Sunday, several Friends from Ohio Yearly Meeting came to Olney and gave some students and faculty a book of daily devotional readings from the writings of George Fox, Quakerism's main founder.
Here's the Fox quote for today, September 29 (or in Quaker parlance, ninth month, 29):
"Keep in the cross of Christ, the power of God, that keeps you crucified to the world, that is dead to the world, and the world dead and crucified to you: for if you do not keep in this power of God, which was before the world and its god was, to keep you crucified to the world, but let in the spirit of the world, you let in its god, which will crucify the good in you."
From Mind the Heavenly Treasure, compiled by Gary Boswell
Any thoughts?
2 comments:
I like it, though it sounds a bit rambling, like a spoken transcript (which it probably is).
Did they read anything at the visit? I'm curious how students and faculty would react to this quote. There's a lot of theology packed in each of those words and I'm not sure Fox's sentiment comes through clearly without a grounding in classic Friends thought. You have the common words with a different meaning/inflection than most people give them today ("what's wrong with the world") but you also have religious words like "cross" and "crucify" who's connotations in mainstream religious culture are different than the way Friends would use them.
HI Martin,
The book was given without a context so I'd be interested in how you'd say Fox and his Quaker peers defined words like cross and crucify.
I would imagine the words are transposed from speech as I understand Fox is now believed to have had a learning disability that made it difficult for him to write.
Diane
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