A Quaker Testimony on the Inner Light and the Way of Transformation
by Timothy Travis
The Inner Light is the beating heart of Quaker theology. It is not mere conscience or common sense but the active presence of God sorting through each person, distinguishing the seed of love from the seed of enmity — and offering, to those who will attend, the power to build one and dismantle the other. This teaching, rooted in the 17th-century writings of Isaac Penington, is as old as Quakerism itself. What is rarer is to find it described not as doctrine but as practice: as the texture of a life being changed, post by post, encounter by encounter, in the abrasive agora of a Usenet newsgroup.
Timothy Travis was a member of Bridge City Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon. In July 2008 he posted this essay to soc.religion.quaker in response to a long-running exchange with a difficult correspondent. It became something more than a reply: a concise and moving statement of Quaker faith and what it means to live it in conditions that are exactly not ideal.
The essence of the faith and practice of Friends was explained by Isaac Penington.
"This is the sum or substance of our religion; to wit, to feel and discern the two seeds: the seed of enmity, the seed of love...and to feel the judgments of God administered to the one of these (in ourselves), till it be brought into bondage and death; and the other raised up in the love and mercy of the Lord to live in us, and our souls gathered into it, to live to God in it."
— Isaac Penington, Sum or Substance of Our Religion, Works, Vol II, p. 441
The Light, in all people, is the means by which that in us is sorted out, seed by seed, and in this sorting we are brought to face that which is sorted to the seed of enmity and that which is sorted to the seed of love. We have the choice as to what to do from there, but Quakers believe that the Light gives us the power, if we will choose the love and eschew the enmity, to build the former and dismantle the latter. In the process (often called "perfection" but in modern terms "maturity" or "completeness" probably best conveys the meaning intended) we come toward restoration to the image of God from which our mythology says that we fell.
In this way we are saved from sin — from the repetitious self (and other) destructive behavior that is the way of the world and that forms the true cultural infrastructure of all human societies.
All people, everywhere, regardless of the spiritual tradition in which they find themselves, have the same access to the Light as people anywhere else — and, not withstanding that they may never have heard the name Jesus or touched a Bible, they have the same access to salvation. And many who know well and often use the name of Jesus, and carry a Bible with them everywhere, have lived in darkness rather than the Light.
It is not this or that — or all — spiritual traditions that save. It is the Light available to all in all spiritual traditions.
When it is written that we all work out our own salvation, this is what is meant. We all struggle with the Light (or struggle to suppress it) and step by faltering step, we are changed if we heed it and not changed if we don't. Sometimes we are caught in the middle of something by the Light telling us to knock it off.
When we are being contended with by the Light, hard choices are made and long ingrained habits are rooted out. It takes time. And it takes being committed to making it happen. There are steps forward and steps back. But the direction of travel remains steady, if one is faithful to the process, and progress is noted, by oneself and by others.
This is not just my testimony — this is the testimony of many Friends through the years, and it can be found abundantly in Quaker literature and even (though expressed in different terms) in the literature of other spiritual traditions.
The "why" in the subject line of this post has to do with why I am still in this newsgroup, still engaged with a particular correspondent long after it is apparent to everyone — including the two of us — that there is no chance that one of us will be converted to the other's world view.
I realized a long time ago that this person was sent to me by God — to provide a situation in which the Light would show me something very important about me that had to change. It was not apparent to me right away, but it became so over time, and the struggle to change has not been easy, and it is certainly not over. Boy, is it not over.
I am led to engage with him, however, so that I can actually engage with myself and those tendencies in me that need changing. No one has ever brought those tendencies in me more clearly into focus.
Disagreement is all around us and we will never escape dealing with people who don't agree with us. Although the internet gives us a free hand to indulge the worst ways to disagree — there is no one within reach to check our behavior in any of the ways we are inhibited in life elsewhere — the same ways we deal with people here are merely distillations of the ways we deal with them elsewhere.
I have not been sarcastic when I have written my thanks to this correspondent. Each of his posts is an exercise presented to me, like a spiritual workout — an opportunity to engage in disagreement and to practice the change I want to be.
Sometimes it is just so humbling to see how far short I can fall, but it is also encouraging to look back over time and see how what I am writing is changing.
I don't expect encouragement or approval from anyone. I'm not writing in this newsgroup for anyone but myself — to change myself. Even this post represents the desire to put into writing, to pull together for my own use, what it is I am up to, so as to be able to better do it.
God, the Light, isn't done with me yet. By a country mile.
Collectors are prepared to put a high price on a simplicity of design without wanting to practice the inner life from which it emanates.
— Roger Haman, "The Aesthetics of Friends Meeting Houses," Quaker Studies 11/1 (2006)
Colophon
Posted by Timothy Travis, Bridge City Friends Meeting, Portland, Oregon, to soc.religion.quaker, 25 July 2008. A statement of Quaker faith as lived practice — the Inner Light made visible in the discipline of difficult encounter.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <C4AF306D.4A2B%[email protected]>.
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