Comments on: Creeds and stories https://www.quakerranter.org/creeds-and-stories/ A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:56:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Howard Brod https://www.quakerranter.org/creeds-and-stories/#comment-947906 Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:56:53 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=61299#comment-947906 OK. After a few decades, I guess I and many others in my meeting have become just simple Quakers (finally). For us (if I may be allowed to speak for others without their permission), there are really just two “creeds”, if you will, that are essential for Quakers; practices which go back to the very founding of the very earliest gatherings of Quakers before they were even called Quakers:

- ‘Expectant waiting’ worship so that we might find God within us and us within God; and

- Seeking the way forward as a spiritual community by arriving at a communal sense guided by the Spirit during ‘expectant waiting’ worship together.

Everything else that comes forth from Friends should be a result of those two purely spiritual practices. I dare say that if more Friends considered those two as the only essentials to being a Quaker, we would have had less Quaker schisms, more ‘lives that speak’, and a more vibrant religious society as the Spirit consumed us.

I have had many Friends over the years tell me that they believe “committees” or “Quaker tradition” or both are essential to being a Quaker. With that type of “creed”, no wonder we can not get many newcomers to stick around.

Perhaps we are not seeing the elephant in the room because we have and enjoy too much business and drama going on — without first routinely (read, “at least weekly”) seeking the Spirit in our lives through those two spiritual practices that centuries ago were considered essentials to being a Quaker.

]]>