the forty-eighth formica friday

It's that time again, another Formica Friday---though today, on a Saturday and late!---a treasure trove of hodgepodge, random tidbits, and a bit of this and that. In particular, it is the place where I can celebrate the best posts I read this past week and want to share with you. This week, in pictures:

Posts, websites, trinkets, and the Internet week in review revue. A quote, a link. Perhaps you'll click through:

"I wonder if Protestantism doesn't suffer from its democratization of sainthood. Because if everyone is a saint then no one is a saint ..." -- Richard Beck, Do You Want To Be a Saint?

"I don't like this proof that I am not good or kind. I don't like the welling of prickly pride and self-righteousness and thinking I know best." -- Leigh, I Don't Want To Fix It

"A few days ago I noticed the first pimple I’d had in weeks and my heart leaped for joy. My greasy skin is back. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia." -- Margaret, Do you want to be well?

"I’m beginning to believe that our task is to share the voice He gives us and leave the rest up to Him." -- Amy, Your Words & Art as Worship

"and i feel it. repentance. the sorrow from knowing that as a sinner, i am, in part, responsible for their hunger." -- Emily, when you’re trying to feel repentant, and can’t

"Because spiritual quarrels aren’t won by the one with the strongest words but the one with the strongest grip on peace." -- Duane, how to survive when someone attacks your faith

Kickstarter? You funded me. Beautiful, wild you: Here's my (first) thank you.

Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.