(Photo Credit: Berthold Werner, Qumran, Public Domain)
HaAretz premium has an article on a theory, based on the Damascus Document, that Qumran was primarily a festival location and not a permanent dwelling for the Essene (or other) sect.
From the article:
Continue reading“A Columbian College of Arts and Sciences professor is using cutting-edge imaging technology to decipher the inscriptions on fragments of broken pottery excavated more than 50 years ago in Jordan. The fragments, long thought to be lost, were recently rediscovered.”
The news announced this week of the latest discoveries at the Herodium in the Holy Land are exciting. According to the article: Continue reading
Yesterday I made a post about “What Jesus Said About Church” and listed the only two passages where Jesus explicitly mentions church (Matthew 16.17–19 and Matthew 18:15-18). What’s interesting is that each of those passages appear to have two different expressions, with the first representing what seems to be a larger, more universal concept of Church, while the latter is more practical and descriptive of a local gathering or collective. Yet both end with the understanding that the ekklesia, in whatever form, has been given authority to “bind and loose”. Continue reading
“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.”
—Stephen Presfield, The War of Art