A few years ago we were taking a road trip home from Colorado when I noticed we were driving through Navaho Nation. They have road markers, you see, just like any other city or state or country. After awhile I noticed that we were still driving through Navaho Nation. A hundred miles farther, still Navaho ..read more

Open to everyone Marillac Center Retreat March 20-23, 2025 Marillac Retreat Center Leavenworth KS Registration open ..read more

Having entered this world, now exit it completely. This house is not a place for staying long. — Rinzai It is a time of transitions. It is that time for all of us, all of the time. Time to let go of what we have held onto. Sometimes the things we hold onto are ideas ..read more

Maezumi Roshi often started a talk by saying, “I just want to encourage you.” This at a time when we had endless cause for disappointment. We always have endless cause for disappointment, don’t we? But around that time we had earthquakes, big earthquakes, riots, deadly riots, we had the karma of Vietnam, Nixon, and Reagan ..read more

Last week I met with a friend on Zoom. The caller said that she didn’t have anything in particular to talk about, but that she just wanted to keep the connection between us. I applauded her. Connection, you might say, is everything. But you know as well as I do: these days we’ve got connection ..read more

One night’s lodging brings rest to the body; two nights give peace to the heart; after three nights the drooping and depressed no longer know either trouble. If one asked the reason, the answer is simply—the place.   —Po Chu-i (772-864) Chapin Mill Retreat Oct. 10-13, 2024 Chapin Mill Retreat Center Batavia NY Registration open All ..read more

I visited Washington DC a few weeks ago. It was 100 degrees; the grand boulevards were all but empty. I walked a merciless mile through patches of shade to the National Portrait Gallery. I’d never been. I’m not sure I will go back or that it will still be there if I do. What will become of this place and its people when all is said and done? These days we hear a lot of racket about our founding fathers and their original intentions. We hear mostly from people who interpret our history and constitution, indeed all our laws, by the notion that they, and they alone, uphold the narrow meaning of ..read more

My husband and I have been trying to muster the wherewithal to update our will and advance healthcare directives. Twenty-odd years ago, we sat down with an attorney friend and in one evening had the whole thing knocked out. That’s probably because we felt like we were still in the middle of life, where time seems suspended. That can happen with a young marriage, a new home, and a small child. The future was far off, and events that would happen there were just a fuzzy abstraction. Not so now, for obvious reasons. Not so now at all. Sometime in the last year my Zen teacher, who is a good twent ..read more

When I was 16, I got a chair for my birthday. It was a little wicker chair from Pier 1. Nothing about it seems unusual to me now except that I asked for it. Who asks for a chair for their birthday? Perhaps I was trying to piece together a different kind of life than the one I had. My room was already too small for the furniture in it. You had to walk sideways to squeeze between the bed and bureau. Maybe I used that chair to hold clothes or homework. I can’t remember much about it, except that it was mine, and that mattered to me then. I took the chair with me into all the places I lived over ..read more

I don’t know what might have caused my sister and me to be riding in the back of our ’57 Chevrolet, the light green sedan that my dad would drive for many more years. I don’t know how or where we found ourselves motoring slowly through a flooded street, water lapping in waves, into the dark ahead. I was afraid, that much I remember. We pulled into a gas station. Was it so my dad could call my mom on the pay phone? We would be late. She would be worried. Was it to buy cigarettes or a beer? To ask for directions? Were we lost? Were we stuck? Would we make it? We didn’t say any of these things o ..read more