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  • The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

    Twyla Tharp with Mark Reiter. I actually finished this on the 27th October, but I’m just getting around to transcribing some things from my journal. Here are some of the ideas and exercises I particularly liked from the book.

    Have a ritual of beginning.
    1. Where’s your pencil?
    3. Face your fears.
    4. Give me one week without...mirrors, clocks, newspapers, speaking.
    5. You can observe a lot by watching. A. Watch a man and woman together; write down everything they do until you get to 20. B. Repeat, writing down only things you find interesting. C. Compare/Contrast the two lists.
    6. Pick a new name.
    Chapter Five: Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box. (Organizational systems) “Easily acquired. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough.”
    11. Chaos and coins.
    12. Reading archaeologically.
    15. Take a field trip.
    18. How to be lucky: “Be generous.”
    19. Work with the best.
    23. Take inventory of your skills.
    24. Play twenty questions. “Before you approach a topic, write down twenty things you want to know about it.”
    26. Take away a skill.
    28. Build a bridge to the next day.
    31. Give yourself a second chance.

  • Australian TV program on Quakers

    Compass — ABC TV Religion | Stories Haven’t read it yet, but delighted to find it through A Dervish’s Du’a’.

  • Are Quakers trinitarian or unitarian?

    To make it into a trite joke,

    Yes.

    My co-worker Chris posed the question, it having been raised on a Unitarian Universalist discussion list. Here’s a quick stab at an answer using resources available to me at the office (which boils down to things on the web).

    The current condition of the Religious Society of Friends is such that you can find Friends who believe most anything, and even Quaker bodies that endorse or tolerate quite a wide range. In addition, modern liberal Friends (the ones I’m most familiar with) just don’t do much theology. In general, though, I think most modern liberal Quakers do tend toward a unitarian understanding of God.

    Historically, and for many if not most Quakers today, Friends have used the language of God/Father, Jesus/Christ/Son, and Spirit/Holy Spirit. (And some even have a developed theology of the offices of Christ!) The first Quaker systematic theologian, Robert Barclay, in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity, first published in 1678, doesn’t use the word “trinity” in this work, but on the other hand includes propositions like: “Concerning the Universal Redemption by Christ, and also the Saving and Spiritual Light wherewith every man is enlightened.” His proposition on immediate revelation begins:

    “Seeing “no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son revealeth him”; and seeing the “revelation of the Son is in and by the Spirit” (Matt. 11:27); therefore the testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can be only revealed; . . . .”

    I can’t really do the research, but I recall that somewhere I’ve read early Quaker rebuttals of charges that they were unitarian, which say that “trinity” “trinitarian” and “three persons in one” are unbiblical language and therefore inappropriate (even if Quakers are, in fact, trinitarian).

    Here’s a link to the Quaker Heritage Press version of Barclay’s Apology.

  • Wink!!!

    I’ve always wondered how to play Wink, which is a popular game among Young Friends (high school and college-age) in Philadelphia, and apparently also here in New England. Recently I’ve also come across references to UUs playing Wink. (I’ve also heard of periodic attempts to suppress or moderate Wink.)

    And now I know.

  • Inkheart

    By Cornelia Funke. More flimsy boundaries between the real world and fiction, this time in juvenile literature. This fantasy is set in modern, 21st-century Europe, although there are heavy doses of medieval details and quirks. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

  • 150,000 good things for Jesus

    Real Live Preacher has a great post on his blog about attending a denominational meeting. He comes to doubt the virtue of having “millions of people paying thousands of people to manage the doing of good things for Jesus.” He thinks “maybe I’d like to do just ONE good thing for Jesus. You know, just one good thing and give all of myself to it.”

  • Lost in a Good Book

    By Jasper Fforde. Thursday Next back in action. In addition to the zaniness of the first book, this one includes some wild pairs of agents: Phodder and Canon; Chalk and Cheese; King and Nosmo. There’s the end of the world, wooly mammoth migrations, and a showdown with Goliath Corporation.

  • Lord John and the Private Matter

    by Diana Gabaldon. I think her very popular book series might be bodice-rippers, but there are no ripped bodices in this one (although there are a couple of discarded or open shirts!). Lord John is a supporting character in her other books, and this novel (first in a series) does spark my interest in her other books. Set in 18th-century London, Lord John sets out to solve two intertwined mysteries.

  • The Eyre Affair

    By Jasper Fforde. A wonderfully cheeky first novel, set in the 1980s England of an alternate universe. Thursday Next is an agent in SpecOps 27, Literary Detection. Time travel, incredible inventions (but airships instead of airplanes), and a flimsy veil between “reality” and fiction.

  • Eragon

    By Christopher Paolini. The first volume of a fantasy series. The author is still in his teens, and it shows a bit, but not in a bad way. It’s a very engaging start to a story about a likeable young man and his dragon.