A number of people have been concerned as to how Zen can be practiced by people with no access to a local teacher or where the local center hasn’t been a good fit. I think of Jundo Cohen as a pioneer in this work. There are others, as well. And now Dosho Port has decided to offer online guidance in Zen training. I’ve known Dosho for years, we’ve worked closely together in examining the great matter, and I enthusiastically endorse... Read more

Today is Holy Saturday, perhaps the strangest and with that among the more compelling days of the Christian calendar. Jesus is dead. With that in the Christian story, God is dead. Resurrection has not yet happened. So many questions follow. Questions of heart. Of feeling. Of mortality. Who are we really? Who am I really? And with that, so closely connected to that, what about death? What about death? Now that’s a question. Zen likes questions. Particularly questions like this.... Read more

In the Christian story this is the day God dies. It’s worth pushing the point a bit, I believe, as I think about that dying thing in the sense of that call from one of the Sufi sages that we must die before we die. And the mystery some call killing death. It is an invitation… A few years ago my UU minister colleague Ken Sawyer wrote a sermon on the subject he called “Going Apohatic: The Spirituality of Emptying.”... Read more

This is no “mere materialism” to declare we need nothing extra. The universe is wondrous and alive. That is enough. It is a great dance. That is enough. All things creating all things. Intimate. Birthing. Living. Dying. Intimate. So sad, so lovely. Does it need to be known? I don’t think so. But. And. Gloriously. For no good reason it is known. By us… (And who knows who others in this vast universe…) For us The mystery of knowing this... Read more

In today’s New York Times, Margalit Fox writes. “The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald. “It was April 11, 1945, and Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army had liberated the concentration camp scarcely an hour before. Rabbi Schacter, who was attached to the Third Army’s VIII Corps, was the first Jewish chaplain to enter in its wake.” For the rest of this story… Read more

On April 7, 2013, you have an important opportunity to make your voice heard on marriage equality in Rhode Island. Join the Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Rev. Geoffrey Black, president of the United Church of Christ, who will be rallying support for the Rhode Island Marriage Equality Amendment to make marriage equality legal in Rhode Island. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear them speak and to stand with them at this moment of... Read more

One of the signs we’re seeing our Western Zen community growing up is how our Worcester Zen temple has launched a capital campaign to purchase the property that has been our home there for the last few years. I love how it is being done, the thought and effort as well as the transparency for a Zen community that continues to respect our inheritance of spiritual directors in lineage together with an increasingly flattened organizational structure. I see in this... Read more

DREAMING ZION A Canvass Sermon James Ishmael Ford 24 March 2013 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing... Read more

Boundless Way Zen Intensive (Ango) 2013 Living Zen: Dogen’s Four Methods of Bodhisattva Guidance A Three-week Residential and Non-Residential Zen Practice April 6 – April 25 At the Boundless Way Zen Temple, Worcester, MA In the tradition of Buddha’s sangha, we will be gathering to support each other in deepening our commitment to Zen practice. There are several ways in which you can participate: Attend the opening ceremony on April 6th at 7:30 p.m. Participate in residential practice at the... Read more

I guess it is just among those mysteries of our humanity why some things become popular cultural items… For instance in my youth there were various cultural references to a First World War German fighter pilot, Manfred von Richthofen popping up here and there, perhaps most notably as a recurring reference in the Peanuts comic strip. ‘Tis one of those things that don’t stand close scrutiny, his major claim to fame was shooting down eighty enemy planes, and presumably killing... Read more