The Empty Path

On Good Friday: Affirming the body

Tags empty path, faith, mortality04/15/2022

There is a grave error in the penitential notion of “mortifying the body.”

It replicates the false dualism of “spirit versus matter ” that crept into and overwhelmed the Jewish faith and practice of Jesus as his followers spread out through the Greco-Roman world.

A truer practice is to “affirm the body,” to affirm it as a mortal yet sacred part of the divine whole.

When I allow myself to suffer the large or small sufferings of my body,

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The horrible cost of the peace testimony

Tags civilian deaths, Quaker peace testimony, war03/07/20229 Comments

Mike Shell

Today I am greatly conflicted about the Quake peace testimony. Not giving it up, but struggling with the horrendous cost in lives entailed in staying true to it.

As of March 7, 2022, the Russian military is surrounding Kyiv, Ukraine, and it continues its deliberate targeting residential neighborhoods and blocking of escape by war refugees. The suffering, death, and destruction are escalating rapidly.

I long to see something done at once to save the people of Ukraine from Russia’s violence.

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

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

Mike Shell

"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, practice12/21/2021

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

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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

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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

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