The QuakerQuaker community is amazing. Last Thursday I sent an email appeal out after my laptop died. The response has been amazing! In just this week, 62 people have donated a little over $3000. That's amazing, and I feel very humbled. I have replacement equipment and have been able to pay off many of outstanding communication bills. Thank you all so very much!

The overwhelmingly-positive response answers two of the most pressing questions I had posed: Is this a project that readers…

Genesis 25 – With Sarah deceased, Abraham marries again (Keturah) and has another six sons – a strange ending to the story of this man who was said to be 100 when his son Isaac was born. He must be nearly 120 at this point. All of the progeny of this period are sent to the east. Abraham dies at 175 and is buried with Sarah.

Isaac makes his home near the well of Lahai-roi (well of the Living One who sees me) in the Negev Desert

Ishmael’s 12 sons…

Consider us contraltos in God’s holy choir. Consider us paratroopers in God’s holy army (OK, medics if you’d prefer).  Consider us utility infielders on God’s holy baseball team.  Consider us produce clerks in God’s holy supermarket.

I’ve been searching for metaphors for Quakers. I’ve been searching for an image of what it means to me to be a Quaker, a picture of why that identity has meaning to me. Each of these metaphors pictures us as parts of a whole, parts with special roles to…

Genesis 24:33-67 - They show the servant of Abraham great hospitality; he tells them the whole story about Abraham – his success in making the move he did and the prosperity he came into with God’s help. He explains why his master sent him and how he came to believe that Rebekah was the intended bride for Isaac.

After hearing all the details, Laban and Bethuel [Rebekah’s brother] agree to the marriage; they only ask that she remain with them for ten days. Abraham’s…

Genesis 24:1-32 – Abraham is now a very old man. He asks his oldest servant, “the man in charge of his household” (24:2) to take and oath “by putting [his] hand under [his] thigh” (24:2) and swearing that he “will not allow [his] son [Isaac] to marry one of these local Canaanite women” (24:3). He wants his steward to find a woman from the house of Abraham’s father in Haran. He makes it clear he does not want Isaac to travel there EVER. The steward is to go there on his own and…

Last week we heard from one of our members, Scot Headley, continuing our Peace Month conversation, about being "Pulled in Both Directions," and this week the George Fox University Players visited and presented "Enough Already!"

"Attend to our fire, Friends!" I croaked in quaking tribulation. I was gathered with Friends from across the country in the Casa De Luz at Ben Lomond Quaker Center. We were gathered for a weekend of learning, worship, and reflection on the rising classification of Convergent Friends.

I traveled to this gathering with a concern that developed as I learned about Convergent Friends while living at Pendle Hill. The definition that had emerged in my mind was that the liberal form…

Genesis 22 - God puts Abraham to the test at Moriah (said to be where Jerusalem would later be built).  “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, who you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you” (22:2).

Abraham obeys. On the third day of travel, Abraham spies the place he’s been told to go to in the distance. He tells the men with him to stay while he and Isaac go…

The purpose of my prior BBQB blogs is to highlight Quaker reliance on Scripture to construct the Quaker practices and Quaker organization.  This blog examines “worship” as one of the two words where Quakers failed to follow new covenant teaching because they focused on the plain meaning of scripture in faulty translations.

 

The study of worship starts with a dictionary definition. Worship as a verb means “to show religious reverence for: to adore or to perform acts of adoration”.…

Genesis 20 - A doublet of 12:10, but involving not the king of Egypt but the King of Gerar, a kingdom south of Gaza, Abimelech.  Abimelech has a dream from God revealing the truth of what Abraham is doing and he confronts Abraham.  The idea of God’s prophets being favored and being people who can intercede with God for us is reinforced here (20:7). Abraham learns that there is fear and respect for God outside his own people, so at Abraham’s intercession, God does…

Genesis 19 - Two angel messengers are entertained by Lot whose hospitality is implicitly praised.  The men of the town beat at his door demanding that he turn them over to them so they can “abuse” them –“be intimate with them” [Tanakh 19:5]. There is virtually no discussion or follow up on the particular evil implied.  The whole focus is on the fact that destruction will come, but the virtuous Lot and those he loves are given a path to follow to avoid the…

Genesis 18 - This chapter shows us Abraham sitting at the entrance to his tent near a small tree called a Terebinth at Mamre.  It is just getting to the hot part of the day, when three strangers appear.  Abraham runs over to them and begs them to accept hospitality from him. 

He enlists Sarah’s help and arranges for meat and cheese to be offered.  While they are eating, they ask where his wife is and one of them says “I will surely return to you about this time next…

Over the last few months I've been worried about where QuakerQuaker is headed. Donations have covered basic hosting costs but there hasn't been enough left over for a behind-the-scenes infrastructure that's been slowly crumbling.

This afternoon, an essential part of that infrastructure collapsed. My laptop, which is my only computer at home, has died. It's five years old and has been falling apart over the last year so it's no surprise, but it will be hard to keep QuakerQuaker updated…

Genesis 16 - There is still one hurdle Abraham must negotiate—the human solution that his wife Sarai dreams up. Sarai, discouraged with her own infertility and not quite as ready as Abram is simply to trust in the word of God they have received becomes impatient and comes up with her own plan to make the promise of God come to pass.  

She offers Abram her maidservant Hagar with the idea that perhaps any children that result might be considered hers. …

Genesis 14 - There is a war in the region between the kings of Shinar (Amraphel), Ellasar (Arioch), Elam (Chedorlaomer) and Goiim (Tidal) and the kings of Sodom , Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Bela. 

The first league of kings is victorious and in seizing the possession and food supplies of Sodom and Gomorrah, they sweep up Abram’s nephew Lot and all he owns.  Abram then goes and with 318 of his retainers, he recaptures Lot and his possessions and brings them…

Anne Marie Roderick will be presenting on her interfaith work during Peace Forum in the ESR Dining Room on Thursday, January 31. Her presentation is one of several events taking place during Earlham College's Religious Emphasis Week, which includes…

Chapters 12 through 25 embrace the story of Abraham

Genesis 12 - Abraham is the next “Seed of Eve” by whom redemption will come to man, the first having been Noah.

God addresses Abram and tells him to leave Haran, the home of his father’s clan, to go to “a land that I will show you” (12:1). And then come the great promises – that God will make of him a great nation, that He will make Abram’s name great and him a blessing to “all the communities…

As I was falling asleep yesterday night, I realized something. I'd been beating myself up about my current inability to sit quietly and listen/wait/worship for longer than about 20 minutes when I'm by myself. I was getting pretty low and feeling like a bad Quaker. (It did not help that I had had a headache all day, and was trying and failing to fall asleep quickly.)

Then I realized an underlying reason why going to Meeting for Worship has become so important to me. I realized…

Genesis 9 - God makes a covenant with Noah, expanding Noah’s “dominion” over the creation by giving him meat to eat as well as plants, providing man refrains from eating the blood of the animals, for the blood is the life of the animal and “the life” is God’s in a special way--man’s lifeblood especially for God will require “an accounting” for the “life” that is so precious to him:

“I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. If a wild…