As I read and re-read Traditional Quaker Christianity, I felt a spirit of humble diligence intent upon conveying the core substance of Quaker understanding, as well as the practices that have thus far assisted its continuation. The original draft of this book was the result of a study of Friends faith and witness by Ohio Yearly Meeting member Michael Hatfield. He gave his work to the yearly meeting "to do with as it saw fit." Small study groups were formed in which his writing…

Invest: Respecting the return on investment favored by the Court of Quaker Opinion, we put our money where our mouth is.

Divest: Helping the powerless to have a place at a politically-bankrupt table; the uneducated to get non-union wage jobs; and the disenfranchised to be assimilated into a culture of spending for the now, rather than saving for the future.

Invest: Deal with the world you're given.

Divest: And with the blessing of God for the poor, as "Blessed are the…

I am preserving various foods for the winter these past few days in with fellowship inward Light. This Fellowship renews in the activities of the day so that no thing is a burden. The activity itself is fellowship. What peace there is to experience directly fellowship in the Presence itself so that all activities are worship and edifying. As I work, I share and live the witness of Isaac Peningtion:

Take not up a rest in openings of things, though by the true…

Having been raised in an ethical household with the understanding that all affairs of the heart are loved by God, and that discrimination of any kind is unjust and the product of ignorance, my adolescents carried with it a dark oppressive cloud that felt confusion from the fact of having a same-sex orientation. In my eyes the present day marriage equality movement is the act of performing miracles in the line of service. Yet, I have this question, which is does this line of policy,…

Dedication

TO MY DEAR SON RALPH

WHO HAD SUCH A GLORIOUS VIEW OF THE TRUTH

OF GOD FROM THE QUAKER POINT OF

VIEW, THAT HE GLADLY GAVE UP FOR IT ALL THAT

HE HAD TO

GIVE

So opens the book …

On Thursday, August 28th, ESR and Bethany Theological Seminary shared their opening convocation in Bethany's Nicarry Chapel. Students, faculty and staff joined together to worship and listen to the message presented by ESR Ministry of Writing Professor Ben Brazil. 

This afternoon, while crossing the street at a traffic light, a person, either unmindful of the light or ignoring it, came close to hitting me with his vehicle. He did not stop. There was a time when I would have become angry or, at best, frustrated by this event. Yet today, Presence filled imagination and anger or frustration had no place. In place of those is the intuitively experienced Freedom transcending outward feelings and thoughts that would enchant the Inward Light in the dim of the…

In Presence, I am awake in all doing. The times over the past months in daily interaction with people and amongst wild things now phases into more restive activities in the shop; creating and restoring. The guidance of inward Presence is manifest victory over the idols of abstracted mind. I move through moments while alive in between; in the eternal. No longer bound by the past or future .. no longer predicated, I am the eternal Name. I am spoken and breathed in ever illuminated and renewed…

Here at "Spirit and Truth" hospital we treat, in silence, everything from chronic racism to acute homophobia. We know, from experience, that just as depression is anger turned inward so also despair is oppression internalized.

In here, dysfunction has become the norm; and every condition, from self-identifying to self-destruction, is alternately embraced and rebelled against. Cases of feminist-fever, white-makes-right syndrome, stinking thinking, and gender-role resentment walk in…

God made music;
God made thought;
God made notions
to think we ought.

God made dogmas of
having no dogmas,
idols of duty and
hammers of beauty.

God made silence;
God made noise;
God provides
such varied toys!

God made food
and God made hunger
& wistful thoughts
of being younger.

God made laughter;
God made woe.
God winds us up
to help  us go.

[last line revised.]

What is divinity if it can come

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

These are the measures destined for her soul.-

from “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens

________________

I’m home and not at Meeting. In approximately eight minutes, Worship will begin and I…

New Blog Post: "Why Do We Need a North American Liberation Theology?"

http://wp.me/p1OXtI-3v

Words can also be obstactles
but telepathy fails
because most people can't
read their own minds.

On this day and in these moments:

May the Life and Presence of Christ enlighten our consciousness and conscious.

May we unite with and in Presence so that our life is in the Life itself and not predicated on outward beliefs, ideologies, theologies, practices, and secular or religious institutions.

May we know the perpetual watch in all things.

May we eat from the bread of Presence in and during our hourly relations.

May…

I was 13 years old. The combined forces of high estrogen and high testosterone had turned my classmates into strange creatures, alien even to ourselves. We had no idea what to expect next from day to day, as we waited for the bus stop. The fact that we spent eight hours a day together in classrooms without windows and painted cinderblock walls made us feel claustrophobic, increasing the already stout pressures each of us felt, though we could barely speak of our feelings. I…

Re-veil: Honoring and guarding the mystery of religious experience for the Court of Quaker Opinion, we adhere to the "absolute perhaps".

Revelation: A mystery is something that can not be understood in full. We do not put the veil back on, but continue to draw it back from the face of compassion.

Re-veil: We are open to the possibility of continuing revelation.

Revelation: But mess-with, more than mesh-with, what has already been unveiled.

Re-veil: Like a Deposit…

ESR alum and current Richmond First Friends pastor Derek Parker delivered this message during worship there on Sunday, August 24, 2014:

Well the man of Peace has spoken and everyone agrees we have to stop ISIS and kill them.  Recognizing that most US citizens don't want to see more of their loved ones and neighbors die or get maimed on foreign soil we are only going to use sophisticated weapons to degrade and obtain victory over this barbaric enemy.  This decision was preceded by publicizing atrocious acts perpetrated by the enemy on innocent or at least less militarily prepared, victims.  This raises the threshold of…

Eating the bread of Presence ... the daily and hourly living Eucharist.

This past couple weeks, I’ve been focused on giving talks about an endangered species. These talks have been in High School, Middle School, Elementary, and before that camping environments. Some days, I was giving one hour, back to back presentations, for up to six hours straight. The content and circumstance of the talk are not relevant. I wish to share with you a particular experience I had while right in the…