It’s hard to know anything with certainty about antiquity. Okay, perhaps that’s true for today, as well. But, history blends with myth much more completely with the old stories. Sometimes myth completely overtakes history. And, for a sacred text it doesn’t really matter, because these texts are not history books, but rather maps of the heart. A good example is the life of the Buddha. Gautama Siddhartha lived somewhere between the sixth and fourth centuries before the common era near... Read more

Over my life I’ve watched how the observances of December 7th, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the beginning of our American involvement in the Second World War have slowed down. Once banner headlines on every newspaper, today, well today there barely are newspapers. Among those stories I did see was one about the gathering of survivors of the attack who were on the USS Arizona. There are nine left, four present at the event. The story was nearly as... Read more

I love the Heart Sutra. I adore the Heart Sutra. Among those many books and poems and spiritual texts that have informed my life, the one which I find at the very center of my understanding of the way things are, is the Heart Sutra. Anyone who visits any Zen center throughout North America has heard it. The Heart Sutra is very short and its message is telegraphed so fast the subtlety and depth of its teaching can easily be... Read more

“I remember a select little group with which we traveled and camped together for some days; this group had undertaken to liberate some captive League brothers and the Princess Isabella from the hands of the Moors. It was said that they were in possession of Hugo’s horn, and among them were my friends the poet Lauscher and the artists Klingsor and Paul Klee; they spoke of nothing else but Africa and the captured princess, and their Bible was the book... Read more

INDICTMENT A Meditation on the Empire and a Promised Land James Ishmael Ford 30 November 2014 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text When the spirit struck us free we could scarcely believe it for very joy. Were we free were we wrapt in a dream of freedom? Our mouths were filled with laughter our tongues with pure joy The oppressors were awestruck; What marvels the Lord works for them! Like a torrent in flood our people steamed out. Locks,... Read more

Two noted Christian writers were born on this day. Clive Staples Lewis was born in 1898 & twenty years later Madeleine L’Engle in 1918. Madeleine L’Engle was an American Episcopalian, and a forthright universalist, which has caused her some trouble with orthodox Christian bookstores, which are reluctant to stock her writings. She is best known for her young adult novels, and particularly A Wrinkle in Time and its four sequels. C. S. Lewis was a member of the Inklings, an... Read more

Today is our American Thanksgiving. And thanks to the way different holidays are marked out, in the case of Thanksgiving falling as it does on the fourth Thursday in November, this year also happens to be my favorite religious holiday. The 27th of November in the calendar of the Roman Catholic church as well as for those of the Eastern Churches who follow the revised Julian calendar, this is the feast of Sts Barlaam and Josaphat. The Orthodox who continue... Read more

I was mildly surprised and more than a little pleased to see that the American Episcopal church celebrates today as a feast for Isaac Watts. Looking a bit deeper I found he is also acknowledged, although a day earlier in both the Church of England and the Lutheran churches. He is known in many different circles for various achievements, logician, theologian, and hymnodist, sometimes even called the “father of English hymnody.” But, he wasn’t an Anglican. He was a nonconformist,... Read more

The Episcopal church honors the Reverend James Otis Sargent Huntington with a feast on this day. The good father was the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross, an independent Anglican monastic order that eventually aligned with the Benedictine rule. A fascinating figure by himself, but if you include his father and his grandfather you get a remarkable spiritual lineage. His father, the Reverend Frederick Dan Huntington, was a Unitarian minister who converted to Anglicanism and ended up as... Read more

It was on this day in 1859, some one hundred and fifty-five years ago, that Charles Darwin’s revolutionary book On the Origin of Species was published. While the great observation is probably Darwin Day, marking Charles Darwin’s birth on the 12th of February, some mark this out as Evolutionary Day, a time of celebration, singing, dancing, and, I hope, eating a bit too much. Read more