the verdict, about time, no more dry and warm she who had been urging me to attend to be together again instead gave me the brush off with no explanation (and still none) but another led into the time and place of a heavy collision, no, things weren’t collecting dust on a shelf or even a one-night stand, these rejections add up without candlelight, fancy linen, or the wine and here it’s gone forecasting brutal winter and not much in the way of mountaineering
Some facts about the Brethren
The Brethren resemble Mennonites in many ways, including their belief that baptism is for believing adults only, but they have their differences, beginning with the way they baptize. They traditionally do it by trine immersion, and historically that often happened in the dead of winter, once they broke the ice in the stream. Seriously.
Much of my ancestry on my dad’s side were Brethren, as I explain on my Orphan George blog.
Here’s a brief introduction to the faith.
- Alexander Mack (1679-1735) was the leader and first minister of a Pietist community that broke with the three state churches in Germany in 1708. Persecution sent them fleeing to the Netherlands and then, beginning in 1719, to Pennsylvania. Mack arrived with about 30 families ten years later, essentially completing the migration to the New World.
- They often resembled the Amish – and some still do – including the German-speaking identity. Like the Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers, they have upheld a peace testimony that rejects participation in war.
- They also led lives modeled on simplicity and a non-creedal belief, “No creed but the New Testament.”
- They were active on the American frontier and grew in numbers.
- There has often been an identity problem. They were often called Dunkards or Dunkers, for their mode of baptism, which some found offensive, or German Baptist Brethren – but please don’t confuse them with the Baptists or the United Brethren in Christ, which I was raised in, or the Brethren in Christ, an offshoot of the Mennonites. Or the Plymouth Brethren in Garrison Keillor’s past, who broke off from the Anglicans.
- Tensions between conservatives and progressives led in the 1880s to a separation that split off the Old German Baptist Brethren, on one side, and the Brethren Church, on the other, from the central body, now known as the Church of the Brethren.
- The Heifer Project began as a Brethren peace and social justice initiative in the 1950s.
- Denominational polity is through Annual Conference.
- The annual love feast includes foot washing.
- What others call sacraments the Brethren call ordinances. Among them are the laying on of hands and anointing for healing or for consecrating an individual for service.
Some might say this looks obscene
The realities of women in management
When Cassia ventures out into the executive ranks of high-stakes corporate intrigue, as she does in What’s Left, she sometimes resembles Jaya in my tale Nearly Canaan.
What does it mean to be a woman in the world of management? Are there any advantages?
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A healing touch
“may your hands be filled with blessings”
“may you be a blessing”
Ten American gold rushes
In my novel Nearly Canaan, Joshua and Jaya settle into a place unlike anything they would have imagined. It’s desert, for one thing, where nearly everything has to be irrigated, for another. Quite simply, it’s a lot like Yakima, in the middle of Washington state. And yes, the state still has gold miners and prospectors.
Here are some significant gold rushes in U.S. history.
- Cabarrus County, North Carolina, 1799
- Sierra Nevada, California, 1848-55
- Colville, Washington, 1855
- Pikes Peak, Colorado, 1859
- Clearwater, Idaho, 1860
- Montana, 1862-69
- Black Hills, South Dakota and Wyoming, 1874-78
- Cripple Creek, Colorado, 1891
- Mount Baker, Washington, 1897-1920s
- Nome, Alaska, 1899-1909
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British Columbia could have a Tendrils list of its own. And my family had a mine of its own in Guilford County, North Carolina, in the first half of the 1800s.
Nita seems to know everyone
In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s aunt Nita continues her ongoing role of knowing just about everyone and what they’re up too. It’s a vital social role that a few rare individuals seem naturally inclined to fill, as my novels Daffodil Uprising and Hometown News demonstrate.
Tell us about somebody you know who serves as the “switchboard operator” in your circles.
Kinisi 72
NZ
FREE
SHEEP
KIWI
Think she’s comfortable?
From a list of books read
Lawrence Durrell’s “Justine.” Henry Miller’s “Nexus”; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “In Evil Hour”; Jack Kerouac’s “Desolation Angels”; Kurt Vonnegut’s “Deadeye Dick” and “Galapagos”; Richard Brautigan’s “So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away”; Carol Rakoski’s “Ere-Voice”; Anne Tyler’s “Accidental Traveler” and “Earthly Possessions”; Hugh Nissenson’s “The Tree of Life” (interesting use of pioneer Ohio historical materials); Grace Paley’s “Later the Same Day” short stories; Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter Night a Traveler” (this time, rather fascinating seems I’m finally able to read styles quite unlike my own part of that cleaning out I’m in); William Kennedy’s “Ironweed”; Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”; Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine”; Hugh Prather’s “Notes to Myself” (late Sixties classic that seems so superficial these days); Marilyn French’s “The Women’s Room” (blames men for every problem, including mothers); Nena and George O’Neill’s “Open Marriage” (my wife had wanted me to be influenced by this what I see is that we HAD an open marriage, which is why it failed); Merle Shain’s “Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others” (more blame, this time from an upscale pre-Yuppie bubblehead); Paul Wellman’s “The Indian Wars of the West” (one of my ex’s left-behinds); “The Solution as Part of the Problem” (superficial Sixties Leftist education propaganda); Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” what else?
Jnana's Red Barn 