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by: Eric Muhr
I used to work as the education reporter for a newspaper in Idaho, and part of my job was covering spring graduation ceremonies. I attended a lot of commencement exercises. It wasn’t my favorite part of the job. Most of these events felt like little more than a jumble of inspiration about the journey we’re on, about where we’re headed. It was always the same.
Except one time it wasn’t.
Read Moreby: Chrissy Muhr
It has been said that John is the Quaker gospel. It’s in John that Jesus calls his disciples Friends (John 15:15). John gives importance to women by telling the story of the first woman missionary – the Samaritan woman (John 4:3-9). And it is in this gospel that Jesus is referred to as the light.
That image of God as light pervades the writings of early Friends as well as the journal of George Fox.
God is seen as opposed to the forces of darkness. The “ocean of light” represents God’s love reaching out to humanity. Even though darkness seems to cover the world, the light is infinitely larger and all-encompassing. God’s love is a never-ending ocean that flows over the darkness and conquers it.
Read Moreby: Jen Buck
Community Is Hard
For five years, I lived in an intentional community. The idea was that we might follow Jesus more closely by committing to life together. We read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. We shared meals. We practiced spiritual disciplines together every week.
It was hard.
Even as Quakers who share Christ (and so much more), the differences were stark and strong between us. Finding consensus on issues often took months. Each of us had commitments outside of this community. And the community took time.
A lot of time.
Read Moreby: J Rourke
I’ve been working on compassion. It’s the aim of my spiritual work—to focus on interaction that is healing and care-full. Unfortunately, compassion isn’t my default, and I don’t always get there. But it’s a goal.
An example from work.
She came for her drink 15 minutes after I’d finished it.
“Yes, that’s yours,” I said. “Yup, almond milk … Yeah, I can put it in a to-go cup.”
She asked a few more questions. I offered a few more snappy-direct responses. She left angry. It was not my best moment.
Read Moreby: Jared Le Shana
God is love.
It is a phrase that we are well acquainted with, and one we like to use quite a bit. It is biblical. It is a creed that inspires us to be like God, and to seek the heart of the Father. We believe that love is at the center of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we are to love just as he loved. But we often disagree with each other on what love looks like for us, as 21st century Christians. Is love tolerant? Is love convicting? Is love tough?
I don’t think I have the answers to all the questions of what love looks like in every situation we find ourselves in, but I would like to propose a different way of looking at ‘Christian love’ (or, in light of what I am about to say, just ‘love’).
Read Moreby: Chrissy Muhr
Sometimes there are words. Sometimes silence. But always, there is music. And I’ve found, especially recently, that this is the image of God that resonates with me.
God as music: the Father composes, the Son conducts, the Spirit enables, and the music flows.
This God music strums the strings of creation, hums through my experience, shapes and shares truth in the voices of a human choir – my friends and neighbors. God doesn’t just speak to me, he sings to my condition.
Listen.
Read MoreWhat does it mean to identify as a Quaker today? I’m not sure. I’d probably be more excited about owning that attribution were this 19th century America with characters like Alice Paul, Elizabeth Fry, and Susan B. Anthony pursuing justice. (Quaker tradition appeals to my inner feminist.) But where are those quietly raging heroines and heroes of the faith now? Early Friends forged their reputation via holy troublemaking; how are we distinguished today?
Are we quietly raging against the tides of oppression and injustice, or simply quiet?
Read Moreby: Eric Muhr
There are times when I’m struck by what I read in scripture, challenged to stop for a moment and think about where I’m going, about whether my life is consistent with what I claim to believe. Take this passage, for instance, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person.”
I’ve taken a different path, standing up for my rights, demanding justice when I know I’ve been wronged. And Christian culture applauds. Why is that?
Read Moreby: J Rourke
I used to dream of having superpowers. And winning the lottery. And marrying someone super rich and beautiful. And finding out I had a rare condition that made me smarter than everyone else. Only a few elite scientists could see it in me. Every once in a while I even dared to consider that the world around me was of my own construction, and if I focused hard enough, I could manipulate everything in my life to be what I wanted.
I really, really wanted out of my boring life. Honestly, I still want it. Maybe we all do. The problem is that we know – whatever we dream up – it can’t free us.
Read Moreby: Chrissy Muhr
Over and over I’ve come to places of decision. Places where it wasn’t enough to know right, to believe truth. I had to act.
Read MoreGod hears everything I say. And I’m a little embarrassed. All my complaints. Every bitter remark. Each selfish lament. He heard me say that? Cue the red cheeks and regret.
But there’s also comfort: “Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live” (Psalm 116:2). In a world of ads, texts, tweets, Facebook posts, junk mail, e-mail – God’s undivided attention means something. My words are heard through the din, and they are valued by the God who spoke light, sound, color, and life itself into existence. Incredible!
Read Moreby: Eric Muhr
After my brother finished his first year of college, I drove to Kansas to pick him up and bring him home for the summer. It’s a long drive from here to there, so I’d planned for the shortened week I’d face on my return. There were so many things to get done, and time, as always, was on the move. It was hard.
Hard to breathe.
Time was slipping into the future, and I couldn’t keep up. This in spite of how fast I was driving.
Read Moreby: J Rourke
I delight in brilliance. Like so many folks my age, I love good writing, probing videos, beautiful photography. Images of smart people, overlaid with substantive quotations (preferably in a bright, clean typeface). These things are fine, maybe even excellent. They encourage, inspire, challenge. At least for a moment or two. Long enough for my friends to hear me talk about it, for it to be shared with others on the internet, then forgotten.
Not the worst way to waste a life. It is my generation's bane to be surrounded by beauty and changed so little by it.
Read Moreby: Eric Muhr
I used to help cover politics for a newspaper in Idaho. I interviewed a local man, a profile. He sought a legislative seat, defined himself as anti-tax, pro-jobs. He spoke of education and construction and the elderly. And while I jotted notes, I thought how similar this sounds to all the rest I’ve met. Each one defines his character according to accomplishments. Each list — the same — with clubs and causes, offices, endorsements. The only differentiation comes from what’s been done and what’s opposed. We have fences but no foundation.
Read Moreby: J Rourke
The crucifixion doesn't make sense to me.
Well, it does, but not all of it. The story of Jesus’ death is a pretty cool revelation into transcending oppressive systems. I love the parts that prove we need no longer be shackled by empire, by religion, by social norms. But then there are the other parts, the parts about everlasting life, wrathful murder, necessary substitutionary atonement. I get hung up on those things. Why would God have to kill Jesus, or even worse, want to kill Jesus for me? Why does my wrongdoing mean Jesus has to die in my place? That seems pretty messed up to me. I won’t sing songs about that.
And that’s not even the whole story.
Read Moreby: Eric Muhr
I log on to the Internet late at night to play chess. In between moves, I check my e-mail, read the news, and think.
It’s quiet here at the end of the day. But peering through computer screen — mystical aperture — brings close the noisy conflict of a war-torn world.
Read Moreby: Kenji Kuramitsu
Japanese immigrants are living in global diaspora – from the Andes to Los Angeles, from Sao Paulo to Seoul, Nikkei nomads (referring to people of Japanese origin) have settled into a vast constellation of countries in the 150 or so years since Japanese isolationism was officially quashed.
One of the many beautiful countries into which Japanese expatriates have assimilated – while boasting a great diversity of thought and unique culinary delicacies – is also internationally known for its barbaric penal systems and the sky-high rates at which it imprisons more people than any other society in history...
Read Moreby: Tiffany Graham
Two years ago I came across a single car accident. The driver was still inside and the engine had caught fire. Several of us tried to help him, but the doors were locked. By the time we got a window open, the flames were so high that we couldn’t get the driver out. Emergency vehicles arrived shortly after, but it was too late.
Read Moreby: David Jaimes
Over 90 years ago an American missionary came to a small mountain town in Peru. He had broken Spanish, a guitar, a sack lunch, a Bible, and a message for the people of Pampas Grande. One of those people, a young man named Wilfredo Dario, heard that message and joined the missionary in telling others the good news. Wilfredo eventually married, and one of his boys was my dad, Victor David. He studied at a local Bible institute, and married the daughter of a military man. A year later I was born.
Read Moreby: J Rourke
There’s a real cool idea in theology called the Cosmic Christ. It’s the belief that Jesus, the human person, was the incarnation of something eternal, the Christ.
Quakers have known about the Cosmic Christ for as long as we’ve been around. That eternal thing that any of us may meet when we are present in the Present. The some-thing, attending to you in each moment, pulling you toward the momentum of Goodness. And we know it as the same dude who said stuff in the Bible and called himself Jesus. Rack up another one for the Quakers, y’all, because everyone else is LATE TO THE GAME.
We’ve called it the Inner Light, the essence of Christ in all peoples. Which we’re into, right? Which we live by looking for Christ in everyone, right? Which we look for in each other, right?
Read More