Faith and Practice

Faith and Practice: The Book[s]

From its beginning, the Society of Friends has been non-creedal, rejecting any requirement that members atest to a specific creed or doctrine. Friends instead seek the religious guidance that comes out of collective worship. Nonetheless, as the Society gradually established itself in the late 17th century, meetings began to systematically record their thoughts about Quaker practice; good history of this process can be found here.

Over the subsequent three centuries, this work has been collected and refined by various meetings. The resulting documents combine practical advice on how Quaker meetings function, historical and contemporary reflections on the nature of Quaker life and worship, and "queries" that serve "as a guide to self-examination, using them not as an outward set of rules, but as a framework within which we assess our convictions and examine, clarify, and consider prayerfully the direction of our lives and the life of the community." [PYM Faith and Practice, pg. 205). The links below will take you to two such works

Faith and Practice (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1997)

Quaker Faith and Practice (The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, 1995)

Children's Queries

Members of Oread Friends Meeting in Lawrence, KS revised the queries from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to be more suited to children so we could better integrate the queries into the education of the Meeting’s children.

First Month - Meeting for Worship

Why do I sit with others in silence?
Do I listen carefully so that I may hear?

Second Month - Meeting for Business

What is business?
How can business be spiritual?

Third Month - Ministry of Word and Deed

How do we encourage and help each other?

Fourth Month - Care for the Meeting Community

How do we create a loving meeting?

Fifth Month - Education

How do we learn from each other at the Meeting?

Sixth Month - Equality

Am I open to and appreciative of everyone?

Seventh Month - Social Responsibility and Witness

What am I doing to help improve my community?

Eighth Month - Peace

How do I work for peace in my community?

Ninth Month -

Tenth Month -

Eleventh Month - Stewardship of Resources

What can I do to take care of the Meeting?

Twelfth Month - Integrity and Simplicity

How do I show integrity and simplicity at Meeting and in my life?
Why is it important to tell the truth?

Lawrence Journal World “Faith Forum” Contributions

• 26 March 2005: Article: Some faith communities taking a stand against a constitutional ban on gay marriage
• 8 May 2004: Why do religious differences among people so often seem to lead to fear and hatred?
• 21 February 2004: Is there a divine spark in everyone?

Queries suggested by Doug Crawford-Parker

Friends,

We had discussed the possibility of using a query in the newspaper ad and/or the brochure. Here are some adapted from Catherine Whitmire's book Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity, which also has a host of wonderful quotations. A few other queries in the list are just made up. But we can change them any way we like, so feel free to adapt and suggest new ways to phrase things.

Peace, Doug

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful. --Wendell Berry

QUERIES

• Do I seek to simplify my life by listening for guidance from an inward holy center?
  

• In what ways do I allow my possessions to determine my sense of worth and self-esteem?
  

• Do I make my work, whatever it may be, an avenue for doing good?
  

• Do I have more trust in money or in God?
  

• Do I prize my time as a gift from God?
  

• How do I recognize and deal with moral complexity in daily life?
  

• How do I contribute to the corporate identity of the communities of which I am a part?
  

• Am I living by values that will help create a better, more sustainable future for the world?
  

• Am I swift to hear and slow to speak, avoiding long, heated debates?
  

• Am I careful to say what I mean, avoiding sarcasm, excessive politeness, and self-aggrandizement designed to impress others?
  

• What criteria do I use to evaluate how much financial security ids enough for me?
  

• Do I look at my investments, clothing, furniture, and other possessions to see if they sow the seeds of war and oppression?
  

• Do I prayerfully discern how to use my financial resources for the common good?
  

• Do I seek to make my partnership or marriage reflect my faith and the values I aspire to stand for in the wider world?
  

• Do I convey a sense of hopefulness to the children in my life, and do I foster in them the imagination and confidence that they can change the world?
  

• Am I a grateful recipient of the gifts that life provides? How do I express my gratitude?
  

• Do I live with a grace and lightness that make joy and laughter part of my everyday life?
  

• What would I do if I were not afraid?
  

• In the midst of suffering do I look diligently for points of encounter with God?
  

• During times of despair do I stay present to the feeling of emptiness and wait for God to fill it with new life?
  

• In what ways does my life generate hope for others?
  

• What gives me hope that a brighter future world is possible?
  

• When I listen within to my place of deepest spiritual knowing, what is it I most long for?
  

• How do I distract myself with busyness in order to avoid the One who is seeking me?
  

• Do I live with my eyes and heart open^×watching and listening for the One who seeks me?
  

• How does my understanding of God determine the way I live?
  

• What do I know about God experientially?
  

• Do I understand my life as a journey of faithfully seeking Truth?
  

• What process do I use to listen and ^îpay attention to the deepest thing I know^ï?
  

• What texts and literature are holy for me? Why?
  

• Am I willing to obey the still, small voice within when it speaks to my instruction?
  

• Do I stay mindfully and spiritually present to each moment?
  

• Do I listen to the insights that come to me from beyond the margins of my understanding? How do I know when to act on them?
  

• Am I cultivating a discipline of listening and watching so that I recognize the messages that come to me through dreams, prayers, meditations, friends, or my own body?
  

• How open am I to being led by the Spirit in my daily life?
  

• How well do I reach out to the people who are difficult and who live on the margins of our community? What can I learn from them?
  

• During conflict, do I adhere to the discipline of speaking truth in love?
  

• When involved in disputes, do I seek truth and reconciliation rather than victory?
  

• Do I seek to hear the causes of misunderstanding, fear, or defensiveness in others, and do I try to share something of myself that may help explain anxiety and fear around an issue?
  

• How does my unwillingness to accept God^ñs forgiveness keep me tied to the past?
  

• Do I accept that my forgiveness and healing cannot be dependent on others taking responsibility for their harmful action or apologizing to me?
  

• Do I endeavor to face the pain of the world and match it with forgiveness?
  

• How am I practicing nonviolence within myself, my family, and my community?
  

• Do I treat wrongdoers in loving ways that allow them to rise above their wrongdoing?
  

• Do I look for and recognize that of God in all people?
  

• How do I monitor and challenge the deep-seated prejudices I have acquired from my family, church, community, and culture?
  

• Am I committed to learning the skills necessary to end racism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination?
  

• Do I look for and see the face of God in all creation?
  

• Do I spend time in wild places listening for what I might learn?
  

• Have I mourned the loss of species and harm done by pollution, and am I aware of my part in these losses? Do I endeavor to change my personal as well as societal practices as an expression of hope for the future?
  

• Do I seek opportunities to both provide loving care for my family and do service in my community?
  

• Do I remember that it is the spirit of my service that makes love visible?
  

• Am I faithfully serving God by seeking justice and showing loving kindness to all I meet?
  

Quaker quotes from Misty Gerner

Some Quaker quotes, long and short, that may be less familiar than those we have been looking at thus far. I can track down dates, etc. if we want to use any of them (or a part of one) for the new brochure or in our advertisements. At minimum, I hope they provide some food for thought for others as they have for me. -- Misty

• "If contemplation, which introduces us to the very heart of creation does not inflame us with such a love that it gives us, together with rich joy, the understanding of the infinite misery of the world, it is a vain kind of contemplation, it is the contemplation of a false God." - Marius Grout (French Quaker, died 1946)
  

• "Concerned people are struggling over the meaning of inwardness, transcendent reality, and ethical actions, and it is impossible to consider any one of them in isolation from the others." - Paul Lacey, 1969.
  

• "It is good, so very good, to experience the quiet ministry of the living spirit of the living God." - Howard Thurmon, 1961
  

• "I especially want to suggest that we impoverish ourselves spiritually when we close ourselves off too quickly from the witnesses with whom we disagree, or when, to appropriate their words for our own beliefs, we translate or transpose what they say into the worlds and ideas with which we are already comfortable." - Paul Lacey, 1995
  

• "And in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings." - George Fox
  

• "The spiritual life has many sources of nourishment, among them the companionship of other seekers, the pleasures of solitude and silence, keeping faith as we wait for leading, experiencing the confirmation of having followed the leadings we have been given, and times of testing. In each of these, when I know I am being nourished and nurtured, I know something of joy. And there are other times I receive joy - as a gift of serenity, balance, deep happiness, and I know this is good for my spirit now and through the rest of my life.

  When we share about the spiritual life, let us not be afraid to say what we know. Let us not, above all, be afraid to share the fact of joy, the gifts of joy. Joy is finally the greatest source of nourishment for the spiritual life, because it is God's greatest gift to us." - Paul Lacey, 1995
  

• "Let your lives speak." - George Fox
  

• "The only true standard I can have to direct myself by is that which experience proves to give me the most happiness, buy enabling me to be virtuous. I believe there is something in the mind or in the heart that shows its approbation when we do right. Let me take courage and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates." - Elizabeth Gurney Fry
  

• "Oh, that I could talk less and pray more, I should be better prepared to live, and better prepared to die." - Edward Hicks, 1851.
  

• "True godliness don't turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavor to mend it: not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick." - William Penn, 1682
  

• "There is a spirit which I feel delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. - James Nayler
  

• "In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a new Life and Power has entered our midst.Ê We are in communication with one another because we are being communicated to, and through, by the Divine presence." - Thomas Kelly
  

• "Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?" - George Fox, 1652
  

• "When one rises to speak one has the sense of being used, of being played upon, of being spoken through. It is as amazing experience as that of being Prayed through, when we the praying ones are no longer the initiators of the supplication, but seem to be transmitters, who second an impulse welling up from the depths of the soul." - Thomas Kelly
  

• "Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." - General meeting at Balby, 1656
  

• "Now to act with integrity, according to that strength of mind and body with which our creator hath endowed each of use, appears necessary for all." - John Woolman
  

• "One thing I understand now is that one's intellect alone won't pull one through, and that the greatest service it can perform is to open a window for that thing we call the divine spirit. If one trusts to it alone, it's like trusting to an artificial system of ventilation -- correct in theory but musty in practice. How I wish it were as easy to throw everything open to the spirit of God as it is to fresh air." - Hilda Clark, 1908
  

• "Trouble of soul can teach us things that raptures never could -- not only patience and perseverance, but humility and sympathy with others." - Edward Grubb, 1033
  

• "There is that near you which will guide you. O wait for it and be sure you keep to it." - Isaac Penington, 1678
  

• "I have never lost the enjoyment of sitting in silence at the beginning of meeting, knowing that everything can happen, knowing the joy of utmost surprise; feeling that nothing is preordained, nothing is set, all is open. The light can come from all sides. The joy of experiencing the Light in a completely different way than one has thought it would come is one of the greatest gifts that Friends' meeting for worship has brought me." - Ursula Franklin, 1979

Last update: 19 November 2004

[ Home ] [ Faith & Practice ] [ News ] [ Calendar ] [ Resources ] [ Contact ]