QuakerQuaker

Children as young as 9 years old, and adults as old as 65, gathered at the Greene Street Friends School Meeting House in Germantown this weekend to discuss the benefits of “taking care of business” the Quaker way.”

As I roam around the web I see many people drawn to reading about Plain dress and simple lifestyles… Are we tired yet of being passive consumers whose only reason for existence is to earn enough money to hand it back to those who make the “stuff” we supposedly have always needed and wanted?

When I go really deep in prayer or meditation the emotional heat of my waking reality is cooled. Spirit calms my passions. Spirit quells my fears. Peace cleanses me.

I couldn’t leave them unless God reassigned me – they’re my tribe. But I’d looked for food, and gotten sawdust and sand. I longed to hear something said among them that I wasn’t hearing, and the Holy Spirit was not opening my mouth to say it myself.

Friends were not only aware that their actions would be interpreted as a challenge to the existing political order but also of the likely consequences of those actions. 

Whatever you do, whichever amount of risk you choose to accept, at least consider something that [Quaker] Hartsough told me: “We all have a responsibility to listen to our own conscience, and if that lands us in jail or means economic hardship, that’s not as bad as the curse of having killed people.”

We can hardly build a new community without being conscious—acutely so—of what has gone before. Even in Quaker circles, which tend to be less sexist than the wider society, the unconscious sexism we have all internalized ought to be addressed.

Christian simplicity is challenging in this culture, not because our culture is complex but because our culture is simple. Because wealth is held as the highest good, and as the source of our salvation, it is very difficult for people to break away from the culture and trust God.