Archive for October, 2011

This may come across like community 101, but as I ponder various charters and creeds, challenges to character and conduct must have a context among the people; then accountability rightfully leads to responsibility, which hopefully results in right action, where proofs of righteousness are witnessed in the words and actions of all parties involved — justice being first and foremost restorative and reconciling — leading to clear, direct and simple declarations about God, people, and redemption.

My mother recently sent me this picture of her father’s parents, Annie and Arthur Giles. Up until three weeks ago, I’d never seen Arthur ~ I look a lot like my great-grandfather.

Then there’s Annie looking off camera, focused, determined as the Scottish Enlightenment. Curiously enough she’s wearing a Star of David on her blouse; no idea what that means, it’s just there with her, spiritual cartography.

My dad has been researching as well, just yesterday discovering for the first time (from a ship manifest) that his dad first came over from Hungary when he was an infant. My dad always assumed his father first came over in 1925, as a young man.

“If something ends up declared as the Word of God, it must already be written. It is already written. We must not go beyond what is already written. We must not be sidetracked by one word of one prophet at the expense of all the other words of all the other prophets.