Today is the 31st of October, in our Western calendar Halloween. In my corner of the world Halloween is basically about small children, and sometimes not so small putting on disguises and hoping to extort candy from the neighbors. And, yes, for some adults costumes, as well. And for a subset of them, alcohol driven parties. But I believe there’s something mysterious and wonderful about Halloween that allows children and adults and excesses of several sorts.... Read more

        It was today, the 30th of October, 1938 that Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing panic among some of the audiences across the United States. I understand it, the narrative of the panic in the country has generally been overstated. But there was panic. These things do happen. I think of how easy it is in anxious times, to misread, to overreact, and sometimes to do... Read more

            Today I stumbled upon a meme today quoting the Congregational minister Robin R. Meyers “Consider this remarkable fact: In the Sermon on the Mount, there is not a single word about what to believe, only words about what to do and how to be. by the time the Nicene creed is written, only three centuries later, there is not a single word in it about what to do and how to be – only... Read more

        We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.... Read more

      The 24th of October! I try to notice this day as it rolls around in our calendar. At least for a time, the Western church recalled the Archangel Raphael on this day, the 24th of October. In more recent years he’s been mushed together with Michael and Gabriel and the three together are celebrated on the 29th of September. There are references, depending on your source to four or perhaps seven archangels. But these three are the... Read more

      INTERSPIRITUAL PRACTICE, ZEN, AND NONDUAL CHRISTIANITY: A Review James Ishmael Ford Embracing the Inconceivable: Interspiritual Practice of Zen and Christianity Ellen Birx Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 2020 I’ve now read Embracing the Inconceivable three times. The first read was fast, the old graduate school read out of a request from the publisher for an endorsement. That read led me to write how “Embracing the Inconceivable opens doors to the mysteries of our hearts and invites us in. Ellen... Read more

        It was today, the 21st of October, 1969, that Jean Louis Kerouac, or maybe it was Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, in any case, the person we know as Jack Kerouac died in St Petersburg, Florida. The day before Jack was drinking whiskey and malt liquor while working on a book. He felt a wave of nausea and then began to vomit blood. He was experiencing an esophageal hemorrage, and despite several transfusions, his liver was damaged... Read more

        When I was planning my stopover in Bangkok on a trip to Bhutan I wanted to visit the Mahayana Buddhist monastery where the English Buddhist John Blofeld’s ashes were interred. My friend the Buddhist scholar Justin Whitaker connected me to Will Yaryan. Will was a mostly retired professor of religious studies keeping his hand in at the Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University in Bangkok. Justin said Will knew a lot of people. My, he was right. I’ll forever be... Read more

      I first heard of John the Dwarf when reading Thomas Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert Fathers. This book was enormously important to me, and remains so. Merton’s selection and his translation of the texts emphasize the echoes of a spirituality akin to the early Chan masters of China. Later I would read texts that show the similarities were perhaps not quite as similar as Merton suggested. But, maybe that’s even better. If we do drink from a... Read more

        I was a High School dropout. When I worked at Wahrenbrock’s Bookstore in San Diego, I spent several years taking classes at San Diego’s Evening College. While I was really only following my nose and taking what seemed interesting, somehow it mapped pretty nicely the lower division courses for an English major. That bit of information just sets a stage. Later when I began to earn my undergraduate degree, shifted now to Psychology, with a plan... Read more