Gathering In Light

Blog Entries

Fire at the Simple Way House in Philly

I just found out from Janelle’s blog, about the fire at the Simple Way house in Philadelphia.  This is where Shane Claiborne and others live and do their ministry. And to hear about this tragedy is a real shame.  Many of us really appreciate and look up to way

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LIfe At Woodbrooke Part 2 | Reading and Writing

I’ve been reading and writing a ton while here at woodbrooke, which I suppose is good since that’s why I came here!?  I just finished a fourth section to my final paper, it was on Martin Davie’s analysis of why and how Liberal Quakerism became the predominate

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(un)Programmed: Towards the Program of the Spirit | YQ Article

About a week ago I had an article come out in Young Quaker, the publication run by Young Friends General Meeting in Britain (See volue 53,number 6). This edition was the last one for Jez Smith, a friend of mine who currently lives in London, and who I worked

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Dress Down Friday | Truth, Blogaholics, and Bad T-Shirts

Another Dress-Down Friday is upon us so kick off your dress shoes, put on your flip flops, grab a cup of Peets (because I can’t) and browse the web. Josh Brown has put together a couple videos called “I still love truth” part one and two.  I think they

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London, the Olympics and Getting Rid of the Poor

I read this article today in the Guardian and thought it was worth pointing out.  The article, “London is getting into the Olympic spirit – by kicking out the Gypsies” by George Monbiot argues that the Olympics, often thought of being a way to boost the economy for the poor, is

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Weekend Away | Teflord’s Iron Bridge and the Shropshire’s Buildwas Abbey

This past last weekend I had the opportunity to go visit my friend Simon in his home town of Telford and he took me to see some really cool things.  Instead of going into great detail I thought I’d put a slideshow together for you to see what we

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Dress Down Friday | Myspace vs. Facebook, Michael Cera, Body Hacks and Hobnobs

Another week of various treasures from around the web and world! This is Dress Down Friday for June 8th. Check out all these Old TV Shows. I cracked up when I saw this Myspace vs. Facebook video from via coworking.com World’s Most Awesome Shirt comes straight from PA.

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Convergent Friends An Introduction by Rachel Stacy

Rachel Stacy, a young Quaker woman and soon to be graduate from Earlham School of Religion, with a double major in religion and chemistry, recently finished her final school project for a class in contemporary religious movements. She decided to do the final research project on convergent Friends and has

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An Apologetic for a Quaker Theology | Do We Need It (or want it)?

This is a response to a comment I received yesterday about Quaker theology.  The comment was good enough that I decided to write a post about it, because I know that many people have the same questions and challenges it brought up.  Theology should be done in a way that

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Dress Down Friday | If I Told You, Timbuk2, and Paul Newman

The normal dress down friday, even though it’s on Sunday this week.  Click on the picture, the links are embedded as notes (roll you mouse over the image once you’re on the flickr page). Technorati Tags: advertising, dress down fridays, Paul Newman, timbuk2

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Some Problems with Online Christian Communities | And Why You Should Stay Away

Online communities continue to grow Myspace, Virb, Facebook, delicious, flickr, twitter, digg, 30boxes, box.net, etc, etc, all offer a way for people to share and stay in touch.  I personally like the attention web 2.0 companies have paid to making the web more interactive in this way.  I

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I Guess I am a Neo-Orthodox Postmodern Quaker (What on earth does that mean?)

You scored as Neo orthodox, You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity

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Life At Woodbrooke | 5 weeks Deep Part 1

I’ve been in the UK for almost 5 weeks now and it feels like the time is flying (I arrived on May 2nd).  My Wife, Emily, will be here in approximately 22 days, 11 hours 53 min and 39 seconds.  Of course, that was when I wrote that sentence,

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Young Friends In Newcastle and Some Highlights

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to Newcastle and hang out at the Young Friends General Meeting.  Simon and I stopped on the way up north (Newcastle is about 3.5 hours north of Birmingham) in Durham for some lunch and to take a look at the

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Dress Down Friday | Vimto, Your Dad’s Pants and Lynx

I’m headed off to Newcastle (home of one of my favorites) for a Young Friends Gathering this weekend. But before I head out I have two very simple video clips that will blow your mind.  Both of these video clips are commercials that get aired over in the England.

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Meeting House Innovative? | Visual Arts and Creativity in Quakerism

Recently I had a great talk with a woman from Essex, and she goes to a Quaker meeting that’s doing some really cool stuff.  I asked her about her meeting and she told me that there are about 35 people there and they have unprogrammed worship every week.  But

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Flickr-Slidr Slideshows for Your Blog (And UK Pictures)

Paul has created a great web app called flickrslidr that let’s you embed flickr images into you blog.  Here got the idea after writing this tutorial about embedding slideshows.  Anyways, I’ve been wanting to post the images from my UK travels thus far, and thought this would be

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Dress Down Friday | Picture Version

I thought I’d do the DDF a little differently today.  Click on the picture below to see a bigger version with links on it. Technorati Tags: dress down fridays

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Towards a Post-Foundationalist Quaker Theology: Slavoj Zizek, Quietism and Pink Dandelion

Accepting the whole of a tradition and not just the parts I found Slavoj Zizek’s opening to his book The Fragile Absolute, to be instructive for a present day study of Quaker theology.  He begins by presenting the challenge of two choices: How is a Marxist to counter all

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WP 2.2 Upgrade | Almost…

I upgraded my wordpress files this morning and it went pretty well, except that the theme I was using “Subtle” isn’t quite working under the new widget framework of version 2.2 — please excuse the basic stripped down look untidyness of the site until I figure out a plan

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1970’s Convergent Friends? | A Brief History

My good friend Shawna from Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) sent this to a bunch of us the other day intimating at Convergent Friends being much older than we thought. A conference of Friends in 1970, which represented 24 American YMs and had a 135 in attendance, gathered in Saint Louis

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Open Anabaptism and a Community of (in)outsiders

I’ve been meaning to comment on Jarrod McKenna’s thought worthy post which looks at the “Emerging Peace Church Movement” or what he likes to call “Open Anabaptism.” Through his various travels and meeting with all kinds of Christians McKenna writes, What people might not be aware of is

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… what larks! Some New Friends and New Words

jez and wess looking through the ‘young quakers’ t-shirt … what larks! Originally uploaded by Simon Latham. Since arriving in England I’ve been having a blast.  There are at least two things that have made it fun so far: new friends and new words. In this picture you can see

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Orthodoxy As An Event and Questions About a Quaker Orthodoxy

Tony Jones, recently discussed a paper he read at Wheaton.  In the paper he talks about the prospect of being an “anti-theologian,” (a designation I too find attractive) and orthodoxy as something that exists within particular events but not as an objective reality out there somewhere.  I found some troubling

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Dress Down Friday | Rush Limbaugh, 8-Bit Nintendo and Quakerpedia

Here’s another installment of Dress Down Friday! Another Radio DJ, Rush Limbaugh, is in trouble for being racially insensitive. He’s recently aired a racially charged song slamming Barack Obama. The Guardian reports, Limbaugh, whose rightwing talk show is one of the most listened to in the US, has