A sermon I thought worth sharing again for this day… For the last half of my professional ministerial life, I served in some venerable New England parishes. Spiritually we were pretty much generic contemporary Unitarian Universalists. That is, we shared a naturalist and humanist bent. And issues of social justice were very important to us. But at the same time, there was always a bit of a Protestant Congregational Christian sense to the whole thing. This sense was something more... Read more
Yunmen, asked, “I do not ask you about the fifteenth of month. Come. Tell me about after the fifteenth. He then gave his own response, “Every day is a good day.” Blue Cliff Record, Case 6 Today is Good Friday. And I find it a perfect day to consider a koan. Koans are not puzzles, although they look like them. Rather they’re invitations. They point, they invite. As, I believe, Good Friday can be. A strange turning moment in the... Read more
Palm Sunday in the year 2025. In this season I find myself thinking Arthur Symons poem captures the moment… Because it is the day of Palms, Carry a palm for me, Carry a palm in Santa Chiara, And I will watch the sea; There are no palms in Santa Chiara To-day or any day for me,I sit and watch the little sail Lean sideways on the sea, The sea is blue from here to Sorrento, And the sea-wincl comes to... Read more
They thought they were safe that spring night; when they daubed the doorways with sacrificial blood. To be sure, the angel of death passed them over, but for what? Forty years in the desert without a home, without a bed, following new laws to an unknown land. Easier to have died in Egypt or stayed there a slave, pretending there was safety in the old familiar. But the promise, from those first naked days outside the garden, is that there is... Read more
The actual date when the person Gautama Siddhartha who became the Buddha was born is not known. In the major schools of Buddhism, using lunar calendars although by somewhat different calculations, come up each year with dates that float mostly in the area of April or May. The Japanese, however, have adopted the Gregorian calendar and have set an annual celebration on the 8th of April. And that’s the one I count. And which I try to mark here every... Read more
I am quite fond of John Donne, and I look for excuses to point this out. Today is one of them. John Donne was born in London on the 22nd of January, 1573 and died on this day, the 31st of March, in 1631. His family were recusant Roman Catholics. He studied at Cambridge but was not awarded a degree as he could not take the oath of supremacy, which included acknowledging the sovereign as head of the church.... Read more
A Meditation on Prayer Evelyn Underhill (I’m enormously fond of Evelyn Underhill. Her magisterial study, Mysticism, was an essential guidepost for me as I was forming my spiritual life. And even as my path has wandered she has continued to be a sound resource. So, I was pleased as punch to stumble upon this excerpt from her teachings floating around the interwebs. It’s originally from Underhill’s The Essentials of Mysticism. Prayer, like meditation, is a term that begs more precise definition.... Read more
Eihei Dogen was born on the 19th of January in 1200. He is recalled as the founder of the Japanese Soto school (Caodong in Chinese) and as one of the great spiritual writers of all time. It is believed he was the illegitimate child of an imperial councillor. His mother is believed to have died when he was seven and he was raised within his father’s family. At thirteen Dogen entered the Tendai order at Mt Hiei. His first teacher... Read more
Gertrude of Nivelles Patron Saint of Cats Ah, the 17th of March. A day when most of the citizens of the good old US of A discover they’re Irish. Not a terrible thing. Not at all. But there’s an under appreciated saint due to having to share the date with super saint, Patrick. Someone to know. I first became aware of her because of, well, cats. And I try to recall this and share it every year. Looking at my... Read more
A friend just pointed me to this article I wrote for Huffington Post in 2013. I thought it might be worth sharing again… I’ve had a brief exchange of notes with someone concerned about the large number of scandals related to Zen teachers. He suggested the ratio is almost one to one. A bit of an exaggeration, but a real question. He also puffed me up a bit suggesting that Barry Magid and I were among the few sane teachers... Read more
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