Last year I gathered a couple of my favorite Christmas poems together. They’re still my favorites. As are those illustrations from Everett Patterson and Fritz Eichenberg. The first of the poems is by the mid twentieth century Unitarian Universalist minister Sophia Lyon Fahs. For so the children come And so they have been coming. Always in the same way they come born of the seed of man and woman. No angels herald their beginnings. No prophets predict... Read more

Because I am working on a writing project I have become obsessed with a small factoid that is completely unrelated to the subject of my writing. Specifically where does the term “Christ Consciousness” come from? I kind of assumed it came from Theosophy. And it might, although a search of pdfs of Madam Blavatsky’s two major works does not show it. A friend found a chapter heading in a book by Sumner Ellis, a Universalist minster published in 1887 that... Read more

      I’m a life long student of the koan way. It has given me the contours of the formal part of my interior life. And, I remain endlessly grateful. I’m also interested in how we might find koans outside of the formal canon, the received cases enshrined in the great anthologies and within the various schools of koan introspection. So, I was pleased when a friend pointed me to a draft copy of a koan curriculum for Western... Read more

      Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave and close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of... Read more

      I see that Katharina Von Bora, also known as Katharina Luther died on this day, the 20th of December in 1552. She can be thought of as the first clerical wife of the “modern” period. Or, more properly I guess, the most prominent of a new class of person, the ministerial spouse. While a date is commonly accepted for her birth, 29 January 1499, details of her family are vague. Possibly born to the Saxon minor nobility,... Read more

      EPIPHANIES & THEOPHANIES A Meditation on the Way to Christmas James Ishmael Ford 19 December 2021 First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles Text And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. The Gospel According to Matthew Christmas arrives in six days. For some of us... Read more

      Today, in Tarkastad, Eastern Cape, South Africa, the 18th of December, 1946, Bantu Stephen Biko was born. He would become one of the heroes of the anti apartheid movement, a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. In 1977 he was arrested and then beaten to death by state security officers. Tributes, images, and songs began to appear around the world. Among these, Peter Gabriel’s tribute, Biko, was released in 1980. It, like all the others, songs and... Read more

      This dewdrop world Is a dewdrop world And yet, and yet. Kobayashi Issa These days a couple of times a month I’m visiting an old colleague who now resides in a nursing home. He suffers from something called vascular Parkinson’s. It resembles Parkinson’s but is actually caused by a swarm of strokes. My understanding is that his cognitive functions are largely intact, although he cannot focus very well and he can only speak a sentence or two, brief,... Read more

      Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Somerset, England, on this day, the 16th of December, 1917. From his teenaged years he was fascinated with science and science fiction. During the Second World War he enlisted and eventually won a commission. At the end of the war he was a flight lieutenant. Clarke then attended King’s College, where he took a degree in mathematics and physics. He started working as an editor for Physics Abstracts. And he started... Read more

  Hokyozanmai Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi Translated by 増永霊鳳 Masunaga Reihō (1902-1981) First published in The Sōtō Approach to Zen, Layman Buddhist Society Press (Zaike bukkyo kyokai), Tokyo, 1958, pp. 188-192. Introduction  Tung-shan Liang-chieh (807-869) wrote the Hōkyōzanmai (Pao-ching san-mei) in verse style. Made up of four-character lines, it contains a total of 94 lines and 376 characters. Its rhythm and tonal qualities make it easy to chant. It somewhat resembles the Sandōkai in content and has, since the middle ages, been coupled with... Read more