Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
As Richard Beck wrote in “Kenosis,”
I’m tired. Of myself.
Not sad. Not depressed. Not suicidal. Not dark.
Just tired.
Tired of being an ego. Having an ego.
I’m tired of filtering everything through myself.
Granted, as one of melancholy temperament, it is far too easy for my brain, when it notices the symptoms Beck describes, to seek reasons for sadness, depression, darkness…and to find them.
I wake up in the morning,
…Kenosis
Posted on 6.05.2015
I am tired of myself.
And not, let me say,
in any morbid, psychopathological sense.
(And why do we so quickly go there?
I’ve become impatient with the mental health frame and worry.
How everything is shadowed
by diagnoses and the fear
of being mentally ill.
Because really,
who among us is healthy?
Let me be sick for a moment.
If that is
…Just as there are many “Christianities,” there are many forms of “Christian Universalism.”
I seek to follow the faith and practice of the historical Jesus, regardless of how later belief systems and their enforcers may have reinterpreted his ministry to suit their own theological or political notions.
In addition, I just finished Stephen Finlan’s 2008 book, The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition, which describes how Paul’s ministry was also reinterpreted,1 first by his own
Six years ago on the Saturday of Holy Week, I wrote about what I call The Empty Day.
For many Christians, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter are the key days of that week. For me, as one who is constantly on the boundary between faith and doubt, it is that in-between Saturday which confronts me most vibrantly with the gut reality of Jesus in my life.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyiWkWcR86I]
Leonard Nimoy sat down with the Wexler Oral History Project last year, his impressive Yiddish skills on full display. In this video, Nimoy describes the origin of his famous Star Trek hand greeting: the Jewish priestly blessing, or duchening.
…This article was originally published on Quaker Universalist Conversations, the blog of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship.
A Garden Grows: Quakerism in Nazi Germany by Mary Mills, available as an e-book from Amazon or Smashwords through the QUF Bookstore, translates five essays by Hans Albrecht, Clerk of German Yearly Meeting from 1927 to 1947, along with the illustrated album written by children of the Quaker school in Eerde.
With A Garden Grows: Quakerism in Nazi
…Note: This post was first published on Quaker Universalist Conversations, the blog of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship. It has also been republished on QuakerQuaker, and there is a substantial comments discussion appended to the post there.
During a one-month practice period (dathun) at the Buddhist Gampo Abbey in the spring of 1989, Pema Chödrön gave morning talks to encourage participants “to use the abundant material of daily life as
…This is slightly modified version of a blog post published on July 28th on Quaker Universalist Conversations.
Brent Nongbri is a post-doctoral research fellow in early Christianity at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His 2013 book, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, offers a corrective to the conventional modern uses of the term “religion.”
Originally published on Quaker Universalist Conversations, 6/13/2014.
Stephan Finlan is pastor of Mathewson Street United Methodist Church, Providence, Rhode Island. He has taught theology at Fordham, Drew, Seton Hall, and Durham Universities. He is author of The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition (2008), Options on Atonement (2007), and Problems with Atonement (2005).
The follow is an excerpt from The Family Metaphor in Jesus’ Teaching
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