tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49197834206036195122022-12-05T08:01:37.523-05:00Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.comBlogger346125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-56274629939269240572020-04-05T12:14:00.000-04:002020-04-05T12:29:16.444-04:00

For a host of reasons, this blog hasn't been a regular part of my life for about... [checks posts] ...5 years. One reason is that I had a messy breakup of sorts with the church. Coinciding with that was the gradual and inevitable dissolution of intellectual+spiritual friendships from grad school. Those were the folks I did my reading and thinking with, and the fruits of that often made it into

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, Iowa41.9972134 -92.583526641.9736099 -92.6238671 42.0208169 -92.5431861tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-54344620555937568142019-11-18T13:01:00.001-05:002019-11-18T13:01:50.450-05:00

Just over a week ago, I lost my maternal grandmother, Dorothy Mullins. She had just celebrated her 94th birthday back in October, but had been slowly declining in health in recent weeks and months. As I did a number of years ago for my paternal grandfather, I was privileged to give a eulogy at her funeral this past weekend, which I'll share here... --- In 1925, my grandmother was born

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Monroe, IA41.5208256 -93.1038128999999841.4970476 -93.144153399999979 41.5446036 -93.063472399999981tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-44575302704842500872016-03-20T15:07:00.001-04:002016-03-20T15:11:13.080-04:00

Photo by CGP Grey via Wikimedia Commons It's been four months since my last post about being a failed church planter, and I'm happy to report that whatever kinds of grief and guilt I had about that messy experience (mostly self-imposed) have passed. The post itself struck a chord with some folks and garnered some really great discussion in various social media, mostly amongst my friends and

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-13983131955769453782015-10-06T17:45:00.003-04:002015-10-07T12:09:14.548-04:00

"that time of the year" by Katie Landry/Flickr Is there a 12-step program for failed church planters? Maybe there should be... "Hello, everyone. My name's Brian, and I'm a failed church planter." "Hi, Brian." After a year and a half of making small, episodic attempts at doing "church planting stuff," sometime this summer it just clicked: This. Is. Not. Working. Maybe it was that I have

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-69060442694237918882015-07-15T12:12:00.002-04:002015-07-17T11:50:15.405-04:00

Portrait of John Adams, painted by Asher Durand In my grad school years I made it quite a sport to criticize American politics, particularly foreign policy. I also became convinced that the Enlightenment was a boogeyman (and the logical next step of the Reformation). Being trained in an Anabaptist-Mennonite seminary with a heavy dose of Stanley Hauerwas in the water no doubt was the primary

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-42531536187825154832015-07-08T10:42:00.002-04:002015-07-08T10:42:57.476-04:00

Not that many if any people would notice that it's been quiet here on the blog for the past few months, but in the off-chance that someone has noticed, I figured it would be good to offer a small note on what's been going on in my world... In late 2013 I started a hobby of roasting coffee at home. I fell in love with it instantly, and very quickly started roasting for friends, family, and

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-22150489155485101072015-02-26T11:22:00.003-05:002015-02-26T11:25:45.493-05:00

Charles Church & Drake Circus Shopping Centre; Plymouth, England (2012) During World War II, historic Charles Church in Plymouth, England, was devastated along with much of the rest of the city in the Plymouth Blitz, carried out by the Nazi Luftwaffe. Being a major port city on the southern coast, Plymouth had long been (and still is) an important military position, and so was a target. In

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-62150200935866467972015-02-05T16:59:00.000-05:002015-02-05T16:59:51.463-05:00

Tanya & Wendell Berry Photo by Ann Thompson via Flickr Jake Meador has a wonderful essay up on Fare Forward, entitled "Wendell Berry's 'Room for Love'." He cycles through three marriages in Berry's fictional works, and offers reflections on how successful marriages in Berry often resemble the author's agrarian understanding and expansive writings on how to live in harmony with the created

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-41739517220903163182015-01-08T13:38:00.000-05:002015-01-08T14:10:09.500-05:00

Me and Mom, 1985 Maytag Park in Newton, Iowa Last summer I wrote out a meandering post, "Following and Straying: The paths of my ancestors," where I was trying to weave together a number of things related to place, vocation, and ancestry and the difficulty of such things in our late modern world. The principal subjects were my two grandfathers, my father, and me. I soon realized that I had

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-21060325866626171772015-01-01T14:42:00.001-05:002015-01-01T14:49:16.851-05:00

"Nothing changes on New Year's Day" -U2 (video) Trellech on New Year's Day 2009 Photo by Keith Moseley via Flickr I am more than happy to bid adieu to 2014. It was a dismal year in ways both personal, societal, and global. As a recent article at Wired suggested, "2014 proved to be a year in which long-festering social, environmental, and political problems were exposed in ways we have not

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-33495576987287854032014-12-24T09:35:00.002-05:002014-12-24T09:39:26.753-05:00

I don't talk much about my family here on the blog, and that's somewhat intentional. But this is one of those "daddy moments" that I can't pass up commenting on here. Our daughter has a good bit of musical talent that she comes by from both her mother and I, which we've cultivated over the course of her life with music lessons, first on piano and then for the past six years, violin. She also

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-32354650474362989292014-12-12T11:53:00.000-05:002014-12-12T13:02:58.480-05:00

"The Fog of War" Matt Hinsta via Flickr/CC license Yesterday, a deputy editor of First Things, Matthew Schmitz, posted a rather unusual piece... Our Partial Pacifism - Which starts out with the bold statement, "I am inclined to blame pacifism for our embrace of torture." I say it's an unusual piece because it took me numerous readings and conversations with a number of (pacifist) friends to

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-41234647145276186522014-12-11T08:16:00.001-05:002014-12-11T08:17:26.515-05:00

This is a Google Maps snapshot of the north side and east side of Des Moines, separated by I-235. See E University Ave there on the right? If you follow that east you'd hit my hometown of Prairie City in about 20 minutes. My folks worked in downtown Des Moines when I was growing up and I worked at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in high school, so I spent a lot of time on the east side. Last year

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-54114817496299768972014-12-08T08:00:00.000-05:002014-12-10T09:19:18.909-05:00

(This is a kind of part 2 to my last post...) As I said in my previous post, we live in an age of stagnant wages and widening economic inequality, and more and more intelligent people are starting to point out that this isn't some kind of technical glitch in the global capitalist system, but it is rather this way by design. The old "rich get richer/poor get poorer" line is what makes this

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-12284216135249362022014-12-07T11:58:00.000-05:002014-12-07T12:25:00.197-05:00

Over the past year, a group of Anabaptist-minded folks, mostly culled from the ranks of the MennoNerds, collaborated on a book project. I was honored to be part of that project and now our book is out! Check it out on Amazon... A Living Alternative: Anabaptist Christianity in a Post-Christendom World My chapter will sound familiar to anyone who's read my blog posts over the past two years.

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-36379035885602037872014-12-05T15:52:00.002-05:002014-12-05T16:18:41.675-05:00

The day brings... (With apologies to Peter Blum for riffing on the title of his book...) Stan Noffsinger, the top executive of my denomination, the Church of the Brethren, asked an interesting question on Facebook this week, and one that stimulated some interesting responses. He asked: "What is your vision for the Church of the Brethren in 2065?" and invited people to cast their visions. On

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-80301437417368912222014-11-07T08:00:00.000-05:002014-11-07T08:00:01.001-05:00

Our neighborhood church(Not a megachurch) Adam Graber has a great piece up, called:How Cars Created the Megachurch His main point is that over the past century, the technology of the automobile has re-shaped our cultural habits and thinking to that which illustrates a high degree of selfishness. With the automobile - and the whole raft of societal and cultural shifts that have followed in

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-68757315199360626942014-10-30T17:37:00.003-04:002014-10-30T17:41:57.526-04:00

Building bridges in the wild (Rural east Marshall Co.) In my ongoing work for Eastern Mennonite University, I've helped coordinate the technology aspects of the "Real World Restorative Justice" webinar series, and this past spring I taught a 3-week course on restorative justice at Grinnell College. These have helped keep alive my passion for restorative justice. (For a primer on the field of

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-67343781479491070592014-09-17T14:25:00.001-04:002014-09-17T14:25:53.521-04:00

When I was in seminary, I got drunk on Stanley Hauerwas. His polemic works against Modernity, Christendom, Liberalism, Individualism, etc. - struck a chord with me, and gave me a certain set of diagnostic lenses to see "How stuff works" in our late modern world. For all that I learned from Hauerwas and will no doubt continue to learn, I am in his debt. Yet even while I was stumbling drunk on

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-40024332617576136472014-09-05T09:00:00.000-04:002014-09-05T09:00:57.187-04:00

Back in July, I preached a sermon at the three local United Methodist congregations, filling in for Pr. Brian Oliver. He had a sermon series going on the fruits of the Spirit, and gave the Anabaptist guy the one on peace. My outline/notes appear below... Outline Intro: Ref. to "Seek the Peace of the Farm Town" sermon from last fall Peace in Conflict: Pax Romana vs. Pax Christi Peace in

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-85731935567803207312014-08-28T12:55:00.001-04:002014-08-28T12:55:27.581-04:00

Here is a stunning passage from Willa Cather's novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop: "Where there is great love there are always miracles," [the bishop] said at length. "One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-27935070278574652582014-08-08T11:47:00.001-04:002014-08-08T11:51:56.896-04:00

Emerging economics scholar, Kate Bahn, points out... Early (US) census takers at the turn of the twentieth century were instructed not to consider women as employed if they were not earning at least a majority of the family’s income. Men were not subject to the same strict definition of employment. Because a lot of the work women did to earn money was done within their homes, it was not

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-30323987011103225702014-07-23T15:57:00.000-04:002014-07-23T16:06:38.682-04:00

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" (thanks to Gary Larson) Photo by glenn_e_wilson via Flickr The dog would not stop barking. It barked morning, noon, and night. Out there in the front yard, seemingly barking at every visible moving object large or small, or every movement of air however slight. It just. Did. Not. Stop. Barking! And its owners, our neighbors whom we didn't and still don't know, were nowhere to

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-44150806650641770362014-07-15T13:24:00.003-04:002014-07-15T16:24:29.451-04:00

Master and protégé - Gustave and Zero in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" There's a moment in "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which I watched last night, that struck me as particularly poignant social commentary. For the sake of not spoiling any of the plot, I'll speak as generally as I can... Zero has just done something particularly helpful for Gustave, but he's forgotten a few things that

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4919783420603619512.post-63457576835017563062014-06-25T13:59:00.000-04:002014-06-25T16:42:57.212-04:00

"Foggy Morning Frolic" by Mike Gilchrist & his cat, Wink (used w/ permission) My grandfather, Dale Mullins, started his adult life as a farmer. This wasn't a "start" so much as it was a continuation of what he was born into on his family's farm outside of Monroe, Iowa. Born in 1915, his father passed away when Dale was only 24 years old, at which point he took over full control and care of

Brian G.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15369514158451008463noreply@blogger.com0Toledo, IA41.9972134 -92.58352660000002741.9736099 -92.623867100000027 42.0208169 -92.543186100000028