Thanks and a bathtub...

Hello to any who (and I would be astonished if its anyone!) may still get this post. I loved posting as Boston Unitarian and am very grateful for those who checked in now and again. Life has taken some turns and many changes have occured hence the lack of posting for some time. Years ago I attended a James Taylor concert during which he introduced a new song by saying, "this is a new song...it sounds just like the old songs." Well the same is true with this space. I am closing down Boston Unitarian but have started a new blog called "Tching Thang's Tub" which (I think) can be found here, and, which, sounds like the old blog. Blessings to all and thanks again for everything!

keep learning...

My blogging has been pretty sparse over the past couple of months (Bill, if you are reading this, thanks for asking after me.) I plan to talk a bit about why this has been so over the next couple of days. For now, this from an early interview of Yo Yo Ma heard this morning on Boston Classical Radio. Ma talks of something his friend the great pianist Emanuel Ax once said to him. "The best thing about being a musician," said Ax, "is that you can keep learning all your life." Amen. I would only change the word "musician" to "human." blessings

your old nonsense...

This from Emerson's "Nominalist and Realist." If only...

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on yesterdays."

blessings

Lincoln...

O for an Abraham Lincoln today...

blessings

lay on more fuel...

This from the 19th Century Unitarian Devotional, "Day Unto Day" often excerpted in these pages...

"My strength faileth because of mine iniquity. — Pa. xxxi. 10.

Oh, say not so! thou canst not tell what strength
Thy God may give thee at the length;
Renew thy vows; and if thou keep the last,
Thy God will pardon all that's past.
Vow while thou canst, while thou canst, vow; thou
may'st Perhaps perform it when thou thinkest least.
George Herbert.

"When a man is to run a race of forty furlongs, would you have him sit down at the nine and thirtieth, and so lose the prize. We do not keep a good fire all day. and let it go out in the evening when it is coldest; but then rather lay on more fuel, that we may go warm to bed." — But "He that is strong with his own strength falls before temptation; he is humbled in the dust. . . . Whence is our strength? From God alone."

The God of Israel is He that giveth strength and power unto His people. Blessed be God. —Pa. 1xviii. 35."

Blessings

dreadfully...

Over at her "Unitarian Universalist Quotes" Blog, Rev. Naomi King posts the greatest quote I have heard for some time.

"Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this – that you are dreadfully like other people."
James Russall Lowell
(pictured)

Amen
(and thanks)

highly risqué...

Dean Grodzins, in an excellent essay included in the truly outstanding "Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism" rightly describes the central difference between traditionalist Unitarians and the Transcendentalists as being centered in "the distinction...between two different kinds of religion, one "natural" and the other "revealed." He relates the following story to illustrate the point...

"In 1840, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller saw the Austrian ballerina Fanny Eissler dance-a performance that proper boston thought hightly risqué. They were very impressed. According to a story that made the rounds, Fuller told Emerson, "This is religion!" A Boston Unitarian lady, hearing the tale, exclaimed with a laugh" 'Both natural and revealed!'

Blessings