Unleashing the everyday prophet
“Only by imagining the world we want to create will we be able to envision the education system we need. Only by recognising the opportunity for every child to be an expression of God’s glory, and by unleashing the everyday prophet in every member of our societies, children, young people and those who work with them alike, will we edge closer to the Kingdom of Heaven our Quaker forebears were so certain was ours for the having.
Let us have faith, let us be bold, let us challenge, let us imagine. Let us start to remove the obstacles, to win over the hearts and minds, to support the innovators, the mavericks, the creative minds. Let’s move away from seeing education as a transaction, and towards seeing it as a gift.”
— Paul Parker, 2021
Recording Clerk for Britain Yearly Meeting
Reader Responses
When has your Quaker faith come into contrast or conflict with the practices or expectations of the wider world?
What did you learn about yourself and your faith?
I found the commemoration of 9/11 really difficult this week. The media focus seemed to be 95% on the US dead, with no mention of deaths “on the other side,” extending back decades and also during the wars we carried to the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. How can we speak of only one side and ever hope for peace?
Leopold S.
I'm a professional martial artist. Many find my profession to be an interesting choice for a Quaker - teaching force to overcome violence. However, that's not the part of my profession I found to be the hardest to reconcile with being a Quaker. It was actually our use of titles (Sir/Ma'am) and how to handle the playing of national anthems at sporting events that I had to sit with the most.
Stefanie S.
I uphold the peace testimony. Yet as a mother and grandmother, I know I would fight tooth and nail to protect my loved ones. I don't know how to reconcile that one.
Mary W., Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK
People tell me I should charge more for my time as a lawyer. I tell them that the Quaker business model is to provide a good product at a fair price. A lot of people just don’t get that — “Other lawyers are charging twice as much as you do.” I really don’t care that much. In that sense being a Quaker is pretty liberating.
Charging less means I am able to serve people who might not be able to afford other people’s prices. That’s also consistent with Jesus' teachings.
Daniel R., Durham, NC, USA
I don’t claim to be a Quaker, I agree with most of what I hear from Quaker folk, especially the deep respect for silence.
Constantly - from being a child told by classmates that I was going to hell because I had never been baptized, to being ridiculed in college for never drinking alcohol, to being told as an adult I am wrong to think that violence is never the answer, to still in the current situation struggling to remember that there is that of God in everyone. I have learned that my upbringing as a Friend was priceless for exactly those beliefs.
Rosemary C.M., Greensboro, NC, USA
This Week’s Messages
Mon Sep 14
Call ye upon him while he is near
“Hear instruction and be wise, while the good Spirit of the Lord is nigh to teach you; seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.” …
Tue Sep 15
Are you losing yourself in work?
“Because of the intimate nature of our work, teachers often tightly wrap our own identities into how our students perform: if the child does well, we do well; if the child struggles and falls down, we sink too. If not done mindfully, we can lose ourselves in our work – confusing the work for living fully.” …
Wed Sep 16
How does anyone ever learn a really new thing?
“How does anyone ever learn a really new thing? Since utopias are by definition ‘new,’ ‘not-yet,’ ‘other,’ human beings will be able to function in them in ways that do not throw us back to the old order only if we pay enough attention to the learning. Wishful thinking about the desired transformation of consciousness as an inevitable historical process distracts us from studying the difficult disciplines that will make transformation possible.” …
Thu Sep 17
Letter from a Quaker martyr
“Keep close to the Light and own it alone to be your teacher, guide, and counselor in all the way through which you are to pass, and in all things that you are to do. Stand in the denial of self and all its goals, and own the Light which leads into singleness of mind unto God away from selfish ends.” …
Fri Sep 18
Where is God living?
“To seek our divinity merely in books and writings is to seek the living among the dead: we do but in vain seek God many times in these, where his Truth too often is not so much enshrined, as entombed: no; intra te quære Deum, seek for God within thine own soul…. That is not the best and truest knowledge of God which is wrought out by the labour and sweat of the brain, but that which is kindled within us by an heavenly warmth in our hearts.” …
Sat Sep 19
The source of my knowledge of divine things
“I can truly ascribe all my knowledge in divine things to the inward manifestation of grace and truth, the teaching of the Holy Spirit. It was Christ, the Light of the world, the Life of men, who opened to me the Scriptures, and gave me a discerning of their meaning; and, as I was faithful and obedient to the pointings of Truth, I was favored with further and clearer discoveries thereof.” …
Source of today’s quote: A webinar with Quaker Values in Education
Banner art by Winslow Homer
