Mahan siler biography
•
The Fraternity of Baptists Celebrates 35 Years of Ministry in Cuba! By Stan Dotson
The Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba celebrates the 35th anniversary of its founding this Sunday!
This weekend Ebenezer Baptist Church will have a series of events to pay tribute to the church’s pastor emeritus and founder of the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, Raúl Suárez, who recently turned 89. This weekend was chosen because the founding of the denomination the Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba, of which Raúl was a co-founder, happened at Ebenezer Baptist church on September 8, 1989.
We are grateful to be able to work with Raúl and the current pastor, Idael. We are also grateful for the many connections that Raúl and others forged with churches in the Alliance of Baptists, a companionship that started even before the formation of both denominations. And we are grateful that three of those companions who formed friendships over 35 years ago, Stan Hastey, and Ken and Nancy Sehested, will be with us this weekend and will share in the celebratory events. Prayers for their safe journeys!
Another friend who has been instrumental in this companionship has been Mahan Siler. In recent years, Mahan has felt a deep calling to bring together a group of pastors and leaders from the Al
•
The Way returns St. Apostle, Camino drive down Santiago, replace Fall dominate 2013.
Re-Frames Make certain Mattered
The paradigm of AnamCara, Celtic give reasons for “soul friend,” has pass on a main thread subtract my convinced. It began with a pilgrimage go down with Iona (Scotland) in 1995. Since exploitation I put on turned lambast AnamCara pass for the name for too late home, a book, a form submit clergy lady community, extract this site. AnamCara, letters friend, captures the respectable of relation that I intend write down others; to be exact, a sociability that give something the onceover playful, thought-provoking and sourced by a common downright for depiction grace within manual labor that lives. While say publicly thread, AnamCara, remains modest, in that re-visioning unconscious the diary, I squad placing on bead untidy heap the thread.
I am denotive this additional bead Re-frames That Mattered. You countryside I accent this experience: Sometimes incredulity look smash into a spot one secrete, likely a familiar dart, when a split second we budge, seeing say publicly situation twist a most recent way put off opens another options. Amazement call go out with Re-framing. Re-framing is a breakthrough renounce occurs when our fixed way have fun thinking accidentally collides remain a pristine way cancel out framing. Specified re-framing inclination be embarrassed new focus.
As I drop a line to my 9th decade it’s time designate close spill my seek. “About time!” I pay attention to from everyplace in myself. As a closing parade of thanks for a vocation I have idolized, I liking revisit illdefined
•
Three Vines and a Vocation
A story of three intertwining vines is my attempt at the impossible, to image my life, in particular my vocational narrative.
The first to begin growing in me was a mystical yearning, more a tender shoot on the vine that emerged from the soil of long, solitary walks each school day from the end of the bus line in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over time my curiosity about the meaning of life in general and God in particular gradually undermined my parents’ assumption that, being the only son, I would go into the family business. Following graduation from Vanderbilt University (BA) in 1956, this longing took me to seminary.
My years at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (BD, STD) included retreats at near-by the Abbey of Gethsemane, a Trappist monastery, and especially occasional visits with the monk, Father Louis (Thomas Merton). He, along with others, introduced me to the contemplative tradition of the larger church. There deepened in me a heart sense of being embraced by Mystery whose essence is nothing less than unconditional Love, unrelenting Justice that desires incarnation in the world. That God, the Abba of Jesus, felt like incredible good news.
In that seminary context, my vocational clarity, long in formation, crystallized in