When we practice zazen (Zen meditation) our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. the inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say ‘inner world’ or ‘outer world,’ but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone... Read more

HERDING CATSReflecting on Unitarian UniversalismAnd the Way of Radical Hospitality A Sermon byJames Ishmael Ford 14 October 2007First Unitarian SocietyNewton, Massachusetts TextHow wonderful it is to live in harmony with all people: like stepping out of the bath, your whole body fresh and vibrant; like a morning dew, glistening on the tiniest blade of grass. It is God’s infinite blessing, a taste of eternal life. 133rd Psalm (trs by Stephen Mitchell) It hasn’t been a month, a blink of an... Read more

While pretty widely expected, I was, nonetheless, excited to learn Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I think it is way too late for him to throw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination, but a google search showed at least three organizations pushing to draft him and several opportunities for people to sign petitions urging him to do so. Frankly, I prefer the “recovering politician.” But, I... Read more

There is some interesting conversation about the video at Philocrites. Read more

St. Thomas Didymus In the hot street at noon I saw him a small man gray but vivid, standing forth beyond the crowd’s buzzing holding in desperate grip his shaking teethgnashing son, and thought him my brother. I heard him cry out, weeping and speak those words, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, and knew him my twin: a man whose entire being had knotted itself into the one tightdrawn question, Why, why has this child lost his childhood... Read more

“There is no curriculum for work on character except life, and no graduation from it except death. How we die is just the final articulation of our character spoken in the hearts of those we leave behind. The whole matter is properly a modest business. Good character is not expounded, it is merely lived. And shame, not praise, is its compass. Perfection of character is indeed a koan, like the bodhisattva vows – we must resolve what it may be... Read more

When practical politics becomes shameful. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Adolf Hitler Read more

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Well, it’s Columbus Day weekend, so a tad more than a hundred of us, all members of the First Unitarian Society in Newton are in Orchard Beach, Maine, at the Ferry Beach Camp and Conference Center, a Unitarian Universalist retreat site. No one is precisely sure, at least as I surveyed the gang over breakfast, but it looks like the congregation has been coming here over this weekend for the past forty years, at least. It is a tradition that... Read more

I gather my interest in bumper stickers provides much amusement to my friends. Probably shows how shallow I really am. But I like brief slogans that attempt to sum up important things. If we know they never fully do, then I think they can be useful. Sort of like mantras, the heart calling to the heart. At least when they’re really on point. When driving down Arsenal street in Watertown, MA, there’s a large billboard sporting a simple slogan, that... Read more