“Our need is to accept ourselves as a whole, and offer that whole to God, leaving it to God ‘unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid’ to evaluate the good and bad in us. The glorious miracle is that, if we can do this, God can still use us, with all our faults and weaknesses, if we are willing to be used.”
“Most persons are awakened and set on their new track of life through the quickening and kindling power of some person who becomes for them the instrument of inspiration and of the creation of faith and the vision of a nobler way of life. Persons are set on fire by someone who is already aflame. It is a trumpet call to high adventure that starts the forward movements away from old forms.”
July-August 2026: These messages are from the summer offseason, when the Daily Quaker Message delivered one message each week.
“Thee Quaker Project, the organization that produces the Daily Quaker Message, has a tagline: “Quaker media for the 21st century.” We’re always thinking about how to bring Quakerism into the digital age, and when I’m not editing the Daily Quaker, I’m managing Thee Quaker’s social media. So I’m invested in the idea that technology can be a conduit for meaningful spiritual experiences, and from conversations I’ve had with people who engage with our projects, I know that it often is. But like many people, my relationship with technology isn’t simple. I resent the time I waste scrolling, and notice myself reflexively reaching for my phone when I’m anxious or bored. My screen is filling up the spaces that used to be empty.”
“I think the Spirit doesn’t lead us to abandon technology but enables us to better use it. Our Society began with the clearness that the entirety of God’s teaching and truth didn’t end on the last page of the Bible: that God is still teaching! Can we still listen to the Inward Teacher when we impulsively check our smartphones throughout the day? I think that we can. God’s truth isn’t locked in a book or in a specific moment in history; that truth is also not locked out of our modern technologies.”
“To make technology responsible—answerable to our needs, careful of the approaching limits of the planet, responsive to conscience—such simple decisions must be replaced by complex ones, that include all the things—family, education, nature, faith, and the long-term future—that technolatry ignores. But in what social space will such decisions be made?”
“In the late 1980s, young urban professionals Scott and Mary Ann Savage experienced an unexpected call. In the midst of a booming material culture, they were uneasy with their lengthy commutes, hurried lives, and impact on the environment. They began to long for a simpler way of life. A spiritual hunger grew as well, which caused them to read about the plain communities around them in Ohio.”
“I’m going on a technology fast…. I’m a little bit scared. There’s this fear that I’ll be disconnected and somehow some amazing thing will happen and I won’t know about it. And then, I don’t know, I won’t have any friends? I guess that’s my fear. It’s not that I don’t need friends, because of course I do, but friends are not who I am. My relationships cannot really address issues of loneliness and deep-seated questions of meaning.”
“The Amish have managed to keep technology in check, and in doing so they have fostered a sense of community that many of us yearn for in our electronically tethered and frenetically paced lives. It’s not that we are not connected—280 million Americans out of a population of 307 million have a cell phone, not to mention Facebook and Twitter accounts—but we still find ourselves inwardly yearning for that something the Amish seem to possess in their lack and which we lack in our possessing: the serenity, the quietness, the sense of knowing where one belongs in a defined community….”
“The Amish are not completely opposed to technology. But they want to ask technology questions. And the primary question they ask of technology is, if we adopt you, what impact will that have on our core values? I think we can learn from the Amish; they’re putting technology on probation.”
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