Feel the Healing Miracle Begin
Breathe in the quiet purpose of this place; / Through outward stillness, seek a calm within. / Here we can find forgiveness and forgive; / Here feel the healing miracle begin.
Minor Ecstasies Are Bits of Stardust
[Minor ecstasies are] bits of star dust which are for all of us, however limited our opportunities. […] Something seen, something heard, something felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired and sick or sad or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer. Exercising our faculty for minor ecstasies may actually increase the number of them we feel.
Something Much Older and Deeper Than Quakerism
My experience is that there is a single root of our faith and life as a religious society — a taproot much older and runs much deeper than Quakerism. The taproot of a tree runs straight down from the trunk into the deepest soil, anchoring the tree against storms and providing nurture from the very deepest of sources. There may be hundreds of secondary roots, but only the taproot is necessary for the tree to survive and thrive. The Big Story — the Cosmic Story — is the story of creation’s eternally repeated encounters with its taproot.
A Deeper Understanding of Quaker Practice
I remember when I first encountered Elise Boulding’s idea that joy can be rooted in something deeper than happiness – it was a revelation that set me free to be at peace with my range of emotions and not to try and suppress or control them, but to appreciate each as it comes, grounded in joy. Monday’s message from Boulding set us on a path this week of inward exploration, further punctuated by Margaret Fell’s description of the Light on Tuesday.
Room for the Infinite
There is a profundity and subtlety in such pictures that we never should have missed. Such painting carries the universe in its bosom. It sets forth the Infinite, the Everlasting Background and Source of all things, and shows us the infinite particulars as out-jutting revelations of Itself. Out from It they came, back into It they retire. There is no disconnection; the finite is a fragmentary disclosure of the Infinite, a rhythm-filled continuation of that unspeakably full Life which gives it birth.
Do Not Fear Truth
I give myself this advice: Do not fear truth, let it be ever so contrary to inclination and feeling. Never give up the search after it; and let me take courage, and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates.
The Heart of the Quaker Tradition
When George Fox was initially on his spiritual quest to understand the true nature of faith and Christianity, he was living in the midst of full-on Christendom, that is state-sponsored Christianity or Christianity twisted to become comfortable acting as ‘the religion of empire.’
The Whole of Life is Sacramental
It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward — that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated — through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of an ‘inward and spiritual grace.’
Let the Light Search You
Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you; the secret subtlety of the enemy of your souls, this eternal searcher and trier will make manifest.
The Difference Between Happiness and Joy
The real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity. Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can.
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