Tag: spirituality

The Diamond Sutra.

The Diamond Sutra is set up as a conversation between the Buddha and an elderly disciple named Subhuti. Two voices, one asking, one answering, both circling around the same old questions we still ask today: What matters? What lasts? How do we see the world without getting lost in it?

Some dates slip past us without a sound, and some carry a little echo if you stop long enough to listen. This one goes all the way back to 868 A.D., when somebody — a monk, a printer, a pair of hands we’ll never know — pressed inked wood against paper and created what we now call the oldest printed book with a publication date. The Diamond Sutra. Sixteen feet of teachings, questions, answers, and the quiet persistence of human curiosity.

The word sutra comes from Sanskrit and means “teaching,” but it’s more than that. It’s a thread, a line connecting one mind to another across centuries. The Diamond Sutra is set up as a conversation between the Buddha and an elderly disciple named Subhuti. Two voices, one asking, one answering, both circling around the same old questions we still ask today: What matters? What lasts? How do we see the world without getting lost in it?

The physical book itself was printed from carved wooden blocks onto seven long strips of paper. Each page had its own block, carved by hand, reversed like a mirror, every line a small act of faith that someone in the future would want to read it. Those seven sheets were pasted together into a scroll about sixteen feet long — a book before books were bound the way we know them now. Imagine unrolling that thing, the slow reveal of words that had already traveled further than most people of that time ever would.

And then, like so many things, it vanished.

For more than a thousand years the scroll sat hidden away in Turkestan, sealed up with hundreds of other manuscripts in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. A whole library walled off, maybe to protect it, maybe to forget it, maybe because someone thought the world was ending and wanted to save what they could. We’ll never know. What we do know is that in 1900, a caretaker sweeping out a cave stumbled onto a doorway that hadn’t been opened in centuries. Behind it: bundles of manuscripts, paintings, scrolls, and among them, this sixteen‑foot conversation between a teacher and a disciple.

I like stories like this. They remind me that the things we make — the words we write, the thoughts we try to pin down — have a way of outliving us. They get lost, they get found, they get read by someone a thousand years later who has no idea who we were but still feels the spark of recognition. A voice calling across time saying, “I was here. I wondered about the same things you do.”

Maybe that’s why I keep writing. Maybe that’s why any of us do.

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE ALWAYS FREE

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Mentors

Mentors can come from the docks, the back roads and back alleys, or, surprisingly, a monastery in Kentucky. Thomas Merton was one of mine. He wasn’t my only mentor, but he was a steady voice that helped me find clarity.

He was born in 1915 in Prades, France—a place distant from here, and even further removed from the Trappist life he ultimately embraced. Throughout his life, he authored 50 books, wrote 2,000 poems, and kept journals that revealed a relentless pursuit of personal growth.

What I admired wasn’t just that he was a monk. It was the strength underneath. He questioned everything, including himself. He spent time in silence, listening to things most of us drown out with noise, drinking, TV, or anything else we use to avoid facing ourselves.

He wasn’t afraid to say he didn’t have all the answers. Sometimes, he wasn’t even sure he was asking the right questions. That kind of honesty can surprise you and help you see things more clearly.

He taught me that solitude isn’t about escaping. It’s about taking care of yourself, like cleaning a boat so it keeps moving. He showed me that silence isn’t empty; it’s where change happens. He also taught me that being human is slow, difficult work, often done without recognition and against challenges.

I’ve had other mentors—some loud, some quiet, some unexpected. But Merton taught me how to be still without losing myself, how to listen, and how to stay honest even when the truth is hard to accept.

Every year on his birthday, I remember him. Though he was born in France in 1915 and eventually became a Kentucky monk, he somehow found his way into my journey. Even from behind monastery walls, he found ways to help others see new possibilities.

We don’t choose all our mentors. Some arrive unexpectedly, shaped by life, and turn out to be just what we need to keep going.

Now, fifty years later, after running up and down many roads, I find myself once again sitting in silence. Being alone is sometimes the hardest part—quiet, remembering who I have been, and, most importantly, who I am. I sometimes drift with the tide, or swim against it when necessary, here on the shores of Rambling Harbor.

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I Was There When the Soup Was Still steaming, and now I’m steaming

Father J. Edward Guinan didn’t start a charity. He started a rebellion wrapped in mercy.

In 1970, fresh from the Paulist Council and the restless spirit of George Washington University, Guinan and a handful of students opened the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV)—a communal home dedicated to radical service, protest, and poetic resistance. His vision was seismic and straightforward:
“To resist the violent; to gather the gentle; to help free compassion and mercy and truth from the stockades of our empire.”

I joined not long after being released from Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, where I’d served time for refusing induction into the Vietnam War. That refusal wasn’t just political—it was spiritual. I walked out of Danbury with a record and a rhythm, and CCNV gave me a place to put both.

We met at the Newman Center, planned protests like prayers, and fed strangers like family. The Zacchaeus Community Kitchen had just opened near the White House, and Mother Teresa—not yet a household name—came quietly to serve the first bowls of soup. She sat with the guests. That was enough.

In 1973, we launched the Hospitality House, offering medical care to the homeless. It wasn’t a clinic—it was a promise. We fed 200, sometimes 300 people a day. Seven days a week. No grants. Just grit.


By 1974, we opened Euclid House, a communal living space and organizing hub. We fasted for famine relief. We slept on floors. We argued about scripture and soup recipes. We were broke, burning with purpose, and building a sanctuary from scraps.

And now—in 2025—I find myself thinking about those days more than ever. The government is shut down. SNAP benefits are expiring. Families are forced to choose between rent and food. Shelters are full. The hunger we fought in 1973 is still here—just dressed in new bureaucracy.

And I’m mad as hell.
Not just at the politicians who play chicken with people’s lives.
But in the silence. The scrolling. The shrugging.
The way we let hunger become background noise.
Where is the outrage?
Where is the yelling on social media?
Where is the mercy?

CCNV wasn’t perfect. But it was real. It was radiant.
And I was there when the steam rose from the first pot,
when protest became presence,
and when mercy moved in.
You don’t have to go out and get arrested.
You don’t have to directly feed the hungry.
You don’t have to open your home to the homeless.
But for Christ’s sake—YELL.

Yell at the fat-cat politicians who play with poor people’s lives like it’s a game.
Yell like someone’s life depends on it.
Because it does.
Rambling Harbor is where memory meets resistance.
Where soup becomes scripture.
Where sanctuary is stitched from scraps.

I was there.
And I’m still here.
And I’m still yelling.
I’m no longer at CCNV. I’m not peeling potatoes or stirring soup.
But like in the movie Network—the one someone asked about the other day—I’m still yelling.
Through my posts. Through my websites. Through my letters to Congress.
I am yelling that I am mad as hell.
And if you’re not—
You could be.
You should be.

And for Christ’s sake, don’t tell me not to call the fat cats fat
When children are skinny from need.
I’m yelling.
And you could too.

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