Blog Entries - Gathering In Light

Looking for Privacy Focused Blogging Platforms

My beloved WordPress is becoming more and more corporate and finding more and more ways to tie data-tracking and AI into their product. I’ve used the self-hosted WordPress install for most of my blog’s existence, but even this version of the platform is showing signs of data-mining, namely

Blog Entries

On The Rebound

My son has recently gotten interested in basketball. This has had an unintended consequence. Up until now, he has not showed much interest in it but his friends at his new school invited him to join the 5-6th grade basketball team. One weekday evening in early February he let Emily

Biking

Riding Uhwarrie National Forest

About 50 miles south of where we live is the Uhwarrie National Forest 51,000+ acres lying just West of Badin Lake. I have been down to Uhwarrie a couple times, once of my motorcycle, and once with the family for hiking. As I’ve been getting more into cycling,

Advent

Sharing: Hush – Songs for Christmas by Seth Patrick Martin

If you’ve been around the site, or me much, you know I love the music – and friendship of Seth Patrick Martin. He’s just shared a new Christmas album with us that I wanted to link to here. He produced it with his friend, Joe Kim in Seoul. The

Blog Entries

Are We In A Post-Social Media World?

I was lucky enough to get to talk with Georgia Sparling of Thee Quaker Podcast a little while back about social media and some of the things I’ve wrestled with as a Quaker theologian, educator, parent, and person who has been actively online for 20+ years. That episode published

Blog Entries

Sharing: What Pro-Democracy Activists Can Learn From Their Adversaries

I commend this article from Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Rahna Epting to you on how Pro-Democracy activists, and the religious communities supporting this movement, need to adjust our approach: “During climate emergencies, far-right parachurch organizations and paramilitary groups are often first on the scene with food and shelter. During

Announcements

Quakers, Colonization, and Decolonization Conference in Philly June 12-15

Hi all, I wanted to share this upcoming conference with all of you from Friends Association for Higher Education. I hope to attend myself and would love to see you there. Here is the press release: 44th Annual Meeting of the Friends Association for Higher Education Quakers, Colonization, and Decolonization

Blog Entries

A Hat Trick For Supporting Curiosity and Growth

I have a little trick, it’s kind of silly, but it helps me when I’m in trouble. I do it whenever my attitude isn’t great or I feel resistant about something I have to do. I call it the “hat trick.” While I consider myself to be

AskAFriend

Ask a Friend: Quaker Glossary and Terms

An email I received recently asked about finding a Quaker glossary of terms online. This individual was looking specifically for an explanation of the Quaker use of the phrase “First Day” (what early Quakers, and some Quakers today still call “Sunday” so as to not call it by its Pagan

Blog Entries

David Whyte on Friendship

My friend, Maia Dery is responsible for me finding and reading David Whyte. Here are a few quotes from Whyte’s lovely chapter called Friendship in his book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but

Blog Entries

Wisdom from Richard Foster on Focus

Shawn Blanc shared a great short post yesterday titled: Six Principles for Focus and Simplicity. Those post shares wisdom from the book Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, a Quaker and well-known spiritual teacher and author. It’s worth re-sharing here: In his book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster lists

Blog Entries

A Little Blog Nostalgia

I just got the site up and running on its own server again (went with DreamHost this time around). I’ve been hosting this site wordpress.com for probably 8 years or so? I moved it there – away from running it on my own server – because I just didn’t

Teaching

Remaking a Quaker Studies Syllabus Using The Quaker World

With the publication of our new book Quaker World, I am having fun remaking my syllabus for my Introduction to Quakerism class this time around. Unfortunately, while the hardback version of The Quaker World is too expensive for students to purchase, faculty interested in teaching subjects related to the Quaker

Blog Entries

A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William E. Stafford

I love William Stafford‘s poetry. I came across him when we were still living in the Pacific Northwest where he is from. The first poem of his I heard from Parker Palmer when I participated in a renewal retreat with him years ago. It’s a poem I have

Blog Entries

Testimony as Consequence, Not Value by Pink Dandelion Reading Notes

Here are my reading notes of Pink Dandelion’s “Testimony as Consequence, Not Value” from Friends Quarterly Vol 35. No 5 2007. It has been progressively summarized for you. The full article can be found below. This article has been informative for me framing the problems of reducing Quaker principles

Blog Entries

When the Wine Gives Out (John 2:1-11)

The Wine Gave Out? A number of years ago, when I was working on my dissertation, I spent three months in England reading and writing in one of their lovely Quaker libraries there. One day, early on, while I was in the library there, I noticed that almost all of

Blog Entries

Quaker Exceptionalism, Jesus, and Movement Building (Mark 9:33-41)

Mark 9:33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called

Blog Entries

Planning to Leave Hey Due to Policy Changes

Here is an Email I wrote today to the support team at hey.com. I sent this and post it here because I have been a very outspoke supporter of this company, paid for their books and products, have their stickers on my computers, moved teams on to their platforms,

The Theological

Becoming Co-Workers With The Truth

When George Fox was initially on his spiritual quest to understand the true nature of faith and Christianity, he was living in the midst of full-on Christendom, that is state-sponsored Christianity or Christianity twisted to become comfortable acting as “the religion of empire.” Fox, and then Margaret Fell, among the

Blog Entries

Systems of Death and the Subversive Seed (John 12:24)

Watercolor from John Jay Alvaro Watch it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/arGhrrsFTxc The Subversive Seed This week, we saw the shooting of 8 individuals, 6 were Asian-Americans reminding us again of the ongoing and increased racism Asian-Americans and other communities of color have faced in the last year.

Blog Entries

Western Friend Review of Resisting Empire

There’s a really great review of my book Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance in this month’s copy of the Western Friend by David Tucker. After reading resisting empire – or more accurately, while reading it – I found myself delving into the text of Revelation, the literature

Blog Entries

Love as A Model For Change

Before Covid19, and certainly even more now, the systems that were meant to take care of us, protect our most vulnerable, and be focused on the best interest of the people rather than for those in power have all failed and can no longer be trusted or relied upon. We

Blog Entries

A New Newsletter is Coming

Hi Friends, I wanted to let you know that I am launching a new newsletter soon called “Remixing Faith.” It will pull together writings and research dealing with faith, resistance, cultural change, and collective intelligence. I am doing this to continue to develop my own writing, as well as create

resisting-empire

Unmasking Liturgies of Empire

One of the things I am currently focused on and really hungry to know more about is the concept of liturgies of resistance. A concept I originally discovered when studying the Book of Revelation. I think this is one of the keys to our ability to resist and survive empire

Blog Entries

Join The Online Study of Poverty, Empire, and the Book of Revelation in the Time of Covid19

Friends, I am hosting an online study of my new book, “Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance,” and the Book of Revelation in the time of Covid19 and I want to invite you to consider participating. I am interested in these three questions with this course: how does