You may ask, what is
the Quaker way?
It is a path through
a forest, thickly grown, yet with shafts of light breaking through
the trees. The path branches often, it loops back upon itself. It
brings you to quiet glades, and leads you through brambles. It
crosses babbling brooks and roaring rapids. It is sometimes wide, and
sometimes narrow; sometimes smooth, and sometimes strewn with roots
and rocks.
Sometimes it takes
you where you expect, and others it leaves the forest in unexpected
direction; sometimes, you end back where you began, but you are never
unchanged.
A thousand people can
wander it, and each find a different route. And yet, as we each walk
our separate way along the path of many paths, we can always reach
out our hands and touch one another, support one another, tell each
other of our journeys.
Though the path is
different for each of us, we talk it together and in unity. Though we
see different things and reach different destinations, we share the
path. Even where we cannot agree what may be found in the forest, we
know that there is one forest, and one path.
Written May 2016
