This is quite the day. Among many other things it is World (or, International) Chocolate Day, as well as, as pretty much any flying saucer enthusiast can tell you the day in 1947 when when a flying saucer crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. ‘Tis also in 1954 the day Elvis Presley was first heard on radio, when his freshly minted “That’s All Right” debuted on WHBQ in Memphis. Some ugly things happened on this day, as well. But, I have... Read more

A BUDDHIST WEDDING Celebrated Within the Western Tradition A Service Compiled and Edited from diverse sources by James Ishmael Ford With the assistance of Tetsugan Zummach & Dosho Port (Some years ago I composed a Wedding Service for Buddhists in the West. The following service includes a number of corrections and expansions from that earlier document suggested by the Zen priests Tetsugan Zummach & Dosho Port, and used in their 2015 wedding. While “bride” and “groom” are used in the... Read more

Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan Pathan was born in Vadodara Gujarat on this day in 1882. He is more commonly known as Hazrat Inayat Khan, Hazrat being an honorific, and sometimes by the title Pir-O-Murshid, which could be understood as senior teacher and head of a Sufi order. Inayat Khan came from a family of poets and musicians, and was himself also an initiate within three Sufi orders, although principally the Nizamiyya sub-branch of the Chisthi Order. In 1910 he came... Read more

It was on this day in 1954 Elvis Presley recorded his first single That’s All Right. Read more

On this day is 1776 a remarkable document was signed by fifty-six men. The principal author was Thomas Jefferson. The document itself the product of high minded idealism, and low politics, including the removal of a critical paragraph denouncing slavery. Jefferson, so complicated a person, penned the Declaration. What all could accept reads: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume... Read more

The Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Buddhist monk and scholar, increasingly known for his social activism wrote a very interesting meditation, Facing the Great Divide, where he attempts to define and contrast what he calls “classical” and “secular” Buddhism. While at the extremes I would agree there is indeed a divide, and probably unbridgeable, I would offer that at least in some ways these views are more like poles expressing the extremes of contemporary Buddhism, particularly as it is experienced... Read more

Nicholas Winton kept a secret for much of his life. It wasn’t until 1988 when his wife found a scrapbook in their attic that she learned the truth about her husband. Pretty much on a whim canceling a skiing trip in the winter of 1938, when he instead flew to Prague to join a friend aiding refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. He ended up being a principal organizer in the escape of nearly seven hundred... Read more

It was on this day in 1858 that the two people who first articulated the theory of evolution through natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin delivered papers at the Linnean Society. In short here’s where it begins. There are those who like to ruminate on whether Wallace was cheated out of his place in history as the “real” discoverer. The bottom line reality is the idea was in the air. I suggest because in large strokes (we wouldn’t... Read more

Today Nelson Eddy would have been one hundred and fourteen! Another child of Providence, Rhode Island, Nelson Eddy rose from poverty to become an acclaimed actor. More important within that, he was a trained opera singer, and an early “crossover” star, appealing, as Wikipedia tells us “both to shrieking bobby-soxers as well as opera purists.” He is considered the gateway for a generation to classical music. Quite an achievement… Read more

Helen Keller was born on this day in 1880. She is justly recalled as a singular figure. And, of course, in truth however unique we might be, in a deep and true way, it takes a village. None of us, even the most remarkable, the most driven, the hardest worker, ever does it completely on their own. And so this morning I find myself thinking about those people who led to the miracle that was Helen Keller. For instance there... Read more