{"id":7710,"date":"2014-01-14T23:23:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T04:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?p=7710"},"modified":"2014-01-14T23:23:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T04:23:45","slug":"quakers-foxes-buddhism-and-beginners-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2014\/01\/quakers-foxes-buddhism-and-beginners-heart.html","title":{"rendered":"Quakers, foxes, Buddhism, and beginner&#8217;s heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What Does George Fox Say (a Quaker parody of Ylvis&#039; &quot;What Does the Fox Say&quot;)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PhsvqbCIaAs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Even before I did a graduate paper on the Quaker preacher<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elizabeth_Ashbridge\" target=\"_blank\"> Elizabeth Ashbridge<\/a>, I&#8217;ve been fascinated by Quakerism. The idea that the Divine is knowable to each individual, w\/out the mediation of text or preacher or church, is a deeply attractive belief. One I hold firmly: you don&#8217;t need a preacher or a holy (wo)man to show you the Divine within.<\/p>\n<p>I also love the silent worship &#8212; so like meditation, but meditation done in a group. Something else that draws me in. I still mourn the demise of a small meditation group I was in once. There&#8217;s something very different about being in a group, each of you turned inward and yet seating in amicable silence.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m also very fond of the Ylvis song, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/m.youtube.com\/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE&amp;desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjofNR_WkoCE\" target=\"_blank\">What does the fox say<\/a>?&#8221;\u00a0Partly because foxes are one of the most magical animals I know (<em>slipping through the high grass by the creek, standing as still as stone, only his eyes moving<\/em>). And face it: the music is fun.<\/p>\n<p>So this parody, by Quaker Ben Guaraldi, was bound to be a favourite for me. Whimsical, profound (read the quotes &#8212; they&#8217;ll move you deeply), and beautiful. How beginner&#8217;s heart is that? And if you&#8217;d like more on Quakerism (and the real Fox), I&#8217;d point you to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.friendsjournal.org\" target=\"_blank\">Friends Journal.<\/a> A lovely, well-written journal that is as full of necessary surprises as Guaraldi&#8217;s video.<\/p>\n<p>A note: there are more similarities between Buddhism &amp; Quakerism than might, at first glance, appear. But go look for yourself. And as the song says, let yourself be open to peace. And integrity. We need more of both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even before I did a graduate paper on the Quaker preacher Elizabeth Ashbridge, I&#8217;ve been fascinated by Quakerism. The idea that the Divine is knowable to each individual, w\/out the mediation of text or preacher or church, is a deeply attractive belief. One I hold firmly: you don&#8217;t need a preacher or a holy (wo)man&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[11,1181,1187,262,1346,713,1214,111,714],"class_list":["post-7710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quakerism","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-foxes","tag-george-fox","tag-quakerism","tag-quakers","tag-ylvis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Quakers, foxes, Buddhism, and beginner&#039;s heart - Beginner&#039;s Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Even before I did a graduate paper on the Quaker preacher Elizabeth Ashbridge, I&#039;ve been fascinated by Quakerism. The idea that the Divine is knowable to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2014\/01\/quakers-foxes-buddhism-and-beginners-heart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Quakers, foxes, Buddhism, and beginner&#039;s heart - Beginner&#039;s Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Even before I did a graduate paper on the Quaker preacher Elizabeth Ashbridge, I&#039;ve been fascinated by Quakerism. 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Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. 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