Stuart Masters

This website contains information and resources relating to my writing, teaching, and speaking activities. www.stuartkmasters.com

The second man is…willing to be a fool to the world and serpent's wisdom, content to suffer wrongs, buffetings, persecutions, slanders, reviling, mocking, without seeking revenge... and thereby overcomes him and bruises his head, and is made perfect through suffering… James Nayler (1653)

“I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle… and say, nope, I ain’t a gonna kill nobody.” Woody Guthrie

"It is a broken Christianity that desperately looks for Jesus returning in the clouds but refuses to recognize him in the faces of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the immigrant, the bombed, the starving, the marginalized, and the oppressed." Rev. Benjamin Cremer

Christ does not say to have the 'right attitude' towards your possessions: He says do not store them up. The prohibition is absolute. Earthly property is structurally bound to..systemic injustice. To attempt to secure one's life through accumulation is a rejection of the Kingdom. David Bentley Hart

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling, their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Arundhati Roy

What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. Emma Goldman

Those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder. Aldous Huxley

Christianity advocated love for the victims of oppression. The moral teacher in Christianity was not a revengeful deity, not a priest, not a man of the priestly caste, and not even a thinker from among the sages, but a simple man from the people. Peter Kropotkin

“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear… You can’t be free until you let go of the fear of losing everything.” Nina Simone

“…if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.” Terry Eagleton

All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy. Sarah Grimke (1837)

How can I make you realize the misery of the poor? How can I make you understand that your wealth comes from their weeping? Basil the Great

There is no understanding Englishness without understanding its imperial and colonial dimensions. Stuart Hall

"The careful organization of this book—applying each major theme/tension across time and across the major Quaker divisions of each time period—would, I believe, make this an ideal book for group study." "I believe Tangled Roots provides a genuine service to…the warm-hearted majority [of Friends]."

"We have a deficit of wonder. When I ask people questions now, they get out their phone. I say, noooo! I don't want to knowthe answer. I just want to wonder about it a while." Tom Waits

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another." Thomas Merton

A very thoughtful and helpful review by Johan Maurer.

This morning, I popped into my local Café for a coffee, which proceeded to ridicule me relentlessly until I’d drunk it all. I’m not going to order a mocha again.

I was attacked by a flock of sheep today. Fortunately I was only grazed.

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us." Dorothy Day - Loaves and Fishes

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received - only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage. Francis of Assisi

However long the night, the dawn will break.   African proverb

Quakerism is just a scam by Big Simplicity to sell more less. 😂

As humanity stands on the precipice...perhaps it is only the deepest form of surrender and the spiritual empowerment and fearlessness that this can bring, which will enable us to make the right choice. Tangled Roots: Navigating the Complex Legacy of Early Quakers, p.83.

…I am only slowly learning to dwell in the place where leadings come from. That is a place of love and joy and peace, even in the midst of pain. The more I dwell in that place, the easier it is to smile, because I am no longer afraid. Gordon Matthews, 1987 (Quaker Faith & Practice 29.01)

"The fact that it was easier to think of the kingdom in the other world so as not to have to change this one." Ernesto Cardenal

"I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others." Coretta Scott King

"There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes." Leo Tolstoy

"It is sinful for people to misue or destroy what they did not make. The creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill." Wendell Berry (1934-2026)

Matthew 25 tells us that when Jesus judges between the righteous and the unrighteous, he doesn't judge them based on their orthodoxy, their patriotism, or their individual definitions of morality. He judges them based on their compassion towards vulnerable people. Benjamin Cremer

"I raise up my voice—not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard.“ Malala Yousafzai

No one heals himself by wounding another. St. Ambrose of Milan

Feminism exists because a man's rights are treated as UNIVERSAL, while a woman's rights can depend on laws, religion, and WHERE she was born.

"Wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial." Macklemore

[Early] Friends experienced a strong sense of being bound together in the eternal power of God... In describing this, [they] drew on three important New Testament metaphors for the gathering of the Church: fish caught in a net; a temple of living stones; and a body of many parts. Tangled Roots p.33

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism." Hannah Arendt

When someone discovers their faith journey and the spiritual awakening it inspires, they won't use it to legislate and control other people. A punitive faith is the first sign of spiritual inauthenticity and ill intent. "I contemplate with sovereign reverence." Brandi Carlile

"All that dwell in the light, their habitation is in God, and they know a hiding place in the day of the storm; and those who dwell in the light, are built upon the rock, and cannot be moved." Edward Burrough (1634-1663)

“Nayler’s vision of a better world is…predicated on the life of Christ being revealed in the bodies of men and women in his time. Through this process, a society based on pride, greed, hatred, violence, and injustice is overcome by God’s kingdom of humility, generosity, love, peace, and justice.”

"Action is the antidote to despair." Joan Baez

When Jesus ate with tax collectors, welcomed prostitutes, forgave sinners and touched lepers he wasn't acting out of character. Jesus was revealing the truth of God.

"...a faith community that values a relatively fixed tradition...can easily become moribund and irrelevant. On the other hand, a protean faith community that ...finds itself perpetually changing and innovating is vulnerable to instability and fragmentation." Tangled Roots, p.12

…many Quakers have adopted a welcoming and inclusive approach to queer and gender-nonconforming people. The reason for this may have deep roots within the Quaker tradition. The Quaker Faith: Friends of Love and Truth, p.126-127.

"The Lord God of heaven and earth is come to teach his people himself." George Fox

"We're due for a gospel that drives out fear rather than depends on it." Brad Jersak