The Hope of Our Worship
November 30, 2025 § 1 Comment
What do we hope for when we gather in our expectant silence?
Fellowship in the spirit, to know each other in that which is transcendental.
Some peace, a little respite from the troubles of the world.
Inner renewal, refreshment of spirit that we can take with us when we go back into the world.
Communion with a Spirit of Love and Truth, a Teacher and Guide who can lead us as we walk in the world.
And a deeper holy communion with a Presence in the midst, a Mystery Reality that gathers us into unity and love and gratitude.
Many Lighted Candles
November 22, 2025 § Leave a comment
In his Apology, Robert Barclay offers a lovely metaphor for the gathered meeting (page 280 in Dean Freiday’s modern translation):
He [God] also causes the inward life to be more abundant when his children are diligent in assembling together to wait upon him. . . . The mere sight of each other’s faces when two persons are gathered inwardly into the life gives occasion for that life to rise secretly and pass from vessel to vessel. Many lighted candles, when gathered together in a single place, greatly augment each other’s light and make it shine more brilliantly. In the same way, when many are gathered together into the same life, there is more of the glory of God. Each individual receives greater refreshment, because he partakes not only of the light and life that has been raised in him, but in the others as well.
With his description of the life rising secretly and passing from vessel to vessel, Barclay is describing the transcendental, psychic dimension of the gathered meeting. By “secretly”, I think he means invisibly, without a tangible mode of communication or transference, and inwardly, coming to abide within each of us as vessels. And I suspect that he means the image of many candles augmenting the light in the same transcendental way.
But we can carry the candle metaphor further. The tangible reality of many candles in a real meeting room augments the light by revealing many areas that would be in shadow with fewer candles. One candle would cast many shadows in the room. But the more candles you add, the more of these shadow regions in the room become illuminated.
In this way, the metaphor obviously applies to vocal ministry, in which the Spirit can work through more vessels, more life stories, knowledge, and experiences, more perspectives, more openings into truth, and more faithfulness, to illuminate the shadows in each other’s hearts.
But the worshippers also bring these qualities with them into the silence, as well as into their ministry, to animate and shape the transcendental dimension of the gathered meeting. This is more of a mystery. How do the inward unspoken qualities of the worshippers give the gathered meeting its energy and joy? How do their intentions and focus and spiritual yearnings bring the Life into the gathering? And what provides the medium through which this Life flows from vessel to vessel?
A subject for another post.
Hellenistic Religion
November 16, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’ve been reading Hellenistic Religions: The Age of Syncretism, edited by Frederick C. Grant and published in 1953. It’s a collection of primary sources from the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia in 331 BCE until Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE, and then through the early Roman empire, which he calls the Hellenistic-Roman period. We tend to forget that Christianity is, then, also a Hellenistic religion, especially as Paul was a Hellenistic figure himself and the ultimate syncretist.
Grant offers brief introductions to his categorizations of these sources and to the individual texts themselves. These are personal accounts of encounters with gods, instructions from a donor patron for the establishment and maintenance of a new shrine, accounts of and instructions on how to petition an oracle, and so on.
They reveal that pagans were having experiences and talking about the gods in ways that are quite similar to our own experience and language in some ways, and especially to those of their Christian contemporaries. Here’s an example, the account of a healing told by a man named Philadelphus by the god Asclepius written by Aelius Aristides, a Greek author and orator, 117–181 CE:
“This is what Philadelphus dreamed. ‘What happened to me was as follows: I dreamed that I stood in the entrance to the sanctuary, where also some other people were gathered, as at the time of the sacrifice for purification; they wore white garments and were otherwise festively garbed. Then I spoke about the god and named him, among other things, Distributor of Destiny, since he assigns to men their fate. The expression came to me out of my own personal experience. Then I told about the potion of wormwood, which had somehow been revealed to me [in a previous account in Aristides’s work cited by Grant]. The revelation was unquestionable, just as in a thousand other instances the epiphany of the god was felt with absolute certainty. You have a sense of contact with him, and are aware of his arrival in a state of mind intermediate between sleep and waking; you try to look up and are afraid to, lest before you see him he shall have vanished; you sharpen your ears and listen, half in dream and half awake; your hair stands up, tears of joy roll down, a proud kind of modesty fills your breast. How can anyone really describe this experience in words? If one belongs to the initiated, he will know about it and recognize it.’”
This account is so vivid, so personal. I have felt exactly like this myself. One can imagine Paul feeling like this in his visions, too. Or Jesus himself.
Aristides’s account goes on to describe how this wormwood treatment (wormwood is a poison) worked for Philadelphus, as did other odd cultic instructions later involving mud and running. One thinks of Jesus spitting into dirt and putting it on a blind man’s eyes.
I am the vine
November 9, 2025 § 1 Comment
A meditation in meeting for worship this morning. An “Afterthought”, I guess, though I did not share it.
In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5) A passage the weekly Bible study that I moderate has been exploring.
When I try to feel inside myself this intimacy with the Spirit of Love and Life, it sometimes feels forced. When I try to feel the Sap of Life flowing into me from some holy Source beyond myself, or even within myself, when I try to open to its action within me, flowing through me to bring forth fruit in the world through my words and actions, I often feel like I’m trying to fake it until I make it.
But every once in a while, this faith and practice of inward attunement and at-one-ment with divine love and life does bear fruit, and its promise is fulfilled. I do feel divine love and life pouring through my spiritual veins, and I am alive with love and joy and gratitude.
Then my faith is renewed and my practice is strengthened in happy expectation.
The History of Rock
November 3, 2025 § Leave a comment
I love rock and roll. I’ve been in three rock bands and few things thrill me more than the guitar crescendo in the Grateful Dead’s Viola Lee Blues, Hendrix playing All Along the Watchtower, or the Cream’s Crossroads or Spoonful. So I’m breaking out of my Quaker mold here to share a resource that you other rock fans might really appreciate:
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, a podcast by Andrew Hickey. I cannot praise this podcast enough.
First of all, it’s exhaustive. The latest episode is the 181st.
Second, it’s utterly comprehensive. Hickey’s knowledge is truly encyclopedic.
Third, it’s not just a history of one genre, or even just a music history. Because so many streams of American popular music influenced rock, he covers many, many other genres. And it starts in the 1920s; that’s how far back he tracks these influences. He doesn’t even get to the 1950s until the late teens episodes.
And he is always giving lessons in music theory, defining rhythms and beats and chord progressions and arrangement choices and vocal styles and the evolution of instrumentation. And he tracks new musical genres as they emerge and evolve and merge.
And he tracks the history of the industry, of record companies and producers, and of promoting platforms and performance arrangements, and record charts.
And he tracks technology, recording technologies, record production technologies, performance technologies, like the effects of acrylic records with the 45 and LPs on, not just the demise of 78s but on the industry more broadly, or the evolution of the electric guitar and the introduction of the drum trap.
He has an excellent ear. He is constantly telling you how artist A’s song X sounds like artist B’s song Y. And he comments on, not only why the song he’s highlighting is important in the history, but why it appealed to audiences, and what’s distinctive or even revolutionary about it, what it contributed to the music’s evolution.
And it’s a social history, most important and fascinating. How segregation affected the music. How black musicians and song writers were treated—and mostly cheated—by record companies and performance halls and radio stations. How the music shifted from an adult entertainment to one focused on teenagers, especially white teenagers. How the black music scenes in different American cities fueled different kinds of music. Almost every episode includes discussion of these kinds of social contexts.
At the same time he repeatedly and humbly discloses his own possible shortcomings in reporting these matters. And he reminds us how hard it is to know what really happened, even while he’s giving you the most amazing detail about really complex stories, especially when it involves who wrote what or who was in what band when. The history itself is very slippery and sometimes opaque, but always fascinating, at least to me.
He is British, and has a rather thick accent, but he speaks very deliberately and slowly, so I have no trouble understanding him.
So if you’re interested in how doo wop evolved, or what’s the difference between rhythm and blues and R&B, or between country music and country and western, and how that mattered in the emergence of rock, or which of the dozens of candidates might be the first rock and roll song, or how Earth Angel set the pattern for doo wop going forward, or how Fats Domino crossed over, whose second language of English was so bad (his first language was French creole), so that some people found him impossible to interview, or the importance of Big Momma Thornton and Big Bill Broonzy, or Jimmy Page’s evolution as a musician, or what swing contributed to the genre, or . . . You get the idea.
Really great stuff.
“That of God in everyone” – Again, Again
November 2, 2025 § Leave a comment
“Can we not say a little more?”
Here is another quote from Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings, this one about the phrase “that of God in everyone”, which my regular readers know is a regular theme of mine; I posted about it just two weeks ago. This is from letter 20 in Brian’s book: “That of God in every one : Can we not say a little more?”
The whole letter is worth reading and speaks my mind, but it is too long to quote in full here. But I do want to share its first few paragraphs. I quote Brian (pages 74–75):
Friends meetings, in making statements on a variety of social issues, often found their rationale upon the assertion that the divine Light is accessible to everyone, typically citing as our core belief that “there is that of God in every one.” This article of faith is so widely cited that it is rare for us to question its use or what we actually mean by it. In what follows, I do not suggest that we stop using it! However, in this yearly meeting season, with minutes and epistles being crafted and circulated, I’d like to encourage Friends to examine what this phrase actually means for them and to also suggest that we can’t rely on this alone as the theological basis for our social witness. Can’t we say a little more?
“That of God”—what can it mean?
It sometimes seems that when Friends say “there is that of God in every one,” it is really meant as the equivalent for a statement that “each individual is of value and has inalienable rights.” This is a valuable thing to say, and I have no objection to it, as far as it goes. I would claim, however, that if it means this and no more, then it is really not a theological statement at all, that is, it is not a statement that reflects in any obvious way our experience of the living God. It is a sentiment that is well suited to a pluralistic democracy or as a universal statement on human rights. To claim that individuals must be treated with equal respect before the law and have equitable access to the necessities of life (including those that make culture and society possible) is a liberal and just sentiment.
But do we Friends bring God into our statements out of habit? If so, then this invocation of the Deity seems more like other conventional references to God that decorate political documents and public expressions than an indication of some imperative that drives us, that is rooted in our spiritual life.
I am not comfortable to remain at that level when using the phrase. Perhaps a further exploration of what we intend by the phrase might help bring other meanings of it to the surface, and these might in turn enhance the richness of our witness and our search.
Prophets Among Us
October 27, 2025 § Leave a comment
In a previous post I shared a message about the nurture of ministry in our meetings at its various stages in our members from Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings. Here I want to share some of letter 14, “Friends, welcome prophets among us in these dark times!” (pages 55–57)
I quote Brian:
Here is one thing I know: a prophetic people is one that welcomes the arising of prophecy. The first motion is, in love, to make room for the leadings and the people who are led and give them opportunity to bring what they have been given. This advice comes from the earliest life of the Christian movement.
In the ancient book of advice called the Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the little fellowships gathered in Christ’s name are admonished to be open to the motion of the Spirit as embodied in traveling ministers: “Let every apostle [one who has been sent] who comes to you be received as the Lord.” Knowing that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, we are to “try the spirits” and feel where the divine is present when someone feels moved to act or speak under the guiding influence of the Divine Spirit—but we are warned not to quench the Spirit’s motion but to accept the unexpected activity of that Spirit in our lives as a community as well as individuals. The Spirit blows where it will, and you hear its sound but don’t know whence it comes or whither it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)
As a people, we have fallen so far into a comfortable and secular mind that we think concerns and leadings are somehow a matter personal to the concerned Friend and our meetings can pick and choose whom to hear, whom to invite and allow to come among us! That is a way to avoid the uncomfortable evidence that the living God is still working through us, preparing individuals and pushing them or drawing them into service. It is a way not to change, not to grow, and to keep control of our schedules and our attention—to keep ourselves unfree. We often talk about being “Spirit-led,” but as a people how available are we really to that experience?
When we make time for the unexpected, when we accept the opportunities that come to us through Friends who are called to travel to us and have the encouragement of their meetings to do so, we enable those Friends, and others not yet arisen, to learn better how to watch for, hear, bear, and accomplish their serivce. Our meetings are “schools of the prophets”—or can be if we recognize the opportunities that come our way, accept them with joy, and learn from them—both from the message and from our experience of reception and discernment.
I have known many Friends, newly drawn into service, who have been discouraged by the convention that prophets come to meetings only when meetings issue invitations. This turns the matter upside down, Friends. The calling and the service are given through the body, through and out of the common life in the Spirit, and represent an invitation from God to see, to feel, to know, and perhaps to act in fresh ways, in ways renewed by the living water of God’s life that brings these leadings and opportunities to us.
It can be inconvenient for a meeting to make room for such an unplanned “wildcat” experience of the Spirit. It may also be that a Friend’s concern brought to a meeting will require some discernment by the meeting about ways and means. I can assure you, though, that it is pretty inconvenient for a Friend to have such a concern, to set aside other things, and to dare to stand forth, to dare to speak for God and for us. The sense of unreadiness, of unworthiness, of emptiness is very sharp in such a Friend, and they are only too conscious of difficulties for themselves and for those they visit. Yet the act of faithfulness, however imperfectly accomplished, is a step into greater life, and if it is rooted in love, it is evidence of God’s work and life active among us. And, Friends, there is such a famine among us, and among people in general, for such evidence!
So, if a Friend reaches out to your meeting with an earnest statement that they are traveling under a concern with the unity of their meeting (your brothers and sisters!), remember that we can earn a prophet’s reward even by offering a cup of water to a prophet. Find a way to entertain this Friend, as we are to entertain strangers sent among us, for thereby we may unexpectedly be visited by an angel—not the traveling Friend but the beloved Spirit, the Shepherd and Teacher, made available in the giving and receiving of spiritual hospitality. Make room, Friends, light your lamps in welcome, live like people who truly love the Spirit, and who love to see the springs of Life break forth in any one!
Prayer in Meeting
October 26, 2025 § 2 Comments
This was my prayer in meeting this morning, though I did not speak it aloud.
Our Father who art in heaven,
Our Mother who art in the earth,
our Holy Spirit who art in each of us
and in all things living,
please awaken within us true knowledge of thee;
please come to us and abide within us
and move among us,
that we may bear good fruit,
fruit that lasts;
please give us this day and every day
the bread of your life
and quench our thirst for justice;
please guide us on the path of right living
and bring us back when we go astray;
please lead us into love and thankfulness and joy.
Amen
Ministry for and to Different Conditions
October 25, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’ve just finished reading Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings, a book of epistles to Quaker meetings and gatherings “written originally out of a motion of love and with the intent that they might help some readers on their path towards the more abundant life that Christ promises and makes possible.”
The book is a wonderful source of spiritual nurture, for both readers and their meetings. Parts of this book spoke to me so deeply that I want to share them more widely here. I’m going to pass on more from this book in future posts.
For instance, in letter number four, titled: “As we reflect on our meetings’ spiritual condition,” Brian writes about “Ministry for and to different conditions” in ways I found very useful as I work with my own meeting to bring my ministries into the life of the meeting. The entire letter, and especially the last paragraph, are an appeal to our meetings to be more proactive in our nurture of ministry, which resonates with my own calling to have more “fire in the Spirit” in the nurture of ministry in our meetings.
I quote Brian in full (page 16–18):
The ministry of the meeting, which includes the words spoken and the silent ministry, and the words or deeds of service or prayer with individuals or groups at other times, is rooted in a listening, loving focus on the actual people gathered and on the One in whom they are gathered.
As you consider the meeting’s condition this year, Friends, listen for the conditions within the community in compassion and honesty. Three conditions that have come particucarly to mind in my exercise are these: the “young” members, of any age, who are new to Friends; the “established”; and the “well-grown in the truth.” Each of these condition has characteristics that may require particular kinds of service to help them forward, and it is good sometimes for a meeting to reflect on whether the ministry is offering what it can under God’s guidance.
In the “young,” that is, those new to Friends, there may be exploration, enthusiasm, receptivity, and a need and desire to learn the foundations of the Quaker path. They need guidance, but not only instruction. They have come to you in curiosity, perhaps, but under that is a restlessness or inquiry, and it is through the witness of your acts and life joined with words of explanation and welcome that they will be helped to see that among you they can find a living path. Inquirers need to feel our humility, but also where we are touched with fire and the Holy Spirit.
In “established Friends,” there is a growth of discipline and order, a maturing exploration of and use of gifts, and a habit of bearing responsibility for the life and support of the meeting. But in this period, there can be an engagement with contradictions and continued mysteries in the understanding of Quakerism. Faith and discoveries that were nourishing and inspiring in the first days among Friends may feel stale or insufficient for the demands now encountered. New resources and opportunities are needed if such active Freinds are to rediscover their spiritual childhood—the place of wonder and gratitude, openness and receptivity. Fire and the Spirit!
Those well grown in the truth have a tested understanding of the value of the diverse paths people can follow as well as the dangers of a mere celebration of diversity. They have an understanding of the pirtfalls and dangers of life in the Spirit, for individuals and meetings, and a sympathy for questioning and doubt. Their expeirence has brought a reliance on the workings of the Lord in many situations, and they have learned to wait and listen; they have seen (or others have seen in them) a growth in tenderness, courage, freedom, and discipline in love and truth. At this stage, though, there are fresh challenges that come from habits long established, the same problems and challenges returning over and over. They can read the indicators of the meeting’s long-term good or ill health and stability, its growth and depth; caring deeply, they can yet feel taken for granted and that their own seeking and spiritual thirst is not seen.
Fire and the Spirit—the baptism is needed at every stage!
People in each of these stages of their spiritual life offer ministry rooted in the questions and findings of that condition, but each stage also has its temptations and problems. In each stage there are times of dryness, or misplaced complacency, of frustration, and of hope. Everyone needs to receive nurture and love, in meeting and out, if their gifts and strengths are to be confirmed and to grow. All need exhortation or inspiration, instruction, reasurance, consolation, gratitude, and challenge—accompaniment in the Spirit as individuals trying to walk in the Light.
“That of God”—Again
October 17, 2025 § 6 Comments
For decades, I have complained about Friends claiming that “that of God in everyone” is our central tenet of faith and that it’s to be understood as a divine spark of some kind, something inherent in the human that partakes somehow of God’s being or nature. I’ve heard Friends equate it with the “image of God” in which Genesis one says we were created.
For all these years, I have accepted Lewis Benson’s argument that this usage of the phrase was introduced by Rufus Jones and is a misunderstanding of Fox’s use of the phrase. Benson claims that Fox used the phrase almost always in the pastoral sense implied in the quote that we use as our source for it in an epistle which he includes in his journal, that Fox did not use the phrase in the doctrinal sense that is common among us nowadays, usually stated as “there is that of God in everyone.
Then, in Michael Langford’s Becoming fully human: Writings on Quakers and Christian thought, I find this quote from Fox:
None that is upon the earth shall ever come to God but as they come to that of God in them, the light that God has enlightened them with; and that is it which must guide everyone’s mind up to God, and to wait upon to receive the spirit from God. . . . That which is of God within everyone is that which brings them together to wait upon God, which brings them into unity, which joins their hearts together up to God (Doctrinals, Works, Vol. 4, pp. 131–132; page 117 in Becoming fully human)
This quote demonstrates how complex and fluid Fox’s thinking was, how hard it is to pin down what he actually means, or at least what kind of coherent theology we might reconstruct from his truly prolific output. Fox is edging right up to Jones here. Or to put it in chrono-theological order, you can see how Jones might see in this passage some foundation for his own understanding. And there it is in one of Fox’s doctrinal works.
However, Fox is still giving “that of God in everyone” a pastoral role; that is, it brings us to God. And he equates “that of God” with the light of John 1:9, “the true light, which enlightens everyone,” which is the Word, which is Christ. So it looks like this is an Inward Light, because God has given it/him to us for our enlightenment. It’s not inherently in-dwelling; it was given to us.
On the other hand, however, “that which is of God within us”—that looks more like an Inner Light, an indwelling light that might in fact be inherent, since it is within us and everyone has it. It looks like Fox is having it both ways.
My sense from reading Jones’s books on mysticism is that he was some kind of neo-neoplatonist, in the sense that neoplatonism believes that a universal divine spark is what brings us to God, just as Fox is saying here. God’s spark seeks to return to its origin-home in God; this is the source of the religious/mystical impulse. Likewise, God reaches us inwardly by reaching this God-seeking God’s-self within us, and that divine spark recognizes and receives God when God comes. In mystical union, the divine spark has finally come home. This is the dynamic of mystical union experience.
Jones believed that this universally possible God-to-God’s spark connection is what lies behind all mystical experience, whatever the mystical tradition. And Jones is the one who taught us to think of Quakerism as “practical mysticism”. All of this is very close to what Fox seems to be saying in this quote.
Fox’s sublime innovation is to equate all this—the pastoral “bringing” to God, the doctrinal dwelling “within” us—with the light of Christ, the enlightening Word. “God” in this dynamic is Christ speaking to our condition, penetrating the sheath of sin and ignorance around our soul with the Light, seeking to reach that of God within us, which yearns for him.
“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epistle, once we have done the inner work of our own transformation in the light of Christ ourselves, then we can answer that of God in others. That of God within us is calling out in the darkness, and the Light answers with the Word.
Through the Flaming Sword 