Messages

  • How early Quakers resisted fake news

    “Quakers are also known as ‘seekers of truth’. How do we maintain that fundamental commitment to truth in an age of widespread online misinformation and disinformation? 

    …Quakerism was formed in an earlier era of unprecedented misinformation and disinformation, with often unreliable printed pamphlets widely available. Quaker testimony and practice and the distilled wisdom on which we can draw provide a very sound basis for combatting fake news.

    We need to stay focussed on the still small voice of calm.”

  • Fall into the hands of the living God

    “Corporate discernment of the will of God is a risky and imperfect proposition. In relying so extensively on the Holy Spirit, we make ourselves vulnerable to pitfalls and failures. However, far from being a weakness, such vulnerability is central to our understanding of the power of worship (and business) ‘in spirit and in truth.'”

  • Discernment is like driving at night

    “Because the evidence and experiences on which we act are usually conflicting and ambivalent, and because we are by nature vulnerable to our capacity for self-deception, discernment is often tentative and uncertain. We may not feel a great sense of having found the truth.”

  • The grace of God deepens our faculties for insight

    “If we are loyal to the truth as we see it, and respond with our might in the ‘common’ situations in day-to-day living as we face them, the glow of the grace of God deepens and nurtures our faculties for insight and for recognition of the true worth of things and of men.”

  • Come to the light to be proved

    “If you love the light, then you come to the light to be proved, and tried whether your works be wrought in God. But that which hates the light, turns from the light, and that shall be condemned by the light forever. And though you may turn from the light, where the unity is, and you may turn from the eternal truth; but from the witness of God in your consciences, (which he hath placed in you, which beareth witness for the living God,) you can never fly; that shall pursue you wherever you go.”

  • One hand on my heart, one hand on yours

    “When I feel the hard edge of judgment in my body and hear it in my words and thoughts, I am learning that I need to stop and softly bring my attention to my heart. I like to hold the image of one hand on my heart and one hand on the heart of the other. From this place of compassion, I seek to understand both of us and empower both of us to be in our truths, whatever that may be. I give myself permission to be changed/influenced by the other. I also give myself and the other permission to decide to back away or disengage if that serves Truth. If I decide to disengage, I will do it with loving kindness and not harshness.”

  • How truth suffers

    “Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those who offer it, for truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.”

  • Parker Palmer: Don’t follow someone else’s truth

    “Creating and holding space for discernment is profoundly counter-cultural work. We live in a culture that too often regards us as empty vessels to be filled with someone else’s knowledge, someone else’s agenda, someone else’s truth… Spiritual discernment is about trusting the fact that all of us are made in God’s image and all of us have access to God’s call for our lives.”

  • How to experience joys unspeakable

    “To you who are seekers, to you, young and old who have toiled all night and caught nothing, but who want to launch out into the deeps and let down your nets for a draught, I want to speak as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can. For God can be found.”

  • We must leave room for doubt

    “We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.”

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