Jan and I and our friend the Zen priest Dosho Port were driving back to Long Beach from Fresno, when Dosho asked “How did you avoid the draft during the Vietnam war?” I hesitated. I always avoided that question. For years it wasn’t hard to redirect the conversation. Although that seemed to be changing. A year before this conversation when talking with the spouse of a UU minister colleague who asked about the war and the draft and how I... Read more

Malcolm X is an unlikely spiritual paragon. But, he is. Malcolm Little’s father was killed when he was six years old, and his mother was committed to a mental institution when he was thirteen. After bouncing from foster home to foster home, he fell onto the streets and into crime. At the age of twenty, while serving a term in prison he discovered the Nation of Islam, to be frank, a cult based only marginally on Islam. On the other... Read more

On this day in the American Episcopalian liturgical calendar they celebrate the life and work of Frederick Douglass. I just love that. Me, while I prefer to acknowledge special and holy people on their birthdays the Christian liturgical calendar in all its variations tends to celebrate their lives on the anniversary of their deaths, the time they go to their glory. So, okay. And I admit as a marker of the totality of their lives it works just fine… Also... Read more

The other evening Jan and I were visiting with some old friends who in one of those all over the map conversations one sometimes has with old friends who you haven’t seen in a while, touched briefly upon the new Broadway show “Hamilton.” Sounds like something to see. Although, as we’re no longer on the right coast, we’ll have to wait until and if, although it looks likely, a road show version makes its way out here to Lala land…... Read more

Yesterday I heard on the news the announcement that former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had passed away. He served in the last decade of the twentieth century during the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. I’ll let others reflect on his effectiveness in those years. Although I did find myself thinking of those who step up in hard times and try to do good. But, actually, for these brief words, I found how much I... Read more

It was on this day in 1923, just shy of three weeks after his excavation team uncovered steps Howard Carter hoped would lead to the Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb, that the archeologist unsealed what would prove one of the great Egyptian treasure troves. As he looked into the darkness illuminated by a single candle, he was asked anxiously if he saw anything. Carter responded “Yes. Wonderful things.” Today one might consider that a bit of an understatement… Read more

THE MYSTERIES OF INTIMACY A Buddhist Meditation for Valentine’s Day James Ishmael Ford 14 February 2016 Pacific Unitarian Church Rancho Palos Verdes, California You may have noticed that today is Valentine’s Day. It is well known that this festival is largely the creation of a conspiracy amongst the greeting card association, the national confectioners association, and the national alliance of floral associations. I’m pretty sure we have a solid paper trail on this one, including hotel bills and photographs of... Read more

I notice that it was yesterday in 2000 that the wildly popular cartoonist Charles M Schulz died. And as it happens the next day, today, sixteen years ago, the last of the original Peanuts strips appeared. Among the many reasons I find Schulz interesting is because of the religious themes that ran through his strips. Originally they were quite orthodox, even, looking at the earliest among them, quite conservative Christian. But, things shift. As of course they do in any... Read more

Just yesterday I was thinking how Darwin’s Origin of Species, in addition to arguably being the most important book written in the nineteenth century, was a really good read. And now I notice it’s Charles Darwin’s birthday. Were he alive he would be two hundred, and seven years old today. Me, I always consider this day one to celebrate. And it turns out I’m not alone. Wikipedia notes how his birthday has been observed as something special since his death... Read more

In my opinion the only great Unitarian Universalist theologian, that is the only great religious thinker associated with the consolidated Unitarian Universalist denomination so far is James Luther Adams. I love that Adams was teased by his colleagues for believing in “salvation by bibliography.” I think it touches not only on what Adams brought to the table, but also to what a liberal spirituality might look like. I believe there is a potential treasure-trove of the heart to be uncovered... Read more