Quaker Pagan Reflections

This post is at least partly Cosette's fault. She named me in a perfectly good meme over at Pandora's Bazaar --the Six Random Things meme. But I'm feeling a bit twisted today, so I'm going to twist it. You ready? The new, twisted rules are these: Link to the person or persons who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Name 6 obscure books that you honestly love--but think almost no one else could. (You must really love the books; you must think most people would hate them. No cheating with books you think other people will love, too!) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. So, here are my Six Bad Books I love. (Really. I think they're awesome. But don't take that as a recommendation...) Clarissa , by Samuel Richardson. This epistolary novel from the 18th Century is the longest novel in the English language. (And y...

I keep thinking I'm gonna give up memes, and then there will be one I just can't resist. Like this one... Which I flat out stole from Bright Crow (and he, in turn, stole from Igraine ). If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don't speak often or have never met), please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake. When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your blog and see what your friends come up with... Well? How about it? Anybody remember the time our flea market booth specializing in Hollow Earth artifacts was raided by Atlantean Customs officials? How about the prank with Captain Scarlet and the Voice of the Mysterons? Or that embarassing incident with the yak?

I guess when you have to complain about an overabundance of love, you don't have too much to complain about. As Erik of Executive Pagan commented recently , the world of Pagan bloggers "is a mini-community." This makes me particularly happy, as one of the editors of Metapagan, since my purpose in contributing to that project has been to encourage the kind of blogging community I see in the Quaker community, thanks to Martin Kelley and the editors at Quaker Quaker . I would like to thank the bloggers who nominated Quaker Pagan Reflections for the Blog Love award: Erik , Yvonne , Cosette , Mahud , and David Miley . Perhaps you'll be relieved to know: I'm going to pass on the opportunity to post the award here four times, or to put up an additional 28 links to more blogs I love. Nor am I simply going to turn around and toss this Valentine into the Quaker ring, now that it's made the rounds of so many of the Pagan blogs I love. Instead, I'm going to try to...

Passion Quilt: Gotta Love the Books! Chas Clifton, author of Letter from Hardscrabble Creek , has tagged me with a teaching meme , focused on what is our passion as teachers. And partly because, when I sit in worship and ask what it is I am supposed to be doing, I often see the face of one or another particular students, and partly because I think that there are so many things out there that can leach away a teacher's joy in teaching, I'm going to take up the challenge. It's one I find especially poignant, given the fact that Chas, a longtime teacher of journalism and writing, is leaving the profession at the end of this semester. "The zest is gone," he writes, and I understand why he has to "flog [himself] into actually writing the comments" on each new batch of student papers. There's an aspect of teaching that's a lot like being on a treadmill. In respect to a colleague, how can I say no? Here are the meme's directions: Post a picture...

This one has been making the rounds in both the Quaker and the Pagan world... Normally, I would place a meme on The Back Page --that being why I created it. But since Cosette of Pandora's Bazaar not only tagged me , but named Quaker Pagan Reflections itself in her own Book Meme post, that would probably be cheating. And, in any case, the book that is immediately to hand is one I've got a few thoughts about worth the sharing. So, for those of you not yet hit with this particular pyramid scheme of the blogosphere, the meme goes like this: 1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages). 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the next three sentences. 5. Tag five people. (My tags are at the bottom of the page, for enquiring minds.) Right. So, the book I had nearest at hand is one I've only begun dipping into--it was a gift from my daughter , who actually picked it up for free on a book exchange she found via the Web: the bestsell...

I spent most of the day catching up on reading blogs and then journalling. Nothing I feel ready to share, yet, at least with anybody but Cat. In the mean time, here's my own book pile. I've cheated a little bit and included some books that I've just finished and one that I'm about to start, but it's all within a two-week window. I had brain surgery, what's your excuse? is an autobiographical account of humorist Suzy Becker's recovery from a brain tumor. It's laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking at the same time, and I'm wolfing it down in huge mouthfulls. Xenocide satisfies the craving I often get for hard science fiction. Well, can any story that features faster-than-light travel and telepathic communication with a sencient computer really be called "hard" SF? It was good, though. A fun read, but also pretty thought provoking. All of Anna Quindlen's books, regardless of plot, are really about people in mid-life thinking about ...

This is in response to a challenge from another blogger, Pagan scholar Chas Clifton, author of the influential and entertaining blog, Letter From Hardscrabble Creek . I think a lot of us have a "book pile"--that jumble of nightstand books that we are actively reading on a daily basis, dipping into every few days, reading for recreation/reading for work, or anticipating reading and have just peeked under the cover for the first chapter or two... At any rate, I do. Maybe it's just a reflection of my jumbled mind. Maybe it's a reflection of my jumbled mind that, though this picture was only taken a day or two ago, the contents have already changed! The fluid nature of my book pile makes it hard for any one snapshot to stay accurate for more than a few days--kind of like pictures of really little children that way. In my stack, you can see R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy , which I'm reading partly in response to a student reader in my 9th grade English class...