“You can go ahead of me.”
Description:
An essay in which the author reveals some growing self-awareness he has gained by standing in line.
Keywords:
An essay in which the author reveals some growing self-awareness he has gained by standing in line.
[I] feel that in my own case, it may be best to share the occasional gleam with the multitude, rather than stand in the blaze on the mountain-top with the elect.
– Corder Catchpool (1934)
Dear Friends: To be poor in spirit is not the same as to be poor materially or socially. Even so, material wealth and social authority tend to obstruct our view of the long arc of history that bends towards a world of justice and kindness.
And thus have we learned of the Lord: to wit, not by the high striving, aspiring mind; but by lying low, and being contented with little.
A Plenary Address by Lloyd Lee Wilson to Pacific Yearly Meeting, 2015, Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma, California
There is an instant when the truth of your soul sears through your every fiber and the indescribable is revealed. It is the fierce light that splits you whole and reveals the poet Rilke’s words, “You must change your life.” It is an opportunity to bring one’s life into alignment, but there is sheer, holy terror that accompanies this process.
“I abused my power,” James Nayler wrote to the Quakers. The year was 1659. Nayler was forty-one years old.
During the March 2014 gathering of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, I stayed with other Friends at a hostel where we had a bible study each morning before breakfast.
