I imagine most people have their favorite Christmas movies selected with a combination of nostalgia, family tradition, the era in which you grew up. I’m no different. Here are my top five favorites:
Charlie Brown Christmas
Home Alone
The Harry Potter Series
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
I’ve even found a way to incorporate my favorite story into a Christmas sermon or two.
For some reason, as much as I loved Twitter, it began to feel like a chore. Probably in part because:
I’m enjoying the simple delight of this blog and using #Mastadon. Meeting new people. Learning new networks and communities is a joy to me. I don’t feel like I have to be on but I do feel like I want to check things out with no real pressure to perform and get boosts. I also like watching other people be excited to discover these new systems.
This came to light today when I was waiting for an invite to a new app, hoping to get a link to be an alpha tester. Sitting there refreshing the developer’s Mastadon page repeatedly for 10 mins struck me as something I have never done before – at least not for an app. Even though I didn’t get in, the excitement was fun and kind of silly. Then I realized, I’m enjoying the internet again.
#Twitter banned the main Mastadon account yesterday and folks are not exactly sure why. But Mastadon continues to grow and pull users away from Twitter, with more and more users on Twitter sharing their Mastadon handles.
What really surprised me though was the fact that Twitter is blocking links to Mastadon from being posted and treating their links as though they are malicious.
This was the warning I got when linking on another user’s profile link:
Birth Stories, The Magnificat, and the Revolution of Christmas Tags: #sermon #advent
This is the message I gave at Deep River Friends Meeting this past Sunday based on Luke 1: 46-55:
46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
In our family, the advent season is extra special. M, our middle daughter, was born on Nov 27, 2009. Just a few days before the start of advent on the liturgical calendar.
L, our oldest daughter, was born on December 19, 2007. She was due on Christmas, but thankfully my wife Emily’s prayers were heard and L was born 6 days before. Now she doesn’t have to competing for spotlight with the Son of God.
As you can see advent is special in our house the birthday boy, Jesus, notwithstanding.
Today, I was approached by a member of my workplace about hosting a space for grieving for folks who continue to struggle after painful decisions made in 2019-2020. The desire for this person was to process grief with the hope that we could find a space to do that as a workplace and community.
In the fall of 2020 and Spring of 2021 my office organized I think 4 of these spaces. The first few were well-attended but then attendance dipped. Then another member of the community approach me and wanted me to plan something (after having not attended the first 4 we hosted). I told this person that I would do if if they helped plan something. We did and it was nice but only a couple folks came. I began to wonder who we were doing these for. Finally, another group came together, and this time we came up with an idea for an embodied approach to grieving. We made a life-sized COVID cell and invited folks to fill it with their grievances and we burned the thing down.
Robert Bell, from Guilford College, interviewed me and did a really nice write up about the new book Rhiannon Grant and I co-edited.
The book is unique in its approach to #QuakerStudies for a variety of reasons, including those we invited to write, the chapters covered, and some of the methodology behind the formation of the content. For one, we are proud of the book having a number of biographical offerings throughout the book, following inspiration from McClendon's “Biography as Theology,” acting as case studies for how individuals have lived out their witness in the world.
Read Bell's piece on The Quaker World here.
Get a copy of the book on Amazon or Routledge Books.
January 19, 2019 I quite Facebook. I threatened to do it, mostly just to myself, years before, but then the Cambridge Analytics stuff came out, and there was so much going on with Trump, fake ads, and Facebook profiting off of their own corruption that I was done.
So I deleted my account. I honestly haven't missed it for even a second since then. All those people I said I could leave FB for, I hear from and connect with in other ways. It didn't feel like the place I needed to be and in many ways, it felt like it was having a negative impact on my relationships and attitude. So with one social network down, I had a little more time and headspace to put towards other things.
Now Twitter is coming under fire.
Books
The Quaker World is an outstanding, comprehensive and lively introduction to this complex Christian denomination. Exploring the global reach of the Quaker community, the book begins with a discussion of the living community, as it is now, in all its diversity and complexity.
The book covers well-known areas of Quaker development, such as the formation of Liberal Quakerism in North America, alongside topics which have received much less scholarly attention in the past, such as the history of Quakers in Bolivia and the spread of Quakerism in Western Kenya. It includes over sixty chapters by a distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors and is organised into three clear parts:
Within these sections, key themes are examined, including global Quaker activity, significant Quaker movements, biographies of key religious figures, important organisations, pacifism, politics, the abolition of slavery, education, industry, human rights, racism, refugees, gender, disability, sexuality and environmentalism.
The Quaker World provides an authoritative and accessible source of information on all topics important to Quaker Studies. As such, it is essential reading for students studying world religions, Christianity and comparative religion, and it will also be of interest to those in related fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology and ethics.
Learn more at Routledge: Link
The Book of Revelation in the New Testament has been often used to predict terror, the end of the world, and wild conspiracy theories. However, Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance argues that Revelation is a first-century handbook for how radicals resisted empire and has nothing to do with predicting the end of the world. It offers a different way into understanding what Revelation is about with the hope of helping support the growing movement for liberation and anti-poverty embodied by movements like the Poor People’s Campaign.
Find out more here: http://resistingempire.com/