Supports to Practice
(Educational Material and Tools that Help Focus Intent)
Thought Leaders, Institutes, Training, Curricula and Publications
There is a plethora of excellent Quaker and resonant material in use around mysticism, contemplation, and the revitalization of Quakerism. There are as many pathways toward the goal of “being love” in service to the planet as there are Quaker Friends.
Therefore members of the Quaker Pathways Forward – Rekindling the Fire of Fox community-of-practice are enthusiastically encouraged to avail themselves of the spectrum of publications, programs, curriculum, retreats, training, and study guides which enhance spiritual deepening. These are “supports to our practice” – tools that help to purposefully focus intent.
Supports to practice for the Quaker Pathways Forward – Rekindling the Fire of Fox community-of-practice will be consistently posted on the Buddhist-Quaker website as our work unfolds. The practice itself however is alive, evolving, and perpetually in the process of becoming through and as the practitioners and will therefore not appear on the site or be distributed as a “how to.”
Our community embraces the wisdom brought to light by ancient philosophers and today’s quantum scientists alike about the fallacy of trying to capture what is appropriate for a moment in time and following it as gospel truth long after it is outworn. The human mind-brain reflexively grasps, shapes, forms and attempts to codify information in order to render it manageable. Manageable isn’t always helpful or useful. Trying to turn what is dynamic, transient, and incessantly changing, into something static is a definition of suffering.
We create the illusion of the solidity of things by labeling, by naming.
–If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all other things i could possibly be. You lock the particle into being “a thing” by pinning it down, by naming it. At the same time you are creating it, defining it to exist. –Soren Kierkegaard
This approach to life and our environment was only marginally effective in 20th century social movements whose programs, training institutes and institutions struggle to remain relevant. It is altogether outmoded in the 21st century as the challenges we face grow exponentially more complicated at an accelerated rate.
Quakers have a role to play in the evolution of 21st collective consciousness. The Rekindling the Fire of Fox community and the practices in which we engage will habituate us to becoming the work as we progressively live into fullness of who we are. Time will be allotted to the shared, lived, experiental practice of recognizing that we are love incarnate rather than on publishing and program development. Friends, the lives of Friends, the increased clarity, and “view from the field of universal intelligence” infused into our collective social transformation work IS the curriculum.
That said, some wonderful “supports to practice” are listed below.
RESOURCES
Pendle Hill Pamphlets
- Mary Post Abbott, Quaker Views on Mysticism, (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #375, 2013),
- Rex Ambler, Living in Dark Times, (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #447, 2017)
- Kenneth E. Boulding, The Evolutionary Potential of Quakerism (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #166, 1964),
- Mary Conrow Coelho, Recovering Sacred Presence in a Disenchanted World,(Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #433, 2015),
- Thomas Gates, Reclaiming the Transcendent: God in Process (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #422, 2013),
- Daniel A. Seeger, Silence: Our Eye on Eternity, (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #318, 1994),
- Frances Taber- Finding the Taproot of Simplicity: A Movement Between Inner Knowledge and Outer Action, (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #400, 1987)
Papers, Publications and Resonant Educational Institutes
- Rex Ambler, Experiment With Light, a Spiritual Movement in British Quakerism:
- Lewis Benson, The Future of the Quaker Vision, Seek Find Share: Study Volume Number Two for the Fourth World Conference of Friends, 1967. Greensboro, NC, U.S.A.: Guilford College, 1967. Copyright (c) 1967 by Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas. The Quaker Vision (out of print),
- Brent Bill, A Modest Proposal for The Revitalization of the Quaker Message,
- Friends General Conference: Spiritual Deepening Program,
- Brian Drayton and Bill Taber- A Language for the Inner Landscape: Spiritual Wisdom From the Quaker Movement,
- Kenneth Gergen: The Taos Institute,
- Rufus Jones, The Testimony of the Soul. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936,
- Rufus Jones, An Interpretation of Quakerism, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Pamphlet,
- Thomas Kelly, A Testimony of Devotion, FGC Quaker Books, originally published, Harper: New York 1941, Harper One, 1992,
- Marcelle Martin, Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey, Inner Light Books, 2016,
- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, originally published, 1949, New Directions Publishing, 2007,
- Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, originally published 1969, Crown Publishing Group, 2009,
- Parker Palmer: Center for Courage and Spiritual Renewal:
- Richard Rohr: Center for Acton and Contemplation,
- Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as Mystics See, New York, The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2013,
- Otto Scharmer: The Presencing Institute,
- School of the Spirit: A Contemplative Retreat in the Manner of Friends.
— Live Gracefully with Uncertainty —
