Meeting the Great Reality Within: The Inner Light

Father Bill W.

A book I’ve often returned to in my morning Quiet Times is Thomas R. Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion. Kelly was a Quaker and a mystic. His book centers on what the Big Book calls “the Great Reality within.” Since it’s a Greater Reality we can never understand it – but we can experience it – and mystics like Kelly come as close as humans can come to describing what such an experience - and still more – what such a relationship is like. In this episode Fr. Bill focuses on Kelly’s first chapter: The Inner Light. It’s a Light sure to illuminate the path of any spiritual seeker.

A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly

Passage from The Light Within by Thomas R. Kelly:

… Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us.

It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.

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