body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are, together make up one body.

-- 1 Corinthians 12:7,11-12 (NEB)

Our belief that people can continually discover more about the will of God makes us eschew dogma. We search for ways to meet human need in shared worship and open ourselves to disagreement as a path to God's higher truths. The Spirit leads our community to creative action, occasionally in ways that transcend reason, as we listen for God's voice in our prayers and in the messages we have for each other.

LEADINGS AND CONCERNS

Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts, which are the leadings of God.

-- Britain Yearly Meeting, Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995

Early Friends found that the Light opened their lives to the painful know-ledge of their own inadequacy. Margaret Fell urged Friends to "let the Eternal Light search you ... for this will deal plainly with you; it will rip you up, and lay you open ... naked and bare before the Lord God, from whom you cannot hide yourselves" (Barbour, Quakers in Puritan England, p.98). But at the end of this painful experience of the Light, at the end of human resources and evasions, the same Light showed Friends the presence and warmth of God's love. This testing process opened Friends to the shared experience of the life and guidance of the Spirit, which became a constant source of inspiration and energy in their lives. So it can be for us today.

We may find that the guidance of the Spirit leads us toward specific actions; such leadings should be cherished. Our first leading may simply be to rise to speak in meeting for worship despite our diffidence. We may feel a leading toward some service, perhaps involving a social problem or a meeting or community need. A real concern is a gift of grace and demands our obedience, but we should also consider how early Friends sought to distinguish true leadings from false ones: We question our motives to find whether any selfish desire or unanswered personal need lies at the bottom of our impulse. We wait in patience to test our leading over time. We seek to find out if our leading is consistent with other revelations of the Spirit. We seek the counsel of other Friends, either individually in conversation or by asking for a clearness committee, where members meet in worship over a concern to test its validity and weight and to clarify its implications for action.

The true "concern" [emerges as] a gift from God, a leading of the Spirit which may not be denied. Its sanction is not that on investigation it proves an intelligent thing to do -- though it usually is; it is that the individual (and if the