Rusty Ring

Like a lot of old people, I've come to find myself adrift at Christmas. Family mostly gone. Friends busy with their own. I nev...

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ...

(In honour of Thanksgiving.) that I was a child before helmets and helicopters Internet radio brown rice pinto beans c...

This is a July post – meaning it has little immediate relevance to Zen or hermit practice – but Tom has made it clear on his website th...

I talk a lot about gratitude on this channel. It's a habit that has two not-very-subtle origins: 1. Gratitude is the wheel of mo...

"Gratitude to squelch my anger, and tenacity to overcome the obstacles." Henry Winkler's recipe for success. Note that ...

Here's a good meditation for sojourners my age. Here at the crossroads of life, when most of ours is behind us, and what we have ...

This month past brought Rusty Ring into its tenth year of publication, not counting the four-odd months that I sat ango . This ...

Gratitude is power. (Photo courtesy of Shivam Kumar and Unsplash.com.)

I was difficult when I was younger. Part of me would like to go back and face some of those challenges and circumstances again, ex...

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

To commemorate this New Year's Day 2015 I offer a meditation on the passage of time. My brother's poetry here is so powerful...

This Christmas I'm remembering a December 41 years ago, when the one-two punch of an OPEC oil embargo and a dry summer in my hydro...

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...

"What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of w...

Cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe And murdered the House of Donald 13 February, 1692 (And thank God for fleet ancestors.) (P...

                                   From too much hope of living,                                         From hope and fear set f...

What I am about to write is not the truth. Once I was a woman. My family was prosperous, and I was passably pretty. Not the grist of po...

I'll be offline for the next 100 days, as I'm going into the woods to meditate. I'll resume posting here when I come back...

This is an ancestor gong I made from an old saw blade I found in my grandfather's shop. Each time you ring it, it sings gratitude...