Wikipedia tells us that on this day in 1838, “(d)ressed in a sailor’s uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.” One of the great American heroes… Read more

There is a tiny but growing oeuvre of Buddhist themed film available here in the West. Right off the top I think of Hollywood blockbusters like Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun and Little Buddha (my favorite of these, but for which at this moment I cannot find a trailer…). It is interesting these big flicks illustrate Tibetan Buddhist themes, particularly the idea of rebirth which in the Tibetan telling and the Hollywood interpretations looks a lot like reincarnation, a controversial... Read more

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The other day I found my father’s VFW cap. It carries the ribbons from his war years. Among them is a Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters. I know lots about how he got them. Among other things I spent my childhood watching the shrapnel working its way out of various parts of his body… Now his life wasn’t much before the war. And he threw most of the rest of his life away following the war, and in... Read more

Thank you, Tony, for the pointer… Read more

Not long ago I was sitting in a local Providence coffee shop with a ministerial colleague discussing strategy in support of marriage equality. Rhode Island is the last New England state to not allow same gender marriage and I am part of a group of progressive clergy committed to changing that. My colleague, a liberal Protestant minister, alluded to how as late as the early nineteen seventies in American law a man and a woman who married were a “single... Read more

I’m not sure where the term first settled into my consciousness as something wrong, but perhaps it was early on in my ministry when I’d meet with young couples preparing to marry. Rather than use more or less traditional “’till death do us part” language to express their level of commitment, they’d a little too frequently ask for euphemisms such as “for as long as love lasts” or, and this is what I’m thinking about, a promise to give the... Read more

I see that Robertson Davies was born on this day in 1913. He is one of my favorite writers, near as I can tell I’ve read every one of his novels. Sometimes called a “gnostic,” he took what I consider some of the more interesting aspects of Jungian approaches and wove them into his fiction. Although I have to admit the retelling in this video of his great novel the Fifth Business makes it appear there was quite the soap... Read more

The Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, best known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, the great Jewish mystic and founder of the Hasidic movement was born on this day in 1698… Read more

Edward Kennedy died last night. I can think of no figure thrust into the public light so inappropriately, who started out so badly, to have such trouble controlling his personal appetites and predilections for so many years, to at the same time grow and grow to such depth and wisdom and to become so important to our nation. I know how badly I’ll miss him and his energy and his commitment to the good fight… Rest in peace, Teddy. You... Read more