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!
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (8)
I’ve been thinking about Georgie Baker, who last week shared the happy news that she was wrapping up her degree in social work. Georgie was two-years-old when we first met. She would come to meeting with her grandparents, Ralph and Gan, and when the other children...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (7)
Well, what a good Thanksgiving we had. It might be my favorite holiday. I like the constancy of Thanksgiving, the timelessness. Thanksgiving in 2024 feels like it felt when I was a kid in the 1960s, the same menu, some of the same people, the same conversations, and...
Do’s and Don’ts In a Time of Change (6)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...