Spiritual Gifts Revisited
February 14, 2026 § 4 Comments
I once became close to a Friend while teaching First Day School together and discovered that she volunteered once a week in a hospice. Who knew? I think it’s possible that nobody else in the meeting did. She obviously had a gift for pastoral care and a leading to serve in that gift. Did she think of it as a spiritual or religious calling? Did she sometimes carry home some of the grief and pain that she witnessed during her ministry? Did she go through rough patches sometimes, or doubt her calling? Did she need any kind of spiritual support? Would she come to the meeting for that support? And would her meeting be equipped to offer it? How many Friends have gifts and leadings like hers that remain invisible to their meeting, maybe even to themselves?
We Friends believe that each of us has been endowed with gifts of the Spirit, and that many of us, if not all of us, will be called into some form of life-affirming service, some “ministry”, at some point in our lives. At least, that’s the “official”, traditional conviction. Also, in theory, one of our meetings’ most important responsibilities is to recognize and nurture these gifts, to recognize leadings into service, and to support them both.
However, too often our members and attenders have never been invited to think about their spiritual gifts or how they might be led into ministry. Nor have our meetings done anything on their part to recognize and nurture their gifts and leadings. Often, the closest we get is nominating committee trying to match the experience and skills, the talents and interests of members to the slots in the meeting’s committee roster; nominating committee does recognize some gifts, and serving on a committee can be fulfilling. But that’s not real proactive spiritual nurture of the gifts themselves.
No one starts off thinking in terms of spiritual gifts and leadings. You have to be exposed, invited, even taught this way of thinking. Yet, we often find our way into our gifts by instinct anyway. People who have been given a chance will often find their gifts “accidentally”, by virtue of their family upbringing, or their education, or other aspects of their environment, their church, or hobbies, or Scouts or 4H, or some mentor(s), or whatever. And they need to be lucky enough not to have been traumatized or oppressed along the way.
So we may gravitate into our gifts and leadings naturally, organically, but still not think of them this way. I know I have. But I eventually came to recognize them as gifts of the Spirit because one of my callings is to the study of religion and of Quakerism, especially the faith and practice of Quaker ministry. Study is one of my gifts and one of my spiritual disciplines; I’m good at it and it feeds my soul. I ended up teaching myself until I found mentors in Doug Gwyn and Bill Taber at Pendle Hill.
So I came to understand and develop my gifts and leadings in the arms of my Quaker tradition. But it took decades to finally find a meeting whose arms embraced this kind of spiritual nurture. Until relatively recently, it has been mostly Quaker institutions that have helped me: Pendle Hill, as I said, and also Earlham School of Religion, the School of the Spirit, and lately, Woodbrooke.
Some meetings write memorial minutes for their deceased members, and often this is the first time their meeting has paid attention to the gifts that they brought to others, to the meeting, to the world. We need to make opportunities for our members and attenders to share what they’re up to with an eye to identifying their spiritual gifts before they die. I would build this role into the questions we ask folks who apply for membership in our clearness committees for membership, so that we identify their gifts upfront—not just so that we can match them up with appropriate committees, but so that we can look for ways to nurture those gifts more directly, if they want it.
Through the Flaming Sword
February 14, 2026 § Leave a comment
This painting by the poet William Blake is the image I use as the banner image for this blog. The “flaming sword” comes from the story of “the Fall” in Genesis three, which I’ll quote below; I’ll also quote from Blake and from George Fox.
The image
But Blake’s painting is hardly directly representational, as we’ll see from the Genesis passage.
- There are flames but no sword or gate into Paradise.
- The cherub is oddly presented and is human, or at least humanoid, in form, whereas cherubim are variously described in the Bible and other ancient mythologies, but always in some composite and mostly animal form. The cherubim that sit atop the ark of the covenant at least have wings.
- The human, presumably Adam, is supine, laid out almost as though he is dead. He has fallen.
Genesis 3:22–24:
And Yahweh God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:
Therefore Yahweh God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Comment
So the cherubim’s charge is to keep humans from reentering Paradise, eating from the tree of life, and becoming immortal. Yahweh and his angelic court (the “us” in the quote) are worried that humans will become like them. And we are already halfway there, having learned good and evil.
Blake’s blanket of flames and the outstretched arms of the cherub block the laid out Adam from rising.
Blake’s text
This image accompanies a page in Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, one of his prophetic books, which is mostly text as captions for a series of paintings with a poem prologue. The poet presents himself as having descending into Hell and come back with prophecy that will reconcile heaven and hell. Here’s the text on that page. Note that Blake has given us here a significant phrase.
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
George Fox
This image, these texts, together build an astonishing set of figures, both visual and theological, a kind of theological koan, a reality that seeks to transcend our either/or. But I used the image as a banner for my blog because of George Fox’s account of one of his visions. Here’s that passage from his journal:
Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practice physic [medicine] for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was immediately taken up in spirit, to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come into that state in which Adam was before he fell, in which the admirable works of the creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made. [John 1:3] Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come into subjection to the spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being. [Journal, Nickalls edition, page 27–28]
Fox claims to have made it past the guardian cherubim and the flaming sword back into Paradise. He says he came “up in spirit through the flaming sword.” He ascended through the flames into Paradise, just as the supine Adam in Blake’s painting would have to do. And the first thing that happens to him is Blake’s “improvement of sensual enjoyment”: Fox’s sense of smell became transcendentally acute.
And he was “renewed up into the image of God”. He was restored to the condition of Adam before the Fall, including the wisdom with which Adam named all the animals from mystical insight into their true nature—the doors of his perception were cleansed. [Check out Bob Dylan’s wonderful song Man Gave Names To All The Animals.] And Fox ate of the tree of life, though he does not describe it this way—through Christ he attained eternal life.
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
Through the Flaming Sword 