Mary Colleen Klein's Blog (25)

On Competition

Winning by cheating isn’t the same as simply winning. They may look the same. They may be rewarded with the same sets of prizes and glory. But they are not equal indicators of ability, even though prizes and glory might obscure that.

Winning matters. Merging into…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 1st mo. 1, 2017 at 1:30am — No Comments

On Flesh

Dear Friends: Back to basics.

The life in me needs to be wonderful.

To be wonderful, the life in me -- needs to be safe, needs to be healthy, needs to be happy.

To be happy, the life in me needs to take some risks with my safety and health.

To be…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 11th mo. 1, 2016 at 1:30am — 3 Comments

On Media

Immersed in stories as humans are – print, radio, television, internet, social media, interactive gaming, virtual reality – we can easily lose sight of truth. Especially when a story fills our imagination with images we dearly want to believe in, we can feel reluctant to…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 9th mo. 1, 2016 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Heritage

Choose life: It’s a good rule of thumb. But the life I have inherited is one that’s built on killing. While I’m safely minding my own business (in a wealthy suburb in the richest nation that’s ever existed), killing and the threat of killing are adding to the wealth of the…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 7th mo. 1, 2016 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Limits

As almost any four-year-old child could tell you, if you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a great big box, you’ll need to cut holes in it before you can make it into a house. Or as “the old man” (Lao Tsu) said, “Profit comes from what is there; usefulness from what is not…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 5th mo. 1, 2016 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Beginning

“This isn’t working. We need to start over.” Virtually nobody ever wants to hear that. Our natural tendency is to protect our accomplishments and hang onto what we’ve got, even if that might not be good for us. Our brains are not designed to assess risk accurately. We underrate the risks of the mundane (cars, bathrooms) and overrate the risks of the dramatic (airplanes, tornadoes). The Known typically appears safer than The Unknown.

Americans are no more likely to be killed by…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Governing

In the earliest years of our faith, buoyed up by currents of the Enlightenment, Friends professed Truth as they drew it from individual revelations. Even though they shared a common Christian background and perspective, early Friends’ revelations multiplied wildly, leading to strife and confusion among them. By 1666, many prominent Friends had been executed or imprisoned, and the faith seemed destined to fizzle. What saved Friends’ faith was Friends’ invention of practices of corporate…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 1st mo. 1, 2016 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Money

One of my sisters keeps horses. She has noticed that if she shows up to feed them later than usual, they seem especially happy to see her. The pathos of this scenario is all the more striking because, in general, we take such scenarios for granted. With carrots and sticks and…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 11th mo. 1, 2015 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Play

Let’s be friends. Let’s play a game, or play make-believe, or play around just to see what happens. Let’s play the Massively Multiplayer Offline Game called The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Each of us gets two characters – InnerFriend and OuterFriend – and the goal is to keep them together, as closely as we can, while we move them through The Valley toward The Eternal Mystery.

Now, about The Eternal Mystery. No other player can tell you where to find it. Only the Mystery can reveal…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 9th mo. 1, 2015 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Difference

A six-year-old girl in South Carolina wrote a letter this summer. “Dear Daddy: I know you were shot at the Church and you went to Heaven. I love you so much! I know you love me and I know that you know that I love you too . . . Your baby girl and grasshopper.” Take more time to feel the sadness of that. Take more time to feel the wrongness of that.

The difference between tragedy and evil is the element of human will. Tragedy (natural evil) requires us to stop and weep and recover and…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 7th mo. 1, 2015 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Needs

I need a miracle. I cannot bring into the world all the good that I want, no matter how much it is needed. But by some miracle, I can learn to play my part.

Our Quaker faith was born into a time when knowledge was becoming understood as being directly accessible to all people willing to exert the proper effort, not as only accessible to and dispensed by anointed priests. Guttenberg launched the mass production of printed books in the mid-1400s. Luther challenged the corrupt teachings…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 5th mo. 1, 2015 at 1:00am — No Comments

On Knowing

Last January, police in South Carolina released a sketch of a possible murder suspect, drawn by artificial intelligence, based on information from DNA found at the crime scene. No eyewitnesses and no cameras had observed the murderer’s face, yet the computer produced an approximation of it, and the authorities believe it might help them solve the crime. (Pollack, NYT, 2/24/2015)…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 3rd mo. 1, 2015 at 8:00pm — 4 Comments

On Reconciliation

Dear Friends: Through no fault of our own, through no feat of our own, we’ve all been born into this juncture in history together. So many of us. Too many of us. Things keep getting more and more crowded around here. Even so, it seems impossibly hard at times to say goodbye…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 1st mo. 1, 2015 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Temptation

Dear Friends: “We come now to examine the state and condition of man as he stands in the fall: what his capacity and power [are] and how far he is able, as of himself, to advance in relation to the things of God.” (Robert Barclay, 1678). In an era when God is Dead, when the…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 11th mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Family

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” This was Cain’s retort to God after committing the first cold-blooded murder in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic record. And even though God banished Cain to a lifetime of “restless wandering upon the earth,” God remained silent on the question of…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 9th mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Pride

Dear Friends: Stand up straight. Those words can sound scolding – or they can sound encouraging. Deciding whether or not to obey directions, we consider the source. We consider whether we think that source cares about our best interests.

Obedience doesn’t mean the same…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 7th mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Production

After frolicking around The Garden all morning, Adam and Eve were starving. They filled their bellies with the fruit of The Tree, and it gave them such a headache! The knowledge of good and evil throbs in the ever-branching tangle of nerves that is the human brain. And the…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 5th mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Time

If we’re lucky enough to live long enough, we get to watch the miracle of babies turning into adults. And with that luck, we pay the price of watching tangible people in our lives turning into memories. And we watch those memories taking on lives of their own.  A baby’s first…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 3rd mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Patriotism

Dear Friends: Our First Amendment right to free expression is sometimes called the “crown jewel” of the Bill of Rights. That somewhat oxymoronic metaphor – a fundamental democratic principle sparkling like a diamond in the coffers of a monarch – reveals an uneasy tension…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 1st mo. 1, 2014 at 8:00pm — No Comments

On Deception

Dear Friends, Many of you have heard the story: Two old Quaker farmers are working together, repairing a fence. One farmer pauses, looks up, and comments that among a flock of white sheep, he sees a black one. The other farmer looks up at the flock and replies, “Well yes, it…

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Added by Mary Colleen Klein on 11th mo. 1, 2013 at 8:00pm — No Comments

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