Human Rights Campaign Clergy Call 2009 Read more

The Society for the Relief of free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American organization dedicted to abolition was formed on this day in 1775 in Philadelphia. Among its organizers were Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin, who would eventually become its president. I think about how long it would take to address the most glaring aspect of what is justly called our American original sin and end it in law. I think of how despite his greatness in so... Read more

for all your faults, and my god there are a lot of ’em, between you and John Adams we got a republic. Read more

THE FAITH AND THE LOVE AND THE HOPE ARE ALL IN THE WAITING Passover, Easter & the Rites of Eternal Return A Sermon byJames Ishmael Ford 12 April 2009First Unitarian ChurchProvidence, Rhode Island Text I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God.As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on... Read more

This year today is Holy Saturday. And on this day, today, in 1945 Buchenwald was liberated. If ever there were a commentary on the death of God, Edward R Murrow gave it here… The person who put the video clip up at Youtube asks rhetorically how this compares with objective reporting today. I’m not sure what that individual means, but it appears to be some snarky assertion that somehow today you can’t get such reporting. Consummate b.s., of course. But,... Read more

A lovely twenty three minute reflection on Zen practice in America at the conservative Rinzai Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, led by the Venerable Joshu Sazaki Roshi. The filmaker is Tom Davenport, an old Zen hand. Read more

First a thank you to all who have send messages of concern and support regarding my auntie. We are following the path that has been laid out for us, still engaged in various forms of testing, although the larger conclusion that this is cancer is the working assumption… Of course in the great mix of things where the sad nestles right up against joy, it is a good thing to mark today as the foundation of the American Society for... Read more

Like for so many families we are in the midst of a breast cancer episode. My auntie who has lived within our immediate family for nearly twenty years found that lump on Saturday. Yesterday the radiologist said first, it’s two lumps, not one and second he was all but certain it was cancer. He also said our original scheduled biopsy for two weeks out wasn’t acceptable. I will be spending some part of today pursuing next steps… Those words we... Read more

The traditional calculations of the Buddha’s birth follow a lunar calendar which floats around this season. However among the various modernizations of Japan’s meji era was the establishment of a solar calendar and therefore a fixed date for observing various things. Among them is the Buddha’s birth. which is today. Now in Buddhism that word “buddha,” which literally translates as “awake,” means several different things. Here we’re talking about the buddha of history, the former prince Gautama Siddhartha who left... Read more

God Bless Vermont! Not only do they have the highest percentage of convert Buddhists in the country, having just overridden the governor’s veto, Vermont is now the first state in the Union to legalize marriage equality by legislative action. Read more