Oz:
Friends, I just posted details on the main list, but Friends Journal is planning an issue on Concepts of God and the deadline is March 15th (Saturday). Does anyone have something already in the works they would like to submit? The shorter the better.
Scott:
Dear Friends’ Journal,
As a nontheistic f/Friend and a member of San Francisco Friends’ Meeting, I greatly appreciate Quaker vision and community and caring, as well as the centering and gathering of unprogrammed Quaker Meeting with F/friends. However my positive experiences with a) evolutionary biology (thinking about this as salutary, personal experience), and b) the parallel-with-Quaker-Meeting, for me, ‘relaxation response meditation, as biology,’ in the Harbin Hot Springs’ warm pool (my actual / virtual anthropological field site for ethnographic books that I’m writing), inform my nontheistic Quakerism, and move me toward nontheistically Friendly 'seasons.' The notion of “God,” - for me among Quakers, since the mid-1970s, - has never held much meaning, whatsoever, and I’m sympathetic, and find some unity, with the more than a decade-long, active, NtF conversation focusing on ‘nontheism’ on the Nontheistic Friends’ email list, as well as in face-to-face NtF gatherings.
I continue to enjoy the experience of centeredness and gathering I learn while connecting inwardly in unprogrammed Quaker Meeting, and among Friends, in the light of nontheistic f/Friendliness, - which I personally think of, and experience, as f/Friendly biological, 'relaxation response’ meditations. And it's particularly the enjoyable parallels between a) soaking in the Harbin warm pool, and b) sitting in Quaker Meeting, in what I'm calling, again, their "de facto 'relaxation response’ meditations, biologically," that are significant for me (and vis-a-vis this ‘Friends’ Journal’ draft letter) to complement theistic Quakers''God' beliefs.
I'll continue to explore enjoying Nontheistically F/friendly "de facto 'relaxation response meditations,' biologically," and daily, and deeply when I'm in the field doing fieldwork (for my Harbin ethnographic book project), as well as in Quaker Meetings.
Scott MacLeod
San Francisco Friends' Meeting
Head Clerk, Founder and President of
startup, Quaker-informed World University and School
(which is like Wikipedia with MIT OpenCourseWare)
*
... adding this to these two, World University and School, wiki, subject pages ...
Nontheist Friends (atheist Quakers?) -
Quakers - Religious Society of Friends -
...