Full show notes for my interview can be found here.

I talked with Peterson Toscano about his fiction piece in the November issue of Friends Journal and we segued into all sorts of byways into how fiction can show us parts of spiritual lives that straight-ahead essays can’t.

One of the roles of faith is to remember that we’ve been here before. We’ve been the wandering Jews lost in the desert but fed manna to survive. We remember the disciples taken by surprise by the rush of Roman guards come to arrest our Messiah, who urged us to put away our swords. We tell stories of a young George Fox wandering England looking for spiritual teachers until all his “hopes in them and in all men were gone.” We survive by telling stories. We keep ourselves centered and calm by remembering others who found a path through uncertainty and assured us they were held up by a Comforter.

September 2025

Friends Journal

I am going to make a bold apology for a clarified liberal Quaker identity that retains its roots and recovers worship in the spirit of Christ, but yet releases us from the orthodox Christian preoccupations that no longer speak to so many unprogrammed Friends.

Are Quakers Christian?

I thought I had wandered into a group of people who actually believed that God was able to speak directly to them. I remember saying, “Oh my God, this is Pentecost!” I couldn’t believe that these people think God is actually glllllloing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong.

Most of the Quakers reading this can probably guess where this is going–she pretty quickly got a lesson in the unwritten norms against exuberance at many Quaker meetings, the rules that prevent many expressions of worship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the strictures on behavior are pretty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t really about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quaker meetings and feeling incredibly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the radical spontenaeity of our worship (anyone can minister anytime!) and the life it called us to but in practice we often are creatures of habit, to our detriment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “experimenting with freedom” and the “liberty of the spirit.” I realize my stories of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that liberty again.

http://quakerspeak.com/how-does-culture-influence-quaker-worship/

If you look back through Friends Journal archives, you’ll find warnings against competitive behavior. In 1955 Bess B. Lane of Swarthmore (Pa.) Meeting wrote that schools should “Place emphasis on cooperation, sharing, rather than on competition” and wondered if “competition is being overstressed in our schools.” In 1972, Christopher H. Anderson, then a senior at Wilmington College, had stronger words. He contrasted his Quaker education with public schools, which he said “breed a social conformity, an intellectual blandness and a repugnant spirit of competition.”

If you know anyone who is interested in the topic, please forward this along!

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Friends Journal

I think about the people I’ve cared about who have needed to talk to themselves and make noises. Who need to pace and say things we don’t understand. Spirit is moving through them, in this incarnational way. Reminding them they still have bodies that can make noises, that they still can breath words into being.

http://www.meetinghouse.xyz/everything/2018/12/31/where-do-we-hear-gods-voice

Since that Sunday worship, I have found myself more inclined and responsive to leadings to share vocal ministry out of Silence. While I still prepare diligently when occasions to plan to preach arise, melding scholarship, daily life, and spirit over time, I am more sensitive and responsive to those inner leadings and the Spirit, from which ALL vocal and non-verbal ministry are born and enlivened.

http://www.nyym.org/content/my-experience-sharing-vocal-ministry