Many Lighted Candles
November 22, 2025 § Leave a comment
In his Apology, Robert Barclay offers a lovely metaphor for the gathered meeting (page 280 in Dean Freiday’s modern translation):
He [God] also causes the inward life to be more abundant when his children are diligent in assembling together to wait upon him. . . . The mere sight of each other’s faces when two persons are gathered inwardly into the life gives occasion for that life to rise secretly and pass from vessel to vessel. Many lighted candles, when gathered together in a single place, greatly augment each other’s light and make it shine more brilliantly. In the same way, when many are gathered together into the same life, there is more of the glory of God. Each individual receives greater refreshment, because he partakes not only of the light and life that has been raised in him, but in the others as well.
With his description of the life rising secretly and passing from vessel to vessel, Barclay is describing the transcendental, psychic dimension of the gathered meeting. By “secretly”, I think he means invisibly, without a tangible mode of communication or transference, and inwardly, coming to abide within each of us as vessels. And I suspect that he means the image of many candles augmenting the light in the same transcendental way.
But we can carry the candle metaphor further. The tangible reality of many candles in a real meeting room augments the light by revealing many areas that would be in shadow with fewer candles. One candle would cast many shadows in the room. But the more candles you add, the more of these shadow regions in the room become illuminated.
In this way, the metaphor obviously applies to vocal ministry, in which the Spirit can work through more vessels, more life stories, knowledge, and experiences, more perspectives, more openings into truth, and more faithfulness, to illuminate the shadows in each other’s hearts.
But the worshippers also bring these qualities with them into the silence, as well as into their ministry, to animate and shape the transcendental dimension of the gathered meeting. This is more of a mystery. How do the inward unspoken qualities of the worshippers give the gathered meeting its energy and joy? How do their intentions and focus and spiritual yearnings bring the Life into the gathering? And what provides the medium through which this Life flows from vessel to vessel?
A subject for another post.
Ministry for and to Different Conditions
October 25, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’ve just finished reading Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings, a book of epistles to Quaker meetings and gatherings “written originally out of a motion of love and with the intent that they might help some readers on their path towards the more abundant life that Christ promises and makes possible.”
The book is a wonderful source of spiritual nurture, for both readers and their meetings. Parts of this book spoke to me so deeply that I want to share them more widely here. I’m going to pass on more from this book in future posts.
For instance, in letter number four, titled: “As we reflect on our meetings’ spiritual condition,” Brian writes about “Ministry for and to different conditions” in ways I found very useful as I work with my own meeting to bring my ministries into the life of the meeting. The entire letter, and especially the last paragraph, are an appeal to our meetings to be more proactive in our nurture of ministry, which resonates with my own calling to have more “fire in the Spirit” in the nurture of ministry in our meetings.
I quote Brian in full (page 16–18):
The ministry of the meeting, which includes the words spoken and the silent ministry, and the words or deeds of service or prayer with individuals or groups at other times, is rooted in a listening, loving focus on the actual people gathered and on the One in whom they are gathered.
As you consider the meeting’s condition this year, Friends, listen for the conditions within the community in compassion and honesty. Three conditions that have come particucarly to mind in my exercise are these: the “young” members, of any age, who are new to Friends; the “established”; and the “well-grown in the truth.” Each of these condition has characteristics that may require particular kinds of service to help them forward, and it is good sometimes for a meeting to reflect on whether the ministry is offering what it can under God’s guidance.
In the “young,” that is, those new to Friends, there may be exploration, enthusiasm, receptivity, and a need and desire to learn the foundations of the Quaker path. They need guidance, but not only instruction. They have come to you in curiosity, perhaps, but under that is a restlessness or inquiry, and it is through the witness of your acts and life joined with words of explanation and welcome that they will be helped to see that among you they can find a living path. Inquirers need to feel our humility, but also where we are touched with fire and the Holy Spirit.
In “established Friends,” there is a growth of discipline and order, a maturing exploration of and use of gifts, and a habit of bearing responsibility for the life and support of the meeting. But in this period, there can be an engagement with contradictions and continued mysteries in the understanding of Quakerism. Faith and discoveries that were nourishing and inspiring in the first days among Friends may feel stale or insufficient for the demands now encountered. New resources and opportunities are needed if such active Freinds are to rediscover their spiritual childhood—the place of wonder and gratitude, openness and receptivity. Fire and the Spirit!
Those well grown in the truth have a tested understanding of the value of the diverse paths people can follow as well as the dangers of a mere celebration of diversity. They have an understanding of the pirtfalls and dangers of life in the Spirit, for individuals and meetings, and a sympathy for questioning and doubt. Their expeirence has brought a reliance on the workings of the Lord in many situations, and they have learned to wait and listen; they have seen (or others have seen in them) a growth in tenderness, courage, freedom, and discipline in love and truth. At this stage, though, there are fresh challenges that come from habits long established, the same problems and challenges returning over and over. They can read the indicators of the meeting’s long-term good or ill health and stability, its growth and depth; caring deeply, they can yet feel taken for granted and that their own seeking and spiritual thirst is not seen.
Fire and the Spirit—the baptism is needed at every stage!
People in each of these stages of their spiritual life offer ministry rooted in the questions and findings of that condition, but each stage also has its temptations and problems. In each stage there are times of dryness, or misplaced complacency, of frustration, and of hope. Everyone needs to receive nurture and love, in meeting and out, if their gifts and strengths are to be confirmed and to grow. All need exhortation or inspiration, instruction, reasurance, consolation, gratitude, and challenge—accompaniment in the Spirit as individuals trying to walk in the Light.
Vocal Ministry: A Garden, a School of the Spirit
October 6, 2025 § 1 Comment
Vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker way. As such, it is the classroom and laboratory in the school of the Spirit for Quaker ministry of all kinds. In our practice of vocal ministry, we can learn and experiment with all of the spiritual elements that make up the faith and practice of Quaker ministry more generally.
Listening for the Voice. The spiritual foundation of ministry is listening for the Voice that is calling us into service, an expectant attention to a possible anointing by the Spirit within us for service. Something there is within us that can hear that call, that can see that light, that can feel that prompt as a seed sprouting, pushing aside the soil of our soul and unfurling into the light of consciousness.
Nurturing the plant. Once you feel that baptism, then the attention changes into a form of waiting to see how the plant grows, combined with however we water such emerging shoots with deep contemplation. We nurture it, give it the fertilizer of this new kind of attention, until it matures and perhaps a flower blooms, a message, or a mission, that is taking more definite form.
Expectant waiting. Once the shoot, now a plant, has produced a blossom, a possible message, attention shifts again. We remain attentive and open, trying to hold onto the opening but not obstructing its development. Will we see it pollenated? Will new thoughts and feelings enter our regard and enrich it, so that some fruit begins to form? Or will the ministry of others bring some truth to the body ahead of our own that settles us back into silence? Or perhaps just the mystery of the deep silence itself will bring the fruit to maturity. If so, eventually a beam of Light shines upon it with clarity, a wind of the Spirit shakes the branch, and it falls ripe into your hand.
Discerning the Spirit. But we are not done yet. Another form of attention is required. Has it truly been pollenated by God? Is this fruit the fruit of the Spirit or of ego, or of a mind engaged but without a true spiritual transmission? Is it just for my own nourishment, or has it been given to me to serve to the meeting? If so, then, we become clear and out to the diners at the messianic banquet it goes.
Serving faithfully. Now, more deep listening even while speaking is required. If it has been given for the meeting, do I keep my ego off the plate in its delivery? Is my ministry truly service and savory in itself, or have I over-seasoned it? And do I know when the plate has been cleared, and I can sit down, having fulfilled my service?
Eldering. Once I’ve sat down, how do I feel—deeply at peace or quite energized, not in the satisfaction of self, but in some transcending sense of relief or of satisfaction? How does my Guide, the spirit of the christ, of the anointing, feel about my service? This inner reflection is just as subtle and delicate as all the other forms of spiritual attention we’ve exercised, just as reliant on experiment and practice. But we are not alone. What does the meeting think of my service? Is our meeting paying attention, deeply listening not just to the message but also to the Seed from which it grew? Is our meeting passing on the faith and tools for listening spirituality and ways to enter the depths of our being and listen? Is the meeting looking for opportunities to nurture those who are being called into service?
All of these forms of attention are versions of our listening spirituality, ways to attune ourselves to the movement of the Spirit within us and among us, to hear its message for us, as individuals and as meetings. Do we have teachers in this classroom? Have we given our ministers the tools they need to find their own faith and practices, so that they may grow in their service? And is the soil of our meeting’s garden fertile and ready to receive the new seeds that our ministry brings to us?
The Murmuring of the Spirit Within
September 15, 2025 § Leave a comment
In my previous post, I talked about what it’s been like for feel a calling to vocal ministry, which is for me a new experience. I had originally planned to share the ministry I had brought to meeting the previous Sunday, and ended up talking about the experience instead.
So here is that vocal ministry for 14 Ninth Month, 2025:
Listen!
The voice of the Spirit within us is often just a murmur barely audible over the noise in our brains.
It is calling out our true name, as Jesus did to Mary Magdalen in the garden; it is calling us back to the Garden with words of healing;
with words that can strengthen us in our troubles and comfort us in our sorrows;
with words to awaken us to the truth within us and to the beauty around us;
with words to guide us as we walk in the world, and correct us when we step off the path, and forgive us when we have stepped off the path;
with words to inspire us to acts of creative expression and to acts of courage;
with words to bring us into love, love of God, love of each other, love even of our enemies;
with words that lead us into fulfillment and joy.:
Vocal Ministry as a Calling
September 15, 2025 § 1 Comment
For years—for decades—I have been thinking and writing about and believing in the potential for vocal ministry as an ongoing calling rather than as an episodic prompting to speak that arises in the moment, and the kinds of support that such a calling should receive. Friends seem to have experienced vocal ministry this way, as a calling, for centuries until Friends in some quarters began laying down the practice of recording ministers in the early twentieth century.
In the meetings that no longer record gifts in ministry, and even in some that do, this sense of calling to vocal ministry seems to have left us, even though we recognize callings to other forms of ministry, like witness ministry for example, and even though vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker tradition. This is one of the most significant changes in all the history of Quaker religious culture, and it seems to have gone oddly unnoticed, at least in the Quaker circles I move in.
Meanwhile, although I’ve been basically obsessed with this matter for a long time, I have not felt such a calling myself—until recently. Now I do, and I want to share some of what that’s been like.
I think I see a couple of reasons for my new sense of calling.
First, I have been working for months on a Pendle Hill Pamphlet submission on the meeting’s role in supporting vocal ministry and on what I call a culture of eldership more broadly. It’s now in Pendle Hill’s hands. So I’ve been steeping myself in our faith and practice of vocal ministry for quite a while and, more importantly, I’ve been diving deep into my own belief and experience of ministry in general, and vocal ministry in particular. It’s been a classic case of how Friend Richard Foster describes study as a spiritual discipline: Spirit-led study can awaken, deepen, and transform your faith and practice.
Second, I’ve changed meetings, from Central Philadelphia Meeting, which is a large urban meeting with vocal ministry of varying degrees of “Spirit-led-ness”, to Princeton Meeting, a much smaller meeting with two meetings for worship. Friends in the earlier meeting, which I regularly attend, have often self-selected for more silence and less ministry than the later meeting often provides; completely silent meetings are not too uncommon. As for me, however, lately, for the first time in forty years as a Friend, I find myself speaking fairly often. I am usually one of only two or three ministers, as was the case last Sunday, for instance.
The discernment I’ve put into writing that essay on vocal ministry and its nurture has worked somehow, I think, with this surprising arising of my own ministry in practice, and awakened in me a sense of calling. I now do feel called to vocal ministry in the way I imagine ministers were in the elder days.
For a long time, I have felt a calling to a vocal ministry of teaching, keeping an ear open for opportunities to pass on our tradition. But this feels different. I do teach a bit in these new messages sometimes. But, even when that’s happening, it’s been secondary to messages of spiritual nurture. I can’t help but ladle out from our tradition or from the Bible, but I find myself trying primarily to quench spiritual thirst, rather than to pass on an element of our faith, practice, and experience.
How does this feel? It feels like I’m navigating a prophetic stream that is flowing inside of me, or through me. There is a sense of an abiding presence, of a continual inner river of movement or momentum, prompting these messages, rather than a sense of a discreet personal Presence, like Jesus Christ, say, of a specific point source, let alone one with a name, as I imagine ministers experienced it in the elder days. But this presence does not feel vague or amorphous. It feels palpable and immediate.
And it’s continuous. By that I mean that some mysterious underlying stream of influence seems to connect my messages over the weeks that separate them. It’s not a thematic connection or about the content; it’s not a feeling either; it’s something else, which I’m calling the spirit of the christ, by which I mean a spirit of anointing. For the Greek word christos means anointed. But I’ll leave that part of it for another post.
Last Sunday, all this was especially palpable. I am nervous about how often I’m speaking, nervous on my own behalf, since the experience is still very new and feels fraught with spiritual risk. But I’m also nervous on behalf of the meeting and the other worshippers. I worry that I’m developing a reputation, and that others might be getting nervous, too, about where this is going and what I’m up to, especially as I am a relative newcomer bringing a new sensibility to the meeting in other ways besides this vocal ministry. And this frequent speaker Steven Davison is the only me they’ve known; they don’t know that I used to be a much more infrequent speaker. So I’ve been trying to be especially diligent in my discernment and even schooling myself not to speak, though I know I’m not supposed to do that either.
But right away last Sunday, I could feel that stream moving in me. I renewed my resolve to say in the boat and not look for a landing, and that was going quite well until fairly close to the end of the hour. Then a Friend spoke who I believe also has a calling to vocal ministry, though I’m not sure she feels that way. And as has happened several times in recent weeks, her message triggered something, and I found myself crafting a message that grew directly out of hers and the images she used. The Stream would not let me coast past that dock. So I landed and spoke.
And I do craft; my messages aren’t spontaneous speaking. Last Sunday, all my study and consideration came up and out and through into my words. I am a writer and a crafter and a student, and all that feels natural and correct to me; all that is a spiritual discipline for me. My “craftiness” is another source of worry for me, true, but these are the pipes I’ve been given. So an odd feeling of confidence or grounded-ness shares space with my worry in this boat.
And the meeting? I think our meeting—at least the earlier meeting for worship—has at least two other Friends who have what looks to me like a calling. I’ve spoken to one of them about this, and she seems willing to entertain the idea, at least. It feels to me like she’s experimenting with it.
But the wider meeting? I serve on Worship and Ministry committee and I’ve brought the idea of a calling to vocal ministry up somewhat obliquely, and my sense is that some members of the committee were a little unsure what I was talking about and others were ready to consider it more. I’m only just getting used to it myself as a personal reality rather than just as a subject for more abstract or impersonal study, thought, and sharing. So I guess we’ll all grow into this together.
Meanwhile, I started writing this post because I wanted to share the ministry I brought last Sunday, and I ended trying to articulate my experience instead. So in the next post, I want to share the actual ministry I brought last Sunday.
A Prayer
March 9, 2025 § 2 Comments
I have found myself speaking quite often in meeting lately. Maybe it’s because I’m working on a submission on vocal ministry to Pendle Hill Pamphlets, so vocal ministry is not just on my mind, but really in my mind. It’s been making me nervous, speaking often like this, more consistently than I every have in the past—three times in four weeks, maybe four times in six weeks. Oy.
Furthermore, I’m relatively new to the meeting, so I’m worried about how it looks to have this newcomer loading up an early morning worship that not infrequently goes silent the whole hour, as it did this morning.
All these concerns are beside the point, of course. The only thing that really matters is whether I’ve been called. But this new trend has me worried about that, too. Am I really called to speak this consistently?
So I went to meeting this morning set on resisting, and so I did. And that resistance had me literally quaking for the last ten minutes. This was made both easier and more difficult, paradoxically, because the message was a prayer. I have only brought vocal prayer to meeting three times in 38 years, and one of them was an extremely harrowing experience. But I held on to my resolve and did not speak. Was I unfaithful? In the end, it felt okay, but . . . I relieved the pressure by sharing the prayer in “afterthoughts”, so I got it out after all.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with afterthoughts and I think it’s possible that I have not offered one afterthought in all my time as a Friend. I suspect, with no clear evidence, that afterthoughts have some kind of feedback effect on the vocal ministry—but what effect? Does it protect the worship from shallow ministry or lower the bar? I’ve been in meetings that have them and meetings that don’t, and I still can’t tell. But my instincts tell me that afterthoughts must have some kind of effect on the worship that precedes them.
Well, anyway, here is that prayer:
Our Father, who art in the mystery of transcendence;
Our Mother, who art in the earth in her immanence;
Our Holy Spirit, which art in each of us a holy presence;
hallow our hearts and minds to your guidance.
Please help us to bring divine love into the world.
Please give all of us who are in need the necessities of the day.
Please help us to treat others as we want to be treated.
Please help us to resist the temptation to do wrong,
and to have the wisdom and strength to do what is right.
And thank you, thank you, thank you.
Prophetic Stream Pipeline
March 3, 2025 § Leave a comment
Each of our testimonies has come into the light through the Light.
Someone turns toward the light within them and the Holy Spirit inspires an opening. Sometimes the opening matures into a message. If the message falls on fertile soil it bears fruit. The fruit is tested and if it lasts (John 15:16), it becomes a settled testimony.
Vocal ministry is the pipeline of revelation; it carries new truth from the prophetic stream into the lives of our members and our meetings.
I have seen this glorious process take place myself. In 1986, Marshall Massey brought a message to the Friends General Conference Gathering about the travails of the earth and an appeal for Quaker meetings to form earthcare committees. Less than a month later, two Friends brought his message from the Gathering to the annual sessions of New York Yearly Meeting. A handful of us came to hear that message and we did have ears to hear. Soon we had formed an earthcare task group. The yearly meeting eventually laid down that task group without forming a standing committee, but in the meantime, it had revised its Faith and Practice to include a testimony on earthcare.
The Holy Spirit is always trying to carry us forward with new truth about how to live rightly in the world.
The Spirit of the Christ and Vocal Ministry
December 3, 2024 § Leave a comment
When we strive to be Spirit-led in our vocal ministry, what do we mean by that? What, or who, is the Spirit by which we hope to be led?
For centuries, the Quaker answer to that question has been pretty straightforward: it is Jesus Christ who gathers us in worship and who leads us in vocal ministry.
But in our liberal branch of the Quaker movement, since roughly the middle of the last century, we have become increasingly less Christ-centered in our understanding of that Spirit.
But even Jesus as the Christ was led by the Spirit.
As the gospel of Luke tells it, at his baptism a Spirit descended on Jesus, conferring upon him spiritual gifts of vision and mission. He then spent some time in the desert during which his vision was tested. And when he was clear in his discernment regarding his role in the kingdom of God, he went back home to Nazareth.
There, on the sabbath, the local rabbi invited him to read from the prophets. We can imagine that the rabbi was aware of Jesus’ claim to prophetic status, and wanted him to explain himself, to choose a passage that might provide a foundation for his claims, and some time to expound on the passage and explain why and how he was the messiah.
Jesus chose Isaiah 61, verses one and part of two: “The spirit of Yahweh God is upon me, because God has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the poor . . .” Isaiah, and Jesus in this passage in Luke, go on to unpack what good news to the poor meant. Then Jesus declared that Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in him.
The spirit of God has anointed me, he proclaimed. The word “anointed” in Greek is the word “christ”; the word anointed in Hebrew is “messiah”. Jesus is saying, I have been anointed by God’s spirit, I have been christ-ed, I have been messiah-ed, by God’s spirit.
Several years later, shortly after his death, the same spirit of the christ anointed the disciples at the Pentecost, and led them into Spirit-led vocal ministry, jump-starting the post-crucifixion Christian movement.
And the spirit of the christing continued to anoint prophets and mystics for centuries after: Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme . . . George Fox.
When George Fox preached to the Seekers on Firbank Fell in 1652, he was anointed by the same spirit of the christ, and they were convinced, they were themselves anointed, christ-ed, in the Spirit, in a second Pentecost, and that anointing jump-started the Quaker movement.
And the spirit of the christing has been anointing us ever since: John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Fry, Alice Paul, Sandra Cronk, Patricia Loring, Bill Taber.
And when we rise to speak, we too pray that we will be anointed by the same spirit that anointed Jesus and all these other prophets, mystics, and saints, one Spirit leading the faithful into vision and mission.
Theism, Nontheism, and Quaker Identity
November 1, 2024 § 3 Comments
This is a long post—lots of ground to cover. So here’s a brief outline:
Introduction
I subscribe to an email newsletter of Academia, a site that aggregates academic articles, and I’ve set a filter for Quaker articles. I get stuff I want to read regularly—can’t keep up with it.
Today, I got “Quakers and Non/Theism: Questions and Prospects,” by Jeffrey Dudiak, an article that appeared in Quaker Religious Thought, volume 118, from 2012. The issue features essays on theism, nontheism, and Quaker identity by Howard Macy as editor, Paul Anderson, Jeffrey Dudiak, David Boulton, Shannon Craigo-Snell, and Patrick J. Nugent. The latter two articles are responses primarily to Dudiak and Boulton, the theist and nontheist apologists.
I wanted to share this resource on what I believe is a very important subject, whose salience has not diminished since 2012, though maybe the heat’s been turned down a bit since then. But I also want to offer my own position on these questions. I don’t imagine that my convictions settle anything, but I hope that they do speak to some Friends.
Not in the traditional sense, as in believing in a supreme being who is omnipotent, omniscient, completely good; “personal” in the sense of keen to engage in relationship with me; “historical,” not just in the sense of paying attention to human history, both writ large and personal, but also having a plan for the fulfillment and redemption of humanity writ large and for individual humans, too, like me—a supreme deity who knows me, cares about me, and whom I could know in return.
I do not know such a deity—I have no experience to base such a belief on. Intellectually, such an idea even offends me a bit: where was some history-caring and engaged deity during the Holocaust, for instance? Furthermore, experience of a supreme being by a being as finite as myself would, it seems, shatter my consciousness. And even if I did experience [him] without exploding, what good would it do me? My yoga teachers taught a similar Vedanta endgame of pure consciousness as the goal of my practice, and it just seemed irrelevant to my lived life.
On the other hand, I have experienced—what shall I call them? Angels? Spirits? Devas? I am some kind of polytheist, having had direct transcendental experience of spiritual beings, and I subsequently have enjoyed relationships with them as central to my spiritual life. So I call myself a para-theist. My experience is that there are deities out there, just with a small “d”.
And I take at face value the testimony of my Christian f/Friends, and the testimony of the first Friends, and of thousands of Friends since the 17th century—the testimony of their encounter and relationship with Jesus Christ. Therefore, I believe in Jesus Christ, even though I have not (yet) been called by him into his discipleship.
I am not willing to disrespect the experiences of those Friends who have been blessed by his presence in their lives by telling them that their experience is just a projection of their unconscious, or not real in some other way, or whatever, just because I don’t share their experience; and also because I wouldn’t want anybody to disrespect my own such experiences. Don’t mess with with my experience and I won’t mess with yours; though I do invite inquiry, and even respectful challenge.
Quakerism is a Christian religion
For this reason, and for several other reasons, I consider Quakerism a Christian religion, and I feel that I am a guest in the house that Christ built. I am grateful that my meetings have accepted me without my Christian confession (though they never even considered such a matter, being to that degree non-Christian or post-Christian). And I think other non-Christians should share my gratitude and act accordingly. By act accordingly, I mean, not just tolerate, but invite and celebrate Christian and Biblical vocal ministry, and actively contribute to a Quaker culture in which Christian Friends feel invited to talk from their own experience and religious sensibilities without fear or censure. Or even to pray, as I do, that Christ will join us, gather us, in our worship.
In other words, a theism built on relationship with Christ seems not just reasonable to me; it parallels my own experience. Hence my para-theism.
It is natural for us to venture out of our experience into theology. I can’t keep from doing this, myself. Well, actually, I love doing it, I do it all the time, in my head and in my writing. And, while a lot of the legacy theology of the Christian tradition does not work for me, it obviously works for a lot of Friends, at least up to a point. From the beginning, starting with Fox himself, some Quakers have always been a bit heterodox.
So we are theists
So, for me, the bottom line is that Quakers are theists in our core identity, because we are Christian; that is, we were gathered as a people of God by Christ, most of us have been invited into personal f/Friendship with Christ, and that’s that. We are a Christian faith historically. We are a Christian faith demographically still today. And the lack of such experience by a small minority of the movement does not change the identity of the movement as a whole.
That we non-Christians, and nontheists, and para-theists in the minority have been given a bed in the spare room of the house that Christ built is a blessing to be grateful for. Trying to kick Christ out of the master bedroom onto the living room couch is deeply disrespectful of our tradition, and of him.
About “God”
One more thing, though. I just used the word God. So what do I mean by “God”, capital “G”? In my public discourse, I use the word God as a placeholder for the Mystery Reality behind my listener’s or my reader’s own spiritual and religious experience is. Your experience is real; I honor that with belief and respect.
I do have my own personal understanding of God, but it’s mine and I will not press it upon you as some greater truth. But I will share it as mine.
For me, God is the spiritual dimension of evolution. In this, I am something of a student of Teilhard de Chardin and of Thomas Berry. The universe is unfolding. There is a wisdom, an intelligence, and an apparent direction to this unfolding—a Logos, as the writer of the prologue to the gospel of John put it, and as the ancient Stoics understood it, and Philo of Alexandria and the writer of the apocryphal Book of Wisdom. There is a Mystery Reality behind creation, within creation, a spiritual dynamic in evolution that we can sometimes sense somehow, in some small but intimate way—when I’m free-climbing the cliffs of the Shawangunks, for instance, or hearing a V of geese pass overhead above the fog.
That communion is the deepest of all communions for me, with the possible exception of a gathered Quaker meeting for worship. So God is real for me in this way, yes.
Quaker Ministry Since the Cessation of Recording
January 1, 2023 § 13 Comments
I’m not sure how I came across this article, but its subject is right up my alley: “Our Quaker Ministry Since the Cessation of Recording,” by T. Edward Harvey, published in the British Friends Quarterly Examiner. It is apparently the transcript of an address to the Elders of London Yearly Meeting on May 22, 1946.
The author expresses a concern that is a recurring theme in this blog and my other writing: the collapse of meaningful, proactive eldering of vocal ministry after laying down the practice of recording ministers, or, as I prefer the usage that New York Yearly Meeting uses, recording gifts in ministry. Because its about the gifts and the ministry, not primarily the minister.
Anyway, here’s the section that spoke to me the most (page 188):
When Yearly Meeting made its decision to cease recording it was careful to say that recording was a matter of machinery, and that whether recording was discontinued or not, much more responsibility for the exercise of the ministry should be taken by the Monthly Meeting. Its recommendations are contained in Part III of our Book of Discipline, but unfortunately the great majority of our members do not read this—even Clerks of Monthly Meetings are sometimes lacking in knowledge of a good deal of it, and I would venture to say that there are a good many Elders who are not familiar with many of the passages in it dealing with the work which especially concerns them. [London Yearly Meeting apparently still had elders at this time.] There are in it extracts from the decisions of Yearly Meeting in 1924 which lay on our Meetings a definite duty with regard to the Ministry—and this duty we shall, I believe, have to admit has very largely not been carried out, though we may thankfully hope that the recommendation with regard to “a greater exercise of sympathetic eldership in our meeting, encouraging those who are beginning to speak” has been fulfilled in large measure. The section on Ministry continues thus:—
“The definite duty should be laid upon all Monthly Meetings of finding ways to show their interest in the Ministry and their sympathy with those called to this service. Though this is already the task of the Elders, it should also be shared by the meeting as a whole.
“It is not necessary that Monthly Meetings should adopt uniform methods of procedure in this respect, but in all cases they should be asked to find time for the consideration of questions affecting the Ministry and to endeavour in practical ways to express their fellowship with those who are called to undertake this service.”
How far has this been carried out? Do our Monthly Meetings regularly make it a part of their duty?
This was written twenty-two years after the yearly meeting laid down the practice of recording. Seventy-six years have passed since Friend Harvey addressed those elders, literally my entire lifetime. I think the situation is still the same here in America, at least.
Except for one all-important thing: In 1946, there were apparently still Friends who felt called to vocal ministry, though their meetings had fallen behind and were no longer ministering to their needs. How many Friends (who aren’t pastors in pastoral meetings) feel a calling to vocal ministry today? And how many meetings would recognize such a calling if it occurred or know what to do with such a person if they did?
Through the Flaming Sword 