While some would so much rather it were otherwise, on this day one hundred and seven years ago, the outlaws Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid were killed in a shootout with soldiers just outside of San Vicente in southern Bolivia. It is possible one shot his mortally wounded colleague and then killed himself. I find myself wondering about our collective romance with the outlaws of our American frontier days. Largely thugs and murderers and worse. Something to do with... Read more

And, of course, there’s the other thing, that good things happening to bad people thing. Sort of like the rain falling on the good and the evil alike. I get that. But then it seems to me those who believe in a deity running the show have something to answer for. With this dualism introduced, where there is the natural world, but also a god who brings along choices and values like good and evil, well… In theological circles they... Read more

As it turns out the Anglican communion, or at least some parts of it, observe today as a feast for William Temple, onetime Archbishop of Canterbury. I like that. George Bernard Shaw, no friend of the church called Temple “a realized impossibility.” He was born in 1881, and died in 1944. Between those times, he married, although had no children, served as a parish priest, for a time as a headmaster, and eventually went into the bishop business, serving as... Read more

It has been said that Guy Fawkes “was the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.” Of course that intention was to blow the British Parliament to perdition in the notorious early Seventeenth century Gunpowder Plot. The conspiracy had to do with the Catholic resistance to Protestant persecution, and in the popular English imagination, to an attempted restoration of the Catholic church, and dreams of an English Inquisition to follow. It was on this day in 1605 that he... Read more

When we moved here to Long Beach I felt I needed two things. One was white or off white linen trousers. The other was boat shoes. I keep telling myself I’m going to lose weight, so I’m putting off the pants thing for a bit longer. But, on our way out from lovely old New England we stopped at a Bass outlet and purchased me my first pair of boat shoes. Lovely things, I think. And I quickly learned that... Read more

(Just shy of a decade ago I published this fascinating account. And it seemed time to repost it. This essay, “Sufism & Zen” is taken from a collection of Nyogen Senzaki Sensei’s lectures and writings which was published in Japan in 1936 as ON ZEN MEDITATION by the Rinzai priest Nanshin Okamoto. It describes the Zen teacher’s encounter with the Sufi master Inayat Khan. As both teachers inform my spirituality, I’m particularly taken that there was a direct connection between... Read more

Like many friends of the American Episcopal Church (I like to say if it weren’t for that little nagging thing about having to believe in a god…) I’m enchanted with the election, and as of yesterday of the installation of their new Presiding Bishop and Primate, the 27th from the establishment of the American church. That bishop, Michael Curry tells a story about a young African American couple visiting an Episcopal church in the American south in the 1940s. The... Read more

It was eighty-five years ago, on this day in 1930 Haile Selassie was crowned King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, or more simply as Emperor of Ethiopia at the Cathedral of St George in Addis Ababa. The Wikipedia article on the Emperor tells us “The coronation was by all accounts ‘a most splendid affair,’ and it was attended by royals and dignitaries from all over the world. Among those in attendance were... Read more

DAYS OF THE DEAD A Litany of Questions 1 November 2015 James Ishmael Ford Pacific Unitarian Church Rancho Palos Verdes, California Today I offer you a litany of questions. And somewhere near the end, so brief you might miss it – I’ll throw in a suggestion of an answer. Just a hint. You might think of it as sort of a small Halloween treat. To begin, I recall a few years ago going with Jan to an event for the... Read more

Today is Halloween. It is also the 498th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his famous ninety-five theses on the door of Wittenberg church. In two years I expect our Lutheran friends to have quite the fete with this. A couple of years ago in honor of the occasion I thought I should pin five theses to the cork board in my kitchen. Which, I did. After letting these points stew for a bit, today I thought I’d share a very... Read more