“Make of yourself a light” said the Buddha, before he died. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal-a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around... Read more

    The Dark Soil of God A Zen Meditation on the Psalms James Ishmael Ford The earth belongs to the Divine and everything on it. For the Divine wove it out of the emptiness of space and breathed life into every corner, bringing forth all life, and all of it precious.   Who is fit to care for this and worthy to act as God’s representative?   Those passionate for truth, who are horrified by injustice, who stand with the... Read more

      Fortune favors the bold. Great line, that. Comes from the Latin, where it was a sturdy proverb. Possibly distilled from a line from the Pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus. It has a couple of variations, but with the same meaning. The line appears in Virgil’s Aeneid and Terence’s Phormio. Ovid gives it a twist in Ars Amatoria, “Venus, like Fortune, favors the bold.” One can see why it would appeal. But, there is a caution. Pliny the Elder in... Read more

      Thomas Edward Lawrence was born today, the 16th of August, in 1888, in Wales. The family situation was, well, complicated. He read, as they say, history at Jesus College, Oxford. Taking his degree he received a scholarship to travel to the Middle East. Lawrence quickly learned Arabic and worked as an archeologist under the direction of the renowned Leonard Woolley and others. In 1914 Woolley and Lawrence began working secretly for the British military. In October of... Read more

      In the Eastern Christian churches today, the 15th of August, is marked as the Dormition of the Theotokos. In the Roman calendar today is called the feast of the Assumption of Mary. In the Anglican calendar this day is traditionally marked as the “falling asleep of the blessed virgin Mary,” although there are more than a few Anglicans who hold to some view of physical assumption for our lady. I like to think of it as the... Read more

        THE GOD OF DIRT A Reflection on the Spirituality of Mary Oliver James Ishmael Ford I. Something came up out of the dark. It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before. It wasn’t an animal or a flower, unless it was both. Something came up out of the water, a head the size of a cat but muddy and without ears. I don’t know what God is. I don’t know what death is. But I believe... Read more

    Florence Nightingale died on this day, the 13th of August in 1910. She was born on the 12th of May, 1820, into a wealthy English Unitarian family, in Florence and was named for the city of her birth. Florence was raised among the Unitarian intellectual elites, counting among her life long friends James and more importantly his sister Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Blackwell who would become the first woman medical doctor recognized in England. She was educated at... Read more

      “For our part, we regard her as neither the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history.” Report by Richard Hodgson for the  Society for Psychical Research. It was on this day, the 12th of August (in the Old Style, that would have been the 31st of July), in 1831 Helena Petrovna... Read more

        HONEST TO JESUS The Zen minister considers the religion of Jesus & A Christianity that can be James Ishmael Ford “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest... Read more

      Rabindranath Tagore died on this day, the 7th of August in 1941. He had been seriously ill for five years, and many considered his death a release from unmerited suffering. He was 80 years old. Tagore was born on the 6th of May,1861. He was a Bengali poet, a musician, and an artist. Really, that barely suggests who this person was. Perhaps a bit more telling is how Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel... Read more