Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update
April 2002

Theme: Family Finally Foreseen

If You Meet Inconvenience On The Road,
   Look For The Rest Of Her Family
                                                          (Poem for Robert, Monk)

    God is a great Bodhisattva
    refusing to budge until son is home.

    "Come home, son," God says. But
    son stays bread. Son stays wine.

    The great Bodhisattva waits at edge
    of edgeless space in moonlight. This

    inconvenience is God's wife. She feathers
    seed for wheat in wide fields. Their daughter --

    humanlovingkindness --  plucks grain,
    turns butter, fires oven. These kids –- 

    serving way beyond
    morning meal.

                        (wfh, holyweek poem, 2apr02)

Inconvenience showed up in this poem surprising me. I had no idea God had a wife.

It will take a while to adjust to this news. Actually the whole family is a surprise. In my root tradition it was taught there was a three guy-type configuration of persons with Trinitarian last name.

Here, in this poem, there is revealed a configuration of Quartet: God, a wife (both of indeterminate gender), a son, and a daughter.

This Quartetish appearance is likely to startle many, including Nihilists, Unitarians, Trinitarians, Nirvananists, and Monotheists of all stripe. Probably only Quakers and Cosmotheandrics will smile with recognizing delight. And how many have ever met a Cosmotheandric?

How lovely to consider and contemplate this family. It is beyond me. It takes so long to see.

They serve, serve Way, serve Way Beyond. They serve way beyond Morning Meal: God, Godwife, Son breadwine, Daughter humanlovingkindness. Can you imagine?

Those willing to foresee family are free to be what they see!

Gratefully,
, Sando , Mini and all who grace Meetingbrook,
3April2002