Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I am not sure Quakers are always prepared to talk about the sacred.   But I do think Quakers are taught fairly well to be prepared to engage the sacred.   Let me explain and elaborate the difference.   I suspect in the process of explaining and elaborating, some of you who grew up in other traditions or, perhaps, no tradition at all will find some resonance in my own experience.             First of all, I define the sacred as the Presence of God or the Holy One.   Sacred simply means the place or space of the Divinity.   In the history of religions the sacred might be a place, like a cathedral, a grove in the forest or some other shrine.   The sacred can be the object of pilgrimages.   Sometimes the sacred has been the place of healing, as well as revelation.   The sacred is opposite of the profane---which literally means “outside the temple.”        ...

For a fairly long time in my professional life I have been interested in contemplation.   As I so often comment, “contemplation” is not a word I heard while growing up as a young Quaker in Indiana.   I am confident I was not paying attention.   I don’t think Quakers I knew were using that word, “contemplation.”   So if I had been asked about it, I would have offered a blank stare.             I am sure I heard about the word, “contemplation,” while I was in school.   I may have heard of it in college, but more likely I first heard about it in graduate school.   I can guess I encountered it first in some kind of history of Christianity class.   Because Quakerism dates from the 17 th century, we have a bad habit of skipping from Jesus to the 17 th century.   I knew almost nothing about the sixteen hundred years between Jesus and the origins of my tradition.   Quite a bit happened durin...

Long-time readers of this inspirational reflection could have rightly concluded that music is not a big deal with me.   Traditionally music was not important to Quakers.   In fact, the first two centuries or more of our history, music was not used at all.   And when I was growing up, music was not very present in my family.   So I have not had much in my context that supports and values music.   I am certainly not against it.      Being a product of the 1960s means I was very aware of the rock n’ roll music that blared from the radios.   I recall how aghast the parental generation was when Elvis hit the scene.   I liked the Beach Boys and would agree that overall the lyrics of the music in the ‘60s left something to be desired!   By the time I was growing up, many Quakers were using music in their worship services, but it often was pretty mediocre.   One of the things that I most liked when I began visiting monasteries wa...