I see that Thomas Hagan, admitted and convicted assassin of Malcolm X was freed from prison today. Last I heard Malcolm is still dead. I am of the opinion that people should only be put into prison for the safety of the community. Rehabilitation seems too rare a thing to put a lot of hope to, beyond that fact most people (read men) eventually age out of violence. I am very sympathetic to that deep felt desire for vengeance, or... Read more

Apparently Beethoven composed this on this day in 1810… Read more

At the foundation of your life, of my life, of all our human lives spiritual and otherwise, is seeing how we are all completely woven out of each other in a strange, haunting and terrible way where now we are one thing, now we are separate. I have no idea why things are like this, although I understand it is not unlike the way the universe is structured, where if you look at it from one angle everything is particles... Read more

At the annual Congregational Meeting of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, at the end of a nearly two year long process and following a lengthy discussion at that meeting, by a vote of seventy-eight aye, two nay, and with one abstention, the congregation voted to replace its 1882 Covenant with a new text. This Covenant is the fourth one the congregation has voted since it first gathered in 1720.We the members of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, with... Read more

GOING IT ALONE And Other Conundrums of the Spiritual Life in a New Age James Ishmael Ford 24 April 2010 A Sermon delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Ballou Channing District of the Unitarian Universalist Association A couple of years ago I was sitting in my office with a younger colleague. We were talking about church growth and particularly our shared perceived need to attract younger people, roughly in my friend’s age bracket. I was enthusiasing with ideas, positively... Read more

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Some rather clever person figured out that as William Shakespeare was baptized on April the 25th (although I also found another source that says he was baptized on the 26th…), he would have been born on this day in 1564, unless, of course, you think there never was a Shakespeare and that Frances Bacon has been robbed, unless it was Christopher Marlowe, or perhaps Edward de Vere. Or somebody else, anyone other than the grasping and unworthy son of a... Read more

may there be many more earth days to come… Read more

John Muir was born on this day in 1838… Read more

I write this reflection on Adolf Hitler’s one hundred and twenty-first birthday. It triggers in my mind that telling and unsettling remark from Bertrand Russell, “the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” There should be little doubt about one thing. We live in perilous times. Our republic is sharply divided. Those unhappy with the current administration are waving signs with messages like “this... Read more