As I reflect on the many facets of my life to this point – including the zig-zag route that has led me to here – I realize what draws them together is the two central metaphors I’ve found in the early Quaker movement: divine Light and the corresponding Seed. One, as spirit, draws forth; the other, as physical matter, responds. These two, however abstractly, are embodied in both my writing and spiritual practice.

Not that anything’s been quite that easy or direct, even before our current dark times.

At least I haven’t been alone.

~*~

In my fiction, they’re most prominent in Kenzie’s Tibetan Buddhist discoveries in the novels Pit-a-Pat High Jacks and Subway Visions and in Jaya’s practices in Yoga Bootcamp, Nearly Canaan, and the Secret Side of Jaya.

Not to be dogmatic in any of this. What I have now is what I found missing in both the Protestant circles where I grew up and the Eastern practices later. The second, as the ashram, was a step that taught me to sit in silent meditation as well as to live in community, lessons that flowered in relation to my Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren circles that followed.

Trying to live in the “real world” of employment and a partner and family definitely thickened the plot as these have unfolded. As I’ll concede, a spiritual life needs to be grounded. That is, the gritty realities.

~*~

Trying to be faithful to the Way as it has opened before me was hardly the path I would have expected. It has, though, been blessed with mutual irradiation, in Douglas Steere’s brilliant term, including a Greek Orthodox infusion.

More recently, attempting to get back to some of the basic hatha yoga exercises, has inflicted the humbling blunt recognition of what 50 years of neglect can do to the physical body.

And cutting through the platitudes and BS of the literature remains a challenge.

~*~

These elements drive the essays of my book Light Seed Truth, examining the three central metaphors of Quaker Christianity. It really becomes a different way of thinking.

Here are some of the things I’ve noted along the way.

I’ve been a Quaker for nearly four decades now, coming to the faith of my ancestors by chance after living and working on a yoga farm in Pennsylvania. Lately, I’ve been uncovering a revolutionary understanding of Christ and Christianity – one the early Quakers could not fully proclaim in face of the existing blasphemy laws but experiences they couched in metaphors of the Light, Seed, and Truth. As I systematically connect the dots 3½ centuries later, I’m finding a vibrant alternative to conventional religion, one full of opportunities to engage contemporary intellectual frontiers, individual spiritual practice, and societal crises. As an established writer – a professional journalist, poet, and novelist – I’ve organized these insights into a book-length manuscript. Would you like you to see it?

What I’ve found is an astonishing course of religious thought no one else has previously presented systematically. Reconstructed, their interwoven metaphors of the Light, the Seed, and the Truth provide a challenging alternative to conventional Christianity, one full of opportunities to engage current intellectual frontiers ranging from quantum physics and Asian spiritual teachings to psychology and contemporary poetry.

Embedded under the conventional interpretation of the scriptures and teachings about Jesus is an alternative definition of Christ and Christianity.

When early Quakers in mid-1600s Britain experienced this as their “primitive Christianity revived,” they were forbidden by the blasphemy laws from proclaiming their understanding openly. Instead, they couched it in overlapping metaphors of the Light, the Seed, and the Truth.

Embracing holy mystery, I’ve found the Hidden Path emerges.

Forget everything you’ve heard about Christianity. Let me show you an alternative portrait of Christ, and a much different practice that results. It can change your life. For starters, you need to realize that Christ is bigger than Jesus.

I can introduce you to the Universal Christ, which is quite distinct from Jesus. It can transform your spiritual understanding and make your life deeper and richer.

This can revolutionize your experience of Christ and what it means to be Christian.

This is not simply an intellectual exercise, but a visceral awareness

The results will startle and provoke, not just across the spectrum of today’s Society of Friends, but among Christians everywhere.

Sometimes I experience the act of writing as prayer. Neither is done for outward compensation, much less any guarantee of results, but rather to open one’s heart and mind to what is eternal and true – and attune oneself to that, regardless.

Culling my collection of photography and tearsheets, I’ve recognized I no longer desire to travel many places I haven’t been, but would rather revisit places I have. Either in person or, in the case of Tibet or Japanese temples, in my thinking and study. I also recognize that could change, given different economic circumstances and an influx of free time.

I now seethe early Quaker vagabonds were Dharma bums, too. The itinerant ministry proffers its own humor.

Quakers are still around, all right. And more relevant than ever. Just listen.

You can find it in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

One of the items I wish I had pursued more openly in my history Quaking Dover is the evolution of the iconic New England town meeting from its origins in the Congregational churches of Puritan faith, as a means of collective church governance, and then into a more secular democratic ideal.

The presence of Quakers (Friends), with their unique decision-making that achieved unity without taking a vote, would have been pivotal in this evolutionary step both before and after the Revolutionary War.

A town moderator, presiding over the session, and a Quaker Meeting clerk share a number of commonalities in their efforts to balance the voicing of alternative positions, where all are heard equally and respectfully, at least ideally.

Quakers also realized that a minority position, even a single person, could be closer to the Truth than the majority was. Resolution of the differences could lead to a superior synthesis, done right.

A fuller history would be informative.

I do suffer through public meetings that don’t have that underpinning, especially when it comes down to a clash of egos or power plays or showboating.

Nevertheless, there are clues in my book suggesting that the Quaker minority did temper Dover’s town decisions, sometimes humorously.

~*~

Another point that would welcome further research by a dedicated historian would be the three volumes of Dover Meeting minutes dealing with male Friends who enlisted in the American Revolution, contrary to Quaker pacifism as a matter of faith and faithfulness.

It was a struggle, with no guarantee that the new government would recognize the hard-won religious liberty that Friends were finally enjoying.

~*~

After publication of Quaking Dover, I became aware of the influence of the Scottish prisoners of war who were brought to New England after the battles of Worcester and Dunbar. Like the West Country fishermen who settled before the arrival of the Puritans, the Scots became a subculture in the region, embodying a different culture and set of folkways. It seems to have been a factor in the Bean family of Dover Friends Meeting.

Again, it’s another history that needs fuller treatment.

~*~

Reading a history by someone else dealing with details you’re familiar with can also be disturbing.

For instance, Nathaniel Philbrick’s bestselling Mayflower has no mention of William Hilton and his family, who were instrumental in a scandal involving the Reverend John Lyford, an Anglican priest in the Plymouth Bay colony who baptized a Hilton child contrary to the rules of those we call Pilgrims, or more properly Separatists. The plot thickens with the introduction of John Oldham and events leading up to the Pequot War.

The picture takes on a different perspective when you’re concerned with what was happening north of Boston.

William Hilton headed off to Dover, where his brother Edward had already built in what would become the third oldest permanent settlement in New England.

~*~

Leaping ahead two centuries, I’ve had to ask myself if someone else with Dover Quaker roots, John Greenleaf Whittier, was America’s first great polemic poet.

Not just a forerunner of Robert Frost but Allen Ginsberg, too, in fact?

~*~

Quaking Dover is available in paperback through your favorite bookstore or as an ebook in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.