I continue to stew over a Unitarian Universalist clergy event I attended where I felt modeled to frame my ministry as a call from a deity. (Yes, this can be an issue within the Unitarian Universalist Association, which while rooted in Protestant Christianity, has no creed and has for a very long time admitted clergy who are not theists. I am only one of a number of Buddhist clergy within the Association, and we share a generally nontheist stance with... Read more

’nuff said… Read more

a loss for the world… Read more

TELLING STORIES A Consideration of Human Liberation James Ishmael Ford 25 September 2011 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text I grow up by internalizing some of the stories that society provides: they create me and I reinforce them by acting in ways that validate them. Stories teach me what it means to be a boy or girl, father or son, Caucasian or (or Black or) Hispanic, American or Chinese, Christian or Buddhist, the importance (or not) of school and... Read more

The following has been floating around the web for a while. One source sites seeing it as early as the year 2000. It just popped again on my Facebook account. And I thought it worth archiving here. It appears that once on her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that homosexuality is an abomination according to scripture and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.  This would be a reference to Leviticus 18:22. It appears Dr Schlesinger has since distanced herself... Read more

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On this day in 1932 Mohandas Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar signed the Poona Pact. It was a period of hardball politics, where Gandhi and Ambedkar representing on the one hand the leading upper castes of Indian society and Amdekar representing what we now call dalits, untouchables, and for which the polite term of the time was “depressed classes,” came together to stand against English rule. I wish Ambedkar was more familiar outside India. A formidable figure, brilliant, difficult, and... Read more

Where do I complain? Or, at least, claim some royalties… Read more

A worthy successor to Edward Kennedy… Read more

My father was born on the 21st of September in 1919. His was a rough life. Orphaned, passed around, institutionalized, run away, lived on the streets, petty crime, maybe greater crimes, prison, released into the Army toward the end of the war, medic, badly, badly damaged, alcoholic, in and out of jail, dreamer, wisher, wanter of better and bigger things. Wanted to be an Irish Frank Sinatra. Wanted to be classy. Betrayed his family over and over again. And, he... Read more