Here is an article about the 750,000 Americans who live off the power grid. They power their homes with home grown solar, wind or geothermal energy instead of public utilities.  Their numbers are growing by ten percent a year.  The up-front investments pay for themselves in a decade or so with an absence of utility bills.  When the power goes out for everyone else, the lights are still on in these homes.  They see themselves as pioneers in a cleaner energy future.  Suddenly it’s cool again to be a rugged individualist.

I am reading Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings.  Six authors are represented, from the 17th through the 20th centuries.  The largest selections go to George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and the early American Quaker John Woolman.  It’s striking how the early Quakers went “off the grid” spiritually.  They looked toward an Inner Light rather than institutional religion.  They found power in themselves, not in formal church structures.  They had their excesses, and they suffered terrible persecutions.  Quakers called people to the inwardness of faith:

“So I called all people to the true teacher, out of the hirelings such as teach for fleece and make a prey upon the people, for the Lord was come to teach his people by his spirit… The day of the Lord was come, and Christ was come to teach his people himself and how they might find their teacher within, when they were in their labours and in their beds.

“Therefore be still a while from thy own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires and imaginations, and be stayed on the principle of God in thee, to stay thy mind upon God, up to God; and thou wilt find strength from him and find him to be a present help in time of trouble, in need, and to be a God at hand.

“And your growth in the Seed is in the silence where you may find a feeding of the bread of life… and there is innocence and simplicity of heart and spirit is lived in and the life is fed on.  ~ George Fox

Some of the great heroes and heroines of the Bible lived off the grid spiritually:  Abraham, Sarah, John the Baptist.  In a similar way, there are a lot of people today who live by faith off the grid, apart from religious institutions, and their numbers are growing.  They may be looking for fresh wineskins to put their new wine in.

To learn how to live off the power grid, go here.  To learn how to live off the grid spiritually, do what George Fox did:  go for a long solitary walk and wait for God.