Home of the Wanderer

I’m a Quaker mystic, raised in a Beanite meeting and coming to a Hicksite perspective by my teenage years. I’ve been coming to a new understanding of Christianity, and it seems I’m much more Beanite now than I used to be.

When I was four, I asked my mother what it meant that we were Quaker. When she told me “we believe in the Light in everyone,” I didn’t attach the Christocentric meaning (Light of Christ) that some others have for that phrase. Rather, I understood that she was talking about that spark of divinity that I feel to be present, not just in all people but in all things. Being a good Quaker kid, I didn’t just take her word for it - I asked myself if I believed it too. I did, and I still do.

When I was nine, I watched a Friend (another term for a Quaker) launch a canoe into a reservoir. He was pre-adolescent, as was my brother, who asked where he was going. When the friend (he was also a buddy at camp) said, “wherever the Spirit leads me,” I didn’t have the Bibliocentric interpretation (”Holy Spirit”) that I think would be common in our culture - instead, I understood him to mean Great Spirit.

Through mystical experiences as a teenager and since, I am convinced of the overriding goodness of the world, and of the presence of a benevolent power more complex and wonderful, and yet more simple, than any description could encompass. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that this power – which I call God – is present in all things, is equally and affirmatively accessible to all people, and loves the world and every piece of it with a curiosity so great that it causes the world to exist.

Also, God told me not to proselytize.

The shadow of the memory of that love has transformed my own experience of profound physical pain, lifting the burden from me and leaving me only with overwhelming comfort.

I seek, in all that I do, to be led by my experience of the ubiquitous presence and accessibility of divine love. This means that the most important thing for me to hear may come to me through the most unexpected avenue, and that my words and deeds may carry a message for someone else, unbeknownst to me. This demands of me that I examine all things for something to appreciate, with the assumption that it is there, and that I be careful to act with integrity – not for fear of angering some remote and impersonal deity, but out of love for the very real and present incarnation of divine love itself, which is everything, and a desire to love the world as well as God does. Seeing that all our hands can do God’s work, I seek through my actions to weave myself into a tapestry of grace, inspiring the world to admire and act on the presence of divine love.

The overriding truth of existence, it seems to me, is unity. We are all one in God’s love. Thus, all suffering, separation, and loss are illusory. And yet, because we are so worthy of love, because the Spirit is at work in every one of us, it is worthwhile to treat the world as if it exists – to honor God’s curiosity, to love God back by loving and caring for each other, to give God the gift of beauty and kindness in GodSelf.

But you see, these are mysteries. If you haven’t experienced them, they’ll sound crazy, and if you have then you don’t need me to tell you. And none of these words is sufficient to describe the indescribable.