“I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

I delivered the following message at Richmond First Friends on May 28, 2017. ​This post originally appeared on the Quaker Libertarians blog.

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The Young Adult Field Secretary works with and supports the young adults in New York Yearly Meeting, serving as a locus for networking and disseminating information; assisting in multi-generational community development; doing mentoring, pastoral care, coordinating, and outreach; and helping young adult Friends to develop their gifts and to find a home in the Religious Society of Friends. In addition, the position will support young adult Friends' retreats and activities and opportunities…

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There is a line set down by other people relative to a person’s relationship with and participation in immanent Presence. This line or wall is heavily guarded and fortified by the protectorate of outward forms. The outward weapons of this protectorate are religious and political ideology, theology, tradition, similitudes, practices, etc. The nuclear weapon of the protectorate is the abstracted “God” who speaks to them and tells them how to direct and lead others so that to not follow the… Continue

You don't do the Bible, or any human being greater honor, or understand them better, by taking them literally.

To take something "metaphorically" doesn't mean that we treat it as just a fluffy literary decoration.

In mathematics there's a term for what a metaphor does: it's called "a mapping." A useful metaphor says that one thing has a similar structure to another thing; they behave alike in analogous circumstances. One of them can be taken as a useful hint toward…

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This was first recorded in 1440 in the poem Partenope of Blois, Ye “wote wele of all thing must be an end.” Note that the word good is omitted. It is similar to “All things must pass”, “this too shall pass” and “here today, gone tomorrow” all of which imply that the transient nature of life applies to both the good and the bad.

Isaiah 40:6-8

A voice…

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While many comics and commentators have used this phrase, the website QuoteInvestigator, cites a 1957 Cosmopolitan interview with talk show host Steve Allen as the first recorded use of the phrase. Martin Dockery, a brilliant storyteller who works the fringe theatre circuit, uses this phrase creatively in his monologue,…

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The following is an excerpt from my blog, of the same title, posted on This Was the True Light.

...no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces…

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I am in the room with you and I am within you. Most speak about me rather than speaking me directly and in immediacy. Speak my name … I am … and there I am. To speak about me … to reflect upon me … is to turn from who I am and who you are in me to focus on shadows. Do not look for me through the written and spoken reflections, writings, and preaching of those who set themselves up as your teacher or elder. I am your teacher and elder and there is no other before me. Look and call upon me … I am… Continue

For an entire generation, these words were synonymous with the fast food chain, Dairy Queen. I still remember listening to a fellow student reading a Bible lesson in grade six and hearing the phrase and thinking the reader was a smart-ass sneaking in a Dairy Queen ad into the Bible. The phrase has been brought into the present first as “wine, women and song” and then…

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This is a statement of (apparent) fact that the material possessions we might accumulate in our lives are not of any use or service when we die. It leaves open the question about where we might go when we die. It works equally well whether you believe that your body just stays in the ground, or that your spirit separates from your body and lives elsewhere, or that…

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First, they must be made alive by Christ, [who] is alive and liveth forevermore … and quickened by him, before they…can be ministers of the spirit, [and] be able to receive heavenly and spiritual things….So, all must be called by Christ…out of the world…and receive his power, spirit and grace and truth and faith [before] they can preach Christ…. They must see him and know him and hear his voice, and have spiritual things from him …and they must all receive their gifts from…

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The word 'spiritual' gives a lot of people problems, and I'm not going to define it. I'm not even going to claim I understand all that it entails.

But one description that works: "If you can't define something; if you can't reduce it to a combination of some other categories or interactions between them" -- words like say, Truth, Beauty, Love and the like come to mind --

then it very likely is spiritual.

Friends have a lot of trouble with the word 'Truth' anymore. It…

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This quote is most often attributed to Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader who was shot in the back in his own driveway in June of 1963. A variation is “you can kill a protest singer but you can't kill their lyrics.” The point is that what we are witness to is greater than ourselves. The word martyr, martus in biblical Greek, actually means witness. The fact is that…

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