Thomas Kelly

Quaker Culture: Living Now

• Author(s):
• Thomas Kelly

Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands this holy Now . . . In the Now we are at home at last. The fretful winds of time are stilled, the nostalgic longings of this heaven-born earth-traveler come to rest. For the one-dimensional ribbon of time has loosed its hold. It has by no means disappeared. We live within time, within the one-dimensional ribbon. But every time-now is found to be a continuance of an Eternal Now, and in the Eternal Now receives a new evaluation. We have not merely rediscovered time; we have found in this holy immediacy of the Now the root and source of time itself.

Issue: On Freedom (January 2022)

Quaker Culture: Impossibility

• Author(s):
• Thomas Kelly

Do you see war as a giant, iniquitous, futile, unchristian system? Then hurl yourself against it, in full blindness to the seeming impossibility of the task. . . There are no impossibles to those who, in supreme dedication, are rooted deep in the Eternal Love.

Issue: On Control (July 2019)

Quaker Culture: Speaking and Silence

• Author(s):
• Thomas Kelly

[In Quaker worship,] words should not break the silence, but continue it. For the Divine Life who was ministering through the medium of silence is the same Life as is now ministering through words. And when such words are truly spoken “In the Life,” then when such words cease, the uninterrupted silence and worship continue, for silence and words have been of one texture, one piece.

Issue: On Beginning (March 2016)