My father James William Ford was born in New Jersey today, the 21st of September, in 1919. I don’t know all that much about his life before he married my mother. Some years ago my spouse Jan and I took genetic tests as Christmas presents for each other. One of the interesting things about how mine turned out is that I couldn’t find any other Fords. I briefly thought maybe James wasn’t my biological father. But the sad... Read more

      I find myself recalling the American Zen Master Kyogen Carlson, who died eight years ago, yesterday. Kyogen was one of the senior Zen teachers in North America, respected and loved across the continent. He was also my friend. My history of Zen in the West, Zen Master Who? contains the bare outline of his life. “Gary Alan Carlson was born in Los Angeles on October 8, 1948. His parents met in the Yukon during military service. His... Read more

        In some ways this blog is where I process my inner life… A lot of the content of this processing turns on expressing the depths of my gratitude for the Zen way while at the same time seeking to clarify precisely what it is within Zen that has been so transformative for me. Endless bows of gratitude, and with that endless work unfolding… Another part of it has been occupied with my lifetime of processing my... Read more

      Lord, through all generations you have been our strength and our home. Before the mountains were born or the oceans were brought to life, for all eternity, you are. A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes. You return our bodies to the dust and snuff out our lives like a candleflame. You hurry us away; we vanish as suddenly as the grass: in the morning it shoots up and flourishes, in the... Read more

      The 16th of September, 1885, is the birthday of the noted Neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Karen Horney. I’ve noted this a few times over the years and taken advantage of the moment to reflect a bit on her and her connections to Zen Buddhism. It’s been a couple of years and I thought I’d like to briefly revisit this very interesting figure at the dawn of convert Zen in North America and Europe. Horney was one of a relatively... Read more

Rev. James Ishmael Ford returns to the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles in a big way for the 2022-23 church year with Second Thursdays with James starting tonight at 7pm PDT!  This season he’ll be exploring practical spirituality and covering a wide spectrum of spiritual topics. His first topic “Finding the Spiritual In and Beyond Religions” promises to be an exciting kick-off to the series. I got a sneak peek of his PowerPoint presentation for tonight and saw the... Read more

      I’ve been thinking about ministry of late. In the Christian tradition there are two general views of ministry, the technical terms are ontological and functional. The ontological view is the high view, it is seen as a shift in the nature of a person conferred by ancient rites. The functional view is that ministers are people doing ministry. The etymology of the word is circuitous but ultimately means to serve. Within Christianity Catholics, the Orthodox both Eastern... Read more

    In the broad middle of the Twentieth century there were a number of writers exploring a synthesis of Eastern and Western approaches to the spiritual life. I would hazard the best known of these was Alan Watts. For good and ill I have to count him among my teachers, if some of that was in reaction to his highly idiosyncratic version of Zen Buddhism. Another teacher for me, if somewhat more lightly, was Terence James Stannus Gray, who... Read more

The McLeod Ganj Psalter RSV, Week 4 Ken Ireland (Ken was Ivy League and Jesuit trained, and for some years a member of the Society of Jesus. He currently lives in Dharamshala. Ken’s a long time Zen practitioner and a friend. He’s taken an interest in my current deep dive into the Psalms project, and it inspired a poem cycle. This is the fourth of the cycle, first published at Ken’s Buddha SJ blog and shared here by permission.) The... Read more

    All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. W.H. Auden, fragment from September 1, 1939 At the time we lived in Massachusetts and I was... Read more