Primitive Christianity Revived, Again
Intentional: As the Court of Quaker Opinion is well-versed in the contemporary importance of intentional living, we look to a new age of spirituality.
In-Tensional: The danger of your mantra is shown by the many New Agers using intentional spirituality to further their worldly aims and success.
Intentional: There has always been a belief that the good will prosper in this life. Ours is the way of having that belief become reality.
In-Tensional: Beliefs need to be rooted…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 1st mo. 27, 2014 at 7:00am — No Comments
There are countries that still respect the contingencies of nature. Specifically, if there has been early snowfall and plenty of it, ski resorts in the Alps get the benefit of opening early with plenty of trails to offer. But if there is late or little snow, then livestock farmers reap the benefit of an extended grazing season.
Nature giveth and nature taketh away; blessed be the Lord! Needless to say, in those countries with respect only for human control/man-ipulation of nature,…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 1st mo. 20, 2014 at 11:30am — No Comments
Does this sound like something to be excited to join?
The idea of this game is more important than the contestants playing it. However, no one can really tell you what the idea is exactly, but only that it is more important than the players. In fact, the idea, now an objective, is so important that it needs to be considered from every perspective by the not-as-important contestants. This process of deciding the essential idea of the game of life will take up most of life's playing…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 1st mo. 13, 2014 at 7:30am — 2 Comments
If the Brits can refer to the Atlantic Ocean as "the pond", then who's to say that the experience of Judeo-Christian religion is not a day at the park.
Weighty Friends are just the latest stones that God has skipped across our troubled waters. Certainly, the O.T. prophets, and even a couple of kings, came at the chosen people with competitive purpose.
Of course, the stones that hopped, almost to dancing, into salvation history by psalm and story are a delight, still experienced…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 1st mo. 6, 2014 at 8:00am — No Comments
Imagine, so soon after Santa-mania, that you were not able to enjoy the hype of the holiday. Imagine being left with only yourself, as you could not get out of a funk. That's the way it is, year-round, for those who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. God, as it were, unwilling to allow you to enter into the fun and festivity of "giving".
More specifically, a form of insanity that lives up to its name, and its relentless endeavor to keep you in-strictly-essential-sanity. The…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 30, 2013 at 8:00am — 2 Comments
Intro.: The Court of Quaker Opinion will grant that psychology has become the means of understanding the inner life of human beings.
Conv.: We are convinced that understanding the inner life has more to do with conversion than with introspection - more about turning around than turning inward.
Intro.: But getting in touch with your feelings and hidden impulses leads you to see who you are and what you want from life.
Conv.: Turning around from who you feel you are and…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 25, 2013 at 6:00am — No Comments
Cultural: May it please the Court of Quaker Opinion to know that our Christmas Social will focus on Bible-based songs and stories.
Spiritual: You mean those that glorify the experience of refugees and mix biblical metaphors?
Cultural: Why shouldn't the Feeding Miracle in the Gospels be compared to the Giving/Sharing of Christmas?
Spiritual: Because it justifies commercialism at the expense of the spiritual hunger that was meant to be satisfied.
Cultural: Would you…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 21, 2013 at 6:02am — No Comments
Henry Becque noted, "The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors". I would maintain that this same defect led early Friends to reject a push to the witness of equality promoted by Levellers for the pull towards the witness of inequality experienced by women.
To substantiate this claim, I refer to The Kindlers'(UK) pamphlet entitled "This I Warn You In Love: witness of some early Quaker women". In particular, "...to be seen as virtuous, she must accept the…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 18, 2013 at 12:42pm — No Comments
R.O.: May it please the Court of Quaker Opinion that we have not lost regard for our charismatic founder, nor the discipline that marks us as his offspring.
G.O.: Dear Friends, we are found(ed) by the Spirit of God and claimed by and for God's purpose. Along with the rest of humanity, we have always been children of God who now see the Light.
R.O.: We have a refuge from the world where we find freedom from dangerous diversions.
G.O.: There is no refuge from the Lamb's…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 10, 2013 at 5:30am — No Comments
P. of M.: With due respect for the Court of Quaker Opinion, we have the presence of mind to be directed by the highest faculty of humanity.
P. of S.: The Age of Reason proved itself to be no more enlightened, but yet more barbaric, than the so-called Dark Ages. Indeed, individuals found good arguments and nations promoted good reasons for self-interested policies that swiftly and mercilessly acted against anyone who stood in their way.
P. of M.: Science has established the need…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 8, 2013 at 5:22am — 3 Comments
Ultra Vires: We come before the Court of Quaker Opinion with the transcendent authority which strengthens the Meeting in Gospel Order.
Ultra Virus: We welcome any authority that we can question and ultimately undermine from within its established function.
Ultra Vires: The power and life is beyond sabotage except for the Meeting without operational safeguards.
Ultra Virus: Your weighty/gifted leaders are no more an impediment to our purposes than unsupported…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 12th mo. 3, 2013 at 9:21am — No Comments
Stock in Protestant Christianity was way up when Erasmus bought into the excitement. Expecting, as Metternich would later with politics, that a tradition of Christianity could be the force to keep mankind's bubble("homo bulla") aloft, he misread the disordered signs of the time.
Continuous revolution, not revelation, marked the Reformation and later Age of Metternich.
Nonetheless, a last stand in Praise of Folly, like vocal ministry confronting the principle of…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 9th mo. 3, 2013 at 8:00am — 1 Comment
Vastly enjoying Rebecca Solnit's "The Faraway Nearby" and her descriptions of a maze and a labyrinth. She writes, "...a maze, which has not one convoluted way but many ways and often no center, so that wandering has no cease or at least no definitive conclusion." With a labyrinth, however, "You may wander, may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive - having…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 26, 2013 at 6:30pm — No Comments
As a survivor of literary, not televised, fame, I know to look to Honeywood, not Hollywood. For there is a good-natured guy who finds his benevolence in everything and everyone he meets. With a Goldsmith's touch, not that of a King Midas, he shapes people and things to his own likeness. His motto of "universal benevolence" is the pen highlighting everything as important or placing confident assurance in the responsibility of everyone.
There but for the teacher who argued that…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 21, 2013 at 3:41pm — No Comments
Hindsight: If it please the Court of Quaker Opinion, we draw from the past in order to guard for the future. After all, hindsight is 20-20 vision.
Hicksite: Truth be told, the picture of the future is only bright if we can somehow distance ourselves from the British-reserve of the past. It is all too clear that demure-conservation is too little too late.
Hindsight: Disownment is still the proper discipline for those who can not honor the past as a guard for the…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 16, 2013 at 1:30pm — No Comments
I'm mesmerized by the condition of the Quaker Meeting. The magnetic attraction to a royal touch that can cure corrupted humanity is scrofulous. Our animal natures worshipping the "King's Evil" (rather than the Prince of Peace) with swollen glands as proof.
Sticking our necks out, in hopeful blessing, only to experience pressure points of obstruction. Spiritual sickness and disease that floods holy friendship into hormonal episodes of concern. Pulses throbbing with secretions better…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 12, 2013 at 12:00pm — No Comments
Dare I claim, with prophets far and nigh, that I have been to the mountain top?
Drawn there by magnetic force, as the medieval legend and Mandeville's "Travels" relate; but having been stripped in the process, as nails from boards, of all my internal supports. My privileged status in the community, my 20+ years of education, my exalted vocation, my indomitable confidence in my decisions, and ultimately my prideful hope for the future - all unwittingly removed from me as I drew closer…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 8, 2013 at 10:30am — 1 Comment
A status-defiant hero of mine, M.L. Mencken, went from "Happy Days, 1880-1892" to "Heathen Days, 1890-1936" with a two-year overlap of uncertain transition. In imitation, I would say that Quakers have gone from Helping Days to Hurting Days with the only uncertainty being the mode of expression.
For some of us, the hurt of disillusionment has been turned inward in depression or neurosis. Others of us have developed outward signs of affliction on the body or, more likely, in the body's…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 5, 2013 at 10:30am — 2 Comments
Ineffable: If it please the Court of Quaker opinion, as with the scriptural people of Ja(h)we(h), we find the experience, if not the Name, of God beyond human expression.
Mot Juste: If time would tell, dear Friends, as with the equally-scriptural children of God, we relate to an immanent parent as our Father/Mother in heaven.
Ineffable: There is no way that the individual person can hold, let alone express, the immensity of religious experience. That is why we worship in…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 8th mo. 1, 2013 at 8:30am — 2 Comments
Don't know if Jacob Stone's statement in "On Authority, A New Apologia"(Friends Journal, June/July 2013) is mountain or molehill(cf. "The Busy Body" blog) for Quakerism. As for Stone, he writes, "This is the heart of my dilemma: I want to know WHY something is holy." Allow me, Friends, to add two cents to the collection plate of possible reaction/response.
Pascal warned that what we make natural we destroy. Quakerism is religion, not science, because we refuse to give ourselves over…
ContinueAdded by Clem Gerdelmann on 7th mo. 29, 2013 at 9:09am — No Comments
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