Philip Gulley-We took the boys to Florida last week for spring vacation.  Our previous spring breaks were spent in the cold in Indiana cleaning the house, so the boys would look forward to returning to school.  But this year we set aside our traditional Hoosier conventions and drove our pale Quaker bodies south to the beach.  The condo we stayed in faced the beach and had recently been renovated after a storm and tidal waves had filled it with water and sand.  The ocean has many wonderful attributes, but self-regulation and restraint are not among them, so you could never quite tell what the waves would do.  I watched people walk along the beach trying not to get wet, but then a big wave would lap in, and the people would skitter away like little Groucho Marx birds.

JIm Mulholland-When I was twelve years old, I took a trip to Texas with my father.  As part of that trip, we walked across the bridge over the Rio Grande at El Paso and visited Juarez, Mexico.  This was my first time I'd ever been outside of the United States and I was really excited.  I was also surprised. 

Philip Gulley-When I was a kid I loved storms. We lived in a big, sturdy house; I felt very secure and like most children had no concept of mortality.  One of my most vivid memories is of April 3, 1974 when 148 tornadoes swept across the Midwest.  The tornadoes missed Danville, but of course we didn't know that then, and so my parents had us go to the basement and crouch in the coal room behind the furnace.  But I remember my brother Doug and I escaping and running upstairs to look out the parlor windows to the west, hoping to see a tornado, and being so disappointed when it didn't come. 

Philip Gulley-I received a letter in the mail last week from a man in the South who'd read one of the Harmony books and wrote to tell me I wasn't fit to be a minister.  I'm not quite sure how he was able to judge my suitability for ministry by reading a work of comic fiction, but that's what he did, and with much enthusiasm.  Most of the sentences were underlined, there were lots of exclamation points, and the Bible verses he cited were in bold print.  He quoted from the letter of James in the New Testament. "Let not many of you become teachers, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness."  (James 3:1)

Jim Mulholland-Last weekend, several of us attended a workshop at Western Yearly Meeting entitled "Seeking Common Ground."  This gathering encouraged conservative and liberal Friends to talk and listen to each other.  Though a majority of the day was spent in small group discussion, the event began with four speakers talking about their understanding of Jesus and the Church.  Two were liberal and two were conservative.