After dropping Jan off at the train as I was driving back to the house to start working on Sunday’s sermon, I was listening to NPR. They spoke of the Normandy observations today, marking the 70th anniversary of that great and terrible invasion of the continent by American and allied forces. While it has been mentioned elsewhere that the Nazi army’s back probably was in fact broken at the battle of Stalingrad, this was something ferocious and dreadful and in... Read more

Another contribution from Adam Tebbe’s Zen in America project. Read more

There is some controversy over whether President Lincoln really greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe with the remark, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” But, what is without a doubt, he could have. Inspired by the death of her child and a vision at a communion service, Stowe feverishly wrote the book that would become a best seller and then a play that would be seen around the world, and which, did indeed, fire... Read more

Josephine Baker was born on this day in 1906. If you don’t live under a rock somewhere in the frozen north, you know she was an amazing person. A world famous entertainer, civil rights activist and heroine of the French resistance to the Nazi occupation. Read more

IT’S MORE OF AN ART, OLD BOY A Meditation on Deshan, Bowls in Hand 1 June 2014 A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text One day Abbot Deshan walked into the meditation hall, his meal bowls in hand. The cook, seeing him, asks, “Teacher, what are you doing? It is nowhere near meal time.” Without a word, Deshan turned around and returned to his room. Excerpt from “Deshan, Bowls in Hand,” Case 13 of... Read more

Old Walt was born on this day in 1819. Read more

Five hundred and eighty years ago on this day a young woman, perhaps better called a girl, barely nineteen years old, obsessed with hallucinations of divine visitations, emerged against all probabilities as a leader against an occupying army, and as it turns out, for a while a passible general, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, accused of various things, but principally of heresy. Of course, she was in fact mainly killed for the dual crimes of leading a... Read more

It was on this day in 1328 that William of Occam, together with the minister general of their Franciscan order and two other leaders fled the papal court at Avignon, confident if they stayed they would be condemned as heretics and executed at the order of the pope. The condemnation indeed followed, but without a body to burn, there was no death sentence… The issue at the moment was the extent of papal authority. While of importance to the development... Read more

Abraham Lincoln Points the Way A Memorial Day Sermon A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford 21 May 2014 Bell Street Chapel Providence, Rhode Island Text In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was a guest of a tribal chief ‘living far away from civilized life in the mountains.’ Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy... Read more

American Tortoise Rescue has declared today, the 23rd of May as World Turtle Day. Sounds right to me! Read more