Don't know if Jacob Stone's statement in "On Authority, A New Apologia"(Friends Journal, June/July 2013) is mountain or molehill(cf. "The Busy Body" blog) for Quakerism. As for Stone, he writes, "This is the heart of my dilemma: I want to know WHY something is holy." Allow me, Friends, to add two cents to the collection plate of possible reaction/response.

Pascal warned that what we make natural we destroy. Quakerism is religion, not science, because we refuse to give ourselves over…

After playing soccer for many years, I have what I would call a trick knee. If I run on it for any period of time, it swells. Then I'm left with stiffness and pain for the rest of  the day. But if I don't get extended walking time each day, I'm awakened in the night with something like restless-leg syndrome.

Needless to say, this summer's extended hell(heat and humidity) has not helped me get extended walking time. Sure, there's always walking, rather than taking the car, to short…

For all the mention, if not talk, of the mystical connection that Friends experience in worship, it's a practical curiosity(known today as "drama") that seems to motivate us.

Once heard, if not suggested, as a "concern", the matter is ripe for discussion, even prolonged scrutiny. It will be needed to consult and hear from all those with any idea or feeling for the issues at hand. Then, it may move from a particular hindrance(molehill) to a generalized dilemma(mountain). Finally, it…

Ever wonder why the communes of the 1660's and 1960's, with the co-op movement ever since, offered a better experience of community than most of our churches these days? Or why more and more little leagues are playing "winless" games? Could it be that the 'reality of the market', with its private possessing and incessant competition, does not fit the 'need of the human being' for sharing and caring?

Gerrard Winstanley vied for the hearts and minds of the same seekers who ultimately…

I believe in ghosts(manes) as human spirits that will not rest before their final wish/justice is procured. I also believe that Quakerism has tried to appease the manes of Mani, I.e., divide flesh from spirit.

Haunted by a Ranter past, we have largely disowned the incarnational benefits of "the Word made flesh". This despite our lengthy use of "weighty Friend" to signal a flesh-and-blood measure of wisdom and grace. Apparently, the shades of a house divided have turned what was…

Leave it to Plato to lay the exalted foundation for America's idealization of concepts such as Freedom and Democracy. Yet, how much exploitation and little-reported crime has been perpetrated in the name of  Freedom? How much devastation via presumption has been inflicted to establish Democracy as a foreign policy objective?

Then came Aristotle and Hegel to help counter this top-heavy approach to civilization. 

Observation of a postulated theory, as Thesis, with the results of…

Have seen the expression "sea change" in the news lately, and am wondering if it applies to Friends adrift. Perhaps it helps to get our bearings by recalling those, called Latitudinarians, who rejected both the High Church and Puritan factions in England. In addition, England's Greenwich becomes Swarthmoor Hall, as the longitudinal focus for the prime meridian, or standard, of Quaker mooring.

So, can we equate our eclectic propensity in Universalist Quakerism with the ecliptic poles…