Blog, By This Way of Life
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. Last week a minister from New Jersey named Terry Chapman, who has been an avid viewer of Darkwood Brew, passed along to me a book he wrote. The book is called Sabbath Pause and contains seven weeks of daily practices structured around the...
Blog, By This Way of Life
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. This week at Darkwood Brew, our Pneuma Divina reading was based on a story where Jesus heals a lame man beside a pool in John 5:1-15. The Pool at Beth-Zatha, also known as Bethesda, was a place that, until the 1964, many scholars thought was...
Blog, By This Way of Life
The best kind…yes? I’m probably not the only linear thinker reading this blog. I tend to think in terms of either/or, not yes/and. I like things tidy. If you’ve ever seen Wall-E, the fabulous movie from Pixar, I’m the character Mo, the one who...
Blog, By This Way of Life
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. When I was in grade school in the Pacific Northwest, my father and I joined a local rock hounding club who were visiting an abandoned gold mine high in the Cascade mountains. When we arrived, the entrance to the mine was blocked, so I started...
Blog, By This Way of Life
Of all the meditative prayer practices we’ve discussed in the last few weeks, I thought Lectio Divina would be a natural fit for me. I love words. I love reading and finding meaning in words. I’m totally on board with praying regularly. I believe that God...
Blog, By This Way of Life, General
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before being arrested and crucified may fit the freight-night spirit of Halloween better than it does the lead-up to Thanksgiving. Yet what transpires at Gethsemane fits the topic of our series about...
Blog, By This Way of Life
Recently a Darkwood Brew viewer who also attends my church tried listening to her internal voices and recording what she heard there. The question she was trying to explore? Her pledge to the church! We thought it was so helpful we asked her to read it in worship....
Blog, By This Way of Life
The past two sermons on The Voices Within are very familiar, as I’ve attended Rev. Bruce van Blair’s Prayer 101 retreat not once, but twice. Bruce covers these voices in a fair amount of detail during one of the sessions, and the sermons were a good...
Blog, By This Way of Life
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. In the 4th Century, St. Augustine observed that the path to knowing God and the path to knowing oneself is the same path. He knew this because he had done his own soul searching and regularly discovered the voice of the Divine within the many...
Blog, By This Way of Life
by Rev. Eric Elnes, Ph.D. In my last post I quoted the apostle Paul where he writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” I actually didn’t quote the full statement. The full statement is: “Do...
