I’m so pleased to announce a new Boundless Way sitting group forming in Brooklyn. It will be led by my senior student Desmond Gilna. Desmond has been a Zen practitioner for nearly thirty years, studying at several monastic centers in America & Japan prior to starting working with me and our other Boundless Way teachers. I find him a sharp mind and equally important a large heart. I’m particularly confident he will prove to be a competent and generous guide... Read more
William Shakespeare was born on this day in 1564. I’m so glad… If you have two minutes, this is worth it. And if you have an hour and a half, the whole darned thing, sort of… (with a brief tip of the hat to Amy Webb for editorial assistance…) Read more
DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI A Meditation on the Free Mind and Free Religion in Hard Times James Ishmael Ford 21 April 2013 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Reading Greater love has on one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13 This past week in Boston has been an exhausting testimony of frustration, fear, hatred, and who knows what other mysterious currents of the human heart leading to a spasm of violence, two bombs exploding... Read more
A resource list from my colleague Cathy Seggel, MTS, Director of Religious Education at the First Unitarian Church of Providence, in Rhode Island. She sent it to our teachers. I thought it might be useful for a wider group of people. As the tragedy at the Boston Marathon continues to lockdown both Bostonians and the hearts of us all, we struggle to support and comfort people of all ages. When this kind of senseless violence strikes, the words of children’s... Read more
A friend just posted this on Facebook. A classic of Calvin and Hobbes wisdom. Boy I miss that strip… And it set me to thinking. I must admit to being somewhat chagrined by my friends who exult in advising people to “not be afraid” of change. I’m not actually sure they know of what they’re speaking when they say this, or rather I think they’re often more in Calvin’s camp, meaning they’re all for other people changing. I know I... Read more
Some years ago I was at the installation for a colleague as minister of a Unitarian Universalist church. These things can go on for quite a long time, and I have to admit my mind wandered on occasion. Until, that is, someone quoted a Hindu sage by way of passing on some advice to the new minister. “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows.” That caught me. I thought... Read more
It really is spring. Some places tentative… And for others, no doubt. None whatsoever… On this day in 1802 Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother took a walk where they stumbled upon a “long belt” of daffodils. It inspired her brother to compose a poem… The spirit of spring… Read more
A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO LIBERAL RELIGION Unitarian Universalism in a Thousand Words James Ishmael Ford Back in the mid nineteen seventies, after I left the Zen monastery that had been my home for several years, I stumbled upon an early nineteenth century pamphlet titled “Unitarian Christianity.” After reading it I immediately looked for where the local Unitarian church was, now called, I saw Unitarian Universalism. I fell asleep during the service. But, later, at the coffee hour I met... Read more
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