Last night was magical. I danced home knowing that this is where I belong, what I should be doing and who I am.

"I am."

Understanding I am was the theme of last night's Turtlebox…

1 Kings 14 – Jeroboam’s son, Abijah, becomes ill and Jeroboam sends the mother to Shiloh to consult with the prophet Ahijah (the one who told him he should be king). Ahijah can’t see but when the woman comes to him, he knows it is she even though she pretends to be someone else. He gives her the following message—the Lord is not pleased with Jeroboam because he has not been like David.  He has made idols and provoked God, so God will bring evil on Jeroboam’s…

1 Kings 14 – Jeroboam’s son, Abijah, becomes ill and Jeroboam sends the mother to Shiloh to consult with the prophet Ahijah (the one who told him he should be king). Ahijah can’t see but when the woman comes to him, he knows it is she even though she pretends to be someone else. He gives her the following message—the Lord is not pleased with Jeroboam because he has not been like David.  He has made idols and provoked God, so God will bring evil on Jeroboam’s…

What is the reach of divinity?         

This is an odd, new question to me, and perhaps odd and new to you, too.  As I reflect on it, however, I realize it is not a new question, and it is related to many questions that have been important to Christians over two millenia.  It is related even to how we read those five Bible snippets that…

1 Kings 13 – As Jeroboam begins to offer sacrifices to the gold bull-calves he set up at the Bethel altar, a “man of God” (“prophet” in other versions) from Judah “denounced the altar and predicted that it would fall apart. He also prophesies that someday a child named Josiah will be born to the family of David and will slaughter those “serving at the pagan altars who offer sacrifices” and he “will burn human bones.” There are a few key prophecies in this confusing declaration. Some…

Bullying carries a lot of weight these days; it's weighing heavily on me. More so on my youngest.



The situation is not overt, more under the radar, which makes it more difficult terrain. I keep asking myself if what she describes and I have observed firsthand is, indeed, bullying. It borders more on stalking. I…

1 Kings 12 – Rehoboam goes to Shechem and all Israel comes there to make him king.  Hearing this, Jeroboam returns from Egypt. The people complain to Rehoboam about the burdens his father had imposed on them and ask him what he will do to lighten the yoke. He asks advice of the older leaders and they tell him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them. . .they will be your servants forever” (12:7). But he…

This week's message explored "The Holiness of Hospitality," brought to us by Andy Henry.

Every now and again I take part in a Quaker Meeting for Worship that is totally silent: a whole hour where not a word is spoken. To an outsider looking in, all these occasions may look the same, but to the worshipper these experiences can vary wildly. Sometimes I rise at the end of worship with a sense of nourishment, and have at times been graced with a renewed sense of connectedness to my Friends, God and everything. I vividly remember one totally silent Meeting where I felt a palpable,…

1 Kings 11 – Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to the Pharaoh’s daughter—he had “among his wives” 700 princesses and 300 concubines!! And it is through his love of women that Solomon comes to displease the Lord, for it is through them that he is lured into the worship of foreign gods in his old age—“his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David” (11:4). He built a “high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the…

1 Kings 9 – The Lord appears to Solomon a second time (the first having been at Gibeon) and says to him that he has consecrated the Temple “and put my name there forever, my eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (9:3) and promising also to establish his line forever. 

But if he or his children “do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut Israel off from the land that I…

“Our lives are an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn. That there is no end in nature but every end is a beginning.”

                                                              ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson

I spent part of May 5 walking in circles. Sometimes such…

1 Kings 8:22-66 – In the presence of all the people, Solomon stands before the altar and prays. He raises his arms to God and asks that God will keep the covenant He has made. He says this: “But can you, O God, really live on earth? Not even all of heaven is large enough to hold you, so how can this Temple that I have built be large enough?” (8:27-30).

There is in this passage much of the same tension that must have come upon the Jewish…

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"

 Jesus replied, "You don't understand now what I am doing, but someday you will." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my…

 “Where are Quakers with the insistent question of homosexuality?”  Are we welcoming and affirming? Or do we proclaim homosexuality a sin, asking that those with the ‘affliction’ renounce their desires?

I asked these questions in early April seeking responses from Friends in various Yearly Meetings across the United States.  I’m grateful for the many responses that came back.  I didn’t hear from every Yearly Meeting, but I heard from enough to begin to see the pattern – and that…

1 Kings 8:1-21 – Solomon assembles the elders and heads of tribes for the bringing up of the ark from the city of David (Zion). Countless sheep and oxen were sacrificed to mark the occasion.  The ark was brought into the inner sanctuary under the wings of the cherubim.  In the ark were only the two tablets of stone Moses had placed there at Horeb.  When the priests came out of the holy place, “a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to…

1 Kings 7 – It takes 13 years for Solomon’s palace to be completed. In it there was a Hall of Pillars, a Hall of the Throne and a Hall of Justice.  The daughter of the Pharaoh, one of his wives, has her own house the size of one of these halls.

Huram, the craftsman who helps Solomon with this palace, is son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, who married a man of Tyre.  He knew how to work in bronze and was “full of skill, intelligence, and knowledge…

Here is this week'spodcast by Lynn Holt.

1 Kings 6 – 480 years after leaving Egypt, 4 years into Solomon’s reign, they start on the Temple. It was 60 by 20 cubits, 30 cubits high [or 90’ by 30’ and 45’ high]. It’s interesting how exact the biblical account is on the dimensions. It is similarly précised when it describes the Ark Noah was told to build [450’ by 75’ by 45’] and the Ark or Covenant Box that was built to contain the “words” or “commandments” of God [45” by 27” by 27”]. The stone used was finished with precision…