Love Not Fear

If you haven't heard, there was a shooting at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee. A man, who seems to have believed that liberals and those fighting for gay rights were directly to blame for his and his country's problems, entered the church during a children's program and opened fire. He killed two people, one of whom seems to have stepped in front of the gunman to protect others. Click on the link title for an Associated Press story. Click here to leave a note to the congregation. If you want to be heard, it sometimes seems you need to say that whatever bothers you is a threat to all the world, and whatever you enjoy is somehow a blessing for everyone. I've heard people seriously speak of killing spammers. XBOX 360s won't end world hunger. The internet is not a cesspool of sin and destruction. The United States did not plummet downhill the day the Civil Rights Act gave some measure of equality to people of all races, and the Presbyterian chu...

I have noticed that there are people in this world that seem to change everyone around them. It seems like merely speaking with them, or shaking their hand, is enough to transform you. I believe that this is what Paul meant by a "fruit of the Spirit." Saint Ruby Yenkala was not always sunshine and roses, not always happiness. Sometimes, she was frustrating and infuriating, but she changed us, and I think, she changed us for the better, and she changed us for good. She was a white woman of Jesse Helm's generation who thought nothing of worshiping with, embracing, and helping people regardless of their color. She was a woman who should, by all rights, been sitting in the back of the church, keeping her mouth shut except to responsively pray or sing. And yet, ever since she walked in the door of Northminster, she was standing in church, telling us what was needed in the community, giving us the good news and the bad news. Ruby was Christ's eyes and ears and hands and fee...

Click the post title for an article on the PC(USA) site about the Montreat Youth conferences. The week we went, there were "only" about 400 youth there, largely because most folks were still in school. Most Montreat Youth Conference sessions are about 3X bigger.

Click on the article title for a Flickr album for the week we were at Montreat!