The creeds are a topic we seem to enjoy visiting in our adult Sunday School class, and it comes to mind again as the daily email This Day in History lists among other events, "August 25, 325, Council of Nicaea concludes". Below I've copy-and-pasted that History article, and an essay from Wikipedia that seems sufficiently knowledgeable and thorough for any "lay" people like our SS class and me. What's quite relevant but not printed here is the actual text (English translation) of the Nicene Creed produced by that First Council, and the text of the Nicene-Constanipolitan Creed produced by the Second Council, that expanded orthodoxy for the Holy Spirit. But no matter, they have been printed in this blog more than once already. What IS especially important to me, part of which was recently chatted back and forth on Episcopalians on Facebook, is the viewpoint on the Creeds of Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, widely put down by fundamentalist Christianity, an...

  Everyone is Different, we're all Different. At least I certainly am. I know that, I see it. ἴδωσιν from Mark 9:1, ὁράω I see, perceive, discern, understand, realize that I'm Different. And I don't mean it as a compliment. My favorite is boredom, or being alone with one person I care about. If there's something to talk about, fine. If not, I'm content with Silence together. Life is Good, but the news is all bad except for what we make of it. Forty years ago, forty-one actually, when I began getting myself together and my life back on track by starting theological seminary, my Junior class (at seminary it's not freshman &c like in high school and college, at seminary it's junior, middler, senior) had a week of indoctrination before the middlers and seniors returned to campus. This is getting too long a paragraph, isn't it, I need to press return and we did many things, some new to all of us, especially including beginning to acquire, for development ...

  Good evening. It's Sunday almost seven pm, still plenty light. The sun is low, maybe already set, I can't tell because its track is to the north during summer, so hidden beyond the west buildings of Harbour Village. No, my Weather app says sunset is 7:16, so it's still out there. The other, P-writer's Lesser Light that rules the night, should be about Full, put on quite a show for us over the Bay last night but because of the heavy thunder & lightning storm that came through, no moon before dawn this morning. And what about that driving rainstorm this morning! We moved our adult Sunday School class from the Library into Battin Hall, where the lighting is abominable and acoustics are even worse, but it was fun for a change. After some early wandering we moved into our topic for the day, continuing our summer project of reading, exploring some strange documents especially non-canonical gospels from Early Christian Writings, today the Gospel of Judas (be...