Sunday I’m preaching on Sex and Religion. Okay. Maybe with capitals. Maybe not… The exact shape of the sermon is only now forming out of the aethers…However, as I launch into my sermon writing today I see that it is Rasputin’s birthday.The venerable knew something about the subject…So, as sometimes happens when the stars align just right and the truly weird dances into reality, some of the background music for at least some of my sermon writing today will be,… Read more

On this day in 1977 Jimmy Carter fulfilled an early and repeated campaign promise.He issued a pardon to all Vietnam war draft resisters.It was the hard emotional end to a long and terrible war…This event was a very important issue for me as my brother had refused induction and had gone underground.Leaving me with regular visits from the FBI. At first they were quite aggressive, threatening various things, including sending my mother to prison. As the years passed I noticed… Read more

Robinson JeffersI guess if you want meaning, show up.Look!How beautiful… Read more

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Well, I have my fingers crossed, and my toes; but I fear the worst over the line in Massachusetts.I, for one, do believe in polls, particularly trending polls. I hope for the machine to get in gear and deliver some votes. And at least one really good observer of our American political scene gives her a slender but fighting chance. I also take comfort in my notoriously bad past political prognostication…But, I just think it won’t be enough, and likely… Read more

Today is Winnie the Pooh’s birthday.Okay, more correctly it is A. A. Milne’s birthday. Close enough.Winnie is one of my heroes, the Bear of Very Little Brain is indeed an exemplar of the great way.Now, my friends who know a great deal more about the subject than I say that the introduction to Taoism through Pooh may be an introduction, but not the most accurate. And certainly the followup wasn’t to my mind particularly compelling.But, I swear, ’tis true.Winnie the… Read more

OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR A Sermon for Martin Luther King, Jr. 17 January 2010 Claudia J. Ford & James Ishmael Ford First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that people should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. A logia attributed to Jesus at Matthew 7:12 Claudia Those of you who follow James Ford’s Monkey Mind blog or… Read more

Don Van Vliet was born on this day in 1941.What can I say? You had to be there…(Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it wasn’t me. It was Jan. Close enough…) Read more

On this day in 1786, the Virginia General Assembly adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom.A brilliant and troubled man, Jefferson gave our nation many gifts.This is one of the greatest.He himself saw this as one of the three items worth noting on his tombstone.It becomes the template for our ongoing national dialogue on the relationship of church and state…Statute of Religious FreedomI. Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments… Read more

Martin Luther King, Jr was born on this day in 1929. He would have been eighty-one today.One of the most significant figures in our American history. Admired around the world. An exemplar for our young, as well as the rest of us.And at Youtube a recording of his I Have a Dream speech had to disable the comments section because of the number of hateful and racist comments.No doubt we’ve come a long way.No doubt we have not arrived at… Read more