This year, 2020, our national American Thanksgiving holiday falls on the 26th of November. In some ways a propitious date. It is actually the anniversary for our first national day of Thanksgiving, proclaimed by President George Washington in 1789. It might be worth noting it was not connected to the Pilgrim story. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he chose not to continue the proclamation and as a national holiday Thanksgiving was only sporadically observed in subsequent years.... Read more

    Many years ago when I began to take night classes at the local community college in what would turn out to be the beginning of my “academic” life, one of my favorites was a survey of art history. The professor stated that his real goal for us was that we could go to a cocktail party and appear to know something about the broad swath of art. I can’t say whether he succeeded in my case. I’m still... Read more

      Sixty years ago today, in Dallas, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. It was a lifetime ago. Actually two lifetimes. The parents of adults today were not yet born. Sixty years is a long time. It is so long ago that it is less and less a matter of memory, and more and more a matter of history. For me its memory. Memory seared into my consciousness. And, most years I continue to share the memory here... Read more

    A BLESSING WAY James Ishmael Ford IN A BEGINNING In a beginning was light. And dark. In a beginning the cosmos began to unfold within a great explosion. Time and space, galaxies of stars and planets, and a hundred million million other things began to spin into existence. Living. And Dying. At some point awareness happened. Beings appeared at least once who could notice and reflect. We happened. And we wondered. AFTER THE BEGINNING We loved. And we... Read more

    On Facebook religious historian Gregory Holmes Singleton was recommending a book Edward Baring, CONVERTS TO THE REAL: CATHOLICISM AND THE MAKING OF CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Along with being a scholar Professor Soingleton is a practicing Anglo-Catholic and offered a small justification for Anglicans to read a book about continental Roman Catholicism. He wrote: “Anglicans in the 19th and 20th centuries, in both Great Britain and the United States, were surrounded by a philosophical... Read more

        FEAR & COURAGE & FAITH A Meditation on Politics and the Intimate Way   James Ishmael Ford   Finally. Finally. Apparently more than one child has been asking their parents all week, when are they going to be done watching “the map show” on television. And. My goodness it did seem like it took forever for that show to end. Waiting day after day from Tuesday to Saturday. Okay, for me, to be honest, actually, for... Read more

  Well, the election is at hand. Today the last votes will be cast to determine wether we continue along the path Mr Trump has been cutting. Or, whether we will return to that hesitant and bumpy march toward ever greater justice and care for all of us, which has been the hallmark of our liberal Democracy. It’s all pretty stark. And, if the polls are right, America’s choice will be Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Mr Biden speaks of... Read more

    Kathryn Dawn Lang was born on this day, the 2nd of November, in 1961. Probably she’s better known to us as k.d. lang. An award winning vocalist, said to have the range of mezzo-soprano, she is also a Buddhist, and did one of my favorite covers of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I appreciate the excuse to share that song today. Hard times, as you may have noticed. It seems to me people sometimes misunderstand the song, thinking its about... Read more

    Out near where my mother in law lives there’s a church “All Saint’s Lutheran.” They also sport a directional sign for parking. It reads “This way for All Saints.” And appended under that, “And sinners, too…” It never fails to make me smile. And. Today is the feast of all saints. It the Western tradition it follows All Hallows eve and precedes the feast for All Souls. I think of each of these moments, and the various categories... Read more

    This morning I was listening to Tom Wardle, one of our Empty Moon Zen dharma teachers give the talk at our Saturday morning program. I was struck by several things. One was the clarity of his message, the review of what our practices are, what they are not, and how they help us to meet the moment. And, well, certainly timely words. This particular moment is three days from one of the more monumental national elections in our... Read more