Comment by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 11, 2015 at 10:31pm

From an existential perspective, I find that my apprehension of the leading of the Holy Spirit (the voice of Christ) needs to be tested against The Book (not merely a book, Forrest!) and the great cloud of witnesses, both past and present!

Given my (our?) human frailty and capacity for self-deception and our susceptibility to the pernicious influence of Satan and the "madding crowd", I dare not rely solely upon my own spiritual reality testing!  I need the testimony of the Bible and the help of the hermeneutical community to get God's leading right!!

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 1:07am

Diane. Thank you for your courage in sharing a conscience grounded in the Light and a faith in the sufficiency of the inward Light itself to guide and instruct. As you know, we do not have to depend on the characterizations of people concerning those founding Quakers who held to the sufficiency of the direct and unmediated presence of Christ within their conscious and conscience in the face of other founding Quakers, like George Fox, who imposed their conscience over against the conscience of others by establishing outward forms to rule and guide Quakers and lead them back into that which they had been lead out of, that is, a conscience ruled by outward forms . Again, as you know,  the Quaker William Rogers (a contemporary of George Fox and a Quaker as much as George Fox was a Quaker) documented this disunity in his "The Christian Quaker ... " written in 1680. 

The term Rantism was used by George Fox (interestingly, it was actually used against George Fox by the protestant church leaders who Fox himself spoke out against) and the establishment forces against those who would not submit to "Foxonian" Quakerism. It is a term of derision designed undermine a faith in the sufficiency of the inward Spirit of Christ to guide and instruct. Those who do not share a faith in the sufficiency and prerogative of inward Christ will ever look for ways to undermine this faith and to denigrate it through derision and mis-characterization and to excuse their admitted adherence to outward forms.   

Your courage encourages me as we go about sharing the sufficiency and prerogative of direct and unmediated Presence itself in our conscious and conscience to guide our path. 

Blessings,

Keith Saylor

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 1:26am

Do we want "the traditional Quaker view" or -- if this doesn't turn out to be the same thing -- the Truth?

In practice there are limits to what the Spirit will lead us. But it's for God to set those limits. We don't 'set' them ourselves; but we find they've been built into us.

In a way it works like a Quaker marriage ceremony: You marry someone because you see that the decision has been made for you, is implied by who you are and who the other person is. And then,  for one reason or another, you may ask a Meeting to confirm that yes, God has married you.

Comment by Adria Gulizia on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 6:21am

I don't take the traditional Quaker view on many things. I listen to music, read novels, and enjoy television, film, plays and opera, for example. My statement wasn't a criticism, just an observation.

Comment by Adria Gulizia on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 8:27am

I do have my frustrations with the view that everyone should go his own way, though. Daniel Wilcox pointed out the was widespread slaveholding in the 18th century among Friends and resistance to abolition work in the 19th as marks against group authority, and those points may be well taken (though it bears noting that the conflict between group and individual truth claims may not have been as sharp as all that, especially in the 18th century - as far as I know, no Quaker argued it was one's Christian duty to own slaves). However, we don't know the countless ways that mutual submission and accountability prevented someone from going off the rails and doing something against God's will. We know a few of these instances (I think Samuel Bownas wanted to preach woe a few times and elders told him not to), but most of the times when a Friend said, "I don't believe you are hearing God's voice right - that isn't what I understand - but I love you, I trust you and I am willing to wait and see whether God keeps calling rather than run ahead now against the judgment and discernment of the elders," we have no record of it. I suspect that the instances where group discernment was on the wrong side of history are relatively few and largely known to history, whereas the number of times that group discernment helped keep individuals on the right path are innumerable and private, but did much more to promote God's will than the other circumstance did to squelch it.

I'm inclined to agree with Jim (and the Bible) that we cannot walk together unless we agree. To the extent that we give up on the notion that agreement in the fundamentals of faith and on how God is moving is necessary or even desirable, our ability to "walk together" as more than a collection of faithful individuals, but as faithful communities with a powerful and living witness to God's sovereignty and love is severely compromised, if not destroyed.

Comment by Diane Benton on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 9:10am

If God's will is that live in an unmediated relationship with God by the Light in our conscience, then the only was to be out of that will would be to trust a mediator.  God is able to work together for good the consequences of missing the mark and acting outside of the character and nature of God.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 10:05am

Adria wrote:

" I suspect that the instances where group discernment was on the wrong side of history are relatively few and largely known to history, whereas the number of times that group discernment helped keep individuals on the right path are innumerable and private, but did much more to promote God's will than the other circumstance did to squelch it."

Adria. You left out another way. I wonder how often gathered discernment through an inward life (in the conscious and conscience) anchored in and informed by direct and unmediated Presence itself (this is explicitly not individualism as the individual is being guided by the Light itself not from outward forms but inward Form) promoted God's will in the history of human being since the resurrection of Christ? There is another Form, the inward Form, found in the conscious and conscience of people since the Spirit was breathed into human being and re-directed the very source of discernment away from the outward impulse and toward the inward impulse. 

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 10:51am

Jesus was led to trust John the Baptizer to help him find his way closer... and from what we're told, this worked. God approaches us from all and any directions: physical, emotional, and intellectual as well as through intuition. It remains, of course, the spiritual that needs to be our first and ultimate recourse.

But God did grow us in a world, not in unmediated bliss. The obstacles and scars we encounter here are evidently meant to develop something beyond uncomplicated connection. (The Hebrew term for the act of creation, I read, had the sense of God making space in which God could 'put Himself outside Himself', which is not exactly logical -- given that once God is here, this is not 'outside' anymore... I don't know, don't know... was told once that the reason for all this, and us, was "God got lonesome.")

There's a friend who comes over, when he can -- and we all play games. We do our best to win, of course, since there's no game possible otherwise -- but we all winsome-losesome, & don't particularly care all that much. Probably if one of us won all the time, he/she wouldn't like that either. The point: We don't need the games all that much; we need each other to hang out with. But the games happen to be the way we can best do it.

And so God plays world with us.

Comment by Howard Brod on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 11:00am

Isn't group Spirit-led discernment actually a turning of all individuals to the inward Presence at Meeting for Business, and isn't a unified wakening of the Spirit-led conscience and consciousness exactly what happens?  And no one pulls out a Bible to consult, a Faith and Practice to review, or an individual to give a great sermon.  Among liberal Quakers those outward forms are actually viewed as not a Spirit-led thing to do.  Instead, we enter into that holy space together, we wait, we feel the Presence within us, and we become One - just as Jesus predicted would happen whenever we turn to the inward Presence.

This example of living in the Presence with others shows that this way of life can and does work well.  It's a choice of how to live every minute that we all can make in order to bring the kingdom of God on the Earth.

I would argue that consulting an outward form instead of this inward approach to life, actually leads to individualism, disagreement, and schism.  This is because the ego will interpret these outward forms quite differently from individual to individual.  Yet, groups that use an inward discernment approach that seeks the Presence instead of outward forms, seem to join in 'Love and Light' even though their egos view things quite differently.

That is the Power of the Presence that Jesus advocated.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 11:20am

Howard, yes -- That's exactly what we are supposed to do as Meetings. Yet there are always the Weighty souls who pull out their F&P to keep the group chained down. In one Meeting I know well, the timid have pretty much killed the Meeting by such cautions.

But we can find God at work in the forms as well... God establishes both unification and schism -- and in groups that endure, a fruitful tension between too rigid an order vs total floppiness.

It's good to have a structure, and good to be able to experiment with that structure. It's there for our sake; we are not there for its sake.

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