A couple of days ago I mentioned a visit to St. Ben’s and thoughts from John 10. There have been some good bits of conversation around that, including Matt Thomas’ post as well as comments in the thread here. I noted today that Jamie Howison has posted part of his Homily from Sunday evening, including a great metaphor from Dr. Alf Bell about an old sheep. As it turns out, I had coffee with Jamie this afternoon — we made a point of finding an independent coffee house rather than the nearest place with a circular green logo. Both of us lean strongly toward the independent shops rather than the “big chain.” Interestingly, it seems that locally-owned coffee houses actually do better with a few Starbucks around, according to something called The Venti Effect. In addition to discussing a point or two about my continued Anglicanization and several themes around writing, Jamie tipped me off to a forthcoming CD release this weekend — I’m hoping to be able to post a review soon.

In other conversational updates, we followed a digression into some discussion on the LDS church and Mormon theology. Elsewhere, we picked up an old thread and began discussing creation vs. evolution, which also follows on the heels of related conversations “IRL” from Saturday evening. Several people have moved from creationist to evolutionist. It is an obstacle to some, but the two views are actually not incompatible. In fact, in The Origin Of Species, Charles Darwin wrote, “I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of anyone… it is just as noble a conception of the deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws.”

Then too, there are discussions on spiritual authority and on worship and spiritual formation. Sorry for not being more engaged in some of these conversations, but I’m very glad to see more conversation picking up. Still time to jump in on any of them!