These are the writings and photos received from Rev. Joseph Boyd while on sabbatical during March, April and May 2024.
March – Japan
I wanted to update you with some pics, and a brief overview of my adventures while away on sabbatical. I plan to share a more extended account with videos and pics that Jennifer took, but for now this will give you a taster of our experience of Japan. I feel that it’s the specific details and interactions with people along the way that make a trip memorable, so I wanted to share with you at least a few details that I recall.
We took a 14 hour flight from JFK directly to Hong Kong for an overnight stay to begin the journey. We arrived and had an amazing vegetarian meal not far from where we were staying, and Sampson, the manager of the hotel took one look at me, and said they would need to find me a bigger bed to sleep in than the one we reserved. For no extra charge, he gave us a bed that fit perfectly. In the morning we woke up and ate noodles in the park, where a small group of men were doing their morning ritual of Qi gong, handing a sword back and forth to each other for balance.
The next day we flew to Tokyo, arriving at night. Our hotel booked us a free taxi from the airport to our hotel with a 2 hr time limit of waiting once we arrived. We figured that would be plenty of time, but we were wrong. Customs and passport checks took more than a couple hours, but our taxi driver stayed without abandoning us. He drove us to our hotel free of charge, and I gave him US currency (all I had at the time), to show some appreciation. Once I was able to communicate how much the US currency was in yen, he looked happy. When we arrived at the hotel, the wonderful people at the desk gave us a high proof grain alcohol drink gratis, which put us right to sleep.
Our first day the next morning we took a bullet train to Yokohama to do zazen at Sojiji in the morning, one of the most important Zen Buddhist training monasteries in Japan. Maezumi Roshi who started the lineage Rev. Daiken Nelson and I are in, spent his formative years during post-WWII Japan living and studying there. It felt powerful to pay respects to his effort, and to do zazen (seated meditation), with people from all over the world, making new friends in the dharma. Most of the monks in Japan are young men who have lived there for years, and they had a buoyancy and lightness that reminded me of my time in grad school.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that if I describe every place we visited, it will be way too long for the Update. A great problem! So I will just give you a teaser of some of the other places in Japan we visited, with a more in depth description when I get back: Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Fukui. It was absolutely incredible, a trip that has changed the way I feel and look at the world. I can’t wait to share more when I get back in June.
I miss you all, and I plan to send you an update about our upcoming adventure to New
Mexico…talk soon.
In Faith,
Rev. Joseph
April – New Mexico
One of the places I wished to spend some time in during this sabbatical was the desert. As I learned at the anthropology museum at UNM-Albuquerque, this desire was shared among different indigenous tribes for thousands of years. Large populations would routinely gather for months in the desert where food and water were scarce for no reason that can be easily discerned, other than perhaps religious reasons.
Driving through New Mexico gave me a feeling of vastness and possibility. As I drove from Albuquerque to White Sands National Park in Alamogordo, I saw what Georgia O’Keeffe said about the land: it glows. The sun hits the desert and brush in such a way as to illuminate everything, including the person viewing it. I’ll never forget the feeling. We stopped to see petroglyphs, ancient drawings etched into the rocks, wary of surrounding rattlesnakes.
As we traveled up to Santa Fe and Taos, I enjoyed seeing the old missions and Spanish homes, some dating back to the 17th century. I was reminded of the relationship between place and art, how imagination inspires place, and how place inspires imagination. This reminded me of Youngstown, and the sense of imagination this city has inspired in me.
It was not planned intentionally that we would in the course of months be in both Hiroshima and Los Alamos, NM where the atomic bomb was built, but it felt important to bear witness at both places. Los Alamos still has a federally funded laboratory with half of its budget (2 billion) dedicated toward maintenance and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and the other half dedicated toward nuclear medicine.
The visitor center was staffed by retired scientists who worked in the lab. I was surprised to learn that the visitor center and museum at the site of the Manhattan Project first opened in 2015, less than 10 years ago. In Hiroshima, the emphasis was on the human cost of war and the use of science for mutual destruction. In Los Alamos, the focus was on the use of science in maintaining the US as a dominant military power. We met one man at the museum who had been to Hiroshima as well, equally sobered by reels of Americans celebrating the dropping of a bomb. It disturbed me, and my hope going forward is that disturbance may be constructive toward a more holistic compassion for our situation at this time in history, as well as a commitment to less suffering.
The last part of my sabbatical will be a pilgrimage walk along the Way of St. Andrews in Scotland. I am hearing it will likely be damp and cold at times, but Jennifer and I are excited to explore part of this country on foot in the tradition of pilgrims going back centuries. I’m looking forward to sharing much more with you in person when I’m back in June…look forward to seeing you soon.
In Faith,
Rev. Joseph
Coming soon…
May – Scotland