ESR Dean Jay Marshall delivered the following message during Earlham School of Religion Worship on April 29, 2015:

I consider blessing to be a subversive act. The disposition that chooses to encounter the other with affirmation and hope, instilling courage,…

The perfect way of unity and conformity

 Leslie Higgins, in an article(1) entitled “The Apostatized Apostle, John Pennyman: Heresy and Community in Seventeenth Century Quakerism,” quotes John Pennyman:

 “And if any have not the self-same measure of the Spirit, and know the self-same things, let such alone, without imposing upon them, and leave them to walk in the measure of Light and Knowledge that they have reciev'd, though…

Notes from a Christian-Universalist

After North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Session, one who is new to Friends expressed concern and dismay after attending an interest group on the Christian-Universalist split - that there was this difference on the part of Friends.

I felt an imperative to resolve this issue for myself several years ago when it first came to my attention.  Believing as John Woolman that  "There is a principle which is pure, placed in the…

I was speaking with college students recently about the culture of militarism in the United States. To quote Joseph Gainza of Marshfield, who led the American Friends Service Committee in Vermont for over 15 years and who founded Vermont Action for Peace, “(one way) of looking at other people, social problems, and even the planet itself, which has become a…

I once dreamt I was standing on a peak overlooking a large field surrounded by forest. People populated the whole of the field and among the people were various individuals talking and espousing a particular belief or way of life. As they spoke, a mist came from their mouths and encompassed some of those listening. This mist had an atmosphere and economy of its own. Those who breathed the mist became enchanted by it so that their very identity and meaning was made of the stuff of this mist.…

In a recent post, Doug Bennett wrote:

“Stillness is a spiritual discipline (like Mass, like walking the labyrinth, like fasting, like praying, like hymn singing, etc.). Friends don’t see it as a tradition, but rather as an essential practice for their worship together. ”

Silence or Stillness as a Spiritual Discipline

I have been reading James…

My devotional reading today was from John’s gospel.  Chapter four starts with Jesus meeting a woman at a well in a town in Samaria.  I actually read the notes in my study Bible this time.  They led me to this history of how the Jews came to disrespect Samaritans:

    ....every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made .... They also worshiped the Lord and appointed from among t…

Have you ever wondered why we don't call our Friends Meeting a Church? George Fox, one of the founders of The Society of Friends (Quakers), used to call the Churches in England steeple houses. His idea, radical at the time, was that the Church is the people.

There is a Zen Buddhist proverb that says; The Zen that is at the top of a mountain, is…

Friends,

http://www.fgcquaker.org/news/quakerbooks-comes-to-pendle-hill

I saw this message on a plaque recently; Grace isn’t a little prayer you say before a meal. It’s a way to live. Do you give thanks or say Grace before “breaking bread”? Where does this custom come from? This painting Saying Grace from Norman Rockwell speaks to the way that a lot of people feel about this practice.

Isn’t it fascinating…

Some thoughts on feminism, Quakerism, and voluntaryism

In the 2004 book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, bell hooks seeks to build a bridge between men and women in the effort to undermine the destructive effects of…

Spent the evening in Fortuna, CA. This morning, there is an overwhelming Grace that fills the spaces between activities; there is a contiguous (ever Present) Being anchoring conscious in itself and conscience embraces various renderings through intuitive momentum. The wheel of fortune ever tumbling is overridden by the eternal nature of a life in Presence itself ... unpredicated by the tumblings of Fortuna's outward wheel. 

Oh, what a blessing to know a life unpredicated; a…

This past Easter Sunday I decided to skip Quaker Meeting and attend a high church Episcopal service instead. My religious past was low church Protestant, as is true for most of the American South. I was raised in a very humble Methodist church with a few ornate trappings here and there, most of which followed the colors of the Christian season, but no holy…

This is an article in the form of a brief Memoir that I have written in respects to my Mother Nora Ruth Roberts who is a direct descendant of Henry James and William James.

I am open to any comments, this maybe my own soul searching on how the life of a writer can be painful, and is far from perfect. I am interested in your experience, strength and hope being that my Mother is now living in a nursing home.

“Let’s…

I have a tradition of baking Polish Easter bread (babka) for Easter Sunday that I share with family and neighbors. This custom is carried on throughout Ukraine, Poland and Belorussia to celebrate the rising of Christ. My grandparents came from Lithuania and Poland so this…

Called a "rural seer" by the New York Times in 1991, Kathleen Stocking left Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, took her powers of perception on the road, taught in the prisons and homeless shelters of California, taught in a scary private school in El Salvador, managed two tours in the Peace Corps, traveled, discovered a world increasingly without borders due to the Internet, and finally came home…