Uncategorized - Gathering In Light (Page 3)

Writing-Sabbatical Update #1

This past week I began a four-week “writing sabbatical,” and the whole thing went really well. The church was generous to release me from my responsibilities so that I could commit focused-time to working on my dissertation. The goal is to work my typical 40+ hours a week but spend

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Who Needs a Crystal Ball?

This is a short piece I wrote for our meeting’s monthly newsletter, I thought I’d share it here as well. I had the privilege of going to the ordination of the new priest at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Washougal a few weeks back. You may remember

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Inviting Children Into Silent Worship

Quaker worship is rooted in silence and the idea that a) Jesus Christ is present in our gatherings and is able to teach us himself and b) God can and does speak to anyone and through anyone no matter what age you are or how “religious” you appear to be

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Love is The Law of Life – Niebuhr

Love is the law of life and not merely some transcendent ideal of perfection. All men may violate the law of life but there is a difference between those who seek to draw all life into themselves,and those who have found in God the centre of existence and through

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Romero on Conversion

From Oscar Romero: In our preaching to the poor, it is not that we pander to the sins of the poor and ignore the virtues of the rich. Both have sins and both need conversion. But the poor, in their condition of need, are disposed to conversion. They are more

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Having More Money Creates More Problems

Here’s an interesting infographic based on some studied that have been done about how those who have money act in contrast with those who are poorer. Created by: AccountingDegreeOnline.net Thoughts?

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Hello/Goodbye: On Coming, Going and Our Testimonies

This is the message I brought to worship on May 13, 2012. If we take human testimony at face value, how much more should we be reassured when God gives testimony as he does here, testifying concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God inwardly confirms God’s

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Rodney King & The Images of (In)justice

We just learned today that Rodney King was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool on father’s day. King, who himself was a father, is a tragic figure in the landscape of recent American culture. He struggled with addiction, never fully healed from the beatings he received

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There Is No Big Red Phone

In preparation for me taking paternity leave as soon as #3 arrives (I constantly imagine the baby singing Dylan’s lines “Any day now, any day now, I shall be released) the church has set aside today’s “message” and the next two Sundays’ messages to be led by people

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What is Born of God?

One of my constant “growing edges” in life and faith is the negotiation of what is my responsibility and what is God’s. When I stop and take a look at what is happening around me, and through me, I am often surprised by how much I live as though

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Isaac Penington to Elizabeth Walmsley 1670

I’ve often shared quotes from one of my favorite early Quakers, Isaac Penington, here’s a thought from him for the day: Truly the Lord hath done great things for us! He hath given us the sight and knowledge of himself in his Son, which is life eternal: he

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The Minister’s Work (George Fox)

The minister’s work is to go from house to house and warn all both small and great, yea, with tears. This is the word of the ministry in the Spirit – In the Spirit that gave forth the scriptures and so brought people into the life that gave them forth,

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If I Had A Hammer (John 2:13-23)

This is the message I gave at Camas Friends Church on Sunday March 11, 2012 “The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip

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Befriending the Stranger – Jean Vanier

Here’s a passage from Jean Vanier’s “Befriending the Stranger” that I felt was worthy to post here: Jesus came into the world to re-create it, to give it back its full meaning to take away our limited vision of life, a vision which prevents the birth of hope

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Entering Christmas

One of my favorite things to do is to prepare worship during advent and Christmas. This week I’m working on putting together somethings for our Christmas Eve Candlelight service and our Christmas morning worship. I’ve been going back through some of the worship plans for previous years and

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Nouwen and The Discipline of Gratitude

I really like what Henry Nouwen writes about the discipline of gratitude: Gratitude … goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but

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Fox On Black Friday

I came across this in my reading the other day and it made me think of some of the stuff I’ve seen from Rev. Billy Talen, especially in the documentary on Christmas, and then I wondered what Fox would be doing on Black Friday: I was moved to open

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Dorothy Day & Changing the World

What we would like to do is to change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of

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Wendell Berry on The Earth as Other

The earth is what we all have in common. It is what we are made of and what we live from, and we cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it. There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the

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Karl Barth and the Mystery of God the Creator

What the meaning of God the Creator is and what is involved in the work of creation, is itself not less hidden from us men [ sic ] than everything else that is contained in the Confession. We are not nearer to believing in God the Creator, than we are to believing

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Kierkegaard on Solitude

It is an awful satire, and an epigram on the materialism of our modern age, that nowadays the only use that can be made of solitude is imposing it as a penalty, as jail. What a difference there is between those times when, no matter how secular materialism always was,

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Lindbeck on The Intepretive Schemes of Religion

Religions are seen as comprehensive interpretative schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and world. Not every telling of these cosmic stories is religious, however. It must be told with a particular purpose or interest. It must be used,

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Mission Precedes Ecclesiology

To be authentic, mission must be thoroughly theocentric. It begins in Gods redemptive purpose and will be completed when that purpose is fulfilled. The God-given identity of the church thus arises from its mission. This order of priority is foundational. Yet for some sixteen centuries Christians have been taught

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The Wisdom of Youth

“Why is it that you have to be at least thirty-five years old to run for President?” asked the Toluca Lake resident. Matthew proposed a constitutional change that would let kids vote and give grade-schoolers a shot at leading the free world, not that it doesn’t seem like we’

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Yoder – Beyond Legitimate Ends

What Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but rather the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others. The point is not that one can attain all of one’s legitimate ends without using violent means. It is rather that our readiness to