When you sit for Meeting and see only chessmen on a board around you, you’ve lost touch with yourself.

Who knows whose game has you trapped, much less in what game.

Example of miscommunication:

“Are you Saved?”

“Are you Self-Realized?”

“Are you Yielded?”

Before Self-Realization, my belief that truth or the mystery could be found and answered in a woman’s love, classical music or jazz, a fine set of books. And thus the constant sorrow interspersed with flashes of delight. Now, further along, a taste of energy that goes so far beyond as well as a dryness of what’s been lost.

As for the girls I desired in high school? How common! [Sex and spirituality are closer and more essential than is often acknowledged. My, this could fill volumes!]

3 July, ’77 … evening Quaker Mtg at Dory Matson’s, the Wilkenings were there … Ellensburg?

First Mtg after summer: 20 adults, five children.

Me, thinking of the Mountains and Rivers sutra

and our Meeting’s love of hiking-skiing-camping

3:X: Been wondering about the break with the ashram, whether it even still exists …

What is the role of religion in a “man’s world”?

To give death meaning?

To uphold what’s good, noble, heroic?

To overcome the Little I?

Meeting last Sunday was at Michael and Tarn’s …

My first Quaker memorial service was Ken Scott’s …

The difficulty most had with the silence, women whispering (gossiping?) to husbands, etc., a packed room — having many standing didn’t help. The service began with the family singing songs informally …

He was 31 …

~*~

JESUS APOLLONIUS

Did Christianity change the Romans?

Or did they change Christianity?

Their vestal virgins redressed as nuns?

Thus, the Reformation

as another uprising of Germanic tribes

against Roman tribute

The mafia

supports its church

~*~

ARE WE GETTING CLOSER TO QUAKERS OR ZEN?

“There were no representatives of the gods inside; the place was empty, and the secret shrine contained nothing” — Pompey, on the Second Temple of Jerusalem

“They worship on the clouds and the Spirit of the heavens” — popular saying of the Jews, recorded in Juvenal.

Geeze, is that all it takes to confound Empire?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

So we were settling in.

our orchard tenant shack here
like Snyder’s place in Dharma Bums
out back of a holy family’s
out toward the birds
and simple
like the long-legged house
of Wendell Berry’s uncle
close to nature
beside the river

Noz [our black cat, half-Siamese] goes berserk when we’re not home: rolled a geode across the floor and ripping caulking from the windows …

Noted on 15:VIII:77: Kitty received notice of her in-state status today. Next up, $50 in the mail to Central.

A week later: With Celeste over Saturday night.

And then we to Seattle Sunday: dinner at Costas [my delight at souvlaki?}, then a movie house of 99 seats, lobby three times larger than the viewing room …

In the morning, my wishing Kitty would say something profound rather than weeping over a slender girl or some fine threads …

Back in our desert orchard:

Tarts baked in stars

So hot that apples sunburn

and I’d thought Ivar’ was joking

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

In the morning, beside the fire, Kitty said if we were still in Indiana, we’d be at Meeting right now, which spurred thoughts of friends and places. Then Carol Grow phoned, to say the Dolphs had friends/guests coming from Oregon and we’d meet at 8 — no potluck, just what turned out to be good, deep energy.”

Was this Smitty Young Bear?

Ivar noting “something strange” in the Valley, the lack in most of it of older, well-maintained structures — instead, the use of trailers, storefronts, a “boom town” attitude … we were also into a deep drought.

The Scotts, of Ellensburg, home from sabbatical … they’re highly regarded and outgoing … but their son is dying, something that returns them to Friends after backing off for years — burned too often, too much standing up for conscience, let somebody else do it …

In short, the Quaker gathering was becoming the center of our social world.

 As I noted 6:III:

Meeting growing closer, deeper, with strong, invisible bonds … a beautiful, loving communion … speaking initiated by Louie’s strange, deep, loving, and troubling speaking … our next meeting will be at their place … where I would pick up what I thought was a curious white, striated and very heavy rock from their mantelpiece only to be told it was a mastodon tooth …

On 17 apr:

Meeting in E’burg, in the morning, at Joe and Myrtle Wilkening’s … they can’t come Sunday nights but mornings or Saturdays are good … also got the address for another place to meet here, through them …

Later, we stopped at the Dolphs’ on our way back from a salmon bake in Toppenish we couldn’t find. Cut asparagus along the canal banks. Learned their little tenant shack is up for rent. Now, trying to find the courage to move in there … smaller but much, much cheaper …

At home, finding an ad in Crossroads, another couple sitting for Meeting … called them and learned of two other couples. So our Quaker circle here, in a single day, has grown by half again, if we arrange ourselves …

~*~

Ten days later, we were half-moved into the little house … and trying to cut back to fit into it …

So the move took place at the end of April? I would have placed it a month a letter, from memory.

The move put us much closer to the earth and agriculture that were so essential to the existence of the county. It would also spur much of the action in my novel, Nearly Canaan. It brought me closer to the culture and ecology of our environment.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.