A Passionate and Determined Quest for Adequacy: Becoming Whole

from A Passionate and Determined Quest for Adequacy: Becoming Whole:

At the Quaker Women's Theology Conference, we encourage women to use narrative theology, that is, to tell their own stories of how God is at work in each person's life. I think sometimes we are afraid of talking about God because we fear that our experiences do not match. But it makes a lot of sense to me that we would all have different experiences of knowing God. I think God is like a mutual friend. For example, I know Sarah, and Sarah's husband knows Sarah, and you may know Sarah, but we would never expect to all know the same things about Sarah. Narrative theology allows us to recognize God in another person's story, even if that person uses very different language.

Read more here...

Impact of the Gathering Survey | Friends General Conference

Impact of the Gathering Survey | Friends General Conference:

We have heard anecdotally of a few instances in which recent FGC Gatherings had a significant effect on a monthly meeting or a yearly meeting, and would like to learn about any other similar impacts so we have a more complete idea of how the Gathering can and does affect the Religious Society of Friends.

If you've attended FGC Gathering recently, or another FGC program which has had an impact on your monthly or yearly meeting, please fill out the survey at http://fgcquaker.org/impact-gathering-survey. Thanks!

Devin Friedman: What I Learned From Speaking with Scott Roeder

Devin Friedman: What I Learned From Speaking with Scott Roeder:

It's a problem that's bigger than extremist pro-life elements or Bill O'Reilly. The problem is the thriving culture of manufacturing dehumanizing lies about people you disagree with, whether they are about Dr. George Tiller, or George W. Bush. It's dangerous. It's dangerous whether you say George Bush wanted to murder Iraqi children or Barack Obama is a secret terrorist who wants to use two married gay men to kill your grandmother. And it's incredibly dangerous for people in positions of authority or power to ratify insane, dehumanizing narratives about people.

Oh, yes. Click here for more of my thoughts on the link between political violence / terrorism and dehumanization.

Blog o’ Gnosis - 5th Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

Blog o’ Gnosis - 5th Annual Brigid Poetry Festival:

I had to go back to this post to find the earliest reference (Reya’s original blog post is lost in the mists) to the now Jan28moon annual Silent Poetry Reading in honor of Brigid (Saint or Goddess, as you prefer). And while the first invitation was for a single day’s blogging event, watching the misty full moon tonight got me thinking of a favorite line from a poem that I want to offer, so I will simply declare that this year’s event has begun!

IRAQ: Former CPT hostage Harmeet Singh Sooden returns to Iraq | Christian Peacemaker Teams

Wow. Blessed be.

Much love to my Friends, friends, and CPT colleagues who have been affected by the kidnapping of the team and the death of one of their members.

IRAQ: Former CPT hostage Harmeet Singh Sooden returns to Iraq | Christian Peacemaker Teams:

CPTnet
19 November 2009
IRAQ: Former CPT hostage Harmeet Singh Sooden returns to Iraq

Harmeet Singh Sooden has joined the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) delegation traveling through Iraqi Kurdistan 7-23 November 2009. This delegation marks the first time he has returned to Iraq since he was freed from captivity four years ago.

While participating in a 2005 CPT delegation he, along with fellow delegate Norman Kember and CPTers Jim Loney and Tom Fox were kidnapped in Baghdad by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Tom Fox was murdered on 9 March 2006. British forces freed Sooden, Kember and Loney two weeks later on 23 March 2006.

Respecting LGBTQ families

Wow. Thank you, Joanna Grover. (H/t Vonn.)

If you don't believe this shit doesn't happen, or that it's just not that bad when it does, read this amazing and heart-touching article.

Imagine having only five minutes to say goodbye to your dying husband or wife of nearly two decades. Imagine being a 10-year-old girl and being physically blocked from saying a last, ``I love you,'' to your mother, who is just down the hall at the hospital. This may sound unconscionable, but it happened, just as described, to the Langbehn-Pond family at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

Reflections on Marriage

This is an excellent article. My thanks to a friend for pointing it out. - sm

Reflections on Marriage:

Today, many same-sex couples in the United States live in a fraught, contingent space of loving attachment, unprotected by state recognition. My fierce commitment to marriage equality derives, in part, from my personal biography as an interracial child, descended from American slaves, and raised in Virginia, beginning less than a decade after the Loving decision. Even though I am heterosexual, marriage equality is personal. I learn from the history of racial and interracial marriage exclusion that the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples is wrong.

....
We must do more than simply integrate new groups into an old system. Let's use this moment to re-imagine marriage and marriage-free options for building families, rearing children, crafting communities, and distributing public goods.

What’s Wrong With the National Parks? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

This is a really good article for those of us concerned about preservation, right usage, recreation, and the environment.

What’s Wrong With the National Parks? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com:

The national parks have been well loved since their beginnings in the 1870s; sometimes nearly loved to death. Since their creation, there has been tension between two goals: wilderness preservation and making these sublime landscapes open to more people.

What’s the best way to protect the national parks, and what’s the best use of resources for that purpose?

The Age of Eco-Angst - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com

The Age of Eco-Angst - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com:

Eco-angst, it turns out, is but one version of a widely studied psychological phenomenon, one well-known in the world of retailing. Take a bargain bin cabernet, tell people it’s an expensive, estate-bottled varietal, and they’ll tell you they like it. They’ll even linger longer over their dinner, enjoying not just the wine but the rest of their food more. Now describe the same wine as a low-end variety from North Dakota, and they’ll tell you it’s not so good — and finish their meal faster, enjoying it less.

...What’s more, brain imaging now reveals that tasting what we think is a high-end wine produces heightened activity in a key strip of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, which lights up during moments of keen interest — a pattern some neuroeconomists see as the brain signature for brand preference. The “low-end” wine, on the other hand elicits not a budge in orbitofrontal chatter, a pattern indicating disinterest or disgust. (Study data can b found here.)

...Eco-angst dawns with the discovery that some children’s sunblock contains a chemical that becomes a carcinogen when exposed to the sun, or that the company that makes a popular organic yogurt operates in ways that result in significantly more greenhouse gases than their competitors. The moral here, or course, is not to stop using sunblock nor to give up yogurt, but to choose the brands without these downsides.

...Rather than taking the ascetic route of “No Impact Man,” we can together become high impact shoppers, tipping market share to products with gentler ecological imprints. But to do so we need to face the often unattractive truths behind the making of our favorite stuff, and so risk a stiff dose of disgust.

The School Issue - College - When Your Dorm Goes Green and Local - NYTimes.com

h/t Suebear.

The School Issue - College - When Your Dorm Goes Green and Local - NYTimes.com:

Thoreau said education often made straight-cut ditches out of meandering brooks. But not at the EcoDorm, which houses 36 undergraduates and is the spiritual heart of Warren Wilson College, a liberal-arts school of fewer than 1,000 students in Swannanoa, N.C.

A call to moral accounting -- chicagotribune.com

Great article with an unusual perspective. h/t Lisa G!

A call to moral accounting -- chicagotribune.com:

But though the rituals are ancient, they're never far removed from modern life. Between our prayers, American Jews are sure also to discuss the current events that touch our community most deeply: the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, President Barack Obama's recent meetings with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the United Nations' recent Goldstone Report, in which both Israel and the Hamas government are accused of war crimes. To my great sorrow, however, many in the Jewish community have already rejected the latter out of hand.

Footprint Network Blog

h/t Marshall.

Footprint Network Blog:

“It’s a simple case of income versus expenditures,” said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel. “For years, our demand on nature has exceeded, by an increasingly greater margin, the budget of what nature can produce. The urgent threats we are seeing now – most notably climate change, but also biodiversity loss, shrinking forests, declining fisheries, soil erosion and freshwater stress – are all clear signs: Nature is running out of credit to extend.”

Barbara McGraw on Religion in America - A Pagan's Blog

h/t to Aline/Macha!

Barbara McGraw on Religion in America - A Pagan's Blog:

In a lively talk McGraw explained that neither the religious right nor the secular left really understands the Founders' thinking on church and state. Secularists argue religion should be purely private, the right that we are a Christian country. This is why both sides throw quotations around so freely, quotations that seem to contradict one another. They ignore the context of the quotations they sling about. As she put it, both sides 'are half right and half wrong.'

Pagan Values � Chrysalis

Check out Pax's page of posts for International Pagan Values Blogging Month. - sm

Pagan Values � Chrysalis: "I posted it here, and kind of just let it go for a little while… but then folks started taking interest! People started linking and posting and it grew into a big ol’ blog carnival with 100 posts, and counting as I find more. I am linking this page to as many of those posts as I can find in the hopes of providing an online snap shot of, and resource for the study of, contemporary Pagan values."

An Angry, Angry Woman � Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change

An excellent post from MezzoSherri, speaking truth to patriarchal power.

An Angry, Angry Woman � Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change: "I am haunted and infuriated by the premeditation indicated from Sodini’s choice to attack a women’s-only class at his own gym. Is it possible that part of the rage working through him was based in this assumptive loop that why would these women be gym members except to make themselves attractive for men, and with that as their purpose, then how dare they be unavailable to him?!?"

Social Media at FGC Gathering

From FGC today:

SOCIAL MEDIA AT THE GATHERING: Planning to Twitter? Use hash tag #fgc09. Blogging? Tag your posts FGC09. See posts and tweets at www.fgcgathering.org.

Is America Surrounded by Paganism? Newt Thinks So - Windows & Doors

Is America Surrounded by Paganism? Newt Thinks So - Windows & Doors:

I invite believing Pagans to define paganism and hope that some will do so here. I am pretty certain that any time a non-follower describes any tradition, without at least the active presence of an actual believer or two, something bad is bound to happen. Any doubts? Think about how Judaism has been mangled over the centuries by non-Jews twisting it to meet their needs for a spiritual foil.

My guess is that is what Newt was doing with paganism, and since it's no longer acceptable in most quarters to do that with Judaism, he simply picked on another group which has fewer defenders. It was wrong to do to Jews, and it's wrong to do to pagans.

My thanks to Jason over at The Wild Hunt for the link. - sm