Apparently following a tweet the senator sent me, and I suspect a number of other constituents, a response to a request for his support of marriage equality. Dear Reverend Ford: Thank you for contacting me regarding same-sex marriage. I have been reviewing and thinking about this issue for some time out of respect for Rhode Islanders with varying viewpoints on this issue. It is a matter that deserves and demands serious and thorough consideration, not a quick reaction, because it... Read more

A drizzly and dark morning here in Hingham. Sitting in a little coffee shop, sipping a latte, checking emails and throwing up a brief posting here ahead of the last part of my clergy conference being held at a Catholic monastery just outside of town. I’ve just waltzed through the headlines and see that North Carolina passed a nasty little bit of legislation enshrining hatred for homosexual persons and restrictions on their basic civil rights in their constitution. As a... Read more

Happy birthday, Gary! Gary Snyder is an American original, teacher, translator, Pulitzer prize winning poet, environmental activist and American Zen pioneer. As nearly everyone knows Jack Kerouac celebrated him as Japhy Ryder in the Dharma Bums. Even though we share lineage connections (that’s Zen talk for meaning we practice in the same schools of Zen), I’ve only met him once. And the “met” really deserves those scare quotes, as what it was was I was working at Moe’s Books in... Read more

Over at his wonderful blog, Wild Fox Zen, teacher Dosho Port talks about the supernatural in Zen. He quotes Dogen, our ancestor, on the subject. “The four elements of supernormal powers are: the supernormal power of desire, the supernormal power of the mind, the supernormal power of effort, and the supernormal power of contemplation.” The real magic… Read more

THE WHOLE SHEBANG: Preacher Casey, Tom & Ma Joad & the Way of Universal Salvation James Ishmael Ford 6 May 2012 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. The Book of the Revelation of John the Divine 14:19 These are hard times. And as I consider them, I find my mind,... Read more

Thanks to Wait, Wait for this pointer to an exquisite example of irony… Read more

I love Cinco de Mayo. It is a quintessential American holiday. And by American I don’t mean that broader use standing for all of us who occupy the two continents bearing that name, I mean United Statesian. Yes, it is observed in parts of Mexico, but like with St Patrick’s Day it is more our holiday, observed by immigrants who have become American, a nostalgic nod to the motherland. And, rather more, it has spread and become part of the... Read more

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On this day in 1776, the colony of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations declared itself independent of the throne of England. The rest of the colonies seemed to like the idea so much that they joined suit two months later… Our feisty little band were not only the first to declare independence, but fourteen years later would be the last to ratify the constitution and formally enter the union… I don’t really know what they were thinking, but I... Read more

I’m not sure what to make of it, but this article from the University of California’s News Center is certainly challenging, and it does make me think… Yasmin Anwar writes, “‘Love thy neighbor’ is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people. “In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove... Read more