Nurselog Notes from Wess 2024-03-15
Regular email updates from Wess Daniels, including articles, news, updates, and upcoming events you might like to know about. Covering Quaker faith and practice, technology, current culture, and other things I care about that I want to share with my friends.
Dear Friends,
I have figured out my newsletter business and moved over to Button Down. If things look different that’s why. I got a lot of recommendations to move to this service because of its simplicity and focus on privacy. Over the next few issues, I would expect the look and feel to change as I learn how to customize things.
But enough of that for now.
I've been working on a mammoth post about building my writing studio, which I posted to the blog yesterday (some of you have already been commenting on it! Thank you).
Gathering In Light: Building a Writing Studio
In the post, I also talk a little more about my sabbatical. Not so much about what I'm doing right now, but more about the process of taking one. That part may be of interest to some of you as well.
Read More on the Blog: Building a Writing Studio
Other recent posts on Gathering In Light:
On The Rebound - A short post about getting back into basketball and my son's growing interest in the spot.
Riding Uhwarrie National Forest - Last summer, I talked about getting into riding my bike more. Riding my new Kona Rove has quickly become one of my favorite things to do. As the weather warms here in North Carolina, I am riding even more. This is a post about a day ride I took recently in the beautiful Uhwarrie National Forest.
Community Bulletin Board
New Book Release: How to Walk Into a Room
My friend, Emily P. Freeman, just published her new book, "How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away." Besides just being excited for her, the book is really good. It's packed full of wisdom around discernment, spiritual practices, great questions, and stories that help the reader consider what feels to me to be a universal issue: "when to stay and when to walk away." Emily writes from a very broad and generous theological place. Her book has the Parker Palmer like quality to it where it's deeply informed by Quaker practice and spirituality without announcing it or beating you over the head with it. I am finding the book helpful in my own process and discernment and I think you will too. Find it on Bookshop and Amazon or your local bookstore.
Quaker Connect - A Program for Renewing Quaker Congregations
For Quakers reading this, if you haven't heard of the new FWCC program called Quaker Connect. I am so excited about the program and even more excited that I get to be involved in its creation and development.
Here's a description:
Quaker Connect helps Friends meetings and churches to try new experiments and learn from each other how to connect the depths of our Quaker tradition and the breadth of our Quaker community with the living reality of our local context under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
If you want more information or think this would be beneficial for your meeting/church, here is the application: https://fwccamericas.org/connections/quaker-connect.shtml
Links from Around the Web Picked Just For You
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A lovely interview with Kate DiCamillo, a Daniels family favorite. From the interview, Kate DiCamillo Says ‘Paying Attention Is a Way to Love the World:
"Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). 'I am most myself when I am sitting in an armchair holding a physical book. I am an underliner, a dog-earer. I like a patch of sun, a cup of coffee and a dog somewhere nearby. This is heaven.'"
- What a bunch of A-list celebs taught me about how to use my phone - You all know that I continue to think about the impacts of our screens and technology on our lives. I really enjoyed the perspective of this article.
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Marilynne Robinson Makes the Book of Genesis New - Here’s a part of the article:
“But she’s not doing history. She’s writing an essay about biblical style and its implications. She wants us to see how radical scripture is compared with its sources. For one thing, it’s human-centered. The Babylonian epics that the Bible recasts—the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh—tell the origin myths of a passel of quarrelsome gods. The Enuma Elish’s gods created people so that they would serve their Creators—build their temples, grow their food. “There is nothing exalted in this, no thought of enchanting these nameless drudges with the beauty of the world,” Robinson writes. In Genesis, by contrast, humankind is made in God’s image; all the sublimity of biblical Creation seems to be meant for its benefit. We move from gods indifferent to our well-being to a God obsessively focused on us.”
Epilogue - Emily P. Freeman
“This is the place where we meet now in these pages, the place of asking ourselves if it's time to roll up our sleeves and stay in this room, loving it back to life, making right what has gone wrong. Or has the time arrived for us to say our goodbyes and make our exit, to thank the space and its inhabitants for the gifts they brought, to leave behind what we must, to pack up what we are able, and to walk out the door?” Emily P. Freeman, “How to Walk Into a Room”
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If you have comments, questions, or things you think I might like to know about or share please email me: cwess@icloud.com
Thank you for reading and making this newsletter possible,
Wess Daniels
Haw River Watershed (Greensboro, NC)
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