This morning in my email something appeared from “articleforward.” Well, actually, the only thing that appeared was the tag “The Rise of Anti-Western Christianity (Must Read).” There actually wasn’t anything attached. Intrigued I googled it. Turns out it was an article published originally at the Quarterly Review, a journal with a “non-aligned right” perspective. I found the article itself, written by Matthew Roberts, slightly modified, by whom I’m not sure, at the Brussels Journal. The lead paragraph goes: “During Pope... Read more

A Pause. With auntie home from rehab following her surgery the immediate family is officially all home together. Our idea of a good New Year’s eve, tucked in out of the storm, maybe wake up when the noise begins, maybe not. Been a year of ups and downs, like they all are. Perhaps a bit harder than some… Hoping for the New Year, pretty much like always. I feel the fragility of it all. Cherishing what is. Wanting to hold... Read more

(The talk was delivered on Sunday, February 25, 1900, at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, in California. The following notes of this lecture are as reported in the Oakland Enquirer together with their editorial comments. Thanks to the Reverend Kathy Huff, Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Oakland for this text.) The announcement that Swami Vivekananda, a distinguished savant of the East, would expound the philosophy of Vedanta in the Parliament of Religions at the Unitarian Church... Read more

The local Vedanta temple is undergoing a major building project, expanding from their old Victorian house to include a modern building connected to it. First Unitarian and the Vedanta temple have had long and positive relationships, and I’ve felt particularly welcomed into the community by their resident swami both as the minister of the Unitarian church, and as a person. Now, part of the ongoing festivities around this expansion will be a memory book of sorts and the swami has... Read more

I’m preparing a brief paper on the meeting of Unitarians and Universalists and the renowned Swami Vivekananda. I was lamenting some of the difficulties and lack of resources that I found useful, when a friend pointed me to Youtube and a clip of the swami’s opening remarks. I was quite taken with it. I particularly thrilled at hearing his voice. It was commanding and I felt a sense of the charisma people remarked of about this remarkable spiritual teacher. It... Read more

“Unitarians didn’t just inherit Christmas from the orthodox Christian sects,” Doug Muder tells us. “To a large extent we invented it, or reinvented it. For years the orthodox didn’t know what to do with Christmas. Easter was the big religious holiday. In England, Christmas looked more like Saturnalia than anything Christian. The actual caroling tradition was more like trick-or-treating than the way we picture it now. Rowdy mobs of the poor would stand outside the houses of the rich and... Read more

Slept in for the first time in I don’t know how long. I liked it. Should try that again, sometime. Much work to do today, but at a bit of a leisurely pace, until this evening, of course. Auntie needs a visit at the rehab. And, I only have a germ of a germ of an idea for this evening. Speaking of which, perhaps I’ll see some of you at one of the services at First Unitarian. Five o’clock the... Read more

While for the most part the Reformation was about who was in charge, there were also here and there people who were looking more closely at the received teachings, hoping for something truer than they had been given by the ancestors. Sometimes this was done at terrible cost. A dramatic example is how on this day in 1572 a Reformed theologian named Johann Sylvan was executed for noticing and, perhaps more importantly, for publishing the fact there is precious little... Read more

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born on this day in 1823 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard and was ordained a Unitarian minister, serving in Newburyport. He later served tne Free Church in Worcester before leaving the parish ministry to engage the issues of slavery full time. A fierce abolitionist, Higginson led a raid on Boston’s Court House to free Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave. He was a vocal supporter of John Brown. When the war came he was appointed Colonel... Read more

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