Max Fleischer was born on this day, the 19th of July, in Krakow, in 1883. He would become a cartoonist, animator, film director, actually also an inventor, and a producer. Fleischer began his career at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, moving quickly from errand boy to photographer, and with a few more steps became an illustrator. Over the next few years he would work as an illustrator for various companies, including Popular Science. Starting in 1914 Fleischer together with his brothers... Read more
After our Boundless Way Zen West three day zazenkai in Seattle, while on my flight home I was reading a small collection of Sam Hamill’s poetry and translations. I was especially taken with three of his renditions of the Soto Zen priest Ryokan’s poetry. Alone in this strange machine hurtling through the air down the coast of the North American continent I found them catching my heart, capturing in some ways in my imagination my own life. It occurred to... Read more
A poem composed on the occasion of my sixty-ninth birthday I pity anyone with no regrets Old Zen priest Myoun Read more
As I write this I am sitting at the SeaTac airport awaiting my flight home to Long Beach after a weekend Zen retreat and other things in Woodinville and Seattle. It is also my sixty-ninth birthday. So, perhaps naturally I find my heart and mind wandering over the events of these past few days and with that the larger arc of my life. At the heart of it this weekend was the retreat. Some twenty-three people gathered for a non-residential... Read more
A commuter sesshin, Zen retreat, is a strange and wondrous thing. Normatively one would all gather together and stay together. This coming and going thing makes it possible for us. So, all to the good. But, it does set things up a bit differently. I am up in Seattle at the University Unitarian Church about to launch the second of our nine to nine all day sits, as we call it in Zen lingo, the days linked thematically, but as... Read more
I sent off an email to various friends who I think of as prominent in our contemporary spiritual scene, asking if they would be willing to share five titles of novels that they consider “spiritual.” I avoided defining spiritual. Sixteen responded with lists. Some gave five, others did not. (And, okay, I threw in my own five titles.) For those interested in counts. Fyodor Dostovyski’s Brothers Karamozov appears three times. Shuzaku Endo’s Silence, appeared twice. As did Neil Gaman’s American... Read more
David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on this day, the 12th of July, 1817.We know him as Henry David Thoreau. His father was a pencil maker. His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, is generally credited for instigating the first student protest recorded in American history, something called the Butter Rebellion. So, while he did indeed follow the rhythms of his own distant drummer, he wasn’t the first in his family to do so. Henry was the third of four... Read more
Words can hurt. Words can kill. And, in the preaching project words can give life. Read more
Big changes are afoot for our Zen project here on the West Coast. And I thought I’d take a few moments to share with you where we are at this moment. If you’re familiar with Boundless Way Zen, you know that it is something enormously dear to my heart. About fifteen years ago I began a collaboration with some amazing people, chief among them as founders of this project were David Rynick, who would become a dharma successor in the... Read more
FINDING THE MOON Margaret Fuller, Liberal Religion, and the Path of Ordinary Wisdom A Sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church Long Beach, California 9 July 2017 James Ishmael Ford Text Silent friend of many distances, feel how your breath enlarges all of space. Let your presence ring out like a bell into the night. What feeds upon your face. grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered. Move through transformation, out and in. What is the deepest loss that you... Read more
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