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…

If the Word, and continued revelation, of God is not a two-edged sword that cuts to the marrow of your life, then it's baloney. If, as Kierkegaard has written in "Either-Or", the razor-edge decision to freely surrender your will to God is not by way of a personal relationship, then it's baloney.

If God is no respecter of personal privilege or property, looking only for an opportunity to invade your "home turf" or, at least, get under your skin, then it's scary-serious. If God is…

Though held, to some extent or Quaker "measure", by persons, as Heraclitus, before the Christian Era and others, as John Locke, before the U.S. Bill of Rights, just try finding this appellation in an abridged/collegiate dictionary. When I Google-searched, 5 out of the first 12 listings were musical references. Like matters of the heart, a sacred trust is better sung of than defined.

That's what's so peculiar about this anomaly for the peculiar people known as Quakers.

Not only…

Birthright: If it please the Court of Quaker Opinion, we birthright Quakers honor the human families that gave us the privilege of being Friends. We have the benefit of a history of persecution to recommend us.

Adoption: Called to, as with our father Abraham, a new existence, we honor the divine dispensation. We are to benefit the history of salvation.

Birthright: Honor thy father and mother so as to secure a long life upon the earth.

Adoption: Rather, hesitate to honor…

How is the world's best dad like the world's first war?

Out of the mouths of babes, Dadaism was the bold, brash reaction to WWI. Its non-conventional proponents, like the Levelers at the time of our Society's beginning, scorned the political intrigue and royal prerogative that suffered little ones in the battle zones of moral, if not world, domination.

So stark was the reality of desolation that words and images took on a surrealist mode of expression. Defiance, not unlike the…

Gathered: If it please the Court of Quaker Opinion, we Friends hold to the quietist, earlier known as spiritualist, mode of worship. We believe that God can and will gather our Meetings irrespective of vocal ministry.

Covered: May it interest the Court that there is an historical acknowledgment by the Western religions of the world that people assemble via pilgrimage-like procession to the place of worship. In addition, worshipers are first gathered by means of some sort of human…

I must admit that, were it not for the One who could speak to my condition when I was the same age as George Fox was, I would have gladly been schooled in natural theology for my religious education. For I, like another Delco Quaker, love botany and words, such as "epinasty", that give me perspective on contemporary Friends' "uppity situation".

Disillusionment with mainline religions while discovering an egalitarian alternative in Quakerism, more and more new growth could subject us…

No one knows better than a person of German ancestry the shame at disgust. Whether idleness when there is work to be done or laziness when things need to be cleaned and put away, the disgust of waste shames those who do not suffer inactivity well. But from whence has Quakerism's penchant for activism arisen? 

Is it derived from a puritanical ancestry and its ethic of work? Is it a natural balance to what seems like inactivity in our worship? Or, is it shame at our disgust of…

Because I have dared to name the danger facing our society in general and Quakerism in particular, I offer a definition of same. "Solipsism" is the theory that the self can be aware of nothing but its own experiences and states.

For society, this translates as David Byrne's "Once In A Lifetime" with people mourning their own situations in light of unrealistic expectations. For Quakerism, founded upon honoring personal experience as a means of continued revelation, the deck is stacked…

"We are not called to make a sick world well. We are called to act well." These words of Arthur G. Gish, as found in his "The New Left and Christian Radicalism", are intended to help us to get out from under the weight of the world. A weight, it seems, like the cartoon depiction of "Fat Albert" sitting atop an adversary. The more one struggles and squirms, the quicker a depletion of strength. And, of course, resistance stymied outward becomes depression inward. The only calling, then, is to…

OMG - seen and heard, as "Oh my God", ubiquitously these days. I just wonder about the relationship that "my God" implies. Is it profiting from a gold mine("God is mine") or is it hidden treasure that I love, but won't exploit for my own advantage?

Yesterday was "Earth Day"; and, for some fossil fuel/raw material enthusiasts, a celebration of profiting from a gold mine(perhaps literally). "The earth is mine" - OMG!

Yet, I believe that those who dutifully/truly celebrate…

How easy to say, "I'll pray for you" or "God helps those who help themselves" or even "It must have been God's will" rather than to respond, "I will hold thee in the Light." In fact, most prayer would limit God's will to our own; just as most human endeavor would foreclose or bypass God's will. Even Jesus, before his execution, would have limited and looked for a way to bypass the Will other than his own. No wonder he asked his disciples to respond to his request to stay awake(keep in the…

Is it time, Friends, that Quakerism had its own scriptures? Not, mind you, to replace, let alone supplant, the Bible; though, in a real sense, the New Testament replaced the understandings and practices of the Old; and, the Protestant Bible, with the help of the Jewish canon, supplanted the Roman Catholic one. I'm suggesting prophetic messages, like those infrequently blessing Quaker Meetings these days.

Not taking anything away from the Quaker testimonies as our Tradition, are there…

When I got my driver's license, someone gave me this piece of advice: Remember that you're handling something that is as much a weapon as it is a convenience. At the time, I considered it an inconvenient truth. Yet, nowhere have I valued that advice more than getting on or off a highway. Unlike some drivers, I offer a signal of my intention, slow or speed up to accomodate the flow of traffic, and, most significantly, merge, not blend, with the other cars.

As Quakers on our way to…

Had occasion to recall a dog that I used to walk. Normally, she was well-behaved and a joy to take to the park. One day, however, this good dog showed a quite different side to her regular disposition. She pulled and pulled and would not stop when I told her to heel. After several attempts at same, I was forced to yank her leash and propel her anxiousness backwards.

Apparently, a dog can forget about the person at the other end of the leash.

Now, what about dog spelled…