4thMo. 2016 Blog Posts (5)

Once, in describing my upcoming wedding to a friend, I mentioned that it was a Quaker Meeting for Worship in which all would sit silent, waiting on the Lord. When she found out that no human being would be leading the meeting, she was puzzled.



"Who pronounces you man and wife?"



"Jesus," I replied.



"Yes, but whose voice does he use?"



In that brief exchange, I glimpsed a fundamental difference in our viewpoints that I'm still trying to understand after…

Blessed Friends, I write of encouragement. This morning in Meeting for Worship (I went to late Meeting) I heard two speakers. One who spoke of individual determination and another who spoke of community. Categorizing the two philosophies I see one as darkness, the other light.

Emil Brunner said something like this, God calls us to Him individually but we are meant to be in communion. Brunner associates individualism with Rousseau and others of spiritual impoverishment including…

"God spoke that was the speaker to Adam and Eve in paradise." (Sermon VI) That George Fox repeated this revelation of the Spirit often in several of his sermons attests to its importance. He exhorts us to hear the voice of the Teacher, the Christ in us, and to remain with him.

My custom for preparation for worship is to pray my reading is profitable to my worship and prayer. In the moments before proceeding this morning I saw that the voice I heard was the voice George Fox heard was…

I have run into a number of issues and causes over the years put forth as being things "we should be involved in." I have first-hand experience of being "involved in" a number of such worthy causes. But it is not the worthy causes that form the foundation of righteousness.

Many will come to me on that day saying, "Lord, Lord, did we not..." [and there follows a list of worthy issues and causes]. I will say to them, "Depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew…

Meeting for Worship, Fourth Month, 3, Year of our Lord 2016. 

I sat at the library table with a worn Journal of George Fox, a That Thy Candles May Always Be Burning, and a worn Good News Bible to read as my preparation for Worship. Sitting at the table one looks into the Meeting room proper.

Usually when I finish my reading I quietly join the others in worship, but this morning was different. A man and his teenage daughter came into the library. He sat in the chair to my left…