Well, we had a very nice meeting of our New Jersey Writers Group (can't we find something less formal? we need to knock our brains together) a week ago Sunday at the home of Dan Sladich. Once again his daughter baked some dynamite chocolate chip cookies to ease along our discussion. In attendance were Dan, Valerie Shimoyama, Kerry Pobanz, Jerry Chesnut, June Saunders, Irene Sasao, Bob Beebe, and even Jerome Carroll came out of the woodwork at the end of the meeting.
We started off by distributing to each person fortune cookie type strips of literary quotes (or, more accurately, quips by writers on the art of writing). This helped to get us in the mood after reading quotes from the likes of Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, and others. Each person had to express his/her agreement or disagreement with the quote he/she got, and why.
From there we moved on to the highlight of the meeting, a discussion of Kerry's soon-to-be-published article on ancestor liberation, specifically entitled "A Comparison of William Baldwin's 'Spititual Releasement Theory' and Dae Mo Nim's Depossession Healing." This discussion was very animated, since we Unificationists have attended more than a few liberation ceremonies in the past decade, in faith, but also sometimes with some scepticism (at least among some). Kerry's article showed that there are other practitioners of spiritual liberation in the world community who have found evidence of spiritual possession or attachment to people's bodies, although not necessarily understanding the origins of such phenomena.
Our next meeting is planned for this Sunday, March 16, 3:00-5:00 pm, at the Pobanz residence: 466 Chestnut St., Nutley. Appropriately, Jerry Chesnut (without the "t") will be presenting an update of his pseudoautobiography (with dialogue), along with Valerie Shimoyama, who will treat us to some more delicious stories from her past life (no, I don't mean previous reincarnations). If Paul Russell shows up, we may also get a chance to comment on his essay on the Book of Jonah. In any case, please being your written comments and we will mail them to him if he doesn't show.
I look forward to seeing you all there.
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