(2015-08-11) The Mind of Christ: Bill Taber on Meeting for Business by Michael Birkel Pendle Hill Pamphlet #406. A wondefully edited collection of Bill Taber's thinking about Meeting for Worship for Business. He opens up a completely foreign perspective on Business Meeting with the same ease as leading a pleasant hike. Bill, seemingly At the top of the hill, carefully describes an intensley worshipful sense of business. (2015-05-31) Franklin, Ursula M. The real world of technology. House of Anansi, 1999. See ./books.txt for a review. Walk Cheerfully, Friends: The Essential Optimism of the Quaker Faith Illustrated by Mary Edith Hinshaw. Greensboro NC: The Publications Board, North Carolina Yearly Meeting, 1978. This book was a gem buried in the stacks of the library. It's an excellent read from cover to cover. Hinshaw, a Quaker pastor in North Carolina with a genelogy dating back to arrival of George Fox in the Carolinas, says that he's been a Quaker for three hundred years. He is an absolute expert on the history of Quakerism in the region near his home. He shares stories about his own living family as readily as anecdotes about his ancient ancestors. The writing style conveys a sense of humurous historical omniscience that is very pleasant. The book's main theme is the strongly optimistic undercurrent running through the Gospel and the history of Quakerism. It treats of a lot of different topics some of which are of intense current concern, and others which were more important historically than at present. The book manages to confer much of its content through the careful re-telling of Quaker folk legends and jokes. When reading it, any Quaker would feel at home (but quizically confused) in the anecdotes it contains. One learns much by the historical side notes. For example, there is at least one (recorded) instance of Ministry being given to a Meeting by way of a Friend jumping up and clicking his heels twice. The book feels like a collection of Zen anecdotes. You feel profoundly moved by the sudden incongruity of the situation, and it deeply moves one. Imagine being the Quaker gunsmith who, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, was moved to buy back all hunting rifles he had sold lest they be used improperly in war. The story conveys a simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and virtuous figure. "The divine milieu." De Chardin, Pierre Teilhard. (2001). (2015-04-29) This is a book that is impossible to review. It's a masterpiece in a genre all its own that cannot be reasonably evaluated from without by someone like me. Suffice it to say: at this time, I could imagine myself enjoying the experience of re-reading this book sporadically for the rest of my life. This reading was particularly nice because presently I'm obsessed with biology. I was avidly reading books about mycology when there was still snow on the ground. Eventually I moved on to more conventional avenues of biology, and now I'm rather interested in the mechanics of genealogy and evolution. This is the first spring that I've kept a garden. It really feels like de Chardin is a piece of this great natural jigsaw puzzle that has been revealed to us. He seems to be the most mystically scientific theologian that I've ever read. Rhythms of the Ecosystem by Janette Shetter [Pendle Hill Pamphlet #208 (1976)] An interesting pamphlet worthy of further reflection. It has as its central theme the imagery and symbolism of Shiva's Dance. It repeatedly comes back to the image as is moves through an analysis of the duality between creation and destruction in: -- The Dance of Atoms -- Cycles of Matter -- Cells to Organisms -- Within the Individual -- Individuals and Groups -- Mankind and the Ecosystem The text is poigniantly illustrated by William Shetter. Terse stylized line drawings show patterns emergining and disolving around each chapter heading in a way that manages to convey a strong sense of what is said in the text. According to the introduction Shetter did graduate work in biochemistry on 'bacteria'. Consequently the first three chapters have a feeling of calm authority, and are very well reasoned. The last several are more speculative and humble. In the second section I surprised by a description of slime mold bacteria cultures as being an intermediary stage between single celled organisms and multi-celled organisms. The pamphlet has little to say about the Society, but what it does say is important. In some Pendle Hill pamphlets there is a predominance of information about the Society and in others there is a predominance of information which might be useful to Quakers, but which is not explicitly about Quakerism. This pamphlet falls in to the latter category. It's helpful to draw on other faiths for metaphors, and it's important to learn more about important issues. This pamphlet does a little of both and succeeds. I think that finding a sense of balance between creation and destruction is an important project worth undertaking. I've been working to understand 'animate organization' at various different scales: we're individuals walking around, in families, organizations, and nations. It's dangerous to assume that there are "Laws" which will govern all scales simultaneously. This them was also brought to light by Shetters pamphlet. The pamphlet's thematic heading on the cover is 'biomythology'! Members One of Another: The Dynamics of Membership in Quaker Meeting by Tom Gates [Pendle Hill Pamphlet #371 (2004)] Gates subtly blends his experience in a evangelical meetings with his foundation in the liberal unprogrammed tradition. This gives the reader a novel perspective on the 'dynamics of membership'; for example, Gates takes the notion of a 'covenant community' very seriously and often appeals to Scripture as a precedent. At every stage he carefully points out what liberal unprogrammed meetings do well, and what they could improve. A particularly striking discussion on the notion of Scott Peck's notion of "pseudo-community" -- communities built on the foundation that there can be no confrontation or overt disagreement -- will be the spur for much useful discussion. I would like to compare this with Brinton's book on Quaker journals. Both texts explore the building up of Quaker religious experience but Gates approaches it with an emphasis on the individual-community axis and Brinton explores it with an emphasis on the individual-divine axis. My memory of Brinton's book is pretty hazy, but I think that there are similarities. At times the text is a stylistically slack, and more than one I found myself at the end of a long garden path sentence trying to figure out where I had been lead to.