If you’re unfamiliar with Gavin Aung’s Zen Pencils, you’re in for a treat. He illustrates quotations he finds throughout the world’s spiritual traditions. Here Gavin takes the heart of something C. S. Lewis wrote in his study the Four Loves. The full quotation follows the cartoon. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give... Read more

A Facebook friend announced he will be going to Japan for Zuise next month. This is a major rite of passage in Japanese Soto Zen. Although largely replaced within the North American Soto community by the Dharma Heritage ceremony, nonetheless it is a momentous occasion, and I wish him all the best on this important marker in his spiritual life. In his announcement he included a lovely clip about Daihonzan Sojiji, one of the two principal training monasteries in Japanese... Read more

KISSING THE LOVER IN THE MOUTH OF BREAD A Meditation on Service and Spirituality James Ishmael Ford 13 October 2013 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold Service was joy. Radindranath Tagore It was ten o’clock in the evening on March the 2nd, 1962. A Friday. We had a moderate sized black and white television. In retrospect and given our... Read more

Today an old friend cited that line often attributed to Karl Barth, that we need to preach holding the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other. It reminded me of a recent flurry of thoughts and comments on various contemporary Buddhisms in the West, increasingly called Buddhist modernism. Among the critiques, as I read them, is that contemporary Western Buddhism too often is both dismissive and ignorant of the richness and complexity of the Buddhisms practiced in... Read more

It was announced this morning that the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Canadian Alice Munro. Read more

ON this evening in 1982, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical based upon T. S. Eliot’s delightful little book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats opened to rave reviews. Running for eighteen years, it would prove to be the second longest running production in Broadway’s history. How many people followed it to the book remains unknown. I hope, many… Read more

THE PASSION OF FANNIE LOU HAMER 6 October 2013 James Ishmael Ford Senior Minister First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice. We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our... Read more

Okay. Here’s how I see it. I believe some basic sort of access to health care is a human right. Each society has to figure out how to provide it, and how much is enough. Me, I’d prefer single payer, and with a pretty comprehensive list of services. But as we are a community that worships at the altar of private enterprise, I’ve no real problem with the plan the Republicans once thought up and has become the Affordable Care... Read more

Some people like to read a biblical passage every day. Me, I like to look up the Wikipedia listing of what happened on that day over the past whatever many years. It turns out on this day in 869 “The Fourth Council of Constantinople is convened to decide about what to do about patriarch Photius of Constantinople.” I had to dig a bit deeper into this one. Turns out Photius was a late medieval humanist who while still a layman... Read more

Actually this is Lucas Sabean’s latest, a small meditation using Jose Gonzales’ How Low and visuals from a couple of bio pics of Martin Luther. Haunting piece… Read more