Image credit: Vanessa Julye

Overview

Contemporary Friend Gretchen Haynes observes that “many faiths urge social action; Quakers understand that social action is prompted by the transformation that finds the source of all action in the inward Spirit.  This leads to a different quality to the action.”

30 minutes High School and Up Introspection
Print this Exercise

Materials & Setup:

You will need devices and internet access to access, print, and/or share the video, essay, and podcast in this lesson.

You may also want to print or otherwise share the queries and spiritual practice.

Instructions:

Contemporary Friend Gretchen Haynes observes that “many faiths urge social action; Quakers understand that social action is prompted by the transformation that finds the source of all action in the inward Spirit. This leads to a different quality to the action.”

How do you think the quality of an action that is prompted by our inner transformation is different from the quality of action that comes from an outward conviction that the action is right? Have you ever felt this difference?

If you have five minutes…

Watch this QuakerSpeak video, How Mysticism Informs Quaker Activism. Original video from QuakerSpeak.com A project of Friends Journal. Filmed and edited by Jon Watts.

If you have twenty minutes…

Read this essay by Noah Merrill about Spirit-Led Service: Dispatches from the Lamb’s War (email message, Oct. 28, 2008)

A Friend who has been a mentor and elder to me on my own journey once shared with me the counsel “Get thee to God, before you get thee to the World.” Not “Don’t get thee to the World.” But ground yourself (myself) in the Presence of the Spirit in whom we live, and move, and have our being, to truly seek, through our speech and actions, to bring all into the more perfect, more whole expression of what early Friends (and Conservative Friends, and others today) call Gospel Order—a universe, including social, political, and economic relationships—that model what God intends for all of us. A world in living relationships of Love, Truth, and Justice.

From Spirit Rising: Young Quaker Voices, copyright 2010. Used by permission of QuakerPress of FGC. Available through QuakerBooks.

If you have an hour…

Listen to this On Carrying a Concern podcast episode (Episode 02: First Q & A) to hear hosts, The Keefe-Perry’s, respond to questions sent in from listeners about following leadings: https://www.ocacshow.org/episodes/2017/4/23/episode-02-first-qa

(27 minutes in length)

Spiritual Practices

An Exercise in the Game of “As If…” When getting into character, an actor needs to engage creative imagination – it is “as if…” they were thinking, moving, seeing the world through the eyes of the character they are stepping into. We can take this same idea and apply it to our spiritual lives.

  1. Spend 10 minutes (or more) in prayer or silent, expectant waiting.
  2. Sit with the intention of listening (and hearing) Spirit’s voice.
  3. Next, take 5-10 minutes to free-write in your journal (meaning, writing without stopping, thinking, re-reading & judging) as if Spirit is speaking directly to you. What did Spirit have to say…?
Queries for Reflection and Discussion
  1. Jennie says, “people of faith are required to take that faith and come to places of not-faith and live faithfully.” What does this mean to you? What is an example of it?
  2. Have you ever had a mystical experience that has informed you to act?
  3. What glimpses of “the holy” have been present in your life now?
  4. In what ways might God/Spirit/the Divine currently being revealed to you through love?
  5. How might you acting on that love open you to change/transformation/a deepening of authenticity?

Please share by posting either a written, video narrative, or illustrated response to one of the queries above.

Related Files:

Dispatches_from_the_Lamb_s_War.pdf

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