Rusty Ring

The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. Be brave. – Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Photo of young Iranians standing ...

I've been listening to a podcast about cults, the primary sin of which (as well as many so-called mainstream congregations, inclu...

Here's a brief rumination from an anonymous blogger about a topic I've raised here before: https://przxqgl.hybridelephant.c...

After 20 years of this I know that practice is not like mending a roof and now the roof doesn't leak. It's more like patching...

(A meme from Zen Twitter.)

It's old now – 2012 – but still entirely germane. In a nutshell, Psychology Today author Alison Escalante's position is that ...

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway (Photo of welded saw blades courte...

If you don't know John Gorka, you should know John Gorka. Few artists sing the human heart like John. A number of his songs s...

As I've mentioned in past years, August has by a series of dependent co-arising become Suicide Month here on Rusty Ring. Along ...

I learned this meditation from AJ Smith of Restoration Church, an urban Evangelical congregation in Philadelphia featured on Gimlet...

"All you single people who think you'd be happy if you were married, ask a married person. "All you married people who th...

If you'd told me when I was 22 that the day would come when I would cherish my ex-girlfriends, I would have called you mad. As a y...

This week I encountered a piece of apparent fluff from The Stranger , Seattle's edgier (or maybe just more sophomoric) alternative n...

A few weeks ago a friend directed me to Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason , by Tim Lawrence. It's attracted an enthusiasti...

This week I'm deferring to Matthew Inman, the Seattle bodhisattva who stands against evil and pointless suffering under the nom de ...

I've pointed out before that Christmas is a Buddhist holiday. Now comes a brother (not Buddhist, so far as I know) who's found...

Renaud was one of the heroes of my youth. Equal parts Springsteen and Dylan (to whom his voice bears an unmistakable family resemblance),...

I recently re-read a journal I kept in January 2003, during the period of my divorce. I was struck by the events and emotions it recorded...

Everyone has a room to air. Everyone has a soul to bare. Everyone has a horn to blare. Everyone has a cause to care. Everyone has a t...

I'm not sure he'd appreciate the label, but Claude AnShin Thomas is the most prominent hermit of our generation. Though an orda...