Maybe we need to begin each Sabbath Moment with a disclaimer: “What happened this week definitely wasn’t in the script.” (Of course it doesn’t help that my knee jerk compulsion is to try to make sense of everything. You know,…
Storms. Floods. War. Mad men with guns. The headlines tear at our national emotional quilt. Never Before In The US, blared one. I enjoy an expansive vocabulary. But some days, I don’t have words. And the spiral I take toward…
Buddha's teaching method was counter intuitive, to say the very least. More often than not, he didn't even talk. He just sat there. There is a well-known story about The Buddha sitting in a place with hundreds of people gathered around…
In her delightful book Life is a Verb, Patti Digh writes about a visit to Washington D.C. She has traveled to meet her husband David. Her flight arrives in the afternoon, so they decide to grab a cup of tea before dinner, choosing a restaurant near Dupont Circle. It is a little…
It could be the heat. Some records have been broken here in the PNW. For whatever reason, my emotional equilibrium is unsettled or off kilter. You know the feeling? And there’s no doubt that I probably work too hard to…
A monk once came to Joshu (Chinese Zen Master) at breakfast time and said, "I have just entered this monastery to learn about God. Please teach me." "Have you eaten your porridge yet," asked Joshu. "Yes, I have," replied the monk. "Then you had…
I’m on my patio. There is a slight lifting of the air so I can smell the earth and the roses nearby, and I take possession of my life here. (A shout out to May Sarton.) And yet. I confess to…
The sannyasi (a Hindu holy man) had reached the outskirts of the village and settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!" "What stone?" asked the sannyasi. "Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to…
Ryoken, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut, only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryoken returned and caught him in the act.…
In 1921, at age 39, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a rising star in the political world. Vacationing on remote Campobello Island, in Canada, he awoke one morning without feeling in his legs. Over the next few nerve-racking days, his condition worsened, was misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Almost one…
