Zen Baptist

Marcus Borg writes eloquently and well of the pre-Easter Jesus (the human historical Jesus) and the post-Easter Jesus (the experiential Jesu...

Idolatry is created where the eye stops, becomes idle, eye dull. One's consciousness state becomes framed and bound. An eye doll is crea...

The definition of sin as missing the mark is erroneous, or rather, of shortened vision. One cannot miss the mark. The Mark is everywhere. Si...

As a prime symbol of human transformation, especially for Western consciousness, the Cross immediately shows the human situation. Anchored i...

Yes, we are "children of God." One can and does experience this. In stepping back, we can see that it is also a metaphor, a vehicl...

Warning to the Overly Sensitive! Christian symbology is in use here! Hey, you Christians! When we give our assent, as Mary did, the Father ...

The Bible read with a scoffing eye is not the same Bible as that read by the natural eye. The Bible read by the natural eye is not the sam...

Jesus, through his own personal resolve, will, and steadfastness, became the Christ. A Light shone in the world. A similar path of personal ...

How odd! I love the story of God becoming Man and walking among us, but I do not ever wish to be a Christian.

Just as water assumes the form of its container, so does the comprehension of Jesus assume the form of the comprehender. Thus you have the p...

Regardless of one's religion or philosophy of life, the universe is one dynamic interflow. Inwardly, we are in relationship with and as ...

Rapture. The very word immediately prompts images. Rapture. Along with the images come feelings. Tears of joy, scoffing, indifference. Those...

I removed the post "drinking Jesus's blood" from Zen Baptist a few days ago because I evidently did not give it enough context...

Here is the Preface I originally wrote for "The World's First Ever Baptist Crime Novel." I focused instead on how the novel ca...

By the time communion got to us Baptists, drinking the actual blood of Christ had downshifted to drinking wine and then to the low gear of d...

            13 And the henchmen came to the Lord God and said “Verily, those trees in front of Peterson are in our way.” And the Lord God ...

In Zen practice and in the martial arts, much is made by the old masters of cultivating Immovable Mind. Immovable Mind means that one's ...

God's Blog

Christianity's seeking of salvation of the soul and secular society's pursuit of goodness for the self are similar arrows shot from ...

This question appeared to me this morning, as it has before, but this morning it appeared with special urgency. Why does the son of God have...

We know that "a thing isn't true unless there is someone to observe it is true" (a la Schrodinger and his cat). We also know ...

Plato (427-347 B.C.) wrote "For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in th...

"When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more." Though this old hymn was written by a Methodist Sunday Scho...

As I move further along the actuarial table. a life insurance monetary scheme in which one bets how long one is to live (I have no life insu...

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, Jesus's suffering helped free millions from suffering. What a blessing! Stomp your feet all you wa...

It is interesting to me that Bonaventure (1221 - 1274), an Italian Christian scholastic mystic, and Banke i (1622 - 1693), a Japanese Zen m...

You will forever know the only Self to which you allow room. To know the Transcendent, you must be capable of the Transcendent. Capable mean...

An exclusivist stance in one's religion is where one believes that one's spiritual path is the only and true spiritual path and that...

In founding the religion of Christianity, Paul and his followers cast it in the mold of the religion of Zoroaster (600+ BCE)-- light versus ...

I come from a long line of protestants and am a protestant of protestantism. The protest must arise anew with each protestant. "You mus...

When we make the temporal our temple, we have short-sheeted our cosmic bed.

A major trap in christianity is the worship of Jesus. One is then let off the hook as far as any major change in self. The way out of this g...

All theology and philosophy is a depiction of the theologian's or philosopher's state of consciousness. A particular state of consci...

IF we keep dreaming we are the way we are, we will remain as we are. AS we keep dreaming we are the way we are, we remain as we are. This ha...

"All things are possible with God." True. But with us individuals, possibility depends upon and takes shape through our latent pre...

I like it that Jesus could whup anybody's ass but generally chose not to, becoming a servant instead. He could stand up on his hind legs...

We pour the water we are into ice trays. We want a frame, to be held. We get rigid. We put our cubed self into a glass of water. Ah! we...

Literal christianity is a stumbling block. Mystical or depth christianity is another matter. To throw that baby out with the literal bathwat...

"... permitting the soul thus to free itself from all the schemata of the world." Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recita...

I love the breath that breathes me. When I love the breath that breathes me, I become the breath that breathes me. When I become the br...

If you believe your god is the only god, you are automatically at war. Never mind that you say your god is love.

As a holy joe, you are a schmo. Sinking into dark, you are a snark. Jesus and Beelzebub are brothers, Chasing round and round that tree ...

Christianity as a method of salvation loses all its efficacy as a method when that method becomes a reality. Once one leaps from a springboa...

"The color of water is the color of its vessel." (Junayd, 10th century) Water also assumes the form of its vessel. Hence, the gr...

The tuning fork that we are consists of one tine of pure animal and one tine of pure spirit. The call is for both tines to vibrate fully, op...

The Not-Even-One, the One, and the dualistic Two which we embody ("on the one hand and on the other hand") merge to make the Three...

0 - wu- nothing - source - father/mother 1 - yu - something - emanation - son/daughter 2 - t'ai - everything - interflow - holy spirit...

I love Easter. Life arising out of Death. All of Nature displaying this pattern mysterious yet familiar. Famil-iar: in the Family. Even and ...

"Sin" is not a popular term and is open to ridicule by those who reject an out-moded Christian paradigm based on guilt. To me, sin...

"He said hello to the Morning Jesus. The Morning Jesus is calm and bright, good sunshine colors. Humorous, the Morning Jesus is humorou...

Humans: a cosmic experiment whose outcome is yet to be known, except by the Great Ah-Hoo-Ah-Hoo-Ah whose end is only a fresh beginning and w...

Self-reflection: absorption in the echoes bouncing off the thin, tough, and shifting membrane of the imagination.

Heart in the cosmos, feet in the world of men, I make my coffee, I dance and sing.

The preachers of yore, of my childhood, whether on Sunday or one of those hot eternal Revival summer nights, would get up in the pulpit, the...

I am the Eternal PacMan chomping life while monsters chase. A golden sun with pie wedge mouth devouring all before me monster in dis...

the rooster crowing the hen clucking the flower opening the corpse rotting the lotus blooming the root mucking the spirit fleshing ...

When we say it's this or that we've now shat in our own hat. When we say it's them or us we've become a spiteful cus...

Early thought was that hell existed below (beneath the earth) and heaven existed above (in the sky). That gave way to a belief that both h...

These words came this night: "If you wish to be a Christ-ian, you must achieve the point of view of Christ. Your soul is your point of ...

I am amused that science is proud of its hard-headedness in relying upon data, then engages a mooshy-headedness in explaining that data. Tak...

I struggle to rise from the mud I am, making a cup for receiving thy grace. The cup becomes a chalice, thy wine inpouring. Chalice, wine mer...

The first birth is into the world of matter, where one is a 25 to 28 foot worm coiled in an encasing whose main concerns are incorporation...