Search Results for: membership

1. Does the meeting engage in regular self-assessment and reflection? Does it prepare a state-of-the-meeting report?
2. Does the meeting have the spiritual, physical, financial and intellectual resources to fulfill its mission? If not, what steps are being taken to fill the gaps? Has it considered calling on the quarterly or yearly meeting for assistance?
3. Does the meeting seek expert advice, when needed, regarding the mental health or behavioral issues of its members and attenders, finance and accounting, labor and employment practices, and property and real estate?
4. Are mechanisms for succession of leadership available and used? Do these mechanisms encourage the nurturing of new leaders? If the membership of the meeting is small, is there a plan for ensuring a succession of leadership?
5. Does the meeting have clear and effective procedures for the replacement of the clerk, the treasurer or other officers of the meeting in case of need?
6. Does the meeting consistently attempt to ensure that the work of the meeting is equitably and broadly shared?
7. Does the meeting pay attention to outreach and care of visitors?
8. Does the meeting provide religious education for all ages?

Use your capabilities and your possessions not as ends in themselves but as God’s gifts entrusted to you. Share them with others; use them with humility, courtesy and affection.

Advices, II

This section includes various guidelines and procedures that meetings and individual Friends may find helpful in supporting members and attenders, deepening spiritual life and attending to business. Some of the procedures and queries were located in sections of the previous edition of Faith and Practice devoted to marriage and membership while the general queries were in a separate section. Other procedures and queries are provided here for the first time, such as the queries on end-of-life matters, guidelines for meeting spiritual self-assessments and guidelines for clearness committees.

The distinctive structure of the Religious Society of Friends developed by George Fox and the early adherents to Quakerism continues today. Its durability is likely because of its simplicity and adaptability. The selections that follow record the experiences of Friends as they seek to be more faithful and attentive to nudges of the Divine perceived in their lives and with the support of others in meetings for worship and business. Our aim is to become part of a gathered community, connected to one another and the whole of creation, accountable to one another and to God.

196
Instead of asking “How are you?” Quakers traditionally asked one another about their spiritual lives when they met. They wanted to know about each other’s spiritual condition and relationship with the Divine. This practice is relevant today! It helps us attend to our own journey and to keep our lives in alignment with Spirit. Additionally, by inquiring into our friends’ experiences we learn more about them and we help them stay attuned to the Divine. Try it out. Ask someone to tell you their story. Listen. Share your spiritual journey with a friend!
– How does Truth fare with thee?
– How does Light shine in your life today?
– What is important in your life these days?
– What gives you joy?

Christie Duncan-Tessmer, et al.
2015
197
At a called session of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in January 2015, Friends affirmed to:
• Commit to increase our consciousness as Friends about the intersection of privilege and race in our culture and spiritual community. We know our knowledge is often limited by our own experiences and that we have much to learn from each other and from outside resources.
• Commit to move forward with our entire community. The yearly meeting is the community of all our individual Friends and monthly meetings and this work needs to be done with the involvement of all of us.
• Commit to integrate this work into what we do in an ongoing way at the yearly meeting level. We want this work to become part of the fabric of what we do whenever we get together as yearly meeting members and attenders.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
2015
198
Friends find their essential unity in their profound and exhilarating belief in the pervasive presence of God and in the continuing responsibility of each person and worshiping group to seek the leading of the Spirit in all things. Obedience to the leading of that Spirit rather than to any written statement of belief or conduct is the obligation of their faith.
New England Yearly Meeting
1985
199
For, when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up; and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed.
Robert Barclay
1678
200
True worship may be experienced at any time in any place—alone on the hills or in the busy daily life—we may find God, in whom we live and move and have our being. But this individual experience is not sufficient, and in a meeting held in the Spirit there is a giving and receiving between its members, one helping another with or without words. So there may come a wider vision and a deeper experience.

London Yearly Meeting
1925 and 1994
201
How does a Quaker Meeting work? Its foundation is the conviction that God is not a distant remote being but a living presence to be discovered in the deep centre of every human being. … The Quaker experience is that, in the silence, as we are open to one another in love, we help each other by sharing our strengths and weaknesses. The Quaker conviction is that as we go deeper into ourselves we shall eventually reach a still, quiet centre. At this point two things happen simultaneously. Each of us is aware of our unique value as an individual human being, and each of us is aware of our utter interdependence on one another.

George Gorman
1982
202
As Catholic worship is centered in the altar and Protestant worship in the sermon, worship for the Society of Friends attempts to realize as its center the divine Presence revealed within. In a Catholic church the altar is placed so as to become the focus of adoration; in a typical Protestant church the pulpit localizes attention; while in a Friends Meeting House there is no visible point of concentration, worship being here directed neither toward the actions nor the words of others, but toward the inward experience of the gathered group.
Howard H. Brinton
1952
203
Each of these Quarterly Meetings were large and sat near eight hours. Here I had occasion to consider that it is a weighty thing to speak much in large meetings for business. First, except our minds are rightly prepared and we clearly understand the case we speak to, instead of forwarding, we hinder business and make more labour for those on whom the burden of the work is laid.
If selfish views or a partial spirit have any room in our minds, we are unfit for the Lord’s work. If we have a clear prospect of the business and proper weight on our minds to speak, it behooves us to avoid useless apologies and repetitions. Where people are gathered from far, and adjourning a meeting of business is attended with great difficulty, it behooves all to be cautious how they detain a meeting, especially when they have sat six or seven hours and [have] a great distance to ride home.

In three hundred minutes are five hours, and he that improperly detains three hundred people one minute, besides other evils that attend it, does an injury like that of imprisoning one man five hours without cause.

John Woolman
1758
204
Our monthly and quarterly meetings were set up for reproving and looking into superfluous or disorderly walking, and such to be admonished and instructed in the truth, and not private persons to take upon them to make orders, and say this must be done and the other must not be done … [Or say] we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them: but we must all be in one dress and one colour.

This is a silly poor gospel! It is more fit for us to be covered with God’s eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness, and to live righteously and justly and holily in this present evil world. This is the clothing that God puts upon us, and likes, and will bless.

Margaret Fell
1700
205
One persistent misunderstanding of some Friends and attenders is that Friends reject outward forms. This is not true. Friends’ unique practices flow from a conviction concerning what is the right outward form. The right form for church government, worship, and ministry answers the same question: how should we act, what should be our response, if Jesus Christ is present in our midst, desiring to speak? To Friends, the answer is that we should sit in reverence, waiting for him to speak. Thus, Friends gather in reverence, waiting to be spoken to, spoken through, and led.

Terry Wallace, Susan Smith, John Smith, Arthur Berk, eds.
2014
206
As a Liberal Friend, I know that trying to name the Divine or become specific about the nature of ‘God’ is theologically inappropriate, that our words stumble to match the depth of all we experience. Thus, at one level, we don’t want to use any term. At another level, however, we need to talk quite a lot about what we are connecting with, and we have lost a common tongue, a primal language, to do this in when we start to locally reinterpret our book of discipline in a multiplicity of ways on the basis of the ‘need’ for inclusivity, or ignore it altogether.

Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
207
Our book of discipline … in spite of its reliance on outward language, conveys as best as we can our core insights and our current sense of our spiritual experience in the best words we have been able to find, discerned by the gathered meeting to be of use to us, to provide us with comfort and with the discomfort of spiritual challenge. … Like a bus timetable, parts of it may go out of date as soon as it is published, but it is not to be discarded unthinkingly, for it still encapsulates what we hold dear. Knowing our book well and using it wisely is an important part of maintaining the reality of a Religious Society of Friends. It is our book, and through its sculpture and adoption, we find a primal tongue for our time.
Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
208
The life of a religious society consists in something more than the body of principles it professes and the outer garments of organisation which it wears. These things have their own importance: they embody the society to the world, and protect it from the chance and change of circumstance; but the springs of life lie deeper, and often escape recognition. They are to be found in the vital union of the members of the society with God and with one another, a union which allows the free flowing through the society of the spiritual life which is its strength.

William Charles Braithwaite
1905
209
In order to critique legitimately and to resist, while being unrelentingly hopeful in God’s promise, it is necessary to know “what time it is.” We must be able to read the signs of the times in order to know how God is calling us to respond in this moment. The first step, which cannot be bypassed, is public expression of grief for the pain and darkness in the world. This mourning is necessary to overcome the numbness that we all live in, so that we have the energy and vision to name something new, to create and envision a way of life that is unimaginable in our present situation.

Christina Repoley
2006
210
Can our Friends meetings be free of privilege and be a living sanctuary where all of God’s self is free to minister to us in all of her offices as teacher, priest, and prophet? Can our Friends meetings be those thin places in which our relationships, regardless of race or class, are a sacrament of grace and wholeness? Can our Friends meetings be the body and hands of the Holy Spirit in the world today?

Paul Ricketts
2014
211
Observance of special days and times and use of special places for worship serve a helpful purpose in calling attention at regular intervals to our need for spiritual communion. They cannot, however, take the place of daily and hourly looking to God for guidance. Nor can any custom of fasting or abstaining from bodily comforts take the place of constant refraining from everything which has a tendency to unfit mind and body for being the temple of the Divine Spirit. The foundation for all our personal life and social relations should be the sufficient and irreplaceable consciousness of God.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Race Street)
1894
212
Meeting for worship can be more than just an occasion on which one’s private religious needs are satisfied. Silent devotion should lead to an awareness that the meeting is less and less a place we choose ourselves, and more and more a place to which, out of love, God has called us. To understand this is to sense the meaning of those lovely phrases about the community of faith being the body of Christ.

John Punshon
1987
213
I went back to my meeting with my reservations, and I was eldered: they encouraged me to say what I knew to be the truth, my truth. I was empowered to speak my truth, to push and be led by the Light to fight for change.
My meeting empowered me to be a servant leader. They put me in a position to speak my truth to the Quaker power structure, and I did. Now it is years later, and I … am still supported by my meeting and empowered by the members’ trust and faith in me.

Gabbreell James
2014
214
To allow [the] inward work to take place is to allow the universal Light of the eternal Christ to reveal our sundered and separate individualism, our own areas of darkness and sin, and then to cooperate with this Light as it seeks to transform, guide, gift, and empower us. … This inward work takes time and may cause us to make painful changes in our life as we become more and more sensitive and obedient to the inward guide. …
It is this inward work of Christ, and not our verbal statements about Christ, that can produce that amazing unity in a gathered meeting for worship, a gathered meeting for business, or a gathered opportunity between two people. And finally, it is this inward work of Christ that leads inevitably to the important outwardness of Quakerism; to a life able to behave in all those ways which Jesus taught and in which he led the way, to a living equality of men and women, to a radiant and supple pacifism that comes not merely from books or movements or anger but that wells up from deep inner springs.

William Taber
1984
215
It has been my experience that if I come to meeting in a state of strong emotion and follow an easy impulse to talk about it, I—and the meeting?—are left with a sense of emptiness. But if I trust that there’s a reason why I’m here, now, in this state, but that it’s God’s reason, not mine, and my part is to wait in holy expectancy—strange things happen. Messages which speak to my condition are given by people who couldn’t possibly know of it. The meeting ministers to my need and uses my state to minister to others—quite without my willing it. I believe that there’s an explanation for this phenomenon. Strong emotion can make us what the early Friends called tender: vulnerable to the workings of the Spirit. I suspect that the presence of one such person in our midst can cause the meeting to gather.

Esther Murer
1988
216
I have been tried with the applause of the world, and none know how great a trial that has been, and the deep humiliations of it; and yet I fully believe it is not nearly so dangerous as being made much of in religious society. There is a snare even in religious unity, if we are not on the watch. I have sometimes felt that it was not so dangerous to be made much of in the world, as by those whom we think highly of in our own Society: the more I have been made much of by the world, the more I have been inwardly humbled. I could often adopt the words of Sir Francis Bacon—“When I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before God.”

Elizabeth Gurney Fry
1844
217
We know ourselves as individuals but only because we live in community. Love, trust, fellowship, selflessness are all mediated to us through our interdependence. Just as we could not live physically without each other, we cannot live spiritually in isolation. We are individually free but also communally bound. We cannot act without affecting others and others cannot act without affecting us. We know ourselves as we are reflected in the faces, action and attitudes of each other.

Janet Scott
1980
218
Looking at the historical expressions of gospel order raises provocative questions for the community of faith, particularly in regard to the nature of corporate commitment and the role of structure in faithful living. If, indeed, a living relationship with Christ is the basis of gospel order, what does it mean today to be a committed people in covenantal relationship with Christ? What does it mean to practice the mutual accountability that keeps this relationship alive? Do our lives with each other in our meetings and homes reflect fidelity, love, and trust? Can we reclaim the socio-economic and political dimension of gospel order? Can we participate corporately in God’s new order in a way that will allow our love to speak to a world dying from environmental destruction, violence, hatred, and entrenched systems of economic exploitation and injustice?
If the historical experience of Friends is applicable today, then corporate life needs pattern and structure to support faithful living. In turn, structures need care to prevent them from withering or becoming oppressive. Communities of commitment need to see what forms the patterns of faithfulness and the ministry of caring oversight will take today.

Sandra Cronk
1991
219
Are we too fearful of those with ideas different from our own? In one Meeting, the issue of whether or not to offer sanctuary to a refugee is a sword that divides people. Or our relationships may be severed due to differences in the way we interpret the Spirit guiding us or how we refer to God, whether in masculine or inclusive imagery. Quaker men and women who see military service as an integral and necessary part of American life are often branded as “strangers” in their Quaker community. Whether we define the Society of Friends in an inclusive or exclusive way will, in large measure, determine whether we grow, spiritually as well as numerically.
Nancy Alexander
1987
220
Living out the immanent and transcendent aspects of spirituality as a Friend has never been a private matter. Quaker structures depend on the shared inward experiences of members as the basis for worship, the ordering of business, and social and humanitarian action. The Quaker way takes on faith the seemingly irrational proposition that the inspirations of individuals can lead a community to unity and spiritual power, not to chaos and dismemberment.

Ursula Jane O’Shea
1993
221
At its best, a Quaker Meeting is not just a collection of individual seekers, but a community of faith, a covenant community, knit together by our common seeking of God. We are like spokes on a wheel: as we draw closer to our center in God, we also draw closer to each other. … And as Douglas Steere has reminded us, “To come near to God is to change.”
Differences and disappointments are inevitable, but in a faith community these are seen not as obstacles, but as opportunities for transformation. God calls us into community because it is only in community that we can learn God’s transforming lessons of love, service, compassion, and forgiveness.

Thomas Gates
 
222
We should not merely hope that Friends will accidentally stumble across the powerful tools of our own tradition, but rather intentionally nurture our communities to engage with one another in deeper ways, name gifts, hold each other accountable, and educate ourselves about the vital practices within our tradition. …
The two most important characteristics of prophetic ministry are critique and hope. Prophetic ministry works to dismantle and resist the dominant consciousness, to energize hope, to envision newness, and affirm God’s promise of fulfillment.
Christina Repoley
2006
223
Talk less; do more.
Jondhi Harrell
2015
224
One of our dearly held modern shibboleths is that we are all equal. The truth is that God does indeed love each of us equally, and invites each of us, equally, into the kingdom, into salvation, into right relationship, into wholeness. But too often there is a negative side to this cliché that all Friends are equal. This is the attitude that adds, if anyone stands out or thinks he or she has a gift or calling, we’ll pull that person down. If such a person is arrogant or on a power-trip, then it is right to admonish and try to help the Friend see his or her gift and role in the larger context of Gospel Order. But what if a Friend is paying close attention to God’s voice, and living with increasing integrity and love and for that reason others feel uncomfortable? How do we regard someone who is exercising gifts given by God for the edification and upbuilding of the faith community? Too often deep vocal ministry, a prophetic voice, or moral leadership are resented.

Martha Paxson Grundy
 1999
225
But if you feel a gift emerging in you, if you hunger for the Bread of Life, if you want more than anything to be healed and made whole, then you may be drawn to the lives and writing of Friends, living and dead, who have walked this path before you. They will tell you, in a variety of words and metaphors, that there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to your condition. Having heard that voice, one needs to heed it. In the ongoing, unfolding work of “conversion of manners,” one needs companions along the way. We need a faith community. We need a Religious Society of Friends with whom to worship, and in whose proximity we learn the hard lessons of how to live in Gospel Order – with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, forgiveness, humility, gentleness, and self-control. Our meetings have a great responsibility to be gatherings of people who are listening to the Inward Teacher, helping each other listen, and learning how to listen together.

Martha Paxson Grundy
1999
226
I was incredibly moved by the way some talked lovingly about membership, not as a stamp on your name tag but as a beautiful symbol of mutual accountability, commitment, and community.
I began to feel a rising and powerful need to be a recognized part of a meeting, to be spiritually grounded somewhere, and to be held accountable by a faith community. While my concerns still remained about the way membership is seen as the single most important way Friends identify one another, my understanding of what membership means began to broaden and to let a little Light in.

Emily Higgs
2012
227
A Friends meeting is intended to be so much more than a loose association of individuals on separate and private spiritual journeys. Friends are called to be a faith community, seeking to know each other “in that which is Eternal” as we journey together. Ideally we acknowledge that our primary relationship is to God and to that of God in each other. We let go of the idea that we have only private lives and hold ourselves accountable to the authority of the Spirit in the life of the meeting. We grow in a sense of responsibility for each other and become part of a gathered community.

Margery Mears Larrabee
 2007
228
Our monthly meetings … can be places where we change ourselves, despite … larger unjust structures. If a meeting wants to work on racism, it can make sure it is welcoming of all and sensitive to racial bias in the way its various committees do their business, from Care and Counsel to Adult Education. If the meeting cares about climate change, its Finance Committee can divest from fossil fuels, while the Grounds Committee installs a rain garden, in addition to solar panels. …
If we make attention to the movement of the Spirit fundamental to our work for peace and social concerns, we may breathe new life into old structures or create new ones altogether.

Eileen Flanagan
2016
229
…(O)ne piece of my feeling welcomed at meeting is explicitly about being a lesbian, but it’s not about there being enough other lesbians in attendance to create a ‘critical mass’ for safety. It’s about the heterosexuals and whatever work they did in the years before I arrived (with the help of lesbians, no doubt) so that I could come into an accepting place.

Su Penn
1998
230
Quaker theology and the Biblical precedents supporting it show that both man and woman are to share in the oversight of the creation, as well as other roles in the Church. Neither man nor woman is to dominate the creation or each other, but all are to live under God’s guidance. The power to be used by both man and woman is God’s power, and not human power.
Virginia Schurman
1990
231
A concern for the fellow-worshipers of our meetings which leads us to find the necessary time to know them, to visit them, to have them in our homes, and to make their needs our concern is a tested preparation for ministry of the highest importance. A person who throughout the week thinks of the approaching meeting for worship and holds up inwardly some of the needs of those who attend, is being prepared for that kind of participation in the meeting for worship that may open the way for helpful ministry. Ministry is often deepened by our natural exposure to those in greatest need, whether it be physical need, as in a constant visiting of the poor, of those in prison, of those whom group prejudice segregates or to the poor in spirit, those who face mental turmoil and inner problems. Few who feel this kind of responsible love for the meeting do not in the course of the week find some experience, some insight, something they have read that has helped them, some crushing burden they know some member or some group is bearing which they have held up to the Light, without these things appearing as seeds out of which ministry could grow.

Douglas Steere
1955
232
The Society of Friends can make its greatest contribution to community by continuing to be a religious society—I mean by centering on the practice of a corporate worship which opens itself to continuing revelation. Again, community is simply too difficult to be sustained by our social impulses. It can be sustained only as we return time and again to the religious experience of the unity of all life. To put it in the language of Friends, community happens as that of God in you responds to that of God in me. And the affirmation that there is that of God in every person must mean more than “I’m okay, you’re okay.” The silence of the Quaker meeting for worship can be an experience of unity. I am an orthodox, garden variety Christian; I find the image of God first in Jesus the Christ. But it is my joy in the silent meeting to seek with those who find different ways to express the inexpressible truths of religious experience. Words can divide us, but the silence can bring us together. Whatever kinds of community the world needs, it surely needs the kind that embraces human diversity.
Parker J. Palmer
1977
233
We find many renowned women recorded in the Old Testament, who had received a talent of wisdom and spiritual understanding from the Lord. As good stewards thereof they improved and employed the same to the praise and glory of God … as male and female are made one in Christ Jesus, so women receive an office in account of their stewardship to their Lord, as well as the men. Therefore they ought to be faithful to God and valiant for his Truth upon the earth, that so they may receive the reward of righteousness.

Elizabeth Bathurst
1683
234
The Quaker way of trying to invite and be open to divine guidance is to begin with a time of silence. This is not the “moment of silence” which is a mere nod in passing to the Divine. Nor is it a time for organizing one’s thoughts. This is a time for what has been called recollection: for an intentional return to the Center to give over one’s own firm views, to place the outcome in the hands of God, to ask for a mind and heart as truly sensitive to and accepting of nuanced intimations of God’s will as of overwhelming evidences of it. It is possible that someone designated or undesignated may offer vocal prayer for the joint undertaking. Spoken or not, it is understood that each person present will be holding the undertaking in the Light in his own way.

Patricia Loring
1992
235
We recognise a variety of ministries. In our worship these include those who speak under the guidance of the Spirit and those who receive and uphold the work of the Spirit in silence and prayer. We also recognise as ministry service on our many committees, hospitality and childcare, the care of finance and premises, and many other tasks. We value those whose ministry is not in an appointed task but is in teaching, counselling, listening, prayer, enabling the service of others, or other service in the meeting or the world. The purpose of all our ministry is to lead us and other people into closer communion with God and to enable us to carry out those tasks which the Spirit lays upon us.
London Yearly Meeting
1986
236
It is our earnest desire that ministers and elders may be as nursing fathers and mothers to those that are young in the ministry, and with all care and diligence advise, admonish, and if they see occasion, reprove them in a tender and Christian spirit, according to the rules of our Discipline and counsel of Friends in that respect; also exhort them frequently to read the Holy Scriptures, and reverently seek the mind of the Spirit of Truth to open the mysteries thereof, that, abiding in simple and patient submission to the will of God, and keeping down to the openings of Divine love in themselves, they may witness a gradual growth in their gifts, and be preserved from extending their declarations further than they find the life and power of Truth to bear them up.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
1723
237
In Friends’ meetings also, from the fact that everyone is free to speak, one hears harmonies and correspondences between very various utterances such as are scarcely to be met elsewhere. It is sometimes as part-singing compared with unison. The free admission of the ministry of women, of course, greatly enriches this harmony. I have often wondered whether some of the motherly counsels I have listened to in our meeting would not reach some hearts that might be closed to the masculine preacher.

Caroline E. Stephen
1890
238
One characteristic institution among Friends of the “quietist” period was the traveling ministry. … The call to this ministry came often in a childhood sense of the presence of God when alone and out-of-doors. It was reinforced by powerful examples of local and traveling ministers and tested by the trials of learning to respond to the Spirit’s moving to speak in meeting. After sufficient testing, the minister would become more sensitive to the spiritual condition of others. He or she would not only speak at various meetings, often at wearisome distances from home, but would hold “religious opportunities” with families or individuals, giving them spiritual counsel. Though much of this ministry was among Friends and designed to maintain the spiritual health of the Society, it was not uncommon to call special meetings for Blacks, Indians, or apprentices, as well as to visit jails or mines. The Quaker leaven in the world owes much to these “active contemplatives” of the past, whose central message was that the living presence of the Spirit is here and now.

Carol Murphy
1983
239
God gives gifts to each one of us, young and old, and God gives gifts to our meeting community, too. Now a gift is not exactly the same as a skill or a talent. A skill can be used in different ways, but a gift is something God gives us to help us live a whole life, make a whole family, or be a whole meeting community. Our gifts are special parts of who we are. People young and old bring gifts to our meeting community. If we pay attention and care for one another, we can discover them. We can help each other understand how to use those gifts wisely.

Faith and Play Working Group. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
2008
240
We regard elders as individuals with “power” who might “tell us off’, rather than as those offering service in line with their gifts, responsible for the nurture of our worshipping life. … Much upset and hurt and energy could be saved by … our all remembering that “to elder” is a positive verb, and that eldering is done on behalf of the community for the community. It is not about the individual.

Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
241
For me, Spirit-led eldering, support, and affirmation are essential and integral to our Quaker way of faith and practice; otherwise our life as a Quaker community falters because we are not tending to a critical aspect in our individual lives and in our lives together. In the recent past, Friends have tended to be fearful of loving other persons in this profound way, of caring enough to be present for them, listening to them, and trusting the work of the Spirit.

Margery Mears Larrabee
 2007
242
We can actually rejoice in … diversity; we do not always need a formula which will iron out differences. That seems to me to be Quakerism in practice. When I talk about the content of the Quaker treasure chest, I often refer to that wonderful epistle sent out to Friends everywhere written by Young Friends from all parts of the Quaker family in Greensboro in 1985. Here, after many tears and misunderstandings and strong disagreements, a group of Young Friends sat down together and, respecting each other, wrote out what for them was the essence of the Quaker good news. They came up with the four sources of authority: The Light or voice in the heart, the discernment of the worshiping group, Christ speaking in the heart, and the words of the Bible. These four elements are in tension in the world family of Friends. We do not all agree on them, but the Quaker treasure chest offers these diverse heirlooms. Some parts of the family are happier with some of the jewels than others. But the greatest disservice we can do is to keep the chest shut. By sharing the jewels with our guests, our guests may actually begin to feel as if the home belongs to them as well. And who knows, our guests may even become the next generation of hosts and show off the jewels in a new light.

Harvey Gillman
1993
243
Obviously, then, all the activities of a meeting—the prayer of worship, the vocal prayer of a gathered meeting, the prayer which sustains and nourishes its cells or prayer groups, family prayer, the ministry of love which expresses itself in counseling, the impact of a meeting on the outside community—all of these should be grounded in the prayer life of the individual. If prayer has not been a reality through the week for at least a core of its members, participants in the Sunday meeting cannot reach high levels of worship. Vocal prayer flows when the cup is already full before we come to meeting. Activity which is meaningful results from insights gained in prayer. Counseling which is helpful comes from the bringing of divine perspective to human confusion. Prayer, then, is a necessity in our lives. It must be at the center of them.

Helen Hole
1962
244
It makes me sad when I hear discussions about not introducing children to “God” until they’re old enough to understand. I grew into the Lord’s Prayer, and am still growing into it. All religious language, all devotional books, and particularly the Bible, provide growing room for young minds and spirits. Because they have sometimes been used as straitjackets by adults who did not understand, does not mean that they are straitjackets.

Elise Boulding
1975
245
Care of the children of the meeting should be the responsibility of every Friend. Let us share with our children a sense of adventure, of wonder, and of trust and let them know that, in facing the mysteries of life, they are surrounded by love. Both parents and meetings need to guard against letting other commitments deprive children of the time and attention they need. Friends are advised to seek for children the full development of God’s gifts, which is true education.

Revised Faith and Practice, New England Yearly Meeting
1985
246
Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.
Isaac Penington
1667
247
The catch is, we can’t love God without loving our neighbor: whoever is next to us at this moment in time. We have to love, really love, with that same love we feel pouring into and loving us.
Some are easy to love. With some we feel at home. We run to them in joy. But we learn as we go that love is for each other one we encounter: those who are easy to love and those who are difficult. The love we feel loving us is as much for those who wound and betray us, and for those we perceive as “enemies,” as it is for ourselves. This love is for the lost and the broken; the cantankerous, ugly, and lonely; yes, and even the brutal, the murderous, and cruel. If we are to love God we must love them as well, not for their cruelties, but for the hidden Seed that would live and grow in them. We, who are loved with a love that will not let us go, are to let that same love flow through us into the world.

Carol Reilley Urner
1994
248
Christ valued children. He told us, “Such is the kingdom of heaven” (Mark 20:14). Through the years writers have interpreted “such” to mean children’s innocence, their naiveté, their dependency, their acceptance. I believe it is their questioning: their wondering how and why and where do I fit in; their seeking to know that this thing slides and this does not; their searching to figure out how to build a castle with a best friend; their attempting to identify all the consequences of using drugs; their broadening their horizons of what is possible. … Viewing people as seekers is an integral component of Quakerism. Our children are fellow participants in that search.

Harriet Heath
1994
249
We cannot set up a religion for our children, nor can we impose a religious authority on them. Each child must be free to seek his own spiritual reality. As parents we can, nevertheless, do those things which deepen children’s awareness of God and of the human love surrounding them.

Emily B. H. Phillips
1968
250
Does anything unite this diverse group beyond our common love and humanity? Does anything make us distinctively Quaker? I say yes. Each of us has different emphases and special insights, but wherever Friends are affirming each other’s authentic experience of God, rather than demanding creedal statements, we are being God’s faithful Quakers. Wherever we are seeking God’s will rather than human wisdom, especially when conflict might arise, we are being faithful Quakers. Wherever we are affirming the total equality of men and women, we are being God’s faithful Quakers. Wherever there is no division between our words and our actions, we are being faithful. Whenever we affirm that no one—priest, pastor, clerk, elder—stands between us and the glorious and mystical experience of God in our lives, we are faithful Friends. Whether we sing or whether we wait in silence, as long as we are listening with the whole of our being and seeking the baptism and communion of living water, we will be one in the Spirit.

Val Ferguson
1991
251
Quakers are mystics and, as such, we don’t associate Friends with the hard-edged world of science. But fundamentally, Quaker process and the scientific process seek similar goals: what is true about the world? S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, one of the discoverers of pulsars and a Quaker, said, “In both Quakerism and science you must be completely ready to revise what you hold to be the truth; you always hold things provisionally, and you are always open to revising them.”

Adam Segal-Isaacson
2012
252
Quakers should be testing everything against their understanding of the Spirit. By bringing the scientific, and Quakerly, process to bear, we can reach an understanding, and, we hope, a truth. Our mystical bent toward the Spirit need not be at odds with a scientific approach to the world. “This I know experimentally” can encompass both.

Adam Segal-Isaacson
2012
253
The spirituality that is real to us finds its inner strength in the mystical experience of connectedness with each other and with the whole of creation. This is the deep, still, and vibrant centre that transcends time. From that dynamic place it is possible to turn outwards and work in one’s own available and chosen action spaces to help make manifest the harmony that is already known.
Jillian Wychel and David James
1991

As spiritual seekers we value our awareness and experience of the Inward Light and of the myriad ways in which we learn to trust that Light throughout our lives. Trust in the Light enables us to express in our practice and daily lives the understanding that grows from this inward experience. The selections that follow tell of our experience as part of a worshipping community of Friends and how we and our service in the world are nurtured by the meeting. Many Friends have written about the relationship of the individual and the monthly meeting in discernment of concerns and leadings and these selections capture the interplay between inward contemplation and outward action. Friends have written eloquently about the ways in which their lives have been kindled and ignited by the divine spirit. Friends have also written of the struggle to find the way and the despair that comes at times. These selections also record the important role that the meeting plays throughout our lives and as we near the end of life.

99
What brings us fulfillment when we find that attaining wealth and status, by themselves, will not? How do we make sense of the lives we are living? What values can give a satisfying shape and purpose to our lives? Where can we find insights on these questions? With whom can we share this search?
The Religious Society of Friends began with persons (“seekers”) looking for answers to remarkably similar questions. The times were very different, but the spiritual dynamics were much the same. When one of those seekers, George Fox, encountered the Divine directly, he began articulating a new vision of the Christian faith. He shared that vision with other seekers, and a new religious movement—Quakerism—was born.
That movement and its members were characterized by three vital features. First: an understanding rooted in experience, that it was both possible and necessary to have an immediate, direct relationship with the Divine, with God, that would give one’s life meaning, purpose, and wholeness. Second: a fervent desire to live out, to fully embody these spiritual insights—“the Truth”—they had discovered in that relationship. And third: a recognition that they needed one another, and so a commitment to form and sustain the spiritual communities necessary to live such a life of faith and integrity.
Thomas Jeavons
c. 2002
100
There is an unfortunate tendency among some Quakers to separate prayer and action rather than to integrate them. … [We can] re-imagine prayer as a kind of inward activism and political work as a kind of outward prayer. Of course, this is a reversal of our usual assumption, that prayer is always an inward activity and peace work is always outward. … In considering phrases like “inward activism” and “outward prayer,” we were challenged to bring the best of activism into our inward lives and the best of prayer into our outward action.
Daniel Snyder
2008
101
By ethical mysticism I mean that type of mysticism which first withdraws from the world revealed by the senses to the inward Divine Source of Light, Truth, and Power, and then returns to the world with strength renewed, insight cleared, and desire quickened to bind all life together in the bonds of love. These bonds are discovered by this process of withdrawal and return because the one inward Divine Source is itself the creative unity which seeks to bind all life together. But there is no necessary chronological order in the world of spirit. It may be that the desire to penetrate to the creative unity in the depths of the soul was first aroused by finding it in the outward affairs of daily life.
Howard H. Brinton
1967
102
Let us recognize that while spiritual life in its externals often presents us with a bewildering diversity, the saints of each spiritual tradition are practically indistinguishable from each other in their lives, their way of being. Though their theological concepts may be different, their feelings and conduct are amazingly similar. They dwell in love, and God dwells in them because God is love. Increasingly in this modern age, the capacity to apprehend the One in the many constitutes the special responsibility of those who would dwell in love. May this capacity to apprehend the One in the many, and the love it expresses, be the special gift of the friends of Jesus to people of faith everywhere!
Daniel A. Seeger
1994
103
We see that the teachings of [the] divine spirit have been the same in all ages. It has led to truth, to goodness, to justice, to love. Love was as much held up among [the] old [Testament] writers, [the] old religious teachers, and as clearly set forth, as in the later days. Their testimony fell upon ears that heard not, upon eyes that saw not, because they had closed their eyes, shut their ears, and hardened their hearts. They had substituted something else for this divine light; this word, which … Moses declared to his people was “nigh unto them, in the mouth, and in the heart.” … Believe not, then, that all these great principles were only known in the day of the advent of the Messiah to the Jews—those beautiful effects of doing right.
Lucretia Mott
1858
104
And as many candles lighted, and put in one place, do greatly augment the light and make it more to shine forth so when many are gathered together into the same life, there is more of the glory of God, and his power appears, to the refreshment of each individual, for that he partakes not only of the light and life raised in himself, but in all the rest.
Robert Barclay
1678
105
The resurrection, however literally or otherwise we interpret it, demonstrates the power of God to bring life out of brokenness; not just to take the hurt out of brokenness but to add something to the world. It helps us to sense the usefulness, the possible meaning in our suffering, and to turn it into a gift. The resurrection affirms me with my pain and my anger at what has happened. It does not take away my pain; it still hurts. But I sense that I am being transfigured; I am being enabled to begin again to love confidently and to remake the spirit of my world.
S. Jocelyn Burnell
1989
106
Something is happening around me: the dark is less dark, the silence is less deep. Even the air is changing. It is damper, sweeter. Morning is at hand. Light will soon come flowing over the edge of the world, bringing with it the day. What a gift! Whether wrapped in streamers of color or folded in tissues of mist, it will be mine to use in ways that I can foresee and in those that are unexpected. The day will make its own revelation, bring its own challenge; my part will be to respond with joy and gladness.
Elizabeth Yates
1976
107
When we laid our tools down at the appointed hour … , it was then I realized I had been in that place of “no time,” often referred to as “God’s time.” Had it really been five hours? It was as though I had stepped into a current that carried me and sustained my work. Its flow guided my movements. And throughout all this I was … powered by the palpable synergy of this centered group of artists. It was a day to be remembered.
Mary Waddington
2015
108
I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Attributed to Stephen Grellet
c. 1800
109
Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all his creatures. His tender mercies are over all his works; and, so far as his love influences our minds, so far we become interested in his workmanship and feel a desire to take hold of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the afflicted and increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, that to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives.
John Woolman
1763
110
A good end cannot sanctify evil means nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it. … It is as great presumption to send our passions upon God’s errands as it is to palliate them with God’s name…. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by love and information. And yet we could hurt no man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: for if men did once see we love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: and he that forgives first, wins the laurel.
William Penn
1693
111
All sorts of things “work” for us … as St. Paul declared. Not only does love “work,” and faith and grace, but tribulation “works,” and affliction, and the seemingly hostile forces which block and buffet and hamper us. Everything that drives us deeper, that draws us closer to the great resources of life, that puts vigor into our frame and character into our souls, is in the last resort a blessing to us, even though it seems on superficial examination to be the work of an “enemy;” and we shall be wise if we learn to love the “enemies” that give us the chance to overcome and to attain our true destiny. Perhaps the dualism of the universe is not quite as sharp as the old Persians thought. Perhaps too the love of God reaches further under than we sometimes suppose. Perhaps in fact all things “work together for good,” and even the enemy forces are helping to achieve the ultimate good that shall be revealed “when God hath made the pile complete.”
Rufus M. Jones
1961
112
The authentic life of the spirit must know a re-birth, a kindling from the Source, a release from the demands of the self into the knowledge of the truth which sets men free. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” This touch of grace upon the spirit, this sense of God’s presence, this re-birth into new life may come when we least expect it, may come in most unorthodox ways and under conditions we have not foreseen. But if it is deeply desired, ardently sought and steadfastly prayed for it will come, and we shall have been reborn into God’s love, and have made a great and decisive step toward life with Him. For most of us this is not a cataclysmic experience—nor is it desirable that it should be; but whether it results from a decision, a commitment consciously made, a gradual growth or a mystical experience we shall know that our religion has “come alive.”
Rachel R. Cadbury
1955
113
What was perhaps most characteristic of early Friends was that they thought of their testimony not in terms of words or propositions, but in terms of what they did, the way they lived their lives. … Testimony for them was to ‘do truth.’ What we now call ‘the testimonies’ were early Friends’ actions in the world, bearing witness to the truth they had experienced. Their testimony was an outward and visible manifestation of an inward transformation. This truth affected all aspects of their lives.
Thomas Gates
2015
114
How many of us are open to, and expectant of, spiritual encounter? How many of us are open to the possibility of transformation? Are we prepared to take the risk of being transformed as Margaret Fell was, or are we frightened of spiritual experience? If we are not open for spiritual transformation, what are we doing in attaching ourselves to a meeting? We have lost a sense of collective purpose when the spiritual is optional. If we have lost the experiential basis of our life together, we have lost our rootstock.
Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
115
As Friends we believe that love is the unifying force in human relations. Let us understand what brotherly love is and what it is not. Love is not self-seeking; it is self-giving. Love does not try to make up a deficiency in that of God in another from an overabundance of divinity in ourselves; it opens us to the divine Light in him and rejoices in it. Love does not mean agreeing on all questions of belief, values, or rules of conduct; it means accepting with humility and forbearance such differences as cannot be resolved by open and patient give-and-take. Love does not recreate our brother in our image; it recreates us both in relation to each other, united like limbs of one body yet each distinctly himself.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
1969
116
True godliness don’t turn men out of the world, but enables them better to live in it and excites their endeavors to mend it; not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick.
William Penn
1668
117
There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation so ever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression. Using ourselves to take ways which appear most easy to us, when inconsistent with that purity which is without beginning, we thereby set up a government of our own and deny obedience to him whose service is true liberty.
John Woolman
1774
118
…As Quakers we are often preoccupied with global issues and as young people we are only too often preoccupied with the pressures of work. [At Junior Yearly Meeting] we had the space to stop, to listen and to think about ourselves. …
Through our discussions we recognised our anxieties and fears. We realised that we are individuals and that we are alone but, as part of a loving community, to be alone does not necessarily mean to be lonely. We discovered that it is acceptable to have confused feelings, to be different, to do things our own way. We should not feel guilty when we are wrong, and appreciate that there must be room for mistakes. There are people who want us to be exactly as we are.
Epistle of Junior Yearly Meeting
1991
119
Quakers from the whole world await a message of hope. But how shall they hear? The presence and work of the Spirit is much more important than our words and forms of worship. That within us should also be transformed outward.
Some of us place special emphasis on the historical Jesus Christ as our personal Savior; others on the Light within everyone, which is interpreted by some of us as the Holy Spirit, and by some as the Christ principle; while others emphasize the universal spirit of God. We see these as three aspects of the one God and rejoice in our unity.
As we love one another, we find unity and become peacemakers. The barriers that separate us are broken, as Jesus broke the barrier between the Samaritans and the Jews through the conversation between him and the Samaritan woman. We should support each other in the diversity of our witness. We are one world trying to live our lives as Christ did.
Mable Lugalya
1991
120
We will not all be called to witness in the same way, but we should not assume that we have the luxury of waiting to act until we have it completely figured out. We must make a first step towards believing in the radical imagination of newness that boldly critiques the current paradigm. We can’t be too worried about being polite; if we engage in fundamental paradigm shifts we will inevitably hurt each other’s feelings. It will be hard work. But it will also be deeply healing—the kind of work that can break through the numbness.
Christina Repoley
2006
121
In prayer, the seeds of concern have a way of appearing. Often enough, a concern begins in a feeling of being personally liable, personally responsible, for someone or some event. With it there may come an intimation that one should do some little thing: speak to some person, make an inquiry into a certain situation, write a letter, send some money, send a book. Or it may be a stop in our minds about some pending decision, or a clear directive that now is not the time to rest, or an urge to stay home when we had been meaning to be away; it may be that no more than this will be given us. But this seed is given us to follow, and if we do not follow it, we cannot expect to see what may grow from it. Seeds, not fruit, are given in prayer, but they are given for planting.
Douglas V. Steere
1962
122
I have sometimes been asked what were my reasons for deciding on that refusal to register for war duties that sent me to Holloway Jail twenty-two years ago. I can only answer that my reason told me that I was a fool, that I was risking my job and my career, that an isolated example could do no good, that it was a futile gesture since even if I did register my three small children would exempt me. But reason was fighting a losing battle. I had wrestled in prayer and I knew beyond all doubt that I must refuse to register, that those who believed that war was the wrong way to fight evil must stand out against it however much they stood alone, and that I and mine must take the consequences. The “and mine” made it more difficult, but I question whether children ever really suffer loss in the long run through having parents who are willing to stand by principles; many a soldier had to leave his family and thought it his duty to do so. When you have to make a vital decision about behaviour, you cannot sit on the fence. To decide to do nothing is still a decision, and it means that you remain on the station platform or the airstrip when the train or plane has left.
Kathleen Lonsdale
1964
123
Those of us known as “activists” have sometimes been hurt by the written or spoken implication that we must be spending too little time on our spiritual contemplative lives. I do know many atheists who are active in improving the lot of humankind; but, for those of us who are Friends, our attendance at meeting for worship and our silent prayerful times are what make our outer activity viable and effective—if it is effective.
I have similarly seen quieter Friends hurt by the implication that they do not care enough, because they are not seen to be “politically active.” Some worry unnecessarily that they may be doing things of a “less important” nature, as if to be seen doing things by the eyes of the world is the same thing as to be seen doing things by the eyes of God. … I suggest that we refrain from judging each other, or belittling what each is doing; and that we should not feel belittled. We cannot know the prayers that others make or do not make in their own times of silent aloneness. We cannot know the letters others may be writing to governments. … We were made differently, in order to perform different tasks. Let us rejoice in our differences.
Margaret Glover
1989
124
Ever since I first came among Friends, I was attracted to the testimonies as an ideal. I wanted to belong to a church which made the rejection of warfare a collective commitment and not just a personal option. I admired a simplicity, a devotion to equality, and a respect for others which reflected what I already knew of Christ. In a deceitful world I warmed to those who did not swear oaths and strove to tell the truth in all circumstances. But this was a beginning in the spiritual life. The seed that was sown in my mind and my politics struck root in my soul and my faith
The choice of the word “testimony” is instructive. The testimonies are ways of behaving but are not ethical rules. They are matters of practice but imply doctrines. They refer to human society but are about God. Though often talked about, they lack an authoritative formulation. …
A “testimony” is a declaration of truth or fact. … It is not an ejaculation, a way of letting off steam, or baring one’s soul. It has a purpose, and that is to get other people to change, to turn to God. Such an enterprise, be it in words or by conduct and example, is in essence prophetic and evangelical.
John Punshon
1987
125
What is the distinction between testimonies and principles? To give personal testimony in a court of law it to report one’s own experience. Speculation and sweeping generalization are out of order; one must only state that which one directly knows. Friends’ testimonies reflect a similar understanding—they are not abstract generalizations, but the records of lives lived. … Friends’ testimonies are not judgments of the mind but voices of the heart. … The Peace Testimony exemplifies not principle pacifism but testimony pacifism. It is not a philosophical generalization to be affirmed by intellectual judgment … but, rather, a confession of spiritual surrender and the fruit of that surrender.
Steven Smith
2005
126
I was struck by how well … [Quaker] testimonies agree with scientific practice. …
Scientific practice … embraces our Quaker testimony of Integrity. A scientist must tell the truth as well as he/she can. Scientists may make mistakes, but scientists are not allowed to lie about their observations or their calculations.
Scientific practice agrees well with our Quaker testimony of Community. We discuss our experimental and theoretical work with other scientists in our community. This discussion plays a vital role in our search for scientific truth.
Scientific practice also agrees with our Quaker testimony on Equality in the way that all scientists enjoy equal status in our common search for truth. One of many examples: an unknown young Indian physicist, Bose, wrote to the famous Einstein, who studied and agreed with Bose’s work. Together they developed Bose-Einstein statistics.
Joe Levinger
2012
127
…our testimonies are not a pre-packaged set of values. Our spiritual experience, our openness to being led and to living a guided life, leads us to a life we have little choice over. Testimony is the outflowing life we cannot help but lead.
Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
128
Leading and being led: the words are simple enough. But for Quakers they have their most profound resonance as defining religious experience. Friends speak variously of being drawn to an action, feeling under the weight of a concern, being called or led to act in specific ways. We speak of being open to the leadings of the Light, of being taught by the Spirit or the Inward Christ. Extraordinary claims lie embedded in those phrases. They say that it is not only possible but essential to our nature for human beings to hear and obey the voice of God; that we can be directed, daily, in what we do, the jobs we hold, the very words we say and that our obedience may draw us to become leaders in all spheres of human life—in the professions, arts, and sciences, but also in discovering the ethical, political, social, and economic consequences of following the will of God.
Paul Lacey
1985
129
“Concern” is a word which has tended to become debased by excessively common usage among Friends, so that too often it is used to cover merely a strong desire. The true “concern” [emerges as] a gift from God, a leading of his spirit which may not be denied. Its sanction is not that on investigation it proves to be the intelligent thing to do—though it usually is; it is that the individual … knows, as a matter of inward experience, that there is something that the Lord would have done, however obscure the way, however uncertain the means to human observation. Often proposals for action are made which have every appearance of good sense, but as the meeting waits before God it becomes clear that the proposition falls short of “concern.”
Roger Wilson
1949
130
When Howard Brinton wrote Friends for 300 Years (1952), which became the standard introductory text to Quakerism in the USA, he offered a list of testimonies, which over time was altered by Friends so that by the 1990s we might be given the list of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, and equality, producing the acronym SPICE. … This listing has a number of effects. One is that we see testimony as consisting only of these principles rather than the whole of our God-led lives. … Secondly, because they are presented as principles, it is easy to imagine that they exist independently of our spiritual experience and the knowledge that there is that of God in everyone, which traditionally has given rise to the way we live in the world. Thirdly, divided up this way into discrete items, they have for some Friends become individually optional. Some Friends may struggle with the peace testimony but be clear on equality; others struggle with simplicity but are strong on peace. … We have recast testimony in terms of individual choice, and our corporate action as ‘good work’ rather than God-led.
Ben Pink Dandelion
2014
131
A concern is God-initiated, often surprising, always holy, for the life of God is breaking through into the world. Its execution is in peace and power and astounding faith and joy, for in unhurried serenity the Eternal is at work in the midst of time, triumphantly bringing all things unto Himself.
Thomas Kelly
1941
132
A Quaker social concern seems characteristically to arise in a sensitive individual or very small group. … The concern arises as a revelation to an individual that there is a painful discrepancy between existing social conditions and what God wills for society and that this discrepancy is not being adequately dealt with. The next step is the determination of the individual to do something about it—not because he is particularly well fitted to tackle the problem, but simply because no one else seems to be doing it.
Dorothy H. Hutchinson
1961
133
My challenge is to keep the wholeness during the hectic daily routines that ensue when we wake up again. I have to practice the simplicity testimony every morning because I am always tempted to check email and fold laundry in between putting on my socks. I have to practice the peace testimony, too, because by 7:40 I feel like yelling at my son, who is often playing with his Legos instead of getting dressed. I have to practice the equality testimony by constantly negotiating with my husband the work load of raising a family, from packing lunches and folding laundry to remembering to call the orthodontist. Most important, I have to continually practice listening for God’s guidance, integrating the discernment tools I used before becoming a parent—silence, solitude, and prayer—with the many ways I feel God touched me through the gift of family.
Eileen Flanagan
2008
134
In all our fervor—in all my fervor—to be doing, have I paid too little attention to the power that lies in being? Do we remember that it is the spirit of our service, the aura that surrounds it, the gentleness and the patience that marks it, the love made visible that compels it, that is the truly distinctive quality that lifts Quaker service above lobbying, above pressure, above coercion, that inspires the doubtful, and reaches the heart of the adversary?
Stephen G. Cary
1979
135
If we are faithful followers of Jesus, we may expect at times to differ from the practice of others. Having in mind that truth in all ages has been advanced by the courageous example of spiritual leaders, Friends are earnestly advised to be faithful to those leadings of the Divine Spirit which they feel fully assured after mature meditation and consideration they have interpreted truly.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Race Street)
1927
136
It may surprise some of us to hear that the first generation of Friends did not have a testimony for simplicity. They came upon a faith which cut to the root of the way they saw life, radically reorienting it. They saw that all they did must flow directly from what they experienced as true, and that if it did not, both the knowing and the doing became false. In order to keep the knowledge clear and the doing true, they stripped away anything which seemed to get in the way. They called those things superfluities, and it is this radical process of stripping for clear-seeing which we now term simplicity.
Frances Irene Taber
1985
137
From time to time … adherence to factual truth can give rise to profound dilemmas for Quaker Peace & Service workers if they are in possession of information which could be used to endanger people’s lives or give rise to the abuse of fundamental human rights. … Some of us are clear that in certain difficult circumstances we may still uphold our testimony to truthfulness while at the same time declining to disclose confidences which we have properly accepted. Such withholding of the whole truth is not an option to be undertaken lightly as a convenient way out of a dilemma. We all accept that ultimately it is up to an individual’s own conscience, held in the Light, to decide how to respond.
Quaker Peace and Service, London Yearly Meeting
1992
138
But the Loving Presence does not burden us equally with all things, but considerately puts upon each of us just a few central tasks, as emphatic responsibilities. For each of us these special undertakings are our share in the joyous burden of love.
Thus the state of having a concern has a foreground and a background. In the foreground is the special task, uniquely illuminated, toward which we feel a special yearning and care. This is the concern as we usually talk about it or present it to the Monthly Meeting. But in the background is a second level, or layer, of universal concern for all the multitude of good things that need doing. Toward them all we feel kindly, but we are dismissed from active service in most of them. And we have an easy mind in the presence of desperately real needs which are not our direct responsibility. We cannot die on every cross, nor are we expected to.
Thomas Kelly
1992
139
Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal light search you … for this will deal plainly with you; it will rip you up, and lay you open…naked and bare before the Lord God from whom you cannot hide yourselves. … Therefore give over the deceiving of your souls.
Margaret Fell
1656
140
[You are] not to spend time with needless, unnecessary, and fruitless discourses, but to proceed in the wisdom of God: not in the way of the world, as a worldly assembly of men, by hot contests, by seeking to outspeak and overreach one another in discourse, as if it were controversy between party and party of men, or two sides violently striving for dominion … not deciding affairs by the greater vote … but in the wisdom, love, and fellowship of God, in gravity, patience, meekness, in unity and concord, submitting one to another in lowliness of heart, and in the holy Spirit of truth and righteousness, all things [are] to be carried on by hearing and determining every matter coming before you in love, coolness, gentleness, and dear unity—I say, as one only party, all for the Truth of Christ and for the carrying on the work of the Lord, and assisting one another in whatsoever ability God hath given; and to determine of things by a general mutual concord, in assenting together as one man in the spirit of truth and equity, and by the authority thereof.
Edward Burrough
1662
141
I think I have wasted a great deal of my life waiting to be called to some great mission which would change the world. I have looked for important social movements. I have wanted to make a big and important contribution to the causes I believe in. I think I have been too ready to reject the genuine leadings I have been given as being matters of little consequence. It has taken me a long time to learn that obedience means doing what we are called to do even if it seems pointless or unimportant or even silly. The great social movements of our time may well be part of our calling. The ideals of peace and justice and equality which are part of our religious tradition are often the focus of debate. But we cannot simply immerse ourselves in these activities. We need to develop our own unique social witness, in obedience to God. We need to listen to the gentle whispers which will tell us how we can bring our lives into greater harmony with heaven.
Deborah Haines
1978
142
The field of my religious training presupposed a clear definite call to a particular kind of service. I must confess that this has never happened to me. … I have never aspired to a particular job or asked for one; nor have I been “stricken on the road to Damascus” as was Paul and had my way clearly dictated to me from the heavens. The entire course has been a maturing of family and personal decisions. In perspective I should say in all humility that my life has been characterized by an inadequate, persistent effort to try to find a workable harmony between religious profession and daily practice.
Clarence E. Pickett
1966
143
We wish we could say that our response to God’s calling was immediate and unequivocal, but in fact there followed several months of indecision, as we struggled with our leading [to travel to and live in Lugula]. We initiated, in a tentative way, the application process through Friends United Meeting, and were encouraged by them to schedule a trip to Indiana for an interview. Finally, five months after Yearly Meeting, we reached clarity, together as a couple: if FUM offered us the position (and we were the only serious candidates), we were prepared to accept. …
That very evening, as we basked in the warm glow of our newly found clearness, we received a phone call … there was no opening, and no need for an interview.
The word “disappointment” does not adequately describe how we felt. Our process of discernment had been slow and gradual but, we felt, genuine. We were left feeling empty, as though we were somehow “in transition”—but transition to what? We had now given up our expectations for the future not once, but twice. Our lives were outwardly the same as before, but we were empty, waiting for a further leading, and not entirely sure when or if it would come.
It took several difficult months, but eventually, reluctantly, we were able to give up the idea that Lugulu was in our future. Then one day, about a year later, a letter came in the mail. … The mission board was asking, almost apologetically, if we would still consider going to Lugulu. Suddenly, we could see the bumpy and circuitous road that we had been traveling for those eighteen months in a larger perspective. God had been asking, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?” Now, and only now, were we prepared to answer unequivocally with the prophet Isaiah, “Here we are, Lord. Send us.”
Thomas and Elizabeth Gates
1995
144
To be a Quaker is not simply to subscribe to doctrines but to be convinced that one has known an ultimate reality which authenticates doctrines. It is to know oneself capable of being taught now by the living Spirit of Truth, capable of receiving vital direction in what one is to do. It is not only to be a follower of the teachings of Jesus but to have met the Inward Christ.
Paul Lacey
1985
145
Authority comes from God, and it is recognized by Friends. Both parts are essential: that an individual speak or act or just be under faithful obedience to Divine Will, and that the faith community recognize and acknowledge that the message or action or be-ing is divinely inspired. …
Each of us has the possibility of being anointed and called to speak with authority on occasion. So each of us must be ready to listen and to discern with great care and humility not only our own internal nudges, but the words of each other person present.
Marty Paxson Grundy
2002
146
When Friends take care of our meeting’s business, we are holding the whole meeting in the Light. We enter into worship and we listen. We listen for God, we listen in our own hearts, and we listen to one another to know what to do. … Friends go out into the world to continue God’s work. They take with them hearts that know love, peace, and unity.
Faith and Play Working Group; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
2008
147
At monthly meeting there was a strong sense of unity on the matter—except for one person. (How easy to have ignored this one dissenting voice.) But in view of it, it was agreed to hold a second monthly meeting to reconsider the matter. Because the venue was different (our meetings are not normally “monthly”) a different group of Friends was present, although three of the first meeting were there. The sense of unity was equally strong in the other direction—except for two Friends. It was therefore decided to hold a third “monthly” meeting. By this time feelings were running high and we were each convinced of the rightness of our own viewpoints. Then suddenly Christ’s presence moved in, and in my own case I remembered his words to his disciples, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, that ye have love one for another.” And quite suddenly it seemed more important to love than to be right.
Rosemary M. Elliott
1967
148
A common misconception about Quaker business process is that a decision can never go forward if one person decides to “stand in the way.” Inactive members, new attenders and non-Friends trying to imitate Quaker process often interpret our principle of unity to mean that each individual has veto power over any decision of the community. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Standing in the way” is not a right which inheres in paper membership or attendance at meeting for business. It is rather a privilege granted by the community because it believes that the dissent is grounded in spiritual integrity and not in ego or a power trip. We acknowledge that the Friend may have light which the rest of us don’t yet see; we wait in love for the Friend to see our light. We are willing to remain teachable in the trust that the dissenting Friend is also teachable. …
Difficulty arises when some show themselves not to be teachable, as for instance when they attach themselves to an external “party line” which precludes submission to the Spirit. The Meeting may rightly decline to trust such persons. Trust is something which must be earned. Perhaps that is a central meaning of the term “weighty Friend”: one whom the community trusts to “attend to pure wisdom and be teachable.”
Esther Murer
1989
149
As a structure to facilitate discernment of the will of God, the clearness committee partakes of many of the features of a meeting for worship for the conduct of business. Where meetings for business have been assimilated to more secular models, with emphasis on getting through agendas within time constraints, on decision-making rather than discernment, consensus rather than unity, it is helpful to incorporate in the model some aspects of worship sharing.
The crucial element is the establishment of a context of prayerful attentiveness, not just for the beginning and end of the time together but for the entire meeting. Liberal amounts of silence between utterances permits them to be heard with all their resonances and taken below the surface mind. The space between can remove the temptation to revert to discussion or conversation. It can help reinforce disciplined speaking and listening. It can allow what does come forth to arise spontaneously from the Center.
Patricia Loring
1992
150
When we seek the sense of the meeting we allow ourselves to be directed to the solution that awaits us. It is a process of surrender to our highest natures, and a recognition that, even though each of us is possessed of light, there is only one Light. At the end of the process we reside in that Light. We have allowed ourselves to be led to a transcendent place of unmistakable harmony, peace, and tender love.
Barry Morley
1993
151
The belief that divinity exists in each human soul dominates the Quaker movement and it is the bedrock of Quaker education. Despite the inevitable compromises and flaws found in every Friends school, Quaker education still seeks to draw out, nurture, and protect the dignity of human personality.
Earl G. Harrison, Jr.
1981
152
From a student perspective, Meeting for Worship is a time for self-reflection and relational reflection. Unique to Quaker pedagogy is the cultivation of an ongoing habit of personal reflection and shared community reflections. Because Friends have neither doctrines nor dogma, they place most emphasis on the manner in which people lead their lives and treat one another. This aspect, as well as the sense of genuine inquiry, allows young people from all religious traditions (or none) to feel comfortable together during the silence of a Friends school Meeting for Worship.
Irene McHenry
2009
153
To the present distracted and broken nation: We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for this party nor against the other … but we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace, and unity with God and with one another, that these things may abound.
Edward Burrough
1659
154
The foundations of Quaker pacifism are religious. We fully recognize the value of the intuitive recognition of the evil of coercive violence in the individual and national life. The sense of the contrast between the way of war and the way of love shown us in the life of Jesus Christ has compelling force. It is also enlightening to think of pacifism as a corollary of the fundamental Quaker postulate of the Divine Spark in every human being. This fundamental Quaker postulate lays on us the obligation to consider and cherish every human being. It follows, for those who accept the postulate, that they cannot do to human beings the things that war involves. It may follow that they become aware that other sorts of human relations are also evil, such as slavery, economic injustice, inferior status for women, and the results of the traffic in narcotics. …
Quaker pacifism is an obligation, not a promise. We are not guaranteed that it will be safe. We are sure that it is right. We desire to make our individual decisions in harmony with it, and to help our fellows to do so.
Friends Peace Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Race Street)
1940
155
Whether the experience of Divine companionship comes soon or late, whether it is a sudden realisation of the Indwelling Spirit, the Divine Presence, the Eternal Light Within, the Seed of God in the heart, it becomes increasingly the mainspring of our life on earth and our hope for the life to come. We recognize this as an element of the Divine in every human heart, however denied and stifled and concealed; it is something to which we can appeal from the innermost depths of our being; an inward experience of God in which we ourselves must live.
From that inward relationship, the testimonies which generations of Friends have been challenged to maintain take on a deeper meaning. One of the most revealing passages in George Fox’s Journal is that in which he records his answer to the officials who offered him his liberty, if he would accept a commission and “take up arms for the Commonwealth against the King.” He did not say that he believed war to be wrong, or that in his opinion brute force never settled anything; he went straight to the heart of the matter and said that he “lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.” To uphold such a testimony involved a dedicated life. The Quaker peace testimony is more than a repudiation of war, and more than a denial of the use of force; it is a way of life to which we must be faithful in small things as well as in great, in our human relationships, our business and social activities, and in the life and witness of our meetings.
Elfrida Vipont Foulds
1981
156
If a concerned Quaker (or any man or woman committed to an absolute religious ethic) decides to enter practical politics in order to translate his principles into actuality, he may achieve a relative success: he may be able to raise the level of political life in his time, as John Bright did, or maintain a comparatively happy and just and peaceful society, as the Quaker legislators of Pennsylvania did. But he can apparently do it only at a price—the price of compromise, of partial betrayal of his ideals. If, on the other hand, he decides to preserve his ideals intact, to maintain his religious testimonies unsullied and pure, he may be able to do that, but again at a price—the price of isolation, of withdrawal from the mainstream of life in his time, of renouncing the opportunity directly and immediately to influence history.
Let me call the two positions the relativist and the absolutist. And let me suggest that perhaps each one needs the other. The relativist needs the absolutist to keep alive and clear the vision of the City of God while he struggles in some measure to realize it in the City of Earth. And conversely, the absolutist needs the relativist, lest the vision remain the possession of a few only, untranslated into any degree of reality for the world as a whole.
Frederick B. Tolles
1956
157
No one dreamed in the sharp crisis of 1917, when the first steps of faith were taken, that we should feed more than a million German children, drive dray loads of cod-liver oil into Russia, plough the fields of the peasants and fight typhus in Poland, rebuild the houses and replant the wastes in Serbia, administer a longtime service of love in Austria, become foster parents to tens of thousands of children in the coal fields in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, inaugurate plans for the rehabilitation (sic) of the stranded soft coal miners, carry relief to the children on both sides of the warring forces in Spain and create new types of peace activity which have brought this supreme issue of these times vitally home to the minds and consciences of people in all parts of America.
We verily went out in those days of low visibility not knowing whither we were going; but, like the early patriarch, we were conscious of a divine leading, and we were aware, even if only dimly, that we were “fellow-laborers with God” in the rugged furrows of the somewhat brambly fields of the world.
Rufus M. Jones
1937
158
If we must speak of our Testimony of peace to the rest of the world, to speak of an absolute denial of war, let us do it in a voice of love, with a sacred sense of the personal sacrifices such a testimony may well demand, not in defiance of our political adversaries with whom we may find ourselves perpetually annoyed. Let us speak not without first recognizing the fears and the courage of those countrymen whom we ask to cease engaging in what they perceive as a defense of life and freedom, so they may join us in paying the price for peace required of those who will not live by the sword but who must be prepared to die by it.
Michael Dawson
2002
159
Quaker peace witness is the magnet which drew many into the Religious Society of Friends. But a magnet can also repel, and some people find that it is an obstacle, which prevents them identifying themselves as Quakers.
When I listen to their difficulties, I find that these are usually practical or intellectual. But our witness against the use of violence is born not in the head but in the heart and spirit, as the Advices and Queries tell us. True Quaker peace work does not arise from a fear of war and violence but from compassion and a sense of what is right. These feelings, of course, are not confined to Quakers.
John Lampen
2012
160
Perhaps it is this integrity, the concept of the wholeness of creation, that will jolt humanity onto a course of sustainability, which people may see as threatening at first. Of course change is often uncomfortable, but change is a must. We need to nurture ourselves and each other, but ultimately we need to nurture the earth—our mother.
Josephine Vallentine
1991
161
Sustainability becomes not just one more matter we’re concerned about, not simply a new ‘testimony,’ but the framework in which Friends today must contemplate, even rethink, every aspect of our faith and practice. … If peace was the dominant theme of Quaker testimony in the 20th century … work for a sustainable human society on earth will focus much of our imagination and energies in this century.
Douglas Gwyn
2014
162
As Friends, we seem to have a heightened aversion to, or fear of, the shadow side—those parts that we’d rather not see. We like to focus on the light as if there is no shadow, and I understand. This is not an unnatural desire. There is a belief operating there that says that if those things in the shadow were allowed to be seen, talked about, and acknowledged that we would surely die. I like to say that we want to be the underground railroad Quakers, but not acknowledge that we were also the Quakers who required African Americans to sit on separate benches during meeting for worship. So we have this fear that we would die if the whole truth were brought to light. There is some truth here. If we truly acknowledge those parts that we deny—that may be our shame, our sorrow, our greatest fears—there will be death. And primarily I focus on the death of the illusion!
Niyonu Spann
2007
163
The important thing about worldly possessions, in fact, is whether or not we are tied to them. Some, by an undue love of the things of this world, have so dulled their hearing that a divine call to a different way of life would pass unheard. Others are unduly self-conscious about things which are of no eternal significance, and because they worry too much about them, fail to give of their best. The essence of worldliness is to judge of things by an outward and temporary, and not an inward and eternal standard, to care more about appearances than about reality, to let the senses prevail over the reason and the affections.
London Yearly Meeting
1958
164
But at the first convincement, when Friends could not put off their hats to people nor say ‘you’ to a [single person], but ‘thee’ and ‘thou;’ and could not bow nor use the world’s salutations, nor fashions, nor customs many Friends, being tradesmen of several sorts lost their custom at the first; for the people would not trade with them nor trust them, and for a time Friends that were tradesmen could hardly get enough money to buy bread. But afterwards people came to see Friends’ honesty and truthfulness and ‘yea’ and ‘nay’ at a word in their dealing, and their lives and conversations did preach and reach to the witness of God in all people, and they knew and saw that, for conscience sake towards God, they would not cozen and cheat them, and at last that they might send any child and be as well used as [if they had come] themselves, at any of their shops.
George Fox
1653
165
Friends recognize that much of the misunderstanding, fear, and hatred in the world stems from the common tendency to see national, religious, and racial groups as blocks, forgetting the varied and precious individuals who compose them. Differences between individuals, and between groups, are to be prized as part of the variety of divine creation. Every person should be free to cultivate his individual characteristics and his sense of belonging to a racial or cultural group as long as by so doing he does no violence to any one in the human family. Only when differences are the basis for feelings of superiority do they become barriers of hate and fear.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
1969
166
The duty of the Society of Friends is to be the voice of the oppressed but [also] to be conscious that we ourselves are part of that oppression. Uncomfortable we stand with one foot in the kingdom of this world and with the other in the Eternal Kingdom. Seldom can we keep the inward and outward working of love in balance, let alone the consciousness of living both in time and in eternity, in timelessness. Let us not be beguiled into thinking that political action is all that is asked of us, nor that our personal relationship with God excuses us from actively confronting the evil in this world. The political and social struggles must be waged, but a person is more and needs more than politics, else we are in danger of gaining the whole world but losing our souls.
Eva I. Pinthus
1987
167
We are much concerned about the whole content of human relationship, about the meaning of “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” in the full range and depth of its implications. Loving does not merely mean doing good works; it goes further than feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. It means warmth and intimacy, open-heartedness and overwhelming generosity of hand and spirit. It means a desire to know and a courageous willingness to be known. Loving implies commitment to the other person, involvement in that person’s life, whatever it may cost in suffering, whether that suffering comes through being repudiated or through identification and sharing.
The life of society desperately needs this warmth of giving and receiving. Everywhere we see sociability without commitment or intimacy, and especially in our towns, intense isolation and loneliness. We see human energy that should be creative and loving deflected into activities that are coldly power-seeking; we see love inhibited, frustrated, or denied, turning into its opposite—into ruthlessness and aggression.
Quaker Home Service, London Yearly Meeting
1961
168
The roots of war can be taken away from all our lives, as they were long ago in Francis of Assisi and John Woolman. Day by day let us seek out and remove every seed of hatred and greed, of resentment and of grudging, in our own selves and in the social structure about us. Christ’s way of freedom replaces slavish obedience by fellowship. Instead of an external compulsion He gives an inward authority. Instead of self-seeking, we must put sacrifice; instead of domination, co-operation. Fear and suspicion must give place to trust and the spirit of understanding. Thus shall we more and more become friends to all … and our lives will be filled with the joy which true friendship never fails to bring. Surely this is the way in which Christ calls us to overcome the barriers of race and class and thus to make of all humanity a society of friends.
All Friends Conference, London, Devonshire House
1920
169
Whichever sphere of activity we are involved in, we have to be responsive to the Spirit’s leadings and try to put into practice our deepest beliefs, for our faith is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week faith, which is not excluded from our workplace, wherever that may be. Everything in the end can be distilled to relationships—our relationships with each other and the earth. Our work must benefit our relationships rather than damage them, and we must ensure that neither the earth nor other people are exploited. Caring, not exploitation, is the key.
Jane Stokes
1992
170
Where people love money and their hearts are ensnared with imaginary greatness, the disease frequently spreads from one to another, and children indulged in those wants which proceed from the this spirit, have often wants of the same kind in a much larger degree when they grow up to be men and women, and their parents are often entangled in contriving means to supply them with estates to live answerable to those expensive customs, which very early in life have taken hold of their minds.
In contriving to raise estates on these motives, how often are the minds of parents bewildered, perplexed, and drawn into ways and means to get money, which increase the difficulties of poor people who maintain their families by the labor of their hands?
A man may intend to lay up wealth for his children, but may not intend to oppress; yet in this fixed intention to increase his estate, the working of his designs may cause the bread of the needy to fail and at the same time their hardships remain unnoticed by him.
John Woolman
1772
171
We feel that we should at this time declare once again our unwavering opposition to capital punishment. The sanctity of human life is one of the fundamentals of a Christian society and can in no circumstances be set aside. Our concern, therefore, is for all victims of violence, not only the murderer but also those who suffer by his act.
The sanctioning by the State of the taking of human life has a debasing effect on the community, and tends to produce the very brutality which it seeks to prevent. We realise that many are sincerely afraid of the consequences if the death penalty is abolished, but we are convinced that their fears are unjustified.
London Yearly Meeting
1956
172
Justice is more often used to justify violence than to oppose or reject it. It is certainly a part of Quaker conscience to be alert of instances of injustice and to correct them, where it is possible to do so without force or violence. Nonetheless, the concept of justice is treacherous for Friends. George Fox and the early Quakers taught us to rely on experience, and we have no experience of justice—only of injustices. The problem with injustices is that they lead to misery and oppression, and I find it more use to focus on the misery and oppression, as Jesus does in Matthew 25, and to try to relieve those conditions without mentioning justice.
Newton Garver
2011
173
Specific acts of prayer are only means to an end. The end is a more continual state of prayerfulness or openness that goes on through the day and through the night. … Back of all that I do, there may come a sense of something undergirding it and something that, when there are intervals in my outer work, flows up to the surface again. …
This prayerfulness can only be compared to the sense of glow that one has when in love. Obviously work has to be done which requires full attention, but when this is broken off, the wonder and security and surge of gladness return, and never really leave as the background of all that one is about. This is what is meant by those who talk of praying continually. It means an openness to people, a willingness really to listen, really to enter into what they are trying to say, an openness to the new and fresh and original in all that is about me, and, deepest of all, it means an openness to the inward whispering. …
Douglas Steere
1990
174
We are called to obedient love even though we may not be feeling very loving. Often it is through the performance of loving acts that loving feelings can be built up in us. We may start with small, perhaps very tiny steps. It is only as we begin to allow Christ’s love to act in and through us that it can become a part of us.
Sandra Cronk
c. 1983
175
For some time I took no notice of any religion, but minded recreation, as it is called; and went after it into many excesses and vanities—as foolish mirth, carding, dancing, and singing. I frequented music assemblies, and made vain visits where there were jovial feastings. But in the midst of all this my heart was often sad and pained beyond expression. I was not hurried into those follies by being captivated by them, but from not having found in religion what I had sought and longed after. I would often say within myself, what are they all to me? I could easily leave all this; for it hath not my heart, it is not my delight, it hath not power over me. I had rather serve the Lord, if I could indeed feel and know that which would be acceptable to Him.
O Lord, suffer me no more to fall in with any false way, but show me the Truth.
Mary Proude Springett Penington
c. 1650
176
A Quaker family, whatever its configuration, is rooted in the wider community of Friends. Grounded in love, it seeks to nurture every member through full acceptance, respect for each other’s choices, and common experiences characterized by caring, compassion, open and supportive communication, understanding, and a sense of humor. Friends seek to strengthen and learn from the children’s sense of wholeness. We believe that through the family we learn that the source of human love is God’s love for us.
Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association
2012
177
Take the decision to have children joyfully, even though it is a hard one to take consciously, for many adaptations will be necessary for both partners. Consider carefully what each parent’s responsibilities will be and how you will share the various tasks of childcare and domestic life. Freedom to step aside from the career path for a while may be valued by either partner, or the traditional roles may be cherished, or both parents may agree to share work in the home and outside it equally.
Elizabeth Seale Carnall
1981
178
God’s love is ministered to most people through the love of our fellow human beings. Sometimes that love is expressed physically or sexually. For me and my lover, John, God’s love is given through our homosexual relationship. In common with other people who do not have children to raise, we are free from those demands to nurture other vital things. This includes our meeting and the wider Society of Friends.
We both draw on our love a great deal to give us the strength and courage to do the things to which God calls us. … Our spiritual journey is a shared one. Sometimes the pitcher needs to be taken back to the fountain. In order to grow, I need my church to bless and uphold not just me as an individual, but also our relationship.
Gordon Macphail
c.1985
179
We are faced at every hand with enticements to risk money in anticipation of disproportionate gain through gambling. Some governments employ gambling as a means of raising revenue, even presenting it as a civic virtue. The Religious Society of Friends continues to bear testimony against betting, gambling, lotteries, speculation, or any other endeavor to receive material gain without equivalent exchange, believing that we owe an honest return for what we receive.
Faith and Practice, Baltimore Yearly Meeting
1988
180
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us.
Thomas Kelly
1941
181
Sometimes people understand “God’s will” or “God’s plan” as something imposed on us by God, something we must discover and decipher. I understand it differently. I feel that God’s path for our lives is constantly being developed. It rises within us and is something we develop in partnership with God as we learn to see and understand more clearly. With this seeing and understanding, we find the courage to step into the future.
Nancy Bieber
2010
182
Peace of mind is infinitely desirable, but it is achieved only through discipline and deep desire. Peace of mind is not inertia, it is not closing oneself from contact with reality which is often desperately grim; there is nothing negative about it. It is a process and a growth. It is achieved, I believe, by exposure, through prayer and meditation, to the serenity and peace, the greatness and the majesty, the loving-kindness and gentleness of God.
Rachel R. Cadbury
1955
183
Now is where we live, now is where the past must be overcome, now is where we meet others, now is where we must find the presence of God.
Carol Murphy
c.1993
184
The practice of journal keeping is … a way of becoming aware of the patterns of our inner life, of growing in self-knowledge and discovering our own gifts and possibilities. … Keeping a journal is just one way … of beginning to re-create your life. At its most basic it is a decision that your life has value and meaning and deserves the effort of recollection and reflection. It is also a decision that what you are living and learning is worth recording. That decision has its roots in a very deep layer of gospel truth.
Jo Farrow
1986
185
To most of us are given some common little jobs every day of our lives. To a very few comes the call to do something extraordinary, some great task. The world abounds in men and women who find happiness and opportunities for self-expression in being faithful in the humble stations of life which are theirs at a given time. If we are loyal to the truth as we see it, and respond with our might in the “common” situations in day-to-day living as we face them, the glow of the grace of God deepens and nurtures our faculties for insight and for recognition of the true worth of things and of men.
Ranjit Chetsingh
1975
186
Oh God, our Father, spirit of the universe, I am old in years and in the sight of others, but I do not feel old within myself. I have hopes and purposes, things I wish to do before I die. A surging of life within me cries, “Not yet! Not yet!” more strongly than it did ten years ago, perhaps because the nearer approach of death arouses the defensive strength of the instinct to cling to life.
Help me to loosen, fiber by fiber, the instinctive strings that bind me to the life I know. Infuse me with Thy spirit so that it is Thee I turn to, not the old ropes of habit and thought. Make me poised and free, ready when the intimation comes to go forward eagerly and joyfully, into the new phase of life that we call death.
Help me to bring my work each day to an orderly state so that it will not be a burden to those who must fold it up and put it away when I am gone. Keep me ever aware and ever prepared for the summons.
If pain comes before the end help me not to fear it or struggle against it but to welcome it as a hastening of the process by which the strings that bind me to life are untied. Give me joy in awaiting the great change that comes after this life of many changes; let my self be merged in Thy Self as a candle’s wavering light is caught up into the sun.
Elizabeth Gray Vining
1978
187
My sunrise meditation means more to me now than ever. At dawn it is easier to feel the universe is one organic whole, held together by that Radiating Power of Love which flows through everything—including thee and me. …
By using the power of mature, redemptive love we can show each individual that we need his or her uniqueness to make us whole. We will then see that we have something to give others and that others have something to give us.
Rachel Davis DuBois
c. 1978
188
For me the certain realisation of God came at the time of the breakdown of my marriage. The unthinkable had happened and I seemed to be at my lowest state physically and mentally. There seemed to be no present and no future but only a nightmare of dark uncertainty. One distinct message reached me: to “go under” was out of the question, I could only start again, learn from my mistakes and take this second chance at life that I had been given. I found a strength within I did not know I had and I believe now that it came from the prayers and loving support of so many people round me.
This rebirth was for me a peak experience, the memory of which is a constant reassurance in times of emptiness and doubt. Facing the future, even with a sure faith, is not easy. I am cautious at every step forward, taking time and believing I shall be told where to go and what to do. Waiting patiently and creatively is at times unbearably difficult, but I know it must be so.
Jennifer Morris
1980
189
As I grow older, I seem to need more time for inner stillness. … This can happen in the midst of daily chores or when walking in a crowd or riding in a train. It means being still, open, reflective, holding within myself the crucible of joy and pain of all the world, and lifting it up to God. Praise comes into it, and thankfulness for all the love I have known and shared, the realization of how much of the time I am carried, supported, upheld by others and the love of God. [During this process] comes the deep sense of the unity of all being, the intermeshing of the animate and inanimate, the secular and the sacred, the tangible and the intangible. … It means just waiting, or just lifting the heart.
Dorothy Steere
1995
190
Prayer for the Aged: Consider thy old friends, O God, whose years are increasing. Provide for them homes of dignity and freedom. Give them, in case of need, understanding helpers and the willingness to accept help. Deepen their joy in the beauty of thy world and their love for their neighbors, grant them courage in the face of pain or weakness, and always a sure knowledge of thy presence.
Elizabeth Gray Vining
1982
191
It happened in the night. I was at a very low point. I was sleeping out of doors on the porch close to the hill. A light breeze rustled through the overhanging branches of a great walnut tree. I was very tired. I looked up at the stars edging over the hill in my mood of great despondency. I said to God, “It’s no use. I’ve tried all I can. I can’t do anything more.” All of a sudden I seemed to be swept bodily out of my bed, carried above the trees and held poised in mid-air, surrounded by light—a light so bright that I could hardly look at it. Even when I closed my eyes I could feel it. A fragrance as of innumerable orange blossoms inundated my senses. And there was an echo of far-off music. All was ecstasy. I have no idea whether it lasted a minute or several hours. But for the rest of the night I lay in a state of peace and indescribable joy. How impossible it is to explain such a phenomenon in everyday language, but whatever it was changed my life. It was not a passing illusion. I never was the same again. For days I was terribly happy. The whole world seemed to be illumined, the flower colors were brighter, bird songs gayer, and people were kind, friendly and loving. This exaggerated brilliance faded somewhat with time and the intense sense of communion fluctuated. Later on there were, of course, low moments amidst the high peaks, and there were failures, dry seasons, and the recurring need for patience and perseverance. But I never lost the clarification of mind and spirit that was revealed to me on that night.
Josephine Duvenek
1978
192
I have been learning … that when we accept our finiteness realistically and without bitterness, each day is a gift to be cherished and savored. Each day becomes a miracle. I am learning to offer to God my days and my nights, my joy, my work, my pain, and my grief. I am striving to keep my house in order, and my relationships intact. I am learning to use the time I have more wisely. … And I am learning to forget at times my puritan conscience which prods me to work without ceasing, and instead, to take time for joy.
Elizabeth Watson
1979
193
People so often talk of someone “getting over” a death. How could you ever fully get over a deep loss? Life has been changed profoundly and irrevocably. You don’t get over sorrow; you work your way right to the centre of it.
Diana Lampen
1979
194
[Grieving] is a discipline that is good for us and good for the world. As we grieve, we become more able to forgive—both ourselves and others—we can more easily let go of the hurts of the past and put our attention to the possibilities that are before us. As we grieve we loosen up a hard, tight place to the point that it can dissolve and be gone. If our hurts remain a hard, tight mass, they get in our way. They call out for attention. We stumble over them and have to maneuver our way around them. With attention on the need to grieve and the experience of how this process can free our hearts and minds from attachment to the past, new doors open up and more becomes possible.
Pamela Haines
2012
195
The secret of finding joy after sorrow, or through sorrow, lies, I think, in the way we meet sorrow itself. We cannot fight against it and overcome it, though often we try and may seem at first successful. We try to be stoical, to suppress our memories … to kill [the pain] with strenuous activity so that we may be too tired to think. But that is just the time when it returns to us in overwhelming power. Or we try to escape from it. … But when the trip is over, the book closed … the research accomplished, there is our sorrow waiting for us, disguised, perhaps, but determined. …
What we must do, …with God’s help, is to accept sorrow as a friend, if possible. If not, as a companion with whom we will live for an indeterminate period, for whom we have to make room as one makes room for a guest in one’s house, a companion of whom we shall always be aware, from whom we can learn and whose strength will become our strength. Together we can create beauty from ashes and find ourselves in the process.
Elizabeth Gray Vining
1952

The principal purpose of a book of discipline is to promote faithfulness among the members and constituent bodies of the yearly meeting by offering advice on various aspects of the life of the Religious Society of Friends. In this sense the entire Faith and Practice, including the quotations from the writings of Friends, is advices. But we also include here a set of advices paraphrased from statements contained in epistles of the Yearly Meeting of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, 1694 and 1695.

I.

Friends are reminded that our Religious Society took form in times of disturbance, and that its continuing testimony has been the power of God to lead men and women out of the confusions of outward violence, inward sickness, and all other forms of self-will, however upheld by social convention. As death comes to our willfulness, a new life is formed in us, so that we are liberated from distractions and frustrations, from fears, angers, and guilts. Thus we are enabled to sense the Inward Light and to follow its leadings. Friends are advised to place God, not themselves, in the center of the universe and, in all aspects of inward life and outward activity, to keep themselves open to the healing power of the Spirit of Christ.

Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Seek to live in affection as true Friends in your Meetings, in your families, in all your dealings with others, and in your relationship with outward society. The power of God is not used to compel us to Truth; therefore, let us renounce for ourselves the power of any person over any other and, compelling no one, seek to lead others to Truth through love. Let us teach by being ourselves teachable.

Keep to the simplicity of Truth. Seek for its manifestations in prayer, in reading matter, in the arts, and in all experiences of daily life. Shun the use of mind-changing drugs and intoxicants, of gambling, and of other detrimental practices that interpose themselves against the Inward Light. It is the experience of Friends that these drugs, intoxicants, and practices lead to a personal willfulness and inability to listen for the will of God. Avoid in daily work those involvements and entanglements that separate us from each other and from God. Keep your recreations from becoming occasions for self-intoxication and avoid those conventional amusements which debase the emotions by playing upon them. These, too, lead to self-absorption and to forgetfulness that each person’s humanity is shared by all persons. Live and work in the plainness and simplicity of a true follower of Christ.

II.

Our Religious Society endures as a community of friends who take thought for outward society by first taking care of one another. Friends are advised to maintain love and unity, to avoid tale-bearing and detraction, and to settle differences promptly and in a manner free from resentment and all forms of inward violence. Live affectionately as friends, entering with sympathy into the joys and sorrows of one another’s daily lives. Visit one another. Be alert to give help and ready to receive it. Bear the burdens of one another’s failings; share the buoyancy of one another’s strengths.

Remember that to everyone is given a share of responsibility for the meeting for worship, whether through silence or through the spoken word. Be diligent in attendance at meetings and in inward preparation for them. Be ready to speak under the leadings of the Light. Receive the ministry of others in a tender spirit and avoid hurtful criticism. In meetings for business, and in all duties connected with them, seek again the leadings of the Light, keeping from obstinacy and from harshness of tone or manner; admit the possibility of being in error. In all the affairs of the Meeting community, proceed in the peaceable spirit of Pure Wisdom, with forbearance and warm affection for each other.

Use your capabilities and your possessions not as ends in themselves but as God’s gifts entrusted to you. Share them with others; use them with humility, courtesy and affection. Guard against contentiousness and love of power; be alert to the personalities and the needs of others. Show loving consideration for all creatures, and cherish the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. Attend to Pure Wisdom and be teachable.

III.

Friends are reminded that it is the experience and testimony of our Society that there is one teacher, namely Christ; and that in that Spirit there are no distinctions between persons, nor any reason of age, sex, or race that elects some to domination. Live in love and learn from one another. Combativeness in family life, whereby one strives to assert a supremacy of will over another, is not compatible with the conviction that there is that of God in everyone. Amid the growing distempers of social existence, Friends are urged to maintain our witness of Truth, simplicity, and nonviolence, and to test our personal lives by them.

The union of two in marriage having a religious basis, any who contemplate it should seek divine guidance, and any who enter into marriage should seek this guidance without ceasing. Within the family, adults and youth, whether formally in membership or not, should instruct one another by example in the way of life which our Religious Society has professed, seeking in all things the Inward Light as the only certain alternative to an unfriendly struggle of wills. Friends are advised to maintain closeness in their family life and, avoiding distractions and contentions, to make their homes places of peace.

The Spirit of Christ can lead parents to wise counsel for their children in education, reading, recreation, and social relationships, while it can also lead children to wise counsel for their parents in these and other aspects of life. If counsel is unwelcome and if difficulties arise, persevere both in prayer and in a sense of humor. Friends are advised in all things to trust in the Light and to witness to it in daily living.

Accept with serenity the approach of each new stage of life. Welcome the approach of old age, both for oneself and for others, as an opportunity for wisdom, for detachment from turmoils, and for greater attachment to the Light. Make provisions for the settlement of all outward affairs while in health, so that others may not be burdened and so that one may be freed to live more fully in the Truth that shall stand against all the entanglements, distractions, and confusions of our times.

IV.

Bring the whole of your life under the healing and ordering of the Holy Spirit, remembering that there is no time but this present. Friends are reminded that we are called, as followers of Christ, to help establish the Kingdom of God on earth. In witnessing to the Inward Light, guard against religious intolerance. Strengthen a sense of kinship with everyone and make service, not self-promotion, the chief aim of our outward lives as Friends, as employees or as supervisors, and as citizens.

Let the sense of kinship inspire us to unceasing efforts toward a social order free of violence and oppression, in which no one’s development is hindered by meager income, insufficient education, or too little freedom in directing his or her own affairs. Friends are advised not only to minister to those in need, but also to seek to know the facts of social and economic ills so as to work for the removal of those ills. Let the Friendly testimony that there is that of God in everyone lead us to cherish every human being regardless of race or class, and to encourage efforts to overcome prejudices and antagonisms. Friends are advised to cleanse themselves of all prejudice.

Be faithful in maintaining our testimony against all war as contrary to the spirit and teaching of Christ. Every human being is a child of God with a measure of God’s Light. War and other instruments of violence and oppression ignore this reality and violate our relation with God. Keep primary our Friends’ concern for the elimination of combat in the outward world as in our personal lives. Friends are advised to live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars. Friends are further advised to aid in all ways possible the development of international order and understanding.

Fellowship of Friends of African Descent (FoFAD) was founded in 1990 to provide for the nurture of Friends of African descent, their families and friends. Like a family reunion, its face-to-face gatherings provide fellowship, nurture, support and spiritual renewal. www.fofad.org

Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts (FQA), created in 1993, is a membership organization “to nurture and showcase the literary, visual, musical and performing arts within the Religious Society of Friends, for purposes of Quaker expression, ministry, witness and outreach.” fqa.quaker.org

Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC), founded in the 1970s, is a North American Quaker faith community within the Religious Society of Friends. Originally called FLGC, it was founded to provide support and nurture to the lesbian and gay community. Honoring that of God in all people, members seek to express God’s truth, offering support and nurture within the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual/transgender communities, in a faith- based context. flgbtqc.quaker.org