Catching Up

I’ve not written here in a while, but I’ve been posting elsewhere. Here are a few things that have gone up on other blogs and sites:

Journey Through the Faith Series Everyday Liturgy

Three posts about my childhood experiences in very different faith communities overseas, and how they shaped my own understanding of faith

“A Year in Asia with Anglicans”
“A Year in Asia with Evangelicals”
“A Year in Asia with Bible Christians”

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Hong Kong for a year. Though a child of an internationally transient family, I, until that point, had grown up in a single church in the north central United States and had very little church experience outside our Baptist-in-name-and-form-but-not-denominationally-affiliated. My parents would probably not have defined themselves as fundamentalist Baptists, even my church may not have fit that definition, but it was definitely the direction my young ecclesiology leaned.

And then we went to Hong Kong.

“The Feast of Grace”—Church at Charlotte Blog

We’re surrounded by marred shalom today. We see it in a passenger airliner downed by a missile meant by one warring party for another. We see it in two brothers on opposite sides of the world who have just lost their whole family.

And we can’t do anything about it. But we are invited to be part of the restoration of shalom.

“The Ice Bucket Challenge”—The Curator

My parents were always generous donors to many individuals, missions, and charities. They gave regularly through our church. But the moment at the cash register was rare. It wasn’t often that I saw them say “yes” to that kind of request for a cause.

And I knew why the yes had been said. I knew what the pause meant. Those three little letters had made all the difference: ALS.

This one was ours.

“Ask a Teacher Series: Eight Questions from Writers to Teachers, Back-to-School Edition”—WriteWorld

You are communicating ideas. Writing is simply a vehicle for doing that. We’ve got a lovely language that is flexible and strange and has all sorts of cobbled-together rules for use because it’s been a cobbled-together language from the start. And some of those rules are worth noting and remembering and following and some of them should be thrown out the window with the silly people who made them up. English is a living language. The rules you learn today may be out of date by the time you’re forty. Such is the nature of having a living language.

“Exploring Infinity”—Church at Charlotte Blog

Last week, I got into a discussion about time and the quantum universe on Facebook. Yes, this sort of thing happens in my newsfeed. A friend who is a physicist had started the discussion thread—he’d been pondering some ideas as he drove home from work, and decided to share them in a group we’re both part of.

I never took physics. I didn’t even take chemistry. I enjoyed science in school, but my math skills are abysmal. When the math required in my science classes got beyond me, I found other sciences to study. But I’ve always been fascinated by science—particularly physics and astronomy—and while much of my friend’s post was beyond my understanding, I still loved entering the discussion with him and sharing my thoughts on the topic.

Catch these posts at the links, and catch up on my past writing here.