A Shot of Light

View all newsletters →

Featured Articles

The Widow as Unsettling Force - Luke 18 Commentary

Featured 1 min read

I was asked to write for the Political Theology website for the upcoming lectionary reading, Luke 18:1-8. This parable is well-known sometimes thought of as "the persistent widow and corrupt judge." My reading takes it in a different direction. Like all of Jesus' parables, this one

Continue reading →
Attention and Empire's Algorithms

Attention and Empire's Algorithms

Luke 6 min read

This was a message I shared with First Friends Meeting in Greensboro this past Sunday based in part by the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10. Empire's Algorithms I have been thinking a lot about attention recently. I've been developing a first year

Continue reading →
Who Gave Us Guilford College?

Who Gave Us Guilford College?

6 min read

Dear readers, this is an essay I have been working on in my role as the Director Friends Center at Guilford College. Some of you may know I have worked at Guilford for 10 years now in both a staff and faculty role, teaching Quaker studies and leading our office

Continue reading →
Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here?

Featured 7 min read

2025-04-05 Presented during the 400th Anniversary Review of Fox's birthday Context: I was asked to offer a playful, imaginative presentation as a last thought for our day long conference looking at George Fox's 400th birthday (last year) and what was learned from those events and where

Continue reading →
More articles →

Journal

Scenes from an Igloo (Class)

Scenes from an Igloo (Class)

As I mentioned earlier, I built a homemade igloo this weekend with my kids. As a result of all this snow we’re getting here in North Carolina, we had a remote day today at the college where I teach. With having classes today, I knew I had Zoom on the docket for today.

Read more →

Coming to PNW this March

I’m visiting PNW Quakers putting March (7-8) for three "talks." The first is a workshop I'm offering at the Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends Quarterly Meeting in Camas, WA (Camas Friends Church). Here’s the working title and description: Endless Revolution - The Lamb’s War a

Read more →
Looking for Privacy Focused Blogging Platforms

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 the many

Read more →
On The Rebound

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 and I know he wa

Read more →
Riding Uhwarrie National Forest

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, and especially “gravel” riding, I’ve bee

Read more →
Sharing: Hush – Songs for Christmas by Seth Patrick Martin

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 album is called: Hush: Songs for Christmas. It is free t

Read more →
Are We In A Post-Social Media World?

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 today and I wanted

Read more →
Older entries →