Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (6)

by Stacey Denny | Jan 20, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages

We’ve lived in our house twenty-five years now, the longest place either one of us has ever lived, so this past summer we decided to freshen up the homestead, starting with the most important room, yet also the most humble, that place where the most pleasant and...

Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (4)

by Stacey Denny | Jan 20, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages

Our gratitude to Mike Goss for bringing the message last week. I was at our farm in Paoli and Jackson was down with Covid in Richmond, after attending a Quaker pastor’s conference at Quaker Haven, which I was supposed to attend but couldn’t because of a funeral....

Do’s and Dont’s In a Time of Change (3)

by Stacey Denny | Jan 20, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages

Our washing machine gave up the ghost last Monday. Joan asked me to look at it, so I did and deduced that paying to fix all the things wrong with our 25-year-old washer and dryer would be more expensive than a new set, so I phoned Shuee’s Appliance Store in...

Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (2)

by Stacey Denny | Jan 20, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages

When I was 16, I was hired, along with 39 other teenagers, to work at the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore for the summer. It was my first time away from home, except for vacations, which were always family events, so I was worried about not knowing anyone, and whether or not...

Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (1)

by Stacey Denny | Jan 19, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages

My friend Jim Mulholland grew up in Greenville, Illinois, where his father taught philosophy at Greenville College. And his father before him. So Jim was steeped in the deep waters of academia, which I realized when I first met him in seminary. A group of us were...

Things We Got Just Right (Universality Over Nationality)

by Stacey Denny | Sep 23, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages

When I was in the fourth grade, one of my best friends was a boy named Joe Bryant, whose family rented a farmhouse southwest of Danville on Mackey Road. He moved to our town at the start of the school year, and we became friends the first week of school. His family...

Things We Got Just Right (Innovation over Tradition)

by Stacey Denny | Sep 23, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages

My phone rang not long ago. It was a Quaker calling from out-of-state, whom I had met several years ago at a conference. He called because their Quaker meeting was in decline, and he wanted to know if I had any suggestions that might revive their meeting. He said,...

Things We Got Just Right (The Triumph of Good) 

by Stacey Denny | Aug 26, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages

Joan and I went on vacation this past week, meeting up with our son Sam and his family in Grand Lake, Colorado just outside the Rocky Mountain National Park, where I was subjected to daily death marches up and down the mountainsides. It wasn’t even pretty, because in...

Things We Got Just Right (Community Confirmation)

by Stacey Denny | Aug 12, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages

I was down in southern Indiana a while back, riding motorcycles with my friend Dave, the newest member of the Quaker Oatlaws Motorcycle Club. We stopped for lunch in New Boston, then decided to head further south to ride on the Ohio River Scenic Byway, a curvy,...

Things We Got Just Right (Spirit Over Bible)

by Stacey Denny | Aug 6, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages

Earlier this summer, Joan had gone with Madeline to the store, so I was lying on the couch, praying, when I heard a knock at our back door. No one we know ever knocks, they just walk in, or call out. We’re not long on formalities. So when they knocked, I knew it...