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

    I searched my blog for the terms “defining” and “religion.” So I know those words appear twenty-six times in my various reflections. One of them from a year or so ago was even titled “Defining Religion: Or, a Fool’s Errand.” The title is probably a truth… No doubt religion is a complicated word. For those who care our English word comes from Anglo-French religiun, to French, and then to Latin. Those who seek an etymological origin story most... Read more

        Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being Brad Warner New World Library, Novato, 2022   A Review James Ishmael Ford   I was offered a copy of Brad Warner’s new book, the Other Side of Nothing in exchange for a review. I said sure. Now the pile of what I must be reading has gotten so high I’m in danger of the pile collapsing with who knows what possible devastation following. As... Read more

    The Layman was once lying on his couch reading a sutra. A monk saw him and said: “Layman! You must maintain dignity when reading a sutra.” The Layman raised up one leg. The monk had nothing to say. This is an episode from the Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Yoshitaka Iriya, and Dana Fraser’s translation of the ninth century Zen classic the Record of Layman P’ang Pangyun (as is the more conventional transliteration of his name goes for us today)... Read more

      The Genjo Koan As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment... Read more