Christians everywhere celebrate communion.  Christians do it because of quite specific guidance given by Jesus in the Bible: “this do in remembrance of me.”

 That instruction appears in all four gospels (Matthew 26: 26-28; Mark 14: 22-24; Luke 22: 17-20), and it is emphasized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26:  “²³ For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given…

Well, summer vacation time is here and I will not be able to post anything until I get back on July 15th. See you then, I hope. We'll pick up with Sirach and Acts when I get back.

Well, summer vacation time is here and I will not be able to post anything until I get back on July 15th. See you then, I hope. We'll pick up with Sirach and Acts when I get back.

Well, summer vacation time is here and I will not be able to post anything until I get back on July 15th. See you then, I hope. We'll pick up with Sirach and Acts when I get back.

Well, summer vacation time is here and I will not be able to post anything until I get back on July 15th. See you then, I hope. We'll pick up with Sirach and Acts when I get back.

Reflections on the 6th World Conference of Friends





Before anything else, I wish to say thank you- to God, to my family, to my F/friends, to Teri for working with me to get the time off to make this journey, to Beatrice for giving me a wonderful tour of Nairobi, to our driver John for giving us an awesome tour of Lake Nakuru National Park, to the conference organizers who spent so…

Sirach 4 – He begins with lines of advice on dealing with the poor, the angry and the destitute, “for if a man curses you in the bitterness of his soul, his maker will hear his imprecation. Gain the love of the community, bow your head to a man of authority. To the poor man lend an ear, and return his greeting courteously” (4:7-9).

“Whoever loves her [wisdom] loves life, those who wait on her early will be filled with happiness” (4:12). For, “though she takes him at…

Here is the latest podcast from North Valley Friends with a message from Andy Henry on Healing the Healers.

My father was, for all intents and purposes, a religious skeptic. He’d been raised by the unlikeliest of parents, a true believer for a mother, and an agnostic father. The whole of his life, he’d felt pulled in two directions, but he still attended church regularly. This was, after all, small town Alabama in the 1950’s.

In keeping with rural southern colloquialisms, my two sisters and I called my father’s mother “Granny”. Granny Camp was a usually sweet and maternal woman, but she…

My rural island home in Washington State couldn’t be much further—geographically or culturally­—from Manhattan’s Wall Street.  Last fall, when the first actions of Occupy Wall Street began, the movement seemed like an abstraction to me. After hearing Madeline Schaeffer’s podcast at Friend Speaks My Mind,…

The Apocrypha – Books of the Old Testament – about 16 of them - included in the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate but not in the Masoretic Bible or the Protestant Bibles. The word in Greek originally meant “hidden” or “secret” – thought to be somewhat beyond the reach of ordinary readers - but because of the exclusion of some of the texts from the Masoretic text, compiled by Torah scholars between the 7^th and 11^th centuries AD. Their criteria was generally to accept…

Could consideration of divorce help us understand how we make use of the Bible?  And might that help us in understanding what God asks of us with regard to homosexuality? 

In Luke 16:18 Jesus says¹⁸ “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”  That’s pretty clear.  But Matthew 19:9 has Jesus saying exactly the same thing and adding “except for immorality.” Matthew has Jesus giving a…

Sunday in worship an interesting thought occurred to me: How can I retract my defenses? The tightness and rigidity,…

Esther 7 – The king’s eunuchs come to get him for the banquet with Esther. There, the king asks Esther what it is she wants; and she tells him she desires only “the lives of [her] people” (7:4). In the course of talking to him about the matter, Haman’s name comes up as the one behind the terror. The king leaves the banquet in a fury and Haman realizes the “gig is up.” He begs Esther for mercy and help. When the king returns he thinks Haman is trying to assault Esther. One of the…

http://downtoegypt.blogspot.com

I spent several days with the Quakers in Congénies, a small village in the south of France. 

Chapter 4 – A long chapter what with Greek additions: Mordecai puts on sackcloth and ashes when he hears about the order that has gone out, and so do all the Jews when they hear the decree.

Mordecai goes to see Esther, but cannot be admitted to the palace in sackcloth. A eunuch, Hathach is the go-between. Mordecai sends her a message begging her not to forget her “humbler circumstances” and telling her she should go and plead for her people. She sends back a message…

Please excuse font and paragraph irregularities - sometimes they just happen and I can't seem to fix them.

The Book of Esther is part of what are called Writings in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is dated somewhere in the 3^rd or 4^th century BC and was thought to be a redaction of a text originally written the man Mordecai, who is part of the story. It is a story that explains the background and meaning of the Jewish festival of Purim [Day of…

Tobit 13 – A song of praise to God:

                                    Blessed be God who lives forever,

                                   for his reign endures throughout all ages!

                                  By turns he punishes and pardons;

                                  he sends men down to the depths of the underworld

                                 and draws them up from supreme…