The following is a summary of a discussion of the first few pages of Fox's Journal that occurred a couple of weeks ago in a New Foundation Fellowship conference call set up for that purpose. The summary is followed by two comments: the first coming from another participant in the discussion, and the second from one who was unable to join in that day.

(1) A small number of us gathered by conference call to read and discuss the Works of Fox, beginning with volume one.…

Just got home from a weekend at Powell House in NY on "The Greatest of These is Love".  Like most of the weekends I spend at Powell House, I came away with a mini-revelation of how God is working in my life.  Being a bible believing disciple of Jesus I find these weekends with fellow Christ Centered Friends fill me with the Holy Spirit and energize me for another year of service at my Monthly Meeting and recently the YM as well.

This year my mini-revelation concerned how Love moves in…

If you are interested in Quaker history and outreach, there is probably not a more intriguing book than Arthur O. Roberts’ famous study of Friends missions to the Eskimos of Alaska in the 1800’s.…

 I love the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. I am a Liberal Quaker. An atheist I know pointed out with a lot of back up evidence that we have no proof jesus ever said those words.  I feel foolish to have regarded these words "Blessed are the Peacemakers" etc as words he spoke- whereas I feel now these words most likely are fictional. rich morgan Brookahven NY

A few weeks ago I spent a long weekend in retreat with some Friends at a Benedictine monastery here in Vermont called the Weston Priory. The monks live under the Rule of Saint Benedict which was written circa the year 500. The  motto of…

November 19, 2015

Why was the Bible written? The Bible itself tells us very little. I don’t recollect any verse in which Jesus says to a disciple, “Simon, will you take notes today, you know, for the record?”

When I first came to know the Bible in my teens and 20s, it never occurred to me to wonder why the Bible had been written. Of course there was a Bible;…

So here you are.  God himself!  You have created the universe, Angels, Adam and Eve, and now you have to make two coats for Adam and Eve so they can survive outside of Eden.  Do you think you can do better than loin cloths?  Can you do better than Isreal (Jacob)?  Better than Hannah?  How about better than Mary, Jesus' own mother?  I think the coats they made are a shadow of the coats God made for Adam and Eve.  How about you?

Ever since the Tower of Babel we each insist on finding a "better" way of expressing something even if it means everyone who is used to a term has to learn a new term.  So I hear all sorts of expressions for what we are.  Why can't we just agree on what Genesis says we are, that is a "living soul"?

Then we can discuss what a soul is and maybe build each other up.  I'll start with my simple model of what I perceive as the main components of a living soul: A mind (consciousness), a…

Originally published on Quaker Universalist Conversations

at universalistfriends.org/weblog/saint-paul-the-quaker-universalist

Quakers are right to select Paul as one of their spiritual ancestors

Careful choice of ancestors is important to our spiritual lives of all humans. Paul is a good early…

In times like these, we need to practice the art of welcoming.  And by “we” I mean the whole world.

We need to rediscover the high art of welcoming the stranger,

… relearn that welcoming is an antidote to fear,

… exercise the art of welcoming until it is second nature,

… recognize that welcoming is a higher art than the art of war.

As waves of displaced people seeking refuge from war wash across the world, we need to welcome them and not build walls forcing…

Qur'an, Sura 8:12 OR "Where Were You When the World Stopped..." To Paris in the Light

Micah, Thank you for your piece I Want to Follow Jesus, Do I need to be Baptized. Your words carried me back to my youth, in the Baptist Church, when the Spirit came upon me and the Life itself was transforming and experienced as sufficient. I am so thankful for the fellowship of one Baptist minister who shared Quakerism with me. I really thought there was no gathering of people that affirmed the Spirit…

In the 3rd verse of the 3rd chapter of the prophet Amos we are asked:

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  There have been more than a few nights where I cried this scripture out to God because of personal desires to end a relationship.  I would wail in the night with moanings and groanings  citing this scripture thinking it justification for ending a twenty year marriage that had created three children,between the ages of 19 and 14 at that time only to be redirected to…

“We want to clarify for everybody that this is not a homosexuality issue for us, this is an authority of scripture/interpretation of scripture/orthodoxy issue for us.” That’s what Anthem Friends Church said last week as they withdrew from Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Their exit…

The other day, I was driving west along the Elk River into the southern Oregon Coast Mountain Range. The breaks in morning cloud cover showed promise of a beautiful sunny morning.  I was  racing with the waning darkness. A few days earlier, in mid afternoon, I had come across a beautiful little creek, while observing and photographing lichen, feeding into the Elk River. The movement of the water cascading over rocks and boulders was particularly captivating. I just could not…

And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.



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"You will say, 'Christ saith this, and the apostles say this;'…

Students in Steve Angell's "Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity" class this fall were asked to imagine a scenario in which Joseph John Gurney and Elias Hicks met up in a present-day context with which the students are familiar. Below is one of the resulting essays, from MDiv student John Edminster:

If we died with him, we shall live with him;

if we endure, we shall reign with him.

If we deny him, he will deny us.

If we are faithless, he keeps faith,

   for he cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:11-13).

These simple, beautiful lines are preceded by the Apostle's guarantee: "Here are words you may trust." It seems likely that he's informing us that the words are inspired, and therefore trustworthy. In addition, the breadth and depth of understanding,…

“Welcome to the battlefield,” writes Ross Douthat in the New York Times yesterday. That sentence concludes a piece in which he responds to a letter sent to the Times by a sizable group of Catholic scholars, and that letter, in turn, was written in response to a series of columns by Douthat,…