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You may already know that the Daily Quaker Message is published by a brand new Quaker media org called Thee Quaker Project. We are a small startup with a big dream, and we have been busy preparing the way for Quakers to have an outsized impact on the future, as they have in the past. We believe that the Quaker message is more relevant than ever. That’s why we continue to dedicate ourselves to building a platform for the future of Friends, and to bringing Quakerism into the 21st century.

“There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names: it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep, and inward, confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren, in the best sense of the expression.”

“It is a leading principle in religion, that the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is not only immediate and direct, but perceptible. We believe that we are all furnished with an inward Guide or Monitor, who makes his voice known to us, and who, if faithfully obeyed and closely followed, will infallibly conduct us into true virtue and happiness.”

“Spiritual discernment lies at the heart of Quaker spirituality and practice. It’s grounded in the central Quaker conviction of the availability to every person of the experience and guidance of God, immediate as well as mediated. Discernment is the faculty we use to distinguish the true movement of the Spirit to speak in meeting for worship from the wholly human urge to share, to instruct, or to straighten people out. It is the capacity we exercise in a centered meeting for worship for the conduct of business to sense the right course for the meeting to take in complex or difficult circumstances. It is the ability to see into people, situations, and possibilities to identify what is of God in them and what is of the numerous other sources in ourselves – and what may be both.”

“To ‘listen’ another’s soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another. But in this scrutiny of the business of listening, is that all that has emerged? Is it blasphemous to suggest that over the shoulder of the human listener, there is never absent the silent presence of the Eternal Listener, the living God? For in penetrating to what is involved in listening, do we not disclose the thinness of the filament that separates [people] listening openly to one another, and that of God intently listening to each soul?”

“You think that you have a leading, but your ego takes over, or your will takes over, and you need community to be with you to help discern what is really coming through. Not for the community to tell you what’s coming through, but to reflect back to you what they’re hearing. Because you’re the one that needs to determine what that true vibration is inside of you.”

“For me, discernment is the core technology of Quakerism. It is the thing that we learn to do and that our faith supports. And that is to thresh through the complexity of life and find the kernel, find the root, find the way: the way for me today, at this moment.”

“No one is forced to pay attention to what the Light exposes. Just as we can close our outward, physical eyes to those things in the ordinary world that we find unpleasant and don’t want to see, we have the ability to close our inward, spiritual eyes and turn away from what the Light of Christ reveals inside us.” 

“Thus I continued still in vanity and folly, with intervals of deep distress and mournings, a short space longer, that is, till the winter of the year 1770, when, being about nineteen years old, I became more fully and clearly convinced, and that very much by the immediate operations, illuminations, and openings of divine light in my own mind, that this inward something, which had been thus long and powerfully striving with me, disturbing my every false rest, confusing every false and sin-flattering imagination of flesh and blood, or of the grand adversary, and enjoining it upon me to give up all, and walk in the ways of virtue and true self-denial, was the true and living spirit and power of the eternal God.”

“May we come with hearts / and minds prepared / seeking to be still / and seeking to listen.”

“One day walking alone, I felt myself so inwardly weak and feeble, that I stood still, and by the reverence that covered my mind, I knew that the hand of the Lord was on me and his presence round about, the earth was silent and all flesh brought into stillness, and light went forth with brightness, and shone on Great Britain, Ireland, and Holland, and my mind felt the gentle, yet strongly drawing cords of that love which is stronger than death, which made me say, ‘Lord! Go before, and strengthen me, and I will follow whithersoever thou leadest.'”

“Turn therefore inwards, and all that is within you will demonstrate to you the presence and power of God in your soul, and make you find and feel it with the same certainty as you find and feel your own thoughts.” 

“Most of us are given some common little jobs every day of our lives. To a very few comes the call to do something extraordinary, some great task. The world abounds in men and women who find happiness and opportunities for self-expression in being faithful in the humble stations of life which are theirs at a given time.”

“How we respond as individuals to the idea of being led, and how we respond to the actual leadings of the Holy Spirit when they come upon us, is closely related to how we feel about our own worth in God’s eyes; whether we can see ourselves as God’s beloved creations and human beings for whom Jesus Christ lived and died and lives again. In those times of my life when I have felt worst about myself and my life to date, I have been about as responsive as the rock mentioned in my journal passage: not believing that God cared, I did not believe that he would bother to lead me to say or to do any specific thing. More recently, as I have come to know God’s personal love for me experientially, I have also come to believe in and experience personal and specific divine leadings in my

“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.”

“We generally think of prophets as dramatic and conspicuous people; not only are they sometimes martyred, they occasionally sit on facing benches, makes speeches, get arrested, and are generally in the limelight. We need those conspicuous and bold prophets, and from time to time, even the most unassuming Quaker must take such a stand.”

“I am a man who has been ‘kicked’ by God, just as a boy kicks a ball in the direction he wants it to go. I have been driven and led by Him.”

“It hath been an objection in the minds of many, and several times hath been objected by the clergy, or ministers and others, against women’s speaking in the church; and so consequently may be taken, that they are condemned for meddling in the things of God.”

“When God taps a person on the shoulder and says, ‘Do this,’ a natural response – and perhaps the only appropriate response – seems to be, ‘Who, me? I am not adequate.’  In contrast to the fishermen who left their nets when Jesus said, ‘Follow me,’ many are the stories of prophets who need to hear the words ‘Fear not, for I am with you.'”

“One day while plowing I heard a voice, whether inside me or outside of me I knew not, but I was awake. It said, ‘Go thou and see the president.’ I answered, ‘Yea, Lord, thy servant heareth.’ And unhitching my plow, I went at once to the house and said to mother, ‘Wilt thou go with me to Washington to see the president?’ ‘Who sends thee?’ she asked. ‘The Lord,’ I answered.”