Monkey Mind has been “awarded” the Honest Scrap by two fellow bloggers, Enlightenment Ward and Rev. Danny Fisher.
This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant. This award is about bloggers who post from their heart, who oftentimes put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul.
1) brag about it;
2) choose a minimum of seven blogs that I find brilliant;
3) and list ten honest things about myself.
Both Danny Fisher and Enlightenment Ward are blogs I follow with enthusiasm, which is part of why their nominating me was so moving in the sea of viral tagging and attendant silliness. First, I want to take advantage of this moment to point you toward the blogs I list in the column to the right of this post. They each are award winners to me. So, it is hard to pick seven to hold up in particular to list here. But I have. If you visit no others, I hope you will these.
Seven Exemplary Blogs:
Anamchara which is subtitled the “website of unknowing,” is the project of Carl McColman, whose spiritual journey took him from his natal Christianity to neopaganism and by the time he began this blog to Roman Catholicism. He is a thoughtful Christian with a particular interest in the mystical traditions.
Caute is the project of Andrew Brown, current incumbent at the Cambridge Unitarian Church as well as a chaplain at Cambridge University. He is also a jazz musician, which I’m sure informs his reflections. I consider him one of the leading lights of contemporary Unitarian theological thinking.
Homeless Tom is Tom Armstrong’s project. Tom is a Buddhist thinker and Dharma bum who is currently homeless in Sacramento. He is a first rate writer and a very interesting thinker.
Marcus’ Journal is an anonymous blog written by a European, I think, an Englishman, I think, who currently lives in Bangkok, I think. It is partially a journal, partially his spiritual ruminations and partially a collection of Buddhist writings and events. I really, really like it.
Wild Fox Zen is the project of Michael Dosho Port, a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor to the late Dainin Katagiri. A good writer, a real thinker, struggling with what it means to be an authentic Zen practitioner in the West.
Wild Hunt is Jason Pitzl-Waters project. A lucid writer he follows the doings of the contemporary western neopagan movement.
Worst Horse is another anonymous blog. It follows the currents of western Buddhist pop-culture. Well written, and informative, I love discovering the byways of contemporary Buddhism. Horse is also famous, or perhaps notorious for its “Dharma Burger” section, a compiling of commercial misuse of Buddhist images and terms.
Ten honest things about me:
1) I am constantly surprised at how the Zen project with which I am associated has grown so fast in this past not quite decade, and how it seems to genuinely serve people seeking a type of Zen that feels so important to me.
2) I am embarrassed at having so much trouble with weight.
3) I think about being sixty more than I thought I would as I passed that marker.
4) I regularly think how my marriage to Jan is proof of good karma from a previous existence, as I can’t think of how I could possibly deserve such good fortune in this life.
5) I love sesshin, intensive Zen meditation retreats.
6) I really like murder mysteries, particularly if they involve clergy.
7) I would like to write one some day.
8) I miss the west, but realize the west of my imagination is not the west from which I came, which itself probably never existed.
9) I’m coming to love New England, although I hate the winters and suspect I shall ever hate the winters.
10) I really like the high pulpit at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. This slightly embarrasses me.
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