Recent content by mysticpastor

I was just given Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by the local leader of the Cold Mountain Zen Center, founded on the teachings of Seung Sahn. Every other page he baffles me, and astonishes me about every third page. "... if you are thinking, you can't understand Zen...Zen is keeping the mind...

We start with love. We end with love. In the middle we practice love. Grace permeates everything. If we think we know something, we dont know it well enough. Apathy is the worst type of sin possible. Idolatry is the basic immature spiritual behavior of humans. We end with love.

There are a few people whose books get special billing in my library..Merton is one of them. I have read the two books on Zen, as well as his reworking of the Chuang-Tzu stories. New Seeds of Contemplation has a sentence about every other page that just makes me put the book down and ponder...

The United Church of Christ openly admits gays and lesbians. In the Presbyterian Church (USA) there are "More Light" churches, that openly oppose the official denominational stance against homosexuality. The is also the MCC Metropolitan Community of Christ, i think. They are an active pro-gay...

Whenever i meet a Russian Orthodox priest, he will usually spend a long time looking into my eyes. Many of them believe that they can discern the inner solidity of the soul through someone's eyes. the trick is to not blink and not to look away. you just look back into theirs.

You may want to start with some Thomas Merton, trappist monk who wrote on zen. Zen and the Birds of Appetite and Zen Masters and Mystics are both good places to start. With your background in Catholicism, that would make a good start. I love to read Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, and book of stories...

Let me ask you this. What does it mean to be saved? To allow the blood of Jesus to cover our sins, or to try to be sinless? (I am not talking about sanctification here, i am talking about justification.) What does it take to get to heaven? A perfect life? or the blood of Jesus? Are you really...

I am a pastor, and we did a survey at the local university before we started a student service. One student replied that he would never go to church, because we would never accept him as he is, since he is gay. I started thinking, which would be better? For us to hold our ground, insist on...

My first post here: I am usually pretty hesitant to equate concepts from one religion into another. The Hebrew G-d is NOT Allah, nor is the Buddha a Christ. But, there are some great similarities between Tao and some Christian concepts of God. The mystics spoke of the via positive (what we...