an old writer and his words

  • TAKING FLIGHT

    Origami cranes lumber into flight and lift into the sky over the small, back street Temple somewhere on the periphery of Shinjuku. They know their flight will be only temporary, that their wings will grow quickly tired, that the rustling sound of two thousand wings will soon fall silent as the breeze bids them a…

    Lou Faber

  • THE SIXTH ANCESTOR’S “YOUR MIND IS MOVING”

    As you look out the window you say the branches of the tree are dancing, the clouds barely stopping to gaze down on the scene. Walk outside and feel the breeze skitter along your skin, see the seed pods of the maple take wing and fly off. Ask yourself why this is, is it the…

    Lou Faber

  • POSTDILUVIAN

    So when Noah finally docks the ark on Mt. Ararat, or wherever, how does he decide which animals get off first? And for that matter, the earth having been flooded for weeks, just what are they supposed to eat on new land? For the vegetarians it must have been very slim pickings, and who wants…

    Lou Faber

  • WALKING

    Walking on ice is easy, although you must be careful not to slip for the fall can be damaging, but walking on water is impossible unless you are not you, and he has returned in your body which we all find highly unlikely, although the difference between you is a simple state of matter. The…

    Lou Faber

  • ZAZEN

    He likes the sitting, at least at first. It does calm him, as it is supposed to, and he knows he needs calm in his life. Even his knees accept the stillness for a while. Soon enough they begin to question the wisdom of this practice. Good for him, maybe, but hell for them, regardless…

    Lou Faber

  • AND CHARITY

    Faith, or is it hope, seems directly proportional to the need we have to believe in what some would call a miracle. In Hebrew the word for charity can also be translated justice. Faith, he says, is hope with a Godly intervention for hopes can easily go unfulfilled, but faith lingers, and isn’t given up…

    Lou Faber

  • TUNG SHAN’S NO COLD OR HEAT

    You say all you seek is moderation, simply finding a middle way, though nothing at all would suffice for you, no pleasure, no pain, no loss or gain, you would willingly attach to nothing at all. This is not the path the Buddha would tell you, for the place you claim to seek cannot ever…

    Lou Faber

  • KNOT WHAT YOU THINK

    “Trying to explain the Old Testament is like trying to untie a series of Gordian Knots.” He said that often, and few argued with him. Whether they did not argue because they agreed, or simply wanted to avoid his unwillingness to cease pushing until the other or others conceded whatever point he was making hardly…

    Lou Faber

  • NARA

    It was inside Nara that it finally slipped away. Its tether had grown ever weaker, the first slip was decades before, a book, brief meetings an answerless question. It stretched further in Tokyo, basin incense under the watchful third eye and hung perilously by fewer and fewer threads until, with the monks’ gentle bow, it…

    Lou Faber

  • BEGINNING

    “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good.” — B’Reshit (Genesis) 1:3-4 I mean God is omnipotent and omniscient, so why create it if God had even the slightest doubt that it was good, and is God even capable of doubt. But that…

    Lou Faber