the state of, for want of a better name, Palesrael. And the big bonus of unification will be that an Arab-Israeli joint democracy will serve as role model for the rest of the Middle East and, who knows, the world. Think of the positive implications of Jewish-Christian-Muslim power sharing in the new state of Palesrael. I see no other way. Nationalism and democracy are incompatible, if not inimical.

So now, in preparation for the discussion of Jimmy Carter's book on Palestine tomorrow night at St. Asaph's Church, I'll let you hear from Jimmy Carter himself. This is a letter he sent to the Boston Globe which was published December 20th. Let it serve as a Cliff Notes to his book for all those of you who plan to attend but will not be able to read it in time. Let it also serve as rebuttal to the scandalous attacks of Alan Dershowitz and what Pat Bucahana calls "the AIPAC poodles."

Reiterating the keys to peace
By Jimmy Carter December 20, 2006

MY BOOK "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" was published last month, expressing my assessment of circumstances in the occupied territories and prescribing a course of action that offers a path to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. My knowledge of the subject is based on visits to the area during the past 33 years, my detailed study and personal involvement in peace talks as president, and my leadership role in monitoring the Palestinian elections of 1996, 2005, and 2006.

Some major points in the book are:

Multiple deaths of innocent civilians have occurred on both sides, and this violence and all terrorism must cease.

For 39 years, Israel has occupied Palestinian land, and has confiscated and colonized hundreds of choice sites.

Often excluded from their former homes, land, and places of worship, protesting Palestinians have been severely dominated and oppressed. There is forced segregation between Israeli settlers and Palestine's citizens, with a complex pass system required for Arabs to traverse Israel's multiple checkpoints.

An enormous wall snakes through populated areas of what is left of the West Bank, constructed on wide swaths of bulldozed trees and property of Arab families, obviously designed to acquire more territory and to protect the Israeli colonies already built. (Hamas declared a unilateral cease-fire in August 2004 as its candidates sought local and then national offices, which they claim is the reason for reductions in casualties to Israeli citizens.)

Combined with this wall, Israeli control of the Jordan River Valley will completely enclose Palestinians in their shrunken and divided territory. Gaza is surrounded by a similar barrier with only two openings, still controlled by Israel. The crowded citizens have no free access to the outside world by air, sea, or land.

The Palestinian people are now being deprived of the necessities of life by economic restrictions imposed on them by Israel and the United States because 42 percent voted for Hamas candidates in this year's election. Teachers, nurses, policemen, firemen, and other employees cannot be paid, and the UN has reported food supplies in Gaza equivalent to those among the poorest families in sub-Sahara Africa, with half the families surviving on one meal a day.

Mahmoud Abbas, first as prime minister and now as president of the Palestinian National Authority and leader of the PLO, has sought to negotiate with Israel for almost six years, without success. Hamas leaders support such negotiations, promising to accept the results if approved by a Palestinian referendum.

UN Resolutions, the Camp David Accords of 1978, the Oslo Agreement of 1993, official US Policy, and the International Roadmap for Peace are all based on the premise that Israel withdraw from occupied territories. Also, Palestinians must accept the same commitment made by the 23 Arab nations in 2002: to recognize Israel's right to live in peace within its legal borders. These are the two keys to peace.

Not surprisingly, an examination of the book reviews and published comments reveals that these points have rarely if ever been mentioned by detractors of the book, much less denied or refuted. Instead, there has been a pattern of ad hominem statements, alleging that I am a liar, plagiarist, anti-Semite, racist, bigot, ignorant, etc. There are frequent denunciations of fabricated "straw man" accusations: that I have claimed that apartheid exists within Israel; that the system of apartheid in Palestine is based on racism; and that Jews control and manipulate the news media of America.

As recommended by the Hamilton-Baker report, renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are a prime factor in promoting peace in the region. Although my book concentrates on the Palestinian territories, I noted that the report also recommended peace talks with Syria concerning the Golan Heights. Both recommendations have been rejected by Israel's prime minister.

It is practically impossible for bitter antagonists to arrange a time, place, agenda, and procedures that are mutually acceptable, so an outside instigator/promoter is necessary. Successful peace talks were orchestrated by the United States in 1978-79 and by Norway in 1993. If the American government is reluctant to assume such a unilateral responsibility, then an alternative is the International Quartet (United States, Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union) -- still with American leadership.

An overwhelming majority of citizens of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine want peace, with justice for all who live in the Holy Land. It will be a shame if the world community fails to help them reach this goal.

Former US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Music at the Speed of Love

If Emily Dickinson had a son, or adopted one, and the son chose to carry on the family (pre)occupation (with) of poetry, the name on the birth certificate or documents would be: Robert Creeley. Here's the title poem from his last book, "On Earth," in which son rhymes as well as mom. Note the extraordinary calm and clarity of this poem. In his later years, all was usually well for Creeley, even along the road to hell--"or heaven / even." That sameness, that oneness, is what my wife once called "the soul's stubborn economy." There is such sweetly soulful economy and equanimity here.

The line about hell reminds me of Jack Spicer's aphorism: "Hell is a place where we go to look up."

In any case, these are words of an American watchfulness that I first saw practised in the poetry of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. Something in me knew then that poetry was a form of yoga. By teaching me to see, they ultimately taught me to be. God bless them. It is all here--right under our eyes, as if our eyes were eaves of a house.

When my teacher told me recently to refuse the temptation of an 'outside,' and thus put us all together in the enclosure of love, I saw that Creeley came to this realization another way: expressing it as compassion for an elsewhere, an other than here, which is always a road to hell, except for those on it who will come to know, via God's Rahmat, that all is well. Bawa and Creeley taught me these last few bobbing days that being, our human being, is well-being. "Make the hunger of others your own," Bawa enjoined ten thousand times in my presence. "And don't forget," his student Jonathan Granoff recently added, "to make the happiness of others your own, too. Once you live in compassion, they all come with the package." On days like this, growing old is, indeed, a mercy.

For the last five years of his life, Maurice Ravel couldn't write a note of music--the result of a catastrophic brain injury suffered in a taxi accident. Friends would see him sitting on the balcony, looking out at the city, and ask, "What are you doing?" Ravel would answer, "Waiting." I think Creeley knew a life of such watch-full-ness and waiting, but he was blessed with the ability to continue composing music. Here's some of it:

ON EARTH

One's here
and there is still elsewhere
along some road to hell
where all is well--

or heaven
even
where all saints still wait
and guard the golden gate.

--Robert Creeley, "On Earth," University of California Press, 2006, page 41

The Guilty Pleasure of Salvation

I should be working, my wife says quoting the Beatles, like a dog, dollars per hour work that keeps us alive from pay check to pay check. I should be working, then treat myself to post-midnight labor-of-love work when I would otherwise be sleeping like a log.

Instead, poetry--whether read or composed--becomes guilty pleasure, lacking full substantiation and final satisfaction of hourly work for which I am paid. I should be working. And I'm not. Or, rebelliously, I am. So with addict's logic I explain to myself and you that your lives will be so much better if this poem that begins Robert Creeley's last book, "On Earth," comes express email at this urgent moment rather than at postponed later hour when, yes, its wisdom will be no less dimmed or dramatic. The trouble is, later I might lack the burning need I have to share it now.

So let me make this fix quick. I turn 65 next Saturday and this poem is my birthday card to myself, a poem about what it's like to stare out the window at the unerased tabula rasa of morning, when so much more of living--as flesh, that is--is memory rather than life or worlds to come. Perception itself is sometimes credo. Birds on a wire. The outline of hills. The slant of snow flakes. Men have left home to find true home because of poems like Basho's below.

BASHO'S DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
Basho knew best about the permanent salvation of true perception. Few poems I have ever read manage the reckoning and transcendence of accumulated time and habit as well as his so-called haikus. I say 'so-called' because the word haiku has become an empty cicada shell, a corn husk. The following is more Logos than haiku:

Clouds come from time to time
and bring to men a chance
to rest from looking at the moon.

That poem is both record and re-enactment of release from bondage. And it even brings a taste (foretaste?) of liberation to those who read it. So maybe satori-poem would be a better label.

THE SWEET MEMORY OF LETTING GO
I have carried that Basho poem with me since college as a kind of 23rd Psalm. Other poems have joined it in the rugsack of memory. But to me it is the core poem for my life as a human being and writer. It is the Sermon on the Mount in shorthand because all that Jesus said about God and Man and Love in that discourse is native, both as sentiment and sediment, to the state of mind this poem describes. The world as Jesus knew and served it comes next after such final resting from looking so long and hard at the moon. Here's another Basho-like poem about release, this one by Paul Reps:

Drinking this bowl of green tea
I stopped
the war.

Ever since I found these poems, Poetry has been a ground of being, much the way those running horse paintings in the Alps caves articulate perception as a ground of being. Funny how those famous 19th century multiple-exposure horse-running photographs depict exactly the same resonant wonder.

FROM BASHO TO BECKETT TO CREELEY--IT'S ALL ABOUT WATCHING
Creeley came to me after Samuel Beckett and then taught me to read Becket--not as an agony but as a joy.

In "To Think," Creeley provides gloss to Basho's text on release from long night and life of moon-gazing:

World's mind is after all
an afterthought
of what was there before
and is there still.

It took years to see this release as peace, not plunge back into darkness. Mystics call it the "Unmanifest" and many describe membership in it. In any case, salvation is more than salvage. It is coming to rest, it is becoming too big and too small to be a 'me' without a 'you,' or an 'us' that isn't God. Aristotle (I think it was Aristotle) was right: essence precedes existence, and to be reborn, or born again, is to reclaim (and be reclaimed by) that essence. My teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen said that all his students were born of his union with God, and so we had to be the maker's measure of Himself as Creation, find and share its silver lining of love, mercy, compassion and, my new favorite among God's attributes, justice.

Few poems I have read see the here and now as a resting place where, by dint and wash of full being, we will make good our escape (transcendence). Throughout his later poetry, Creeley seems to say that heaven is content-ment, and, as such, found and dwelled in wherever contentment is experienced.

The way from here is there
And back again, from birth to death,
From egg to echo, flesh to eyeless skull.
One only sleeps to breathe.

The hook, the heart, the body
Deep within its dress, the folds of feelings,
Face to face to face, na bandaged simple place,
No wonder more than this, none less.

--Robert Creeley, from "The Red Flower," On Earth, p. 44

Death, Creeley says, is the only way to let the imagining of complete stillness be more than afterthought of what we once knew. That's why my teacher talked incessantly about dying before death. It was to dscover the first circumstance (code word: God) during our time as flesh and blood: to be the ultimate echo. Heavenly sentience.

"When Christ walked on water and invited Peter to do the same," a college friend who was a devotee of Meister Ekchart told me, "that's when he resurrected far more usefully than he did in the cave." I know now that Christ was showing Peter how and what it's like "to die before dying." Trust, gratitude and praise, as my teacher often said.

"The crucifixion," the same friend told me, "was just Christ's way of sying, 'You can't kill the truth.'" I remember feeling I had no inkling of what he meant, and looking at him with embarrassed incomprehension. My friend laughed. "Put it this way, Dave," he continued, "Which way would you rather take to the truth. To join your teacher on a cross or join him in the swimming pool?" I laughed, but until today, the laugh was one me. Now I think we need to learn to walk in this world with the same light tread Christ walked on water. Somewhere along the way, my teacher, Bawa, got out of the boat and walked with Christ on the ocean water. And now he beckons to his pupils (as in students, as in eyes).

THOSE BLESSED DAYS THE GREAT WHEEL SUFFERS A FLAT TIRE
There are stories about the last hours of my two fathers--Bawa and Eugene Dwayne Federman--that are strikingly similar and consoling. These stories speak well for a lovely knowledge that breaks loose, and free, at the end. Days before he died, Bawa opened his room to all and said it was never again to be shut to anyone. Then he drifted in and out of consciousness, once awakening when I was there and asking either, "Am I in heaven?" or "Am I still here?" With blessed similarity, my biological father asked when the paramedics were trying to revive him, "Am I still here?" and successfully fought off any further attempt to keep him prisoner in this untenable here-and-now. I often thank God for that final union of my two fathers and pray for reunion with them through equal readiness to die. (But, to be honest, I shiver as I write this.)

As I have told you repeatedly, I am an existential Sufi. So a willing paradise to find would be the one I was born to inherit: a world where it is worth it to have been born just to be here, and be enough, unflinchingly, comfortingly. "It is all one day," Tennessee Williams says. I am cheered by his discovery. But it must become my own. For Creeley, it was, and is, enough to stand by words, our own life lived as well as it can be, and in that quality of dignified self-maintenance. In the beginning was the word, the Logos. That same word is our final word, as if our our first hour is our last, because it is all one day, one time. Eternity closes in on the hour. "Rosebud" is Aramaic for "Ready."

I can't tell you how grateful to God I am that Robert Creely has been a sacred adjunct of my life for 45 years. May this poem show you why.

WHEN I THINK

When I think of where I've come from
or even try to measure as any kind of
distance those places, all the various
people, and all the ways in which I re-
member them, so that even the skin I
touched or was myself fact of, inside,
could see through like a hole in the wall
or listen to, it must have been, to what
was going on there, even if I was still
too dumb to know anything--When I think
of the miles and miles of roads, of meals,
of telephone wires even, or even of water
poured out in endless streams down streaks
of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,
or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring
again, or it was--Even when I think again of
all those I treated so poorly, names, places,
their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and
I never came, was never really there at all,
was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven
like a car along some empty highway passing,
passing other cars--When I try to think of
things, of what's happened, of what a life is
and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant,
the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths,
all the painful, belligerant news, and the dog still
waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices,
presences, of children, of our own growing children,
the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now,
each physical moment, passing, passing, it's what
it always is or ever was, just then, just there.

--Reobert Creeley, "On Earth," University of Califorrnia Press, 2006, page 4

Dasfed Requests Permission to Come Aboard

Among the greatest fatherly advice ever given to a son or daughter was this spoken shipboard by poet Charles Olson to young poet Robin Blaser moments before Robin departed from America to Europe in 1959: "Don't get stuck in Europe. Head for Hittite country."

Here's some of what Olson meant.

The Hittites were a trading people from Europe who invaded the Middle East around 1600 BC and eventually took over Babylonia, modifying the extremely tightassed Mesopotamian legal code which said, "Off with his head!" for any infraction from yelling "Fire!" in an empty theater to stealing melted candle wax from the floor of a local temple. Indiscriminate death sentences were replaced with a sliding scale of fines.

In keeping with the Hittite's casual, easygoing approach to life, they expanded their panetheon of the gods to include all local deities, including those of Egypt and Judea. Believe it or not, Yahweh was one of the gods recognized by these very elastic and absorbent people.

Me gets the strange feeling that the polytheistic Mecca Muhammed consolidated on behalf of Judeo-Christian monotheism was a city founded on Hittite tolerance for ALL religions. In any case, Muhammed can be viewed as an Arab Clement of Alexandria.

Meanwhile, back to Olson. I think the poet was telling his young charge to keep going East to where the old openness of mind and spirit reigned supreme, and the universe was also a multiverse. In the ascendent interests of non-duality, I'm beginning to see where the God of Sun or Rain could just as easily be the God in Sun or Rain. In short, Hinduism and Islam can and must coexist.

In any case, and in short, Blaser was being exhorted to travel the OPEN ROAD. That's what guys surnamed Blaser are supposed to do: BLAZE TRAILS. I just thought I'd come aboard your ship of state at midday this cold, windy Saturday and pass along Olson's sage fatherly advice

And Love. To everyone I have the privilege of knowing or comes to rest or respite at this blog.

Dasfed

P.S. Don't forget the voyage. And write regularly.

The Mission is Emission

Haiku thought for this Friday: the mission is to be emission, gnostic flareup from the sun and source, carrier of light for a billion years and miles into worlds otherwise dark, cold and barren. Wisdom is the highest and best use of consciousness. Wisdom, as poet Charles Olson taught me, isn't content as such; it isn't the rules Moses wrote on tablets of clay. It is the tablet's highest and best use as registry of insight; it is, in certain extreme cases, the return of the tablet to dust to serve as irrefutable proof that the insight will always re-emerge. The dark night of the soul is, as Japanese haiku-master Basho depicted, a cloud-covered moon that brings rest to fixated eyes and to minds locked in themselves. Here's how St. John of the Cross put it in "Dark Night of the Soul":

The deep suffering of the soul in the night of sense comes not so much from the aridity she must endure but from this growing suspicion that she has lost her way. She thinks that all spiritual blessing is over and that God has abandoned her. She finds neither support nor delight in holy things. Growing weary, she struggles in vain to practice the tricks that used to yield results, applying her faculties to some object of meditation in hopes of finding satisfaction. She thinks that if she is making a conscious effort to do this and still feels nothing, then she must be accomplishing nothing. Nevertheless, she perseveres, plagued by reluctance and fatigue. In truth, though unaware, the soul has been basking in spaciousness and quietude, free from the manipulations of her faculties.--Mirabai Starr, translator, "Dark Night of the Soul," Riverhead Books, 2002, page 67

"I Believe in a Culture of Peace" by Susan Gelber Cannon

This is the first guest posting at this site. It's the transcript of a profoundly moving talk, "I Believe in a Culture of Peace," given this morning by my dear friend Susan Gelber Cannon at Episcopal Academy where she teaches 6th grade English and History. Susan, who is known to me as Amira, spent last year on a sabbatical in Japan, China, Denmark and Canada as an emissary of American education. She is a peace pedagogue with wit as dry as the Arizona desert and wisdom as practical as a Wendell Berry farmer's. Like me, she frets about Iraq and Palestine and attends Washington peace rallies. Her husband Kadir is a very gifted artist whose paintings hang in my living room and with whom I share conspiracy theories like they were fine after-dinner Cuban cigars. We both think Hugo Chavez came to the UN principally to promote Noam Chomsky and hope he will plug Howard Zinn at his next appearance there.

I Believe in a Culture of Peace
I believe in the culture of peace. I believe in daily peacemaking on a personal, institutional, national, and international basis. I believe in regular, not random, acts of kindness. I believe in the power of teachers and students to be peacemakers.

Last year about this time, I was preparing to travel halfway around the world to share my ideas on peacemaking with teachers and students in Japan and China, Canada and Denmark. I was convinced that we everyday people are the key to creating a culture of peace in the world. I still am. But in many ways, this journey of thousands of miles started at home with my father, Fred.

~~~

From my earliest memories, I can see images of my father in uniform. There were the tiny photographs (fading even in my childhood) that he shot in Italy in World War II. There he was holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or posing with a buddy in a foxhole. There was my father washing his face in his helmet, or riding in a jeep, or standing on a dock with his heavy pack on his back.

In my memory, I can hear the stories, often funny, of how he and a buddy jumped waist deep into a pigpen under orders to take cover, of getting stranded up a telephone pole when he was stringing wire, as his jeep buddies sped away under German fire. My father told these stories over and over again, and they always ended with his loud belly laughs, as if he were trying to persuade us that the war had been fun.

But, I also hear the screaming. My father screamed in his sleep often, sometimes nightly, especially after watching a war movie. "Don't let him watch it," my mother would plead. "He'll fight the war all night if he does." But my dad always wanted to watch; it was if he had to. He paid for each viewing with refreshed images for his nightmares. He would awaken my mom as he kicked and twitched, flailed and yelled, working the covers off his bruised and purple legs, battle scarred and discolored from freezing in the Italian Alps in the winter of 1944.

My father had written my mother every day during the war, and we have over 1000 letters he sent her, full of love, loneliness, and longing, but missing any mention of war's horrors. He never talked seriously about the war, until he was in his eighties. My son Lateef was doing his 6 th grade Multimedia Project on the Italian Campaign of World War II.

He did a video interview of my father, and again my dad told the funny stories. But suddenly, after 2 hours, my dad got real. He called for his tiny Army-issue bible, a battered leather-covered copy that he had kept in his pocket every day of the war. He read the 23rd psalm aloud. You know, "The Lord is my Shepherd… I shall not want…." "I read that verse every day in battle," my father confided, and then he went on, telling us the truth even though he knew we could not fully understand it: "War is hell. That first battle was my baptism by fire. I was one of the walking wounded… Those times weren't a vacation and it wasn't a game. There were thousands of dead people laying around—not just one—but thousands… There were dead soldiers everywhere… War is hell. I don't wish it on my best friends or my worst enemy. May my children, and my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren be spared from it, forever. Amen."

"Okay," my father concluded. "Now you can shut off the camera." Unfortunately, we couldn't shut off the war in his mind.

~~~

The Secret World of War
The combat veteran lives in a world apart. The civilian-co-worker, friend, wife, husband, child, parent—knows nothing about this world. Aware of our ignorance, countless poets and writers have tried to translate the soldier's and veteran's inner life to the rest of us.

As I went searching for peacemakers during my sabbatical year, I met two of them early in the process. Contemporary war correspondent Chris Hedges writes compellingly about war in two books, "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning," and "What Every Person Should Know About War ." His work does much to help ordinary citizens like me understand the realities—not the myth—of war. Here is an excerpt from a newspaper commentary, The Myth and Reality of War:

"War, it must be recognized, even for those who support the conflict…, distorts and damages those sent to fight it. No one walks away from prolonged exposure to such violence unscathed, although not all come back disturbed. Our leaders mask the reality of war with abstract words of honor, duty, glory and the ultimate sacrifice. These words, obscene and empty in the midst of combat, hide the fact that war is venal, brutal, disgusting…"

John Crawford, an Iraq War veteran, was a senior in college when his Army Reserves unit was sent to Iraq. An accidental soldier, he published his war writing in his book, "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell ." Reading his book and talking with John, I understood more clearly the transformation from student to soldier he had undergone. "They wanted me to act like a man, but I was feeling like a little boy," he said. "I never wanted to hate anyone; it just sort of happens that way in a war."

After my father's death, I asked my 90-year-old mother, "How did Dad go through all he did and still carry on a normal life?" She looked at me as if I was out of my mind. "He fought the war every night," she replied, and turned away. He wasn't alone. Millions of veterans of combat, soldier and civilian alike, are still living with the demons of war both in their daily lives and in their nightmares. And everyday, in numerous countries around the world, more men, women, and children are becoming living and dead casualties of war, military and civilian alike.

As a daughter, as a wife, as a mother, and as a teacher, I want to know why we are allowing this as a global society? I have not raised my two sons to kill other mothers' sons. I am not teaching you so you can go out and kill the students of other teachers. In my classroom, I refuse to support the myth of war any more. I want to create a culture of peace.

~~~

A Peacemaking Sabbatical
A sabbatical is an opportunity for a teacher to do research in a field of interest, away from the demands of the classroom. For my sabbatical during the school year 2005-06, I researched, wrote, created websites, and taught and traveled overseas. My field of interest was and continues to be peace education.

Peace education aims to change an existing belief system—acceptance of war as a method of solving international problems—to a new paradigm—one in which human rights, social justice, sustainable development, and creative diplomacy are promoted as effective paths to national and international security. Peace education helps young people see themselves as integral parts of one human family and as capable actors for positive social change on a local and global stage. In short, peace education helps kids to think, care, and act.

I traveled all around the world to share and to discover. I went looking for peace and peacemakers. I'll tell you 25 things I learned:

1. I learned that the modern, built-up city of Hiroshima, Japan, with its parks, shops, and skyscrapers, still has the eerie feeling of the dead, those who were incinerated by the A Bomb. But life goes on. People work, shop, and picnic; children play and laugh.

2. I learned that hibakushas, A Bomb survivors, speak every day to groups of school children from Middle Schools all over Japan, about the perils of nuclear weapons and the horrors of war.

3. I learned from one hibakusha, Michiko Yamoake-san, that she would keep speaking to group after group of children, even though she was sick with radiation-induced thyroid cancer, because, "If I speak to 100 children, and I reach just one… that one might make a difference."

4. I learned that if I speak up also, and if even one student feels moved, that is a good thing.

5. I learned from college students in Kyoto that Japanese students feel pressured throughout their school careers, have to take exam after exam, and worry about getting into college, just like you.

6. And, I learned that once they get there, they feel worried about getting jobs and good houses, and have no time to worry about issues such as equality and peace.

7. From these students, and others in China, I learned that it is important to teach my students how to balance their lives, so they can think about important issues, while doing the things they need to do to succeed personally.

8. I learned in Toyohashi, Japan, that private school students in Sakaragoake Middle School could choose a global education track that would enable them to travel and learn about countries around the world for the next five years of their schooling. This was their school's answer to the horrors of Japanese military aggression during World War II.

9. I learned that Japan, once the home of innovative peace education, was now penalizing public school teachers who spoke about peace, going so far as to fire them or send them to far away schools, as Japan tries to remilitarize.

10. I determined that I would teach teachers in the United States, and other countries I visit, about ways to teach for peace during our daily lessons, even at the risk of losing popularity or job security.

11. I learned in Toyohashi, Japan, that artists and educators can work together on peace projects, even when they cannot understand each other's languages, to create beautiful works of art for peace.

12. I learned how inspiring the work of a small group can be to others. One Japanese artist wrote, "You taught us how to express our own opinion. You gave me energy. We have to start some action like you. The Peace Event was a great lesson for us."

13. I learned in Xinglong County China how comforting it feels to be treated to wonderful food and caring guidance in a new country, and that hospitality is a gracious talent at which my Chinese hosts were masters. I vowed to be a better host when people visit my home, my school, and my country.

14. I learned in Xinglong County, in Beijing, Shanghai, and countless cities in China, how curious many Chinese people are about Americans, and that they will open their homes and schools to meet Americans and make new friends.

15. I learned that Chinese Middle School students can be just as energetic, noisy, fun, smart, kind, and naughty as my American Middle School students, and I felt at home teaching them.

16. I learned how important it is for Americans to learn about Chinese culture, history, and development, and that the future of the world may well be found in the quality of the relationships among Americans and Chinese. I made a website to help Americans learn about life in China, and another one to help Chinese learn about life in the USA. Many of my students are pictured on the website, and teachers and students all over the world have enjoyed your writing and art work.

17. I learned in Japan and China, Denmark and Canada that many people think all Americans are greedy and selfish. "What is going on with your country?" was the most common question we were asked.

18. I learned from one Japanese woman that her post office was powered by solar panels on the roof. I learned from one Chinese friend that all the hot water for our hotel was heated in solar heaters on the roof. I learned from my Danish hosts about water-conserving toilets. "Why can't you Americans do things like this?" they asked. We can. Our new toilet works beautifully and saves water.

19. I learned that my Chinese friends who are teachers walk, ride bikes, or take long bus rides to get to their schools each day, and I have started to walk to school twice a week to emulate them and to conserve gasoline.

20. I learned in Canada, at an international conference of peace researchers, that all over the world, in any country you could name, people are working on projects big and small to promote peace.

21. I learned from Johan Galtung, Norwegian peace mediator, that many citizens of the world want Americans to walk humbly, to realize that we are a nation among nations, and that we need to cooperate with the world community.

22. I learned in Denmark that people can mistake irresponsible insults for free speech, and that even cartoons can hurt people's feelings and incite violence. I learned that ignorance of the culture of your neighbor can lead to war with your neighbor.

23. I learned in Norway, at the Nobel Institute, that everyone can be a peacemaker. I interviewed Anne Kjelling, chief librarian, and asked her what my students most needed to know. "Tell them anyone can be a Nobel Peace Prize winner. They are just ordinary people, educated and uneducated, doctors, lawyers, housewives, volunteers. The thing is, they have done something for the cause of peace. Everyone can, but no one does," She said. I vowed that I would tell my American students that. I just did.

24. I learned from Irwin Abrams, Nobel Peace Prize biographer, American historian and peace educator, that peace education leads to an "unseen harvest. There are consequences" of the peace work we do. Big and small efforts yield fruit, whether we are the ones to harvest it or not. He encouraged me to believe that my efforts as a teacher are meaningful and important, even in a culture of war.

25. Finally, I learned that in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian Fred means Peace. I was visiting the Nobel Fredcenter , when I figured it out.

~~~

Active Peacemaking
My father's name was Fred. While he didn't have peace in his life, his name, his experiences, and his love for people propel me to work for Fred, for Paz, for Heiwa, for He Ping, for Salaam, for Shalom, for Shanti, for Peace.

I want to make you believe in the value of active peacemaking: the belief that socially just policies and structures are more lastingly effective methods of solving global problems than violence and war. Finally, I want you to know that such pacifism is not passive. It is active, hard work, and it is not for the faint of heart.

I ask that you be peacemakers: Use your critical judgment when you watch TV or read the news. Walk, take the bus, carpool. Buy less stuff. Be a good host. Do regular acts of kindness. Study about other cultures, religions, and countries. Make friends with people who are different from you. Care about your families and classmates, and also care about the billions of people who are your global neighbors. Learn how to select a cause worthy of your energy and work for it. Make time for peacemaking. Think. Care. Act. Everyone can, but no one does. Be the one who does.
--Susan Gelber Cannon

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

Today is Dr. King's birthday. The Dow-Jones Average pauses for breath and the world reflects on the power of one man to change history for the better.

I want to thank Dr. King for reaffirming the irreducible and irreplaceable Power of One. It's a power you meet when, as my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen said, you face, fight and defeat the final sin: "the belief in an outside" where we are all contained as discretes, as disparate selfs. In that world, there are Jews, Christians and Muslims battling each other. In that world, God has promised his children a Zion that is nothing more than real estate, and they have forgetten their real estate as his children bound by covenant to cherish and protect all life.

THE INSIDE STORY
When you realize there is only INSIDE, and that it is comprised of a consciousness in which we are joined as one flesh, family and faith, then the unconditional love and forgiveness Rev. King both embodied and taught are as native as breath and as instinctive as hunger.

Friends, you owe it yourself to read Leo Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You," the book that helped solidify Gandhi's belief in non-violence while in South Africa. The book so moved Gandhi that he named his ashram there, Tolstoy Farm. The reason I say this is that I have found many of the best Christians I know to be Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims who follow Christ's teachings and not some church creed and preposterous mythos. I also find that the true lineage of Christ and most active membership in his assembly is global and non-denominational.

THE MYTHOS-CHRIST VS. THE LOGOS-CHRIST
Thankfully, the mythos-Christ is under heavy attack, as I think it should be. Creed has covered his body in more barnacles than Job was covered with boils and maggots. Remember the recent headlines about a 2nd century gospel that posits Judas as Christ's main disciple, ordered by Jesus to betray him? What does that say? Hmmmm. Such a gospel makes perfect sense when you see Christ through Tolstoy's and King's eyes.

Tolstoy writes that Christians long ago chose to follow the Mythos-Christ rather than the Logos-Christ and have turned their backs on his central teaching: "Resist not evil." In context of that injunction, turning the other cheek is all you can do because you are affirming the inclusiveness of God's Love, which is the very sinew of his Creation.

Some of my friends are upset about the spate of popular books by atheists debunking the Mythos-Christ. Personally, I think these 'attacks' are healthy because they are concerned with honoring Christ as a mentor, as supreme ethicist, as one who unlocks the deepest possibilities within the human being. This Christ is to be emulated and embraced not smothered and 'othered' by worship. This Christ isn't the Second Adam; he's the First Adam redeemed, as we are all Adams struggling for redemption. To be the Way and Means that Christ proclaims himself, he must be role model. Hindus call such a man an Avatar, an incarnation of God. And they say such divinity-drenched people are frequently encountered throughout history. The idea of God having only one son is as ludicrous to them as it is to me.

In his autobiography, King's guru Gandhi, writes of an exchange he had while studying law in England with a group of Anglicans intent on converting him to Christianity. Gandhi said, "Why should I convert to your religion when Hinduism recognizes thousands of incarnations of God? Your religion recognizes only one. That makes it a baby religion." Baby religion, indeed. The Quran says each time and place is blessed with a prophet. That prophet is often an avatar, a mentor.

THE CHRIST THAT DOES NOT NEED TO RESURRECT
I studied with a Sufi master who was once asked by a born-again Christian if he accepted the Second Coming. My teacher then asked, "Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?" "Most decidedly," the Christian answered. "Have you accepted Jesus with your whole heart and soul and mind?" he continued. "Absolutely," he was answered. "Then where could Jesus have gone that he need to come back again?" my teacher said. "If you have accepted Christ, then he could never have left this world and would have no need to return. There can be no separation between teacher and disciple. They are one forever and ever."

The Christ my teacher was talking about is the Christ Dr. King knew, the Christ that Quakers believe in, one who did not need to die on a cross and return after a long quiescent weekend in a cave just to validify himself. Even if he did resurrect, that's not what makes Christ the Christ since Crhist had already raised the dead. Besides, what Christ is is imperishable to begin with. That's what myth-obsessed Christians have forgot. And that's why you have millions of them believing in Rapture rubbish.

If accepting Christ means to accept the myth of a man who died for my sins--as some sort of super scapegoat--then I, too, am an atheist. But if accepting Christ means that the Jesus in me, like the Jesus of Nazareth, accepts the Christ within (also known as Buddha-Nature, Nur-Muhammed, Inner Light, Atman, and lots of other designations), then I'm a full-fledged believer. To me, Jesus was the first student of the Christ, and the rest of us are his subsequent students. The assignment given at birth remains the same for all of us: UNLOCK THE CHRIST WITHIN. I think Martin Luther King was a believer in the Christ within all of Mankind, practising, not just preaching, the common love and justice born of this realization. Therefore today is a celebration for all of humanity. God bless Dr. King! May his love continue in us. May his mission be fulfulled by us.

From Wendell Berry With More Love Than I Can Bear

Wendell Berry is trying to save America again, this time by reconstructing the childhood of his alter ego, Andy Catlett, in the Port William saga that is his large number of novels, novellas, short stories and, lately, poems. By now, Berry knows that the present is largely unsalvageable; so he has preserved the past where another world is still intact, although receding quickly.

In his just-published novella, "Andy Catlett: Early Travels," it is three days past Christmas 1943, and Andy is to travel by bus, alone, to stay with his grandfather, Marce Catlett, and hired hand< Dick Watson. It is pre-dawn, and the world is both in suspension, struggling to recognize itself in the feeble light, and serenity, still able to count on its emergence it has always known. Andy will be met by the two elders who are driving a mule-drawn buckboard. It is a world where people can believe in a seventh day, a sabbath for rest, with stubborn evidences of itself to be found and taken for granted every day.

Andy is 9 years old, still the innocent of "A World Lost" (1996), on the morning of a day like the one that opens that book--only in the earlier book it is shattered by news of the murder of his most beloved uncle who is also his father's brother. I have no idea if the day of this new novella will be similarly sundered by death or tragedy. So far, this book is a pastoral. But Wendell has increasingly allowed himself a more bifocal vision in his narratives to indulge one of his deepest motives for writing: mourning.

On this morning at the tail end of 1943, Port William has sent sons to fight in World War II, but the one that matters most to Andy--his mother's youngest brother, Virgil--is not yet MIA and so, like everything else, to be hoped and prayed for as some day returned and restored. Wendell as Andy imagines the coming bifurcated present, and with the innocence of childhood is able to broker a reality able to stay co-existent with the already impinging post-war world. It is an understandable outcome to expect, but the future will prove too uncompromising.

Here is the first of many retrospections as Andy remembers the world he will lose but has not yet lost and can still savor as one beyond endangerment. This is the best writing being done on our planet and I wish I could forge a reader's debt to make right and equal, even though other, the world we have exchanged for the world Wendell knew:

It was a though a curtain had fallen on a stage and the credulous audience (I, that is to say) was now in a different world from the one I had waked up in only a short time ago. The world I was in now was an older one that had been in existence a long time, though it would last only a few more years. The time was about over when a boy traveling into the Port William community night be met by a team of mules and a wagon. Dick Watson would die in the fall of 1945 and Grandpa Catlett in the late winter of 1946. By 1950 or so most of the horse and mule teams would have departed from the country. The men and women who had known only the old ways were departing fast. I knew well at that time that the two worlds existed and that I lived in both. During the school year I lived mostly in Hargrave, the country seat at the confluence of the rivers. Hargave, though it seemed large to me, was a small town that loved its connections with the greater world, had always aspired to be bigger, richer, and grander than it was, and had always apologized to itself for being only what it was. When school was out, I lived mostly in the orbit of the tiny village of Port William, which, so long as it remained at the center of its own attention, was entirely satisfied to be what it was.

That those two worlds were inmortal contention had never occured to me. When in a few years one had entirely consumed the other, so that no place anywhere would ever again be satisfied to be what it was, I was surprised, and I am more surprised now by the rapidity of the change than I was then. In only a few years the world of pavement, speed, and universal dissatisfaction had extended into nearly every place and nearly every mind, and the old world of the mule team and wagon was simply gone, leaving behind it a scatter of less and less intelligible relics.

* * * *
But on that morning in 1943 I had no premonition of such an ending. In my innocence, I thought only that the world the mules were drawing us into was a truer world than the world of Hargrave, and I liked it better. It was a world placed unforgettably within the weather, in the unqualified daylight and darkness. I thought it had always been and would always be pretty much as it was.

--Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett: Early Travels, Shoemaker & Hoard, Emeryville, California, 2006, pages 17-19

The Tide is Turning

Friends,

When the proposition to spend and send more for Iraq becomes this openly laughable (see Michael Moore's letter below), the war is lost. The big question now: Is it over? Do we have the guts to let it be over--I mean both OUR wars: the war in Iraq and the war in Palestine fought by our favorite proxy bully--Israel. It's all or nothing, folks. When you clip the wings of demons, you clip 'em all. Flight cancelled. Reigns of terror over. We should all be as sick with Palestine as we are Iraq, doubled over in pain and prayer, and retching our guts out like we had the moral equivalent of cholera. Read on, friends. Laugh now, then continue vigils interrupted by phone calls to senators and representatives. For the first time, they're listening--happy to do so, happy to be allowed to be human beings for a change. Senator Casey's staffer told me "99%" of the multitude of calls they were receiving about the President's speech were against him and his plan. But those aircraft carriers are still steaming toward the Persian Gulf. When they turn around and head home, we can say we've had a victory.

Pray without ceasing,

David

Dear Mr. President:
Send Even MORE Troops (and you go, too!) .
..fromMichael Moore1/10/07

Dear Mr. President,Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you stillwant to talk to us after how we behaved in November.Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonnado the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what itwas last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already hadover a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another fewthousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of massdestruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 tojustice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLEEAST! YES!!!

You've got to show some courage, dude! You've got to win this one!C'mon, you got Saddam! You hung 'im high! I loved watching the videoof that -- just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!

Look, I have to admit I feel very sorry for the predicament you're in.As Ricky Bobby said, "If you're not first, you're last." And you beinghumiliated in front of the whole world does NONE of us Americans anygood.

Sir, listen to me. You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, notthousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq withmillions of us! I know that you're out of combat-ready soldiers -- soyou have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million -- Iraq -- is to send in at least 28 million!

Here's how it would work:

The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. Thatwill quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of uswill stay and rebuild the country. Simple.

Now, I know you're saying, where will I find 28 million Americans togo to Iraq? Here are some suggestions:

1. More than 62,000,000 Americans voted for you in the last election(the one that took place a year and half into a war we already knew wewere losing). I am confident that at least a third of them would wantto put their body where there vote was and sign up to volunteer. Iknow many of these people and, while we may disagree politically, I know that they don't believe someone else should have to go and fighttheir fight for them -- while they hide here in America.

2. Start a "Kill an Iraqi" Meet-Up group in cities across the country.I know this idea is so early-21st century, but I once went to a LouDobbs Meet-Up and, I swear, some of the best ideas happen after thethird mojito. I'm sure you'll get another five million or so enlisteesfrom this effort.

3. Send over all members of the mainstream media. After all, they wereyour collaborators in bringing us this war -- and many of them arealready trained from having been "embedded!" If that doesn't bring thetotal to 28 million, then draft all viewers of the FOX News channel.

Mr. Bush, do not give up! Now is not the time to pull your punch!

Don't be a weenie by sending in a few over-tired troops. Get yourpeople behind you and YOU lead them in like a true commander in chief!

Leave no conservative behind! Full speed ahead! We promise to write. Go get 'em W!

Yours,

Michael Moore

Countdown to Armaggedon

Bush's days are numbered. So he is moving now to execute the grand apocalyptic finale to his brief tenure as the servant of messianic Christianity. His not so-veiled hints about a widening of the Middle East war, the leaks of Israel's planned nuclear attack on Iran, are all part of a last lunatic lunge toward an Armaggedon. Henceforth--and I'm addressing this mainly to my dumbfounded, disbelieiving, in-constant-denial Zionist friends--Israel and America must be looked at as joined-at-the-hip Siamese twins, lost in the same end-of-world fear and fanaticism. They're a diabolical duo, marching in lockstep. Therefore, as long as we don't see Plaestine as a proxy for Iraq and vice versa, as long as we don't see Iran as the middle of this Western-created circumference of terror, I fear we miss the ever-diminishing chance to avert catastrophe. We must address the double disease of American and Israeli foreign policy. They are one and the same. Americans must make the linkage.

Years ago, when Ernie Kovacs was in Philadelphia on CBS holding down the thankless time spot against Milton Berle, his brilliant comedy show got cancelled. On the last night, he went about the studio setting mock fires, muttering, "If I can't have this studio, nobody can." As the blaze grew bigger, it became a mushroom cloud. I always wonder why that sign-off skit comes back to mind at times like this. Now I know: it is comic relief that has spot-on relevance to this murderous moment

THE LAST & GREATEST THREAT: RIGHTEOUSNESS
My friends, ask any of the world's citizenry at random who poses a greater threat to world peace, Israel or North Korea, and most (including me) will say Israel. Ask the same citizenry who poses a greater threat to world peace, America or Iran, and America will win by an even wider margin. The winners both have large, active nuclear arsenals and both openly threaten their use by saying they are deploying this weaponry against potential nuclear adversaries. The irony of this is so great that it gives new definition to insanity.

The last and greatest threat to mankind, my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen says at the end of his book, "The Resonance of Allah," is righteousness. When I get emails from Zionist friends urging me to see the lastest documentary on the resurgence of anti-Semitism, and I realize how these men and women have been manipulated by the same fear factor(y) used to take America to war in Iraq, I grow exasperated and melancholy both at once (no easy psychological feat). For starters, most of my Zionist friends refuse to see Jewish complicity in the rising tide of prejudice against them. So even Jimmy Carter becomes an anti-Semite for using the word 'apartheid' in polite company.

Zionists should take a beginner's course in karma, and see that a lot of what they call 'anti-Semitism' is understandable fury at their actions. I've long said (to no avail) that Jews themselves could do a lot to cure the hatred they bring on themselves. Alas, the leaders in both Israel and America are consumed by an impenetrable psychosis of righteousness. So you'll excuse some frightened, feeble, cowardly crazies from swabbing Swastikas on Jewish graves and grocery stores. At least the tomb stones and stores are left standing (or partially so). Israelis prefer to bulldoze homes into rubble or contaminate wells; their anti-Semitism against Arabs is so much more virulent.

AMERICA & ISRAEL: THE AXIS OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
Friends, I think it advisable to see Iraq-Afghanistan-Palestine as parts of a three-front imperialist Judeo-Christian war where, so far, the only 'victory' has been Palestine. Soon, in return for allowing complete subjugation of that inchoate country, Israel is likely to use our aircraft and shared weapons secrets to drop the first nuclear weapons since August 1945. Will the world then become as incensed as it has been at the firecracker missile launches of North Korea and the unproven nuclear weapons ambitions of Iraq and Iran?

The only hope we have at this late juncture is for impeachment proceedings against both Bush and Cheney that will stop Israel in its tracks. I think it is clear they are speeding up plans for an attack on Iran and we'll join them in attacks against Syria. Conequently, I am going to spend my birthday in Washington, D.C., protesting the the buildup of men and the allocation of extra money for their deployrment in Iraq. I am also going to urge sanctions against Israel and immediate cessation of all arms and arms funding to this deranged country that listens to no one but the hungry-ghost voices in its own head and history. Care to join me?

A BITTER MEMORY
Long ago, I told my father, during a heated political exchange, that I rejected Zionism because it was thinly disguised nationalism and colonialsm, and that Jews had to stop being, what poet Charles Olson called Americans, the last First People. This was during Vietnam some months after I.F. Stone had revealed that the Israeli army was strongly suspected of using napalm against the Arabs in the 1967 War. "We Jews don't do such things," my father screamed at me. "They are in choots with America," I told him. "Like us, they'll do anything they damned well please." "Are you comparing the policies of the Israeli government to those of America?" my father, who was as much against the Vietnam War as I was, asked indignantly. "Is there any difference?" I said. By this time I was just out to hurt him because Israel was the only dream this old Leftist had left after the failure of the Soviet Union--and I wanted him to find a broader, more unifying and nurturing dream. We almost came to blows that day.

Wisely, we never discussed Israel again; or, if we did, we somehow found common ground to tread. By the end of my father's life, when Netanyahu was in power, I think he gave up any hope of paradise on earth. And since he saw no sign of any paradise to come, I think he just wanted off the wheel.

I am so much his son because, like him, I believe the only salvation for humanity is to become its own messiah.

Where my father and I part company is that I believe this is a divine mandate, that God has allowed Himself to become a 'prisoner' of our forgetfulness, so that men must discover an internal means to safeguard themselves. That means is God. And because God is within, His reality is glimpsed as a pre-exisiting, inextinguishable light like that from the glass-enclosed lantern of the Quran whose light is eternal and protected from the elements as it protects us from darkness. The Quran also mentions an eternal mosque within where true worship is done 24/7. As a Sufi, I believe there is no 'outside,' just the inside of shared consciousness where we are all one, and there is no Jew or Gentile, Israelite or Palestinian, that all are "in Islam" [the state of being, mind you, not the religion] if they would just awaken.

THE LAMPLIGHTER'S SERENADE
When I was very, very young. I remember a lamplighter on the streets at evening. God is, by definition and personal experience, that lamplighter. So far, the darkness has never become greater than that of early evening where and when always the lamps along the street are lit. It just seems like they are re-lit because my flirtatious gaze has wandered. But the discontinuity is of my making. Every day, Muslims invoke the mercy and compassion of Allah hundreds and even thousands of times. Now I have added justice to that rahmat. We must, I beg God, save Palestine. No Jew is safe until he provides for the safety of those he wrongfully and unjustly fears most. I pray that lawmakers in my country will 1) prevent any further buildup in Iraq, 2) make it unambiguously clear that Iran must not be harmed, and 3) liberate Palestine from crushing isolation and humiliation.

Here's a good article by Robert Parry on what's brewing war-wise with Iran and Syria.

The U.S.-Iran-Iraq-Israeli-Syrian War
By Robert Parry
January 12, 2007

At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.

Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.

“The President’s inference was this: that an entire region would blow up from the inside, the core being Iraq, from the inside out,” Williams said, paraphrasing Bush.

Despite the already high cost of the Iraq War, Bush also defended his decision to invade Iraq and to eliminate Saddam Hussein by arguing that otherwise “he and Iran would be in a race to acquire a nuclear bomb and if we didn’t stop him, Iran would be going to Pakistan or to China and things would be much worse,” Russert said.

If Russert’s account is correct, there could be questions raised about whether Bush has lost touch with reality and may be slipping back into the false pre-invasion intelligence claims about Hussein threatening the United States with “a mushroom cloud.”

U.S. weapons inspectors concluded in 2004 that Hussein had long ago abandoned his nuclear weapons program. Many experts agreed that continued international sanctions would have prevented its resumption for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, some observers believe Bush’s invasion of Iraq has proved counterproductive by spurring Iran and other countries to speed up their development of nuclear and other unconventional weapons in hopes of keeping the United States at bay.

The countries on Bush’s “axis of evil” hit list saw that Iraq’s WMD disarmament and acceptance of United Nations inspections didn't stop the U.S.-led invasion.

Not only have possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result, but U.S. forces killed Hussein’s two sons and turned the deposed dictator over to his enemies so he could hanged like a common criminal on Dec. 30.

So there can be little incentive for Iranian or North Korean leaders to follow the Iraq model of disarmament and inspections. Further, the explosion of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world has increased risks to the pro-U.S. dictatorship in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where Islamic militants with close ties to al-Qaeda are reported to be gaining strength.

While avoiding any overt criticism of Bush’s comments about an imaginary Iraqi-Iranian arms race, Russert suggested that the news executives found the remarks perplexing.

“That’s the way he sees the world,” Russert explained. “His rationale, he believes, for going into Iraq still was one that was sound.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews then interjected, “And it could be the rationale for going into Iran at some point.”

Russert paused for a few seconds before responding, “It’s going to be very interesting to watch that issue and we have to cover it very, very carefully and very exhaustively.”

Reasons for Alarm
In his prime-time speech, Bush injected other reasons to anticipate a wider war. He used language that suggested U.S. or allied forces might launch attacks inside Iran and Syria to “disrupt the attacks on our forces” in Iraq.

“We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria,” Bush said. “And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
Bush announced other steps that could be interpreted as building a military infrastructure for a regional war or at least for air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

“I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region,” Bush said. “We will expand intelligence sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies.”

Though most news accounts of Bush’s speech focused on his decision to send about 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq – on top of the 132,000 already there – Bush’s comments about his regional strategy could ultimately prove more significant.

Militarily, a second aircraft carrier strike force would do little to interdict arms smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border. Similarly, Patriot anti-missile batteries would be of no use in defeating lightly armed insurgent forces and militias inside Iraq.

However, both deployments would be useful to deter – or defend against – retaliatory missile strikes from Iran if the Israelis or the United States bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or stage military raids inside Iranian territory.

Iran has a relatively sophisticated arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles. Those short-range missiles could be fired at U.S. bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. The medium-range missiles could conceivably hit Tel Aviv.

Not only could Patriot missiles be used to knock down Iranian missiles while they’re heading toward their targets, but the fearsome firepower of two aircraft carrier strike forces could deter any Iranian retaliatory strike following a U.S. or Israeli attack.

In other words, the deployments would fit with Israel or the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear sites and then trying to tamp down any Iranian response.

Another danger to American interests, however, would be pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq seeking revenge against U.S. troops. If that were to happen, Bush’s escalation of troop levels in Iraq would make sense as a way to protect the Green Zone and other sensitive targets.

So, Bush’s actions and rhetoric over the past several weeks continue to mesh with a scenario for a wider regional war – a possibility that now mainstream journalists, such as Tim Russert, are beginning to take seriously.

The Surge Purge
Other data points are aiming in that same direction.

On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq. Bush also removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran’s nuclear program.

Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a former Navy aviator and currently head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for two aircraft carrier groups off Iran’s coast.

Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neoconservative circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining “the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel.”

Bush also shifted Negroponte from his Cabinet-level position as DNI to a sub-Cabinet post as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To replace Negroponte, Bush nominated Navy retired Vice Admiral John “Mike” McConnell, who is viewed by intelligence professionals as a low-profile technocrat, not a strong independent figure.

McConnell is seen as far more likely than Negroponte to give the administration an alarming assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions in an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate. To the consternation of neoconservatives, Negroponte has splashed cold water on their heated rhetoric about the imminent threat from Iran.

“Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade,” Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News in April 2006. Expressing a similarly tempered view in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, “I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective.”

Bush reportedly has been weighing his military options for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities since early 2006. But he has encountered resistance from the top U.S. military brass, much as he has with his plans to escalate U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. military officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed “bunker-busting” tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep underground.

A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]

By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.

“Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” one former senior intelligence official said. [New Yorker, July 10, 2006]
Delegating to Israel

But one way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel’s powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with the Congress.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also has called the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb an “existential threat” to Israel that cannot be tolerated.

Bush’s tough talk about Iran also comes as Israel is reported stepping up preparations for air strikes against Iran, possibly including the use of tactical nuclear bombs, to destroy Natanz and other Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Sunday Times of London reported on Jan. 7 that two Israeli air squadrons are training for the mission and “if things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete [at Natanz]. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole.”

The Sunday Times wrote that Israel also would hit two other facilities – at Isfahan and Arak – with conventional bombs. But the possible use of a nuclear bomb at Natanz would represent the first nuclear attack since the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II six decades ago.

After the Sunday Times article appeared, an Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel has drawn up secret plans to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. For its part, Iran claims it only wants a nuclear program for producing energy.

While some observers believe Israel or the Bush administration may be leaking details of the plans as a way to frighten Iran into accepting international controls on its nuclear program, other sources indicate that the preparations for a wider Middle Eastern war are very serious and moving very quickly.

Without doubt, Bush’s actions in the past two months – reaffirming his determination to succeed in Iraq and warning about a possible regional explosion if he fails – suggest that his future course is an escalation of the conflict, not some “graceful exit.”

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Tell Your Congressperson to Say 'No' to Giving Extortion Money for any Further Iraq Troop Buildup

Folks,

The president is going to request (no, make that demand) more troops tonight. Before he does, and while your congressmen are snug in their offices, please call them--as I did Jim Gerlach yesterday--and tell them to say NO to more troops and more money for Iraq. Tell them you now know how the game is played: the Decider puts more troops in Iraq, then extorts tens of billions in ransom money to keep them safe from harm. Of course, this ransom money doesn't get the hostages--namely, our troops--returned safely. It just gets them armored vehicles and more bullets to protect themselves from their captors. And thus the cycle of violence widens and deepens.

And while you've got your representative on the phone, please consider asking him/her to curb Israel's rumored but as yet undenied maniacical war plans for Iran. Tell him you read in the Sunday Times of London this past Sunday that Israel has drawn up plans to use bunker-bustin' atomic weapons at several suspected nuclear-enrichment sites and, if true, would be the first nation since America to use atomic weapons--THIS TIME FOR NO RATIONAL REASON AND NO JUSTIFIABLE PURPOSE (as if the use of atomic weapons could ever be jusitifed). Also tell your representative that you refuse to let Iraq serve as a smoke screen for Israeli annexation of Palestine and that inhumanity looks and feels the same everywhere it is practised and, in the flagrant cases of Iraq and Palestine, CONDONED. If we can fight for 'democracy' in Iraq, why not fight for it in Palestine, too?

However, if you don't agree with me about Israel, please protest war-escalation plans for Iraq. Tell your representative that you know a euphemism when you see one and that "surge" is a pallid but potable substitute for "escalation." He/she may call you an anti-Semantite, but never an anti-Semite--unless, of course, you join me in begging for mercy for Palestine

Here's Maureen Dowd's column from today's NY TIMES to goad you further toward protest.

Please aim some part of this day toward justice, please.

Love Among the Ruins
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 10, 2007
WASHINGTON

It's a romance turned sour, because it was never sweet.

The American military’s cocky heroes were supposed to sweep in and carry off a poor, grateful Iraq to security and bliss, like Richard Gere did Debra Winger in the finale of “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The strategy was: Love lift us up where we belong/Where the eagles cry/On a mountain high.

Didn’t happen. Yet the search goes on, in this country obsessed with hookups and breakups, for the right relationship metaphor to describe our deadly embrace of Iraq.

My colleague Tom Friedman wrote last week: “Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, ‘Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.’ It never works. If the underlying union is not there, adding a baby won’t help.”

Juan Williams repeated Tom’s metaphor on Fox News, agreeing that “a bad relationship” cannot afford the “pressure” of a newborn.

One reporter who writes about the war told me he thinks of the American entrenchment in Iraq more like a marriage that’s run out of gas, but you decide to stay together because of the kids.

Bill Maher used a bawdier metaphor of a man who promises his date a glorious romp, doesn’t deliver, and then just refuses to admit it and get out.

Some women say that the Surge will not work because it’s like starting over with an old boyfriend: you think you’ve learned the pitfalls and can resume with more success — you can set benchmarks! — but instead you’re swiftly ensnared by the same old failures. And the most maddening romances, of course, are those in which you think you have the power, you should have the power, but somehow in the end, you don’t have the power.

Many Bush officials and lawmakers now talk about the Iraqis with impatience, as though they are deadbeat relatives who have got to stop putting the pinch on us for a billion a week and try harder, in the immortal words of Rummy, “to pull up their socks.”

They may still speak diplomatically, but in body language, Condoleezza Rice and her chosen new deputy, John Negroponte, radiate irritation with the Iraqis, as though they are the most irksome of cousins or in-laws who have long overstayed their welcome, or children who not only don’t thank you for presents but also leave the playroom a mess.

The favorite analogy of Rummy and others who pushed the war was parent-child. “If you never take the training wheels off a kid’s bicycle,” Paul Wolfowitz would say, “he’ll never learn to ride without them.”

But that is too Norman Rockwell for a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch.

At times, the American-Iraqi relationship seems so cursed that the most apt metaphor would be a fairy tale like “The Golden Goose” of the Brothers Grimm, in which a girl sees a bling bird that belongs to a despised boy and tries to pluck a feather for herself, but instead her hand gets stuck fast to the goose. Her sister comes along, thinking she can snatch a feather, but she gets stuck as soon as she touches the first girl. Then there’s a Surge, when the third sister rushes to help but ends up stuck in a daisy chain of disaster.

With the Surge, as with the invasion of Iraq, W. is like the presumptuous date “who reserves a hotel room and then asks you to the prom,” as my friend Dana Calvo put it.

Teddy Kennedy gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday about his new legislation that would require Congressional approval before troop levels can be increased. Afterward, he was asked if he would try to block the escalation with an amendment to an upcoming Iraq spending request.

“The horse will be out of the barn by the time we get there,” Senator Kennedy replied. “The president makes his speech now. We’re going to get the appropriation request probably the end of January, early February.” He said it could take eight more weeks for Congress to act. “By that time, the troops will already be there,” he said. “And then we’ll be asked, are we going to deny the body armor to the young men and women over there?”

In other words, the president will ask us to the prom once he reserves the hotel room.

From Mythos to Logos--Finding Christ as Ground Zero, Once Again, With Help from Robert Creeley

Sometimes, Samuel Beckett has often taught me, you must lose all hope to see that it is inextinguishable, that the constant, howling 'I am' which is the current of consciousness is itself hope in the form of the Logos--egoized, as Jack Spicer said, into the "low ghost" of small-s Self. Heaven is never lost. Beckett's American son, Robert Creeley, taught me that this morning. And I needed Heaven's ineradicable affirmation, especially after seeing "Children of Men," the new British depiction of a racist Armaggedon and possible salvation (the movie ends with a Moses-like baby being taken out of the Egypt of modern England) that is a required art-sufferance for all sentient beings at this time.

I'm going to share a Creeley poem with you. It's called "A Reason," and it weds the 'I am' to that reckoning we attribute to God or conscience. Only here the 'I am' is not yet ready to reveal itself as the "I am that I am." It is prevented from doing so by being more burrowed and alone. In this poem, Creeley, as he most often does, is looking for a reason for this constant affliction of the isolate Carestian 'I am'--always engaged in outreach that fails. But Creeley's despair is diamond-tipped and it can bore through anything. Hence his poems have an existential spirituality--the way Beckett's novels do.

Years ago in college a friend told me, "Jews write God as G-d because those are our initials." I don't know if that's the official reason. I'm usually told that the middle letter is dropped out of respect for God's glory and enormity, his formlessness, his antecedence to any idea or conception of Him. Personally, I like the look of "G-d;" the word reminds me of lovers' initials carved in a tree. By the way, this friend also told me, "We have to go from Mythos to Logos if we are ever to actualize God." He, like me, loved Creeley. Maybe he even learned this truth or mission statement from the poet. I know that I have.

In any case, I mean 'actualize' both as in activate and reify. In this way, the son is the father to the man. Anyway, here's C reeley depiction of the tormented existential intimacy which generally precedes what Zen Buddhists call the Great Doubt Block. Here, duality dissolves like Pompeii pottery in Vesuvian lava. At times, this condition seems a miserable, hellish eternitude of bifurcated consciousness--in which the victim is plagued by unending subject/object, I-you consciousness.
A REASON

Each gesture
is a common one, a
black dog, crying, a
man, crying.

All alike, people
or things grow
fixed with what
happens to them.

I throw a stone.
It hits the wall,
it hits a dog,
it hits a child--

my sentimental
names for years
and years ago, from
something I've not become.

If I look
in the mirror,
the wall, I
see myself.

If I try
to do better
and better, I
do the same thing.

Let me hit you.
Will it hurt.
Your face is hurt
all the same.
--Robert Creeley, Words, Scribners, New York, 1967, page 93.

Creeley is an American Molloy, an embodiment of the irreducible, isolate self.."People grow fixed with what happens to them," Creeley writes to describe the accumulated sense of self and life we all share (i.e, "History is one damned thing after another."). It is one of the best definitions of karma I have ever seen: the fixity, the fixation on the things such as race and ethnicity and gender that we think define us. Incredible to think of the concepts, constructs and ideas with which we fill the void--as if the 'I am' were an echoing wind tunnel. Even more incredible to think of this howling 'I am' as part of a pact with God, a fulfillment of a collective bargain made with mankind to never allow erasure or amnesia of the authoring source. The 'I am' is an angel cry as well as Edenesque launch-point. Or so I heard my teacher describe.

I can see now why so many friends study Zen. It is the most exisitential of spiritual immolations. No Christ to die for our sins, to distract us from the pain and promise of the 'I am.' I consider myself a Sufi exisitentialist. Existence precedes essence when, of course, it should be the opposite. "If I look / in the mirror, / the wall, I / see myself," Creely says, seeing the 'I' as hardcore, unflinching fact. Like all of us after still another failure of our intention to break free or beyond, we come back to the stranded self sticking up like a reed in the water. But this is simply "Go" on the board. You have to land there and then go past it. It is transient, transtional. Like Tom Hanks in "Castaway" with his effigy-friend, it's all we have. Or think we have.

If I try
to do better
and better, I
see myself.

Every act is seeming repetition, a multiple of one cotinuing attempt to go beyond. It's enough to make you scream, the all-inclusive one that is still minus everything and everyone else. No wonder some of us spend eight hours a day on cushions in meditation, hoping to dissolve the thin membrane of separation, to burst from the amneotic sac of enclosed consciousness, of fierce containment within ourselves. Remember Creeley's haiku?

In the courtyard
at midnight
the moon
is locked
in itself

to a man a
familiar thing

Let's go back to Mythos-Christ rather than the existential Logos-Christ. Mythos Christ slept in a tomb for three days after his physical death, then arose. This, Christians says, is what sets him apart from every other prophet and avatar. "No one else died and resurrected," preacher after preacher has told me, like it's some exclusive ingredient to his life that makes it the only one to worship and adore. Snce I believe imitation is the sincerest form of worship, I see Christ as one powerful instance of embodiment--but not the only one or the highest one. He is co-equal with the other emodiments. Right now, the Mythos Christ, made exclusive and supposedly supreme by resurrection, is under heavy attack. Christians who think they would die if Christ were anything less than the one-and-only Messiah are fidgeting with the crucifix Christ like it's a hot potato.

And right now it is.

Every day, news reaches us of a former world in which Christ was followed as far less, or other, than the resurrected one. They are even unearthing texts which suggest he may have had a wife and a kid. And yet domestic Jesus was still followed as fulfillment of God's prophecy.

Recently, Christian-dumb was rocked by a 2nd century telling of the Mythos Christ in which Judas is ordered by Chirst to betray him. Why? So that the Christ legend can begin? What legend? We all need to traffic in mythos with our gods and their sons. For me, mythos-making revolves around one question: What is the highest and best use of the Christ story? To free Jerusalem from infidels? To make everyone accept him as the only savior? Or is his mission more customized to the needs of his followers. If so, it becomes, as the early gospels show, an aggregate of teaching in which the Christ is some fountainhead students observe in their teacher and are led to in themselves. Then Christianity is, once again, a way of life and learning for those attracted to Christ for the sole or main purpose of liberation. In this case, everyone's middle name is Egypt.

I like this new telling because it puts the disciples back in the picture by making Judas a fairly realized student who is forced into an Abraham-like sacrifice of Ishmael (Christ) to proclaim the self-subsisting reality--the only one that can serve as life raft--of God. In the end of "Zen In The Art of Archery," the master gives his student his bow and tells him to bury it when he has finally learned to shoot. In this way, we are the tombs of our teachers, their last resting spot on the earth whose inhabitants' misery they seek to reduce. Continuance is the only church in which we can worship God. That church is all around us. There is no cross to bear other than our failure to find the Christ within.

Crucifixion can only be the culminating event in a Mythos passion play. This is what happens to the Christos when it is Mythos not Logos. The Easter Jesus who is sealed in a tomb then bursts forth fom it is, to me, a hostage of religion, trapped in unwilling codependence in a dysfunctional human family.

For me, personally, the only Christ I wish to receive and know is the one who brings ultimate salvation: the mentoring of the Bodhisattva. Otherwise that divinity on the cross is reduced to a Lenin in a tomb, a saint in an open casket. You can learn nothing from his agon-y (agon is Greek for dance) if you think it is his alone--suffered for, not by, you and me. "The cross," my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen said, "is our own bodies. The five nails are enslavement to the five senses."

Sufism is teaching me to quit this cross. And Creeley has helped as much as Rumi. Existential Sufism has put me back in the garden on the night before the betrayal with the master who is asking only and always of me to "watch" with him, to see what he sees, and as he sees. Jesus is teacher first and foremost. If he must leave us, even for a second, it is in the garden practising the witnessing he taught us. THAT CHRIST CAN'T LEAVE US. WE CAN ONLY LEAVE HIM. And, say the mystics, that departure, or alienation, is an illusion. So faith in Jesus and God requires faith in the Self.

What is more important?" a former Jesuit asked a friend. "Faith in Jesus or the faith of Jesus?" When he knew it was the faith of Jesus he left the Catholic Church because Christianity preaches faith in Jesus as the Way (existence precedes essence). The former priest chose, as I have, Sufism. For Sufism is to learn and practice the faith of Jesus, to see him/me/us as what Hindus call the At-man. Creeley has taught me to keep looking in that mirror in the wall that takes in and reflects everything. Sufism has also taught me that God's deepest--or maybe I should say most practical, profound and immediate--embodiments are His virtues, which act to rub smooth the resistant bark of the small-s Self smooth. In the end, I am told by people whose lives are evidence of this truth, the seer is what is seen, and the enclosure of self becomes an embrace of all things.

Sufism, as texts I have studied make clear, is a record of this transcendance. Re-enactments galore.

But first, and this is where Creeley has been such a benefactor, you must strip bare, renounce or take less seriously all so-called essentials but the essence.

All alike, people
or things grow
fixed with what
happens to them.

You must, as my teacher said, stand naked and alone. At such penultimatye moments, I have been locked in and exhausted by habit and habitualness. My whole life became a prayer for release. Creeley's poems are prayers for this release.

I throw a stone.
It hits the wall,
it hits a dog,
it hits a child--

This is the last, enduring gasp of the particulate world, a world with no end or beginning, just the intransitive 'I am' filling time and space.

my sentimental
names for years
and years ago, from
something I've not become.

Yet this place is a meeting ground of God and Man and one of its names is Logos, nicknamed Christ by Christians, Buddha by Buddhists, Moses by Jews, Muhammed by Muslims. The Quran says that all who truly practice their faith are "in [the state of] Islam." Christos-Christ, a/k/a Nur Mahammed is prepping us for deliverance from the protective burden of the indestructible, hard-scrabble small-s Self. This is the daily koan of the seed that must be tough enough to grow anywhere and yet perishable enough to sprout into a tree. And so, as dear Emily Dickinson said, we are finally "seded" from the first birth into the second true one. Only that 'person' can sit on the throne. The throne is that seat of consciousness.

"Let me hit you," Creeley says like a Zen meditation captain asking for permission to strike you with a staff. "Will it hurt," he says, not bothering to pose it as a question. Of course, it will hurt. But if the master does not strike, the pain is even worse and more irremediable. Creeley is also husband/father/friend/poet here, describing something he's see all too often before, and knowing the usual outcome: "Your face is hurt / all the same."

You may not believe this, but Creeley no longer has a stone in his hand. Just a pen--as in o-pen--to remind us of the human condition we all share whether enlightened or ignorant. This poem makes me want heaven as much as Rumi or Rilke ever have. This poem makes another second in any place but paradise unbearable. This poem delivers me both into and from hell. This poem makes liberation the purpose of living once again. Nine bows, dear Creeley--even in the heavy midst of mall and maya traffic.