Name: Mark Greiner
Where you live: Takoma Park, Maryland (next to Washington, DC)
What you do as a vocation or avocation?
Vocation: contemplative Christian, husband, father, and Presbyterian pastor.
Avocation: playful potter, hiking
Your two favorite books:
Only two?
“Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander” by Thomas Merton
“An Interrupted Life” by Etty Hillesum
Your two favorite songs:
“Berliner Messe” by Arvö Part
“Endless Chain” by Metamora
Why you are interested in spirituality?
Jesus' intimacy with his Abba ( in John 17, the Message version) when he prays:
“I'm saying these things in the world's hearing
So my people can experience my joy completed in them…
I'm praying not only for my disciples today
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.”
Your favorite quote:
"Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know, or to be any thing, and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart; and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience, that the Lord knows that, and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life, which is his portion. And as thou takest up the cross to thyself, and sufferest that to overspread and become a yoke over thee, thou shalt become renewed, and enjoy life, and everlasting inheritance in that." --Isaac Pennington (1745-1817, a Quaker)
Your favorite web sites:
Eloquence on sustainability, ecology, culture and agriculture.
Essential reading for our day:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/
http://www.landinstitute.org/
News and opinion, leaning left, voicing sanity in the maelstrom:
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/
Biblical Commentary and liturgy:
http://www.textweek.com/
Contemplative Church extraordinaire:
http://www.consciousharmony.org/
“He who laughs, lasts.” - Mary Pettibone Poole :
http://www.funnytimes.com/
Your hero?
Any human being who freely and fully embraces his or her own life (and community) with its limitations and possibilities.
A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?
Suffering = Pain + Resistance
A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
Within the creek, near my home, boulders invite me to sit, breathe, smell, listen, and look through the changing seasons. The creek has many moods. The creek connects with everything.
Church website: http://www.takomaparkpc.org/
"Be astonished! Be astounded! For I am doing things
among you that you would not believe if you were told." Habakkuk 1:5
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