The name “Jesus” scares people off, since our sound bite- and meme-driven culture automatically ties that name with what I call the “Christianists,” those abusive people who misuse the sacred tradition of Jesus’ friends as a political ideology, the way
…Author: Mike Shell
10Afterward, when he was alone, his followers and the Twelve asked him about his parables, 11and he said, “To you the secret of the realm of God has been imparted; but to those who are outside everything takes
…On May 27, 2007, I began publishing The Empty Path through the free blogging service of WordPress.com. I have now migrated that blog to a domain I own, EmptyPath.net.
The blog’s first post was called “Where to
“I believe God loves those moments when we do without him. He thinks, ‘At last, they’re going to stop walking around with their nose up in the air awaiting some supernatural magic; they’re going to watch the snow and the
…Samaritans
In 2015, writing about “Christian Universalisms,” I explained that Jesus
…was from Galilee in northern Palestine, child of Aramaic-speaking peasants, not of the “proper” Hebrew-speaking Jews from Judea in the south. His [initial] concern was
Many of us are chronically distressed by the suffering we see around us. It confronts us in the 24/7 news cycle, in social media, in what we pass on the street every day. We live with a longing to be
…Originally published on Quaker Universalist Conversations (1/1/17).
I had a dream a few days ago, one of those rare wholly unambiguous dreams. It was a flying dream, but that’s not the relevant feature, just a plot device.
I was returning
You don’t know what will happen if you go down that road. That’s why you should go there.
Why do what you have already done?
The world never changes, and it is never the same. Each step opens a new
…Waiting for Quaker meeting
with a fence of white jasmine
behind me
and the
sun
a bit too warm
I hear from across
another wooden fence
opposite
the shout of the
morning-sobered plumber
stumbling from his
trailer:
“Alright! The first
…Nothing new.
Except perhaps that the the circumstances are more extreme than they have been since I lost my counseling career.
There is this.
…The fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is