Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 55 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 4 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 55 – If you are thirsty, “Come and drink” (55:1). If you have nothing, come and “take your choice of wine or milk: (55:1). “Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good . . . Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life” (55:2-3).

I will give you the same undying love I gave to my servant David. “I made him a leader among the nations. You also will command nations you do not know, and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey” (55:4-5).

“See the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near” (55:6). His ways are not your ways, his thoughts beyond anything you can imagine. “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (55:9).

Like the rain that falls and nourishes the soil, the word of the Lord will always produce fruit. “You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands!” (55:12).

The government will be fair and stable. Enemies will not come near; if anyone does attack you, it will not be because the Lord sent them. “[I]n that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. Your will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (54:17).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

4. But delights to endure all things

How to endure, when all around us die

Nations and gracious cities, homes and men,

And the sweet earth is made a filthy den

Beneath whose roof black, belching vultures fly:

How to endure the darkness, when the sky

Is totally eclipsed by evil, when

Foul grinning Chaos spreads its reign again

And all good things in senseless ruin lie.

Must we be hard as stone? It wears to dust.

As stiff as oaks? But they untimely break.

As pitiless as still? It turns to rust,

And Time from Pyramids will ruins make.

In violence, decay, starvation need,

What can endure? Only the living Seed.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 54 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 3 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 54 – A time of growth and prosperity is coming, “Enlarge your house; build an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! For you will soon be bursting at the seams. Your descendants will occupy other nations and resettle the ruined cities” (54:2-3).

You will no longer live in shame or dwell on the “sorrows of widowhood. For your Creator will be your husband” (54:4-5). “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will take you back. In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you” (54:7-8).

As the Lord promised with Noah, He will no longer be angry with you, “For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken” (54:10).

 The Lord will rebuild Jerusalem and decorate the “storm-battered city” with jewels and sparkling gems. He will “teach all your children, and they will enjoy great peace” (54:13).

The government will be fair and stable. Enemies will not come near; if anyone does attack you, it will not be because the Lord sent them. “[I]n that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. Your will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (54:17).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

3. Nor to revenge any wrong

Now am I veined by an eroding doubt,

Insidious as decay, with poison rife.

Is love indeed the end and law of life,

When lush, grimacing hates so quickly sprout?

I thought in ignorance I had cast out

The sneaking devils of continuing strife,

But as the cancer thwarts the surgeon’s knife,

So does revenge my sword of reason flout.

But though hate rises in enfolding flame

At each renewed oppression, soon it dies;

It sinks as quickly as we saw it rise,

While love’s small constant light burns still the same.

Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong,

Yet hate is short, and love is very long.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 53 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 2 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 53 – Continuing the prophecy begun in the previous chapter, again in the past tense, but “past” in God’s eyes only.

“My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was noting beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (53:2-3).

We despised him and did not care about his sufferings. “Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down” (53:4). We thought he was being punished by God for his wrong-doing, but NO, “he was pierced for OUR rebellion, crushed for OUR sins. He was beaten so we could be whole” (53:5).

WE are the sheep who have strayed, not HIM. “We have left God’s paths to follow our own” (53:6).

Like a lamb, he “was led to the slaughter . . . Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants” (53:8).

He had done nothing wrong, yet “he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave” (53:9). Yet ALL of this was part of a larger plan the Lord had. “When he [the suffering servant] sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied . . . my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins” (53:11).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

2. That delights to do no evil

Shall I be good because of some reward,

Because the virtuous act pays dividends

In candy bars, the approving nods of friends,

In many tongues to praise, and hands to applaud,

In riches, honors, lavishly outpoured?

Or, since to ruin all things earthly tend,

Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,

The crown of bliss that Heaven may afford?

Ask the sweet spring upon the mountain top

What makes his sinless water flow so free:

Is it the call of some far-distant sea,

Or the deep pressure that no crust can stop?

No conscious end can drag us out of sin,

Unless clear goodness wells up from within.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 52:13-15 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 1

Isaiah 52:13-15 – He who will be sent, God’s servant “will prosper, he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights” (52:13).

The people looked on him and were appalled. Written in the past tense, it passes into the ears of Christians as a prophecy of what WILL come:

“[S]o will the crowds be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before” (52:15).

New Testament Inspired:

I want to continue having some New Testament-inspired part of my daily blog through the last days of it. While I was a Friend for about ten years before returning to the Catholic Church, and knew the story of James Nayler’s entry into Bristol, England in 1656, I never had run across the famous “deathbed words” he spoke in 1660, some two hours before he passed away. And, I had never any knowledge of the absolutely amazing sonnets that Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) wrote using these words as his foundation. They blew me away when I first read them in 2012. I think everyone in the world should read them, so I will include one each day. But first the words themselves:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

And now the amazing Sonnets by Kenneth Boulding, a very illustrious Friend himself, sonnets that were inspired by Nayler’s words:

1. There is a spirit which I feel

Can I, imprisoned, body-bounded, touch

The starry robe of God, and from my soul,

My tiny Part, reach forth to his great Whole,

And spread my Little to the infinite Much,

When Truth forever slips from out my clutch,

And what I take indeed, I do but dole

In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl

That holds a million million million such?

And yet, some Thing that moves among the stars,

And holds the cosmos in a web of law,

Moves too in me: a hunger, a quick thaw

Of soul that liquefies the ancient bars,

As I, a member of creation, sing

The burning oneness binding everything.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 50-52:1-12

Isaiah 50 – The “marriage” of Yahweh to Israel, while taxed by her unfaithfulness, is not formally ended. Then comes the Third Song of the “servant of Yahweh”:  The Lord has given the prophet an open ear and a willing spirit. “I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard”(50:5). The Lord helps him endure. Those who fear the Lord should listen to the voice of his servant.

Isaiah 51 – Those who “pursue integrity” (51:1) and who seek the Lord listen to the servant. They remember the “quarry from which [they] were cut” (51:1). Abraham and Sarah were alone when they were called. The Lord will turn the desolation of Zion into an Eden (51:3).  The nations should pay attention, “for from me comes the Law and my justice shall be the light of the peoples” (51:4). “The heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth wear out like a garment, and its inhabitants die like vermin, but my salvation shall last forever and my justice have no end” (51:6).

With Yahweh as our consoler, we cannot be afraid of mortal man. Jerusalem must arise after having experience God’s wrath. “See, I take out of your hand the cup of stupor, the chalice of my wrath; you shall drink it no longer” (51:22).

Isaiah 52 – Awake and “clothe yourself in strength. . .put on your richest clothes, Jerusalem, holy city (52:1). “How beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation” (52:7).

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 47-49 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 39)

Isaiah 47 – A lament for Babylon. “She” will be humiliated, no longer be “called sovereign lady of the kingdom” (47:5). The “spells” you have used, the “advisers” you have consulted will be of no use now. “Let them come forward now and save you, these who analyze the heavens, who study the stars and announce month by month what will happen to you next” (47:13).

Isaiah 48 – Yahweh speaks: “Things now past I once revealed long ago, they went out from my mouth and I proclaimed them; then suddenly I acted and they happened. For I knew you to be obstinate, your neck and iron bar, your forehead bronze” (48:3-4). He reveals new things – things not heard of nor revealed by God before since he thinks they are “treacherous” (48:8). Yahweh says it is for His sake “only have I acted” (48:11) to keep anyone from claiming His glory. “I am the first, I am also the last. My hand laid the foundations of earth and my right hand spread out the heavens” (48:12).

“If only you had been alert to my commandments, your happiness would have been like a river, your integrity like the waves of the sea. Your children would have would been numbered like the sand, your descendants as many as its grains. Never would your name have been cut off or blotted out before me” (48:18-19). But now Yahweh has redeemed the, guided them through the deserts.

Isaiah 49 – About the call of the prophet. Yahweh called him before he was born. “He made my mouth a sharp sword, and hid me in the shadow of his hand” (49:2). Isaiah thought his concerns were all his and that he had “toiled in vain” (49:4) over the years. But now he sees that he was “honored in the eyes of Yahweh, my God was my strength” (49:5b). And not only has he been a light for the tribes of Jacob and the survivors of Israel, he is told by God, “I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (49:6). Isaiah tells us that Yahweh never deserts those he loves. “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you” (49:14-15).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 39

As I have said before, my story is very ecumenical. I had no firm religious home from which to start out, and no one tradition has shaped the road I have traveled. I was baptized as a child into the Episcopal Church, made the decision in college to join the Catholic Church, lost my faith in God not long after that, and only found my way back because my faith was revived through an encounter with early Quaker Christianity. Today I am a Catholic again, but I am not here to trumpet the spiritual supremacy of any one tradition. I have reasons to be back that I think are compelling, but I hope that what my story reveals is God’s ubiquitous presence and the grace that draws us to him. The great obstacles to faith in my life have been the idols of modernity – radical secularism, philosophical materialism, and political ideology – idols that seem compelling and convincing in many ways. But my experience and my testimony is that these idols can never explain or give expression to the deepest realities of our existence as human beings. For this we must turn back to the great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is present for us in Christ.

There is yet another purpose in my writing this account of my religious journey: to seek a discerning response to the insights and openings I think I have been given. I say “I think” because the more I reflect on God – his unimaginable transcendence – and on the insurmountable limitations under which we human beings operate, the more I realize how little I can ever say for sure about “him.” This is about faith, not scientific knowledge, but it seems a necessary faith to me, and scientific knowledge will never answer the needs of our deepest nature. One of the great insights of Quaker Christians is that God continues to reveal his reality and his truth to those who join themselves to him in faith, and perhaps because I have been so shaped by Friends, I have come to see the things God has opened to me in my journey as things I am asked to share and lay before the believing community for their review and prayerful consideration. I am not a religious scholar, but I think the dialogue about faith and the truth it penetrates must do on among all of us – those trained in philosophy, religious doctrine, and history, biblical scholars, and even those of us who are “only” believers.

The vision I offer is at heart a plea for unity. I hope that Catholics who read my story may find in the message and spirituality of Friends an approach to the gospel that is both challenging and complementary to the faith they hold and practice; it is also my hope that Friends who read it might find their way back to the outward testimonies and forms that I believe are necessary to sustain the gospel truths on which their vision rests. And as for those who do not believe – as I did not for so many years – I hope that if they read my story they too might find in it a way around the barriers our secular and skeptical world erects to separate them from the profound truths and rewards religious faith attempts to penetrate and make available t us. We are one human creation. God seeks us for his own, that we might have the life he offers to us in all its fullness

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 45-46 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 38)

Happy New Year to Everyone!

It is almost two years since I undertook to get through the Scriptures - Old and New Testaments - on my blog, getting all my notes and thoughts over the years out so that others could see them. When I finish with Isaiah, I will be done. I am a little anxious that I have no plan to continue with anything else. We'll see.  

Isaiah 45 – This oracle in praise of Cyrus, emperor of the Persians. This guy, though he does not even know Yahweh at all, will be the vehicle of Yahweh’s salvation. He will conquer the nations who raise up useless idols; he will return the chosen people to Jerusalem, help in the rebuilding of the Temple. But this chapter is just beautiful in the words it uses to describe the Lord’s presence in it all: “Though you do not know me, I am Yahweh, unrivaled; there is no other God besides me. Though you do not know me, I arm you that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that, apart from me, all is nothing” (45:5-6).

“I form the light and create the dark, I make good fortune and create calamity, it is I, Yahweh, who do all this. Send victory like a dew, you heavens, and let the clouds rain it down. Let the earth open for salvation to spring up” (45:7-8).

“Truly, God is hidden with you, the God of Israel, the savior” (45:15). “’By my own self I swear it; what comes from my mouth is truth, a word irrevocable: before me every knee shall bend, by me every tongue shall swear, saying, ‘From Yahweh alone come victory and strength.’” (45:23)

Isaiah 46 – The idols of the Babylonians – Bel [Ba’al] and Nebo [Nabu] – are “carried off like bundles” (46:1), “powerless to save the ones who carry them” (46:1). But the people of the House of Jacob and the House of Israel have been “carried since birth” (46:2) by Yahweh. He promises salvation to Zion.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 38

To live a life of hearing and obeying is something we can all commit ourselves to so that in everything we do we can “do rightly, justly, truly, holily, equally to all people in all things.”  We can “live in the Power of Truth and wisdom of God, to answer the just Principle of God in all people upon the earth. And so answering. . . come to be as a city set upon a hill . . .”  There is no reason in the world why we Catholics ought not respond to the call to “let your lives preach.” 

I have often wondered why there is so little emphasis upon the idea of living consecrated lives among lay people in the Catholic Church; I don’t know the answer except that perhaps the Church wants to let people know that it does not consider this level of commitment normative for everyone. Or perhaps there is a fear that a serious lay option will drain candidates away from the priesthood or the “religious life.” But practicing the spirituality of early Friends is a way of consecrating one’s life to Christ, a way that is open to any man or woman who chooses to put the hearing and obeying of Christ at the center of his or her life. Ultimately, offering lay people ways to deepen their spiritual lives can only improve the environment for vocations.

The other benefit in fostering among lay Catholics a knowledge of the kind of spirituality Friends developed is that it can provide people who must live in the world with the spiritual resources to avoid getting dragged down by that world. Quaker spirituality trains people to look at the world and its enthusiasms with discerning eyes, to live simple lives, to avoid materialism, insincerity, superficiality, and the allure of power. It teaches us to be patient, to see in small acts of integrity the path Jesus wants us to follow. And it teaches us that the life of Christ offered to us is something we can enter into today, in our lives here on earth.

But if we take to heart the deep and profound things Friends have to teach us, how can we be sure we will not also absorb their excesses? Perhaps one of the things that makes Buddhism attractive to some Catholics is that Buddhists do not threaten us as much. Buddhists don’t have much to say about the things we claim to be and know. We will not find in their books passages comparing the Church to the whore of Babylon or the Beast in Revelation as we most certainly will find in some Quaker writings and Reformation writings generally. But I think we [we who are Catholics] must learn to find a way to use the good in other Christian approaches without being threatened by the harsh things they might have said about us in their past anger and frustration. The prophets said some pretty hard things to the people of Israel, after all, yet they were not silenced or banished on that account—at least not forever. The Catholic Church needs to find a way of incorporating the prophetic voice Protestantism has to offer into its own larger story.

All I know is that Friends opened me to the God who led me back; and I know that the message I responded to is a message anyone can respond to, and I must remind my readers of it again before I close. The work of redemption God performed among the Jews and brought to us all in Christ is a work we are all invited to be joined to. Open your eyes and see that God is in you. He has been in your from the beginning. He has loved you, called you, guided you, lifted you up, and carried you. You have felt his work in you many times but have not seen him in it. Open your eyes and acknowledge him. Serve him, obey him, let his life grow up in your. If you do, you will experience a delight deeper than any you have ever known, a depth of meaning in your life greater that you have ever imagined. As my friend Isaac Penington put it,

“I have met with my God, I have met with my Savior; and he has not been present with me without his salvation, but I have felt the healings drip upon my soul from under his wings. I have met with the true knowledge, the knowledge of life, the living knowledge, the knowledge . . . which is life, and this has had the true virtue in it, which my soul has rejoiced in, in the presence of the Lord . . . I have met with the true birth, with the birth which is heir of the kingdom, and inherits the kingdom. . . . I have met with the true peace, the true righteousness, the true holiness, the true rest of the soul, the everlasting habitation, which the redeemed dwell in.”