The brilliant Peter Bowden of UU Planet has just produced two clips for our First Unitarian website. Read more

I see today is the feast of Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary to Japan.While fervently hostile to nonChristian religions, with some blood, if indirectly, on his hands in that regard, I believe he is also the first moderately accurate reporter of Zen writing in a European language.He appears to have actually cultivated a genuine friendship with Abbot Ninshitsu of Fukushoji in Kagoshima. They spent many hours together and talked of many things.Heinrich Dumoulin gives a delightful accounting of Xavier’s inquiry… Read more

Sounds like my crowd… What is confusing is why anyone would want a different gang? Read more

Today as any fan can tell you is the birthday of Rex Stout, and therefore of Nero Wolfe. I got through the tail end of my undergraduate experience in my late thirties, and the beginning of my seminary days thanks in good part to Mr Stout’s tales of Nero Wolfe, Archie and the gang in that brownstone in a timeless New York. Well, the clock worked for everyone but Nero, Archie and associates who from the depression into the nineteen… Read more

Shirley Chisholm would have been eighty-five today.I think she would have loved last year’s election, particularly the primary, having lots of problems picking her candidate… Read more

ARJUNA’S DILEMMAA Reflection on Killing, the Spiritual Life and the Quest for Meaning29 November 2009James Ishmael FordFirst Unitarian ChurchProvidence, Rhode IslandTextKishna, the great Lord of Yoga,revealed to Arjuna his majestic,transcendent, limitless form.With innumerable mouths and eyes,faces too marvelous to stare at,dazzling ornaments, innumerableweapons uplifted, flaming –Crowned with fire, wrappedin pure light, with celestial fragrance,he stood forth as the infiniteGod, composed of all wonders.If a thousand suns were to riseand stand in the noon sky, blazing,such brilliance would be like the… Read more

On this day in 1965 Arlo Guthrie was convicted of littering…’Twas an early example for me of how weird karma actually is… Read more

William Blake 28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827 Read more

Will Shetterly posted this picture he found on the web. I’m hoping it was photoshopped. I fear it is not…Will titled it “How Class War Works.”I’m not positive, although that certainly is part of it…I’m sure the casual cruelty of children also plays into it.And this astonishing human ability to separate ourselves from others, to not see how deeply we are in fact connected, to miss that when one of us is hungry, the world cries out in pain. Deaf… Read more

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