Messages

  • Individuals Can Resist Injustice, but Only in Community Can We Do Justice

    “As a faith practice, sanctuary brings back into focus our community’s covenant to serve the Peaceable Kingdom. First, sanctuary cannot be reduced to or dismissed as a matter of individual conscience. An individual may provide refuge to the violated and may even prophesy, but only a congregation can gather as a church and enter into the communion that is sanctuary. Second, the practice of sanctuary fuses the concerns that are separate and even competing issues when relegated to the faith practice of individuals.”

  • Wear Thy Sword as Long as Thou Canst

    “Young William Penn, a gentleman of high social status, had heard Quakers preach and had experienced an opening of the Spirit in his own life. After a few months he had the opportunity of meeting George Fox, the inspiring leader of the Religious Society of Friends. Penn was obviously troubled in his conscience about following the custom of his class of wearing a sword. So he asked Fox, ‘How long should I wear my sword?’ Fox replied in the Quaker language of that day, ‘Wear thy sword as long as thou canst.'”

  • The Seeds of Concern Are Given for Planting

    “In prayer, the seeds of concern have a way of appearing. Often enough a concern begins in a feeling of being liable, personally responsible for someone or some event. With it may come an intimation that one should do some little thing: speak to some person, make an inquiry into a certain situation, write a letter, send some money, send a book. Or it may be a stop in our minds about some pending decision, or a clear directive that now is not the time to rest, or an urge to stay home when we had been meaning to be away.”

  • Learn to Say No as Well as Yes

    “My cosmic love, or the Divine Lover loving within me, cannot accomplish its full intent, which is universal saviourhood, within the limits of three score years and ten.* But the Loving Presence does not burden us equally with all things, but considerately puts upon each of us just a few central tasks as emphatic responsibilities. For each of us these special undertakings are our share in the joyous burdens of love.”

  • Bayard Rustin: “There is no need for me to fear.”

    “About thirteen miles north of Nashville, I heard the racket of approaching police cars. In a few seconds the bus came to a sudden stop. A police car and two motorcycles drew up to us. Four police came thundering into the bus. They consulted shortly with the driver and then came back to me.”

  • We Say We Are Activists; Early Friends Said They Were Waiters

    “When compared with bodily action, what could seem more inactive than waiting upon God? The modern world asks, ‘Where will that get you?’ Young people say, ‘We want action.’ Yet, as we have seen, it was precisely through this and other apparently inactive means that the early Friends came into a power of whole action that surpasses anything that we experience today.”

  • Look Not to Yourself, But to That Within You

    “I have thought this morning, whether we, as a Society, do not suffer more than we need, by expecting too much of ourselves; whether our hope and reliance is sufficiently on Him whom we desire to become our all in all; experience has taught me, that Christ in me, or His saying and anointing power in me, is indeed my only hope of glory. I look not to myself, but to that within me, that has to my admiration proved to be my present help, and enabled me to do what I believe myself I could not have done.”

  • We Are a Gentle, Angry People

    “We are a gentle, angry people /
    And we are singing, singing for our lives /
    We are a land of many colors /
    And we are singing, singing for our lives”

  • Coming into Citizenship in a Heavenly Kingdom

    “What we try to mend depends a good deal on what we perceive to be torn. The search for religious experience often originates in a sense of being alienated, separated, torn from the divine, the truth, the great community of the universe to which we yearn to belong. The religious experience itself often begins with a conversion (literally a ‘turning towards’), an experience of what might be called ‘disalienation,’ a coming into citizenship in a heavenly kingdom, an acceptance of membership in a divine community.”

  • Spirituality Is a Rehearsal

    “For a musician, actor, or athlete, practice and rehearsal are simply steps toward the ultimate goal, the performance — the concert, the play, or the ball game. For a spiritually led person the same is true. The purpose of spiritual practice and rehearsal is to enable each of us to be spiritually led in the performance of our daily lives.”

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