" ... to call it to more openness and hospitality." Wess Daniels

In a recent letter , Wess Daniels shared his decision to no longer teach a seminary course at George Fox University because GFU conditioned his position on his willingness to conform to the institution's (his employer) rule that he no longer discuss a particular issue publically.

A person can respect Wess' decision remove himself from his teaching association with his employer to freely express his conscience…

If you find the outward ways and practices of traditionalist, conservative, evangelical, and liberal Quaker forms do not sustain, there is another way. It is the direct unmediated life in Presence. In Presence, there is no looking back and no need for a hoped future. In Presence, all is given and all is known; sufficent to sustain eternity within you in all things and circumstances. The way is simple and uncluttered by outward forms. It is a stumbling block to many. No matter what your…

This morning I found myself in Spenser's sonnets and specifically:

“After long stormes and tempests sad assay,

Which hardly I endured heretofore:

in dread of death and daungerous dismay,

with which my silly barke was tossed sore:

I doe at length descry the happy shore,

in which I hope ere long for to arryue:

fayre soyle it seemes from far and fraught with store of all that deare and daynty is alyue.

Most happy he that can at last atchyue

the…

Watchfullness in times of ease and satisfaction. Presence sustained.

In times of freedom from outward constraint and care, a sense of satisfaction in acomplishment can overshadow the sense of Presence so that unity and identity in the Light fades against outward accomplishment; self-consciousness anchors outwardly and conscious becomes informed by outward sense of the ease of things. However, this inward dimming is forestalled when watchfullness combines with intention; just on the…