Charles Edward Anson Markham, better known as Edwin Markham was born on this day in 1852. He was officially the poet laureate of Oregon between 1923 and 1931. He had also been called the poet of labor. And, what touches me most, the “poet laureate of Universalism.” Beyond my spiritual circles it his poem “The man with the Hoe” that is perhaps best remembered, and it is the poem that earns him that association with labor. But, also he was... Read more

As I hope everyone knows, today, the 22nd of April is Earth Day. Earth Day is observed both nationally and internationally, and deservedly so. While we face many problems within our human communities that desperately need to be addressed, we are also in the midst of an ecological catastrophe, the outer limits of which appear to be the extinction of our species. And one would think that would get our attention a tad more front and center than it does.... Read more

Some days its impossible to choose which holiday you want to honor. For me out of the thicket of possibilities I find today, the 21st of April, boiling down to two: The foundation of Rome! Hard to want to pass on this one. I mean it evokes so many things, starting with my childhood and those stories from the book of the Apocalypse which my grandmother was fond of reading to me, and which I liked before I discovered H.... Read more

LEARNING TO FALL A Meditation on the Stoic Way A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford 17 April 2015 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text You are composed of three things: body, breath and mind. The first two are yours to the degree that you are responsible for their care; only the third is truly yours. If you do not attach your sense of who you are to your thoughts, to what others say or do, to what you have... Read more

Sir Terence Alan “Spike” Milligan was born on this day in 1918. He died in 2002. It has been argued without Spike there would be no Monty Python. A world too horrible to contemplate. So, thanks, Spike! Tons… Read more

Of course. Of course. On top of all else going down at the Ford Seymour Ford homestead, I’ve broken a tooth. Right at the gum line. I’m between dentists, and so had the pleasure of seeking out a chain with walk in service. They seem nice enough. Having googled them, I knew there have been allegations of up-selling in another state. For the most part other complaints have the air of coming from people who complain about everything. My own... Read more

John Steinbeck’s novel the Grapes of Wrath was published on this day in 1939. It would prove to be one of the formative reads in my young life. It said some hard things about our country, about capitalism, about the rich and the poor. And by the time I had finished reading it, I realized whose side I was on. My understanding has nuanced over the years. Today I consider myself a type of social democrat. I think business is... Read more

This weekend fifteen people gathered at the Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, MA, for the first, we expect annual gathering of the folk responsible for the spiritual direction of Boundless Way Zen. The gathering included all four of our senior guiding teachers, the three Dharma holders, people who have received the first of the two steps in Dharma transmission as we preserve it within our sangha, and the eight senior Dharma teachers, those mature practitioners who have accepted the responsiblities... Read more

It’s Yuri’s Night! The world, or some small part of it, stops tonight to celebrate our human reaching out into space, maybe eventually to other planets, and, who knows, perhaps someday to the stars. Yuri’s Night marks that day in 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to launch into outer space. I’ve always thought our urge to leave our planet something particularly interesting about us, no doubt in my heart, directly connected to those humans who first... Read more

Joel Grey, will always be for me the haunting one man Greek chorus to the musical adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, a vision of a world on the edge, not, I find, unlike our own. As I’ve reflected on the stories and later the film, I’ve come to think of it as a story of our human existence, with so much possibility, including, always, the possibility of our own self-destruction. And, then, with that, the choices we make. So... Read more