ashes dust zen et cetera

Is there any day more than Ash Wednesday that Buddhism and Christianity are closer in medium and message?

Christians receive ashes, as a sign of mortality and repentance. As for the mortality aspect, is it not akin to the impermanence that Zen Buddhists practice?

Various Christian denominations impose ashes on the forehead with these words spoken, or some variation of them, from Genesis 3:19:

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

And then many walk around the rest of the day with ashes on the forehead, sometimes in the shape of a cross.

For me, it typically raises a quandary: wash them off or not? In other words, am I "bragging" about some sort of piety that I do not possess? Jesus warned against such strutting. But eventually the ashes need to get washed off, lest one's pillow become all ashy.

Is this a bleak day, a somber reminder of our mortality? I posit it should not be. I further suggest that Buddhists among us (sometimes I strut and pretend I am one, though "practice" is the only membership card, is it not?) would smile. They would not have to say anything.

A mindful Ash Wednesday (or Ash Monday, Ash Tuesday, Ash Thursday, Ash Friday, Ash Saturday, or Ash Sunday) would be occasion enough to smile.

whither goest men?

I strolled into church late, which is not unusual. I came in during the reading of the Gospel, about the Transfiguration. It is a story that resonates with me, because it corresponds in my reflection to a personal transformation, in 1979.

I stood in back, not yet sitting, during the reading, in deference to the presiding priest and in respect of the Word. After the reading, I walked down the left side (why do we all tend to sit in the same places, anyway?) of the church and sat down in back of a member I know. (Had dinner with the family last Sunday evening, after a very Christian, post-worship invitation.) Once I removed my coat and placed it on the pew, I looked around and was almost instantly struck by this observation: the congregation is almost all women, at least at this service. I counted five men, including myself and the master of ceremonies assisting at the altar, in the pews. There were 20 to 25 women. Up in the choir loft were nine men and four women. I counted them when they came to the Communion rail. (I will set aside for now the more troubling age-related demographics. Quite simply, 60 years old tended to be the younger outlier of those attending.) (As an aside, I just discovered that a Rolling Stone review of James Brown's 1966 song "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" offered that he made its "biblically chauvinistic" lyrics "sound genuinely humane.")

This invited questions as my mind wandered during worship, as it sometimes does. I like to gaze out into the Memorial Garden, in this season sporting serene, snow-draped branches of crabapple. This is likely my final "resting place," if ashes rest. My mind entertained questions like these, none of them precisely formulated and none snarky or sour, though they might erroneously seem that way here, lost in translation:

• Is American Christianity culturally feminized, not offering men a masculine alternative? (I am reminded of the provocative essay I read in The Atlantic magazine, in July/August 2010: "The End of Men" by Hanna Rosin.)
• Have rank-and-file men themselves abdicated their place in the worship community (even though men prevail in the leadership ranks)?
• What if the situation were reversed: would women mount a campaign to rectify this? (see bullet immediately above about abdication)
• Does this female-to-male ratio prevail in the same proportion in the following circumstances: urban churches (as opposed to this suburban one), other Christian denominations, other religious traditions in America, poorer vs. richer congregations? What about Europe? The rest of the world?
• Does any of this matter, even to men?
• Should it matter (to men or women)?
• If it does matter, what are we to conclude, if anything?
• And finally, if it matters, what is to be done, if anything?

what melts

Is it merely the temperature or a metaphysical thaw, all this melting, this evaporation, this trans-formation; where does it all go; and what is 'it' we are referring to? Not that it is something 'less' because nothing is lost, all is impermanent, the zen masters remind us; all is here, and nothing is lost; no-thing. in the vespers dusk, the scuds of clouds before this cafe window breeze leftward, it may be east or south, or both, I am not sure. These clouds (cumulus, stratus? cumulo-stratus? I forget my cloud taxonomy, from fourth grade; I need a nap, where different clouds can float by in front of a different sort of lens) of dusky gray lavender, ashy dustiness are already rehaped, gone, departed from what my fingers were tapping about moments ago. I do not lament them as lost, or found. Someone a few miles down the road is welcome to greet them. I moved a desk today. It stood in a room, for a few years. I was under that roof some twenty years. I was quick to describe my mood afterward as sad over this but one would have to ask why. Romancing a vision of some ideal that never was? Clinging with claw marks to some sort of cloudy mirage? The skeletal, bronchiated limbs of the winter trees across West Genesee Street stand silently before me. They too are as transient as those clouds above their sight line but one would not think it so readily. Those slender naked branches are eloquent. I bow before them, and them before me.

winter haiku #3 2014

at winter window / comb-toothed icicles stand guard / refusing to melt

winter haiku #2 2014

sun-bleached cityscape / clarion noontide snowmelt / razoring shadows

winter haiku #1 2014

flaky detritus / white dusting chickadee branch / now solitary 

Febyouary

Don't you think it odd that February, the shortest month in duration, has an extra letter, that quirky R, at least to the naked, etymologically untrained eye?

In case you are wondering how that R got into February, the estimable Online Etymology Dictionary ( http://www.etymonline.com/index.php ) tells us:

February (n.)

late 14c., from Latin februarius mensis "month of purification," from februa "purifications, expiatory rites" (plural of februum), of unknown origin, said to be a Sabine word. The last month of the ancient (pre-450 B.C.E.) Roman calendar, so named in reference to the Roman feast of purification, held on the ides of the month. In Britain, replaced Old English solmonað "mud month." English first (c.1200) borrowed it from Old French Feverier, which yielded feoverel before a respelling to conform to Latin.