How to Become a Member of a Spiritual Family

How to Become a Member of a Spiritual Family

“We are born into families in order to be able to transcend them and become members of a spiritual family in Christ. Our new spiritual families, our families of choice, do not necessarily exclude our relatives, but, on the other hand, do not automatically include them either. It is important to clarify that this is an internal struggle that an individual faces and is not something to be imposed by some outside authority as has happened in some churches. Also this is not a matter of taking stock of what theological or political tenets or lifestyles our family members hold and then deciding to exclude those who do not believe or live the way we do. We are really talking about what happens to family members who are in abusive relationships…”

Joining in Marriage Is the Work of the Lord Only

Joining in Marriage Is the Work of the Lord Only

“I asked a friend if they’d be willing to try a spiritual friendship practice with me. We met roughly once a month to talk about what was going on in our spiritual lives and to listen to each other. This brought home to me how powerful it is to be really listened to. Here was a space where I could talk about spirituality without fear of ridicule.”

How Powerful it Is to Be Really Listened To

How Powerful it Is to Be Really Listened To

“I asked a friend if they’d be willing to try a spiritual friendship practice with me. We met roughly once a month to talk about what was going on in our spiritual lives and to listen to each other. This brought home to me how powerful it is to be really listened to. Here was a space where I could talk about spirituality without fear of ridicule.”

Become for Each Other the Presence of God

Become for Each Other the Presence of God

“[We need to] rediscover the possibilities of a friendship in which the deepest areas of experience may be shared. Certainly that kind of openness seems to have existed in earlier generations among a group who were very significant in the life of the Society. Until this century it was not uncommon for Friends to travel in the ministry, following a real sense of leading in this direction. Often they went out in pairs, one older, one younger.”

The Hardest Lesson

The Hardest Lesson

“Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.”

Why I Stopped Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

Why I Stopped Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

“When I left a Quaker elementary school for a public middle school as a kid, I was surprised and confused by the mandatory morning pledge of allegiance to the American flag. I didn’t like it, but my Quaker education hadn’t been extensive enough for me to articulate why. I ended up going along with it because I was afraid to rock the boat in a new environment. By high school, I had the time and maturity to consider it more, and I chose not to stand or recite the pledge. I didn’t like the idea that I was swearing allegiance to a symbol, that this oath was supposed to take precedence over my conscience, and I didn’t believe that our country really provides “liberty and justice for all,” as the pledge states.”

The Relationship Between Your Inner and Outer Lives

The Relationship Between Your Inner and Outer Lives

“[The first generation of Friends] came upon a faith which cut to the root of the way they saw life, radically reorienting it. They saw that all they did must flow directly from what they experienced as true, and that if it did not, both the knowing and the doing became false. In order to keep the knowledge clear and the doing true, they stripped away anything which seemed to get in the way. They called those things superfluities, and it is this radical process of stripping for clear-seeing which we now term simplicity…”

Conscience Is Not the Infallible Voice of Truth

Conscience Is Not the Infallible Voice of Truth

“Conscience is not the infallible voice of truth, of the moral law, of God, or of anything else, but only man’s ability to hear this voice. This inner ear of man is, however, just as much subject to error as his physical ear.” 

Are the Seeds of War Nourished by Your Possessions?

Are the Seeds of War Nourished by Your Possessions?

“May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not.” 

How Do We Love Ourselves?

How Do We Love Ourselves?

“I think that we must first, and always, adhere firmly to the view that the right way is there to be found. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.’ Yet we shall not always find the right way. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ How do we love ourselves?”

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