In the Coracle

U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny – NYTimes.com

July 2nd, 2009, 1 Comment

In the coffeeshop this morning I noticed this front-page article in the NY Times (or the Wall Street Journal, I’m not sure which.  However, I found the online article at NYT…).
Seems there’s an evaluation of American nuns underway, and as you can read below, it’s unclear what the goal is.  It’s going to be interesting [...]

The Attraction of Monasticism: Urban Iona Quotes, Part 2

November 21st, 2008, No Comments

Continuing the series of digging into Kurt Neilson’s book, Urban Iona.
In Chapter 5, Neilson writes about his experience as a Catholic anda former member of the Claretian missionary order.

As I sought community, the ideal of a common project of life, a common vision, and living it out day to day together with others spoke to [...]

Call to Simplicity (St. Basil the Great)

October 31st, 2008, 1 Comment

One of the three great figures in Orthodox Christianity is St. Basil the Great (along with St. John Chrysostum and St. Gregory of Nazienza, also called Gregory the Theologian). Basil, born 329CE is known for his unbowed devotion to life with Christ.
He forsake a wealthy life, gave what he had to the poor (echoing the [...]

Being and doing (Learning from the Monks)

October 10th, 2008, Comments Off

I found a really nice blog entry today in my ongoing technorati search for all things monastic.
Check out http://loudandclear87.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/learning-from-monks/, a college student who writes:
So, I have Church History at 7:50 in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes its a real bear to get up and go to a lecture that early to just [...]

Missional orders as ways to start new churches

January 21st, 2008, 3 Comments

Here’s a very, very interesting video of a talk by David Fitch about using missional orders as a church planting strategy.
“The way we used to plant churches (in the Christendom era) was as organization. An established church structure … paid somebody… with the distinctives of the denomination, the tags, the franchise…”. But that [...]