Religion, Ecotheology, and Consciousness
We'll get back to Genesis, but here's a test recording I did when we were reading through Jonah for Thinking Religion. Here are some quick thoughts on Jonah's final encounter with God after Nineveh proves to be a little more receptive than first thought…
Text available here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=176000971
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Another creation story, how we get from Adam to Noah, and Sumerian King List (with a little Dylan)
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Today, we go over salmon recipes, Documentary Hypothesis, J's and G's in German, our new farming unit at homeschool with the 4 year old, and the tragic story of Cain and Abel and the Mark of Cain. Where did Cain's wife come from?? Listen and let's find out.
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Q&A and follow up from Gen 3:20-24 post
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I’ve been rewatching Star Wars with my 4 year old son the last few weeks. We started with A New Hope > Empire > Jedi then worked our way back to Phantom Menace and now Attack of the Clones (with Revenge of the Sith then Clone Wars after that).
I have to admit… after the debacle that was Episodes 7-9, the Prequels actually hold up. I haven’t touched these movies in years but they feel more familiar now.
Maybe George Lucas was right.
This week we take a look back on a fascinating week of religion news and discuss how to talk to people who don't think the same way you do before closing out with a little history lesson on Acts 4-5.
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Merianna and Sam discuss church schedules, life of the pastor's spouse, missing Sunday morning worship, Micah 6:8, and high church baptists.
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This week, Revs. Merianna Neely Harrelson and Sam Harrelson discuss canonization, the politics of commentaries, Jonah's Whale, interpretation history, Doomsday Clock, Harrowing of Hell, and masturbation lessons from Sunday School.
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Bonus episode here as the main show will be coming out a little later this week. This is audio from Sam's sermon on John 1:29-42 this past Sunday at Garden of Grace UCC in Columbia, SC about sin, community, identity, and why he started going to church.
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Sam is joined by The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson to discuss how she approaches Acts in church Bible studies, canonization, ascension vs resurrection vs transfiguration, the problem with a seminary education, and 4 listener questions.
Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Ancient Rite" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Sam is joined by Matthew Klippenstein this week to discuss fracturing of denominations, late dating of biblical texts, what an American has to learn from a Canadian, why the Dalai Lama might want to consider the lilies, and why ACTS might be the best book in the New Testament.
Special Guest: Matthew Klippenstein.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:45 — 52.9MB) | Embed
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Big news in this one… we’re coming back weekly for 2020! Starting around New Year’s Day, we’ll be back with all new guests and voices (and voices of guests) as well as some fun book giveaways, and a number of insider downloads drawing from the show’s past (and present and future).
Merry Christmas from Merianna, Sam, and the Harrelson family and more soon!
(We also have an exciting new podcast studio that we'll be discussing)…
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Merianna and Sam discuss cultural transitions and how churches of all sizes and shapes are positioning themselves in the midst of societal shifts.
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Merianna and Sam discuss the notion of generational divides in politics, mattress buying, and church attendance.
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We really do forget that Easter isn’t just a day but actually a season in the liturgical Christian calendar. It would be like assigning all of Lent to Ash Wednesday. There’s a reason Easter is the longest season in the church calendar… practice resurrection.
I don’t remember when or why but about 2 years ago we threw this sticky blue ball onto the ceiling of our dining room. It’s been there ever since fighting a constant battle with gravity and friction thanks to the miracle of modern polymers. It’s also become part of our family and dinner routine. It’s going to be a sad day when it falls.
It’s part silly, part therapeutic, and part philosophical but I like to tear down my bags and carry items every weekend and make sure I have what we need and I know where it is. It also helps to process what we don’t need and take those items out of the tins, packs, and bags that make up our daily carry and supply lines. Good metaphor for life. Biblical even.
And most important of all, citizens must hold companies and governments accountable for the commitments they make, and demand that both respect the web as a global community with citizens at its heart. If we don’t elect politicians who defend a free and open web, if we don’t do our part to foster constructive healthy conversations online, if we continue to click consent without demanding our data rights be respected, we walk away from our responsibility to put these issues on the priority agenda of our governments.
Source: 30 years on, what’s next #ForTheWeb? – World Wide Web Foundation
That’s what Peach is for. It is a place to be real with people who’ve chosen to be real with you. It’s friendly, it’s therapeutic, it’s cathartic. It’s necessary. When it’s not around, those of us who use it go a little bit mad.
We’ve come to lean on confessing out loud. And there are no priests left who can be trusted any more. The only thing we can trust is benign neglect.
Is that the next phase of the web? The web that hardly works, where no one’s paying attention because no one really cares? (Except your friends, including strangers, who somehow care so much?)
Source: kottke.org – home of fine hypertext products
Yep.
How can we transition to a gender-balanced world, if these biases remain part of our vernacular? ELaN Languages, an independent translation organisation in Belgium, wants to tackle our unconscious bias by updating their online translation tool with a new feature: ‘the unbias button’. The plug-in offers unbiased translations of biased words. Making us aware of our unconscious bias by translating bias words, such as job titles, into gender-neutral words.
Source: A NEW PRODUCT FEATURE TO BREAK GENDER BIAS – J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam (news)
This thing is pretty AND amazing. 
Today starts the liturgical season of Lent. Around 12:03AM this morning (or last night, depending on your biological sense of time), I committed the ultimate mind crime of deleting my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. Well, I began the process of deleting them since each of these advertising companies give you a 30-day “grace” period for you to “make sure” that you really want to disengage from the machine.
But, it’s time.
It’s time for me to stop making excuses about where I put my time and attention. It’s time for me to stop making excuses for participating in systems that I don’t want to encourage or necessarily be a part of even if there’s the offer of exposure and connections. It’s just not worth it.
Jump from the hook. You’re not obliged to swallow anything that you despise.
Merianna and Sam discuss old friends, new parenting techniques while attempting to figure out what makes the church different from the garden club.
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Merianna and Sam (and newborn Baby Girl) discuss insider language in denominations, the LGBTQ question facing the United Methodist Church, narrative preaching, and the difficulties of studying for a sermon in 2019 in the age of unlimited entertainment.
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Merianna and Sam tackle Instagram Stories, performative social media, and generational gender divides in reading the Scripture.
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Merianna and Sam discuss Instagram Bible studies, reading the whole Bible in a year, and the search for authenticity in a time of societal shifts.
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