David Hahn wrote in last month’s Quaker Religious Thought that “listening is a central spiritual practice” because it “invites a willingness to be disturbed and uncomfortable.” This work of being disturbed and uncomfortable – of really listening – is how we open ourselves to the ways in which “the Spirit is leading in our midst.”

Over the years, Barclay Press has worked to share deep, honest, personal sharing of religious experience in daily Fruit of the Vine devotional reflections. Barclay Press has sought to facilitate this same kind of interpersonal sharing in face-to-face gatherings with our Illuminate Bible study series. And it has been our intention to do the same with the books that we publish.

Not to make people disturbed and uncomfortable, but to offer the Friends we serve opportunities to listen – really listen – to one another. Listening, Hahn continues, is “truly a transforming and disruptive practice that cultivates trust and capacities in alignment with the Spirit’s leadership among us. There is ... rich wisdom and transformation in communal listening” that might lead – if we let it – to “greater imagination and participation in God’s preferred and promised future.”

This is our work at Barclay Press – to help Friends listen deeply together and to each other, as we work to pay attention to the Spirit and to follow God, with greater imagination, into God’s preferred and promised future.

Thank you for your faithful support of this work,

Eric Muhr
Publisher