An excerpt from my intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the March Friends Jour­nal.

It’s only human to turn to metaphors to describe our spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships. We talk about “nur­tur­ing the seed” and “turn­ing toward the light.” We move along on spir­i­tu­al “jour­neys” that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly involve any trav­el at all. Our con­fer­ence themes often include words like weave and motion and open.

I live in an area with a lot of old roads going off in var­i­ous direc­tions and one big high­way going to the obvi­ous near­by city. When I plug a des­ti­na­tion into my phone it usu­al­ly tells me to get on the high­way even if it’s going in the wrong direc­tion from where I want to go. I gen­er­al­ly ignore the direc­tions and take the back roads. This is a metaphor, per­haps, for our Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We are dwarfed by denom­i­na­tions many times our size, most of which have bet­ter sig­nage, more con­ve­nient rest stops, and wider break­down lanes. But I’d like to hope that the Quak­er way can be more direct, more sur­pris­ing, more inter­est­ing, and more reward­ing in the long run.

Find­ing Our Ways 

Intro­duc­tion to our Feb­ru­ary issue.

Friends Journal