#bill taber

[theinwardlight]

[theinwardlight]

Our witness is to a Reality so vast that we can never comprehend it or describe it, yet we know we need to talk about this Reality and its effect on us and on our behavior in the world. In broadest terms we call this Reality God. Our witness is that when we are truly ourselves we are profoundly attentive to this Reality, sometimes moment by moment, and obedient to what this Reality asks us to be or to do or not to be or not to do. Our witness has been — and is — that this Reality, however vast and incomprehensible, can be very personal and loving as our teacher and guide. Early Friends and Conservative Friends have described this sustaining, energizing and teaching presence as the light of the living Christ, sometimes as the Inward Light, the Guide, the Inward Monitor, and many other terms.

From Bill Taber, Quaker teacher and minister

[theinwardlight]

[theinwardlight]

Entering into worship often feels to me somewhat like entering into a stream, which, though invisible to our outward eye, feels just as real as does a stream of water when we step into it. Just as bathing in a real stream of pure flowing water needs no justification to the one who has experienced the vitality it brings, so entering into the stream of worship needs no justification to one who has experienced the healing, the peace, the renewal, the expansion which accompanies this altered state of consciousness. I once thought worship was something I do, but for many years now it has seemed as if worship is actually a state of consciousness which I enter, so that I am immersed into a living, invisible stream of reality which has always been present throughout all history. In some mysterious way this stream unites me with the communion of the saints across the ages and brings me into the presence of the Living Christ, the Word, the Logos written of in the Gospel of John.

Bill Taber, Four Doors to Meeting for Worship

[theinwardlight]

I think that for Fox, and anyone who proposes an experiential theology, as Friends do, the element of experiment is important. Fox came to his opening only after he had traveled around seeking out the leading lights of his day. He found that none of the people who he met could answer the questions in his soul. He found the answers in an inner voice. He heard this voice, he identified it as the Inner Christ, and he found confirmation in that his “soul did leap for joy.”

Bill Taber, Quaker minister, 2011

[theinwardlight]

And again I pause, and that pause is important, because when a serious question comes up, the typical Quaker response is not a quick answer but to wait a while, and to feel from where the right answer must come. 

Bill Taber, Quaker teacher and minister