All posts filed under: Divine Mystery

A Disturbance in the Force

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A Christian scholar pursues enlightenment through studying Chinese Taoism, meditating with Tibetan Buddhists, practicing meditation with Hindu holy men, whirling with Islamic Sufi dervishes, and finally traveling with shaman using psychotropic drugs. Huston Smith was a huge influence on my spiritual path. He died this week at age 97. I have taught “Introductions to Sacred Texts” using his book “The World’s Religions.” His studies with U U theologian Henry Nelson Wieman provided a context for much of his subsequent study of human flourishing through religion making him very relevant for U U’s. His life story became a very important exemplar for my own journey. Reading his spiritual memoir, “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine” both inspired some of my more esoteric spiritual adventures but was also partly inspiration for my spiritual memoirs, “Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing” and “Spiritual Pilgrim: My journeys with Christian, Sufi, Taoist and Shamanic Mystics.” His calm wisdom will be missed, but the world is better for his having lived so long. Jim

Mekong Pilgrimage

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My world spiritual pilgrimage will continue next week as I fly to Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam to travel with a group up the Mekong River to Ankor Wat. Our journey will include daily lectures by Yale professors on the religion, art, and culture of the peoples with whom we will interact. After a week traveling through rural parts of Vietnam we will cross over into Cambodia, where we will visit the killing fields, Phnom Penh, Angkor Ban, and Siem Reap on our way to the Buddhist temples of Ankor. I continue to work with my editor to revise and adapt my first book “Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing” which is currently scheduled for publication in September 2017. While I am traveling I have scheduled two additional blog posts from my website telling the story of my fall from TSI and my finding hope again. I hope those of you who are following my story which find these interesting. Upon my return from Vietnam and Cambodia I expect to begin blogging on generosity …

Diverse Baptisms

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Baptist youth achieve young adulthood around the age of thirteen. They become Christians by studying their Bible, faithfully attending worship services, participating in Christian youth activities, and being plunged below moving water in what Baptists call full immersion baptism. As I approached my thirteenth birthday was quite ambivalent about being baptized. Didn’t know if God thought I was ready yet. But my kid sister Pat, eleven months younger than me, declared she felt ready. So ready or not prepared to take the plunge! Knew what to expect from reading about Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:10: “Just as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him.” Was pretty sure the affirmation Jesus received from God: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” was unique to his situation. But was still counting on seeing the heavens opening and descent of the spirit. At least some kind of warm feeling of welcome and well done good and faithful …

Jim Sherblom - Transitions

Baptists Love Freely

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In 1638 twenty three Baptist exiles from the colony of Massachusetts had signed the Portsmouth Compact, and baptized each other in Founder’s Brook to create America’s first Baptist church, soon to be located in Providence, RI. On my second birthday, October 6, 1957, my father Rev. Edward Sherblom at the age of 36 became the founding pastor of Founder’s Memorial Baptist Church in Portsmouth RI with three dozen members in this newly covenanted freely loving Baptist congregation. That Sunday’s Providence Journal includes a wonderful picture of Ed holding me, his two year old son James Peter, named after James the first head of the church in Jerusalem and Peter the first head of the church in Rome, explaining the Portsmouth Compact to me. Growing up in a minister’s family, as a preacher’s kid, often has an incredible impact on a child, usually positive. In the Baptist tradition a minister is expected to look for signs of the Holy Spirit in at least one child in every generation and groom that child for the Baptist ministry. …

Jim Sherblom - Transitions

Transitions

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Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom preaches at First Parish in Brookline (MA), Unitarian Universalist, on “Transitions,” as he announces his upcoming departure from First Parish at the end of 2015. Transitions – September 13, 2015 (PD It’s a paradox: I love this congregation, and my role as your senior minister, and yet for your sake and mine, it is time for me to move on.  I have been overwhelmed this week with the outpouring of love and support from so many of you, thank you, thank you, you will always be a great blessing in my life.  We are a very different community then we were when Rev. Martha and I arrived here 11 years ago: a larger, more diverse, stronger, and healthier congregation.  I am enormously proud of all that we have accomplished together.  Yet on my own spiritual journey I have horizons yet to cross, which you cannot cross for me, and this congregation has its own new horizons to traverse, and I cannot lead you there either.  So comes the time to bid …