Quakers
A UK political and spiritual movement that helped to build America and helped me find my own path.
The Quaker movement called to me gently over many decades, going back to childhood, though I didn’t understand that calling. I have found this to be true often in life, that the thing you are looking for is right there but until you choose to see it, it remains invisible to you.
I first met the notion of Quakerism in various school lessons about prison reformers and other such philanthropic endeavours, via people like Elizabeth Fry who brought regular relief to people, especially women, left to rot in prisons often for nothing more than being too poor.
I also met them on the front of my grand-fathers morning porridge packets of Quaker Oats though they had nothing to do with the Quakers directly. In this case they looked rather dour and unappealing and wearing funny hats.
They were the subject of religious persecution in the early days, 1600’s, and many went to USA to escape being burned as heretics, with William Penn being the founder of Pennsylvania state as one of the original leading lights of the Quaker movement and a close friend of George Fox.
But the image stuck and many decades later when I felt that I still needed to ground my acceptance of Jesus’ teachings…
