Caleb Eaton
I was introduced to The Living Network when a friend emailed me a link to the article Matrimony vs. Marriage. I had ignored a couple previous links he had sent me because I wasn't interested in anything "religious." Yet the title of this article hit home because I had decided a few years previous that I would NOT get a government marriage license because I didn't want the unnecessary third party intrusion into that sacred relationship. Although the decision was made for moral reasons, went against all the mainstream churchian institutions that I was aware of. Yet here was an article that distinguished the difference between the licensed and unlicensed relationships. And did so with an entirely new view of scriptures that stripped away the mythology and mysticism and put them into the realm of practical everyday-life reality.
Articles that have been similarly influential and wonderfully validating for me are:
I've been trying to come up with a name for a potential Congregation of Record for the Northeast Texas area. The Holy Order of the Sabine is my favorite so far because it's dripping with sarcasm...
1. Local folks will recognize the pretentiousness of naming anything after the muddy and stinky Sabine River, much less a "Holy Order" of anything.
2. The last thing I want to be a part of is another social gathering--usually called "church"--designed to make people feel holy simply because they meet once or twice a week to sing songs and listen to a windbag who has no practical life skills talk about theories of the by-and-by. Instead, I want to reach out to all the people already participating in the Kingdom without realizing it: the homeschoolers raising wholesome kids, the home gardeners and farmers raising wholesome food, the ranchers producing wholesome meat, alternative health practitioners teaching people health self-sufficiency, etc. And anyone interested in participating in work days designed both to get to know one another on a real-life level and to create a stronger, more self-sufficient group of people.