Smokin Joe's Emerging Swamp Thang

Hi guys,
we are going camping with some friends and a couple of out of town guests in January. The idea for this camping trip came up a year ago in a blog discussion about the importance of building our friendships around – non-agenda drive time together rather than structured meetings. We originally talked about calling this an ‘un conference.’ No speakers, no meetings, no agenda, just hanging out around the tents and near the beautiful Florida Bay with some good friends (with cigars and your favorite bev) doing some cool "thinkling."

If you are interested in joining us, we will start Friday afternoon, January 16th, and end about mid-day or afternoon Sunday (although those who desire can stay on another night) at Fiesta Key at mm 70.

I already have some camp sites reserved, please let me know as soon as possible if you are coming. The individual tent sites are $45 per night, if two adults share a tent, that comes out to $45 for the two-night weekend for the camping, and food should only be about another $40 per person. The entire weekend should cost about $90 per person – a little more if you are bringing your son (or sons) and want to have a tent site to yourself.

You can email me at josenmiami@yahoo.com ~Joseph

Birdwatching I

Scot McKnight (see his jesuscreed blog on beliefnet) recently published The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How you Read the Bible. John Meadows recommended it, so I picked up a copy and was helped and challenged by reading it. I propose we spend a couple of conversations discussing it. I'd recommend you read it, but will provide a short summary of each section so that you can participate in the discussion without having to read the book ("Covenant Thinklings, where you can talk big without actually having to do any work!").

To get us into things, here's an assignment from the book:

Read chapter 19 in Leviticus (the subhead in your Bible may say something like "Various Laws." After reading through the chapter, make a list of the "laws" that you think are still "for God's people today," the ones that "no longer apply," and the ones that make you say, "Huh? No idea what to do here" (which likely means that it "no longer applies," so maybe you only have to make two lists after all!)

Now: on what basis did you assign various "laws" to the first or second (or third) list? It would probably be best to pick one example from each list and tell us how you made the call.

Appropriate humor is to be encouraged.