Certainty: Perhaps the Court of Quaker Opinion knows the importance of certainty for belief.

Truth: Perhaps certainty is not truth, and is less important than doubt for arriving at truth.

Certainty: The joy accompanying certainty witnesses to its personal worth.

Truth: The strength accompanying truth witnesses to the world its lasting endurance.

Certainty: My experience is validated by certainty.

Truth: Love is the only true validation of a human life.…

As a young man, I had a number of  natural history mentors. These men and women were woods-people who organized their lives in such a way that they experienced the natural world to the fullest. They didn't read about the natural histories of the various species in the natural world, they experienced the natural histories personally. They knew the natural history of a species because they observed a species' natural history directly ... immediately ... without borrowing their experience from…

I call for a Sunny Fund.  The fund's goal is to inhibit climate change through product innovation.



In the 1950s the purpose of the March of Dimes was to end polio.  They funded the Salk vaccine, then the Sabin vaccine.  Then they declared victory over polio and moved on.



I know of a number of tinkerers in the U.S., all underfunded or self-funded, who do good work.  I want them funded and better organized.



At the FGC gathering in River Falls a lone engineer set up…

A Response to Madeline Schaefer from a Quaker Mystic

First, I appreciate the willingness to both name and discuss the division between the Mystics and the Activists in the Quaker Community of our day.  It is an issue that is close to me, as I think of myself as a mystic and often feel, to varying degrees, alienated from the activist focus of so many Quakers individuals and Quaker organizations.

My take on this is that contemporary Quaker activism is a part of the largely…

First off, the disclaimer: “Capitalism, as an economic system, is not intrinsically evil as such.” [How I hate having to say that!]

Now, the disdisclaimer: “Capitalism, Socialism, or any blend or variant thereof, becomes intrinsically evil the moment it becomes an object of worship. Thou shalt hold no economic and/or political system above the Lord thy God.”

 There is no question but that capitalism (of the worst sort) has become the major object of worship for some large but …

In his recent column,  Among Friends in Friends Journal, Gabriel Ehri wrote; "When we are privileged to experience great art, we experience wonder: wonder at sheer beauty, at discovering a novel avenue of our own perception, and often wonder at the seemingly impossible fineness of the artist's execution. Art, like…

I have spent much of my time, mostly voluntary, helping preserve and restore natural areas. I do not expect that people share my conscience in this matter. Many people might wish to pave over a natural area I wish to see preserved.

Presence experiences any number of ugly and horrible things will happen. Presence experiences any number of wonderful and pleasant things. They happen in Presence and always will; as they always have.  In Presence, it is not that you…

I observe the habits of the male Allen's Hummingbird on territory. 

Sometime, as I watch, he turns his throat in just the right way so that his gorget blazes forth in brilliant hues of orange.…

OMG - did you sense and understand that?!

This is Christ's News Team: Local managers/overseers, reporters/prophets, and editors/elders at God's service. For the God of loving communication has a fierce way of providing it.

No stone/emotion/thought/betrayal left unturned; no inside scoop barred from exposure; and no complacency left unchecked. This is a crackerjack team of publishers of truth.

They are only mystical in the sense of trying to solve, not propagate, the…

I found Micah Bales post about the reluctance some Friends have to talk about, to name, God and Jesus in our witness to be resonate with my own experience.  I wrote this sonnet about the current situation vis a vis this kind of speaking.  I wrote it a few years ago, not as a direct response to Micah, but it feels to me pertinent to that topic:

God-Talk

It's difficult to talk about Jesus.

Ev'ryone seems to have an opinion.

With so much conflict…

Chapter 17 of Minding the Light: Our Collective Journal is now available online and attached as a PDF file, below. For this chapter, we invited Friends to respond to the query,"When have you encountered the Light through music?"  We received 16 stories and two images in response to this query.  Within seven of the stories, there are links to related music.

We invite you to read these stories for yourself.  What stories rise for you as you sit with our latest query?…

A Foundation:  Stewardship of the Earth

I’ve seen two estimates of the number of species now on the earth:  7 million and 30 million.  I have a sense that most of these millions of species will become extinct with too much climate change, probably in 100 years. 

You can look at this environmental catastrophe in different ways.  Humanity owns all of this in perpetual trust for all future generations of our children, and we’re called to not spend our children’s inheritance, not…

The early Quakers declared it:

And we found this light to be a sufficient teacher, to lead us to Christ, from whence this light came, and thereby it gave us to receive Christ, and to witness him to dwell in us; and through it the new covenant we came to enter into, to be made heirs of life and salvation. And in all things we found the light which we were enlightened withal, (which is Christ,) to be alone and only sufficient to bring…

ESR is pleased to announce the three recipients of the Thomas J. Mullen scholarship for the 2014-15 academic year: John Connell, Tracy Davis, and Steve Olshewsky. This scholarship provides each student with full tuition for 27-30 credits.



The Thomas J. Mullen Scholarship is a full tuition scholarship given to a residential…

E.D.: We presume that the Court of Quaker Opinion is humble enough to trust the unfolding of evolutionary destiny.

Freedom: Humility demands that you consider the possible unfolding of evolutionary destruction, as well.

E.D.: In either case, we need to respect the cosmic control of evolution.

Freedom: Which is your way, as the ancient Greeks before you, of deifying evolution, or cosmos.

E.D.: God works through natural processes, which over time reach…

The inaugural blog post at the newly-launched Quaker Libertarians site recently went live:

National Quaker organizations have the unfortunate tendency to address war spending from the perspective of budget realignment or reallocation. This approach puts forth the false notion that national governments sit atop vast reserves of wealth that should…

Gift: We rejoice in the gifts of God as cherished by the Court of Quaker Opinion.

Giver: The Bible is a gift of God that is not for believing in, but, rather, believing with.

Gift: What about truth?

Giver: The truth is likewise a gift of God that is not for believing in, but, rather, believing with.

Gift: What about Christianity?

Giver: Christianity, as a way of life, is also a gift of God that is not for believing in, but, rather, believing…

I recently was given the gift of an old book: The Quiet Eye, a way of looking at pictures, by Sylvia Shaw Judson (1954,1982 Regnery Gateway). The author was a well know Quaker…