{"id":49247,"date":"2025-09-05T08:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=49247"},"modified":"2025-09-05T08:15:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:15:32","slug":"49247","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2025\/09\/49247.html","title":{"rendered":"Zen, Unitarian Universalism, and a Writer’s Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Printing Press
Ephraim Moses Lilien
early twentieth century<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Nineteen years ago on the 5th of September, 2006, at 12:53pm (Eastern time), I posted my very first Monkey Mind blog post.<\/p>\n

It was a Gary Snyder poem.<\/p>\n

Lew Welch jut turned up one day,<\/em>
\nlive as you and me. \u201cDamn, Lew\u201d I said,<\/em>
\n\u201cyou didn\u2019t shoot yourself after all.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cYes I did\u201d he said,<\/em>
\nand even then I felt the tingling down my back.<\/em>
\n\u201cYes you did, too\u201d I said \u2014 \u201cI can feel it now.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cYeah\u201d he said,<\/em>
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a basic fear between your world and<\/em>
\nmine. I don\u2019t know why.<\/em>
\nWhat I came to say was,<\/em>
\nteach the children about the cycle.<\/em>
\nThe life cycles. All the other cycles.<\/em>
\nThat\u2019s what it\u2019s all about, and it\u2019s all forgot.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Gary Snyder Axe Handles<\/em>
\n(San Francisco, North Point Press, 1983: p 7)<\/p>\n

I was still in the parish ministry, serving the First Unitarian Society of Newton<\/em> (in Massachusetts) and I was about to begin a sabbatical. I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but it would be the only sabbatical of my ministerial career. Colleagues told me that it would be nice to keep in touch with the congregation, the people who were footing the bill. Most of whom would never see a sabbatical themselves. It seemed a reasonable idea at the time.<\/p>\n

Another colleague suggested perhaps trying to start up a blog. It was becoming a thing in that moment.<\/p>\n

I liked the idea. There were even free sites that one could use. I checked out several and settled on Blogger. For a name I decided to use the title for my church newsletter column. Itself chosen way back in 1989 when I was doing my parish internship at the First Unitarian Church of San Jose. They informed me I was writing a column and they wanted the title right then.<\/p>\n

Monkey Mind immediately came to mind. It\u2019s a Buddhist<\/a> term for the mind that jumps around like a monkey.<\/p>\n

It has stuck all these years\u2026<\/p>\n

My first impulse was sort of a day book. The same day I offered a second post. At 3:25pm I added a poem from the Unitarian minister and poet Lynn Ungar.<\/p>\n

When Moses met God on the mountain<\/em>
\nthe first thing the Divine spoke of<\/em>
\nwas shoes. How are we to interpret this?<\/em>
\nWhere do you find God when<\/em>
\nyou have no mountains? Some say just<\/em>
\nstand in the lowlands and call,<\/em>
\nbut you must be willing to take<\/em>
\nwhichever god might answer.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever would save his life<\/em>
\nwill lose it,\u201d said the prophet,<\/em>
\nwho was harsh, but never cold.<\/em>
\nOnce, driving across the steaming<\/em>
\nlake, something beckoned, but I<\/em>
\nwas too impressed by the possible<\/em>
\nto follow. Sometimes, in the<\/em>
\nlow light it haunts me. It will<\/em>
\nshare neither face nor direction.<\/em>
\nIt mutters through its hot breath<\/em>
\nsomething that sounds like \u201cshoes.\u201d<\/em>
\nWhen I gave up high heels I heard<\/em>
\nit fluttering around the window<\/em>
\nfor a month. Some nights I think<\/em>
\nI will live into this obsession. Go<\/em>
\nbarefoot long before spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some nights the voice blows in<\/em>
\nfrom the Sound:<\/em>
\n\u201cTake off what binds you.<\/em>
\nYou are standing on holy ground.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Lynn Ungar Blessing the Bread: Meditations<\/em>
\n(Boston, Skinner House Books, 1996: pp 41-2<\/p>\n

The next morning I kicked off with a quote from Joan Halifax.<\/p>\n

Spirituality is difficult for us to touch because it flows to and from the invisible, fromlove and the mystery of death. It comes out of the \u201cmeltdown\u201d that we know as love and compassion and the surrender that we know as death. It flows from the ground of our relationship, not only between human beings, but also between all beings, including mountains and rivers. It is often born from suffering, and it evokes within us compassion, which allows us to see through the eyes of innumerable beings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Joan Halifax A Buddhist Life in America: Simplicity in the Complex<\/em>
\n(New York, Paulist Press, 1998: pp 44-5)<\/p>\n

I suspect this foreshadowed that while the old monkey mind would bounce around, it would also usually return to the issues of spirituality and religious life from a somewhat eclectic, broadly Unitarian Unitarian but also deeply informed by a Zen Buddhist perspective.<\/p>\n

\"\"Just before 10am I wrote my first original posting. In it I outlined the upcoming sabbatical and how I\u2019d been offered a minister-in-residence fellowship at Meadville Lombard, our Unitarian Universalist seminary in Chicago. It came with an apartment and a very modest stipend.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
2006. That makes this the nineteenth anniversary of my blog.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So much water under the bridge since then.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Eventually Patheos offered me a very very tiny amount of money to move my blog to their portal and I accepted.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I think today my blog is one of the oldest continuing blogs focused primarily on the Zen experience. Probably the same for being a Unitarian Universalist.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Since the blog began I moved from the church I was serving in the suburbs of Boston to one up on the hill overlooking Providence, Rhode Island. Then I retired from there. Jan & I then returned to our native California to be close to Jan\u2019s mom. We also left the Boundless Way Zen community in New England to start a small mostly West coast collective called Empty Moon. I\u2019ve also kicked around consulting with UU churches in the greater LA area.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We lived for nine years in Long Beach in a lovely little condo. And then moved to Tujunga into Jan\u2019s mom\u2019s house to help her continue to live at home. She\u2019s now 98 and we\u2019ve found a rhythm that works well enough for all of us.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
All this time I\u2019ve been writing up a storm.<\/div>\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n
My sixth book and the first since retirement from parish ministry, came out in July, 2024, The Intimate Way of Zen: Effort, Surrender, and Awakening on the Spiritual Journey<\/em> with Shambhala<\/a>. And this year my seventh book, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual but Not Religious\u00a0<\/em>was published by Monkfish<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
Keeping busy for an old fart.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Speaking of busy, I\u2019ve also started a Substack page<\/a>. It pays a little better than my blog. But it\u2019s a subscription and I cherish the broadcast quality I get with Patheos. So, for the foreseeable I expect to keep both going.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As I write this, I have submitted a manuscript for a novel to Monkfish. They have acknowledged receipt. And now I wait\u2026<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I turned 77 this year. I am an affiliated community minister with the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church<\/a> in Pasadena. I preach there and around the greater LA area on occasion. Our little Zen sangha<\/a> continues largely as an online project.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
And I continue to write.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Worlds seem to bubbling up out of my heart and onto the page.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Clearly, at least for me, for now this is my calling. My work\u2026<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n