The Fantasy of the Ideal

More often than I would care to admit, I have allowed my personal fantasies about the perfect community to distract me from the beautiful, real-life community that is right in front of me. I’ve found that making community an abstract ideal is the enemy of real, flesh-and-blood fellowship. The idealized community seems so much bigger, …

Time To Dive In!

Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down into the Seed which God sows in thy heart, and let that be in thee, and grow in thee, and breathe in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the …

Love Matters

This weekend, I took part in a Quaker street outreach in downtown Philadelphia. We arrived early Saturday morning, setting up camp in the “free speech zone” near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. We were there for most of the morning and afternoon, holding public worship and engaging with people walking by. We really had …

Come and Die

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that, “when Christ calls [a person], he bids [them] come and die.” This is a message that Jesus repeats time and again: no one can follow him unless they are willing to take up the cross. The way of Jesus is one marked with unspeakable joy, but also with tremendous suffering. When …

Idols and the I AM

I am fascinated by the often dysfunctional relationship between God and Israel. In Exodus, God appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and provides the Hebrew people with a hope and a future. For reasons known only to God, the Lord chooses an insignificant group of Egyptian slaves and promises to guide them to freedom, peace and …

More Than A Heart

And now it’s moving, and everybody plays a part. It’s a living breathing being, with a brain and a heart. It’s a living breathing being, you can tell it by its art. It’s a living, breathing being just like corporations aren’t. From Occupy Your Life, by Jon Watts It’s hard to think of any organ …