James R: I Am What I Am

By James Riemermann
Here’s a thought-provoking com­ment that James left a few days ago on the “We’re All Ranters Now”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/ranters.php piece. It’s an impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny and a good chal­lenge. I’m stumped try­ing to answer it upon first read­ing, which means it’s def­i­nite­ly worth featuring!


There is much expressed in these pages which I can hearti­ly sup­port. Cer­tain­ly, if Friends are reluc­tant to speak of God or Christ in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends for fear of dis­ap­proval or cen­sure, some­thing needs to be cor­rect­ed. We can­not build deep, lov­ing com­mu­ni­ty in an atmos­phere of anx­i­ety and mistrust.
I also dis­cern a sense that the author and many vis­i­tors to this site feel that many Friends are more inter­est­ed in an easy, com­fort­able, unchal­leng­ing social and polit­i­cal club, than a place for seri­ous spir­i­tu­al growth and chal­lenge. If you wish to call that being “con­vict­ed in our sin,” so be it. The phrase does not speak to me, but I think its mean­ing does.
At the same time, I dis­cern a sense here – rarely explic­it, but fre­quent­ly implied – that what lib­er­al Quak­ers need is a good purg­ing, a removal of those Friends who don’t believe what “we” think Friends should believe. Who “we” are, and pre­cise­ly which beliefs are accept­able and unac­cept­able, is very much in question.
I don’t believe in God, and have spent the last 15 years among Friends try­ing to under­stand, among many oth­er things, why I feel so irrestibly drawn to a com­mu­ni­ty and reli­gious soci­ety in which the cen­tral term is God. My rela­tion­ship with that com­mu­ni­ty is at the cen­ter of my life, and has trans­formed and improved me in ways that make me deeply grate­ful and rev­er­ent for what­ev­er it is we expe­ri­ence or cre­ate togeth­er. It has not made me a theist.
In my large and very lib­er­al meet­ing, a fair num­ber of mes­sages in meet­ing for wor­ship invoke the name of God or Christ or Jesus. Per­haps a larg­er per­cent­age do not, includ­ing many from Friends I know to be Chris­tians of var­i­ous sorts. That a mes­sage does not invoke the name of God, does not prove or even sug­gest that God is not present in the mes­sage. If I am mis­tak­en and God does exist, sure­ly he is man­i­fest in all cre­ation and human­i­ty, and not mere­ly at those moments when we invoke his name. If I am mis­tak­en and God does exist, sure­ly he is man­i­fest in me, and in what I bring to my meet­ing, and what my meet­ing brings to me. Sure­ly your con­cep­tion of God is not that he is only present in the lives of those who hold cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tions to be true. Or am I mis­tak­en about this as well?
I do expe­ri­ence some­thing mys­te­ri­ous and pro­found and life-changing in my reli­gious life among Friends. I have a hard time describ­ing it, though I occa­sion­al­ly try in my flawed and halt­ing lan­guage. Per­haps the expe­ri­ence I have is the same as, or deeply sim­i­lar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est, because, mys­te­ri­ous as my expe­ri­ence some­times is, noth­ing about it strikes me as unnat­ur­al. It is some­thing beyond me, nat­u­ral­ly, as it springs not from my own doing, but from the encounter or rela­tion­ship between me and oth­ers, between me and the world. It is nei­ther here nor there, but a liv­ing bond that comes from being alive in the world with oth­er liv­ing beings. There is some­thing sacred in that bond, and act­ing in ways that tend to vio­late it is not right­eous. I depend on my com­mu­ni­ty for many things, and one of those things is to keep me hon­est to that bond. I sub­mit myself to that dis­ci­pline freely and joy­ful­ly, and my will­ing­ness springs from the faith I have in the good­ness of that com­mu­ni­ty. I do not and can­not, how­ev­er, sub­mit my mind, my beliefs – my mea­sure of the light – to any author­i­ty. To do so would be a vio­la­tion of my integri­ty, and it is not in the tra­di­tion of George Fox or the founders to demand this sort of obe­di­ence, nor to deny the bless­ing of our com­mu­ni­ty to those who will not state agree­ment with cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal propositions.
I am con­fi­dent that Fox and his fol­low­ers would have been shocked to see the the­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty that is the real­i­ty of mod­ern lib­er­al Friends. He also would have been shocked, I sus­pect, to learn that the cre­ation story/stories of Gen­e­sis, tak­en lit­er­al­ly, would soon be proven by sci­ence to be clear­ly and absolute­ly false. Giv­en his unshake­able integri­ty, giv­en the rad­i­cal nature of his min­istry, giv­en 300 more years of light and learn­ing, I think his beliefs would have changed in many ways that are hard to imag­ine. Should we have not changed dur­ing this period?
My goal is not to change Friends, though my pres­ence among them will prob­a­bly have some small effect. Like Pop­eye and Luther, I am what I am. At the same time, I applaud and hon­or the Chris­tians and oth­ers whose faith in God is utter­ly cen­tral to every­thing of val­ue in their lives. It would grieve me deeply if you were reluc­tant to speak your faith in wor­ship to avoid offend­ing me. Some­times your lan­guage about God speaks to me very deeply, though on a metaphor­i­cal lev­el. Oth­er times, not so much. In any case, your beliefs are impor­tant to me. I want to know you. I would like for us to remain Friends.
Either way, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.


This piece orig­i­nal­ly appeared as a com­ment on “We’re All Ranters Now”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/ranters.php.

23 thoughts on “James R: I Am What I Am

  1. While many parts of this evoke a sym­pa­thet­ic response from me, I’ll just respond to one piece.
    “I do not and can­not, how­ev­er, sub­mit my mind, my beliefs—my mea­sure of the light—to any author­i­ty. To do so would be a vio­la­tion of my integri­ty, and it is not in the tra­di­tion of George Fox or the founders to demand this sort of obe­di­ence, nor to deny the bless­ing of our com­mu­ni­ty to those who will not state agree­ment with cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tions.” ‑J.R.
    Actu­al­ly, I think this is what sep­a­rat­ed Quak­ers from Ranters in the first place, in my lim­it­ed his­tor­i­cal knowledge.
    George Fox, and many oth­ers, did estab­lish and sub­mit to the author­i­ty of the gath­ered wor­ship­ping com­mu­ni­ty as the prop­er check of indi­vid­ual lead­ings, along with Scrip­ture, to pre­vent us from run­ning out into fool­ish notions. One of the inter­est­ing things about Quak­er author­i­ty was that dis­own­ment did­n’t mean one could­n’t wor­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty, but that one could­n’t speak for Friends if one was­n’t will­ing to sub­mit to test­ing by the author­i­ty of the Meeting.
    Among mod­ern U.S. Friends, our unwill­ing­ness to sub­mit our indi­vid­ual lead­ings and lives to com­mu­ni­ty over­sight is more reflec­tive of our indi­vid­u­al­ist mate­ri­al­is­tic cul­ture than of fideli­ty to Quak­er tradition.

  2. I’m writ­ing in love and truth, and I hope my words will be read that way. I don’t feel any need for “purg­ing”. My per­cep­tion of our church is that there is a gath­ered guid­ed peo­ple, called to fol­low Christ, who do so with great faith and strug­gle and integri­ty. There are also a great num­ber of peo­ple who are drawn to the fruits of the com­mu­ni­ty, the out­growth of the Tes­ti­mo­ny of life in Christ in envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice, per­son­al, local and wider peace work, non­vi­o­lence and so on. My under­stand­ing is that all these grow from one root — and that is non-dogmatic, hum­ble dis­ci­ple­ship to Jesus Christ, head of the Church.
    The fellow-travellers are an inte­gral part of the work of the soci­ety in the world, and not all of them have an under­stand­ing of Love’s pow­er or the real­i­ty of Divine pres­ence and guid­ance. That’s fine with me. I was a mem­ber of the Soci­ety for at least 15 years and did many years of study of Quak­er the­olo­gies, his­to­ry, jour­nal, took lots of cours­es at Wood­brooke etc, and yet only recent­ly start­ed to “get it” for myself.
    Most­ly that hap­pened because three or four peo­ple I respect­ed in the Soci­ety were able to say direct­ly to me “but actu­al­ly it’s all about fol­low­ing Christ isn’t it? Every­thing else fol­lows if I can put that first”. From that wit­ness I start­ed out as what I called an “athe­ist Chris­t­ian”, read­ing the gospels, watch­ing the lives of believ­ers I knew, know­ing that some­thing there was my clue to full abun­dant life.
    I start­ed to try to fol­low, to live the real Love that Jesus and his dis­ci­ples did. I don’t feel I can do it out of my “own pow­er”, but only in appro­pri­ate depen­dence on that greater Love which moves through me. Now I feel I real­ly do have faith, and it is found­ed on the man­i­fest real­i­ty of Love, and now an under­stand­ing that the Divine is the ulti­mate real­i­ty, no need to fear it break­ing or “try to beleive” any­thing. I haven’t sold all that I have to join the poor­est (yet?!) but I am learn­ing at His feet and fol­low­ing Him as I am able.
    I realise that prob­a­bly the peo­ple whom I call fellow-travellers see things total­ly dif­fer­ent­ly! Prob­a­bly some of them think I am trapped in illu­sion, liv­ing in the past or some­thing. To me, after many years of chew­ing on it, Quak­erism does­n’t make sense with­out Christ at the cen­tre, although it works fine with a lot of peo­ple com­ing along because of what His guid­ance pro­duces. There might be a way of liv­ing in the pow­er and life of Christ with­out using that lan­guage — I think Gand­hi was doing so — but at the moment I need to use the Name to find my way to Him. I am liv­ing in response the grace that I have been giv­en, and I am very thank­ful for it.

  3. Wow, Alice. That is very pow­er­ful tes­ti­mo­ny. I’d repost it to thy blog if I were thee. I feel that I am fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar path, though I don’t think I’ve got­ten quite as far as you. I don’t think I’m an “athe­ist chris­t­ian”, but I feel I am some­thing equal­ly ambiva­lent. I often feel an over­whelm­ing, almost crush­ing sense that the truth about God is unfath­omable, unspeak­able, unde­fin­able, beyond all thought, speech, writ­ing, and under­stand­ing, reach­able only through Love. Some­times I feel as though any­thing I could say or claim about the nature and exis­tence of God would nec­es­sar­i­ly be so far from the real­i­ty, it would be almost a lie, and there­fore increase my igno­rance of God’s true nature. From the out­side, this can look a lot like athe­ism. When James R says:
    I do expe­ri­ence some­thing mys­te­ri­ous and pro­found and life-changing in my reli­gious life among Friends. I have a hard time describ­ing it, though I occa­sion­al­ly try in my flawed and halt­ing lan­guage. Per­haps the expe­ri­ence I have is the same as, or deeply sim­i­lar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est, because, mys­te­ri­ous as my expe­ri­ence some­times is, noth­ing about it strikes me as unnat­ur­al. It is some­thing beyond me, nat­u­ral­ly, as it springs not from my own doing, but from the encounter or rela­tion­ship between me and oth­ers, between me and the world. It is nei­ther here nor there, but a liv­ing bond that comes from being alive in the world with oth­er liv­ing beings.”
    I feel that I know exact­ly what he means.
    As for the Chris­t­ian part, I am strug­gling with this. I am try­ing to uni­fy my expe­ri­ence of Christ with my expe­ri­ence of Jesus. Do I fol­low Christ? How do we define Christ? As Love? As the gospel Jesus? If I say that I fol­low Love, and if Love is per­fect­ly expressed in the per­son of Jesus, am I a default Chris­t­ian? That would be nice.

  4. “Cer­tain­ly, if Friends are reluc­tant to speak of God or Christ in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends for fear of dis­ap­proval or cen­sure, some­thing needs to be cor­rect­ed. We can­not build deep, lov­ing com­mu­ni­ty in an atmos­phere of anx­i­ety and mis­trust. … It would grieve me deeply if you were reluc­tant to speak your faith in wor­ship to avoid offend­ing me. … In any case, your beliefs are impor­tant to me…” J.R.
    This whole piece is one of the most elo­quent expo­si­tions I’ve ever read of the “Tol­er­ance Is the Great­est Good” theory.
    The deep­est ded­i­ca­tion to Truth does not require us to deny oth­er’s attempts to under­stand, but it does not require us to accept all under­stand­ings as equal.

  5. Hi Friends (and Hi James)!
    I go to the same meet­ing as James. Let me first address what I feel is at the heart of James mes­sage — a fear that he will be “purged” — deemed expend­able in a spir­i­tu­al way, which is one of the most inti­mate parts of our lives.
    I don’t think our meet­ing will ever feel that way about you, James. I don’t feel that way about you even though I dis­agree with you so pro­found­ly about issues of our reli­gion. I’ll add, too, that I feel called by God to seek mem­ber­ship the meet­ing, and that I feel that I have a great deal to learn from it, and from you.
    I don’t think the prob­lem is that there are some indi­vid­u­als in meet­ing who don’t believe in God. I think the prob­lem is that there is not a con­cen­sus about what we are doing togeth­er. If that con­cen­sus were there, then dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives would be less like­ly to change the course of the reli­gion, and I believe that falling away from God is pro­found­ly chang­ing the course of the reli­gion. (Of course that change start­ed hap­pen­ing long before I became a Quaker!)
    Although I think that God was not the core of our cor­po­rate wor­ship at our par­tic­u­lar meet­ing — maybe since it began dur­ing World War II — it feels to me that James being vocal about his per­spec­tive, and start­ing a Quak­ers with­out God group, made this offi­cial. I am pro­found­ly dis­ap­point­ed about that, but I guess it’s best to have things out in the open so to speak.
    I see the lack of spir­i­tu­al con­cen­sus as a grave weak­ness in our meet­ing. To address that, I am spend­ing a lot less ener­gy on our meet­ing, help­ing to start a Conservative-leaning wor­ship group. Maybe some day it will become a meet­ing of its own. (And at the same time, I am seek­ing mem­ber­ship in our meeting.)
    Here’s the obsta­cles that I see com­ing up when there is not a con­cen­sus that the com­mu­ni­ty is wor­ship­ing God:
    Like I said when James gave a pre­sen­ta­tion about Quak­ers with­out God at our meet­ing, I feel like wor­ship­ing God col­lec­tive­ly is a real and fair­ly spe­cif­ic thing to be doing. I want to restate that for empha­sis. Seek­ing and wor­ship­ing God is a real thing for me (not a metaphor), and doing it cor­po­rate­ly is not the same as doing it indi­vid­u­al­ly. I can’t over­state how impor­tant that con­cept is in under­stand­ing where I’m com­ing from.
    After read­ing Friends for 300 Years and see­ing a sign every time I walk in the meet­ing house that says we’re seek­ing God togeth­er, I had the impres­sion that’s what we were doing, but there is not that concensus.
    I like to com­pare seek­ing God cor­po­rate­ly in Quak­er meet­ing to play­ing bas­ket­ball. Play­ing bas­ket­ball is not the only way to be an ath­lete. It’s not the only way to be a good per­son. But it is a fair­ly spe­cif­ic thing, and it is some­thing that must be done with oth­er people.
    I find in our meet­ing, we’re not play­ing bas­ket­ball togeth­er. Some peo­ple are play­ing bas­ket­ball. Some are doing tai chi. Some are doing aer­o­bics. Some are doing stretch­es to pre­pare for cross-country run­ning. It’s nice to see peo­ple get­ting exer­cise and putting so much work into their fit­ness. It’s a a nice envi­ron­ment for lots of peo­ple. (I know that many peo­ple are very hap­py with our Meet­ing and its spir­i­tu­al diver­si­ty.) But it is not basketball!
    I think that because we have such vari­ety in pur­pose, we lose great poten­tial for depth. If we were all “play­ing the same game,” we’d have peo­ple to encour­age us to become bet­ter bas­ket­ball play­ers and to show us what that means and to chal­lenge us in the game.
    Also, our struc­ture of busi­ness was designed to be done by a group of peo­ple who was all seek­ing God (and Christ) togeth­er. I think it starts unrav­el­ling and becomes very hard to keep up the spir­i­tu­al momen­tum in a com­mu­ni­ty where there’s not that con­cen­sus. Not that peo­ple like James unrav­el the momen­tum– that’s not true. James has a depth to him that is real­ly beau­ti­ful to feel while wor­ship­ing or doing com­mit­tee work togeth­er. But in com­mit­tee work or meet­ing for busi­ness, because we can’t say “OK, let’s seek God now” with­out know­ing that that’s like open­ing a debate, then it’s real­ly hard to have high stan­dards in the way we do busi­ness and com­mit­tee work.
    I know once when we were talk­ing about this James, you said that maybe I want to have more spir­i­tu­al uni­ty because it is pos­si­ble for me, as a Chris­t­ian, to go to oth­er hous­es of wor­ship and find peo­ple who agree with me. Because that is so present in the world, then I expect it at meet­ing, too.
    I’m not just a Chris­t­ian though; I’m a Quak­er. I want to prac­tice the reli­gion that I fell in love with when I read Friends for 300 Years, and when I had the Holy Spir­it fall on me the first time I vis­it­ed our meet­ing. I want enough of a col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of pur­pose to be able facil­i­tate cor­po­rate wor­ship, cor­po­rate busi­ness, cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment of leadings.
    Like I said, I see our meet­ing’s lack of col­lec­tive pur­pose as some­thing that was there long before James or I were a part of meet­ing. It’s not his “fault.” (And I rec­og­nize that most peo­ple there see it as a strength, and not a fault at all.)
    We can main­tain stan­dards with­out purg­ing if we have groups that are pas­sion­ate­ly engaged in col­lec­tive pur­suit — and if we can artic­u­late what we’re doing. That’s what I’m seek­ing in my small wor­ship group.
    Inter­est­ing­ly enough, I see our larg­er meet­ing (that James and I share) as cul­ti­vat­ing a selec­tive mem­ber­ship, too. Peo­ple who feel like they don’t fit in because they need a stronger sense of focus or a more tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism just leave. Or they back up, like I have done. A place of wor­ship can not be every­thing to every­body, and “purg­ing” is in fact hap­pen­ing at our meet­ing in a more sub­tle, self-selective way than some­one in author­i­ty say­ing, “We dis­agree! You’re out!”
    I respect the work that you are doing Mar­tin, as a Conservative-leaning, vocal young friend, kind of like me. I’d real­ly like to hear more of your thoughts about this issue.
    In the Light,
    Elizabeth

  6. This whole piece is one of the most elo­quent expo­si­tions I’ve ever read of the “Tol­er­ance Is the Great­est Good” theory.
    The deep­est ded­i­ca­tion to Truth does not require us to deny other’s attempts to under­stand, but it does not require us to accept all under­stand­ings as equal.
    Giv­en the neg­a­tive spin put on the word “tol­er­ance” on many conservative-liberal-quaker blogs, I’m not sure if this is a crit­i­cism or a com­pli­ment. If the lat­ter, I thank you. If the former…I still thank you.
    To clar­i­fy my own view, I don’t feel tol­er­ance is the “great­est good.” It is cer­tain­ly one of the greater goods, and aban­don­ing it as a val­ue has played a cen­tral part in most of the great­est crimes in his­to­ry, reli­gious and sec­u­lar alike. It is not every­thing, but it is far more than the mil­que­toast nice­ness it is often crit­i­cized for being.
    I agree that not all human under­tand­ings are equal. Some, such as Nation­al Social­ism, are pos­i­tive­ly abysmal. Oth­ers, such as a ded­i­ca­tion to kind­ness and humil­i­ty, are sub­lime. Between the poles, it can be hard­er to sort it all out. I am cer­tain­ly a long way from hav­ing it sort­ed out.

  7. Hey James — thanks for your putting your beliefs into words and thanks Mar­tin for post­ing them. Now, rather than an implied “lib­er­al Quak­ers need a good purg­ing” (glad we ‘Christo-centric’ Quak­ers aren’t the only para­noid ones out there) I pre­fer to think of this blo­gos­phere as a sort of place to process famil­ial ten­sions, and a place to sort out our own beliefs thru thresh­ing, dis­cus­sion, elder­ing, some spank­ing, and even dis­cern­ment. Kind of like a cor­ner elec­tron­ic bar for Quak­ers. I’m in full throt­tle agree­ment with Robin Mohr and appre­ci­ate her insights. I got­ta point out some­thing that implies that God is ‘unnat­ur­al’, altho I’m sure that is not quite your mean­ing, but:
    “Per­haps the expe­ri­ence I have is the same as, or deeply sim­i­lar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est, because, mys­te­ri­ous as my expe­ri­ence some­times is, noth­ing about it strikes me as unnatural.”
    Does this imply that if God and/or the Holy Spir­it is the mys­te­ri­ous some­thing, that some­how makes it unnat­ur­al? Super­nat­ur­al per­haps, but this to is a mis­nomer. Appar­ent super­nat­ur­al, but God is ‘nat­ur­al’ and we are prob­a­bly more of the abber­ent mate­ri­al­ists. Also:
    “He also would have been shocked, I sus­pect, to learn that the cre­ation story/stories of Gen­e­sis, tak­en lit­er­al­ly, would soon be proven by sci­ence to be clear­ly and absolute­ly false.”
    Oh, James hon­ey, not all Chris­tians buy into the ‘cre­ation sci­ence’ crap that says the world was cre­at­ed 6,000 years ago or some such non­sense. Sci­ence has not proven cre­ation as ‘absolute­ly false’ if you believe the Gen­e­sis account as a deep­er myth­ic but TRUE spir­i­tu­al account of cre­ation. James, the Holy Spir­it has to reveal God to you, with­out this, its all fool­ish­ness and con­found­ing and appar­ent­ly hokum. The Spir­it is seen with spir­i­tu­al eyes. Ask and you shall receive.

  8. I go to the same meet­ing as James. Let me first address what I feel is at the heart of James mes­sage — a fear that he will be “purged” — deemed expend­able in a spir­i­tu­al way, which is one of the most inti­mate parts of our lives.
    Elizabeth,
    Thanks for you heart­felt mes­sage. I have respond­ed to you in full off-blog. For the pub­lic record, though, I do not at all fear being purged by Twin Cities Friends Meet­ing. I feel very much with­in the arms of our meet­ing. I know there are a hand­ful of Friends there who are trou­bled by the vocal pres­ence of folks like me, and wish to sup­port those Friends in any way short of with­draw­al, but I do not feel in the least threat­ened or wor­ried for my own sake.
    I have spo­ken with non­the­ist Friends with oth­er meet­ings, how­ev­er, who have been berat­ed, insult­ed and even removed from their meet­ings for their beliefs. I speak only for myself, but it is the suf­fer­ing of these Friends that moves me. A tone of intol­er­ance, even a sub­tle one, can have sad con­se­quences in peo­ple’s lives.

  9. Hi again Friends
    This debate is such an emo­tion­al one for me. Until I can get myself in check and approach it with a greater mea­sure of Christ’s peace, I’m going to have to drop out.
    Maybe I’m out­run­ning my guide as I post this com­ment. (Like hav­ing a last cig­a­rette before quit­ting!) It is direct­ed at those of you who, like me, believe that a meet­ing with a cor­po­rate focus on God is pre­cious and irreplacable.
    We will need to be extreme­ly gen­tle as we set bound­aries that allow us to prac­tice our faith. This does not mean that we should not or can not set bound­aries, but it means that we can’t ever do it with even a hint of mean spirit­ed­ness or pride. Bound­aries don’t nece­sar­i­ly mean kick­ing peo­ple out.
    I think we need to wor­ship and pray as much as we can to build up the spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty that it will take to dis­cern God’s will and to act not accord­ing to pride and emo­tion in this.
    In prayer,
    Elizabeth

  10. So, Mar­tin. What’s your point? I had expect­ed to hear more from you, or are you not blog­ging in April now too?
    I am strug­gling with how to com­ment on a top­ic which I have some very strong opin­ions, between a wide­ly Quak­er ten­den­cy to avoid con­flict and a con­cern not to crit­i­cize a per­son I don’t even know.
    I am torn between tak­ing a big, fat (ver­bal) swing at the incon­sis­ten­cies in this post and try­ing to keep in mind the real human being who wrote it; between not want­i­ng to mince words just to be nice and not want­i­ng to get car­ried away from the unvar­nished truth.
    I pray for guid­ance from God as to how much time I should even spend think­ing about this.

  11. Hi Robin,
    Sor­ry to leave you, James and every­one else hang­ing. I thought James asked some very good ques­tions and I think it deserves sig­nif­i­cant prayer and thought before I answer. It also requires a free hour or two to pull it alto­geth­er. Var­i­ous threads have been run­ning through my head but I won’t under­stand how they weave togeth­er until I sit down and start writ­ing. Martin

  12. I’ve been trav­el­ing for the past week (and still am) and only now have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to look at a few blogs.
    James, I’m so glad you took the time to post your thoughts and that they found their way here. Your clar­i­ty about your place among Friends is some­thing I have always appre­ci­at­ed about you (James, Eliz­a­beth, and I all attend the same meet­ing). As I’ve writ­ten else­where, it’s when peo­ple are ground­ed in their faith that real dia­logue and shar­ing can hap­pen, with­out the fear of being converted.
    Each time I lis­ten to you, James, I can­not help but feel vis­cer­al­ly that you and I are expe­ri­enc­ing the same Thing That Can­not Be Named Or Cap­tured In Words. Maybe you are being more faith­ful by not nam­ing It, and I am sim­ply using a word I am famil­iar with: God. But your ten­der­ness and your com­mit­ment to the meeting-community is clear to me, and I know exper­i­men­tal­ly the pow­er of belong­ing and of Being Home.
    At the same time, Eliz­a­beth, your descrip­tion of the pow­er of the wor­ship group in which we both par­tic­i­pate speaks to my condition.
    In a vari­ety of ways over the years, I have pur­sued lift­ing up to the month­ly meet­ing my con­cern about just how lib­er­al this Lib­er­al Friends Meet­ing is. I have nev­er felt ful­ly heard, nev­er felt ful­ly “lis­tened into Truth,” nev­er felt as though Friends or the meet­ing wished to labor with me. Like Eliz­a­beth, I have looked else­where for spir­i­tu­al­ly Quak­er nour­ish­ment that sup­ports my jour­ney to be faith­ful to the Divine, and the inward trans­for­ma­tion that accom­pa­nies such a journey.
    Slow­ly over a num­ber of months, I am com­ing to under­stand that the meet­ing and I are not a good fit for one anoth­er; and though I feel a bit released from the ini­tial call for me to raise the con­cern I men­tioned, I also am clear that I am not released from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the month­ly meet­ing for the time-being. So I stay and dis­cern where God is call­ing me among these Friends who have, in fact, car­ried me thus far.
    In some ways, as I type this, I feel like the moth­er in the sto­ry of the King who, when con­front­ed with two women claim­ing to be the moth­er of a cer­tain child, declared the child be cut in two, so that each woman may have a fair por­tion: I love Quak­erism so much that I do not wish to see it cut in two. I would pre­fer to leave it whole and allow non­the­ist Quak­ers to live up to their mea­sure of Light; and I myself will know the child lives on and grows, and I will find oth­er such moth­ers and fathers who have made sim­i­lar choices…
    This anal­o­gy is not quite right, but it is what occurs to me for now.
    And now I must go and catch a plane!
    Blessings,
    Liz

  13. “Per­haps the expe­ri­ence I have is the same as, or deeply sim­i­lar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est, because, mys­te­ri­ous as my expe­ri­ence some­times is, noth­ing about it strikes me as unnat­ur­al. It is some­thing beyond me, nat­u­ral­ly, as it springs not from my own doing, but from the encounter or rela­tion­ship between me and oth­ers, between me and the world. It is nei­ther here nor there, but a liv­ing bond that comes from being alive in the world with oth­er liv­ing beings. There is some­thing sacred in that bond, and act­ing in ways that tend to vio­late it is not right­eous. I depend on my com­mu­ni­ty for many things, and one of those things is to keep me hon­est to that bond. I sub­mit myself to that dis­ci­pline freely and joy­ful­ly, and my will­ing­ness springs from the faith I have in the good­ness of that com­mu­ni­ty. I do not and can­not, how­ev­er, sub­mit my mind, my beliefs—my mea­sure of the light—to any authority.”
    First, James, let me say that what you wrote was ele­gant­ly writ­ten and spoke to me on many lev­els, if not all. I feel that, although I’m com­fort­able with using the word God when refer­ring to the energy/relationship you iden­ti­fy with, we feel and believe very sim­il­iar things. I am not, how­ev­er (like you), com­fort­able with the word Christ, despite my will­ing­ness to use God as a sort of default when no oth­er word can describe the rela­tion­ship I feel with the world around me.
    When I think of the word Christ, I think of some­one walk­ing the earth who was con­sid­ered more a part of God than the rest of us, who was­n’t just enlight­ened (like Bud­dha or Ghan­di, etc.), but WAS God, in a way that implies the rest of us are God to a less­er degree by first being led by Christ. I’m not com­fort­able with this, although I respect and admire those who live sim­ple, wor­ship­ful lives with these beliefs.
    I think of Jesus as a man, like Bud­dha, who was wise, enlight­ened, and whose teach­ings are invalu­able, but I do not con­sid­er him any­more God than Bud­dha, or myself, or any oth­er part or per­son of this earth. I don’t feel com­fort­able with the idea of believ­ing that one per­son was EVER, on this earth or in this uni­verse, more a part of God or more in tune with God than any­one else was or will be.
    I love the teach­ings of Jesus like I love any wise teach­ings that guide me fur­ther down a path toward my own Truth. I love Bud­dhist teach­ings in the same way, as indis­pens­able wis­dom and sources of insight. I don’t feel it nec­es­sary or com­fort­able to asso­ciate my spir­i­tu­al path with a cor­po­ral deity, espe­cial­ly when I feel that believ­ing in the Chris­t­ian term Christ would also imply cer­tain things I don’t accept when think­ing of the term God… were I to con­sid­er the term God con­sis­tent with the term Christ, I would no longer believe in “God.”
    I think what you said real­ly spoke to me, and point­ed out cer­tain ways in which I myself don’t believe in the typ­i­cal ideas of God, but also ways in which you and I believe in the same things and I can more eas­i­ly call them God, as long as my def­i­n­i­tion of God can encom­pass any num­ber of con­nect­ed rela­tion­ships between every­thing, a Light that remains with­in all of us, and a sim­plic­i­ty that for me does­n’t require holi­er names for one of many great and holy men.
    I say all of the above with love for ALL shapes of faith. I just want­ed to express some­thing that formed in my mind when read­ing the orig­i­nal post, and also express grat­i­tude for those who have spo­ken my mind in this con­ver­sa­tion. 🙂 It’s done great good for me to see this con­ver­sa­tion, being new­er to the Quak­er faith, and learn­ing about so many dif­fer­ent ideas of God and our faith.
    Alice said “Quak­erism doesn’t make sense with­out Christ at the centre.”
    For me, it does­n’t make sense with any one per­son at the cen­ter, espe­cial­ly if there is that of God is each of us. 🙂 I don’t know if that makes sense to any of you, but I see so many addi­tion­al teach­ers with whom I hold the same rev­er­ence as Jesus. What I deeply love about the Quak­er faith is that, despite this huge dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, I would still be wel­come to wor­ship with you, and I would still wel­come you to wor­ship with me. 🙂 That, in itself, is a les­son in tol­er­ance to me, and hope­ful­ly to those with more Christ-based beliefs as well.

  14. As a Chris­t­ian Quak­er I notice some­times that when I speak of my Chris­tian­i­ty some peo­ple tend to wince a little.
    And you know what? — - I don’t blame them.
    When I look at what some men have done to the use of the Bible to mar­gin­al­ize, con­demn and hurt peo­ple through his­to­ry; when I see the idea of Jesus used to sup­port mil­i­tarism; when I see what some peo­ple have done to one anoth­er in the name of that faith; I have to open­ly won­der what Chris­tian­i­ty could pos­si­bly have for me that I could use.
    And since this I per­ceive as the actions of main­stream Chris­tian­i­ty — along with the argu­ments in the vestibule about which sized cross to march in with — it isn’t a sur­prise that peo­ple may be uncom­fort­able with my being a Chris­t­ian or speak­ing about Jesus.
    But I came to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the idea and the way men have used the idea, and when I did this I did expe­ri­ence a kind of opening.
    Bud­dhism did not influ­ence the Khmer Rouge, but Pol Pot did grow in a Bud­dhist cul­ture. And this was­n’t the Bud­dha’s idea. Chris­tian­i­ty did­n’t cause the Holo­caust, the Nazis did. And this was­n’t the teach­ings of Jesus. It was­n’t — it could­n’t have been — Allah who ordered 9/11.
    There­fore I see that it is the use men make of these things that is and can be the great wrong.
    And to the argu­ment that the dif­fer­ent tracks that exist with­in the world of Friends are a prob­lem; I think this is the case only to the degree we each use our modal­i­ties in the wrong way.
    Look — to the wider world Quak­ers are still pecu­liar. I sub­mit we are an echo of the founders of Amer­i­ca at least in one way; we either hang togeth­er or we will sure­ly hang separately.

  15. James, you wrote: “I don’t believe in God.” I’m inter­est­ed in what God don’t you believe in? God is a 3 let­ter word and means zil­lions of things to zil­lions of peo­ple. How about “your ulti­mate con­cern” (Tillich)? Do you have one?
    If you could expli­cate the back­ground for your dis­be­lief in God, it might be heal­ing to many.
    Inci­den­tal­ly at Lan­g­ley Hill MM (North­ern VA) an old gen­tle­man had been going to meet­ing with his wife for 50 years and called him­self an athe­ist. Then he applied for mem­ber­ship– no problem.
    Belief in over-rated. In spite of most bib­li­cal inter­preters Jesus nev­er expect­ed us to believe any set of intel­lec­tu­al propo­si­tions. He just asked us to love God (good­ness, mer­cy, jus­tice, what­ev­er) and our neigh­bor. I sus­pect you do that, James. By my book that makes you a Christian.

  16. Lar­ry,
    I appre­ci­ate the obvi­ous good will in your com­ment. And I agree that “belief is over-rated”. How­ev­er, I am not a Chris­t­ian. To equate a love of good­ness with Chris­tian­i­ty, if you think about it, is rather dis­mis­sive of the count­less non-Christians in the world who love good­ness, or at least try to do so. Chris­tian­i­ty is one path among many. Or, more hon­est­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty is many paths among many – the per­spec­tive of Chris­tians in the world is not uni­fied, in fact has nev­er been uni­fied. At its best (which is to say, infre­quent­ly) it has been a col­lec­tion of diverse humans unit­ed in car­ing com­mu­ni­ty, not in a belief system.
    From my read­ing of the Gospels, I can’t accept that Jesus thought of God as just anoth­er word for “good­ness, mer­cy, jus­tice, what­ev­er.” He was talk­ing about the lord of cre­ation, whom he held to be supreme­ly good, mer­ci­ful and just, and whom he expect­ed to rad­i­cal­ly trans­form the nature of cre­ation in the very near future. He was cer­tain­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary in his attempts to erase bound­aries between the clean and the unclean in his high­ly strat­i­fied cul­ture, but he did have some par­tic­u­lar and some­what tra­di­tion­al beliefs about God – beliefs which I do not accept. Paul and the ear­ly Chris­tians had anoth­er, some­what dif­fer­ent set of beliefs, many of which Jesus seemed to show no signs of sharing.
    I know we could work over the def­i­n­i­tion of God until I could be includ­ed in the cir­cle of those who believe in God. I have no desire to do so, as it would feel dis­hon­est. The word can mean count­less things, yes, but it has always had strong asso­ci­a­tions with con­cepts such as the self-aware cre­ator of the uni­verse; the self-aware ruler of the uni­verse; an over­ar­ch­ing and benef­i­cent pur­pose to the uni­verse; and many oth­er con­cepts which do not res­onate for me.
    “My ulti­mate con­cern” is not sin­gu­lar, but even if it were that does not strike me as a his­tor­i­cal­ly coher­ent or hon­est descrip­tion of God. If I had to pick one con­cern – and I am very reluc­tant to do so – it would be com­pas­sion for the suf­fer­ing of all liv­ing creatures.
    I’m not sure what you mean by “the back­ground for [my] dis­be­lief.” I don’t remem­ber ever hav­ing believed in the exis­tence of God, though I have long found the “con­cept” of God, the poet­ic force of a per­son­al­iza­tion of the uni­verse, deeply com­pelling. I often find it expres­sive, use­ful, beau­ti­ful, reflec­tive of human yearn­ing, but not “true” in the sense of “an accu­rate descrip­tion of the real­i­ty out­side of my mind.”

  17. He just asked us to love God (good­ness, mer­cy, jus­tice, what­ev­er) and our neigh­bor. I sus­pect you do that, James. By my book that makes you a Christian.
    You imply here that God can be *defined* in terms of good­ness, mer­cy, jus­tice, etc., which would imply that any­one who believes in these things would be a Chris­t­ian in your book… I think a Chris­t­ian def­i­n­i­tion of God is a lit­tle more than just an vague idea of good­ness, mer­cy or jus­tice, and that to claim that any­one who believes in con­cepts of basic good­ness and peace and love is Chris­t­ian is a lit­tle inac­cu­rate, at least for me. I think what mat­ters more is what each indi­vid­ual sees them­self as, and while I appre­ci­ate what you’re say­ing, you may run into bad feel­ings from a faith­ful Jew, Bud­dhist, athe­ist, or oth­er per­sons of non-Christian faith by claim­ing that because they believe in good, they are actu­al­ly Chris­t­ian. I think it’s a lit­tle more than that to most Chris­tians, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly for wrong per­cep­tions. There *are* dis­tinc­tive beliefs that sep­a­rate tra­di­tion­al Chris­tians from Jew­ish, Bud­dhist, and agnostic/atheist peo­ple. While I admire self-defined Chris­tians and their beliefs, I think it’s impor­tant not to impose def­i­n­i­tions on oth­ers’ faith so that they will fit into Christianity.
    🙂 You could prob­a­bly word it in a way that I would prob­a­bly be con­sid­ered Chris­t­ian, but I would­n’t be com­fort­able with that, just as you might be uncom­fort­able with me word­ing agnos­ti­cism in a broad way that might include your­self, so that you would fit into my beliefs. I think it’s impor­tant to allow dis­tinc­tions and dif­fer­ences in the par­tic­u­lars of each faith, and in accept­ing that we are not all Chris­t­ian but still believe in good, find fur­ther under­stand­ing of unique or dif­fer­ent spir­i­tu­al beliefs.

  18. Hi Brandice and everyone,
    I am hear­ing your point about not want­i­ng labels that don’t apply. But my expe­ri­ence of G‑d is that G‑d is the good­ness. I’m not try­ing to be inclu­sive, I’m say­ing what is true for me, and it does seem scary to try to describe my expe­ri­ence of the Divine Pow­er in this pub­lic forum because this is what is most pre­cious to me. But it is also the Lib­er­at­ing Truth that has freed my soul, and hav­ing been trust­ed with this under­stand­ing which has such pow­er and bless­ing for me. I owe the lib­er­at­ing pow­er a wit­ness. The pres­ence of love, kind­ness, good­ness in the uni­verse is man­i­fest­ly real. Love does exist, peo­ple do incred­i­ble things out of love every day. Love, G‑d’s Pow­er, can move peo­ple beyond their lim­i­ta­tions and frail­ties to man­i­fest the Glo­ry of Love in the world.
    For me, the cre­ative pow­er, G‑d, is all the good­ness, all the love that is in the uni­verse, open­ing every flower, entic­ing every shoot to unfurl from the seed. G‑d is the cre­ative, pros­per­ing pow­er in the uni­verse and the rea­son the uni­verse exists. Like Teil­hard de Chardin’s Prime Entelechy(sense 2 in this def­i­n­i­tion)? The flow of Divine love is the impe­tus and also the pat­tern and the road and the promise of the future. That real love is an infi­nite­ly mer­ci­ful power.
    Christ Jesus is the seed poten­tial in every liv­ing thing. In one body, He was able to trans­form lives so deeply that the effects are still ring­ing about the world today and His risen pres­ence, His spir­it is both what­ev­er enlight­en­ing pow­er there is in our meet­ings and our hearts, and the com­forter that allows us to bear the sor­row of wit­ness­ing the dif­fi­cult parts of our human nature. He is the ray of light that illu­mi­nates the con­scious­ness to see the next step for­ward and He is the seed that is unfold­ing in each of us ded­i­cat­ed to Divine Goodness.
    I’m throw­ing words at this, try­ing to describe how I expe­ri­ence the world. I hope I might be com­mu­ni­cat­ing it, but who knows? Love and Blessings.

  19. In one body, He was able to trans­form lives so deeply that the effects are still ring­ing about the world today
    For me, I can look at this state­ment and say the same thing about Bud­dha, to an equal or pos­si­bly even greater extent. 🙂 There are actu­al­ly more Bud­dhists in the world than there are Christians.
    Your words were very well spo­ken and I agreed with every­thing thing but that one para­graph. That’s where it’s dif­fer­ent for me, and that’s why, while I respect and iden­ti­fy with a lot of Chris­t­ian beliefs, I can’t say that I’m Chris­t­ian. 🙂 I hope that makes sense, the ref­er­ence to Bud­dha’s influ­ence being very sim­il­iar or even wider spread than Jesus Christ’s. I hold them with equal rev­er­ence, in addi­tion to many oth­er spir­i­tu­al­ly enlight­ened teach­ers over the years, and I think that’s what makes the dif­fer­ence for me.

  20. Hel­lo, Brandice. I don’t think most Quak­ers believe Jesus “had more God in him” than any­body else. There’s a ter­ri­ble assump­tion being made there – that Jesus was “just” a human.
    Thee has to under­stand that “that of God in every­one” comes from Jesus Christ. It is the indwelling Jesus Christ in our hearts and souls. That “still small voice” is Jesus Christ. With­out Christ, one can­not have “that of God” because Christ is God in human form.
    It seems like thee is assum­ing that Jesus was “only” a per­son, like me or thee. Most Quak­ers I know (myself includ­ed) under­stand Jesus as at the very least more than a wise human being.
    I am remind­ed very much of a para­graph from C. S. Lewis in Mere Chris­tian­i­ty. He says it far bet­ter than I could ever hope to: “I am try­ing to pre­vent any­one say­ing the real­ly fool­ish thing that peo­ple often say about Him: “I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was mere­ly a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a lev­el with the man who says he is a boiled egg — or else he would be the Dev­il of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a mad­man or some­thing worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patron­iz­ing non­sense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

  21. Harold does a great job, I think of pre­sent­ing what I feel (and what I heard from Brandice & James) about the dif­fi­cul­ty of say­ing “if you’re lov­ing, you are a christian”
    cer­tain­ly many chris­tians hope to be lov­ing, as do many non-christians. For “Chris­t­ian” to mean any­thing beyond “lov­ing per­son” (and if it did, Alice, I assume you could just as eas­i­ly call your­self a lov­ing athe­ist, and adopt James’ words, rather than ask­ing him to adopt yours, in seek­ing “uni­ty”
    I dis­agree with Harold (and CS Lewis) that Jesus must either be the Son of God (in a way that we are not) or a lunatic, per­haps only because it makes me uncom­fort­able (per­haps I should take solace in the idea that many mys­tics walk the line of lunacy?)
    Since noth­ing was writ­ten down at the time, and all of the Bible is the inter­pre­ta­tion of human beings, I am will­ing to believe that his words when read to say that he is the ONLY WAY to God and such, are sim­ply poor­ly under­stood metaphors or suchlike.
    In any case, that he was more than human sim­ply does not res­onate with me, log­i­cal­ly or spir­i­tu­al­ly. And there­fore it is dis­hon­est (as James says) to iden­ti­fy as a chris­t­ian, no mat­ter how lov­ing I may aim to be.
    I have talked to many folks (well, a few) who are now Chris­tians due to a mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence. Jesus came and sat down next to them, held them, called out to them. While such an expe­ri­ence would sure­ly scare the pants off me, I also feel a bit of envy, or grief, that I have not had one. But that does not change the fact that I have not.
    What am I then to do?

  22. “I love Quak­erism so much that I do not wish to see it cut in two. I would pre­fer to leave it whole and allow non­the­ist Quak­ers to live up to their mea­sure of Light…” — Liz, in a pre­vi­ous comment.
    In anoth­er post, “We are all ranters now,” Mar­tin expressed dis­com­fort with hyphen­at­ed Quak­ers. You know, Buddist-Quakers, Catholic-Quakers…
    I only start­ed attend­ing last sum­mer, so I don’t yet know much about what being a Quak­er means. But I am very much drawn to what I see: Peo­ple seek­ing and cul­ti­vat­ing the Light in them­selves, nur­tur­ing it in each oth­er, work­ing togeth­er to form a com­mu­ni­ty, work­ing to trans­late their spir­i­tu­al growth into real-world actions.
    I do not want to be an Atheist-Quaker. I want to be a Quak­er. I intend to cul­ti­vate the Light in myself and to work with the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties for a vari­ety of good pur­pos­es. As far as I can tell, that’s what being a Quak­er is about (though I’m sure I’ll learn more aspects).
    For me, the Light is not a euphemism; it is a real thing, some­thing to be cul­ti­vat­ed, some­thing that will improve me and show me how to improve the world. On the oth­er hand, the word and con­cept of God are dis­trac­tions from my prac­tice. For me, God is a neb­u­lous con­cept that does not have a tan­gi­ble real­i­ty, and that does have a tan­gle of bad and mis­lead­ing associations.
    I began this post by quot­ing Liz because she put into words some­thing that I have been feel­ing strong­ly over the past few weeks while think­ing about oth­er schisms and poten­tial schisms. It is a trag­ic and ter­ri­ble thing to say, “You’re not real­ly a Quaker.”
    And “You’re not real­ly a Quak­er” is real­ly what each schism is say­ing. Quak­ers could say, “We have dif­fer­ent lead­ings or under­stand­ings – come, let’s wor­ship togeth­er, and thresh, and dis­cern, and accept that we are all imper­fect, and let’s cul­ti­vate our Light, and val­ue our com­mu­ni­ty, and rec­og­nize that not every dif­fer­ence is an imperfection.”
    Is there a dif­fer­ence between non-theists and Bible-based Quak­ers? Yes, of course there is. Are we both Quak­ers? I believe we are. Will this cause dis­com­fort? Yes. I recent­ly attend­ed a meet­ing that began with hymns, and I found that in hon­esty I had to refrain from singing half of them.
    I would nev­er ask that the hymns not be sung. But I would ask those who sing them to wor­ship with me and work with me as a fel­low Quak­er. And I would nev­er ask that God not be men­tioned, or even invoked; my respect for Quak­er tra­di­tion makes me accept and even val­ue the invo­ca­tion of God as part of the com­mu­ni­ty process, even if I do not val­ue “God” personally.
    Chris

  23. Chris writes: “It is a trag­ic and ter­ri­ble thing to say, “You’re not real­ly a Quaker.” And “You’re not real­ly a Quak­er” is real­ly what each schism is say­ing. Quak­ers could say, “We have dif­fer­ent lead­ings or understandings—come, let’s wor­ship togeth­er, and thresh, and dis­cern, and accept that we are all imper­fect, and let’s cul­ti­vate our Light, and val­ue our com­mu­ni­ty, and rec­og­nize that not every dif­fer­ence is an imperfection.”
    Yes – love­ly, and true.
    “I do not want to be an Atheist-Quaker. I want to be a Quaker.”
    I think I under­stand the val­ue of what you are say­ing here. I don’t want a dilut­ed, watered down Quak­erism, nor do I want to sim­ply flirt with Quak­erism. But I do want my Quak­erism, which is to say my human­i­ty, to be exact­ly as com­pli­cat­ed and prob­lem­at­ic and gen­uine as it has to be in a per­son like me, or you, or Liz, or Mar­tin. I am an athe­ist, and an agnos­tic, and a Jew, and a Quak­er, and many oth­er things, and each of these car­ry some aspects of truth about me. But none of those words begin to grasp what I am, and how I am sim­i­lar to and dif­fer­ent from all of you, from all of Quak­er­dom, all of human­i­ty. Like­wise for the words all of us use to describe our­selves, I think. This is a strength, not a weakness.
    I am ded­i­cat­ed to the prac­tice and com­mu­ni­ty of Quak­erism I have found, but I have lit­tle inter­est in find­ing out exact­ly what a Quak­er is sup­posed to be, so that I can turn myself into that at the expense of being who I am.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Comments on Quaker Ranter Daily