Hakuin’s Song of Zazen All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water; How sad that people ignore the near, and search for truth afar, Like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, Like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor. Apart from water there is no ice, apart from beings, no Buddha. Lost on dark paths of ignorance, We wander through the six worlds, from dark path to dark path.... Read more
A month or so back Jan & I were walking through a grocery store when the muzak (or, the moral equivalent) started up Jimmy Durante’s novelty song Rudolf the Red Nose Raindeer. At the time I marveled that a singer who has been dead now some thirty-six years was accompanying all of us shopping that day. A bit of the miracle of voice recording. And the various technologies that have followed, all of which he was in the pioneering stages... Read more
Brendan Behan, poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright in English and Irish, was born on this day in 1923. He led a tumultuous life, born in Dublin, by the age of sixteen he joined the Irish Republican Army, and was involved in a plot to blow up the docks in Liverpool. He was arrested in possession of explosives and sentenced to three years. Later Behan returned to prison for attempting to assassinate two Garda Siochana detectives, this time sentenced... Read more
Thanks to an astrological chart we can know when the philosopher Proclus was born. It happens to be today in 412 of our common era, in Byzantium. While Christianity had taken over the business of state, here and there philosophy still could be pursued, and Proclus proved to be the last, and some might even hazard, the greatest of the Neoplatonics. The New World Encyclopedia summarizes for us how “Proclus’ greatest concern was the elevation of the human soul to... Read more
Helder Pessoa Camara was born in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, on this day in 1909. Today he is remembered as Dom Helder Camera, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of Olinda and Recife in that country, a fierce opponent of the military dictatorship, and an advocate of Liberation Theology. There is in fact a move within some circles of the Catholic church to canonize him. I find it about as likely as Dorothy Day or that other troublesome priest Thomas Merton getting... Read more
Yesterday Jan and I followed our almost regular program of going to a late matinee and then to dinner. We’d feared we were going to miss Moonlight, but I think because of Oscar buzz it has had a second life. And, so, we were able to get to the theater while it is still making the rounds as first run. If you google “moonlight” and “review” you will see it is wildly popular among the professional reviewers. My google search... Read more
BENDING TOWARD JUSTICE Theodore Parker’s Religion, and Ours James Ishmael Ford A Sermon 5 February 2017 Unitarian Universalist Church Long Beach, California Theodore Parker was born on the family farm in Lexington, Massachusetts, on August the 24th, 1810. His paternal grandfather, John, was in command of the Minutemen on that day thirty-five years earlier. When the Minutemen confronted the British regulars, he declared, “If they mean to have war, let it begin here.” And there it began. So, Theodore was... Read more
Rosa Louise McCauley, later Parks, was born on this day in 1913. Sometimes called the mother of the freedom movement, sometimes the first lady of civil rights, on the 1st of December, 1955, she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. And with that sparked something that continues to burn bright to this day. Thank you, Rosa! Thank you… Read more
It was seventy-four years ago, today. Methodist minister George Fox, Rabbi Alexander Goode, Reformed minister Clark Poling, and Catholic priest John Washington were aboard the troop ship SS Dorchester. They were all commissioned first lieutenants, they were all chaplains. At twelve fifty-five a.m. on the 3rd of February, 1943, the Dorchester was torpedoed off the coast of Newfoundland. As the ship began to sink the chaplains helped as many troops and civilians as they could into the lifeboats. Then it... Read more
I was distressed to see a new Pew survey written up at FiveThirtyEight that shows that a majority of Americans think being an American also means being a Christian. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed stated they believed it is very important to be a Christian if one is to be an American, while a softer nineteen percent only felt it “somewhat important.” Together that counted for fifty-one percent. Of course that does mean almost the same number believed it wasn’t... Read more
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