• Talking Theology with James

    Jim, Emily and I kicked it today in LA. We went through echo park, silverlake, los feliz, visiting clothing stores, eating good food, etc. Then Jim and I went to watch RK play in Hollywood. we had so much fun watching their new show and hanging with the guys afterwards, got to meet to crazy kids from capitol and then we kicked it at some mexican restaurant in HWood. i thought about wanting to do ministry again, with people like those guys, with Jim, with people who want to see more of the church being church than doing it. i had some good talks with matt hoopes – talking theology – about how the church isn’t in mission anymore that we don’t view ourselves as missionaries, instead we started third party organizations to do it. and how i am worried that some of my thinking may give me a hard time securing the kinds of jobs i may want in the future. not because i disagree on the basics, but because i disagree on everything else, methodologies, theology, ecclesiology, anthropology, etc. i just feel like we have packaged this thing up way to neatly that we have left half of the people who God wises to read out on the doorstep, because we don’t have enough room in our own minds for people who are like this, look like this, think like this, do this or that, etc. at the end of the day, i had great church with my brothers tonight – singing, music out of God-giftedness, laughing, exhorting, and breaking bread and drinking the cup together. oh and then there was the baptism, with all this rain we got soaked, twice. as we couldn’t find our car and as we stopped on the side of the highway to check up on an accident that happened, no one was inside even though it i looked like it just happened. strange, beautiful and lovely.

    oh – and the church doesn’t have enough room in it for artists because they think outside the box and the church doesn’t. or as Jim just said, the church has become the box to think outside of. we mean the moder-perverse version of “church” we see today that is based on location/program driven church and not people/authenticity driven church.

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    What Napoleon Dynamite Character Are You?
    Name 
    Age 
    Favorite Color 
    Choose One  Flippin Sweet Heck Yeah Vote For Pedro You Guys Are So Retarded Idiots *Heavy Breath* Moon Boots Ligers
    You Are  Rex
    How Much Of A Retard Are You? – 43%

    This cool quiz by TexasTwister1989 – Taken 8173 Times.

    New! Get Free Daily Horoscopes from Kwiz.Biz

  • coming out of the muck

    out of the muck

    im getting through. things are looking good today. I am coming back, up the long hall, still swinging, still crawling along. i am like S. Weaver in Aliens, or Arnold in terminator. Well not really, but it fun to sound tough. Actually things are on the up and up, i am feeling better than i have in weeks, and i am looking forward to a restful weekend. God is delivering me. I am assessing what needs to be done by the end of the quarter and planning my attack. The rough cut went over well yesterday. we have a lot of work but i think this is the fun part. its all the stylizing that i like to do, working with colors, music, titles, transitions, effects.

    I also have two big papers, a 20 pager and a 10 pager. I will rock them, once i figure out what they are going to be on. THough for one i think i am going to write on this idea i have had for a while – the Lord’s pray as a mission statement. What if a church’s mission statement was to live out the Lord’s prayer, what would that look like, sound like, feel like, etc. So i am excited about that prospect and for the 20 pager i am going to come up with something really cool because it is an OT assignment with a really cool prof.

  • lie, cheat…


    dantecutoutfuzz5
    Originally uploaded by cwdaniels.

    fess up, we all lie and cheat at some point, its just that not all get caught. fortunately most of us do, and that is when we learn to stop all that lying and cheating.

  • Nouwen and Silence

    I read this morning.
    It is working on me and is true for me as well as for Nouwen.
    Lord I need to quiet myself.

    “Many people ask me to speak, but nobody as yet has invited me for silence. Still, I realize that the more I speak, the more I will need silence to remain faithful to what I say. People expect too much from speaking and too little from silence.”
    ~ Henry Nouwen The Genesee Diary p.134

    I slept hard, I don’t really remember anything, i don’t even know if I moved. I am overcoming the anxiety i have had, I am trying to get it all under control.

    I have a lot to learn about myself and how to be healthy. How to know where the limit is. I am possibly joining a small group of artists at fuller to work on some projects this is another thing I am excited about but want to make sure it is the right fit – make sure I am not doing to much.

    —-

    Finally I learned today from my wife, why I became a Quaker. It is because of their sense of fashion. When I was showing her some pictures of the Beatles that I love and how cool the guys look,Grandma Death told me that George looked like a Quaker and that’s why I became one! I never looked at it that way. She is always so right about me….

    Oh and for an explanation on our new names read the Lazlo files

Publications


Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance (2019)

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance looks at Revelation from the perspective that Revelation is not about predicting the end times but is instead a handbook for early Christian resistance and survival against empire.

Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation on Bookshop.

A Convergent Model of Renewal: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture (2015)

A convergent Model of Renewal lays out a model for working with congregations and communities alike, interested in maintaining their tradition while also becoming more connected to their context and needs of their community.

A Convergent Model on Bookshop

Image of the cover of the book The Quaker World
The Quaker World Co-Edited With Rhiannon Grant – 2022

The Quaker World is a book with over 50 authors around the world covering sections such as global Quaker history, to spirituality, and embodiment and emphasizes global Quaker diversity and biographies of Quakers.

The Quaker World on Bookshop.


More books and publications by Wess