Gathering In Light (Page 33)

Death Penalty Dead in New Mexico

My Friend posted this today, and it seemed worthy to share here as well. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has signed a bill repealing the death penalty. His statement is worth reading, here are a few highlights: I have decided to sign legislation that repeals the death penalty in the

The Theological

Barclay Press Post: Repetition and A Non-Liturgical Liturgy

Here’s my latest installment at Barclay Press. As you’ll notice I worked at weaving a number of ideas I’ve had together and tried to initiate a forward step in a Quaker understanding of “liturgy.” More on this to come. What Quakers were against wasn’t forms but

Blog Entries

What I’m Passionate About

My friend Rhett Smith is doing a weekly segment on his blog called “What Are You Passionate About?” What he’s doing every Friday is asking different people he knows to talk about their passions and share them with his readers. Here’s what he writes: One of the questions

The Cultural

Virtual Desire and a New York Police Officer

There’s a really interesting article in the New York Times today about a police office who was being charged with brutality in a criminal case. The suspect was caught carrying a gun and was purportedly punched by the officer while he was in cuffs. The Times reports that, “Officer

Church in Mission

Fan Culture and “Virtual” Communities

I’ve written about Henry Jenkins in the past, he’s Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and writes constantly about fan culture or “fandom,” remix, and other contemporary cultural happenings. I didn’t know much about him until last year when my doctoral advisor recommended I read

Blog Entries

New Book on Jesus: Seeking the Identity of Jesus

A new book on Jesus has recently published that sounds pretty interesting, its called, Seeking the Identity of Jesus. Here is the list of points the scholars in the book all came to agreement on over the course of three years working together on the project. * 1. Jesus of Nazareth

Blog Entries

A Much Needed Re-Organizing of Work (Visually)

Yesterday I was feeling really stressed about the work I wasn’t getting done. This was in large part because L decided she wasn’t going to take her usual 1.5 hour nap. I use the time she naps to clear out my email, grade papers, or work on

Blog Entries

Dress Down Friday | She Walks! (And Facebook Kills)

She walks. Is the music you’re listening to making you dumber? (HT: Hoopes) Here’s an interesting article about being Carbon Neutral on a Shoestring. (HT: Emily) Flourish: a new group for creation care that targets churches and families. Go Humans go? What does that even mean? 10 sites

Green

How Many Burgers (Or Burritos) Does it Take To Fuel Your Bike?

I remembering seeing this awhile ago in GOOD, a magazine I subscribe to and really like. I meant to post it then but totally forgot about it until today when a friend sent it to me. It’s a pretty simple equation – bicycling rocks, even more than walking! The only

Featured

Practicing Re-Collection (or Centering) Prayer

One thing that came out of our weekend retreat was a number of practices I want to work on and integrate into my life. This mostly came from the morning workshop on contextualizing the “testimony to plainness.” In other words, how do we cut out the excessive parts of our

Church in Mission

The Ironic Gesture of the Church

Ryan Bell, the pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Hollywood, invited philosopher/theologian Peter Rollins to do a two day conference called “Beyond Evandelism” at their church building (You can read Bell’s recent post on Rollins talk last night). In his talk Peter Rollins discussed a number

Andrew Sullivan

Dress-Down Friday | Bubble Project, Jesus on Twitter and Ash Friday

This is another Dress-Down Friday for February 27, 2009. Knowing my constant use of the social network twitter, my friend Cate send this: It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a video from Rocketbook – here’s a little something on advertising: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?

The Cultural

Elvis Perkins on Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, it is the first day of Lent and one day we reflection on repentance, cleansing and the frailty of life all in preparation for Good Friday and the resurrection. I have some reflections that tie into Lent that I will post as time presents itself, but

Church in Mission

Stations of the Lord’s Prayer (A Worship Resource)

This past weekend at our convergent Quaker retreat we had both programmed (planned) and unprogrammed (silent) worship. For the programmed worship on Saturday morning I planned an interactive worship time based around the Lord’s Prayer (a topic I am deeply interested in). In this post I’ve included a

Featured

Reflections From The Convergent Retreat 2009

Since Martin and Robin, the two co-leaders with me of this past weeken’s retreat, have already written their first I figured I better get on writing something because I’m already late! I really had a great time this weekend. Ben Lomond Quaker Center is up in the beautiful

Blog Entries

Dress-Down Friday | Moons, Red Dresses, and Trilogies

Dress-Down Friday Installment #3,027.5 * Quaker Ranter Martin writes about Margaret Fell’s red dress and the challenge she posed to understanding plain dress and Gospel Order. * All you philosophy buffs will enjoy Kyle David Bennett’s continental philosophy overview handout. * Safari users, here’s a quick tip on

Church in Mission

Three Features of Everett Cattell’s Mission Theology

In preparation for the convergent Friends retreat this weekend I have been putting together some discussion notes on Everett Cattell. I will be presenting him as a “convergent Friend of the past” on Saturday evening. Because of this I was reminded that I wanted to post some summary remarks about

Featured

Following the Convergent Retreat This Weekend

I’ve mentioned a few times that a bunch of us are getting together this weekend in Northern California for a convergent Friends retreat at Ben Lommond Quaker Center. For those of you who won’t be able to join us, we want to be able to make at least

The Theological

A More Authentic Fundamentalism (Peter Rollins)

This quote is from Peter Rollins who will be in Hollywood speaking on his Evandalism tour March 1 and 2. In the post he discusses the subjective violence of Fundamentalism, which covertly seeks to cover up a maintenance of the status quo: The main gist of the argument lies in

Blog Entries

Dress-Down Friday | Bolt, Naomi Klein and Coffee

It’s been a while since I posted a “Dress-Down Friday” post so today seemed like a good day to get back into the swing of things. Dress-Down Friday’s are just casual postings of whatever random goodness I’ve bumped into while cruising the web. I think you’ll

Featured

Digging Up the Roof: The Kingdom Moment and the Paralytic in Mark 2:1-12

This is the sermon I gave this past Sunday on Mark’s story about Jesus and the paralytic. When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front

The Political

New York Quakers On Torture

The New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers put a minute together on torture and then made a video of people reading it. I thought it was good enough to share with all of you. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMbeDd_W9AM&w=525&h=444]

The Theological

Plan B: The Church (John Caputo)

In preparing for a sermon the other day I came across one of my favorite quotes from John Caputo’s book, “What Would Jesus Deconstruct?” (see also here): The name of Jesus is too often a mirror in which we behold our own image, and it has always been easy

Church in Mission

The Paralytic as Missionary (Mark 2:1-12)

I’m putting together a sermon on Mark 2:1-12 where Jesus meets, and heals, the paralytic. As I was talking this passage over with a friend it dawned on us that the paralytic, after he is healed, is the one sent out like a missionary, while the rest remain

Church in Mission

A 21st Century Good Samaritan: Deidox’s Story of “Robert”

Last week I heard about the new project Brent Gudgel, Dan Portnoy and clan have been working on called “Deidox” from twitter. I’ve posted about some of Brent’s work before: The New Chronicle Project. The Imagination of the Kingdom at Work Think of Deidox, pronouced “day-docs,” as short