It was on this day, the 13th of September, in 1848 that poor Phineas Gage took a railroad spike through his head. What exactly happened after is disputed. What is indisputable is how this incident opened up wide the question of how much we are biological creatures, where our sense of self is in some manner epiphenomenal to biological processes. Our minds are something wonderful. They even have some quasi-independence. Three very interesting bits. Psychosomatic illness.... Read more

      “All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.” Hypatia Perhaps you’re familiar with the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia? An amazing figure, the daughter of an Alexandrian philosopher, she became a major thinker and teacher during the cusp of the fourth and fifth centuries of our common era. She was an astronomer, a mathematician, and most of all, a Neoplatonist philosopher. While commonly beloved Hypatia, is also recalled for her brutal... Read more

      Twenty years.  Hard to imagine. A life time, or certainly near to it. Men and women not yet born have fought and some have died in the conflicts that followed that terrible morning. I remember. The Sunday that followed 9/11 I was expected to preach. Casting about to find something that might be a word of hope I listened to stories.  One in particular captured my heart. Now, twenty years have passed and we’ve found ourselves mired... Read more

  You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains... Read more

    Fifteen years In 2006, as I was getting ready to take off on my first (and it would turn out to be only) sabbatical I was advised by an elder colleague that it would be wise to keep in touch with the gang back home. You know, the people who are paying me to do this. Most of whom will never get a sabbatical of their own in their lives. Another, younger colleague suggested trying a blog. “You... Read more

      It was today, the 9th of September, in 1850, that California was admitted to the union. The name comes from a Sixteenth century Spanish romance, The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. In the novel Queen Calafia ruled a wonderful land  of black Amazon women. Of course there were already people there when the Europeans showed up. They’d arrived a very long time ago, at least 13,000 years. Some 70 ethnic groups existed at the time of... Read more

    It was on this day, the 8th of September, 1966, that the very first episode of Star Trek, “the Man Trap,” premiered. I came a tad late to the Star Trek thing. I missed pretty much the whole first season. This was the sixties, and my young adulthood, after all. So I wasn’t sitting watching lots of television. First there was sex, drugs, and some rock n roll. Then Zen came along. But I liked what I saw.... Read more

    I recall reading the introduction to Madam Alexandria David-Neel’s “Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects,” where she was advised by one of her teachers that there was no problem in publishing the secrets. They remain secret unless someone is ready to hear them. Sort of the truth about such things. With that, here’s the nub of Zen Buddhist wisdom, ready or not… For me the best religious analysis of our situation is found in three Buddhist terms:... Read more

    How do we throw ourselves whole heartedly into the way? How do we honor that vow? When our very lives are tangled, how do we make our way? When there are people who depend on us, how do we make our way? Another image comes to mind. I was talking with a clerk in a large Department store. It turned out he had been a Catholic monk for more than twenty years. He left because his mother was... Read more

    In the Episcopal Church today, the 5th of September is marked as a feast day for Bishop Gregorio Aglipay. I’ve always loved that they have a feast day for a Filipino revolutionary, dissident Roman Catholic priest, Independent Catholic bishop, and Unitarian. As those who know me might suspect, he’s just a favorite spiritual figure for me. Aglipay was born in 1860. He was orphaned early. When he was fourteen and working in the tobacco fields he was arrested... Read more