THE MOTHER OF MY HEART Remarks shared on the occasion of being named a “Distinguished Alumnx” at the Pacific School of Religion James Ishmael Ford Yesterday Jan & I spent the day at the Pacific School of Religion, where I earned an MDiv (1991) as well as an MA (1992). There were many stressors at the time, not the least how we could afford the whole thing. And. I was in hog heaven. While the school was very much center... Read more
Zen, God, and Doubt: Encountering the Mystery James Ishmael Ford There’s a lovely meme that floats around on social media. The words are by Rachel Held Evans. It goes: “This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.” Evans was a very interesting person. A journalist, columnist,... Read more
A Robot’s Dream: The Zen Teacher Goes Ego Surfing The latest in ego surfing is asking Chat AI for a bio sketch. A colleague just did it. Found out he was an Anglican priest, although he was pretty sure he’d spent the past thirty years as an English Unitarian minister. And it had him as the author of a book he’d never heard of. Otherwise it was mostly right. So, I did it, too. Used ChatGPT, which you can sign... Read more
Sri Nisargadatta’s Zen Hinduism James Ishmael Ford Sri Nisargadatta is arguably the Zen community’s favorite Hindu. At the veryt least we sure like to quote Nisargadatta. As an example, I was reading a book on the practice of Jhanas, pretty inside Buddhist baseball. And there it was. A book on Buddhism quoting the Hindu teacher. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but... Read more
Some Zen Words for End Times James Ishmael Ford Today, the 21st day of the first month of the third season, in the 23rd year of Thutmose III’s reign, or as we may prefer to put it, the 16th of April, in the year 1457 before our common era (okay unless it was 1482 or 1479 BCE), marks the anniversary of the oldest battle recorded with anything resembling reliable detail. It was a fight between Egyptians led by the... Read more
The Sikh Tradition A Small Celebration James Ishmael Ford There is one god, named truth, the creator, without fear, without hate, timeless in form, beyond birth, self-existent, (known by) the grace of the Guru. It was today, the 13th of April, in 1699 that the Guru Gobind Singh created a formal initiation into the community of Sikh believers, the Khalsa. The tradition’s founder was the Guru Nanak. Nanak was born in 1469 into a Hindu family... Read more
The Unity of Religions James Ishmael Ford “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” Emily Dickinson For anyone who says there are common currents to religions, say, like for me; there are challenges. Hard questions. Is there really a thread through them all, a tie that binds, some universal truth found in all religions? Just looking at the various creeds and the rites of the religions, it seems the answer would be no. No. And... Read more
Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver Reflecting on the making of an audiobook James Ishmael Ford Just shy of a year ago I received an email. Helena de Groot was, okay, is a producer for Pushkin, a multi platform publisher. She said they’d stumbled upon my allusions to Mary Oliver at my blog, which included one full on appreciation. Helena went on... Read more
DYING & RISING A Zen Reflection on Easter James Ishmael Ford 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... Read more
Every Day is the Good Day: A Zen Meditation on Good Friday James Ishmael Ford 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... Read more
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