The Vietnamese born Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was born on this day in 1926. Happy birthday, Thay! And best wishes for many more… Read more

Martin Luther King, Jr preached “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” I look around me and find it hard to believe. But then, every now and again something happens, and it gives me pause. And I think our old teacher might be right… Read more

Today I’m at the house. Three of the nine “pods” that contain our worldly goods have just arrived with me on hand to see that they are situated in such a way down our drive way to allow them to actually be unpacked. I’m about to poke through them to see what arrived. (The plan at this moment is for us to sleep in the house Saturday night. And it looks like a plausible plan what with auntie’s new bedroom... Read more

John Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) thank you, Chalicefire… Read more

Last night about ten members of First U sat down together and walked through the draft Principles and Purposes language proposed by the Commission on Appraisal. The document was found to be verbose and the general take away was that it offered no improvement on the current language and was in fact troubling in several areas. The group felt the “identity” section might have been better named “history,” and wondered about the appropriateness of the term “heretic,” and the whole... Read more

Joe Hill was born on this day in 1879 & noticing that sets my brain to racing. I observe how representatives of the American right wing object when people notice how the majority are slipping ever further down even while a small minority of our people are flourishing, and various remedies are suggested. Such as cutting taxes on the lower & middle classes and rescinding the array of tax breaks the rich have been given in the past eight years…... Read more

I notice that on this day in 1966 LSD was declared a dangerous drug and made illegal in the United States. That led to a small flash back, if you will, taking my imagination to a long gone era… Today I’m not a big fan of drugs, and at this point in my life consider various spiritual assertions on behalf of the drug mildly amusing. At the same time I haven’t always felt this way. Those spiritual assertions were powerful... Read more

THE ART OF CONVERSATION Reflecting on Spiritual Practices Within Liberal Congregations James Ishmael Ford 5 October 2008First Unitarian ChurchProvidence, Rhode Island Text Long ago, a rural village in Japan decided to build a temple and invite a Buddhist monk to come and minister to them. There were two applicants who seemed qualified, so the village decided to put them to a test in order to determine which one would be their new spiritual leader. In the middle of the village... Read more

Some years ago I ran across a little volume describing a visit to Japan sometime before the second world war. The writer described encountering a small Buddhist society following an adaptation of the rule of St Francis. I’ve lost the book and have never been able to find anything else about this little band, almost certainly consumed in the fires of that second great war. But who they might have been, their purpose in gathering, and the work they may... Read more

While working on this coming Sunday’s sermon I followed the following down the way for a bit, but eventually saw it really didn’t fit in the sermon. I’ve walked down any number of these alleys in the past. And in the past this passage would be cut and maybe, if I really liked it, filed away. Although truth be told probably never to see the light of print. However, now I have a blog… Buddhist scholar Jeff Wilson cites Henry... Read more