This Sunday as part of our Thanksgiving service, I shared the pulpit with our congregation’s religious educator, each of us addressing two things for which we were grateful. This is the first of my reflections… I find myself thinking about Frederick Douglass. He was born a slave, separated from his mother, then his grandmother, secretly learned to read, finally escaped to the North, and then, and this is the important point, instead of simply trying to put a life together... Read more

A Prayer At this moment the world offers us a gift. Silence, a few heartbeats of quiet. We may take anything we wish into that silence. Perhaps a story. Or a fragment of a story. The good rabbi Jesus told us what paradise, that place from before our first thought, what our heart’s healing looks like. He said it is a mustard seed, that is, it is like the smallest thing you can imagine. It is cast into the soil,... Read more

I found myself thinking of the Zen teacher Alan Senauke, who is also a folk and bluegrass musician, and when I went to Youtube to see if there was anything he’d done posted there, I found among a small but interesting collection, this… There’s illness in the family, and I’ve seen a lot of nurses of late. Talk about bodhisattvas right here… The Zen of nursing… Read more

An amazing photo, by Randy L. Rasmussen, a staff photographer at the Oregonian. It shows a young woman blasted directly in the face with pepper spray. The press reports this was a “sprawling, yet largely peaceful, street demonstration.” Pretty harsh for peaceful… I was reading the story when I glanced up to the news where they were playing that nasty hit piece ad against Elizabeth Warren who is running for senate across the state line in Massachusetts, trying to show... Read more

Today is the seven hundred and fourth anniversary of William Tell shooting that apple off of his son’s head. (And, yes, to arrive at dates like this one must squint and hold their head slightly to the left…) For me this event is inextricably linked to William Burroughs, who in a 1961 drunken “William Tell game,” missed the apple and shot his wife in the forehead, killing her. The one story about courage and skill in the face of tyranny.... Read more

A friend pointed me to Gyomyo Nakamura Sensei, a Japanese Buddhist priest now living in India. I see why. A fascinating guy, his father a professor at Komazawa University, so he had some strong Soto Zen influences. He ordained within one of the Nichiren sects, but left to be a nonsectarian Buddhist. He’s lived in India largely since 1976 and is affiliated with two temples there. His music collaborator for much of his work is Laura Levin (worth listening to,... Read more

Ah, the election cycle has begun out our way! Even though I’m in Rhode Island we’re hearing the beginnings of Massachusetts’ senatorial campaign. As Professor Elizabeth Warren alluded at some venue to her part in establishing the intellectual framework for the Occupy movement, that has given some ammunition to the supporters of the incumbent Republican. They have been suggesting that should we get this evil woman, this Occupy supporter into the senate, there will be all manner of disorder, including... Read more

I was distressed to see the mass clearings of various Occupy camps around the country. Particularly in light of how authorities here in Providence have handled it all, so far, it seems, a concern for all involved, allowing a long withheld and, to my mind, necessary witness being presented to the world. In Oakland among the thirty plus who were arrested at six a.m. yesterday were my UU ministerial colleagues Jeremy Nickel, Kurt Kuhwald, and seminarian Marcus Liefert, as well... Read more

‘Tis Aaron Copland’s birthday. Makes me think of a certain fanfare… Read more

THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES A Meditation On Liberal Religion and a Call to an Ecological Consciousness James Ishmael Ford 13 November 2011 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text Yunyan asked Daowu, “How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?” Daowu answered, “It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.” Yunyan said, “I understand.” Daowu asked, “How do you understand it?” Yunyan said, “All over the body... Read more