“The great and small tragedies in your life and world sometimes just ask you to stand before them with silence and humility. You do not always have an answer, but you can learn to be present — listening deeply, with a heart that trembles in response to pain.”
I felt like the little donkey when / his burden is finally lifted. Things! / Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful / fire! More room in your heart for love, / for the trees! For the birds who own / nothing—the reason they can fly.
“If love were the central practice of a new generation of organizers and spiritual leaders, it would have a massive impact on what was considered organizing. If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We could suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through the eyes of love. We would see that there’s no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea — but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential.”
This week’s messages are guest edited by Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR), a Quaker organization that works for equity and a life of dignity for all. RSWR programs promote partnerships with women in India, Guatemala, Kenya, and Sierra Leone and encourage those with diverse resources to embrace our shared responsibility for one another’s well being.
“Deep within us, amid our differentiations as individuals and nations and species, is the desire for oneness. This holy longing is found not only in the human soul but in the soul of the universe, at the heart of everything that has being. We are not an exception to the universe. We are an expression of the universe. Our longings are a unique manifestation of the universe’s longings. In listening to the depths of life, within our lives and within every life, we will hear the longings of the One that are deeper than the fears that divide us…”
“As an artist, I find that art helps both inspire and captivate one’s attention. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing a piece of my art in each of the messages this week. Some may be familiar as they have appeared in publications such as Friends Journal and Quaker Life. Others have been used to promote AFSC events, while still others have never been shared. I hope they have helped you focus your attention on our Friends and their words.”
“The first step of peace is to stand still in the light (which discovers things contrary to it) for power and strength to stand against that nature which the light discovers: here grace grows, here is God alone glorified and exalted.”
“There is no question that faith communities will continue to provide sanctuary whenever refugees need protection from government officials, that many of these communities consider sanctuary to be an essential part of what it means for the church to be the church…”
“We attend meetings to escape the agonies of an unjust society and to find personal refuge among like-minded Friends. Because our hearts are not stirred or our minds made sensitive to the injustices of the communities in which we live, we accommodate ourselves to a whole system of personal and group relationships in our neighborhoods and places of business—a system that has served to reinforce the assumption of white superiority. This way of life denies that there is that of God in every man, the vital message of Quakerism that provides the basis for the “blessed community” in which everyone can achieve freedom from want and fear and can realize his full potential as a human being.”
“Those that speak against the Power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a woman, simply, by reason of her Sex, or because she is a Woman, not regarding the Seed, and Spirit, and Power that speaks in her; such speak against Christ, and his Church, and are of the Seed of the Serpent, wherein lodgeth the enmity.”
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