Featured A Hidden Wholeness Chapter 2 – Sketchnotes Over the next ten weeks or so we at Camas Friends Church are working through Parker Palmer’s book, “A Hidden Wholeness: A Journey Toward an Undivided Life.” I will continue to post our discussion guides and the sketchnotes here for those who may be interested in using them for
Featured Sketchnotes from Palmer’s “A Hidden Wholeness” Chapter 1 We are reading through Quaker author Parker Palmer’s wonderful book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. As a part of my preparation for leading the group I am making sketchnotes of the chapters. Here are the sketchnotes for the prelude and chapter one and here are
Uncategorized Finding Healing After a Suicide I wrote an article last summer about some of the healing process I have been working on in relation to my step-dad’s suicide. Friends Journal picked up the article, redid a little of it and has published it this month in their issue on mental health. If you’d
Blog Entries A Convergent Model of Hope is Ready To Share I finished my dissertation, “A Convergent Model of Hope: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture,” last November. But it is finally rolling out so that it can be shared with others. I know it’s the case that dissertations aren’t always thought of as super interesting things
Featured Like Seeds Being Poured Out (Matthew 28:16-20) “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples
Featured Hope on a Tightrope Sermon #Sketchnotes Each week as I study, I take a lot of notes. Some of those notes I type into Evernote on my computer, and some of them I sketch out. The stuff that really stands out to me, the important quotes, and image-heavy ideas go down on paper. I love using
Featured Resurrection: Hope on a Tightrope (Matthew 28:1-10) “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.” (Matthew 28:1) A Little Hope I don’t know about you but I am in need of some hope this week. I have had enough death
Uncategorized Cornel West – Hope on a Tightrope “The vocation of the intellectual is to turn easy answers into critical questions and to put those critical questions to people with power.” “The quest for truth, the quest for the good, the quest for the beautiful, all require us to let suffering speak, let victims be visible, and demand
Featured Palm Sunday: Rivalry Encased in Death (Matthew 26:20-27:26) “So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be
Featured Death By Bread & Clothes Alone (Matthew 6:25-34) “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor
Featured On God & Money: Who and What is in Service to Whom? (Matthew 6) “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Matthew 6:23–24) The Splitting Apart This past week news broke that the Joel Osteen’
Blog Entries My AFSC Message is Online I was given the wonderful opportunity to speak at the American Friends Service Committee’s Corporate Gathering this past Saturday on the subject of Zacchaeus, Single-Stories and Bayard Rustin’s “Angelic-Troublemakers.” If you’re interested in reading that message, you can jump over to their Acting in Faith Blog and
Featured Whose Desire is Going to Run Us? Matthew 6:1-18 We All Desire Another’s Desire Like many kids growing up, I worked hard to gain the approval of my parents, teachers, friends and pastors. One year in college when I ran for class president, I did it on a whim. I thought it would be funny to see if
Prayer On the Harm We Have Done Here is a prayer from Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) that seems as timely as ever, and one we ought to be praying regularly, especially given the state of the church and its too often unfortunate behavior in American society and politics. OUR Father, we look back on the years that are
The Biblical No! Yes and… (Matthew 3) “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in
The Biblical Presence Matters (Matthew 2) “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.
The Biblical On Quaker PR: Salt, Light and Transformation (Matthew 5:13-20) “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be
Blog Entries Moving Through The Fog Movement by Rumi If a tree could move from place to place, It would escape the pain of the ax. And if the sun and moon were set in stone, how could they spread their light? How bitter would the great Euphrates, Tigris, and Oxus rivers become, if they were
Featured The Beatitudes: Receiving and Giving Blessing (Matthew 5:1-12) Happiness I wanted to start off by saying something about happiness. There’s been plenty of research done around what is happiness and how do we achieve it? In one recent study by Arthur Brooks he stated that scientists have proven that up to 48% of happiness has to do
Blog Entries Learning from Imperfection This past Sunday we talked about imperfection and the importance of being average and ordinary. Jesus’ work in Galilee reveals his desire to “build an alliance of backwards people” or as another person put it, Jesus worked to create the “fellowship of the disqualified.” We put so much pressure on
Featured Pushing Cars and The Alliance of “Backwards” People (Matthew 4) “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23 NRSV) Pushing Cars [I opened my sermon by sharing a story about my car battery dying and trying to push the
Blog Entries Among the People “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains,
The Cultural Birthday Parties in a Cul-de-Sac Birthday Parties in a Cul-de-Sac: The Conundrum and Guilt of Planning a Birthday Party in the Burbs I realize not all morality finds its origins in the 80s, but in this case, I think I am on good ground. When I was growing up in the age of the 8
Blog Entries Six Books that Changed My Perspective in 2013 It takes me awhile to read a book, but that’s probably because I love to have three or four or six books going all at once. I usually have at least one fiction going, a book for spiritual insight, a more academic text, and then some kind of personal
Featured Getting Found in Translation: Reflecting on Issues of Theological Translation Whenever Quakers from various streams get together, similarities and differences quickly arise. This is the current state of our tradition; it’s not something we should fight against. Instead, we need to learn how to move within it by being clear about who we are while “moving towards sympathy,” as
