On this day in the Western Church’s calendar and for those of the Eastern Church who follow the revised Julian calendar, this is the feast of Sts Barlaam and Josaphat. (Those stubborn Easterns who continue to use the Julian calendar observe the feast on 26th of August.) This is my favorite Christian holiday. Sadly, this feast isn’t observed in the West, anymore. And I suspect it isn’t celebrated by many in the East, either. The story of the prince Josaphat... Read more

I just sent the following letter to our Congressman, Representative Patrick Kennedy, copying it to the Providence Journal. I would like to add, if you live in the greater Providence area and are looking for a church home, please feel free to investigate whether we might be that best place for you to grow deep and from which to engage the world with mercy and in quest of justice. 26 November 2009 The Reverend James Ishmael Ford First Unitarian Church... Read more

Some years back the Unitarian Universalist annual denominational General Assembly took place in Portland, Oregon. After it ended Jan & I took a rental car and drove north through Seattle across the border to Vancouver, then on a ferry west to Vancouver Island and Victoria, back down on another ferry to the US and a revisit to Seattle before finally flying home. Among the vivid images of that trip maybe the most vivid was when we were in Vancouver. We’d... Read more

There’s been quite the brouhaha in the Buddhist blogosphere about Zenshin Michael Haederle’s article Dharma Wars in the latest issue of Tricycle, the first of the national Buddhist glossies. There have been some significant rejoinders to the article. I think Enlightenment Ward and the Buddhist Blog the most on point, so far. I have a walk on part in the article, and so feel I have a dog in this hunt. And so some of my own thoughts… Mr Haederle’s... Read more

On this day in 1859 Charles Darwin’s magnum opus On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published. A hundred and fifty years! My, how time flies… Of course with this book we all began an inexorable shift in human thinking toward an understanding of evolutionary biology that would reframe how we understand ourselves and our relationship with the world. Yes, there are foot-draggers and naysayers.... Read more

Recently the Unitarian Universalist denominational president wrote about and to the youth chiding them to be socially active. I’m all for that. Most of us can use a little push to be a bit more engaged. But what caught me was that he said, a) “hanging out” isn’t a spiritual practice. And b) social activism is. I think the Reverend Peter Morales has much to offer our Association and I look forward to his having a successful time riding the... Read more

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On this day in 1620, if you adjust for the change in calendar from Julian to Gregorian, forty-one passengers of the Mayflower, which was at the time anchored in Provincetown Harbor at the end of Cape Cod, signed a compact. This document was brief enough…In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the... Read more

Alistair Cooke was born on this day in 1908. He was a fixture for part of my life as a fan of Masterpiece Theater. So, it’s nice to note… And, also, we happen to be related. Well, sort of… Cooke died in 2004 and bones from his body were harvested in a criminal conspiracy for resale. At that time my auntie was having oral surgery which required rebuilding part of her jaw. After the surgery we were informed the bone... Read more

Today is World Toilet Day. The video is funny. The subject quite serious… Read more