The text from my message given to Camas Friends Church June 6, 2010 Personal Histories In the last couple weeks, I have been reflecting a lot on my own history, my own personal narratives that have shaped my life. With having recently gone home this probably doesnt come as
Continue reading →While I was at Pendle Hill a couple weeks back I mentioned there was a lot of talk about meeting houses closing, there was a lot of talk about death, some literal death, some the death of our meetings and with it a (big) piece of our own stories. But
Continue reading →This morning someone in our meeting requested prayer for the oil spill and during the time of prayer the image of the oil spill came back to me in a powerful way. I envisioned the hole where the spill gushes out as a seeping wound. Creation is deeply wounded, and
Continue reading →Last week we discussed Proverbs 8, here are some of my thoughts on the passage. Lets be honest here, the (divine feminine) language in this passage can be little shocking to American Christianity, which is so often dominated by men. Who is wisdom? Well, whoever she is, shes
Continue reading →A lot of people want to know what a pastor does with her or his time throughout the day. I have one person who mentioned that they figured I had a lot of free time, because “pastor’s don’t do much more than prepare sermons right?” Right? Well not
Continue reading →One idea we’ve been doing at our church (Camas Friends) we started last fall, it’s called “Last Sunday’s for the Earth.” The idea was to create a forum where topics could be discussed using films as a starting point for those conversations. We have shown a number
Continue reading →Last week I wrote a little about our experience of visiting another Quaker meeting in Portland last Sunday. During that time of open worship I thought some about Acts 2 and Pentecost. It was obvious that there is much that these two communities have in common and can learn from
Continue reading →I came across this quote today while working on my sermon for Sunday: “We have tended to use particular power models for God that image divine power as like that of a monarchical ruler, or a military general who crushes all who oppose him. The model of power assumed here
Continue reading →During worship at Multnomah Meeting on Sunday I kept thinking about the fact that it was Pentecost Sunday and reflecting on the Holy Spirit. One thought, given the context of worship, was that although there were many language represented in Acts 2, the Spirit was the one language all could
Continue reading →This Sunday morning Camas Friends locked the doors to our meetinghouse and took a field trip into Portland to worship with Multnomah Monthly Meeting, an unprogrammed (as in silent worship) that is a part of North Pacific Yearly Meeting. There was a pretty good group of us who drove down,
Continue reading →I am going to make this plug for my friends at Friends Association for Higher Education coming this summer. I would be there if I wasn’t already all traveled out. This note is geared towards young Friends who are in higher education (students, scholars, teachers, etc.) I can’t
Continue reading →There’s a lot to say about this past weekend retreat on Convergent Friends and New Monasticism and it’s going to take me some time to unpack all the various experiences, ideas and thoughts that came out of it. However, one thing is for sure it was a learning
Continue reading →