Category: religion-twilight

Witness to a Miracle
Guys I’ve Done Time With: Houston Marshall 1948-2017 Hootie Marshall was just a guy: if I’ve ever known anyone that phrase applied to, it was him. I met him when I was five years old and we were in day camp; while the initial experience was bewildering to me (though I eventually loved camp), he showed ...
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Nights of Terror
Seven Days of One Long Moment The question—which I’ve asked on this website before—is: what is the nameless dread that I feel before sesshin begins, the fear that periodically grips me in the pit of my stomach? What am I afraid of? I seemed to have less of it this year. I had uneasy moments, but didn’t ...
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Why Volunteer
I had finished my Thursday volunteering stint at Urban Ministries and was tidying up when Brittany came back. “David, would you mind taking one more person? She says she’s sick.” I said I’d be happy to. I wasn’t in a hurry. “She’s a new client,” she said. The woman who came back didn’t look like a lot of ...
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Can’t Face It Anymore
When the Life Force Can’t Fight the Death Wish I was talking to a friend I meet every week for lunch and we were catching up before we ordered. “I had to go to a funeral this weekend,” Tom said. “I told you my neighbor died, didn’t I?” “I don’t think so,” I said. “How did he ...
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He Showed Up
Levi G. 1953-2017 I won’t say that Levi was my best friend in the world—I have many wonderful friends—but he was the friend with whom I most resonated. When I was in Asheville we met every week for a couple hours, having breakfast and drinking coffee. As soon as we sat down we fell into the ...
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Waking Up
The Thing We Do Every Day. Not the Other Kind Though I think of zazen as the foundation of my life, and often think and read about it, I sometimes don’t want to do it when I wake up first thing in the morning. I feel slightly afraid. In that waking moment it’s as if I’ve ...
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Man’s Search for Meaning
While Life Goes On All Around When spiritual pilgrims went to visit the great Indian saint Vimala Thakar and unexpectedly got to see her, they asked her the purpose of life. “To live,” she said. A Zen Master couldn’t have said it better. When I was in high school I read—with what I remember as an utter lack ...
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Overwhelmed
The Happiness that Takes Some Time to Ripen We had sat down for the reception at my niece’s wedding—tables of eight arranged all around the room—when I realized how my brother had seated us. It was the three living siblings from my generation—Bill, Rusty, and me, with our wives—along with our sister’s oldest child Tade and ...
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Why Can’t We Live in Paradise?
Reflections on the Words of a Homeless Man At the homeless shelter where I volunteer, I was interviewing a man who was being admitted, and was following the prompts of a questionnaire. “Do you have any disabilities?” I said. “No. No disabilities.” “Let me read the list,” I said. The last one was Drug Abuse. “Yes,” he said. “Drug abuse. ...
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Same Thing Again for the First Time
A Few Words About Sesshin I wrote some time ago about my dread of an upcoming Rohatsu Sesshin, and my subsequent reaction to it. I had no such feeling about our spring sesshin; this was probably the first time I hadn’t felt dread before a retreat (going back 23 years). The spring retreat is only five ...
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My Father’s Gaze
Is That Me or Is It Him? I look into the mirror sometimes these days and see—to my astonishment—my father’s face staring back at me. The man died 52 years ago, and didn’t reach nearly the age I am now; he was 47, and I’m 68. Life had been hard on him at the end, wasted ...
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Back from the Dead
Reflections on Rohatsu Sesshin Why am I doing this? comes up sooner or later on sesshin, usually by the fourth or fifth afternoon, when I’m bone weary, blinking back sleep, the winter daylight starting to wane—that melancholy moment—and I’m staring at the wall without much focus or resolve. Why am I doing this? I sit there ...
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Sunday Afternoon of the Soul
Sitting Rohatsu Sesshin In the twenty years I’ve been practicing at the Chapel Hill Zen Center, I’ve missed four days of Rohatsu sesshin, which takes place during the first week of December. The first time was when my sister got married to her second husband. I was the Ino that year, and when I got the ...
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