THE MANDALORIAN and GROGU

The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) directed by Jon Favreau. I'm glad I missed this on the big screen. (I saw Backrooms instead.) This is essentially a condensed season of a Star Wars streaming series, forced into the mold of a movie, and it shows. It's just one Star Wars trope after another, and it wears thin. It also borrows from other franchises—Bladerunner, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter—and not in a good way. There isn't really anything interesting or new here. It's just rehashed scenes you've seen before. They feel familiar because they are. Meh.

Streaming on Disney+.

•

Kathleen Kennedy is finally away from the helm of the Star Wars franchise. I think it is also time to ask Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to step back. Let some new blood try their hand at Star Wars films.

RUSTON WAY

Ruston Way. An hour before sunset.

A walk along the water after dinner at Katie Downs.

LUCERNE GOLDCOLLAR

This year, the chickens are once again shown during the last week of the Washington State Fair. But, new, is the pigeons being shown during opening weekend. So, I brought my donations for the Puyallup Food Bank and went and visited with some of the most beautiful birds, including this Lucerne Goldcollar. He's young. He's cool. He just calmly watched as I took his photo and cooed at him.

DELIVERANCE

5 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

•

"Deliverance"
Jeremiah 15:15-21

STURGEON MOON

"Sturgeon Moon," Speedball block printing ink, art marker, and found paper on cardboard box panel.

•

Today, I observed the full moon by sitting this morning with my lineage temple for a fusatsu ceremony—a time of atonement, repentance, and renewing the bodhisattva precepts/vows I'll take in less than a year.

This evening, I sat with my home temple of South Sound Zen, for one of my "better" sits, which countered last week's body shenanigans.

•

Moon's voice is the bell 

calling me to the cushion— 

a body of tides

JUST OUR HEART

Just Our Heart (2026) directed by Maartje Nevejan. "Grief is love that has nowhere to go." It is the rare film that draws forth tears from me. This is one of those rare films. It's a poetic, cinematographic, meditative film that explores death, grief, loss, and transformation. It does so both gentle and firm. It does so obliquely, in "slant rhyme" as Emily Dickinson would say. It's about being open to being broken, to being cracked open, to engaging the tears that flow, and waving back at those who wave at us, with us. This is a truly beautiful work of documentary art.

It is also about the importance and need for rites of passage and rituals in our lives.

This is the August 2026 selection of the Tricycle Film Club.

SUCCULENCE

4 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

•

"Succulence"
Isaiah 51:1-6

MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES MANSON

My Grandfather Charles Manson (2026) directed by Sophia Maddox and Alexandra Orton. This documentary tries to answer the age old question of whether or not we are products of our genes (nature) or our upbringing (nurture). It's a film about identity, self-discovery, intergenerational trauma, and truth (or the various strands of truth).

I found it interesting because it overlaps with two strands of thought happening in my life right now—(1) my reading of The Shards, in which the Manson cult appears in a peripheral way; and (2) my current study of the three pure bodhisattva precepts (do no harm, do good, do good to/with/for others).

Is it sometimes necessary to divorce ourselves from our families, from those we love? I believe so, and this story is one such example.

Streaming on Hulu.

HINT HINT

This guy!

Wrigley is trying to get me to sit, so that he can sit too. I told him maybe later today, after dinner.

FOCUS

Tonight was the most brutal sit I've ever experienced. Instead of a cushion, I sat in a chair, otherwise it would have been an order of magnitude worse. I didn't have to confront my thoughts or my mind, but rather my body as it slowly "unravelled" into nervous system chaos. My body walked me through internal shocks, muscles tightening and locking up, and the exquisite caresses of The Visitors (who haven't shown up recently) during a grand performance.

So my glasses on the table in front of me became a point of return when stuff got too crazy. I thought of them as me watching me. It was a technique to reset and refocus, in order that I didn't bother anyone else in the room.

I did it! I survived an hour of sitting (two 30 minute sessions) and 10 minutes of walking meditation.