2 Timothy 3:5

Jeremiah 31:33

Acts 26:18

2 Corinthians 4:6

Romans 2:29

Romans 10:8

Colossians 1:27

Romans 1:19

Romans 1:16

2 Corinthians 3:6

Ephesians 6:12

Ephesians 4:13

1 Corinthians 15:47

Deuteronomy 30:14

2 Corinthians 13:5

2 Corinthians 4:4

1 Thessalonians 5:19

2 Timothy 1:10

Romans 8:2

Colossians 3:10

2 Corinthians 10:4

Joel 2:28

Galatians 1:16

1…

This afternoon we watched a rerun of a retrospective — Oprah Winfrey's Where Are They Now? Oprah interviewed the widowed husband of a young woman who decided to move to Oregon so she could take advantage of the assisted dying legislation there. She was living with inoperable brain tumors.

This evening we watched a documentary on CBC about a young man with cystic fibrosis. He and his friends run a weekly podcast at of Halifax where they discuss the granular minutia of living in this…

I am working with a document purporting to list the 100 most frequently cited Bible verses in the writings of early Quakers compiled from the Quaker Bible Index. The text below is third on the list. I have provided the AV-1611 (commonly called the KJV)  as that would likely be how Fox and the first Friends heard this passage, and a more modern one (in this case the NRSV). …

SO I turned to this book because I’m one of those peculiar people who read early Quaker tracts and I was looking for theological and historical context in which to understand what I was reading. This book delivers. I now have a better appreciation of how what is going on in the texts I am reading may be quite different depending on whether they were written in the interregnum or the restoration.…

“I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

I find myself working with a George Fox tract, "To All That Would Know the Way to the Kingdom" (p 15 GF Works, volume 4).

Parked in the very first paragraph we find three (3) direct citations of scripture:  John 3:3-8, Revelation 1:9 & Colossians 1:13. Here's something that jumps out at me: he introduces the gospel passage with "Christ saith" but Revelation with "John the divine said" and Colossians with "the apostle said". "Said" is universal past tense of "to say" but "saith"…

I have been actively absent from the blogosphere for some time now. Back in the ancient of days I had a quite sustained blog presence. I have from time to time returned to blogging but each time I have faltered and left again.

I think a big part of this is my awareness of how very public the space is with a very narrow audience. Blogs take a while to take off and most do not cultivate a massive following. Meanwhile what you say and do here is publicly accessible. My attempts to do a…

I have been reading an e-book called "Convergent Model of Renewal".

As I understand it thus far, the future of Quakerism is a kind of hybrid of Episcopalian, liberation theologian and furry cosplayer.

Mind you, this is probably the most hopeful suggestion I have heard in years...

I will be playing the hireling minister at our local United Church this morning. So for those who object to prepared sermons I apologize now. I'm posting the text in part because I think it speaks to the character of our religious experiences somewhat and so may be of interest to some.

Now our Bibles are whole libraries of stories stretching across thousands of years of storytelling and seasoned liberally with poems, and laws, regulations and promises. But in case you…

Then the priest of Drayton, the town of my birth whose name was Nathaniel Stevens, came often to me, and I went often to him; and another priest sometimes came with him; and they would give place to me, to hear me; and I would ask them questions and reason with them. This priest Stevens asked me, why Christ cried out upon the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ And why he said, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not my…