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Quaker Corporate Experience Online

Likely the greatest impact of technology on Quaker corporate experience has been online technology in our meetings for worship.

On Tech (July 2024)

Quaker Culture: Direct Experience

[The] Lord opened my spirit . . . [and] gave me the certain and sensible feeling of the pure, which had been with me from the beginning . . . such an inward demonstration and feeling of the seed of life, that I cried out in my spirit, “. . . there is not another, there never was another.”

On Perception (March 2023)

Focus and Immersion in Present Experience

Waiting for sunrise on a desert morning this March, my focus came to the inward Truth only. I had walked in darkness with a quiet dog to a saddle between two hills in the middle of the Mojave Desert Preserve. In wild lands, especially in dry lands, I find less cumber between God and me. I can feel a presence in my middle. With Light arriving, I reflect on my feelings and what I’m led to do. Guidance from the Holy is clearer in these times of presence.

On Play (September 2015)

Time, History and the Eternal Now

My first encounter with Friends occurred thirty years ago in my hometown of Princeton, New Jersey. I was going through a tumultuous time, and I found the Princeton Meeting to be a place of peace and comfort. Later, as I became more involved with Quakerism, I learned about the history of Princeton Meeting and the hidden history of local Quakers, who were the original settlers there. I learned that the Quakers didn’t take sides during the Revolutionary War; that they cared for the American and British wounded equally; and that as a result, they fell out of favor politically.

On Time (March 2014)

Words from a Guardian Angel

With an unmistakable sense of mystery, a special kind of Knowing comes to me. This Knowing has come on dozens of occasions, sometimes touching me after prayerful intention and sometimes randomly, an act of pure grace. It seems very much like the “precognition” or “telepathy” that is studied by researchers into the paranormal. Interfaith minister Paul Hertel calls it “Knowing with a capital K.” (See Polly Campbell’s Imperfect Spirituality: Extraordinary Enlightenment for Ordinary People, 2012.) I sometimes call it my “Guardian Angel.” Although I cannot explain this phenomenon, I have no doubt about its value. This Knowing enhances my relationship with the Inner Light.

On Knowing (March 2015)