“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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, 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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December 2024: This month’s theme is Discernment and Leadings, examining individual and corporate practices for listening to our inner guide. We will read about how to recognize and act on leadings, Quaker process, proceeding as way opens, and the fallibility of conscience. Making space for expectant waiting in decision making and patching together an understanding of divine will with the help of Friends are Quaker superpowers.
“The query for this week is: How can we prepare the way for powerful ministry? This is a query I have been living into in my own life. I recently founded a nonprofit called Public Friends; the mission of Public Friends is ensuring the future of Friends in North America by supporting and developing Quaker ministers to a professional standard. My hope is that Public Friends will prepare the way for powerful ministry.”
“This may be what some modern Friends find unpalatable – that they may be asked to endure the prophetic or teaching ministry of gifted ministers who have actually been given permission by the meeting to tell us when we fall short in our faithfulness.”
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