A commonplace book is a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, observations and information used to record them for later use. This commonplace book is for Wensleydale and Swaledale Quakers to share things that speak to them and are offered for your contemplation.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. (Ursula LeGuin)
The commitment to the spiritual journey is not a commitment to pure joy, but to taking responsibility for the whole human family, its needs and destiny. We are not our own; we belong to everyone else. (Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience)
As we experience discomfort in this time, let’s begin to dream of a new normal, a new normal that addresses the weaknesses and problems that were going unaddressed in the old normal. If we’re wise, we won’t go back; we’ll go forward. (Brian McLaran “Dreaming of a New Normal,” Wisdom in Times of Crisis (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2020), faculty presentation (May 6, 2020)
The amazing fact of Quaker worship is that we sit in silence not to tell God how great God is. No, in silence together we wait. Sometimes, only sometimes, we feel a connection to God and to the ones around us; and if we’re very lucky, to ourselves. Our true selves. When that happens, we have our orders: ‘Pick up your cross and follow me’. The message is clear: not ‘Worship me’, but ‘Follow me’. Feed the hungry, tend the sick, welcome the stranger, let your life speak. Take the love you’ve been given unconditionally and pass it on. Give it to others who need it, who need to feel that miraculous connection that was given to you.
(The Friend - 4 Feb 2021 | by Kate McNally)
With my love to you in the holy peaceable truth
that never changes,
nor admits of evil,
but makes all free
that receive it
and that walk in it
And from the truth floweth justice,
equity, righteousness and godliness,
mercy and tenderness,
that brings a man’s heart, mind, soul and spirit
to the infinite and
incomprehensible God.
(George Fox’s Epistle 358 in ‘Mind the Oneness: The Mystic Way of the Quakers’ by Rex Ambler. Pendle Hill Pamphlets (number 463), 2020.)
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors. (William Blake)
Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times...who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems in shadow and grief. (Jan Richardson, in St Bede's Winter Newsletter)
The beauty of silence is that it allows us to engage where we are. We are not dovetailed into someone else's sermon, neither are our devotions by an outward liturgy. Rather, our motions of faith can sit where they need to be, close to us in their authenticity and sincerity, closer to God in their directness and individuality. (Ben Pink Dandelion, Celebrating the Quaker Way)
The most basic experience of Silence is intimacy...Silence keeps us intimately bound with the truth of our being, constantly conveying to us in a bodily way that our individual and unique presence as soul, spirit, and body intermingles with the world and, at the same time, lives a free and independent existence. (Silence: The mystery of wholeness by Robert Sardello)
...view meeting for worship as a precious opportunity to become very present to the oneness of all humans, of all existence...come there to rest in the peace available...share space and time with the people who are not busy talking and doing, and who are collectively, consciously, aiming to lift our hearts and minds as high as they'll go. (Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism by 27 Quaker Nontheists. Edited by David Boulton)
In times like these, our prayer may need to be expressive and embodied, visceral and vocal...How else can we pray about ecocide, about the death that humanity is unleashing upon Mother Earth and upon ourselves?...our prayer may be noisy and expressive, or it may be very quiet. It may be the kind of prayer that depends on listening in stillness and silence with complete attention: listening to our breath as we breathe God in and breathe God out, listening to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our heart. A discipline of contemplative prayer or meditation can set us free from the frantic churn of thoughts and feelings and enable our spirit to rest and roam in a vaster, wilder space. (The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Joan, "Love Every Leaf," in Rooted & Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis, eds. Leah D. Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas. (Rowman & Littlefield: 2019))
We are all one in love...When I look at myself as an individual, I see that I am nothing. It is only in unity with my spiritual seekers that I am anything at all. It is this foundation of unity that will save humanity. (Julian of Norwich)
