Encountering Spirit—An Opportunity Friends General Conference is sponsoring a retreat in April titled Encountering Spirit. I will join Marty Grundy and Stanford Searl in a panel and following workshop on The Gathered Meeting on Sunday, April 14. So I’m doing what I can to get the word out. Information Retreat website: Encountering Spirit. Workshop schedule: Workshops. When: Friday, April 12, 2024 – Sunday, April 14, 2024. The Gathered Meeting Plenary: Encounter in Community—Sunday, 1 pm Eastern. The Gathered Meeting Workshop: Sunday, 3–5 pm, Eastern. Who: Steven Davison, Marty Grundy, Stanford ..read more

I’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s frightening how contemporary it is, how it corresponds to our time and reality more than it did when the book was released in 1985, and even more than when the show began in 2017. Of course, we do not need a television program to show us what man’s dominion over women’s bodies looks like, or patriarchy’s control of female and human reproduction, or what state-sponsored sexual slavery looks like, when a woman can be forced to have sex with a man through brute personal force and then be forced to carry and give birth to his child through the force of ..read more

Martin Kelley, editor of Friends Journal and author of the Quaker Ranter blog, recently posted about an article by Windy Cooler at FGC titled “What is a Public Minister?“. Windy Cooler’s article is the first in a series and I eagerly await the next posts, as I think this is a really important subject. In fact, I was led to reply to Martin’s post and would have done to Windy Cooler’s, but FGC’s site offered no such option. So here is what I would have said: Like Martin, I, too, have been a “public minister” for decades, doing workshops, giving presentations, and especially, writing a lot. And f ..read more

Marina, the life partner of another friend of ours, Claudio, was killed in a bicycle accident a few days ago. She was hit from behind by a young person who was distracted while driving—not sure exactly how at this point.  This circle of friends, who live all over the place, meet every few months by Zoom, and we met night before last. Claudio spoke for a long time about their relationship, what he knows about the accident, his emotional state, the days following; he was visiting family in Italy when the accident occurred. He said several times that he was not “spiritual,” it was Marina who ..read more

Dear readers: I have published three books of poetry and a fourth is about to come out. You can learn more about them on my personal website, stevendavison.com. The book. The first book is actually a hybrid book of poems, photographs, personal letters, short essays, and other elements. The poems in The Road to Continental Heart: Befriending, and Defending, the Spirit of North America were written for a friend who walked across the country with a group of environmental activists, one poem a week for nine months, most of the poems incorporating research I had done into the landscapes and places ..read more

My article on leadership, Learning to Follow, in the latest issue of Friends Journal is now featured on their website. You can click the link to read it ..read more

The sacraments have been defined as outward signs of inward grace. Grace has often been rather narrowly defined as forgiveness of sins. Friends have greatly expanded our understanding of the sacraments, of grace, and our relationship to them.  We do not practice the outward forms of the sacraments because we know that no outward form, especially one that is performed by rote, could guarantee inward grace.  And we know that the inbreaking of God’s spiritual gifts includes, not just forgiveness, but also correction, healing, strengthening, comfort, renewal, openings of the mind, loving ..read more

While working on an essay on Quaker metaphysics—what’s going on in our personal mystical experiences, and especially, in the psychic dimensions of our gathered meetings—I looked up the Wikipedia entry for “divine spark” to clarify its neoplatonic source. That entry was terrible in many ways; it did not even mention neoplatonism, but only Gnosticism. But it also mentioned Quakers. In fact, the section on the Quaker use of divine spark took up more than half of the entry. See below for the original entry. This was quite a surprise to me. And as I say ad nauseum in this blog and elsewhere, the cl ..read more

Oaths offer Friends and other faithful Christian communities a point of leverage by which we may be able to move some elected officials who assault the truth in the service of their white Christian nationalist god of violence and untruth. These officials have sworn oaths, and they are breaking their oaths with their words and actions. These oaths end with the phrase “so help me God”. Former Vice President Michael Pence might be especially open to this kind of appeal, since he is so self-avowedly Christian in his private and public life; he’s even used the phrase as the title of he newly-publis ..read more

Here’s what a testimony of love might look like: A testimony of love on immigration reform Dear US Representative [X]: I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a foreigner and you welcomed me; I was naked and you gave me clothing; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me. . . And when was it that [we did these things]? . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.  Matthew 25:35–40 We, the members of [meeting] implore you as a member of the Un ..read more