Today a year ago, NASA transmitted the Beatles’ song Across the Universe toward the north star, Polaris, some 431 light years from our little blue green globe spinning through the great night. If there’s anyone there to hear it, I hope they enjoy it… Read more

I was quite saddened when a dear friend informed me that the renowned Chan master Sheng-yen died in Taiwan today. He was seventy-nine (eighty by East Asian calculations). Not to be confused with the controversial Tantric teacher Lu Sheng-yen, master Sheng-yen was one of the foremost interpreters of Chan Buddhism to the West. And for those unfamiliar with the term “Chan,” the Japanese pronounce the word “Zen.” Sheng-yen was a scholar and author as well as spiritual director. Perhaps most... Read more

I was looking for something else at Youtube when the video below popped up. As I listened to it, it set a cascade of thoughts and feelings that ran through me like electricity. Christianity, in the words of one of my mentors Joanna Macy, is my natal lineage. I learned to read from a Bible nestled in my grandmother’s lap, and the stories, particularly those of Jesus crowd up in my dreams to this day… There are, of course, many... Read more

For unknown reasons, over the past month or two on perhaps three occasions I’ve run across posters, one quite old, commemorating the “four chaplains.” Each time they caught me, made me think for just a moment or two about war and peace and how we meet our deaths… On this day in 1943 the American troop transport the Dorchester was sunk by the German submarine the U-223. I don’t know how many chaplains were aboard, but I suspect just four.... Read more

On this day in 1959 a small plane crashed in Iowa, killing the pilot Roger Peterson and his three passengers, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens & J. P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson. In his 1971 hit, American Pie, Don McLean named this event the day the music died. It’s stuck… Read more

On this day in 1940 Frank Sinatra joined Tommy Dorsey’s band. Two years later “There are Such Things” would become Sinatra’s first hit with the band… Read more

Please forgive a bit of a ramble in response to a query about race in the comments section to my recent entry below about how the President appears to have had a folded khata, a while silk scarf sent to him by the Dalai Lama, folded in his pocket when he took the oath of office. Race is a difficult issue and one I don’t pretend to have a handle on. I have figured out the primary problem of human... Read more

which, of course, leads to this… temptation upon temptation… the winding road of life. hope i don’t end up a toad… Read more

and then those beards in the previous clip reminded me of this… Read more

I was rummaging Youtube trying to find the tent revival clip for my previous post, which sadly they don’t see to have in their files. But, I also ran across this. Possibly my father’s favorite song. (Not a major music guy…) Read more