Steven Davison, writing in his blog, Through the Flaming Sword:
The purpose of a covenant community is to provide a home for this transforming work. That means that joining a meeting that is a covenant community invites radical engagement with our spiritual lives on the part of our fellow members, who are to be the vehicles for God’s transforming work.
Talk of “holy possessions” might also lead Quakers to think of those things which have set us apart from the rest of Christianity and may well preserve our tradition in the 21st century.
As we keep sowing, we divide the labor according to our gifts. For every radical prophet who risks everything to speak the truth, we hope some conservative is doing a good job of guarding the money that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pastor who cherishes our community, and we make space for the outward-facing evangelist, who understands when the moment is ripe to intervene in our culture.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/06/sowing-in-tears.html
As we keep sowing, we divide the labor according to our gifts. For every radical prophet who risks everything to speak the truth, we hope some conservative is doing a good job of guarding the money that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pastor who cherishes our community, and we make space for the outward-facing evangelist, who understands when the moment is ripe to intervene in our culture.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/06/sowing-in-tears.html
As we keep sowing, we divide the labor according to our gifts. For every radical prophet who risks everything to speak the truth, we hope some conservative is doing a good job of guarding the money that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pastor who cherishes our community, and we make space for the outward-facing evangelist, who understands when the moment is ripe to intervene in our culture.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/06/sowing-in-tears.html
Interview with Britain YM recording clerk Paul Parker
Parker started attending meetings as a young teenager. He says he found Quakerism refreshing because Quakers asked him what he believed, while other Christian traditions told him what they believed.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4688407
San Antonio Quakers’ minute on child separations
Friends Meeting of San Antonio finds the policy of the present administration of separating children from their families at the border to be shameful and contrary to American values. Further, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a people of faith.
A few years ago Friends Journal ran an article on the border humanitarian crisis, co-written by one of San Antonio’s clerks, so we’ve added this weekend’s statement to the article for context.
I like this interview on the Italian mafia by Isaac Chotiner in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Powerful Than It’s Ever Been.”
It seems that this perpetual cynicism may be the greatest threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grandchild of government conspiracy theories? Maybe the cause doesn’t matter as much as the effect.
The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alternative authority that you go to because you can’t get anything done through the legitimate state. For that very reason, I think there’s no doubt that it promotes that chaos. It likes civic distrust. It likes cynicism. It can profit from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.
I think that if we wanted to construct a Quaker critique of the current American government – and the type of corporatized corruption we see in Russia and the petrostates, it would best start with the political culture that deny basic facts, gaslight citizens with ever-changing rationales, and creating chaos that can let financial hucksters reap billions. These are not governments based on integrity and fair playing fields.
