QuakerQuaker

It is such a blessing to know and share the inward manifestation of eternal life with the early Quakers through inward witness. The Presence within is sufficient, freedom from the outward ways.”

Although Friends don’t practice the physical sacraments, seeing all of life as a sacrament, I like to broaden the ameliorated ounce of grape juice and pasty wafer into all food encounters. I take in the good gift of life, health and energy in the food I eat.

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.

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.

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?

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.”