The nature of inspiration
“Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism.”
— Caroline Stephen, 1890
Quaker philanthropist and author
Reader Responses
How do you stay teachable?
For a long time, I believed that being teachable meant that I needed to be always open to knowing that I may be wrong or needed to learn more. This meant always putting my own Knowing aside, and over time, I became disconnected from my Self and Knowing.
I found that not acknowledging my own Knowing made me less able to learn. I may have been teachable, but without a healthy sense of self, I had a harder time integrating new information because it got interrupted by the wobble within my Self.
I have come to learn that being teachable - and being able to integrate that learning - also depends on standing in my Knowing and sense of Self. It requires having a healthy enough ego to both know that I can always learn more - and that doesn’t discount the things I do Know.
Erin A.-H., Esquimalt, BC, Canada
By trying for humility. I've noticed my blind spots tend to be right where I feel most certain. Not that the core belief is wrong, but nuance is lurking there and I'd miss it if I didn't look.
Melissa H., Tampa, FL, USA
I strive to be quick with my next question and slow with every answer.
Scott S., Viroqua, WI, USA
New experiences! I’ve been practicing yoga since I was 12, teaching for nearly 20 years. I went to a class from an entirely different lineage a couple weeks ago with the intention to practice asanas (postures) as instructed instead of as I typically practice them. It was humbling and inspiring!
Eva P., Princess Anne, MD, USA
Avoiding denial when I make mistakes - a failure is the best teacher.
Mitch G., Lincoln City, OR, USA
I am taught by the 'least of these'.
Walter Q., Coquitlam, BC, Canada
This Week’s Messages
Mon Sep 07
Knowledge that doesn’t need to be taught
“Everyone who believes in the existence of God attributes to him justice, mercy, and love, and that he is unchangeable in his nature, and incapable of partiality. Hence he must—and no doubt has—given to every man and woman a complete and sufficient rule of faith and practice without the aid of books or men. And [God] hath so ordered, in the course of events, that the more strictly and faithfully every man and woman lives up to the guidance and teaching of this Inward Anointing… the more instruction and help they afford one another.” …
Tue Sep 08
The two most important things to teach children
“Teachers are optimists. We would not be teachers if we did not have confidence in the future and in humankind. We trust that given the right opportunities children will grow up into responsible adults capable of making good choices and of saving the world from disaster.” …
Wed Sep 09
Parker Palmer on the mind vs. the heart
“My vocation (to use the poet’s term) is the spiritual life, the quest for God, which relies on the eye of the heart. My avocation is education, the quest for knowledge, which relies on the eye of the mind. I have seen life through both these eyes as long as I can remember – but the two images have not always coincided… I have been forced to find ways for my eyes to work together, to find a common focus for my spirit-seeking heart and my knowledge-seeking mind that embraces reality in all its amazing dimensions.” …
Thu Sep 10
Teaching First-day school is ministry
“Religious education has always been public ministry. After Pentecost, Jesus’s disciples became apostles; those who had been his students became teachers and the early church’s foremost religious educators. Seventeenth-century Friends traveled in the ministry, sharing an emergent faith and developing practices. The nineteenth-century invention of First-day school moved formation outside the home, where family worship was experiential learning, and placed religious education in the public community of the meeting. Friends who step outside the meetingroom while the adult community is in worship in order to attend to the younger generations’ spiritual formation are public ministers.” …
Fri Sep 11
Fox: God has come to teach his people himself
“The Lord God of heaven and earth is come to teach his people himself by his light, Spirit, grace, and truth, and to bring them off all the world’s teachers. God hath raised up Christ Jesus, his Prophet, whom people should hear; and saith, ‘This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him,’ and Christ saith, ‘Learn of me, I am the way, the truth, and the life; and no man comes to the Father, but by me.’” …
Sat Sep 12
Believing in what we may become
“We seek to affirm in each child at school, each member of the meeting, each person we meet in our daily lives, the person that he or she may with God’s help grow to be. We are all the merest infants in God’s world, struggling to stand upright and walk unaided, trying in vain to articulate our halting thoughts and feelings. We stumble and fall. We give way to self-pity and shame. God hauls us to our feet again and makes sense of our childish babble, never ceasing to believe in what we may ultimately become. Do we do the same for our children and one another?” …
Read the source of today’s quote
Banner art by Winslow Homer
