PlainSpeech Messages | Find YOUR way to GRACE.

I recently read a message I’d given in 1984 and felt a mixture of embarrassment and surprise. Embarrassed because it seems inadequate now, and surprised by how much my worldview has changed. Twenty-five years from now, I might read these messages and have a similar reaction. I offer no guarantee that my work or words will endure the eroding effects of time. I can only assure you these thoughts have been helpful to me, and perhaps a few others, today. With that qualification, I offer them to you.

~ Philip

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How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

VIEW VIDEO  I’ve been thinking this week about family traditions, which we used to have in my family until my granddaughter was born and tradition went out the window. When my siblings and I were young and had birthdays, we received one present, a cake, and Mom would...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

When I was a kid, we’d go visit my Grandma Norma down in Vincennes. She and Grandpa lived in a house built in 1832, which they’d bought in 1929 for $1600, and fixed up. My grandfather added on to it so perfectly you couldn’t tell where the old stopped and the new...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (5)      

VIEW VIDEO  We’re having family Thanksgiving on Friday this year, which would have been unthinkable when I was a kid, like having church on Monday instead of Sunday. It just wasn’t done. But Spencer is at the firehouse this Thursday, so we moved the family dinner to...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

VIEW VIDEO  When I was 6 years-old, my great-uncle Fritz died and I wanted to go to his funeral, not because I was especially fond of him, I barely knew him, but because I’d never seen a dead person, except in the movies. My brother Glenn, the veteran of several...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (3)   

VIEW VIDEO  Winter arrived this past week, and with it, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), when the lack of sunlight plunges many of us into despair. The solution, of course, is Florida, which raises other difficulties, namely snakes. When I said winter arrived, you...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead (2)

VIEW VIDEO   It is good to be back with you. Last week, you’ll remember, was our Sunday for unprogrammed worship, which, since time immemorial, has been held on the fifth Sunday, four times a year. But the elders decided to have it last Sunday, the third Sunday,...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

How to Die Before You’re Dead     

I walked into town one day this week for lunch. It was a glorious, early autumn days that God is inclined to grace us with every now and then. Brilliant blue skies, pleasant temperatures, farm equipment passing by, the farmers on their way to their next field. Autumn...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

Finding Our Way (10)

VIEW VIDEO  Last month, Frank Gladden, bemoaning the scarcity of rain, questioned whether I had any pull with the Lord. I said, “I don’t know. Why do you ask?” He said, “My beans need rain. A real preacher would get me some rain.” So to save Frank’s beans and my...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

Finding Our Way (9)

VIEW VIDEO  I went with two of my siblings and my cousin to southern Illinois last weekend to revisit the haunts from our childhood. Most of the people we visited as children are now deceased, inhabiting various graveyards in Franklin County, Illinois, so much of our...

How to Die Before You’re Dead (7) 

Finding Our Way (8)

VIEW VIDEO  I attended a Quaker conference this past spring where one of the event’s sponsors, a non-Quaker wanting to sell us insurance, started listing all the good things Quakers had done over the years—the antislavery work, the work for women’s equality, our...

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