(From the Thursday evening plenary:)

"I am a great appreciator of academic freedom, through the experience of its opposite."

"Unfortunately, I am now a lesson to frighten other intellectuals."

(At Friday morning worship:)

"The Christ-yoke is not a transaction. It is an invitation into a relationship."

"It is not a yoke of new boundaries, where we make new insiders and new outsiders."

We are invited to be humble learners. Despite how much we know, or think we know, we are asked to know more."

"May we be open."

(From Friday morning plenary:)

"Emerson once said that what he wanted from lecturers was first-hand experience, not second-hand news."

"Quakerism became the exemplar of the universal religion of first-hand experience, intent on finding a direct way to a personal meeting with God."

"This is about a double affirmation: Solitude and society. Mysticism and social action. Retreat and democracy. Individual epiphany and institutional transformation. The Inward Light and the obligations of the Beloved community. Spiritual growth and the social gospel. Prayer and pickets."

(In Friday morning small group discussion on the texts of Douglas Steere:)

"Scholarship is incarnational."

"Douglas Steere was expansive: while putting his pipeline out in the world, he was drilling his well."

"To witness is to be really who I am, where that is unexpected."

"We don't have the luxury of not witnessing. Everything we do is a witness."

"There is a thin line between witnessing and imposing."

"Our witness is continuing revelation. Claim the power to define yourself."

"I get it right some of the time."

"We're expanding the circle."

"When the Holy Spirit speaks to one heart, it speaks to two."

"Don't overgeneralize."

"If you can't say something simply, don't bother. Go home. It's rude to my ears."

"Write at a level that most people can take in."

"How to find a voice that seems adequate?"

"Not to say I don't have good days, occasionally--but often I feel that I have failed to communicate."

"8.4 people, on average, read each academic journal article that is written. It seems a waste of time and energy."

"Academics are talking too much to themselves, not looking at the world."

(In Friday afternoon sessions on the web and education:)

"My College tries to be Quaker. It struggles to be Quaker. Internally, we are clear, but financial pressures lead us to say that our being boldly Quaker is not what our students seek.

"I understand a Quaker college in terms of what happens when things break down."

"What do you mean by community on-line?"

"Community happens in other ways on-line: with less back and forth, interaction, but greater depth, more thoughtfulness."

"My students know I am slow to anger."

"You have to be mindful."

"There is no bridge across the river. We have to build the bridge."

"It was a different way of thinking."

"There are many things you can't do completely any more."

"A community is simply a group of people who care more about each other than they need to."

"Why it's not that simple has important implications for all forms of community building."

"The non-synchronous web helps people get beyond the problems of trying to work synchronously."

"We fall into groups, with a fixed and narrow sense of our identities and interests. A synchronous community can lock us into that."

"What really matters is creating new ideas."

"This is a new thing: the information world to which people can gain access without going through someone else's gates."

"Posting on-line means sharing thoughts in progress--but we are afraid to leave an imperfect trace of ourselves there."

"The web casts the net more widely--it has an extraordinary capacity to locate people I'd like to work with."

(From Friday evening plenary:)

I should try and draw some conclusions from this, so we can open it for discussion.

What is crucial here are the ethical and moral issues.

I just want to know what the questions are.

We can pummel. But friends don't pummel.