Bloggers of Truth

By Will Taber

I have been writing a blog for two and a half years now. I started my blog because there was an interesting on-line conversation happening and I wanted to be a part of it. A number of Quaker blogs that I discovered associated themselves with the idea of Convergent Friends. These Friends are interested in finding ways to reconnect across the divisions among Friends and to reinvigorate the Religious Society of Friends. Much of what was being written was about individual experiences and thoughts. I thought I could add grounding in traditional Quaker theology to the conversation. Specifically, I had been reading Barclay and giving workshops on the Apology for a number of years. I decided that I could provide a series of articles on Barclay's Apology and talk about what I found exciting and where I thought it spoke to the condition of modern Friends. To my surprise, with several detours along the way, this endeavor ended up taking more than two years.

Something happened to me while I was writing about Barclay for such an extended period. The words and the message started seeping down below my brain. I started to understand, in a way that I hadn’t before, that the core of the Quaker message is that we are to learn to recognize the voice of Christ within, and then to pay attention to what it is saying. We need to reorient ourselves so that voice becomes the central point of our lives and all else revolves around it. I have been a Quaker all my life and I am only now beginning to get it.

Some of us would like to adopt the name Publishers of Truth. However, before we can be publishers we need to be possessors. We give lip service to following the Inner Guide, but we want to circumscribe the areas where we will do so. We pride ourselves in faithfulness to our Guide in meeting for worship, but what about our decisions on how to spend our Sunday afternoon or Thursday morning? Do we really want to rely on God for all things? Due to some combination of my class, my racial background, my talents, some work and luck, I have a reasonably good life. Is this a blessing? Are those not so fortunately situated unblessed? Do I rely on God or the accidents of my life? Even now, my life speaks, but it speaks more of comfort and ease than of the life of God.

Living a life centered on God is frightening because the Gospels are not written for people like me. The Gospels are written for the poor, the dispossessed, and the marginal. Jesus came to the poor and the outcast. What of my comfortable life might I have to give up if I am to be faithful to the voice of Christ within? “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb 10:31) When Friends quake today, is it from the power of the Lord or fear of what might be asked of us?

Early Friends lived in an extremely troubled time. For many of them, they had no choice but to rely upon the Lord because all of their other props had been torn away from them. Our world appears to be on the brink of upheaval. Will we wait until our lives are disrupted to learn to recognize the voice of God or will we be like Job who already had unshakable faith before misfortune struck?

The first letter of John starts out, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” When we talk about our spiritual lives, do we talk about what we have seen and heard and touched in ourselves of the Word of Life? If we are hearers, seers, and touchers, shouldn’t we also be doers of the Word? If we are doers of the Word, we will be Publishers of Truth, not only with our words, but also with our lives.

About the Author(s)

Will Taber is a member of Fresh Pond Meeting in New England Yearly
Meeting. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts where he works as a software engineer and writes his blog Growing Together in the Light (http://gtitl.blogspot.com).