Author: Gregg Koskela

(Message given at Wayside Friends on July 17, 2022) Imagine we are sitting by the shore of a lake. I push out from the shore in a little fishing boat, and turn and face you, using the acoustics of the water to share a story …

(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on May 15, 2022) One of the joys of getting older is time.  Time to see more and more of what is out there in our beautifully diverse world. Time to read more perspectives and experience more things; the …

(Back to part 1) On Time Team, the fun part is the finds; digging in the trench, discovering something, and then pulling the expert over to talk about what the find tells us about the story, about the context. Now that we’ve had the crash …

It was 36 years ago, tonight. Vivid in my mind, I can still feel the bricks of the hearth under me as I sit, hear the laughter of people I love around me, see the streaks of black and blue on my own right ankle …

(Back to part 1) So we’ve had our crash course in the story handed to us. We now can bravely try to play the part of “biblical pottery expert”, as we begin to examine little pieces of the current story, the little shards of incidents …

(Back to part 1) Is there a way out of this human cycle of rescue, home, institution, oppression? In just a short time after the dedication of the temple, oppression rises as political power distances from Yahweh and tries to extend its own reach. As …

(Back to part 1) Longing for home leads to a desire for safety, security, and power. The wandering people of Israel conquer the land they believe they were promised (perhaps blaming God in their holy texts for their own horrendous choice of genocide.) They take …

(Back to part 1) The story begins with oppression and cries for rescue. At least, that’s one way to tell the beginning of the story of the people of Israel. Alternative arguments can be made for when Abraham left Ur to go to the land …

A few weeks ago I saw a tweet about President Garfield’s inaugural address in 1881. I knew nothing about Garfield other than his name. The tweet said it was the first inaugural since Lincoln to address slavery, and it would take 30 years before it …