On this day in 1773, the Anglican clergyman Theophilus Lindsey preached his farewell sermon to the congregation he served in Caterick, Yorkshire. He explained that he could no longer in good faith serve as an Anglican priest. His theology had shifted over the years and he was now a convinced Unitarian. The back story is interesting enough. The Anglican church as a national church was of necessity comprehensive. From the beginning of the Elizabethan settlement there were tensions between the... Read more

Nothing new, of course. But this time it is because the Dalai Lama suggests he might depart from the traditional means of selecting his successor. Thank goodness someone is standing up for the old time religion… Read more

One of my favorite spiritual books is Thomas Merton’s translation The Wisdom of the Desert: Some Sayings of the Desert Fathers. It’s a selection of stories from the medieval anthology, the Verba Senorum, telling of hermits who lived in the fourth century Egyptian desert. There are more scholarly translations; most people seem to cite Helen Waddell’s work as particularly good. And I’ve dipped into these. But I find I continuously return to Merton, probably because he seems to have what... Read more

ON READING THE KORAN AND OTHER ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SACRED A Sermon byJames Ishmael Ford 25 November 2007First Unitarian SocietyWest Newton, Massachusetts Text In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, the All-merciful, the All-compassionate, the Master of the Day of Doom. Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succor. Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed… From the opening... Read more

      With all the vagaries of movable feasts, today is both our American Thanksgiving and the thirty-forth anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was fifteen at the time. I recall the announcement over the school loudspeakers. There were gasps. A girl sitting next to me on my left started crying. I was fifteen and a snot with intellectual pretensions. I was confident I was one of a handful of classmates who even knew what party... Read more

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess by Rick Fields Thus I have made up: Once the Buddha was walking along the forest pathIn the Oak Grove at Ojai, walking without arriving anywhereOr having any thought of arriving or not arrivingAnd lotuses shining with the morning dewMiraculously appeared under every stepSoft as silk beneath the toes of the Buddha When suddenly, out of the turquoise sky,Dancing in front of his half shut inward looking... Read more

I was thumbing through Frank Schulman’s This Day In Unitarian Universalist History when I came across this listing. On this day in 1850 Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her family belonged to First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn. Masaryk spent some time in Germany studying piano. Friends there told her about Thomas Masaryk, whom she married on March 15, 1878. The couple moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where Thomas fought for his country’s independence and Charlotte devoted her... Read more

I was asked about the handful of books I thought addressed the thorny questions of how we live our lives written from a specificly Zen perspective. There are a few more, but the ones I find really, really interesting are: Robert Aitken Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics The first serious presentation of how we might engage our lives inspired by the Bodhisattva precepts of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Some readers criticize Aitken Roshi’s socialist perspective which does inform... Read more

I’ve just made the world renowned “Separated at Rebirth” page at the Worst Horse. Can Wheaties endorsements be far behind? In the meantime autographed photos are available at reasonable rates… Read more

There is obviously a pun of sorts in the title for this briefest reflection. Is “awakening” or “enlightenment” really like waking from sleep? In some ways, I think it is. But, the metaphor can be misleading, as well, if we cling to the image as the reality. For many this metaphor suggests being awake is categorically different than our ordinary lives. So, if one is awake one shouldn’t feel inappropriate feelings, or act upon them. One shouldn’t feel lust, for... Read more