Many founders of religious groups would hardly recognize their modern-day successors. That would surely be true of George Fox, the originator of the Friends (Quakers) movement.
Continue reading “Searching for George Fox”
Month: October 2004
Listening to the talking lama
My Methodist-Buddhist uncle asked if I would watch my grandma for a few hours so he could go out tonight to hear a llama speak. I complimented him on his interest in Peruvian culture. I was teasing him. He meant a lama, a Tibetan lama. A talking lama.
As Ogden Nash once wrote,
A one-l lama, he’s a priest.
A two-l llama, he’s a beast.
And I will bet a silk pajama
There isn’t any three-l lllama.
Be that as it may, I personally have never heard a talking lama or a talking llama.
I cannot thank and praise the Lord sufficiently.
“I cannot thank and praise the Lord sufficiently, that He so comforts me in my tribulation, and that my mind is still fixed to fear the Lord with all my heart all the days of my life, according to my weak ability.”
– Clement Hendrickss, Martyrs Mirror, p. 834-841
Why I live with my grandmother
A couple of years ago, my youngest uncle moved back with my grandmother Elva, after her hip replacement surgery, having spent a decade driving to her house several times a day to check on her. It’s been hard to convince her that she could no longer live alone safely, but I think she understands it now. But, as a former worker in nursing homes (LVN), she never wants to live in one. She says she wants to live in her home until she “sprouts wings and flies away”.
Continue reading “Why I live with my grandmother”
Kerry/Bush: I thought I was serving my country as a young man…
God doesn’t answer prayer…
“God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
Tantalizing if True?
In the 19th century, newspapers would sometimes flag articles “Important If True” when their information was potentially urgent but they didn’t have time to verify it before press-time. One wag wrote that churches should put the same sign over their doors.
Even when we don’t fully understand the truth about God and the world he created, even when we’re frustrated when we try to talk about these subjects (“No, that’s not it… what I meant to say was…”), we ought to know that truth really does exist. We might even find that it’s specific, practical, and relevant. And it’s not just important, it’s tantalizing, because it’s so different from the way we’ve been living all our lives. Is the Good News too good to be true? Not hardly.
Unlike most bloggers, I find myself constantly editing and re-editing my earlier posts, sharpening the point I want to make. We need to wake up. We’ve been dreaming.
About Elva
Elva is what my grandmother’s Texan-German relatives call her – short for Evangeline. She is more than 90 years old, and remembers bouncing on her Civil War veteran grandfather’s knee before 1914, while he called her “My little elf” (in German). She’s fifth-generation Texan, but was raised in a farming community where everybody spoke German, so she didn’t learn English until she started to school. She raised eight children while working in nursing and food service, first in Houston and later in St. Louis.
Continue reading “About Elva”
Desperate prayer
“The best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything but a cry.”
– Charles Spurgeon
Beyond reality-based politics
‘The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.”…’
‘ “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities…” ‘
— Ron Suskind, quoting a senior advisor to President Bush, in the New York Times magazine, 10/17/2004