On this day in 1554, Lady Jane Grey was executed. Her husband had been beheaded a few hours earlier. It was almost exactly a year after her nine days reign as Queen of England. She was sixteen at the time of her death. They played for keeps. No doubt… And interestingly for those of us who care about religion, with this a major turn in the events that would birth the Anglican church… Read more

In my childhood at the dawn of television Saturday morning was a feast of entertainment past. As soon as they began broadcasting it would be World at War, old footage from the all too recently ended Second World War. It would be followed by various vehicles to show movie cartoons from the previous decades. Afternoons would feature many movies but frequently they would feature Shirley Temple. After she grew up, I’m glad her political ambitions didn’t pan out, a conservative... Read more

I was running through my Facebook feed when I paused to watch a video clip. It was of someone I’d not heard of sitting in a studio audience. The scene cuts to a conversation with a woman who as a child had been saved from the holocaust. The scene cuts back to the studio audience, where the woman is sitting. They then say the man who was responsible for saving her life was sitting next to her. She kisses him... Read more

In the Western calendar today marks the feast of Richard the Pilgrim. Born somewhere in the last quarter of the seventh century, he is said to have renounced his claim the the throne of Wessex in favor of a pilgrim life. He died on that journey. Lots of miracles have been claimed on his behalf since then. Wikipedia warns us to not mix him up with that other Richard the Pilgrim, a French jongleur, who was witness to the siege... Read more

A youth interviews the Reverend James Ishmael Ford of the First Unitarian Church in Providence, Rhode Island for a Catholic school project. Read more

“Unpack karma and you get cause and effect. Unpack cause and effect, and you get affinity. Unpack affinity and you get the tendency to coalesce. Unpack the tendency to coalesce and you get intimacy. Unpack, intimacy and you will find that you contain all beings. Unpack containment and there is the Goddess of Mercy herself.” Robert Aitken, Encouraging Words: Zen Buddhist Teaching for Western Students In my youth I prayed to know God. I prayed with complete earnestness, with the... Read more

One of the lovelier of many lovely (and a few less than lovely) things about coming to Rhode Island, is being in the state founded by Roger Williams. I see that it was on this day in 1631 that he arrived in North America, in Boston. Raised Anglican and ordained a priest in the lovely old tradition he converted to Puritanism while still at Cambridge. And with this launched a life long spiritual quest. He is celebrated in the calendar... Read more

While it may be pushing the current a bit, today is Imbolc, a festival of my ancestors marking the beginning of Spring. And let me tell you, like my people on that little island for so long, so long, at this moment I’m ready for Spring… I’m also among that crowd that are pretty sure this is the origin for what has become the Feast of St Brigid. While I believe there was a Christian of the name, it seems... Read more

    I have a more or less daily practice of looking at Wikipedia’s list of events, births & deaths for that day. Today as I ran through the list I noticed a feast for an Episcopal priest. I often find who the Anglicans make “saints” interesting. And, indeed… Today is the Feast, as it were, contemporary Anglicans don’t really quite go so far as to officially create saints, of the Reverend Canon Samuel Moor Shoemaker, III, DD, STD. It... Read more

England’s King Charles the first, a foolish man, and an unworthy leader believing with all his heart he deserved to be a king because he was the son of one, was beheaded on this day in 1649. No great loss. Turns out that in a bad attempt at poetic justice the dictator who ended up in charge following Charles’ fall, Oliver Cromwell, was beheaded, or rather his corpse was beheaded on this day, some two years after his death. Power... Read more