http://www.universalist.org/archives/000720why_go_to_church_why_go_to_this_church.html

http://www.universalist.org/archives/000719green_pastures_or_fallow_ground.html

Friends,
This is an icon at new skete. Jesus is holding not an
american football I think but a loaf of bread...
I am going up to New Skete Monastery in Cambridge New York for the weekend,
with Boris Pitel and Peter Von Berg and look forward to meeting other friends
there, perhaps driving over to Vermont to do Mount Equinox tomorrow if weather
permits, Sunday lunch at Michael and Siri Allisoins. Michael is with NASA and
is happy at the recent private launch from cape canaveral. Heinlein may have
had it right that private enterprise might be the way out of the gravity well,
when public and political will fails.(and who besides Newt Gingrich said anything
about space?) anyway will certainly have some good photographs, Boris being with
us, and be back with you very soon...
+Seraphim
.

http://www.universalist.org/archives/000718from_the_outgoing_moderator.html

http://uuminister.blogspot.com/2012/05/happy-birthday-lw.html

Relay for Life 2012 Survivors' Lap

Today, LW is 7. 

Friends,
Ducks by the pond today. does not the flattened depth of the photographic plane
give an impression that they are facing a body of water perpendicular to them?

else, received from amazon the detective fiction reviews of charles williams
1930-1935 it seems an interesting book but the buyer should know, apart that it
is not an inexpensive book, that half of it is essays and apparatus by the
editor, Jared Lobdell, concerning golden age detection and also its relation to
Williams own writing.

A brief dipping into this shows Lobdell giving rather short shrift to the 'farceurs'
Michael Innis and Edmund Crispin whom I always enjoyed. I agree with him that it is
a pity that Williams was not given Harley Quinn to review but in fact he was not,
and there we are..

Nor are Williams reviews full length but seem at least for the most part to be
groups of one or two paragraph notices of writers for the most part forgotten by
all except specialists in period detective fiction, well with others we do know
such as J.D.Carr, Ellery Queen, and...ah here is something interesting...Sax Rohmer.
"there are some few absurd books of my own which exist only because one
evening,having finished one of Mr Rohmer's,I said to myself:'I also will write
a novel.'"
so... today these ,yours
+Seraphim
.

http://boyinthebands.com/archives/thoughts-about-the-uua-decline-numbers/

http://boyinthebands.com/?p=7634

So the UUA’s a bit smaller this year than last. The question I have — perhaps unanswerable — is how many of those are (put plainly) old, middle aged and young. Are these numbers a sign of social and economic stress, or are we approaching a demographic cliff?

The answer would suggest next steps. But the good news is also the bad news. Despite the talk of cradle Unitarian Universalists, we’re dependent on converts. (The cradle UUs could use some PR help, being second only to the Quakers in making participation from infancy a smug, if unearned, status.) This is good because there’s the opportunity to grow, should we tap adequately into the culture. But the bad news is that we would probably make the most sense to those coming from a churched setting, and those numbers are falling.

Related posts:

1. UUA certification numbers pending For the last few years (but much less last year)...
2. Patience while I review the numbers So now I’m curious what the total congregational expenditures and...
3. Reviewing UUA numbers: vanishing congregations Rather than making a big report about UUA certification numbers,...

Friends,
This photo I find on line of St Michael's tower on the tor at Glastonbury,
looking up to the sky, seems to go with these lines by R.S.Thomas which
in turn seem to go with the time before Pentecost.


There is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims?
He is such a fast
God, always before us, and
leaving as we arrive.

I remember at Glastonbury standing here and looking up ,the sky was blue that
day I think, and feeling it is an image of the Church that is and is coming,
rooted in the earth and ,as the Tor may in some way represent, at its center,
and open to the sky....

+Seraphim

.

http://boyinthebands.com/archives/how-im-celebrating-facebooks-ipo/

http://boyinthebands.com/?p=7639

I’m “celebrating” by offsetting my Facebook use with greater use of Diaspora, an alternative that let’s you keep strong control over your data. I don’t know many people there, but it’s more lively (about things I care about anyway) than I’ve heard described, and I’ve found some interesting people I wouldn’t have otherwise fonnd.

Sign up here and if you’re a member, seek me by name.

I can’t stand Facebook, but I use it to keep up with a few friends and family members. I don’t like the low regard its management has for privacy, or for the presumption of a inevitable (but invented) good it provides. But it’s easier to do without it if there’s a partial alternative. Partial because there’s no point replace an invented good with another.

Related posts:

1. Celebrating Buy Nothing Day I know the culture-jam-istas are sometimes derided for making pointless...
2. “Celebrating Life” best for bookshelf One of the things that baffles me is how there...
3. Anna Belle wrestles the GIMP and wins Anna Belle Leiserson (Faith and Web) took me very, very...

Friends,
Here is a collage made by Bill Samsonoff from Liturgy at
New Skete Monastery in Cambridge New York. I will be
viisting there next weekend...

.

and one more item, a fish whose little world is in front of a
chinese restaurant I had lunch at yesterday. He swims over coins
thrown in I suppose as a sign that the place is a sort of mine of
Luck...

.

these two items today,
yours
+Seraphim