Most pics from the area of Grape Street, the unofficial capital of Hammonton Halloween. #blog #family
In album Hammonton Trick-or-Treat 2011 (23 photos)
At home, Francis shows his Happy Clown costume.
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There’s a different feel since I last visited – it’s quieter and more lived-in. Less a protest and more a small town. Services are organized and there’s less people standing with signs and taking each other’s pictures.
I briefly sat in on the Quaker/Interfaith tent, where a meeting was going. I couldn’t hear much but the main issue of business was how open an interfaith speaker’s series should be. I didn’t have too much time so I quietly slipped off afterwards to take more pictures of Occupy. #blog
In album Occupy Philly, 10/25 lunchtime #occupyphilly (7 photos)
Part of the “Idea Wall”
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Wow, when I Google myself, the top return is my Google profile, which includes direct links to my some of my media (in this case, business site, blog and LinkedIn profile)
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Reshared post from +Geoff Livingston
A good post on guest blog curation under your masthead by +Danny Brown.
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How To Be A Gracious Guest Blog Host – For Bloggers By Bloggers
Having a guest blogger is a great way to expose your blog to new readers and grow your blog traffic. So here’s how to look after guest bloggers.
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A bit of a milestone – I finished the One Year Bible reading plan last night! I managed to stretch it out to 27 months but that’s alright. I started in January 2009 and initially kept the daily readings going till May of that year, when I feel hopelessly behind. I kept a mental note of the date and in May 2010 I started where I had left off. I kept reading regularly until the last week in December, when I was understandably distracted by the birth of our third son Gregory on 12/28. Knowing I wanted to keep the cycle going, I skipped that week and started again on January 1, 2011. It was only last night that I went back and finished up that last week – featuring Malachi and Revelations (which has the Lamb’s War metaphor so important to early Friends).
Thanks go to Gregg Kosela and AJ Schwanz for letting me know such a thing as one year Bible reading plans existed. I had never been able to stick to a regular Bible-reading regimen before. The grandmother who frequently declared me a Bible illiterate would be so proud! (Actually not, she’d find something else to critique, but her hangups around family and “Christian” living are a much longer blog post!).
It’s been great having a regular spiritual practice. I’m glad I can find my way around the Bible now and my understanding of Friends has deepened. The early Quaker writings are steeped in Biblical allusions and we miss a lot when we miss those references.
This passage from Ezekiel struck me this evening:
What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep?.. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. So my sheeph have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal. They have wandered through all the mountains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them…
For this is what the Soverign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep. I will be like a shepherd looking for his scattered flock… I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strenghten the weak. Book of Ezekiel 34.
It seems appropriate for all sorts of reasons. Last week the priest of my wife’s Catholic church shut it down under false pretenses (see savestmarys.net/blog), the culmination of a long plan to close it and ultimately most of the small Catholic churches in South Jersey. There are sheep that will be scattered by these acts. I’m also just so acutely aware of religious of all denominations who are so caught up in the human forms of our church body that we’ve lost sight of those who are wandering in the wilderness, easy prey for the wild animals of our worldly lusts. I take solace in the promise that the Lord’s Shepherd is out looking for us.
My workshop partner Wess Daniels just posted an update about the upcoming workshop at Pendle Hill. Here’s the start. Click through to the full post to get a taste of what we’re preparing.
Martin Kelley and I will be
leading a
weekend retreat at Pendle Hill in just a couple weeks (May 14 – 16)
and I’m starting to get really excited about it! Martin and I have been
collaborating a lot together over the past few months in preparation for
this weekend and I wanted to share a little more of what we have
planned for those of you who are interested in coming (or still on the
fence). During the weekend we will be encouraging conversations around
building communities, convergent Friends and how this looks in our local
meetings. I wanted to give the description of the weekend, some of the
queries we’ll be touching on, and the outline for the weekend. And of
course, I want to invite all of you interested parties to join us!
Read the full post on Wess’s blog
Earlier today I posted an excerpt of an interesting article on Anabaptism on my Tumblr blog and it’s engendered quite a conversation on Facebook about testimonies and empty forms, etc. It’s true that any form of spiritual discipline can get twisted into look-at-me heroism or lets-talk-anything-but-God group conformity.
The answer isn’t to give up testimonies or to hold onto them even tighter, but instead to constantly remind ourselves about their purpose: to learn how to live as an attentive people of God. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:
I’ve been a mostly bicycle-riding vegan for decades, an outspoken
pacifist and a frequent plain dresser. All of these practices have
aided my spiritual growth but also have unearthed new sources of pride
for me to wrestle with. The self-examination has been practice in
discernment.I often think back to the story of the Good Samaritan. What mattered
wasn’t how he was dressed or whether he was riding a bicycle. No, what
mattered is that he knew enough to know he was being called to
sacrifice something: to get covered in a strangers blood, to aid
someone who might resent him for it, to lose money he had earned to put
someone up for the night. Maybe he had practiced this discernment of
self-sacrifice by living a testimony that had challenged him to
navigate between loss and pride, and maybe he had been brought up in a
community where the value of love was prized above all. The important
thing is he knew to stop and be a true neighbor.
