Pendle Hill Pamphlet

Queries

Of the many things that impressed me about Pendle Hill Pamphlets, the most powerful was the number and especially the quality of the queries come up with by the authors of the pamphlets I read and summarized. Some had no queries, most had one or two. And some had a long list of thought-provoking queries. Even the rhetorical questions were worth answering.

18. Anthology with Comments (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1942)

20. Guide to Quaker practice (by Howard H. Brinton; 1943)
Is there a living silence in which you feel drawn together by the power of God in your midst?
Is the vocal ministry in your meetings exercised under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit, without prearrangement, and in the simplicity and sincerity of Truth?
Are your meetings for business held in a spirit of love, understanding and forbearance?
Do you seek the right course of action in humble submission to the authority of Truth and patient search for unity?
Do your children receive the loving care of the Meeting and are they brought under such influences as tend to develop their religious life?
Do you counsel with those whose conduct or manner of living gives ground for concern?
What are you doing to ensure equal opportunities in social and economic life for those who suffer discrimination because of race, creed or social class?
What are you doing to understand and remove the causes of war and develop the conditions and institutions of peace?
What are you doing to interpret to others the message of Friends and to cooperate with other in the Christian message?
Do you make a place in your daily life for inward retirement and communion with the Divine Spirit?
Are you careful to keep your business and your outward activities from absorbing time and energy that should be given to spiritual growth and [your right share of] the service of your religious society?
Do you faithfully maintain our testimony against military training and other preparation for war . . . as inconsistent with the spirit and teaching of Christ?

21. Reality and the Spiritual World (by Thomas R. Kelly; 1942)

How can we be sure that God is real, and not just a creation of our wishful thinking?

Why are are you so sure there is a Reality corresponding to your religious cravings?

How does the spiritual world behave towards us?

[How do we decide in between conflicting views of the spiritual world], rejecting some and accepting others?

How do you begin a double mental life, [outer and inner]?

Can a new [inward] bondedness be the meaning of being in the Kingdom of God?

Do you carry some small group of people who rest upon your hearts not as obligations but as fellow-travelers?

28. Barclay in Brief (edited by Eleanore Price Mather; 1945)

How far may Christ prevail in us while we are in this life?

How far may we prevail over our soul’s enemies, in and by Christ strength?

Would it not greatly contribute to Christianity’s commendation, & to the increase of the life & virtue of Christ, if all superfluous titles of honour, profuseness & playing were laid aside & forborne?

29. The Inward Journey of Isaac Penington (edited by Robert J. Leach; 1944)

Where art Thou?
Art thou in thy soul’s rest?
Dost thou feel the virtue and power of the gospel?
Dost thou feel the life and power flowing in upon thee from the free fountain?
Is the load really taken off from thy back?
Hast thou found this, or hast thou missed this?
Art thou in the living power, in the divine life, joined to the spring of life, drawing water of life out of the well of life with joy?
Or art thou dry, dead, barren, sapless, at best unsatisfiedly mourning after what thou wantest?
And if a man thus miss the way, how can he attain the end?
If a man begin not in the true faith, in the living faith, how can he attain the rest which the true faith alone leads to?
What is love?
What shall I say of it, or how shall I in words express its nature?
Canst thou pray?
How camest thou to learn to pray?
Wast thou taught from above [or from] thine own natural part?
Wast thou ever able to distinguish the sighs and groans of the spirit’s begetting from the sighs and groans of thy own natural and affectionate part?
Will not the Lord assist the magistrate, who in his fear waits on him?
Did we ever think, in our dry, dead, barren estate, to have seen such a day as this?

31. Quakerism and

India

(by Horace G. Alexander; 1945)

How do Asia’s poverty problems & of Asia’s [desire] to be free from Western control touch the Society of Friends?

Schools, student hostels, hospital & dispensaries are needed, but are they the main task of Christian missions?

Can the FAU and the AFSC have a wider influence than any of the older missionary bodies?

What are the contributions of the people called Quakers to the

USA

What is the Quaker belief’s central core that finds expression in the Quaker way of life?

37. Are Your Meetings Held in the Life by Margaret M. Cary; 1947
Are Your Meetings Held in the Life?
How can a meeting spread initiative and responsibility throughout its membership instead of overworking a small group?
How can a meeting absorb children who are growing up in the midst and give them those qualities which will later make for adult leadership?
In the light of the existing pressures in our lives how shall a woman apportion her time among home, meeting, and other activities?
What do ye more?”

39. Christianity & Civilization (Burge Mem. Lecture (1940, Oxford), by Arnold J. Toynbee; 1947)
What is the relation of the Christian Church to the Kingdom of Heaven?
If the Church were to replace temporal civilizations as a single worldwide and enduring representative of the people, would it mean that the Kingdom of Heaven would then have been established on Earth?
Are higher religions essentially and incurably anti-social?
Are spiritual and social values antithetical and inimical to each other?
Is the spiritual opportunity given by Christianity an indispensable condition for salvation?

40. Quaker message (extracts of Quaker belief & practice & present significance by Sidney Lucas; ‘48)
You will say ‘Christ said this, and the apostles say this’, but what canst thou say?”
Can we not rise to the thought and the practice of a great Quaker brotherhood, organized to serve the world of God’s children by changing the unnatural anger and aversion which makes them enemies into that loving cooperation which will turn the whole world into a Society of friends?

43. Standards of Success (by Teresina Rowell Havens; 1948)

Are there many modern prophets who tell businessmen in an attractive suburb that God despises their mansions and will destroy them?

“What should I do with that by which I do not become deathless?”

Have you found God and realized the oneness of your soul with Cosmic Reality?

“Do you live together in concord and amity, harmony and unison, viewing one another with eyes of affection?

What is to be the standard of success for most men and women?

“Have I fulfilled the potential of my particular state? Have I dedicated all my work to God?

What is True Man?

How are we to free ourselves from the subtle influence of this [size/number] standard, which continues to affect our unconscious judgment of our own worth?

[Can our modern culture find mental or physical health, creativity, and holiness without some criterion of success deeper than outward action alone?

44. Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace (by Howard H. Brinton; 1948)
Is inner peace, free from all sense of pressure attainable?

46. The Faith of an Ex-agnostic (by Carol R. Murphy; 1948)

What are the characteristics, vital or lethal, of our Western culture?

How long will scientific integrity last in this struggle for power fought with armies of ex-Nazi scientists?

How shall we persuade humankind to concentrate on inner growth?

Can an unexamined morality long remain the motive power of human effort?

If non-resistance means the victory of a military conqueror, how far away will eventual deliverance be, and how responsible is the non-resister for the intervening years of rapine?

How are we going to put some pep into virtue?

Why should we love humankind? Are we worth it? What are we, anyway?

Is religion true as well as well as useful? Is the universe basically good, bad, or indifferent? Is it a divine creation or not?

Are ideals separated from reality, or are they real and acting on reality?

What growth or purpose is responsible for all this? How was it possible?

What is the meaning of meaning?

Does the self have any independent determining power of its own?

What is its relation to its constituent parts & to its environment?

How can fractured will pull itself together?

How shall we realize that we do belong to a whole?

Is creative activity only one of many forces, or an expression of the principle by which the universe exists & functions?

47. The Nature of Quakerism (by Howard H. Brinton; 1949)
To what extent can a type of behavior, developed within a small community become a standard for action outside that community?

48. The Society of Friends (by Howard H. Brinton; 1949)

49. Christ in Catastrophe: inward record by Emil Fuchs who found serenity through suffering (1949)
Will our nation [Germany in 1932] become a stronghold of peace in the center of Europe, or would she open the doors of violence and war again?
What do you want?
Shall your children save their lives by losing their conscience?
Are you alone right and all others wrong?
Are you mad or are they?
How high must the tower be from which we have to fall?
Why did so very many, very clever and orthodox theological thinkers, scholars, pastors and leaders not recognize evil?
Will you destroy yourselves, or give yourselves to the grip of God’s power and find thereby a new life in which love, not greed or lust for power is the new dynamic?
But where is there strength, where real life in forgetting?
Can you say anything to us that will give us hope?
Do you belong to those who in their egotism lament their misery and poverty and seek to find a way out only for themselves?
Do you belong to those who see a way of help for others [not involving] outward power and armies?
Can there be happiness?
Can these things be?
How can God be love, when all still happens that has happened in the world of men—and will go on happening in time to come?
How much of God may there have been in this your brother, your sister, whom you killed, starved, denied education and constructive living, or drowned in luxury?
How can you dare to stand entirely alone?
When will we be ashamed to call Christian those who trust in the sword?
Is God real?
Are we real?
What does it mean, this trusting in God?

51. Worship (by John Woolman; 1950)
What is worship?
How shall we have faith?
Do I in all my proceedings keep to that use of things which is agreeable to Universal Righteousness?
Do the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions?
Doth pride lead to vanity?
Doth vanity form imaginary wants, [which in the end spreads desolation in the world]?
Doth Christ condescend to bless thee with his presence, to move and influence to action?

53. The Power of Truth (by Herrymon Maurer; 1950)
Where is the simplicity of Truth?

54. Prophetic Ministry (Dudleian Lecture at Harvard; April 26, 1949; by Howard Brinton; 1950)
What then can we learn from these 3 centuries of experiment with an unordained ministry exercised by self-trained men and women?
Can we look for a similar outpouring of the Spirit as in the declining Greco-Roman world when Christianity began?

55. The Pendle Hill Idea (by Howard Haines Brinton; 1950)

58. Ten Questions on Prayer (by Gerald Heard; 1951)
1. Is it valid for us to pray for others?
Is it not unavoidable, is it not an essential step, to pray for other?
Have our keenest prayers, perhaps the first we ever offered with whole-hearted intensity, been to know God better and to love Him more?
Has our sharpest pain, driving us to implore His aid to lessen it, been because we felt so far from Him and because we realized how little we cared for Him . . .?
Why should we wish to exploit God ?
Is not our wish to pray for other sufficient guaranty for the purity of our prayer?
Is it not difficult to pray with intensity, but without asking anything specific?
How can God be all that we have believed God to be?
How can God endure for God’s creature to be in this pass?
Is it not then an essential step in our knowledge of God and our trust in God, to pray for others, and then watch God?
2. Will praying for others be productive of constructive results in securing peace?
What is peace?
3. How serious is the barrier presented by secular minds in the United Nations to our efforts to reach God through these men?
What has God created the world for?
What about feeling as if I am wasting my time praying?
Shouldn’t I be doing one of the jobs that is due for me to do?
4. Does prayer have any effect on the wills of men who are indifferent to spiritual values?
5. What can one do to stimulate the will to pray for others, in persons who ordinarily pray only for themselves?
How did you pray?
When did your results come?
How long have you had those results?
Do you really feel happy about it?
Do you find your peace of mind has increased?
Do you find that you are now really getting on better with others?
6. Must we love someone before we can pray effectively for him?
Can we despise Stalin, or even what he does, and at the same time pray successfully for him?
If I were in their position would I have done better?
What would I do if I ceased at this moment ceased to be a critic in the opposition and had to take over the Meeting?
Did Stalin meet any teachers [at seminary] who only cared for God?
Is it to be expected that our prayer life will force us into an active program in the political and economic field?
7. What is the relation in effectiveness between intensity over a prolonged prayer time and repeated short prayers?
What are [older insomniacs] to do with their hours of rest?
Are the emotions involved in prayer?
What should the prayer personal feeling be?
Is there too great an intensity of feeling?
8. Is prayer more effective when the person for whom you pray knows that you are praying for him?
9. Are many individual prayers more effective than a smaller number of groups meeting for intercessory prayer?
10. What bearing does the quality of one’s own life have on the effectiveness of his prayers for other?
What are we doing as evidence of our contrition?
Why have we to know Him first as forgiver?
What shall we ask of those who respond to a call to prayer?
What helps can be offered?

59. Quaker Stongholds (by Caroline Stephens; abridged by Mary Gould Ogilvie; 1951)
Why cannot you be silent at home?

60. Promise of deliverance (by Dan Wilson; 1951)
Can the overfed and privileged overcome starvation’s evils?
Do there exist now, visible nuclear communities, held together by an experience of unity so fundamental that the new society is emerging through them?
Could a community of individuals become so filled with the sense of belonging now to the Kingdom of God that they would suffer even their beloved community to be sacrificed in order to spread the promise of the Kingdom for everyone?

64. Of Holy Disobedience (by A. J. Muste; 1952)
Should we not emphasize “[positive and constructive service]” rather than the refusal to fight?
Should young men who are eligible for it accept the IV-E classification or take the more “absolutist,” non-registrant position?
Was what the committed Christian was doing then so definitely not meaningful and sacrificial?
Is the rush to get into other jobs and to go to distant places motivated by fear of men and of the authorities, by a desire to be thought well of, or by a dread of social displeasure or legal punishment?
Where does the State get the competence, or mandate to determine a Christian believer’s vocation?
Is conforming with any provisions of a draft law, [in reality] promoting war through conscription?
Why should pacifist [laymen and] ministers work harder to keep a young pacifist from [choosing to] go to jail rather than into civilian service, than to [have them] think seriously about not going into the army?
Are the qualms people have about COs going to prison related to [the strong social disapproval of going to prison, and the strong social approval of becoming a soldier]?
Is it just possible that we older people are sometimes concerned with sparing ourselves [disapproval] when we think we are solely concerned about sparing teenagers?
Is [the prison experience] vastly more terrible than the war experience?
Do we have a right to [divert energy] from lifting the curse of conscription from the mass of youth into an effort to secure alternative conscript service for COs?
As soon as [the State claims sovereign rights over [everyone], that there are no rights higher than theirs, where then, will their usurpations stop?

70. Science and the business of living (by James G. Vail; 1953)
How can the great accumulation of knowledge be interpreted so that what is known shall be available when needed?
What is the impact of our work upon our civilization?
Are there some unifying principles comparable to chemistry and physics laws by which our complex relations as human beings come into an intelligible order and harmony?
How can science help the human race to survive?
Do the things on which I am working contribute to the well being of all around the world, or do they foster vices, prejudices, of fears?
Do I realize that [the former] choice will be ultimately more satisfying since it has the approval of an inner monitor which distinguishes me from animals and represents the highest point in evolution?
If the obvious step of a courageous waging of peace is impractical, what is the alternative?
Is there anything more worthy of our effort?
What is our purpose in devoting our energy to an industry, church, government, or any institution in which many people are associated?
Is it to satisfy the urge to exert power on the part of a few, or is it to create a community?
Why should it be too much for each of us working according to his special talents to contribute to a world in which the welfare of all is a serious objective?
To what extent can we leave to others the responsibility for the end use of our technical work?
Have you ever pondered the teaching of history?

81. Personal Relevance of Truth (Thomas S. Brown; 1955)
How long is our beloved country to survive?
How can one explain the Unity of Truth in terms common to science, philosophy, and religion?
How shall I detect the true signals in all the noise and motion around me?
Why is it that I do not see the Truth in every situation with infallible clarity?

83. The Use of Silence (by Geoffrey Hoyland; 1955)
Can the Christian become aware of God in the same [sense-free] way that the Christian is aware of selfhood?
How many Christians can say that this inward spiritual communion is the core of their religious experience?
Is the vision of God reserved for a favored few?
Does the silent worship of the Friends actually work out in this way, producing these results?
Is it not possible that in the Living Silence lies the one perfect road to reunion?
Is there any reason in Heaven or Earth why we should not all enter it together?

86. Blake’s 4-fold Vision (by Harold Goddard)
What can [marry] us with our lost underworld?
Why doesn’t a seed decay like a bit of dead leaf, or go on lying there unchanged like a pebble?
Is there a tiny invisible sun inside the seed with a strange affinity between it and the great sun?
Or does the seed somehow retain a memory that it was once a water-lily?
What is truth?

89. Scruples (by Gilbert Kilpack; 1956)
Have you not had an [unfollowed] God-given leading which . . . you feared you could not carry it through as expertly as you thought you should?

90. Insured by Hope (by Mildred Binns Young); 1956

93. Quakerism and Other Religions (by Howard H. Brinton; 1957)

95. Inner liberty: the stubborn grit in the machine (by Peter Viereck; 1957)
Why not have the moral courage to be unadjusted, a bad mixer, and shockingly devoid of leadership qualities?
What then, is the test for telling the real inspiration from the just-as-good?

110. The Covenant of Peace: a personal witness (by Maurice Friedman; 1960)
How can a Jew be a pacifist in the face of Nazi persecution of the Jews?
[War is] immoral, for whom?
What do we mean by moral?

112. Two trends in modern Quaker thought, a statement of belief (by Albert Vann Fowler; 1961)
Non-Christians as Members?

115. Mysticism and the experience of love (by Howard Thurman; 1961)
What then is it that the mystic claims was experienced?
How may a quality of “built-in awareness” of others be developed?
Precisely what does taking the other’s total fact into account involve?
Whence comes this power [of love] which seems to be the point of referral for all experience and meaning?

119. Stand fast in liberty by James E. Bristol; 1961)
Why is it that many of us fall victim to the hysteria of our generation and are finally persuaded that we must abandon much of our precious liberty and adopt a fair measure of the tyrant’s mode of operation in order to prevent the seizure of power in America by a subversive tyranny?
Should we be surprised if the no-God materialism which permeates American life today moves us in the same direction [as Communism]?
What kind of a movement is needed?

122. The Civil War diary of Cyrus Pringle (Foreword by Cyrus G. Pringle; 1962)
Cannot the result (i.e. hard beds are healthy beds) be defeated by the degree (i.e. too hard)?
How can we reason with such men [who passionately support war]?
If we choose between hospital service and overseeing blacks on confiscated rebel estates, what would become of our testimony and determination to preserve ourselves clear of the guilt of this war?
If we are compromising by doing service and waiting for a response from Government, is patience justified under the circumstances?

125. Children and Solitude (by Elise Boulding; 1962)
Shall we save the world and lose the soul of one untended child?
What secret splendor of intentions resides in the heart of every child?
Why is the first moment of self-awareness so important?
If I could but keep to this moment of sweet calmness, what might I grow up to in time?
Who is taking “time out” to probe for the new dimensions in a now-unimagined life?
Who is dreaming dreams?
Who is seeing vision?
Where are the solitary ones?
Have we not each of us stumbled upon a child’s solitary joy?
How do we adults help to make creative solitude available to our children?
May it not be that unoccupied time is the only thing that can lead to the creatively occupied mind?

126. Readiness for religion (by Harold Loukes; 1963)
[How do we as parents balance the old Quaker advices of “example,” “self-control,” and “obedience to law” with the current philosophy of “freedom of self-expression?”
Where do we find support to do this in the absence of close-knit Christian communities of the past, where a guarded education” was possible?]
Why is the Christian idea not very widely accepted now?
Why should I be a Christian if I can be good without?
How far is it right for Christians to impose beliefs on others?
How do you prove God’s presence?
What is man’s purpose on earth?
[How then are we to answer Christianity’s difficult questions?]
What can our children understand?
Are there stages of development which we may learn to wait for, and to take advantage of?
What then are we to do [to present God to our children]?
Why do we have to live?
What have we to offer them from the faith that we live by, but whose formulation is now so far in the past?
What does God mean in your personal decision and action?
What do you mean by obeying God?
Do you really make sense of the world by your belief in God?

127. Thou dost open up my life; selections from the Rufus Jones collection (Ed. Mary H. Jones; 1963)
Which one of our 1,000 possible selves shall we express?
How [do you] get a rightly fashioned life that is truly worth expressing?
How [do you] open out the possibilities of life?
How much does the Bible have to say about growth?
What is the alternative?
What is the substitute for Christ?
To Whom would you turn in personal crisis, when everything seems to crash in on you?
What is your major support?
In what does your life really exist?
Is the universe fundamentally significant?
Has it produced and will it answer the deepest longings and strivings of human hearts?

129. Nonviolent action: How it works (by George Lakey; 1963)
Why has the opponent] changed his mind?
How can your theory [of identification by suffering] account for [the extermination of 6 million Jews]?
Does the campaign have the staying power to get through the antagonism [necessary for relevance] to the sympathy which lies on the other side?

130. Poetry among Friends (by Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert; 1963)
Do Friends have a concern to seek out and mature the flame of creativity that burns in all?
Do we provide an atmosphere in our Meetings for Worship, and in our schools which helps us to discover our creative abilities, discipline them, and exercise them to the fullest power God has given us?
By our own work is a vision of the Truth advanced among us, and let to shine before all so they may be led to a clearer knowledge of their Father?
Is our way at last to a cross of choice?
To obey atom’s blast or God’s still small voice?
What is this sea change within which hide undreamed-of delights of the eye?
Who would have guessed death’s beckoning brings youth all back, with gusts of spring?
This sudden flush and swell of bud, this hunger to embrace not one but everything?

133. The Eclipse of the Historical Jesus: Haverford College Library Lectures, April, 1963 (by Henry J. Cadbury; ‘64)
If miracles are elsewhere a part of mythology, why not in the gospels too?
What was Jesus thinking?
What did the inclusion of a historical character mean for the drama?
What did it mean for the historical understanding of Jesus?
Why, if we understand what are our problems today, should we bother to connect them with so arbitrary and fanciful a structure as traditional theology?

134. From convincement to conversion (by Martin Cobin; 1964)
Why is a prophet without honor in his own country?
What do I want beyond birthright and convincement?
What will happen if the entire Society of Friends embrace [a rushed response (which is out of character)] to the imminent danger of nuclear destruction, and we meet with large-scale nuclear destruction anyway]?
Why did Judas betray Jesus?

137. Revelation and Experience (by Carol R. Murphy; 1964)
What experience should I choose?
How should I interpret it?
Do they have any meaning at all?
How shall I treat them?
Are they as important to me as I am to myself?
How does God act in this ambiguous world?
Dare we now trust this revelatory image?

138. An Apology for Perfection (by Cecil E. Hinshaw; 1964)
Is the Truth prospering among Friends?

142. Dear Gift of Life (by Bradford Smith (born 1909, died 1964); 1965)
Why don’t we speak more of the fun of living?
Since life carries death with it like a seed, and since this is normal, what is there to fear?
Have I walked it with my eyes open, my lung full of its bracing air?
How can you help being more deeply rooted, branched and leafed in all of life?
Where do we come in?
Are not humans the only link between the life force and the world of ideas which leads to truth, love and beauty which are the attributes by which we recognize the divine?
Except it die, how can it be quickened?
In what sense is Jesus alive today?
Is it not clear that his life is in our lives?
If immortality is universal instead of particular, does this not elevate us to a life that is far grander than we deserve, [far better than a pinched and narrow personal immortality]?
Is it not clear that destruction is merciful, and that that which takes away is as necessary and as divine as that which gives?
Who would have guessed death’s beckoning brings youth all back, with gusts of spring?
Who would have guessed death’s beckoning brings this sudden flush and swell of bud, this hunger to embrace not one but everything?
Would the sky burn me if I touched it with my hand?
Would I bump my head if I went up high like a bird?
If my head touched the sky would I hurt and cry?
Would God be mad if he heard?
Why is water wet?
Does the brook run all night or does God turn it off while I’m sleeping?
Does the brook ask questions like me when it talks?
Is that why it’s running and leaping?
Why do roses have thorns?
Does God love a thorn As much as he loves a rose?
Is our sun really hot?
Does it cook the sky?
Can birds go to sleep?
Can water get dry?
Were things like this when you were a boy?
Can I have this piece of wood for a toy?
What body, what substance, what meat and wine, meeting a shadow, can vanquish it?
Do I fear my shadow of death?
What better place than self to have a heaven in?
Ah could we live like trees, would we conquer too?
Can matter, mattering so little outlast mind and spirit?
But does it leave no echoing mind to hear it?
What matters, dies, but matter lives?
Why then need I be stricken with this weight of words?
What, oh what is it the leaves say?
How is it I have grown so much a part of these that I am more in them than in this bodied self?
Is it that life, at ebb, prepares the home to which it goes?
What else is there to do but endure to the end, and to be possessed of a quiet mind?

143. Unless one is born anew—William Penn Lecture, Sunday, March 28, 1965 (by Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson; 1965)
What are others doing in response to God’s will? Christ will respond: “What is that to thee?
There are signs of a “Pentecostal stirring of the Holy Spirit.” Is there [such a] ferment within the SOF?
Can you carry the responsibility for God?
How can I acquire a [sufficient] faith in God?
What prevents us from giving ourselves unreservedly and unconditionally even to our family and friends?
When love for God finally casts fear out of the individual, what happens then?
Why do we find more agreement one issue than on another, similar issue?

144. Bethlehem revisited (Christmas Sermon in Germantown Unitarian Church 12/20/64; by Douglas V. Steere; 1965)
If God was consumed with love and knew that only by love could humans and God’s world of nature live peaceably together, how would God communicate [God’s knowledge]?

146. The wit and wisdom of William Bacon Evans [1875-1964] (by Anna Cox Brinton; 1966)
Shall harshest features weep their want of graces?
Shall love in stooping age prove none or little?

147. Walls (by Robert E. Reuman; 1966)
What Makes the Wall Mentality?
[How can] supranational structures control and limit totalitarianism without in turn becoming a new and more terrifying totalitarian structure?

149. Experiments in community: Ephrata; Amish; Doukhobors; Shakers; Bruderhof; Monteverde (by Norman J. Whitney; 1966)

151. On Being Present Where you are (by Douglas V. Steere; 1967)
Is presence possible when there is almost no physical representative on the scene?
What does it mean to be present and what does genuine presence imply?
How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?
Whose advice can I trust?
What things are most important and require my first attention?
God: “I am ready. Are you Ready?”
Should religions insist upon the illusion of isolation . . . and hope for each other’s failure?
[How can the Holy Spirit] give its message to other religions and from other religions unless each is willing to be present, to the other?

153. The Mayer/Boulding dialogue on peace research (by Kenneth Boulding; 1967)
Is peace research a way to peace?
On what shall we rely as the aribiter of Truth: relentless intellectual honesty and science, or the distilled wisdom of the ages informed by the Light Within?
[Is reason such that] it will move men to their salvation? [Does] the “executive power of the will lie in the passions, regulated by moral and spiritual virtues?
What are the kinds of knowledge I need in order to contribute to the making of peace?
What are the raw materials I need for peace research?
What is it that I could teach or that I could learn that would be of some use to me in my world peace-making efforts?
Isn’t [it rather] that no matter how much morality [and knowledge there] is around, there is a kind of gap between them that we don’t understand and are not likely to fill merely by more knowledge?
What do the findings of such peace research as we now have in hand indicate that we should do?
How do you get over the boundary between war and peace?
What is it that we know that is enough?
How do we persuade people to take the trouble to learn a language?
Do we apply enough intelligence and in what direction?
Why did Quakerism fail?
What is to be done with the findings of this project?
Which project shall we do if the effectiveness of a morally right project is smaller than that of a morally wrong one?

154. The reality of God; thoughts on the "death of God" controversy (by Alexander C. Purdy; 1967)
What is left after the demythologizing process of biblical criticism?
Does not the accumulative effect of traditional phrases tend to make God remote and unessential to life as we know it?
Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely... and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘we are delivered’ ... Has this house . . . become a den of robbers in your eyes?
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Can the forms and institutions of religion be scrapped?
Should ours be the role of iconoclasts?
Will we be able to arrive at a satisfying conception of God?
Is there any other direction for our thinking to take?
Can God be thought of as a Person, as a Person unlimited by the personal, or as Impersonal?
Is the koinonia also a result of the gift of the Spirit?
Can it be that we have been engaged in the wrong quest, seeking God as the object of it, rather than seeing God as the divine mover in our search for something more?

157. Facing and fulfilling the later years (by Elsie Marion Andrews; 1968)
Isn’t life explorable?
Can we accept the sheer joy of being?

158. Man: the Broken Image (by Carol R. Murphy; 1968)
Is man a naked ape?
A Thin-king reed?
A Candle of the Lord?
What more to we need to know than Shakespeare’s, Plato’s, and Jesus’ distilled thoughts?
Can we say that man has a soul?
How does he stand in relation to God?
The structure of creation runs through him. Why then should he feel so orphaned and estranged?
Without responsiveness, how can there be responsibility?
How tell the dancer from the dance?
Is man a thing subject to non-human nature, or is he part of a wider and deeper pattern or responsiveness that created and continues to re-create him?
What happens to man’s logos when he dies?
How can man appear so alienated from God’s Logos?

160. Behind the Gospels (by Henry J. Cadbury; 1968)

161. The Religion of George Fox by Howard H. Brinton; 1968

163. The Hardest Journey (by Douglas V. Steere; 1969)
Do we know at first hand how true subjectivity, awareness, attention, compassion, unlimited liability for our fellows and a return to the infinite ground of our being can take place?
Have Quakers found that they have been able to keep their own share in social change disinfected from the inevitable egotism of good works?
Have we got a word for young people in the early stages of revulsion to killing tightly focused on the Viet Nam War?
Are we matched to the [issues] of our time?
How may we better prepare to respond to them?
Have you ever had a moment of awe and glory that has cloven your life asunder and put it back together again forever different than it was before?”
How well do we understand and sympathize with Jesus’ disciples who fell asleep again and again in the night of his passion in Gethsemane?
Is it conceivable that “still enough to hear God speak” may require lasting, instant decisions, if one dares to enjoy the company of the Friend-Enemy?
Dare we go on beating about the burning bush?
Does the “stillness to hear God speak” reach to a willingness to take the consequences of our actions and very possibly to be used in [some way that we never thought] we would be willing to accept?
Is “stillness" then an almost frightening intimation that the inward journey may ultimately sweep away our reservations and may make us both tender and malleable, and that the prospect both terrifies and lures us on?
What after all is the sin against the Holy Ghost other than this unlived life, the unused light that may die within us?

166. The atonement of George Fox (by Emilia Fogelklou; 1969)
Is it too bold to conjecture that Fox’s sacrifice of power was his unconscious, unspoken but practical atonement for things past—mute in the realm of words, very real in demonstrative action?

167. William Penn: mystic, as reflected in his writings by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1969)
The world talks of God, but what do they do?
How shall preparation for the Light be obtained?
[In meeting] do you sit down in true silence, resting from your own will & workings, and waiting upon the Lord, with your minds fixed upon the Light until the Lord refresheth you and prepares your spirits and souls, to make you fit for His service?

168. The MODERN PROMETHEAN: a dialogue with today’s youth (by Maurice S. Friedman; 1969)

169. Holy Morality: A Religious Approach to Modern Ethics (by Carol Murphy; 1970)

How can we do without the problem-centered approach in the realm of moral behavior?

Can we afford to live only in the present moment?

How is one to define “working” or “not working”?

[To what degree must those seeking transcendent values be disaffiliated from the system]?

170. Edward Hicks: Primitive Quaker & His Religion in Relation to his Art (by Eleanore P. Mather; 1970)
What is a Primitive Quaker?

173. Evolution and the Inward Light (by Howard Haines Brinton; 1970)
What will enable the human species to survive?
The Kingdom of Heaven, if it is to begin on Earth must begin some time somewhere, so why not with the individual who has adopted its ethical code?
How can we secure the sensitivity and awareness to [evolve and] avoid catastrophe?

175. Mutual irradiation; a Quaker view of ecumenism by Douglas V. Steere; 1971)
O my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that thou art so great & yet nobody finds thee?
How does it happen that thou callest so loudly & yet nobody hears thee?
How does it happen that thou art so near & yet nobody feels thee?
How is it that thou givest thyself to everybody & yet nobody knows thy name? (Hans Denck, 16th century)
[What can Quakers bring to ecumenism]?
What is the Holy Spirit saying to me as a Christian, as a Quaker, in [witnessing the practices] of this other religion?
How do you find it possible to counter the dispersive forces of life and to keep attentive in the inward center with only one hour a week devoted to it?
When is the time that you take for the healing of the soul?
[What happens] when the prophetic type of religion [with its personal responsibility meets] the profound Buddhist and Hindu concentration upon consciousness and awareness and “myself” is transcended?

179. Light and Life in the Fourth Gospel By Howard H. Brinton; 1971)
What does John mean by “eternal life?”
[How does this gospel compare to the religious classics of other religions?]
What kind of Christianity can save our modern world?
What then is eternal life in the present?
How can we discover the eternal in the temporal and the temporal in the eternal?

180. Apocalypso: revelations in theater (by Jack Shepherd; 1971)
How could we be [entertaining], spontaneous, and serious?
[Hera]: What was our [godly] function?”
How could the comic idea, same story, same sequence of words, suddenly become serious?
How is the silence to be used?”
Could purity of heart be the answer?

182. On speaking out of the silence; vocal ministry in unprogrammed meeting for worship (by Douglas V. Steere; 1972)
What is this yearning communication that was promised us and that we have from time to time experienced in our meetings?
How should controversial issues be brought into the ministry of the meeting?

183. Art and the changing world: uncommon sense in the 20th century (by Dorothea Blom; 1972)
Are Common Sense & Uncommon Sense irreconcilable opposites?

191. Feminine aspects of divinity (by Erminie Huntress Lantero; 1973)
In the tragedy of Adam and Eve, is the serpent really the devil, or something less sinister?
[Does God] feel Himself threatened by their curiosity and lèse-majesté (violating royal rights)?
[Was Wisdom a master workman, advising God, and delighting in the results of Creation?
Or was she a daughter, laughing and playing before God like a child?

193. The available mind (by Carol R. Murphy; 1974)
What does all this awareness of Now have to do with the search for God?
If a mystical sort of experience is made the basis of religion, how can we know if it tells the truth about reality?
How many Friends Meetings are the powerhouses of shared contemplation they were meant to be?
Which comes first—meditation or way of life?
Is skepticism necessarily the villain of [circumstances calling for expectancy?
When does expectancy become gullibility?
If individual inspiration can go astray, what shall we say of testing by the consensus of a group?

194. Quakerism of the Future: Mystical, Prophetic & Evangelical (by John Yungblut; 1974)

196. Women and Quakerism (by Hope Elizabeth Luder; 1974)
Why did Quakerism produce so many outstanding women?
What is the history of women’s bearing on the future?

197. Art responds to the Bible (by Dorothea Johnson Blom; 1974)
Did the Church Fathers of long ago, who arranged the Bible, intentionally open and close their work with this Tree of Life?

198. Re-conciliation: the hidden hyphen (by Mary Chase Morrison; 1974)
When we are called back to Re-conciliation, Will we turn? And if so, how? (5 times)
Might we be mistaken?
Is there something more important than being right?
If truth be told, are we speaking it, or is it being heard?
Is wisdom silent, or are we deaf?
How are real clearness and ease and freshness and grace to come again?
Who has not experienced that deadly kind of noble ‘forgiveness’ that leaves one permanently one-down, in the wrong forever?
How did we come to be so imprisoned in “goodness?”
How did we lock ourselves into so limited a concept of what goodness is?
What does “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” mean for human beings?
What is reconciliation when it is done?

199. Contemplation and Leisure (by Douglas V. Steere; 1975)
[Is all planning guilty of blocking life’s flow, or is it certain kinds and amounts of planning?

200. Born Remembering (by Elise Boulding; 1975)
Why is it that we are born remembering, [aware], & live forgetting?
How then was the petering out of intellectual and spiritual energy to be prevented?
What did God require of me?
Jesus, was unbearable stretching of spirit—torn upwards, rooted below your crucifixion?

202. Quaker poets: past & present (by Mary Hoxie Jones; 1975)
Where does worship end and poetry begin?
O ye mighty Elders, are your own rules forgotten?
Have ye still to learn the seriousness of hindering a Quakor ‘neath concern?
Why is it right for you to chant, and wrong for him to sing?”

204. William Penn, 17th century founding father: selections from political writings (ed. Edwin Bronner; 1975)
By what law you prosecute me & on what law do you ground my indictment?
Shall I plead to an indictment that hath no foundation in law?
Is this indictment legal?
Is this justice or true judgment?
If these ancient fundamental laws are not maintained and observed, who can say he hath right to the coat on his back?”

206. Margaret Fell speaking (by Hugh Barbour; 1976)
What canst thou say?
Art thou a Child of Light?
And what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?
What had become of the redemption of the whole body of mankind, if they had not believed the message that the Lord Jesus sent by these women of and concerning his resurrection?

210. The Psychology of a Fairy Tale (by David L. Hart; 1977)

How do you bring the voice of your soul into your conscious life?

Are you really going to put yourself in my hands or not?”

Is it not strange that Ferdinand the Unfaithful drives the faithful one to an act of faith?

211. Seeking Light in the Darkness of the Unconscious (by John Yungblut; 1977)

[Does] even matter [have a] memory of the darkness on the face of the deep while chaos yet prevailed?

What enables some children to know that making sport of taking life is evil, & what conceals this know-ledge from others?

What response do we need to have with reference to the darkness of ignorance, evil, and the unformed void?

212. A Place Called Community (by Parker J. Palmer; 1977)

How can I participate in a fairer distribution of resources unless I live in a community which makes it possible to consume less?

How can I learn accountability unless I live in a community where my acts and their consequences are visible to all?

213. The Triple Way: Purgation, Illumination, Union (by George Terhune Peck; 1977)

Are experienced and weighty Friends bored with meeting when they go away]?

Can it be that those who have left us are stuck in a pattern?

214. Jacob Boehme: Insights into the Challenge of Evil (by Ann Liem; 1977)

Was Jacob Boehme and George Fox linked somehow by the revelation of truth, and the converting of a people to follow it?

215. Art, Imagery, and the Mythic Process (By Dorothea Blom; 1977)

216. O Inward Traveller (by Carol R. Murphy; 1977): What good does your inward journey do?

220. A Fifth Yoga: the Way of Relationships (by Joseph Havens; 1978)

Can I step into the other person’s private world so completely that I lose all desire to evaluate or judge it?

Can I enter so sensitively that I can move about it freely, without trampling on meanings which are precious to him?
How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

222. The family as a way into the future (by Elise Boulding; 1978)

Is there some better set of arrangements than the family almost within sight that will produce better human beings, more economic justice, and peace instead of war?
Is it all over with the family, or is it still a significant human enterprise?
How are we to create viable new local community structures to replace the frayed structures of industrial centralism, in a dynamic context of world neighborhood, world need, world service?

224. In the Belly of a Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Thought of Thomas Merton (by Parker J. Palmer; 1979)
How do we live in fair exchange, so that what we consume is balanced out by what we produce?
How can our spiritual labors be as useful to the people who feed us as their labors are to us?
What are their fruits?

227. Woman Ministers; a Quaker Contribution (by Robert J. Leach; 1979)

228. With thine adversary in the way: a Quaker witness for reconciliation (by Margarethe Lachmund; 1979)
What does it mean to live now as a Christian?
How could nations live together from entirely egoistic points of view without its leading to the catastrophe of war?

229. Henry Hodgkin, the road to Pendle Hill (by John Ormerod Greenwood; 1980)

Is the state of luxury that separates us from even the best of our native fellow workers really necessary? Ought we to become Chinese subjects [completely]?

Have we been afraid to speak the truth about our own failure, that of our own churches and countries, and so put back the cause of truth?

230. The life of the spirit in women: a Jungian approach (by Helen M. Luke; 1980)

How do we tell the difference between the message of a “worldly spirit” and The Spirit?

What kind of free spirit is it that breathes through me & is the dominant influence in my life?

231. Quaker testimonies & economic alternatives (by Severyn Ten Haut Bruyn; 1980)

Should one develop business for his own advantage in the light of his Christian beliefs?

Is it likely that wholesome conditions of work & adequate wages will be attained if the employees have no share in determining them?

Will not sharing in management have great educational value & may it not release latent energies in employees?”

What principles can Friends offer to business people, labor leaders, consumer advocates, anyone who is deeply involved in the management of the economy?

232. The Life Journey of a Quaker artist (by Dorothea Johnson Blom; 1980)

How can you move to higher ground without sometimes losing the view and finding the going rough?

what is the inherent function of art?

233. Friends and the World of Nature (by Theodor Benfy; 1980)

235. A.J. Muste, pacifist & prophet: his relation to the Society of Friends (by Jo Ann Robinson; 1981)

236. Four Women, Four Windows on Light by (by Carol R. Murphy; 1981)

“Will you open or close the door upon the angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he came of old to the patriarch at noonday?”

Are there 2 worlds, a tangible and an intangible, or only one seen in different perspectives?

238. Lawrie Tatum, Indian Agent: Quaker Values and Hard Choices (by Robert Hixson; 1981)

Can Quakers be as effective at policy-making as in policy-protesting?

Can military force by justified if the only alternative appears to be even more bloodshed and violence?

And if not, then what methods should Quakers adopt to prevent war-like people from harming others and themselves?

Does the Quaker insistence on principle that makes for good conscientious objectors, make for ineffective leaders and decision-makers?

What value are Quaker ideals if they cannot be realized in society at large?

243. Joel Litu, Pioneer African Quaker (by Rose Adede; 1982)

245. Alternative Christianity (by John Punshon;1982)

Is the Friends’ interpretation of the mind of Christ and the New Testament as valid as that of the major branches of the Christian religion?

Does the Bible, after being critically examined, contain history, prophecy, and doctrine that we are under an obligation to accept because it is in the Bible?

What does God have to say about current issues?

246. Quest there is (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1982)

When shall we learn to pray not to “what I think Thou art but what thou knowest Thyself to be?”

248. The Candle of the Lord (by Elfrida Vipont Foulds; 1983)

“Are we gathered?”

Have we evolved a working pattern which will cope with such a challenge?

Are we ready to live as if the Kingdom of God had come?

Are we ready to believe that the Spirit of Man is the Candle of the Lord?

254. To Martin Luther King, with love: a southern Quaker’s tribute (by David W. Pitre; 1984)

256. The Prophetic Stream (by William Taber; 1984)

Where is your loyalty; where is your rock-solid unshakable trust?

Has the salt lost its savor so that it is therefore unfocused, useless?

What are your graven images; career; acceptance; fear?

[Am I] present where and when I am? Am I really understanding and meaning what I say?

Do I take time periodically for calm receptive focusing inward?

What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly (hatsenay leket) with your God?

How can I justify my existence in a world where so many are miserable?

What is the right-sharing of my resources in this wealthy and privileged land?

How do we prepare for prophecy?

Do we devote ourselves to a daily spiritual discipline appropriate to our stage of the spiritual journey?

Do we cultivate a personal or group worship which can open us to the prophetic stream?

Why dost thou look on faithless men, and art silent when the wicked swallows the man more righteous than he?

What then is faith, as the Quakers have understood it?

257. Artist on the witness stand (by Fritz Eichenberg; 1984)

Where are the artists eulogizing the grandeur and harmonies of nature, its checks and balances which give meaning to our lives?

Should not our great artists and writers try to bring the awareness of our problems closer to us, their contemporaries?

258. When Silence Becomes Singing: a study in perception and parable (by Helen Kylin; 1984)

259. Stewardship of Wealth (by Kingdon W Swayne; 1985)

How big a personally controlled “safety net” is big enough?

Can you distinguish between your economic and religious motivations in the area of energy conservation?

Do we really believe Jesus’ eye-of-the-needle metaphor about the rich?

Are we willing to accept its implications for Friends’ institutions?

How can I develop my own unique capacities and interests, and use the wealth and power which has been entrusted to me by society so as to benefit others and create a more just and compassionate world?

GUIDE TO SELF-ASSESSMENT QUERIES

What considerations guide your choices with respect to purchasing the following: living quarters; household furnishings; food and drink; clothing; transportation; recreation [i.e. arts and craft, vacations, entertainment]; electric and electronic devices; education; personal services?

What is your annual income?

What career choices have you made that limited family income?

Can you distinguish between your economic and religious motivations in the area of energy conservation?

Have you a cutoff level below which you can comfortably lay out money without stopping to think about it?

What is your family’s budgetary process?

How are conflicts between family needs and the larger society resolved?

How does your will resolve the above conflict?

260. The Way of the Cross: The Gospel Record (by Mary C. Morrison; 1985)

What if you can’t live your Christian Faith with the confidence of Jesus in John’s Gospel?

How can we follow him?

What does it tell us about Jesus that he came to John [as part of a crowd] and was dipped by him into the River Jordan?

261. Interconnections (by Elaine M. Prevallet; 1985)

Is there ever any profit that is not registered as a debit somewhere?

How does God exercise dominion and what does that tell us about our dominion over the earth?

What was Jesus’ way of dominion?

262. Bearing Witness: Quaker Process and a Culture of Peace (by Gray Cox; 1985)

“Do you live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars?” John Woolman

How can each citizen reconcile the orders of the temporal with the path of Christ?

263. Replacing the Warrior: Cultural Ideals and Militarism (by William A. Myers; 1985)

How do the military virtues fit the culture & time we live in?
What is our warrant, our authority, for maintaining a different moral position from that of our community?

267. Encounters with Transcendence: Confessions of a Religious Philosopher (by Scott Crom; 1986)

Where was I during that experience when I disappeared?

What alternative [to the scientific] way is there to approach our issues of
selfhood, reality, and transcendence?

What is the most distinctive feature of an energy whirlwind which makes
it a self or a person rather than a tree or a stone?

Do I find “transcendence” a useful category? Do I view the world through a transcendence-colored lens?

268. In God We Live (by Warren Ostrom; 1986)
Am I sick because I believe the boundaries between [all substance,
energy, consciousness, and emptiness] are more illusion than real?

269. THE SEED AND THE TREE: A Reflection on Non-violence (by Daniel A. Seeger; 1986)

What does it mean to be committed to the way of nonviolence?

Does loving everyone mean assenting to everything they say?

Does it relativize our search for Truth?

How do we develop our capacity for seeking and expressing Truth?

How does relinquishing [the requirement] of effectiveness [in a non-violent plan] make you feel?

How do you experience needing a black and white answer while knowing it does violence to the complexity of the truth?

Does pursuing social change through changing our major social institution fit your way of pursuing peace?

Does a personal commitment to non-violence fit your way of pursuing peace?

[Does using a role model] fit your way of pursuing peace?

Is your pursuit of peace a combination of social change, personal commitment, and role models?

270. The Sanctuary Church (by Jim Corbett; 1986)

What can we do [as a community to offer sanctuary]?

How radically unassimilated from the rule of violence must the church become to go free from its [“service to empire”]?

Is the practice of sanctuary by Covenant communities “political?”

How are we to work with those whose dedication to winning the good war
entails using us as medics in their crusade?

272. Going Back: A poet who was once a Marine returns to

Vietnam

(by W.D. Ehrhart; 1987)

How long will it be before my government sends my children to wage war against the children of another Nguyen Thi Na?

274. Nonviolence on Trial (by Robert W. Hillegass; 1987)

What is the problem or evil we are addressing?

Is it the trident submarine, nuclear weapons, or something even deeper and more pervasive?

Why [call me to witness] rather than someone more gifted?

Since I enjoy American privileges & advantages, am I not personally responsible for what my nation does?

Have I not a civil & a religious duty to resist the policy by all nonviolent means possible?

How can I presume to speak for God to my fellows?

275. The Needle’s Eye: (by Carol Reilley Urner ; 1987)

How could we insure that the voices of tribal people would be heard above those of others like ourselves who too often sought to speak for them?

Why should [violent young Maoists] heed my cries to “love also the oppressor” when I myself seemed too much a beneficiary of oppression?

What moral challenge did corporate official see in my life, when I risked little and already possessed the affluence for which they strove?

276. Meditations on a D Major scale (by Bertha May Nicholson; 1987)
Is there a relationship between music and the spiritual life?

How do you acknowledge a golden moment, & then move beyond it?

What is the truth that is like a scale, that could help us learn more about God?

Where do we look for direction in the spiritual life?

Where are our guides, our teachers?

278. Education and the Inward Teacher (by Paul A. Lacey; 1988)

What can we know about the nature of the Teacher? The Teaching?

What is the content & method of the Teaching?

How can we take the reality of the Inward Teacher seriously, in how we teach & learn?

What relevance does the Inward Teacher metaphor have for all forms of education, the disciplines and basic skills which are needed to live effectively in the world?

[Is the individual/group ready to put self-will aside?

Is the leading consistent with other past leadings of the spirit, which “is not changeable”?

Will the proposed action deepen the fruits of the spirit?

Are there other kinds of learning where it is necessary to assert the work of an Inward Teacher to explain how the learning happened?

How can we best prepare ourselves to hear and respond to the inner voice which may be available to each of us?

How good a society does human nature permit? [Abraham Maslow]

How good a human nature does society permit? [Abraham Maslow]

What can we do to open our classrooms, our schools, ourselves, to the possibility of such an encounter?

How is the Inward Teacher known?

280. An Attender at the Altar: A Sacramental Christian Responds to Silence (by Jay C. Rochelle; 1988)

[Have Friends lost their roots in deep faith, so that our ethics have become short-lived & trendy?

Have sacramental Christians lost sight of the vision of God as the goal of our liturgy?

Have we split off spirituality from secular life and compartmentalize our selves into neat categories?

Have we given up the struggle to find a Christian way in tension with the cultures in which we live]?

How shall we live when we know in our hearts that the place where we stand is holy ground because God meets us here?

How shall we live when we know in our hearts that the time in which we live is eternal because God meets us in it? How shall we live when we know in our hearts that Christ meets us in the faces and hands of our community?

282. Batter My Heart (by Gracia Fay Ellwood; 1988)

Can we continue to use male images for God in the old manner without implicitly supporting patriarchy?

Can we use any hierarchal images for God or any images of submission for humanity, without in some way fostering oppression?

What becomes of those persons who have derived their identity as Christians or Jews from a commitment to the Bible as sacred Scripture, yet are courageous enough to acknowledge this death-dealing theme that pervades it?

283. Sink Down to The Seed (by Charlotte Fardelmann; 1989)

284. Thomas Kelly as I Remember Him (by T. Canby Jones; 1988)

Do you really want to live every moment of your lives in God’s Presence?

Does every breath you draw breathe a prayer, a praise to God?

Do you sing and dance within yourself to be God’s and only God’s, walking every moment in holy obedience?

Is love steadfastly directed toward God, in our minds, all day long?

Do we intersperse our work with gentle prayers and praises to God?

Do we live in the steady peace of God, a peace down at the very depths of our souls, already a victor of the world and our weaknesses?

Are you a miracle of radiant eternity lived in the midst of time? Am I such a miracle?

Are we people whose lives can only be explained by saying, the Eternal Life and Love are breaking through into time, at these points?

Are we people whose lives can only be explained by saying, the Eternal Life and Love are breaking through into time, at these points?

Do we hunger for the same sort of miracle in our lives which transformed that of Thomas Kelly?

Are we people whose lives can only be explained by saying, the Eternal Life and Love are breaking through into time, at these points? Do we hunger for the same sort of miracle in our lives which transformed that of Thomas Kelly?

285. Letter to a Universalist (by John Punshon; 1989)

Why is it so hard to talk about Christ?

[Is current secular orthodoxy preferable to traditional religious orthodoxy?]

286. War Taxes: Experiences of Philadelphia YM Quakers through the American Revolution (by Elaine J. Crauderueff; 1989)

What are the consequences to other Friends, to non-Friends, and to oneself when taxes are paid for war?

How would individual Friends respond to war taxes and formal Advice?

What would result in taking a radical position on the war tax issue?

At what point should a Friend refuse to support what in peacetime would clearly be acceptable, but in war might actually or implicitly support the war effort?

What should this Meeting do about those Friends who have a “religious scruple” that forbids paying taxes to defray the war debt, [and who have] suffered Distraint of their Goods, when “the greater part of the Society pay the same Taxes? Should these accounts be forwarded as Suffering to the Meeting for Sufferings?

Why should there be pain and separation when “love and union might be preserved?”

What does Peace Testimony mean to individuals and the Society of Friends as a body today?

Is there nothing that we now believe to always be true?

What obligation do Friends have “to beware lest by our example we lead others wrong?”

Do you respect the feelings of others on issues, even when you differ with them?

What are the ways you Meeting responds to the war tax issue?

Is your Meeting open to war tax resisters and war tax payers?

How are you challenged by the diversity of opinion and action of Friends through the American Revolution?

Are there Quaker beliefs or practices for which you would be willing to lose property or be jailed?

How does the Spirit of Christ help you to discern what is right for you on this and other issues of conscience?

288. Improvisation & Spiritual Disciplines: Continuing the Divine-Human Duet (by Carol Conti-Etin; 1989)

What is there in the concept of sabbath which might be worth preserving?

Why not offer your duet partner [the Spirit] a daily time together and a much long, minimally distracted “jam session” once a week?

How can one read the Scriptures, if one finds them irrelevant or hurtful?

Should anyone who finds the Bible uninviting begin or resume a program of Bible reading?

Did I in fact own any or all of my income?

But what would surrendering my self-will entail?

What expressed thoughts hinder our spiritual growth, and how may we cultivate only those forms of prayer which help us mature?

291. Prayer in the Contemporary World (by Douglas V. Steere; 1990)

What is being attacked in the charges against prayer [as being superstitious, autosuggestion, & pietistic]?

Are they being leveled against high prayer or on low forms of prayer that masquerade [as prayer]?

Is it conceivable that Jesus saw that the way to touch any society was at its Achilles heel, by serving the group whom it wanted to hide from its sight?

Can we discover a mutual ministry to one another when this bloodstream of our common humanity is restored?

[Will we be like disciples and be] “absurdly happy, entirely fearless, and always in trouble?”

What was the church really meant for?

What is the hidden God saying to me through the witness of those who deny him?

293. The Ministry of Presence: Without Agenda in

South Africa

(by Avis Crowe; Dyckman Vermilye; 1990)

What greater ministry can be practiced than one which reflects that presence?

297. Gospel Order: A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Community (by Sandra Lee Cronk; 1991)

How can we manifest faithfully our new commitment to God?

Is the thing, or things which thou hast against him, fully so, as thou apprehendest?

Hast thou seen evil in him, or to break forth from him?

Hast thou pitied him, mourned over him, cried to the Lord for him, and in tender love and meekness of spirit, laid the thing before him?

Hast thou any hardness of spirit or hard reasonings against him? Isaac Penington

What does it mean today to be a committed people in covenantal relationship with Christ?

What does it mean to practice mutual accountability that keeps this relationship alive?

Do our lives with each other in our meetings and homes reflect fidelity, love, and trust?

Can we participate corporately in God’s new order so that our love speaks to a world dying from environmental destruction, violence, hatred, & systems of economic exploitation & injustice?

299. Vistas from Inner Stillness (by Richard L. Walker; 1991)

Are sensations of the soul, feelings, & sensed paradoxes the way in which reality is revealed to us?

300. Therefore Choose Life: The Spiritual Challenge of the Nuclear Age (by John Tallmadge; 1991)

What therapy shall we undertake to strengthen our individual and collective will to survive?

301 Spiritual Linkage with Russians: The Story of a Leading (By Anthony Manousos; 1992)

Can the world’s problems be solved just by listening?

303. WORDS, WORDLESSNESS AND THE WORD: Silence Reconsidered from a Literary Point (by Peter Bien; 1992)

What precisely did John mean by the term logos?

Is the Word to be connected chiefly with the Doing aspect of God head or with the Being aspect?

304. Mind What Stirs in your Heart (by Teresina R. Havens; 1992)

How do we walk differently when we walk in the light?

How do you walk when the Light is blocked from shining into your soul?

How would it change our economic justice efforts to focus on the psychic costs of our competitive economic system?

Where are Woolman’s observations about hurry most relevant today?

How do we know when we “are moved?” How do we distinguish our own will from a true “leading?”

305. Spiritual Discernment: The Context and Goal of Clearness Committee (by Patricia Loring; 1992)

Who is to appoint the members of the clearness committee?

Is any record of the proceedings to be kept?

[If so, what, and how?]

Should the entire matter be left as unrecorded as a meeting for worship, in confidence that the process will work in its own way and that what is forgotten is not required for the right discernment?

306. Four Doors to Meeting for Worship (by William P. Taber; 1992)

When does the meeting actually begin?

How can the small number of modern ministering Friends, or anyone who speaks, be sure that we are not speaking too often, too long, or from our own ideas?

What new insight, what new understanding has this meeting time with God given me to take into my daily life?

[What change have we promised to bring into our daily life]?

307. Beyond Consensus: Salvaging Sense of the Meeting (by Barry Morley; 1993)

What is the difference between consensus and sense of the meeting?

Do I dwell consistently in the virtue of Life & Power so that occasions for war may dwindle?

308 Marriage: A Spiritual Leading for Lesbian, and Straight Couples (by Leslie Hill; 1993)

What is the meaning & purpose of marriage?

How does Quaker marriage relate to [LGBT] & straight couples?

What does marriage under the care of the meeting mean for any couple?

What are the responsibilities of the meeting and the couple?

How do we nurture all commitments among ourselves?

Are you seeking a spiritual union, a legal union, or both?

Have you taken steps necessary to compensate for any lack of state recognition or legal provision for committed lesbian and gay relationships.

What are your expectations of marriage?

What are your thoughts on a spiritual Quaker marriage?

What do you think about the traditional masculine and feminine roles?

Can you be ready to compromise your plans or wishes out of respect for one another?

How do you deal with conflicts between you?

How will finances be handled in your marriage?

Have you discussed any health problems?

How do you feel about your new extended family?

Are you willing to give the time, patience, and openness to a good sexual relationship?

Are you willing to recommit yourself, day by day, year by year, to try again in spite of difficulties, to recognize, accept, love and delight in each other’s individuality?

315 Answering that of God in Children (by Harriet Heath; 1994)

As a Quaker, To what [of God] do I answer, that is in every person?

At what age does the Light appear in children?

How does its Presence in my children affect my task of guiding them?

Can we see the Inner Light when they [“being difficult”]?

Is the child inherently good and can do no wrong?

What is my child trying to accomplish? What does my child understand? What does he/she need to know? How much can she understand now? What is my child able to do? What does she need to learn? What do I want my child to learn?

How do you see that of God in people of any age?

How could young children’s exploration of their environment encourage them to question and help them to develop the skills to search for answers to spiritual questions?

How do you view children? How does your view of children define your role as a parent?

How do your Quaker beliefs influence how you live with and nurture your children?

How has your parental role changed as your children have grown older?

How have your Quaker beliefs and understanding changed as you have parented and as your children have grown older?

316 For that Solitary Individual: An Octogenarian’s Counsel on Living & Dying (by John R. Yungblut; 1994)

How does one cultivate awareness of the transparency of the divine?

What is evolution saying to us about a new authoritative sex ethic? What has deep psychology to offer to a new sex ethic?

How can any consciousness survive the disintegration and decay of the body?

How do we make a good end? What shall be my approach to encountering death?

319 Stories from

Kenya

(by Tom and Liz Gates; 1995)

322 Nonviolence and Community: Reflections on the Alternatives to Violence Project (By Newton Garver & Eric Reitan; 1995)

Does violence ever really work?

What kind of commitment to community is required?

[What need is there for an ethic] requiring this sort of commitment?

PH Pamphlet Impressions

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Pendle Hill Pamphlet Queries