It appears that every few years someone or another discovers Jesus spent some time in India and or Tibet before beginning his teachings which we find recounted in various Gospel versions. The primary document addressing those “missing years” before that public ministry is a text originally titled Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men. The editor/translator was a Russian journalist Nicolas Notovitch. In fact this book was exposed as a fraud almost immediately by the renowned F.... Read more

Mason Jennings Thank you Worst Horse – once again! Read more

Just thinking of Lenny Bruce who forty-four years ago yesterday was sentenced to four months of hard labor for an obscenity conviction. Read more

Roger Williams was born on this day in 1603. Born Anglican and religiously precocious, at eleven he embraced the Puritan wing of the church. He had a facility for languages, and famously worked with John Milton, teaching the great poet and theologian Dutch in exchange for Hebrew lessons. Graduating from Cambridge he ordained and began serving as the domestic chaplain to a wealthy family. His puritan sentiments revolted at the ascension of William Laud to Canterbury and so he and... Read more

Done shoveling. But also looking out the window, I see more snow falling… Found myself being grumpy for a minute. But… Thank you, Frank, for another perspective. Read more

Ever since President-elect Obama announced he has invited the Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration I’ve found myself brooding over what is the best way for those of us who see LGBT rights writ large and particularly who support marriage equality to engage the larger population in ways that actually turn hearts and will lead to this next great civil rights victory. I recall how a few years ago after I delivered a particularly forceful sermon... Read more

Erran Baron Cohen & Y-Love Read more

I notice how today is the anniversary of Robert Ingersoll’s defeat and capture at the battle of Lexington. A young lawyer commissioned as a colonel in the Union army, he was imprisoned before being paroled on the promise of not fighting further in the war, a common process early in that conflict. A brilliant lawyer Colonel Ingersoll would go on to become attorney general for the state of Illinois as well as a renowned litigator. He was also the foremost... Read more

It is too bad that President-elect Obama has selected the Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation at his upcoming inauguration. Mr Warren is an interesting figure, in some ways possibly correctly described as his generation’s Billy Graham. But his disgraceful and oh so recent advocacy of California’s hateful Proposition 8 should have eliminated him from this particular event. Too bad, too bad… Read more

The photos are in from our Boundless Way 2008 “Freeze Yr Butt Off” Rohatsu Sesshin. (Well, maybe the official name is a bit more decorous…) This is our “official” photo, less formal than usual, and we lost a couple of folk before it was taken, but feels like it captures the gang. This is me somewhere near the end. I appear to be grumpy. Perhaps you can smell the three day lack of showers… This is our mascot, who generally... Read more