A Friend left our meeting, recently. Although he had a Quaker history, this Friend had not been to meeting for a long time before coming to ours and frequently expressed, while with us, that it brought joy to his life and he was glad to have found us. But he stopped coming and, when some Friends made inquiry, he said it was because there was too much "Christ centered language" to suit him.

This made me very sad because I am a Christ centered Friend. I felt as though my expression of my spirituality had chased away someone I loved.

Our Meeting is as eclectic as any I have encountered. We have a little of everything on the Quaker spectrum, including some evangelicals who come, on and off, going back and forth from our unprogrammed "liberal" meeting to a Quaker church. One of the things that we have frequently commented on, one of the things we consider to be the strength of our meeting, is that we are a diverse community in which people of different spiritual orientations worship and live together and contribute to one another's spiritual condition. Messages at our meeting come from many spiritual contexts, Christian and pagan and Jewish and Buddhist...

This is a very big deal in Quaker circles. The divide that seems to exist between Christian and universalist Friends is an elephant under the rug when Quakers meet outside their home communities.

I have heard it said that Quakerism was accidentally a Christian religion, that the accident of where and when it was born made it Christian, in the way that the where and when of the birth of people who live around me made them, for the most part, Americans. Born in a different time and place I would be an Armenian or Chilean and, the same can be said of Quakerism. I am less certain of that than some, but I think about it.

First Friends (George Fox and the multitudes of seekers he found waiting for his message) came to believe in the light within, the indwelling spirit. This was called the "Christ within," as well. The idea was that all people have a measure of this spirit and that, if they will set aside the forms of worship and the theological notions they have been taught, this spirit will teach them and change them, this light will show them the way. It will transform them, conform them and they will exhibit new behaviors and attitudes that will testify to the change that has taken place within them as the result of this inward change, this work done within them by the Holy Spirit.

But, although first Friends were Christians and any that doubt that have but to read what they have written, they also very firmly believed that this spirit, this light, existed in all people, regardless of their faith. The lyric in the Quaker song is "...there's a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew, there's a light that is shining, Friend, in me and in you." Among the first Friends were those who went to the Turks, and to the centers of power of many spiritual traditions (with little actual success) to expose them to The Truth of the light, the spirit, a measure of which waits in each of us to do its transforming work. Nonetheless, the idea that the spirit, the light, exists in all is firmly a part of Quakerism.

Although I am a Christian Quaker I take this universalism seriously and it has wider importance to me than it did to first Friends. And I do believe that anyone, anywhere, regardless of his or her spiritual tradition or lack of one, has access to this spirit, this light. If they will let it work on them--and it wants to work on all of us--they will become a "mystic"--one who is in a personal relationship with the divine. Over time this mystical relationship will change that person. And the product of this work, the fruit of this process of change, will always be the same. The spirit changes everyone it works on in the same way; the light shows all people the same path.

The Quakers have developed a list they call "The Testimonies." What these are is a source of discussion and disagreement among Quakers (are they "values?" are they our version of a "creed?"), but that they are is not much disputed. Over the past 350 years Quakers have been changed away from the "natural man" (describe it yourself, gentle reader, because you know what I mean. It's the human condition) into a person who is described, to one extent or another, by simplicity, harmony, equality, harmony and integrity. The existence of these characteristics in a person's behavior "testifies" to the change that has been done, the transformation that has taken place inside. This is what the spirit turns us into; it's the path along which the light leads us.

In any spiritual tradition there are mystics, people who have entered into an intentional and personal relationship with the spirit, answering the call that spirit makes to all, and allowing that spirit to do its work by clearing away the theological legalisms and formal stuff and the rituals and just being present, and open, to it. "Be still and know I am God."

And in every spiritual tradition these mystics are recognizable because they are described, as those Quakers who have similarly embraced the light are described, by the terms simplicity, equality, integrity, harmony and community. Wherever one finds oneself, in an Islamic tradition, a Jewish tradition, a Buddhist tradition or no spiritual tradition, a Friend can find other Friends, even though those we find may not know they are Friends. There is an outward manifestation of the inner change.

Friends who exist in these different contexts, if they do not see the illusions involved in these contexts, may not recognized one another, but they have been changed in the same way by the same spirit, and are walking the same path, by the illumination of the same light.

ps There are Quakers who are not mystics. There are Quakers who are legalistic, there are Friends who are intellectual and theological, Friends who are straight Christians and will tell you (and me, especially) that hell awaits those who don't start doing things they way they (think) they do. So, if you are not a Quaker, and you are reading this, keep in mind that not everyone you run into who calls him/herself a Quaker will approve of what I have written, here.