A person experiences life as

something separated from the rest -

a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.

Our task must be to free ourselves

from this self-imposed prison,

and through compassion,

to find the reality of Oneness.

~Albert Einstein

This very Buddhist…

We never see the fourth king in a manger scene.

Um, yes I know these weren't really kings.  They believed in following stars around though; my story keeps that element.

The fourth king had less adept court astrologers or had more travel snags, or for whatever reason, doesn't show until like July-August, somewhere in there. 

The holy family is gracious and accept the gift.  Jesus, precocious as always, is showing signs of future greatness.  The family is doing better by…

Andre Trocme, a French Protestant pastor and pacifist, is known as a man who led an effective response to the Vichy and Nazi genocide against the Jews. He had a heart for servanthood and God, and an ethic that moved beyond the preaching of pacifism from the pulpit to guiding an entire community to sacrifice on behalf of those who had even less. He wanted to do more than he had, and to this end, he sought ought the assistance of the American Friends Service Committee. He…

Jesus said that he calls us friends because he has made the Father known to us.  As we are guided by Christ in our conscience, we do so with the awareness that we are part of God’s plan to spread Love and woo people into knowing the truth that Love is the unified field. 

Separation is sin.  Sin is generated by any action that causes separation and disturbs the unified field of Love.

In my professional life I talk with many people before I actually meet them.  Several times people have told me that I didn't look like I sounded.  I have heard that many Hollywood stars of the silent movie era never made the transition to the "talkies" because their voices didn't correspond with their "on screen" appearance.

Which is the real person?  The one we see or the one we hear?  That might sound like a stupid question but there are people who are hard to look at who are easy…

One believes either lies or truth.  Our beliefs come to us from our environment or from God.  The God who is Love and Light is wooing us into Truth.  To believe you freely choose what to believe is to believe a lie. 

We don't have to go any further than Genesis 1:27 as explained more particularly in Genesis 2:18 to establish our need for relationships.  Relationships empower us.  The greater the relationship the more we are empowered.  Not all "empowerment" is good.  Some relationships are definitely detrimental to our and society's well being.

The power from a relationship flows from the relationship.  The relationship doesn't change who we are so much as it changes our capability.  Consider the…

http://http://www.candletothesun.com/blog/a-cosmology-of-christmas

God is intimately involved in the Creation.  Therefore, those whose conscience is guided by the Light of Christ are active in the Creation.  Such activity has an influence on the various forms of outward governance operating within the Creation.

There is a quiet, open place in the depths of the mind, to which we can go many times in the day and lift up our soul in praise, thankfulness and conscious unity. With practice this God-ward turn of the mind becomes an almost constant direction, underlying all our other activities.

~ Kenneth Boulding, 1910-1993

We've heard a lot about "Quakernomics" lately, and indeed, the book by that title is a…

The creation is arranged according to the Creator’s desires.  The world consists of the arrangements of human being.  The creation groans as it awaits the arrangements of the world to come into harmony with the arrangement of the Creator.

SITE OF FIRST QUAKER MEETING IN CAYUGA COUNTY DEMOLISHED

Historic Ledyard home demolished, site of Cayuga County's first Quaker meeting

Hello Everyone,

It may be of interest to some that the first Quaker Meeting in Cayuga County, New York was demolished this past Tuesday.

Click Here to read the…

Outward political and religious education and educators use outward forms, prescriptions, practices, ideologies (theologies), and institutions to gather people whose conscious is needful of being anchored in and whose conscience is needful of being informed by outward forms

A conscious anchored in and a conscience informed by outward forms, people, and institutions is the meaning of behind the words “Worldly,” “Carnal,” “Bodily,” or “Natural Reason or…

This title may seem a misnomer in the rear view mirror, but is meant with a touch of humor, given its abstract feel, and my application:  the mundane affairs of keeping our Meetings' records.

A group, for our purposes, is "a set of Friends" like a Committee (Standing or Ad Hoc), a Study Group (like Joe's Bible Study at Multnomah), or even just some annual mailing, PR for Annual Session lets say.

NPYM, the Yearly Meeting, joins the database as one more meeting, of the Yearly…

Love and trust are not the same.  Jesus loves us.  He doesn't necessarily trust us (John 2:24 - 25  But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.)  Nowhere in the scriptures are we commanded to Trust our Neighbor.  We are told to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile but not to trust.  In fact we are told to be as innocent as a dove and as wise as a serpent.  When people on spiritual journeys…

A difficult and powerful testimony from Alison Leigh Lilly (http://alisonleighlilly.com/about/).

Please read Alison's whole blog post at…

[ memo from npym-it-discuss, NPYM's IT Committee listserv ]

I found myself explaining to my class last night, about 20 people, mostly in California, that the difference between open and closed source software might be thought of in terms of board games. 



That gets me thinking about Quakers and their Game Nights.  We have them here at Multnomah.  Friends break out the board games in the social hall and go crazy.  We maybe haven't done that in awhile?  Simeon Hyde was an avid…

The William Rogers, “Christian Quaker”, Project … The Revenant Remnant

The Book: “The Christian Quaker Distinguished from the Apostate and Innovator in Five Parts” by William Rogers written in 1680.

Introduction:

Around twenty-six years from the beginning (1650s) of the Quaker Gathering, a disunity happened (around 1670ish) amongst the founding Quakers. George Fox, and William Penn, among other founding Quakers, sought to introduce or re-establish…

Chapter 23 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, "How did the Light lead you to West Hills Friends?"…