New links

I have recently updated some of the links in my sidebar. My blog is pretty old and dated, and I hadn't paid much attention to the sidebar for quite awhile. So I removed some of the dead links, and updated some others. Some I still need to get too.

I also added a couple links. Under 'blog links' I added Kathy Escobar. I have been familiar with her in blogland for years, and I think she might actually be an acquaintance of an old acquaintance of mine, but her stuff is ringing truer for me now than it used to. So I thought maybe I ought to give her a read now and then.

I also added the faith community she co-leads under 'Faith, Churches, etc.' It's called 'the refuge,' and seems kind of like the type of place Jane and I could use. This is their "invitation to community":

the refuge is a mission center and christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other.

we love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can.

we're all hurt or hungry in our own ways.  we're at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the bible.

we find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts.

we find dignity as God's image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another.

we all receive, we all give.

we are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberals, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, book-smart, street-smart, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving.

yet Christ's love binds our differences together in unity.

at the refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. 

So... that's about it on this rainy day.