breathonthewater

I recently had a wonderful experience sharing a weekend of worship, workshops, songs and reflections with Quakers in Bruceville, Texas, gathered there for the 2013 South Central Yearly Meeting on the theme: “Lead Kindly Light: Being Faithful”. I had been invited to give a keynote talk and found it led to some reflections which I would like to share here on: “Sharing the Spiritual Commons in a Culture of Peace and a Political Economy of Democratic Stewardship”. They concern two great challenges I think Quakers and others face in trying to live out the their testimonies — and some practical responses. The first challenge is to transform the dominant culture of conflict into a culture of peace. The second is to transform our political economy from a plutocratic national security state seeking ever more GNP into a human development driven democracy practicing ever better stewardship of the commons. I framed these challenges with some preliminary reflections on the Quaker experience at the heart of all the testimonies, the experience of the Inward Light or Truth which is the Spiritual Commons from which all the testimonies spring and to which we are called to be as present and faithful as we can be. The full text that I prepared is available here: graycoxscymkeynote