There isn’t really an end
to this.
Coasting forward or
drifting sideways or back,
We never reach a goal.
It’s a matter of equilibrium,
homeostasis.
It’s not
a matter of
getting to enlightenment,
Author: Mike Shell
… 
Stop wasting
time
being
consciousness.
“You”
does not
exist.
It is a path
of illusory
linear time
through the
sphere
of
Creation
which
is
all
at
“We Are All Called to Be ‘Heroes’,” by Elam D. Jones (Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2020, 19-21)
In “We Are All Called to Be ‘Heroes’,” Elam D. Jones explains why he is wary of the popular pandemic practice of calling essential workers “heroes.”
…I have come to understand that the label “hero” and how it has been employed in the United States to refer to essential workers not only generates complicated and ambiguous feelings
Never mind the endless cycling
of what we call news
ensorcelling tales of political theater,
social distress, and un-
natural disasters
things happening
elsewhere.
We are in the salutary midst
of the fall.
What is close
is real.
Think of children
now schooled
Continuing my series on Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973).
When William Stringfellow uses the biblical language of the Book of Revelation, he is not referring to beings or events of some future supernatural “end time.” He is using it—as did Revelation’s author and first audience—to refer poetically to things of this present world, this mortal human world.
Chapter 4 is “Stratagems of the demonic powers.” The demonic denies
…
From my Facebook post this morning .
It is quite normal for human beings to claim “religions” as cultural identities. Normal we say “I am a Jew” or “I am a Sikh,” meaning that we belong to people of the Jewish or Sikh culture, those who subscribe not just to the systems of “right belief” and “right behavior” of those “religions.”
All of this is because THE most important social reality for human animals is that they are hardwired
…
In this post, I interrupt my chapter-by-chapter study of Stringfellow’s 1973 An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land in order to put this series into the context of 2021’s political, cultural, environmental, and pandemic crises.
… 
care (v.)
Old English carian, cearian “be anxious or solicitous; grieve; feel concern or interest,” from Proto-Germanic *karo- “lament,” hence “grief, care” (source also of Old Saxon karon “to lament, to care, to sorrow, complain,” Old High German charon “complain, lament,” Gothic karon “be anxious”), said to be from PIE root *gar- “cry out, call, scream.” —Online Etymology Dictionary
Our hyper-connected media world forces us all to wrestle with an extra layer of emotional suffering: that
…When my mother went into skilled nursing care with Alzheimer’s dementia, my grouchy alter-ego Walhydra crawled under the bed, saying, “How can I writing sarcastic humor when real life is shutting me down with grief and depression? It isn’t funny!” Mom died in January 2011.
This post is the next to last one from my blog Walhydra’s Porch. It was written after a certain national catastrophe that may still have consequences a generation from now.
I think modern Quakers and people of other religions have a lot of confusion about what “membership” means.
I am a “convinced Friend” because in my faith and practice I choose to follow the Quaker way of worship, decision-making, and witness in the world.
I am a “member” of a particular Meeting if I have chosen to take responsibility for the support and well-being of that particular Meeting.
By analogy, one can be a Muslim or a Jew or a
…