Engagement Announcement

Duane & Linda Simler of Lena, IL are announcing the engagement and upcoming marriage of their daughter Brenda Sue Simler to Randall Lee Westfall.

The bride-to-be is a 1999 graduate of Lena-Winslow High School in Lena, IL and a 2003 graduate of Manchester College in Indiana, with a degree in Non-Profit Management. She is currently employed as Evening Program Coordinator with the YWCA Self-Sufficiency Program in Fort Wayne, IN, working with domestic violence intervention for women and children.

The groom-to-be is a 1999 graduate of Greenville Senior High School in Greenville, OH and is currently a junior at Manchester College in Indiana pursuing a degree in Religion & Psychology. Currently, he is serving as pastor of the West Manchester Church of the Brethren in North Manchester, IN. He is the son of Jerry & the late Connie Westfall of Greenville, OH.

The couple is planning a wedding for the 30th of July 2005 at the Freeport Church of the Brethren in Freeport, IL.

Our Wedding Webpage is:

http://weddings.theknot.com/pwp/view/co_main.aspx?coupleid=3244317169327836

I know ... no I don't

I find myself saying a lot these days "I know" which really might be because I am back on campus and being away for sometime tends to provoke that in the wayward sojourner. So much of my life is extracted from the things that I claim to see. The truth be told, I am seeing the world as I am, not from reality. And if prayer is as Evelyn Underhill states "turning to reality", then maybe I could see much better by closing my eyes. In reading the John 9 story maybe we can begin to "get this". I say "I see" and "I know", so my sin (or whatever word best describes your "falling out") remains.

Maybe this whole journey of faith really is about "not knowing", isn't that precisely what faith is? To have a beginner's mind (see Luke 18:17) as the Zen Buddhists would say, means that we can never really claim to know anything and the moment that we do... we become dangerous. Something that you could find in both spectrums of the liberal/conservative divide. I'm not advocating any kind of genuine idiocricy (though if you look up the word "idiot" in its original Greek meaning you would find that it is a man who has not held together the masculine & feminine aspects of his soul), but there is something to be said of people who can continually run the gambit of saying even though I may claim to know this, what is it teaching me or asking of me?

I believe our Western minds has not created any real room for possibility that we don't know. I understand this especially since I am a Type 5 personality in the Enneagram. Which means I am a "Perceiver" and the source of my greatest strength and weakness is attaining knowledge. I soak up as much information and knowledge as I can in hopes that it will take me somewhere. It will eventually, in America, take me somewhere, however that somewhere my not be where my soul really finds rest. If we can only begin to learn or un-learn that we really don't have it all figured out then I believe that grace can really be present in our lives and as we become present for others.

Connie Sue

when you drew your last breath
a part of me left as well
I know I must go on living
my heart cannot bear this farewell

here I stand at your grave
with so much I wanted to say
I can feel you here
as though my breath were yours

all I can do is release....

A Place to Start...

I believe that my life in recent years has been one of liminality. You know, not quite to the next phase of a journey or in the hallway but not into the next room that you want or need to be in. This has been my life for the better part of the last 3 years, knowing that I can't quite get to the room that I must be in, from the room I just came from. Struggle, anger, tears and loss were the catapult that had to thrust me from the "threshold" into the place I am now in. It was precisely those things that I couldn't do anything about that ultimatley did something to me. Liminal space can best be defined as "between" or even on the "cusp" of something new.
So it made sense to me when it came time to start thinking about posting my own blog that I would aptly name and claim it in this fashion. I hope that this space can be one that keeps us in the "threshold" of Christ together, after all isn't that where true transformation takes place? (see Matthew 4:2).
It has been said that the great saints and mystics of the church attempted to live their whole lives in this "teachable" space (see Matthew 7:13). I trust that we can begin to live our lives in this place that feels almost counterintuitive, only then can we begin to sense the intuition that is the Holy Spirit.

[Parts of this blog contain ideas that sprang forth from Adam's Return, by Richard Rohr]