If Love Flows Through Us
If love flows through us, then we can’t possess it. And if love flows through us, then we can’t take credit for allowing it to do so.
Delusion, Quaker Worship, & Spiritual Life
If the goal of my spiritual life is transformation, spiritual attainment, or personal improvement, then any path I walk leads back to me — that is, nowhere. … Openness to sobering, even painful revelation is at the heart of silent Quaker worship: the turning of bare attention, without denial or rationalization, to whatever appears as I am searched by the light that was in Jesus. … By dispelling the delusion of self as center, the Christ-light eases my need for self-validation and spiritual success.
Special Experiences and Visions
Vocal ministry about the relative unimportance of special spiritual experiences.
An Easter Trilogy
Three posts on a Quaker’s reactions to the Easter story.
No Salvation
There is no salvation. There is nothing I can do, or anyone do for me, that can rescue me from being what I am: a human animal conditioned in every sense. No deliverance from guilt, pain, death. No act, belief, or experience that would make acceptable the unacceptable. No person, institution, concept, or intuition to hope in. Nothing to hold, seek, or look forward to.
On Being Peaceful
I sense that our motives for taking part in an action for peace are crucial to the effectiveness of that action. But I am not clear about my motives. I can’t say with confidence that I am moved more by love for enemies (in this case, warmongers and other violent people) than by a desire…
A Quaker Reading of 1 John 4
In 1 John, the apostle makes the explicit identification of God and agapē — universal love — that can serve as the primary interpretive principle for post-theistic Friends in our reading of both scripture and the Quaker tradition.
“To all Friends” — an Adaptation
A 21st-century adaptation of George Fox’s Epistle CXXX, “To all Friends, to dwell in the truth, the life of God, the light, &c.” (1656).
