Way back, during the beginning stages of Friend Speaks My Mind, I got in touch with Mark Helpsmeet, the host of Northern Spirit Radio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  As far as I know, Mark is the only liberal Friend in the United States to host a radio program under the care of a meeting.  The intent of Northern Spirit Radio is to "provide religious and spiritual radio…

While I could never be mistaken for a fundamentalist, I have a childish yearning for a completely literal burning bush-type experience, or perhaps one day, while driving to New York, (Damascus not being handy), I suddenly find myself being yanked from my car and cast down upon the side of the interstate and a voice tells me in no uncertain terms that this is Jesus speaking and you, Patricia, had better take heed! Now that's the sort of experience that leaves no room for doubt. Why is…

It’s funny: I’ve had this blog title floating around in my head for months now. I thought the title was going to be referring to my return to Meeting for Worship after my hip surgery.

It’s not, though: it’s about my return to Jesus.

Five years ago, I began an annual tradition of reading the New Testament, starting on Christmas and finishing by the end of Lent. Two years ago, after I finished my annual reading, I felt that I was being called to take a break. I…

Listen to this post: http://www.turtleboxstories.com/audio/juicyinnerstuff.mp3

Somehow I grew up with the idea that to be a good Christian, God would ask you to give up everything at home and travel far away. There was pain and suffering. That's what we were told missionaries do and we revered missionaries.

Yesterday in the car, it hit me…

Moses and Aaron then went into the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. (Lev 9:23)

     Reflecting on my practice of the spiritual disciplines for my Spiritual Formation class at Earlham School of Religion, I recalled a very special…

Greetings, Friends!

Chapter 4 of Minding the Light: Our Collective Journal is now available online and in PDF format.

For this chapter, we invited Friends to respond to the query, "When have you encountered God’s Presence through a stranger?"  We received seventeen personal stories, a photo essay, and three original still photos.  Many of the strangers who appear in these stories are poor. Some are children. Some are ordinary people who act in unexpected ways,…

Teaching First Day School in a liberal unprogrammed Friends meeting is a strange and wonderful business. Somehow you have to transmit whatever it is that is going on mostly in silence among the adults in the next room, without any hint of indoctrination and ever aware that what might be your Truth may very well not be Truth as experienced by the parents of the tender minds under your care. Teaching the Bible is this experience on steriods. You soon find yourself navigating between Scylla and…

Listen to this post: http://www.turtleboxstories.com/audio/letitngmynaked.mp3

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This week, as I approach the start of the Quaker Basics course, I've been reading about simplicity. To a new Friend, this is a challenging concept. I was concerned that it made a virtue out of not thinking and this troubled me. Many years ago, as a new Christian, I remember being told that Christians should accept all they are told without question. Even as a teenager, I thought that was ridiculous. How could I separate the two ideas? Simplicity, as it was presented, seemed at first to mean…

Periodically, I write open letters to my Meeting on its listserve. This particular correspondence was sparked by an article I read in a monthly Quaker periodical. In the beginning, Friends did not celebrate Christmas, believing it to be a tradition foist upon them, and one in contradiction to their beliefs. They faced fines for daring to keep their shops open on Christmas Day. Vandals sometimes broke windows and damaged Quaker-owned businesses. Friends believed that Christmas was a festival…

Anticipating the Promise in Creation

This one is particularly great because our 4th & 5th graders came up with the idea to serve God by serving creation, so they made bird feeders and we all hung them out around our walking trail during worship. There are pictures on the podcast.