Following Abi's Trail

Well, it has been a while since I last posted...I find that my interests have been in some other areas following my recent experience of being "mostly dead" for the better part of a month! If I have been absent from you, I have been more present in my home -- and I know you'll understand. :^)

I have been in a bit of a different place, reading a few books, even, and have been participating a bit more on other blogs than I have since I build my own little Virtual Abbey here in the blogosphere.

So, I decided that I would just give you some links to the conversations I've been involved in, so you'd know what I've been up to!

As you know, I spent Lent reading and blogging through Scot McKnight's fabulously powerful yet wonderfully simple book, The Jesus Creed. I posted on my experience reading through this book 31 times during Lent with Abi.

And I am currently engaged with Scot in his Preparing for Pentecost series, where we are learning to feed like hummingbirds -- frequent but small meals from Scot's new book: 40 Days Living The Jesus Creed. You will find a comment from me for most days -- today was day 9.

I also contributed my two cents to a thread at Jesus Creed asking: what is community? You can read my comment here, but the rest of the comments might be interesting as well !

And I chimed in near the end of a "discussion" about how seminaries decide what to do with professors who push the envelope a bit too far for their comfort zone.

I read John W. Frye's little novel called Out of Print -- and found it very thought provoking! I'll have to process my notes about that book another time...but the Abbess is very much in favor of the Word of God being spoken much more, and in much bigger chunks, than most are accustomed to. What would you do if all the words disappeared out of all your copies of the Bible? Hmmm....

I've been keeping up with my friend Brad's amazing series on Spiritual Abuse. A must read, in my opinion. This kind of deep thinking is required if we are going to attempt to regain healthy relationships among all the members of the Body of Christ.

Just last night I finished reading Anne Rice's second book in her Christ the Lord series: The Road to Cana. I picked up a copy at Costco (I looked for the first one, Out of Egypt, but it wasn't there any more...I'll have to try WalMart ;^) )

I must say it was a lovely book. So well written. So compelling in its portrayal of village life in Nazareth. You can view a number of YouTube interviews here. And here is Jamie's blog interview with Anne Rice.

And, of course, our Tuesday night missional learning community processed Time Banking a bit more this week...and my brain is still swirling around this awesome tool! Since my last post was on this, you can see that it has lots of my mental resources occupied!

On top of it all, this is spring break -- and, gratefully, we have had lovely weather. The boys have been outside riding bikes, playing basketball in the driveway, roller blading, playing at the park down the street. What a wonderful respite this has been, after a wet winter and SNOW last week!

Blessings to you all...I'll check back soon!