Excluding inclusion . . .

Sunday, March 23, 2025. It's Sol's day . . . spending itself behind clouds over TulseyTown. Strong Northerlies are to bring the cloud cover and a cooler 60's. Clearing and 40's tonight.

At what moment
of life’s long sleep
might I wake from this dream
astonished
by the truth?

– Saigyō, Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude, transl. by Meredith McKinney, Shambhala, 2021.

Kurosawa Akira was born today in 1910, Tokyo, Japan. He was the first Japanese film director to win international acclaim.

Yesterday was the beginning of the “Selma March,” led by Martin Luther King, Jr

What we’re getting wrong about the loneliness epidemic.

George Frideric Handel's oratorio "Messiah" had its London premiere on this day in 1743.

[T]he vast majority of Christians in history have identified with their own much smaller kingdoms for which they were willing to fight, kill, surrender, and grant pledges of total allegiance … National boundaries are simply arbitrary lines … We have defined ourselves largely by exclusion more than inclusion. Ironically, World Wars I and II were fought among various “Christian” peoples of Europe and the United States. Any reluctance to admit our embarrassing Christian history reveals our immense capacity for avoidance and denial of our own shadow. – Fr. Richard Rohr, Meditations, The Center for Action and Contemplation. 3.21.25.

The Buddha's Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light.”

[…]

I think of this every morning

as the East begins.

[…]

And then I feel the sun itself,

clearly I am not needed

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicagle value.

Slowly, beneath the branches

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces

of that freightened crowd.

– Mary Oliver, “The Buddha's Last Instruction,” House of Light, Beacon Press. 1990.