Leadings and Nontheism

“Quakers and many others who are practiced in prayer and meditation have had the experience of an insistent inner voice which moves them towards a specific course of action. In the silence this voice is at first soft and gentle, but if it is not heeded it can become stronger and stronger until the course of action is clear. Quakers call this a ‘concern,’ and it is this which is the source of many of the testimonies that are later adopted by the whole of the Quaker family.

The word concern is not used in the sense of ‘concern about something’ but rather it is a clear understanding that some task has been ‘inwardly laid upon me by God.’ Traditionally, with Quakers’ Christian heritage, this means acceptance of a personal God. However, today there are an increasing number of Friends who do not accept a personal God, yet their experience with the impersonal Spirit in the silence is the same. They are still able to point to the experience of an inner leading, and a feeling of being in harmony with the universe when they follow it.”

— Jim Pym, 1999
Buddhist Quaker publisher