Yes! Magazine recently ran an article on the intriguing and controversial Matthew Fox. The article also links to Fox’s 95 Thesis which he’s affixed to the Wittenburg door. It’s a long list and includes some odd bobs like #94 “Since angels learn exclusively by intuition, when we develop our powers of intuition we can expect to meet angels along the way.” Others rang with me and have made me think. Here’s a sampling to wet your mental whistle.

#33 The term “original wound” better describes the separation humans experience on leaving the womb and entering the world, a world that is often unjust and unwelcoming than does the term “original sin.”

#38 A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event … {read more…}

A week or so ago I wrote an off-the-top-of-my-head post about the organized church, and my current relationship to it. As is usual with the case of my shitty first drafts (SFD) it wasn’t worded especially careful. And as is usual of my most propheticish moments, it raised some hackles. I don’t intentionally raise hackles, at least not most of the time, but I really don’t mind when they get raised, and I mostly stay out of the fray. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth on the blog…15 or 16 comments, if I remember rightly. Folks do do do love to theologize. I don’t really enjoy that much myself, the theologizing. I like orthodoxy as much as the … {read more…}

“When sleeping women wake
mountains move.”

-Chinese Proverb

Hey Jason C!

Did you guys see that Jason Clark asked me how I thought emergent should proceed in the future? He did, just check it out in the comments below. So nice! Thanks Jase.

I should say too, that I have been invited to be a part of the Emergent planning group. (Thanks Bob Carlton.) I just couldn’t afford the travel…and truthfully, I don’t know how much energy I can/should give to the organization because I know organizing the emergent types out there is not my primary call. I’m listening though, to see if and how I should be inovled as things move foward towards the 07 gathering.

Anyway, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have a … {read more…}

Last week, Catie, who is five, came running in from school saying: “Mommy! Do you know what? It was NOT Martin Luthe King Jr. who got the slaves free! It was a GIRL! It was Harriet Tubman!”

Ah….my little feminist.

I caught Catie up on the difference between the underground railroad in the late 1800’s and the civil rights movement of the mid 1900’s. She’s only in kindergarten — time is sort of relative. But I think she get’s it now.

The next day Eden came home and narrarated the life of Dr. King to me. She didn’t stop talking the whole time we walked from our house to the library (10 blocks) and back.

Apparently it’s time for MLK lessons … {read more…}

Emerging Women You Should Know:
(off the top of my head, in no particular order at 1am)

Claudia Burney
(beautiful black woman with plenty of chutzpha becomes an eastern orthodox convert — who wouldn’t want to read?)

Liz Rios
(sassifrass jones with a good education and a wicked key pad)

Kelly Bean
(alas, she doesn’t have a blog. but she does have a community that she’s been hosting — unpaid, unordained, and unrecoginzed — for 7+ years)

Deborah Lloyd
(mama bear of a church for street youth in portland, plus a big ole’ fat degree from a seminary that doesn’t think women should be ordained — plus great platnium dread locks and grandkids.)

Maggi Dawn http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/
(the godmother of bloggers, highly educated british brain with … {read more…}

I get several emails a week from folks wanting to know about the Emergent Church, postmodernity, Monkfish Abbey, and what-the-hell-is-an-Abbess. A while back I got an query from a fellow, Scott Collins, who was working on a paper on “Women and the Emergent Church.” I finally got around to answering the poor guy, who’s email had gotten lost in the shuffle. My delayed answer is probably not going to do him one iota of academic good, but it I did spend quite a bit of time typing it, and it’s not a bad assessment, if I do say so myself.

As regular readers know, I do get tired of debating these things on line, but every once in awhile … {read more…}

It’s been raining for 26 days straight in Seattle. But one day, for a few minutes, the clouds broke and it looked like this:

Yesterday I woke up in tears and it really never got better. I think I totally panicked Jen Lemen (does anyone else out there still miss her blog like I do?). I called her machine with that shaky “I’m really trying not to cry” voice. Nice way to freak out a friend, eh. ‘Though I couldn’t reach Jen, my housemate Sharon was home, so I cried on her shoulder for awhile.

You see, this is my sixth straight week of daily migraine pain and I’m not winning the emotional battle. I’m starting to get glimpse of a possible reality: this might be it for the rest of my life.

All I want to do is work. Is that … {read more…}

As y’all probably know, some folks out there (perhaps you are one of them) have accused the Emergent/PostModern church of being chocked full-o-heretics. And with a name like Monkfish Abbey even non-Christian folks look at ‘cha kinda funny. Why, just last week an Jew-ish friend said to me ; “Oh right, you have your own cult.” My immediate indignant reply? “It’s not a cult!” Followed quickly by the little voice in my head which said, “I bet all the cult leaders say that. I bet Jim Jones said that!” Then my inner voice laughed. I discussed this with our local theologian, Lindell Alderman and he says that technically, Monkfish Abbey is more like a sect than … {read more…}