Follow Whithersoever You Are Led

Follow Whithersoever You Are Led

“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.'”

Spirit May Speak Gently

Spirit May Speak Gently

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

What Disturbs My False Rest

What Disturbs My False Rest

“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.”

Knowing We Need to Change Is Not Sufficient to Compel Change

Knowing We Need to Change Is Not Sufficient to Compel Change

“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.” 

Friends Explain Quaker Discernment

Friends Explain Quaker Discernment

“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.”

That True Vibration Inside of You

That True Vibration Inside of You

“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.”

The Greatest Service You Can Perform

The Greatest Service You Can Perform

“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?”

The Heart of Quaker Spirituality and Practice

The Heart of Quaker Spirituality and Practice

“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.”

We Are All Furnished With an Inward Guide

We Are All Furnished With an Inward Guide

“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.”

There Is a Principle Which Is Pure

There Is a Principle Which Is Pure

“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.”

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