Yesterday at the great family Christmas feast I had a longer than I would have liked conversation with one of the relatives. Don’t get me wrong, I like him, for the most part. But, he has an annoying, actually a seriously annoying inclination to “left wing” conspiracy theories. At least we’re roughly on the same page, wing-wise. However, when he gets that expression in his eyes and proceeds to explain in detail the suppressed truth of one thing or another,... Read more

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said ‘Let Newton be” and all was light. Alexander Pope Me, I like Christmas. ‘Tis the perfect humanist holiday, celebrating the birth of a child as an opening into the possibility of miracle. Very easy to see why in old Massachusetts when the Puritans outlawed the holiday for the pagan mess it is, in the early nineteenth century it would be the emergent Unitarians who would revive it. We’ll be celebrating... Read more

It happened one hundred and one years ago today. In the midst of the carnage. In the midst of the horror. Something happened. It was short lived. But. It still enters human dreams… Read more

For those who start to notice how weird the weird can be, this is the season… Read more

I have no comment to go with this. Read more

It was on this day in 1853 that Saradamani Mukhopadhyay was born. Better known as Sarada Devi, she was the nineteenth century Hindu saint Ramakrishna’s wife, and is generally known as the Holy Mother within the Vedanta community. In the years following Ramakrishna’s death she proved to be the heartbeat of the forming community. Swami Vivekananda declared he would never had made his famous visit to the World Parliament of Religions without her explicit blessing. Her devotion to the movement... Read more

This Sunday afternoon the leadership council (board) of Boundless Way Zen voted to accept the application of the Blue Cliff Zen Sangha as a member group. I am very excited that Boundless Way will now have an official community on the West Coast. We represent an emerging Western style of Zen firmly rooted in the received traditions with lineage roots in both Japan and Korea and strive to be grateful for and authentic to the essentials of the tradition while... Read more

It was on this day in 1946 that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern made it to the big screen. It was an expensive film and opened against a lot of competition, and did not do well. But over the years in part thanks to endless Christmas season reruns on television gradually worked its way into the American heart. Even at the time it opened, however, while not doing much... Read more

Jan & I both supported Robert Reich’s run for governor of Massachusetts, and spoke a little with him during a fund raising dinner held by a friend. Good man. Here he gives a little advice for dealing with relatives during your big holiday family gathering… Read more

’twas on this day in 1918 that Henry Roeland Byrd was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. We know him as Professor Longhair. Read more