As I begin this post, Portland and Seattle are roasting, a Florida beachfront condo has collapsed, the lake keeping Las Vegas afloat is disappearing, and many more out West are dreading the start of fire season. Here in the East we’re keeping a wary eye on Xs and Os on the Atlantic hurricane map; and … Continue reading Coming Soon: Maybe the Most Important Book I Never Wrote
This small 2003 collection of essays, now alas out of print, had its origins in two incidents, somewhat related, and which also turned out to be the start of something bigger, at least for me. In the first, I proposed to the Publications Committee of Friends General Conference (FGC), the “liberal” association of U. S. … Continue reading Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks: wandering through recent Quaker history
“History doesn’t repeat,” Mark Twain supposedly said, “but sometimes it rhymes.” Are the conflicts within so many American churches over LGBTQ and associated issues part of some cruel karmic sonnet? The Separation Generation’s three volumes approach this question in prose, by chronicling disruptions among five American Yearly Meetings extending roughly from 2011 to 2018 (along … Continue reading Broken Churches, Broken Nation (Again?)
Is it over? Has The Separation Generation finished dividing U. S. Quakers? Yes and no. Yes, in a publishing sense: Book Three, the last of The Separation Generation series, is now done and available: Shattered By the Light; or The Ruins and the Green. In Shattered by the Light, parallel conflicts over sexuality, the Bible … Continue reading Is This The End of the Separation Generation?
From The Guardian: “One of the world’s greatest masterpieces, and surely the most stolen piece of art of all time, Hubert and Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as the Ghent Altarpiece, has a new €30m (£26m) glass-case home. While remaining within St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, for which it … Continue reading A Non-Mystic Report on The Trip I Didn’t Take to Ghent