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Permalink Reply by Laura Scattergood on 2nd mo. 8, 2015 at 11:00pm

Well, that was a bit silly.  I started a topic and then had to quickly leave off as I was doing childcare.  And now it sounds like I am saying "I found it. And Thee didn't."

The purpose of the "I Found it Movement" was to get people  "saved" as I recall.  There was also a sort of jolly "Get High On Jesus" mood afloat in various quarters.  Which even to my teenage mind sounded suspicious. 

And here I am, we are now.   Without creeds. Without a litmus test of whether one "has found it". Without rituals, without bumper stickers.  Okay, we have bumper stickers.  "War is not the Answer".  "George Fox called.  He wants his religion back." (Actually, I made that one up, copied from the Jesus one of the same theme.)

So with great humility, I have to understand that I can't know what the inner experience of others is.   I don't have any great words to describe exactly what I found when I found the Religious Society of Friends and the Christ I met there and how it differed with the "I Found It'  Jesus of the bumper stickers.

The only thing to be said is that I have definitely shaped up over the decades since saying goodbye to the Jesus who gets you high and saves you from hell to the discipline of following Christ in Quaker paths.  As one person commented wryly,  "Well, we can't say it, (Quakerism) appears to have done you any harm."

Clearly George Fox was bold to say he had found "it" that is something different than the Steeple  Houses offered.   But I am sometimes hard pressed to describe it so I won't.  But I won't assume that THEE needs to, pass a yet-to-be-devised-and-hopefully-won't-be Quaker litmus test and earn the appropriate bumper sticker to pass muster with me.  I would fail such a test.  So I don't administer them.   

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Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 9, 2015 at 7:47pm

I remember that but was more into WWJD especially after reading Sheldon's "In His Steps".  Never did have a bracelet though although I might have a Tshirt someplace.

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Permalink Reply by Laura Scattergood on 2nd mo. 9, 2015 at 10:12pm

Yeah, James,  that WWJD was another slogan, but I kind of liked that one, although it became trivial, and I do recall that book too!  I once was volunteering in a Quaker group home for women on parole/probation and I was reading that book. I was going along, glowingly agreeing with it and so on and being very virtuous.  Well, one of the main staff at the home lent me her brand new car to drive the women to one of their required meetings, and I scratched some paint off it!  And I had to think about the book and WWJD thing, because I had the inclination to not say anything and maybe no one would know I did it.  Not because I didn't want to pay for it, but because I was just embarrassed to have scratched someone's brand new car.  But having the book fresh in my mind, I called her up and confessed and she was graciously forgiving.  It was just a humbling lesson that I might like those virtuous books and so on but it doesn't turn out easy to be so virtuous when it is my turn to do what Jesus would do! (and no Jesus would not say, "Be Healed O New Car", probably either)

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