Notes For Meeting

I’m curious what everyone made of the story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar that we read this week. If I’d been thinking ahead a little more, I might have included a couple more passages about what happens to Ishmael later on, but we’ll read them aloud now. The important punchline of the story of Ishmael can be read in chapter twenty-five of Genesis, which we’ll read together now: This is the account o...

It’s Father’s Day, and we’re in the thick of studying through the book of Genesis together. Remember there was no reading assignment this week, we finished the first eleven chapters of Genesis last week, the sort of pre-history part of the story, and this week, we’re going to be introduced to Abram, whose name gets changed to Abraham. We didn’t have reading assignments, and we’re not going to read...

It was really fun to start our discussions on the Old Testament when everyone was home, and now we’re moving back to being spread abroad. I posted our last few weeks of meetings on Substack, and we’re going back to recordings at least while Tom is abroad. This week’s reading was a little bit longer, four chapters, but all concerning one story, the story of The Flood, capital-t-capital-f, The Flood...

Today we’re going to finish talking about the five scrolls, which are Esther, Ruth, Lamentations, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. You’ll remember that Esther is about Esther, our Jewish Heroine who saves her people from Xerxes the jerksy and his awful advisor Haman. Lamentations is a book of laments, in the form of acrostic poetry. Song of Songs is the other scroll besides Esther that doesn’t men...

My darlings, I’m so enjoying our whirlwind tour through the Bible. As a reminder, we’re currently talking about the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, which we divide into three chunks: the law, the prophets, and the writings. We started our tour in the very middle, with three of the writing books that are written in poetry, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. And this week, you all read Job chapters 1, 2, and...

After some discussion with everyone during Lent, we’re going to start a tour of the Old Testament in Meeting today. There seemed to be some general agreement among all the Bruntons-east that having an overall sense of it could be fun and interesting. Today we’re going to do a quick orientation, and then we’re going to start exactly in the middle with the poetic books, mostly because I like them an...

We’re going to keep reading about the final days of Jesus from the Gospel of John today. One of the reasons I like reading the Gospels is that they each have a different take on what happened that week, but the accounts of Palm Sunday and the events of that week are all reasonably well synched up - unlike the dinner we were reading about last week where three accounts are about the wine and the br...

It was so much fun hiking with you all yesterday! The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for it, which I suppose is why we couldn’t get a parking space at Patapsco. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who noticed the sun shining. The first daffodils are blooming, right next to the house by the fig tree. It’s a sheltered spot there, and they’re always the first of all the narcissus to bloom he...

I promise our Meetings aren’t going to permanently turn into vocabulary lessons where we only talk about the new words I’ve picked up like Syzygy and selenelieon. But I did learn another new word from an article from the New York Times that was making the rounds on Friday and I can’t help reading the headline: “Bad News for Friggatriskaidekaphobes: 2026 Has Three Fridays the 13th” Friggatriskaidek...

Dan’l and Lina and I finished reading Slaughterhouse Five a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot about one specific aspect of the book, which is that it consistently juxtaposes the ordinary and the absurd and the horrific, sometimes all within the same character on the same day. Aliens, and a bird tweeting, and bombs dropping. The firebombing of Dresden. Against that backdrop, I was down...

I learned a new word when I was reading the news this morning. Selenelion. Apparently, on Tuesday morning we may be able to see the fully-eclipsed moon and the sun at the same time, which is called a selenelion. The eclipsed moon is also called a blood moon, because when it ducks behind the shadow of the earth, it takes on a reddish color. Actually I also learned a second new word, which is one I’...

It’s hard to know exactly who to blame for what’s going on with the weather, but I blame the groundhog. I can hardly believe we’re getting another big winter storm and the snow isn’t even completely melted from the previous one. Capital Weather Gang is calling for three to six inches of accumulation for us, which would be fun and cozy if we weren’t just getting over weeks of snowcrete. There are s...

What a treat that I got to see all of you this weekend, even briefly. I don’t mean to taunt anyone who couldn’t be there on Saturday morning, but when I got to Zoe’s apartment to pick up Katie after she stayed over to watch the Olympics, there was coffee cake just coming out of the oven, and it was SO GOOD! Katie and I stayed there at Zoe’s apartment and chitchatted with her and her roommates just...

Today we’re going to spend a little time with a parable that Jesus told, the Parable of the Sower. But first we’re going to talk a bit about the genre of parables, and what they’re for. I can’t remember how many of you were here at the dining room table when Tomi was talking about Plato and esoteric knowledge, but I don’t think it was everyone, so a brief recap is in order. Tomi was mulling over a...

It’s kind of hard for me to think about spring right now. It was fourteen degrees this morning when I got up, and that was the warmest morning we’ve had in a week. The ice on top of the snow is especially crazy, it feels like walking on a glacier on Mt. Adams. But it’s February first, and that means it’s Imbolc, or St. Brigid’s day, which has been a national holiday in Ireland since, checks watch,...

What a way to end the month of January! As I wrote my notes this morning, we had about six inches of snow and it was still snowing. The sheep, interestingly, slept out in it, and had veritable snowbanks on top of them but still seemed to just want a nibble of corn from your mama’s hand. I loved having everyone home, however briefly on Wednesday night. When I was driving Tomi back to St. John’s, we...

Lina and I have started to notice, when we go out to feed the sheep and get the eggs, that the sun is finally starting to rise a little earlier. We’re still taking headlamps and flashlights with us, but the darkest days have started to give way, at least a bit. Then, yesterday evening we went for a walk, and the sun was just starting to set a little after five, another sure sign of the lengthening...

It still feels strange to me when I write 2026 on the top of my notes for meeting, but I’m starting to settle into it at least enough that this week won’t center on time travel like we did last week. This week I’ve been completely obsessed with John Green’s Vlog Brothers video from four days ago, Hope Is Not a Feeling . I don’t always watch Vlog Brothers, but Lina sent me this one in the middle pa...

It was weird to write 2026 on the top of my notes for meeting today. I’m not quite old enough to remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey came out, but I’m do have my own version of that date that’s in the future, and it’s from the movie Back to the Future , which came out when I was ten. In Back to the Future , which maybe we should watch as a family, Marty McFly travels to the distant past, to 1955,...

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Thinking about thinking. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com

Season Two, Episode Seven. March 3, 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com

Season Two, Episode Six. February 25, 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com

Season Two, Episode Five. February 18, 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com

Season Two, Episode Four. February 11, 2024. Photo Credit to Zoe Brunton. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com