When testimonies come drifting in

March 16, 2019

Steven Davi­son asked what the tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty even meant or whether it was spelt out any­where. No one could answer but no ine want­ed to omit it.

I sus­pect a process may be at work sim­i­lar to the one that has made “that of God in every­one” the puta­tive foun­da­tion of all our tes­ti­monies: an unself­con­scious thought-drift in a cul­ture increas­ing­ly impa­tient with intellectual/theological rig­or, or even atten­tion of any seri­ous kind, not to men­tion care for the tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty. These ideas arise some­how, some­where, and then get picked up and dis­sem­i­nat­ed because they sound nice, they meet some need, and they don’t demand much. They appar­ent­ly don’t require dis­cern­ment, anyway. 

The “Tes­ti­mo­ny of Community”

Camp Acagisca

June 20, 2015

A two-night scouts camp­ing trip with two of my kids to the coun­ty facil­i­ties at Camp Acagis­ca nears Mays Land­ing turned into a one night with one kid affair (my 11yo got way too mouthy when it came time to decide who was going to share a tent with dad and went home imme­di­ate­ly; the 9yo end­ed up in a melt­down mid morn­ing on the sec­ond day.)

 

Rain camp­ing

A video post­ed by Mar­tin Kel­ley (@martin_kelley) on

 

And while I assumed the name was some sort of Lenape con­struc­tion, it’s appar­ent­ly an amal­gam of Atlantic City Area Girl Scout Camp.

Extended summers and jobs old and new

October 5, 2005
Bicycle riders

Theo and I on the old bike this sum­mer. More pho­tos

Last Thurs­day my Francis-inspired pater­ni­ty leave end­ed – two weeks paid for by my employ­er, two weeks or so of vaca­tion time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time cor­ralling two-year old Theo than I did gaz­ing into new­born Fran­cis’s eyes. I hearti­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing Sep­tem­bers off. One of my more enjoy­able tasks was the almost-daily bicy­cle rides with Theo. Some­times we went across town to the lake and it’s play­ground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until night­time threat­ened and I had to insist on com­ing home. Oth­er times we took long rides to local attrac­tions such as last post’s Blue Hole. The bike so sym­bol­ized our spe­cial time togeth­er that it seems almost prop­er that it was stolen from the train sta­tion on that first day of com­mut­ing, appar­ent­ly the lat­est vic­tim of my South Jer­sey town’s bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came run­ning yelling “diya-di-cal!” but there was noth­ing I could do. Sum­mer’s over kid.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Excitement outside fgc

June 21, 2005

melee
The offices of Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence are across the street from the Penn­syl­va­nia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which is this week host­ing a biotech con­ven­tion. The streets out­side are host­ing a bit of a counter-convention led by a group named “BioDemoc­ra­cy 2005”:http://www.biodev.org/. Here are some shots from a melee out­side our front door a few min­utes ago.
*Update:* appar­ent­ly one of the police offi­cers at the cen­ter of this scuf­fle “suf­fered a heart attack and has since died”:http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/special_packages/bio2005/11949070.htm. I’m not even sure how to com­ment on that. From my van­tage point it cer­tain­ly seemed like the police offi­cers were using undue vio­lence. But while I was ten feet away I don’t know who threw the first punch and what exact­ly hap­pened in that sea of bod­ies. What­ev­er hap­pened, it’s quite appro­pri­ate to hold him and his fam­i­ly in our prayers.