The Empty Path

Identities or intersectionalities – Mark Jordan’s review of Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics

Tags boundaries, communitas, identity, intersectionality, queer, theology01/08/20222 Comments

"Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad," July 6, 1969, Daily News article about the June 28th police raid on the Stonewall Inn

“Waiting for Queer Theology,” Mark D. Jordan’s review of Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics, by Linn Marie Tonstad (Wipf and Stock, 2018), in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2021.

Queer theologies as processes, not products

The key concern for Mark D. Jordan

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Yyyyhhhwwwwhhhh – Interbreath of Life

Tags God, Judaism, Rabbi Walter Ocean Waskow, YHWH01/06/20221 Comment

Mike Shell

The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), by Manuela Ideacrea. [Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)]

“YHWH is the bearer of consequence, not punishment or rewards.”

Excerpts from Dancing in God’s Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion, by Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow (Orbis Books, 2020)

Dancing in God's Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion, by Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow (Orbis Books, 2020) …

Moment

Tags miksang, poetry, practice12/21/2021Leave a comment

Mike Shell

"First tracks," by Mike Shell (12/9.2021)

Opening the doors
+++I see
+++that the landscape
+++is
ever-changing.

One moment becomes
+++another,
+++not
in a sequence or
+++progression,

But

…

Sustaining the real presence of community on Zoom

Tags communitas, practice, Zoom12/18/20212 Comments

Mike Shell

Excerpts from “A Jewel in the Lotus: Buddhist chaplaincy includes compassion and ‘skillful means,'” by Chris Berlin, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2020

Chris Berlin, is an instructor in ministry and spiritual counseling and the denominational counselor to Buddhist students at Harvard Divinity School. With his colleague Cheryl Giles, he teaches the course Compassionate Care of the Dying: Buddhist Trainings and Techniques.

The course interweaves teachings in the Buddhist view of impermanence and death with

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Prodigal son

Tags grace, mortality, poetry12/11/20212 Comments

Mike Shell

When Dad died
+++I could
+++let him go
+++because
we had gone to McDonald’s
+++together.
Double cheeseburger,
+++shake, and fries.

Watching him
+++climb on the exercise bike
+++as soon as we
+++got back
+++to the nursing home,
I saw him at peace
+++with

…

Segregation is de jure, not de facto: Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law

Tags Reviews, segregation, White culture11/16/20214 Comments

Mike Shell

"The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,"by Richard Rothstein (2017)

Sasha Bley-Vroman reviews Richard Rothstein’s 2017 The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America in the October 2021 issue of Western Friend.

Beginning with the statement, “The GI Bill was a White guy thing,” Bley-Vroman tells us:

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Carl Sagan on the celebration of ignorance

Tags belief, Carl Sagan, faith, science09/07/2021

Mike Shell

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (1995)

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.

I have a

…

Teasing the scribes and pharisees

Tags historical Jesus, language, storytelling08/27/2021

Mike Shell

"Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees (Malheur à vous, scribes et pharisiens)," by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894), Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons].

Some fun with words that may go deeper than we usually expect to go in reading the Gospels.

In Mark’s account of Jesus’ Temple teaching, Jesus answers trick questions from the scholars and Pharisees and then responds with one of his own, translated in English as follows (Mark 12: 35-36):

How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right

…

OMGWM Part 3: Teased post-polio sissy

Tags fear, practice, White culture08/22/20212 Comments

Mike Shell

"Frankfurt am Main - African refugees rallying for the right to stay in Germany" [Demo für Bleiberecht, Bahnhofsviertel], by Picturepest on flickr (1/1/2000)

It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—
everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything—
lives with some profound personal sorrow. – Ross Gay

Fear

I am not convinced that our nation’s racial abuses and obsessions can be changed solely by large scale movements and political reforms, or by publicly challenging denial about America’s culture of White supremacy.

Yes, such examinations of deep-rooted, implicit White supremacy are essential for

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“Anti-paraskavedekatriaphobia” – from October 13, 2006

Tags Walhydra's Porch08/13/2021

Mike Shell

Walhydra admits rather sheepishly that she was very much in the closet until around 1973.

It was then, while she was in her first year in Lutheran seminary, that she finally realized she couldn’t lie to herself anymore—and, better still, that the Divine One did not in fact condemn her for her “difference,” regardless of what the Church and most of Western civilization had to say.

Finding her courage, she dropped out, moved back to her beloved college town

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