Jim Sherblom's Blog, page 4

SPIRITUAL PILGRIM

I just sent a rough draft of my second book, SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Lessons from Mystic Journeys with Five Faiths, to my favorite editor to begin the process of polishing it.  I continue to enjoy the journey.  If you haven’t read my first book, SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: Six Disciplines of Human Flourishing, please buy it and read it.  If you enjoy it, please give it a five star review on amazon.  That is the only way amazon will offer it to others to read as well.  Thank you.  Jim

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Beginning Well

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When beginning a new adventure I always begin with hope, audacious aspirations, and a fair amount of fear of failure.  Yes, in my life I have taken great risks and succeeded beyond all expectations, but I have also ventured and failed so many times before.  So it is with great joy and relief that I report that sales of SPIRITUAL AUDACITY, in its first month post-launch, have exceeded all expectations.

It has been among the top 5% best selling books on amazon, has already garnered eight five star reviews, and my distributor has shipped over 200 copies of my book this first month.  I am very grateful for all of you who believed in me and encouraged me on this path.  getting this message of human flourishing out to a wider audience feels like my newest ministry.

If you have not yet read my book, please buy it and read it, I want to know what you think of it.  If you have read it, and liked it, please post a review on amazon.  Amazon says if I can get fifty positive reviews of my book then they will offer it to others seeking spiritual books as well.

Thank you all!

 

 

 

Transcendentalist Concord

Last night friends and transcendentalists gathered at First Parish in Concord to welcome Concord’s latest transcendentalist author’s book SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: Six Disciplines of Human Flourishing  https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Auda... into the literary world.

First Parish’s senior minister Rev. Howard Dana opened with a poem from Mary Oliver, perhaps America’s leading living transcendentalist poet.  Then he offered a few words on human flourishing.  Next Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom explained how the book came to be and read excerpts from the chapters on divine mystery and spiritual awakening.  The evening culminated with Louisa May Alcott, courtesy of Orchard House, wandering in to congratulate Concord’s latest transcendentalist author.  Now on to the October 5, 2017 author’s night at the Concord Library.

Audacity for Unitarian Universalists

Anyone who knows me well knows I delight in being audacious.  Like sitting down to write the story of my life as a spiritual memoir, and it becoming a guidebook to  help discover your own spiritual path. I have traveled a strange and mystic path and hope it helps you on your journey.

If you are anywhere near First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Concord, MA from 7 pm to 9 pm on Friday, September 22, 2017,  please come by and join our celebration and book launch party.  There will be readings, refreshments, and books to buy and sign.  All are welcome!

Sherblom Family Forest

As part of my family’s attempt to positively impact global climate change we donated money for Camino Verde to acquire and restore forty acres of Amazonian rain forest.  This short youtube video provides a first glimpse at what they are calling the Sherblom Family Forest.  

Worldwide Spiritual Audacity!

I just googled myself and found that my new book SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: Six Disciplines of Human Flourishing  is now being offered for sale in the USA, England, Sweden, Australia, and even New Zealand.  I am shocked at how fast the web makes this possible.  Hurrah!

Please review SPIRITUAL AUDACITY

If you enjoy SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: Six Disciplines of Human Flourishing please:

Tell all your friends on social media!
Write a five star review on amazon or goodreads!
Buy and gift extra copies to friends and family!

Publishing this spiritual memoir is part of my ministry to enhance human flourishing.  Jim

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Failing Retirement again

It is about twenty months since I retired from parish ministry and set off on a pilgrimage up the Ganges River in the footsteps of the Buddha to find awakening and enlightenment.  That experience led me to envision and write a spiritual memoir now being published as SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: Six Disciplines of Human Flourishing.   New York Times bestselling authors Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone describe its story as: “Jim’s spiritual journey takes him to the farthest reaches of the earth — and to the inner sanctum of his heart.”

You can find a further description of the book, and other testimonials, and even buy the book and write a review of your own (yes please do) at amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Audacity-Disciplines-Human-Flourishing/dp/1634890760/

The B U School of Public Health thought my message on human flourishing so important for its faculty and students it has organized a free September 13, 2017 seminar on how religious disciplines impact human health, based largely on my book.  Please register and attend:

http://www.bu.edu/sph/news-events/signature-events/deans-seminars/book-release-events/spirituality-and-public-health-how-religious-disciplines-impact-human-health/

Then First Parish in Concord is hosting a book launch party from 7 pm to 9 pm Friday September 22, 2017 to welcome this book into the world.  All are invited!

So now I am busily working on my second book, SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Lessons from Mystic Journeys with Five Faiths having clearly failed retirement again.  Where the spirit leads I go. 

Mentors and Teachers

I have been richly blessed by mentors and teachers who helped me along my way.  None was more important to my emergent Unitarian Universalist ministry than Rev. John Buehrens, who reached out to me during my first year at seminary, and has been an important mentor and guide to Unitarian Universalism ever since.  As part of my own way to give back, this Thursday I will begin at Yale Divinity School as a lecturer on Unitarian Universalist Ecclesia, Ministry and Polity, providing me with a chance to pay forward the gift of teaching and mentoring.  Blessed Be.

Sermon on Human Flourishing

 In telling the story of his awakening Confucius said, and I paraphrase, “At 15, I set my heart on learning.  At 30, I planted my feet firmly in day to day living.  At 40, I no longer suffered from uncertainty.  At 50, I knew what made my heart sing.  At 60, I knew equanimity.  At 70, I became an authentic person of no fixed position.”

Confucius lived masterfully.  In sitting down to tell the story of my life, I discovered that there were six spiritual disciplines of human flourishing that had guided me to my own awakening.  Like Confucius I could say at 15, I set my heart on learning.  At 30, I planted my feet firmly in day to day living.   At 40, I far less often suffered from uncertainty.  At 50, I knew what made my heart sing.  At 60, I finally discovered equanimity.  So now I seek to grow in wisdom and understanding into my seventies.

For me, the first and foundational spiritual discipline was resiliency.  Let me tell you a story about how I developed resiliency at the age of six:

Ranger Elementary School was a small, aging brick building that served kids from the poorer side of Tiverton. It faced Stafford Road, the main street on that side of town, with a parking lot on one side and a large, grassy playground on the other side and behind the school. Written in stone over the main entrance door, the school motto said: “We do things because they are right, not because we are being watched.” And that was the spirit of the place, with a proud claim to righteousness and relatively little monitoring of each child’s behavior.

The teachers were not particularly well educated, and most had similarly low expectations for their students. However, it played a major role in our socialization process. Behaving appropriately was generally held in higher esteem than displays of intelligence. Being respectable was far more important than being good.

Beginning in first grade, I discovered the boys played marbles at recess. I didn’t know how to play. Marbles cost money. No one was allowed to play unless you played for keepsies, where the loser must give his marbles to the winner. This felt like a form of gambling. And even if you won, you could still lose your marbles. If they spilled onto the floor, the teacher would confiscate them and give them to the janitor.

Accumulating marbles was a risk, but having no marbles was a disaster. Many boys bought bags of fifty shiny marbles for one dollar per bag at the local variety store. For those who didn’t have that kind of money or couldn’t get it from their allowance or their parents, it was possible to buy three shiny new marbles for a dime. As a last resort for the truly destitute six-year-old, the janitor was willing to resell any used marbles gathered from the classroom floor for a penny apiece.

So everybody could afford to play, except me. I was still in debt due to that broken egg timer, [but that’s another story] so no marbles for me. I had no money, not even a penny, and knew better than to ask my mom or dad for gambling money. I couldn’t afford to play marbles. Yet I had to play! I knew I could be good at it. If only I could find a way to escape my poverty long enough to accumulate some marbles!

I didn’t want poverty to define me. At Ranger Elementary, everyone looked down on the Sherblom kids as poor. Our house was always dirty, overcrowded, and in a state of disrepair, with six-inch nails protruding from unfinished interior walls. As the fifth child in this large family, my clothes were mostly hand-me-downs. Many of these were cheap clothes when they were new, and all of them showed signs of wear and tear. Marbles felt like my destiny. My older brothers were too focused on other things to play marbles. This would be my proving ground and would become my domain. I became absurdly focused on this quest.

One day coming out to recess, I found a marble lying at the edge of the grass. Someone had forgotten it or dropped it running for the bell. Now I had my chance. I chose to play one of the smaller boys, Paul. Paul shot his marble and won. Again I felt doomed to no money and no marbles. But Paul lent me a marble to keep playing. This time, I won.

By the end of recess, I had played dozens of games and miraculously had won more than I lost. I went triumphantly back to class with two warm marbles nestled in my pocket.Every recess thereafter, I played, and every recess, I got better. I brought an intensity and focus few could bring to marbles. By spring, I was the best marble player on the playground. This is my earliest remembered experience of being in the zone, concentrating completely, and everything feeling right. I loved it! This sense of mastering the universe is highly addictive.

My marble collection grew to several hundred marbles. I began to sell them back to the other boys at two marbles for a penny, undercutting the janitor by half and virtually eliminating any competition from the variety store. Because my prices were the best in town, everybody bought marbles from me. Most days after school, my pockets bulged with marbles and increasingly with money. Now I had some spending money, so I began to buy my own used books at a nickel or dime each. I no longer thought of myself as poor. [Because] I had resources.

By the end of third grade, it was no longer cool to play marbles at recess. But by then, I’d spent some of my newfound wealth buying social status, tithed 10 percent to the church, opened a bank account with $18 from marble sales, plus gave over three thousand marbles to my younger brothers. My sense of the possible skyrocketed! I was an entrepreneur. I had a facility for money making, understanding how money works, and making my way in the world. In short, I had a facility for success.

Much I would later accomplish in life took root in those playground victories. I would never underestimate the power of focused intent and awareness [ever again].

For the rest of the sermon follow this link: http://firstparish.org/wp/speaker/rev...