Good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They often begin by setting a context, tell what happened, and end by explaining what it means. However, what actually happened was probably chaotic, disjointed, and with many mixed meanings and messages; which is somewhat unfulfilling in the telling.

Yesterday was a blustery day.

Please come join my author event this Wednesday Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom, author of SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Awakening Journeys of a Twenty-First Century Transcendentalist Wednesday, October 17 at 7 pm Main Library, 129 Main Street Jim’s spiritual memoir tells stories of his mystic travels on spiritual pilgrimages with Sufi’s, Taoists, shamans, Buddhists, Christians and Transcendentalists. “Equal…

If you wish to spend a delightful evening swapping stories with religious mystics,and celebrate the launch of my second spiritual memoir, come join us at First Parish in Concord at 7:30 pm on Friday September 28, 2018

Come help me celebrate the launch of my second book:

SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Awakening Journeys of a Twenty-First Century Transcendentalist

Approaching Concord’s wildness from the south or west is best done paddling on the rivers.  The Algonquin indigenous people called this ancient river system Musketaquid.  It is a land defined by its sandy esker ridges, left from the melting of the last ice age, and its plentiful waters.  My house is a half mile from egg rock, on a street that ends at the Assabet river.  I often paddle my kayak as a form of transcendental meditation there.   Once I’m on the river, with only bird sounds to distract me, my heart rate slows, and I paddle gently with the current.

A lecture for the Thoreau Society 2018 Annual Gathering by Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom adapted from his soon to be released book (September 2018) SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Awakening Journeys of a Twenty-First century Transcendentalist. 

A transcendentalist seeks to transcend the normal experience of life.  With a sense of ultimate reality, the infinitude of our soul is made real through transcendent experiences.  In Concord, nature’s wildness is usually where that happens, but this transcending of ordinary life can occur in all times and all places.  The indigenous people who lived…

Why do we still not hear the stories of our women ancestors, or ancestors of color, as we do our White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) male ancestors?  Their stories should be told. Concord’s sixth minister, Daniel Bliss (1739 – 1764), was its last Calvinist, Loyalist, and Puritan minister. The times were rapidly changing.  Bliss was, like…

It is hard to know many of the details of the lives of early enslaved African Americans in Concord, Massachusetts because they were, like white women and children, treated as property rather than as citizens of early Concord.  In the seventeenth century Concord was a subsistence farming community, so college educated intellectuals, such as ministers, lawyers, or doctors, appear to have often relied upon enslaved workers to maintain their households and farms.  But they didn’t tend to leave posterity their names or life details.

My family heritage is about fifty percent White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) New Englanders with most of the rest being descended from Swedish immigrants who moved to Worcester in the late nineteenth century to work in the precision tool industry.

For millennia indigenous people traveled long distances through the forest to live seasonally in Musketaquid.  After spring planting many tribes often summered along the Atlantic coast with its bountiful fish, clams and lobster.  It was a life in tune with nature and their environment. In the early sixteenth century they began interacting with English fishermen…

I was doing my walking meditation around Walden Pond one day this past winter when I came upon a  park ranger who is a friend of mine. 

Traveling in the high Himalayas is as remarkable for what is seen as for what remains unseen.  This is a magical and obscure place which continually challenges one’s faith and imagination. After a few days spent exploring around Kathmandu our bus ascends the switchback trails, clinging to the mountainside, and semi-paved roadway, to rise in…

This is the tale of intrigue you perhaps never heard behind the battle that morning of April 19, 1775.  Rebellious English colonists had been preparing for this day for months.  On February 1st the Second (illegal) Massachusetts Provincial Congress, with John Hancock presiding, called for the rebellion’s growing military supplies to be gathered and stored…

On the cold and drizzly afternoon of Sunday, April 15, 2018, Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom lectured about “Transcendentalism in the 21st century” to a packed, standing room only, crowd at the new Walden Pond Visitor Center.  He spoke about experiencing reality bounded by our senses alone, or guided by reason, intuition, and ultimately unknowable mystery