PlainSpeech Messages | Find YOUR way to GRACE.
I recently read a message I’d given in 1984 and felt a mixture of embarrassment and surprise. Embarrassed because it seems inadequate now, and surprised by how much my worldview has changed. Twenty-five years from now, I might read these messages and have a similar reaction. I offer no guarantee that my work or words will endure the eroding effects of time. I can only assure you these thoughts have been helpful to me, and perhaps a few others, today. With that qualification, I offer them to you.
~ Philip
NEW!
Things We Got Just Right (Universality Over Nationality)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Things We Got Just Right (Vesting Power in People, Not Positions)
When I first came to Fairfield, I had a bad case of the big head. I’d had several books published, still had hair, was married to a striking, intelligent woman, and was under the impression I was God’s gift to Quakerism. I rolled into here thinking how lucky you all...
Things We Got Just Right (Equality Over Cultural Norms)
Several years ago, a man I know was told he was dying, which of course we all are, but his death was sooner than he had anticipated. Though well-off, he’d always been miserly, to the frustration of his wife who wanted them to travel and see things and visit their...
Things We Got Just Right (We Value Experience Over Belief)
This happened maybe 30 years ago, when I attended a conference for Quaker pastors down in Orlando. Someone had the bright idea to get all the Quaker pastors in America together and somehow the Evangelical Friends were put in charge, which meant all the speakers were...
Things We Got Just Right (Sacramental Living)
When our children were born, Joan bought a camera and started taking pictures. Pictures of everything—vacations, hikes, family gatherings, birthday parties, first haircuts, first days of school, holidays, thousands of pictures. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it...
Things We got Just Right (Our Insistence on Equality)
I got the notice this week that my high school graduating class is planning our 45th year reunion, which I was looking forward to, but now am not, due to the confirmed presence of a narcissistic man who spent our twelve years together bullying our most vulnerable...