In the Lectionary of the American Episcopal Church today is the feast of the agnostic Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Quaker Amelia Bloomer, once a Millerite, later a spiritualist, and later still associated with the Free Thought movement, although she might best be described as an independent Christian seeker Sojourner Truth, and Methodist Harriet Tubman. Among the assigned readings for the observance is the 146th Psalm. I suspect my Anglican friends won’t mind my citing a version by the Zen priest and... Read more

Among the fun things for me on Facebook is when Friends point me in directions I was previously unaware of. Today my friend, and not just a Facebook “friend,” but a real life one, Florence Caplow noted that this Ida B. Wells’ birthday. I followed the link… Oh, my… Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on the 19th of July, 1862. After obtaining his freedom her father was able to further his education and even... Read more

Bartolome de las Casas was one of the first Europeans arriving in the Americas to exploit the new world at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Gradually he came to see deep problems in the colonial effort. He began to oppose the harsh treatment of the native Americans, bringing his case before the Holy Roman emperor. Ironically, at first he called for substituting African slaves for the native slaves. Some suggest he therefore inadvertently played a part in the beginnings... Read more

Today in 1945, when he witnessed the detonation of the first atomic bomb, one of the scientists present, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was also a student of Sanskrit, is said to have spontaneously chanted those words from the Bhagavad Gita, “Lo! Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Many human cultures have a sense of an end time. In fact while we can be sure of few things, one that is relentlessly in our face is mortality, is... Read more

    Today is the 15th of July. It’s one of those dates for those interested in American spiritual history, where it’s hard not to think about Transcendentalism. Many think of it as America’s first literary flowering. In fact it was only incidentally a literary phenomenon, not unlike the way Zen Buddhism when it came to Japan transformed that country’s literature and arts. American Transcendentalism was in fact a theological and spiritual revolution that totally transformed early American Unitarianism. There... Read more

It was today in 1791 that a series of riots swept through the English city of Birmingham, and continued for three days. The reasons were many, but they circled sufficiently around the scientist, political activist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestly, that the incident, or incidents, it was a series of assaults, are often called the “Priestly riots.” There had been long simmering hostility between the progressive Dissenters and the majority Anglican citizens of the city. The Dissenters had been pushing... Read more

According to Wikipedia when on this day Aetheistan, who was king of England obtained a promise from Constantine II of Scotland that the Scotts would not join with the Vikings in their continues conflicts, one can argue the beginning of the formation of the United Kingdom. Doubly interesting as we race toward the September Scottish referendum on whether to continue within the United Kingdom. Not a bad moment to reflect, if just for a moment or two, on the nation... Read more

Actually, I can think of circumstances where things probably can’t get worse, at least for the participants. It was on this day in 1804 that hostilities between Vice-President Aaron Burr and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton boiled over into a duel. Burr shot Hamilton who lingered for a day before dying. As I consider our current national political crisis with a gerrymandered House representing a minority and declining segment of American public opinion but for the time safely ensconced... Read more

While I’m always just a little suspicious of dates that have passed through numerous cultures over a long period of time, some set today as the day in 1099 when a month and a day after the Crusader army arrived at Jerusalem, in response to a vision of a priest they marched in procession around the walls of the city. They made their way to the Mount of Olives where the mad monk Peter the Hermit preached, exhorting them to... Read more

It was on this day in 1944 that Lieutenant Jackie Robinson refused to go to the back of the bus. Wikipedia recounts the incident. “While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer’s wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after... Read more