Foreword—I spent more than half of 2013 at Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA, and fell in love with many things about it. My latest passion is with their pamphlets. Here I have, after reading them, set down the most impressive excerpts of each, with rare paraphrasing and additions of my own [in brackets]. Most of all I am impressed with the timelessness of these pamphlets, the old- est of which go back more than 80 years.
421. Heartfulness: Renewing Heart, Mind and Spirit on Retreat and Beyond (by Valerie Brown; 2013)
About
the Author—Valerie
Brown is a popular Pendle Hill teacher and retreat leader and the
author of 2 previous PH Pamphlets (407.
Living from the Center: Mindfulness Meditation ...; 386.
The Mindful Quaker)
Valerie
Brown is a member of Solebury MM & a PH workshop leader. She was
ordained as a Zen lay member in 2003 by Thich Nhat Hanh. [She helped
found] Old Path Sangha, a Buddhist community in New Hope, PA. She has
studied Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She is a certified
Kundalini yoga teacher.
Introduction/
Some
Reasons
for
Retreats:
Personal
Reflections—This
essay grew from [questions coming
out of retreats like a]
4-day New Year's Eve retreat at Pendle Hill (PH). How
do I keep this [retreat] feeling in daily life? What can I do when
I return home? How does Friends' experience of expectant waiting
influence the retreat process, & how do retreats influence
expectant waiting? Does continuing revelation play a role for
Friends in the retreat experience? How does Quaker silence express
itself in group retreats?
The
impulse
for
self-reflection
is
part
of
our
human
spirit,
out
capacity
to
take
stock
and
the
desire
to
reflect
at
times
of
transition,
loss,
and
change.
Some
reasons
include
needing
to:
regain
life-balance;
mark
the end of a relationship; ask questions of
life
purpose and direction, seeking clarity.
What
is a Retreat?--Retreat
provides a time away, an intentional separation from normal
preoccupations and cares in order to bring greater
awareness
of God's immediate
and
transcendent
presence. What
has meaning and purposes in my life? What is missing? What
am I avoiding? What brings me most alive?
Retreat
is
about
shaping
a
new
perspective,
and
realizing
we
have
been
escaping
reality
through
our
busyness.
At
my
1st
retreats
I
wanted
to
hold
onto
a
little
bit
of
peace
and
the
temporary
escape
from
all
the
troubles
I
had
wrestled
with
during
the
retreat.
Quakers
make
no
distinction
between
the
sacred
and
the
secular.
This
lack
of
distinction
does
not
devalue
the
sacred;
it
upgrades
the
secular.
Friends
believe
that
access
to
the
Inner
Light
of
God
is
immediate
and
continual.
We
retreat
to
support
transformation
within
ourselves
and
within
the
world.
We
may
measure
success
by
how
faithfully
we
live
into
our
natural
gifts.
Retreat
creates
the
space
to
recognize
these
gifts.
Retreat
strengthens
habits
of
the
heart.
The
heart's
tension
is
found
between:
the
life
we
have
and
the
life
we
want;
our
aspirations
and
our behavior; the parents we have and the ones we wish for; the
partner we have and the one we wish for. In
retreat
we
hold
these
tensions
creatively
in
ways
that
expand
the
heart's
capacity
for
compassion
for
ourselves
and
others.
Retreat
offers
a
time
set
aside
out
of
a
sense
of
deep
wisdom
which
deepens
our
awareness
of
God's
abi-ding
love.
In
retreat
we
slow
down
&
surrender
to
the
gift
of
doing
only
1
thing.
[For
those
who
feel
too
busy
for
retreats],
spiritual
practice
can
be
woven
into
our
daily
life,
one conversation at a time, one kindness at a time, one moment of
awareness at a time. God's continuous manifestation in the world can
occur anytime anywhere.
Retreat
to
Consider Important
Life
Decisions/ ... Persistent
Questions/ ... Relationships—When
I
came
to
Albiquiu
in
northern
New
Mexico,
I
knew
that
the
place
with
its
Painted
Desert
touched
a
taproot
within
me.
I
had
come
with
the
intention
of
releasing
the
inner
turmoil
&
finding
peace.
Retreat
became
a
way
to
step
back
from
my
turmoil,
to
focus
on
my
core
values,
to
be
guided
by
a
deeper
sense
of
passion
&
purpose.
I
began
to
ask
questions
that
had
been
long
in
my
mind
&
heart
&
to
trust
my
capacity
for
greater
self-awareness
&
inner
direction.
I
also
found
a
new
home;
I
continue
to
go
there.
One
of
my
greatest
fears
on
retreat
was
being
alone
with
my
self.
I
was
so
caught
in
thinking
&
doing
that
I
had
forgotten
what
it
was
like
to
just
"be."
I
1st
came
to
PH
in
1995
for
an
Authentic
Movement
workshop. I began to taste the possibility of body awareness, an
opening to God's presence through movement. We worked with our body
as a prayer vehicle; I found myself in a place of not knowing.
Retreat
is
a
step
on
the
path
of
conscious
awareness
of
the
unconscious
forces
that
control
our
lives.
Asking
big
questions
is
an
act
of
courage
as
these
point
us
in
the
direction
of
courageous
action.
Retreat
offers
time
to
consider
the
whole
spectrum
of
relationships
or
a
specific,
significant
relationship—what
is
working,
what
is
not,
why
&
what to do about it. People begin to touch deeper knowing within &
to make richer connections with others even in shared silence.
Retreat
Honors Sabbath Time/ Retreat Requires a Sense of Place—I
have
to-do
lists
[for
every
conceivable
time
period].
[In
my
home
growing
up,
there
was
one
day
in
the
week
when
[rushing
around
was
suspended].
On
Sunday,
my
mother
didn't
go
outside
of
our
home
to
work.
We
went
to
Mass
and
played
music;
my
mother
prepared an elaborate dinner
around
a pot roast. We would dress up for Mass and sometimes go visiting.
Sundays were an invitation to holy leisure, and to remember each
other and family.
On
retreat, I pull the plug on busyness, just as my mother did on
Sundays. I begin to slow down. I begin to remember what it is like to
really see and feel. Keeping the Sabbath through participation in
meeting for worship orients Friends toward the week ahead and offers
a welcome hour of silent, expectant waiting. People in situations
where it is difficult to carve out the time for solitude and
reflection may
need
to
ask
for
help.
PH
has
a strong sense of place, planted and sustained by Spirit, inspired by
the vision of 20th
century Friends. People come to be open to the presence of God and to
explore the mystery of this Presence.
Type
of Retreat—Wherever
the
location,
any
retreat
in
a
monastic
community
or
volunteer
service
retreat
includes
pre-retreat, during retreat,
&
post-retreat.
I
attended
a
Father-Daughter
Retreat
without my father;
I
knew
that
until
I
could
come
to
acceptance,
&
peace
about
him
&
my
relationship
with
him,
I
would
feel
anger,
resentment,
&
frustration.
Attending
the
retreat
was
the
1st
step
on
the
road
of
reconciliation
&
forgiveness.
I
shared
my
story
of
loss
&
hurt, anger &
resentment.
[I
heard
the
stories
of
daughters
&
fathers].
I
appreciated
the
kinship
of
spirit
I
discovered
with
others
& left feeling clearer & more settled, less hurt &
isolated. With
openness,
a
prayerful
&
thankful
frame
of
mind, even preparation for a self-directed retreat can bring us
nearer to God.
At
a Kundalini yoga retreat, beginning at 3:30 am with a cold shower &
"pure" yoga whites, I
went through opening chants, Kundalini yoga, shavasansa
(deep
relaxation), &
chanting. I learned to "just do" &
"just be" the
practice.
On
wilderness
retreat
to
Mt.
Rainer,
I
pitched
my
tent
at
the
base
of
several
giant
sequoias.
[In
spite of disruption of] my plans for solitude, [I still needed to
ask] How do
I want to be with wilderness
all around me?
Being
with
people
of
color
at
a
7-day
Vipassana
retreat
created
a
deep
sense
of
safety
as
we
shared
our
stories
of
alienation,
isolation,
otherness,
unique
cultural
roots.
A
monastic
retreat
at
Blue
Cliff
Monastery
with
Thich
Nhat
Hanh
and
1,200
other
participants
challenged
me
to
redefine
"community."
I
remember
using
mindfulness
during
long
waits
[and
try
to
use
it]
in
all
circumstances.
Friends
and Retreats—There
is holiness in the waiting. Holy waiting invites the practice of
patience with and trust of ourselves
as well as waiting for that which may be unsettled. It has a quality
of attentiveness and awareness of God's abiding Presence everywhere.
Growing garlic or planting a tree calls us into inter-connectedness
with the environment and ourselves; I plant for tomorrow. In Friends
meeting there is a similar gestation period. The
inherent
mystical
aspect
of
Quakerism
excludes
any
one
formula
for
meeting God in the moment. Useful tools include meditation,
mindfulness, centering prayer, and lectio
divina.
As Friends we experience meeting for worship in the way we wait, the
way we show up, and by our readiness.
Continuing
Revelation/ Silence—Continuing
revelation
is
the
root
system
of
the
Quaker
tree
of
life.
For
me,
Quakerism's
essence
is
living
one's
outward
life
as
a
function
of
one's
inward
life.
In
this
personal
faith,
God's
presence,
the
Inner
Light,
appears
as
both
immediate
&
transcendent,
clear
&
opaque,
visible
&
invisible;
it
is
Mystery.
I
am
called
into
Union
with
God,
an
expression
of
God-consciousness.
This
consciousness
represents
not
self-consciousness
represents
not
self-centeredness,
but
an
awareness
of
opening
to
what
is
Beyond.
Silence
fits
Friends
like
well-worn
slippers.
On
retreat,
silence
is
extended
well beyond the traditional period
of meeting for worship, [&
can become] interior silence, which stays with &
aids our capacity to be present to the Inner Light. Over
time,
as
I
began
to
understand
the
nature
of
meeting
worship
&
how
it
differs
from
Buddhist
meditation,
I
have
grown
to
appreciate
the
differences
between
them.
For
Friends,
the
members
&
attenders
at
meeting
for
worship
create
a
visible
fellowship
that
supports
individual
faithfulness
&
a
collective
Love.
The
Stages
of
Retreat:
Practical
Guidance—The
1st
step in the pre-retreat process is a longing to go on retreat. A new
beginning offers something impressive if you commit to a retreat.
Woody Allen said: "80% of success is just showing up."
Showing up fully for a retreat requires: Physical preparation,
relationship preparation, spiritual preparation. Physical
preparation = when, where,
how.
Relationship
preparation
=
what
to
say
to
those
closest
to
you
[for
while
you
are
away].
Spiritual
preparation
questions:
Why
this
retreat,
why
now?
What
is
my
hope,
longing,
or
intention?
What
do
I
want
to
feel,
learn,
or
experience
more
deeply?
Other questions: What
conditions
do
I
want
to
create
to
travel
safely
and
enjoyably?
What
do
I
take
with
me
and
what
do
I
leave
behind?
[Right
before] the retreat, begin to slow down and create an internal sense
of spaciousness.
Do I need to bring along spiritual or inspiration reading, or will it
be a distraction from contemplation?
Dress
in
layers
and
wear
comfortable
clothing
to
enjoy
the
outdoors
as
temperatures
vary.
Consider
keeping
a
journal
or
starting
a
journal
while
you
are
on
retreat.
Journaling
is
a
way
of
truth-telling
to
ourselves,
a
way
of
holding
our
feelings.
Even
if
journaling
intimidates
you
and
feels
foreign,
jotting
down
observations
and
insights
as
they
come
to
mind
can
be
useful.
You
don't
need
to
work
hard;
just
let
the
thoughts
come.
The
Retreat: You Are Here—A
retreat
organized
in
a
retreat
center
will
likely
include
a
carefully crafted balance and blend of activity and rest, engagement
and withdrawal.
Retreats often [are meant] to create space for us to listen and to
accept an invitation for intimacy with ourselves and with God's Love,
which is continually self-revealing. When I lead a retreat, I usually
begin by focusing on intention, naming why we came on retreat. Some
say
that
the
shortest
distance
between
2
people
is
a
story.
We
recognize
that
we
are
not
alone. We come to know others and ourselves. Retreat invites deep
listening, opening body and mind in a state of rest and ease.
Listening is an act of love and, when done well, can relieve the pain
of another, who feels loved and understood.
I
often invite participants to discover the Japanese kanji—listening
with ears to hear, eyes to see, mind to think, heart to feel,
attention to focus. I discovered that I listen with my head full of
questions; questions which might meet the norms of social etiquette,
[but from which] the "heart" of good communication is
missing. [There
is
a]
unity
of
spirit
that
underlies
the
listening
process
in
retreat.
The
retreat
process
is
like
a
lighted
lantern
or
a
crock
of
cool
water
by
the
roadside:
replenishment
in
the
desert,
an
oasis
of
light
for
the
heart,
mind,
and
soul.
Our
high-speed
lives
require
retreat. Without time and space to be, to find meaning, our lives
lack fulfillment. I encourage participants to see that the seeds of
transformation lie in our own adversity and challenges. Howard
Thurman writes: "Look well to the growing edge ... This is the
basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when
times are out of joint and men have lost their reason, the source of
confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash. The
birth
of
a
child
...
is
the
growing
edge
incarnate.
Look
well
to
the
growing
edge."
What
is
your
"growing
edge"; what
does
it
mean
to
look
well
to
it?
Where do you find "hope in moments of despair?
Cultivating
Retreat in Everyday Life: Post-Retreat Guide to Mindfulness Practice
for Friends—On
returning from a retreat, many people experience a mix of emotions
that range from the dread of reengaging what was left behind to
eagerness to reconnect with their lives and loved ones. [They
find]
they
cannot
adequately
describe
their
experience
in
words.
The
real
worth
of
retreat
goes
beyond
what
happens
during
the
retreat
to
include
what
takes
place
when
we
reenter
work,
home,
and
family.
Did
the
retreat
awaken
a
hidden
strength
or
realization?
How
do
we
continue
the
contemplative
activities
we
practiced
during
the
retreat
when
we
return
home?
We
may
be
more
vulnerable
and
open
with
a
new
sense
of
peace,
gratitude,
and
hope
that we expect
to carry into our families, workplaces, and neighborhoods. The
movement
from
the
receptivity,
grace,
and
union
with
the Inner Light back to productivity of work life and challenges of
home life cannot be manipulated, programmed, or controlled. Drawing
nearer to God is grace, a Mystery.
As
whole, resourceful, &
creative human beings we already have everything we need to bring
mindful awareness
into everyday life. Starting where we are means remembering what we
already know through practice. In
a
letter
to
yourself,
recall
the
many
ways
you
are
whole,
resourceful,
&
creative.
We
may
expect
to
see
quick
improvement
after
a
retreat
experience,
&
to
get
rid
of
parts
of
ourselves
that
we
don't
like.
Not chasing after goals doesn't mean to live with self-discipline,
intention and direction, but rather to know the difference between
ambition &
purpose. Ambition is linked to rewards that are fleeting. Purpose, on
the other hand is linked to one's core values, a power basis for
motivation, focus, determination, &
resilience. [In the midst of self-criticism, generate a feeling of
warmth, care, kindness &
friendliness toward yourself; this builds self-compassion.
Mindfulness
creates
an
inner
balance
that
allows
for
greater
emotional
stability,
and
the
clarity
to
act
or
respond
with
greater
understanding.
Mindfulness
allows
us to observe and accept sensations and emotions, even painful ones,
without judgment. Next time you eat, just eat. this slows down the
eating process and allows greater awareness, gratitude, and pleasure
in the moment. Notice
how
you
are
walking,
everything
about
it
and
all
your
surroundings.
this
strengthens
focus
on
the
present
moment
and
sharpens
mental
clarity.
Stop
to
notice
a
flower
or
the
color
of
the
sky,
appreciate
the
sound
of
the
wind.
Life
becomes
real
and
immediate
in
that
moment.
Take a mini-retreat, hourly pause practice. Take 3 deep breaths and
pay attention.
The
Law of Attraction is simple: we attract what we are. Mindfulness is
about being aware of the internal environment of emotions we project
through our body, as well as being
aware
of
internal
environment.
[Keep
asking
these
questions:
Am I letting my strengths fall into disuse? Am I depleting my
emotional & physical energy? What sustains me, & what
drains me? What is my emotional & physical state right now?
Nature never repeats a single moment. We can learn a great deal from nature: stability & solidity from trees; fluidity from water, freedom from birds, & beauty from a rose. In the brain, we strengthen networks in the brain when we repeat a thought over & over again. This can be advantageous, or it can make it difficult to change unwanted thought habits. Take a few minutes to recall & write down things you are grateful for. Question conclusions you draw. Seek out like-minded people. Take small steps. Watch what happens.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
422. Reclaiming the Transcendent: God in Process (by Thomas Gates; 2013)
Nature never repeats a single moment. We can learn a great deal from nature: stability & solidity from trees; fluidity from water, freedom from birds, & beauty from a rose. In the brain, we strengthen networks in the brain when we repeat a thought over & over again. This can be advantageous, or it can make it difficult to change unwanted thought habits. Take a few minutes to recall & write down things you are grateful for. Question conclusions you draw. Seek out like-minded people. Take small steps. Watch what happens.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
422. Reclaiming the Transcendent: God in Process (by Thomas Gates; 2013)
About
the Author—Thomas
Gates is a member of Lancaster (PA) MM; he has served the Committee
for Worship and Ministry locally, and the Working Group on Deepening
and Strengthening Our Meeting from Philadelphia YM. He spent the 1st
8 years of his medical career as a family doctor in rural NH. He and
his family lived and worked at Friends Lugulu Hospital in Kenya
(Stories
from Kenya;
PHP #319). Since
1995,
he
has
been
a
member
of
the
faculty
of
the
Family
Medicine
Residency
at
Lancaster
General
Hospital.
This
is the ultimate knowledge of God: to know that we do not know.
Thomas
Aquinas
We
are
talking
about
God;
what
wonder
is
it
that
you
do
not
understand?
If
you
do
understand,
then
it
is
not God.
Augustine of Hippo
Making
the Case—God's
transcendence would seem to be among George Fox's "airy
notions," when we try to speak of it. Transcendence exceeds
normal human experiences &
categories of thought &
language. Meister
Eckhart
says:
"So
be
silent
&
do
not
flap
your
gums
about
God,
for
the
extent
to
which
you
flap
your
gums
about
God,
you
lie."
To
speak
of
God's
transcendence
is
to
risk
falsehood
&
invite
failure
...
&
yet,
not
to
speak
is
also
a
kind
of
falsehood.
Beldan
Lane
says:
"We
must
speak,
we
can't
speak
without
stammering
... [Language
about
God
uses] speech to confound speech, speaking in riddles, calling us to
humble silence in the mystery's
presence." If we too easily give up the
struggle
to express the ineffable, we may finally
have
nothing to say.
As
Quakers
we
have
inherited
a
healthy
skepticism
about
"notions."
But
paradoxically,
early
Friends
never
seemed
to be at a loss for words; they made use of a rich &
evocative vocabulary to describe their experience of the Divine. They
understood that in speaking about the Divine, metaphors are all we
have. At
the
beginning
of
my
college
years,
during
the
Vietnam
war's
waning
years,
I
tur
ned
to
my
ancestors'
Quakerism
to
help
articulate
a
claim
as
a
conscientious
objector
to
military
service.
I
began
to
discover
what
I
believed
&
where
I
could
stand.
The
weaving
together
of
[Friends
spirituality],
academic
study
of
religion,
and
a
scientific
worldview
came
to
be
a
life
project.
I
have
been
left
with
the
need
to
find
coherent
ways
to
think
about
God.
If
we
have
only
nonsensical
or
outmoded
images
and
ways
of
thinking
about
God,
then
faith
in
God
will
sooner
or
later
come
to
be
seen
as
nonsensical.
I
am
deeply
concerned
that
in
the
21st
century,
our
theology
may
no
longer
be
adequate
to
sustain
our
practice
of
waiting
worship.
There
is
an
implicit
theology:
God
is
present
&
available
to
us
all,
without
mediation;
God
has
something
to
say
to
us,
if
we
but
listen.
God
can
&
will
speak
to
the
gathered
community
through
one
another's
words.
God's
ways
can be discerned by the body; God will give the community the gifts
necessary to accomplish God's tasks. If we no longer believe in this
implicit theology, then at some point our practices of silent worship
and group discernment will become "empty forms."
My
goal
in
this
essay
is
to
examine
the
idea
of
God's
transcendence
and
how
process
theology
can
help
us
to
reclaim
a
living
sense
of
Transcendent
of
our
time.
I
want
to
show
that
one
can
think
coherently
about
God
in
a
way
that
does
justice
to
the
scientific
worldview
and
to
our
deepest
spiritual
intuitions.
In
this
vision,
God
is
an
energy
field,
an
inner
yearning,
a
decentralized
network
of
cooperation
and
connection,
a
verb,
and
is
embedded
in
the
very
process
by
which
the
universe
comes
into
existence.
My
purpose
is
to
use
words,
as
Isaac
Penington
would say "to
bring
us
to
the
knowledge
of
things
beyond
what
words
can
utter."
The
Paradox
of
Transcendence—Spiritual
truths
are
often
expressed
in
terms
of
paradox,
something
contradictory,
which
when
seen
from
a
larger
frame
turns
out
to
be
true.
[Besides
spiritual
paradoxes],
there
are
scientific
paradoxes,
such
as
light
understood
as
having
a
dual
wave/particle
nature.
Christian
tradition
speaks
of
God's
transcendence
beyond
our
normal
experience,
&
God's
immanence,
nearness,
presence,
or
indwelling.
Tradition
has
always
asserted
that
both
are
fully
&
paradoxically
true—a
kind
of
"spiritual
complementing."
By
the
the
17th
century,
God's
transcendence
was
uppermost
in
the
popular
imagination;
for
most,
God
seemed
remote
and
distant,
even
unapproachable.
George
Fox
and
the
early
Quakers
redressed
this
imbalance
in
dramatic
fashion:
with
experience
of
the
Inward
Light
immediately
available
to
all
and
the
belief
that
"Christ
is
come
to
teach
his
people
himself."
Their
subjective
experience
of
the
Light
was
one
of
overwhelming
holiness
and
otherness,
of
God
breaking
into
their
lives
from
beyond
their
normal
experience,
[i.e.
transcendence].
For
modern
Friends
the
task
is
more
likely
to
involve
"reclaiming
the
transcendent,"
of
finding
new
ways
to
think
about
God's
"moreness"
and
"beyondness."
Process
theology
can
be
one
vehicle
for
this
rebalancing.
Changing
Views of Transcendence—The
interplay between God's immanence and transcendence is apparent from
the very beginning of the Bible. From cosmic creator to walking in
the garden; from looking down from heaven to "for in him we live
and move and have our being." Sometimes
the
Bible
combines
images
of
transcendence
and
immanence:
"I
dwell
in
the
high
and
holy
place,
and
also
with
those
who
are
contrite
and
humble
in
spirit
(Isaiah
57).
It
seems
that
people
in
the
ancient
world
may
have
been
better
than
we
are
at
holding
together
this
paradoxical,
simultaneous
sense
of
God's
transcendence
and
immanence.
With
God
as
an
active
participant
in
terrestrial
life,
the
ancient
world
was
an
"enchanted
universe".
The
ancient
worldview
eventually
broke
down.
[At
the
same
time
that
science
expanded
the
universe's
distances
to
vast
proportions],
God's
role
in
explaining
the
natural
world
around
us
became
smaller
&
smaller.
The
ancient
world's
"both/
&"
understanding
of
transcendence/immanence was
lost.
In
the
17th
century
under-standing,
God
is
outside
of
the
world.
God
can
influence
&
affect
the
world,
but
the
world
has
no
effect
on
God.
This God is spatially and spiritually distant. Deism
was
the
belief
that
God
created
the
world,
set
it
in
motion,
imparted
the
scientific
laws,
and
then
withdrew
to
a
distant
place
beyond
the
universe.
God's
immanence
was
reduced
to
the
scientific
laws.
The
highest
human
calling
was
scientific
reasoning
used
to
discover
nature's
law.
[Supernatural
Theism]/ An Alternative Model of God—Theism,
the
belief
that
there
is
a
God
who
created
&
continues
to
sustains
the
universe
through
active
involvement,
is
as
old
the
Bible;
theists
of
the
Enlightenment
period
basically
adopted
the
understanding
of
God
outside
of
&
unaffected
by
the
world.
They
held
that
God continues to be active
in the world, albeit from God's distant perspective above, beyond, &
apart from the world. Since Enlightenment theists saw God's ongoing
relationship to the
world
as
being
through
selective
divine
interventions,
this
position
has
been
characterized
as
supernatural
theism.
This
is
an
anomaly
that
arose
out
of
the
Enlightenment's
peculiar
dynamics.
A
remote
&
distant
God
arbitrarily
suspending
the
laws
of
nature,
is
decidedly
not
biblical.
[And
what
is
now
a
suspension
of
natural
laws
may
some
day
be
explained
by
a
new
scientific
understanding].
For
millions,
it
has
become
increasingly
unbelievable
&
discomforting;
it
doesn't
explain how
God acts in the world,
[or
God's
relationship
to
evil].
Institutional
religion
has
largely
abandoned
these
people
to
skepticism
&
eventual
disbelief.
They
are
unaware
that
there
is
an
option
other
than
supernatural
theism.
Might
there
be
a
more
adequate
way
of
thinking
about
God
[than supernatural theism]?
In
panentheism,
the
world
is
in
God,
&
God
is
in
the
world
&
is
more
than
the
world.
God
is
both
immanent
&
transcendent.
Certainly
Eckhart
&
many
other
Christians
mystics
through
the
ages
have
(without
using
the
word)
been
describing
panentheism.
Marcus
Borg
describes
panentheism
as
"a
root
concept
for
thinking
about
God."
If
God
is
in
the
world
&
the
world
is
in
God, then
intimation
of
the
Divine
would
seem
to
be
a
natural,
expected
occurrence.
One
helpful
metaphor
is:
God
is
to
universe
as
soul
is
to
body.
God
[soul]
pervades
the
world
[body]
and
is
present
everywhere,
but
at
the
same
time
is
more
than
the
world
[body].
God
[soul]
acts
upon
the
world
[body]
from
the
inside.
Panentheism
permits
us
to
reclaim
the
transcendent
but
in
a
way
that
avoids
the
distortions
of
supernatural
theism.
We
can
say
for
our
time,
the
transcendent
is
that
which
is
supremely
immanent.
Process
Theology—Alfred
North
Whitehead,
[a
mathematician
&
physicist
turned
philosopher]
originally
sought
to
address
the
most
basic
metaphysical
questions:
Why
something
rather
than
nothing?
Why
order
instead
of
chaos?
Why
novelty
instead
of
repetition?
Whitehead's
basic
insight
was
to
see
that
what
is
most
real
isn't
matter
or
substance,
not
objects
or
"things"
of
ordinary
life.
These
are
made
up
of
more
fundamental
building
blocks,
Whitehead's
events:
momentary
units
of
experience,
actual
occasions,
with
an
internal
process
of
becoming
&
change.
Whitehead's
metaphysics
is
one
of
process,
rather
than
substance.
Ultimate
reality
consists
of
events
rather
than
things.
In
the
moment
of
its
becoming,
the
actual
occasion
selectively
and
creatively
incorporates
those
aspects
of
the
past
which
are
most
relevant
to
its
own
becoming. The
actual
occasion
thus
represents
a
creative
synthesis,
a
unity
(however
fleeting)
which
arises
out
of
the
multiplicity
of
past
actualities
and
future
possibilities.
An
actual
occasion
is
like
a
person
who
brings
an
inheritance
of
past
experiences
as
well
as
a
number
of
future
possibilities
into
a
critical
moment
of
decision.
In
making
a
decision,
one
takes
from
what
has
gone
before,
never
as
a
mindless
repetition
of
the
past
in
its
entirety,
but
as
creative
process
of
selection
and
synthesis,
forging
a
unique
identity
from
the
raw
material
of
the
past.
One
is
also
very
much
influenced
by
future
possibilities,
as
a
source
of
goals,
motivation,
and
vision.
My
interests
ranged
from
geology
(now faded), to chemistry,
to
religion,
to
teaching,
to
medical
school.
One's
situation
here
is
analogous
to
an
actual
occasion
in
the
moment
of
its
becoming.
Parts
of
the
past
that
mattered
most,
along
with
the
future
possibilities
that
most
beckoned
were
chosen, and a new reality was forged.
The
influence
of
past
actualities
is
real
&
tangible,
the
realm
of
physical
casualty.
The
future's
influence
is
very
different,
for
the
future
doesn't
actually
exist.
Future
possibilities
must
be
conveyed
by
to
actual occasions
by some actual or real entity. Here, Whitehead invokes God as that
actual entity which mediates to every actual occasion, in the process
of its becoming, the relevant possibilities for its future.
God is both the ground
for order,
limiting the possibilities, &
the ground
of novelty.
God is an intrinsic part of the process of becoming, part of the very
fabric of existence. Among
the
limited
possibilities
offered,
there
is
one
that
is
most
valued,
as
the
one
most
likely
to
advance
God's
vision;
this
preferred
possibility
is
called
the
initial
aim.
God
acts
in
the
world
by
per-suasion
and
invitation,
never
by
coercion,
inviting
each
actual
occasion
to
align
itself
with
God's
wider
purpose.
My
decision to attend medical school and become a rural doctor allowed
me to unify many disparate strands of my life. I
was
clear
that
I
was
being
drawn
into
something
larger,
that
what
I
chose
to
do
with
my
life
mattered
beyond
my
own
needs
and
desires,
mattered
even
to
God.
Choosing
one
possibility
necessarily
closes
others,
but
it
also
opens
up
new
possibilities.
I
never
had
a
sense
that
there
was
a
single
"God's
plan
for
my
life."
No
matter
what
I
chose,
God
would
continue
to
work
with
me,
continue
to
offer
new
possibilities,
continue
to
nudge
me
toward
a
more
worthy
life.
What
process
theologians
are
saying is that there is always creative incorporation of the past,
always the need to make choices. This same dynamic is present
throughout the universe, at all levels of reality. It is a
never-ending process that creates present reality.
For
the
inanimate
universe,
the
future
possibilities
are
largely
just
a
continuation
if
the
past.
In
higher
life
forms
the
range
of
possibilities
is
much
greater.
On
the
largest
scale,
the
picture
that
emerges
is
of
slow, gradual, evolutionary change, with the possibility that God's
values can to be progressively realized in world. What is valued by
God is beauty or
increasing harmony at ever-increasing levels of complexity.
The
history of the universe seems to bear this out. Increasing
complexity
and
organization
suggests
that
there
is
an
emergent
"moral
nature"
built
into
the
fabric
of
the
universe.
In
humans,
this
impetus
towards
increasing
harmony
at
every
increasing
complexity is manifested most notably as love.
Process
theology
envisions
an
interdependent,
relational
view
of
reality.
All
things
are
related
to
all
other
things;
God
is
the
supremely
related
one.
God
gives
creative
&
suggestive
energy
to
the
world,
&
the
world
gives
the
results
of
what
it
has
done
with
this
energy
back
to
God.
Whatever
we
have
done
with
possibilities
from
God,
God
experiences
us
again
in
our
new
moment
of
being.
God
then
"fashions
for
us
another
possibility
that
we
once
again
may
transform
to
whatever
degree.
Einstein said: "there are only 2 ways we can live our life; we
can live as if nothing is a miracle, or we can live as if everything
is a miracle," touched &
guided &
intimately
known
by God in every moment of existence. God's
transcendence
consists
in
being
supremely
immanent.
Religious
implications—Process
theology emphasizes God's omnipresence, but also clarifies how
God is present as the initial aim for every actual occasion. Because
God is present and
working
in
the
world
only
through
the
initial
aim,
God's
power
is
the
power
of
persuasion
and
invitation.
In
process
theology,
God
influences
everything,
but
determines
nothing.
God
knows
everything
there
is
to
know,
which
does
not
include
the
future.
Classical
theism
sees
God
as
unchanging,
unmoved,
unaffected.
Process
theology
envisions
God
as
the
One
who
is
always
supremely
related
and
influenced
by
the
world;
what
God
is
related
to
changes
as
the
world
changes.
God
is
all-knowing
but
what
God
knows
changes
as
the
world
changes.
In
process
theology,
God's
overriding
aim
is
that
the
world
come
to
experience
well-being
and beauty. God's
aim
is
to
increase
the
creatures'
capacity
to
experience
goodness
and
beauty,
but
this
necessarily
involves
an
increased
capacity
to
experience
suffering
and
to
choose
either
good
or
evil
actions.
God
suffers
our
suffering,
is
truly
affected
by
it
and
responds
to
it
by
offering
new
possibilities
to
redeem
and
transform
the
suffering.
Spiritual
Implications—Process
theology
gives
a
positive
account
of
the
reality
of
spiritual
experience.
In
human
beings,
initial
aims
largely
remain
far
below
the
surface
of
our
awareness.
From
time
to
we
can
become
intuitively
aware
of
God's
initial
aim
for
us
in
our
particular
circumstance.
[It
will
seem
to
come
as]
an
in-breaking
from
another,
transcendent
realm.
God
is
constantly
offering
"little
leadings"
in
the
form
of
the
initial
aim,
a
constant
invitation
to
align
ourselves
more
with
God's
way.
God
"speaks
to
our
condition,"
offers
new
possibilities,
&
to
the
extent
that
we
respond
to
these
new
possibilities,
more
possibilities
will
be
offered.
[It
is
interaction
carried
out
with
a
high
degree
of
intimate
understanding
between
the
participants].
Our
relationship
with
the
Divine
has
a
personal
quality
to
it,
even though God isn't a person in the usual sense of the word.
Christ
as the Logos is present in each of us and throughout all creation, as
[initial aims made flesh]. [Jesus'
complete,
perfect,
growing
responsiveness
to
God's
initial
aims]
is
implicit
and
imperfectly
present
in
us.
Jesus
has
given
us
all
"the
power
to
become
children
of
God."
Process
theology
allows
us
to
reclaim
a
sense
of
the
Transcendent in our lives in our spiritual lives, and
is
one
door
through
which
we
might
reclaim
a
robust
sense
of
the
reality
of
God.
In
the End
... God—I
was
exposed
to
the
ideas
of
process
theology
through
[extensive
reading]
of
seminal
works
in
process
theology
and
a
course
in
process
theology
at
Earlham
School
of
Religion.
Process
theology
allows
me
to
think
about
God
in
a
way
that
is
compatible
with
a
scientific
worldview.
Leading-edge
theologians
and
scientists
are
finding
common
ground.
In
my
day-to-day
spiritual
life,
I
rarely
spend
time
in
the
rarefied
and
abstract
world
of
process
theology.
[I
tend
to
use
Quaker
metaphors
and
practices
there,
because]
there
is
a
practical
aspect
to
Quaker
spirituality
that
I
find
lacking
in
the
abstractions
of
process
theology.
The
new
ideas
[of
process
theology]
have
reinvigorated
my
appreciation
for
the
tried-and-true
of
our
tradition.
It
is
a
lot
like
the
big
bang
theory.
I
know
that
everything
we
see
in
the
physical
universe
owes
its
existence
to
the
big
bang.
You
and
I
are
some
part
of
this
incredible
story:
born
in
the big bang, forged in the interior of ancient stars, part of the
universe now coming to understand itself. I can no more comprehend
the God of process theology than I can comprehend the big bang.
Nothing of the creative and sustaining properties of God depends on
my understanding them. Catherine
LaCugna
said:
"One
finds
God
because
one
is
already
found
by
God.
Anything
we
find
on
our
own
would
not
be
god."
Thomas
Aquinas said:
"This
is the ultimate knowledge of God: to know that we do not know."
Augustine
of Hippo
said:
" "We
are
talking
about
God;
what
wonder
is
it
that
you
do
not
understand?
If
you
do
understand,
then
it
is
not God." Some
of us are content to bow before the divine Mystery in awe and
gratitude. I feel drawn to try to comprehend something of the nature
of this Mystery.
I have come to see that the value of that effort is simply to bring
us back to the mystery, awe, and gratitude.
Queries:
Why
is
it
important
to
have
coherent
ways
to
think
and
speak
about
God? How
is
God
immanent
(near
to,
dwelling
in)
you? How
is
God
transcendent
(beyond)
you? How
do
you
respond
to
panentheism,
God
being
in
and
acting
from
inside you? How do you react to the statement "there was a
sense that no matter what I chose, God would work with me, offer new
possibilities, and nudge me towards a more worthy life?" How would you describe God you do or could believe in?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
423. Queries as Prayers (by Ron B. Rembert; 2013)
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
423. Queries as Prayers (by Ron B. Rembert; 2013)
About
the Author—Ron
B. Rembert teaches religion and philosophy at Wilmington, Ohio. He
is a member of Campus Friends Meeting. His
wife
and
son
are
active
volunteers
in
community
activities.
Ron
launched
this
work
on
queries
as
prayers
while
in
a
writing
workshop
at
Collegeville,
MN.
[Introduction]—In
2011,
I
participated
in
a
writing
workshop
hosted
by
Collegeville
Institute
for
Ecu-menical
and
Cultural
Research.
Writing
queries
as
prayers
came
from
my
needs
to
revive
my
answering
of
queries
and
to
intensify
my
practice
of
prayer.
The
idea
of
approaching
queries
as
prayers,
however
unusual,
seemed
intuitively
rich.
My
wandering
writing
efforts
pointed
in
no
clear
direction.
I
walked
to
the
church
of
St.
John's
Abbey,
where
the
Benedictine
monks
led
praying
in
the
ancient
Liturgy
of
the
Hours
or
Divine
Office.
Douglas
Steere
in
1963,
collaborated
with
attendees
of
the
2nd
Vatican
Council
in
promoting
ecumenical
dialogues
on
the
topic
of
prayer
in this
same
church. The
Ecumenical
Institute
of
Spirituality
was
also
formed
then.
[The
logical
step
of]
tracing
the
historical
development
of
the
queries
didn't
ignite
the
needed
muse.
Re-calling
a
query
heard
in
meeting
for
worship,
I
began to write,
the
words
began
to
flow
&
energy
for
the
project began to increase.
"Do
I live in thankful awareness of God's constant presence in my life?"
[Excerpt] God
of Light ... you draw us to the deepest levels of awareness./
Heighten my awareness as I reach for you through words ... How
is it I am aware? How
and
when did I first receive awareness? ... How
aware can I be?
... Always
partial,
never
conclusive,
this
awareness
that
I
love
and
fear
...
Help
me
turn
down
the
volume
of
my
unlistening
...
Help
me
soften
the brittleness of my uncaring ... Forgive me for my failed moments
past, when I lost awareness of your constant presence./ O God of
Love,/ with some anxiety I imagine your awareness of me,/ the me you
see, the
one
I
may
not
wish
or
choose
to
see
...
Thankfulness
is
my surest awareness.
Reading
this prayer before
that
[writing
class]
audience
emerged
as
a
gift,
with
formidable
questions
[I
will
use
in
the
following
chapter].
Addressing
queries
has
long been &
remains
a
longstanding
practice
among
Friends.
Besides
self-examination,
queries
have
been
used
for:
topics
of
debates
with
critics;
administrative,
info-gathering
aids;
guides
for
interpreting
testimonies.
Questions
seeking
clarification
are
a
blessing.
I:
Is there a
difference between writing a poem and a prayer?—I
was
not
trying
to
write
a
poem;
I
was
using
few
words
and
carefully
chosen
ones.
The
words finally chosen were
not
necessarily the 1st
ones
to
come
to
mind.
Some
appeared
and
disappeared; some changed
places
in
the 2nd
draft.
Careful
word-choice disciplined
my
writing
of
the
prayer
and
praying
while
writing
enabled
me
to
discern
the
language
I
sought.
My
primary
intent
was
to
express
my
feelings
about
God
in
relation
to
myself.
Expressive,
descriptive,
and
analytical
statements
appear
in
the
prayer,
but
expressive
ones
were
meant
to
be
the
loudest.
It
is
also
meant
to
draw
as
much
attention
as
possible
to
God.
Recognizing
and
rejoicing
in
God's
presence
stood
out
as
my
all-consuming
concern.
Queries
used
by
Friends
assume
God's
presence,
whether
explicitly
mentioned
or
not.
Is
answering a query as prayer as much about oneself as about God?—For
the
peace
testimony:
Do
I work toward creative, life-affirming ways of resolving conflict &
avoiding violence &
destruction? Do we recognize &
face disagreement &
other situations of conflict in our meetings &
strive for reconciliation?
Queries
test
the
individual
or
community,
not
someone
else
or
another
community.
Deeper
reflection
is
required
to
address
each
query
adequately.
The
peace
testimony
version
I
consider
here
begins "We
utterly
deny
all
outward
strife,
&
fightings
with
outward
weapons,
for
any
end,
under
any
pretence"
(1661).
How
do I &
my students
understand the differences between outward &
inward strife; between outward &
inward weapons?
Going
deeper
in
reflection
regarding
this
query
pushes
my
self-examination
further
to
an
embedded
concern:
Do I understand
how inward strife in my own daily life generates outward strife
with
others?
Do
I
use
inward,
spiritual weapons like
forgiveness of myself and others to avoid adding to outward strife?
What do I notice
about myself from God's perspective?
Self-examination
is
as
much
about
one's
self
as
about
God,
but
never
about
one's
self
without
God,
which
will
likely
result
in
self-deception.
Writing
a
prayer
as
part
of
answering
a
query
underscores
God's
presence
as
a
fundamental
part
of
the
overall
self-examination
effort.
When I am
observing, am I observing the me I want to see or the me I may not
wish to see?
Authentic
self-examination
draws
me
inevitably
into
a
more-than-human-experience.
Why
record prayers
in written form rather than experiencing
them in
silence?—When
I yearned
for
a
disciplined
daily
prayer
practice,
I
turned
to
a
Benedictine
lay
community
with
a
similar
yearning,
I
committed
to
praying
the
Liturgy
of
the
Hours
as often as possible during the day. Praying the Benedictine
Breviary has increased and enlivened my efforts to offer other
prayers at other times. I
found
that
the
repetition
of
the
Lord's
Prayer
and
the
Psalms
refreshing
and
reassuring.
I
have
found
that
adding
my
writing
exercise
to
my
own
reflection
has
helped
that
reflection
become
a
more
God-attentive
enterprise.
We
use
written
prayers
as:
written
documents
to
record
some
of
the
important
interactions
and
sacred
moments
in
our
lives;
evidence
of
thinking
&
actions
at
one
point
in
time
&
the
possibility
to
re-experience
earlier
prayerful
moments;
vehicles
of
our
thoughts,
feelings
& prayers
with
others
over
time
and
distance;
a
means
to
make
a
public
experience
of
prayer
realizable;
an
enhancement
of
attentiveness
through
the
rigors
of
the
writing
effort.
Knowing
that
we
are
all
ministers,
am
I
open
and
obedient
to
God's
promptings
to
speak?
...
No one lays hands
on my head./ No one grants me a special blessing./ Or do you God?/
[So] How do I know I am a minister?...Watch
&
learn to be...How do I know I am a minister?
It seems as simple & complicated
as faith,/it seems quiet &
loud as hope...Obedience
that
sets
one
free/appears
almost
impossible
to
conceive./
Commands
that
nurture?/
Imperatives
that
liberate?...Forgive
me
for
not
speaking
when
you
need words./
Forgive
me
for
not
listening
when
you
offer
words./
I
need
your
prompting,
God./
How do I know I'm a minister?
II.
[Renee Crauder: 6-step Awareness Exercise]—Renee
Crauder's exploration
of queries
&
prayer
was
similar
to
my
own.
Her
integration
of
querying
with
prayer
was
a
great
source
of
encouragement
and
helped
sustain
my
work.
In
her
essay
"Quaker
Queries
&
the
Awareness
Exercise,"
she
discusses
almost
10
years
of
daily
use
of
queries
in
a
formalized
prayer
practice,
adapted
from
examen
prayer
introduced
by
Ignatius
of
Loyola.
Crauder
begins
with
a
historical
survey
of
some
uses
of
queries
over
time.
Then
she
asks:
"How
do we really
use the Queries today? How important are they in the lives of
Friends?"
Crauder
reports
on
a
model
of
self-examination
which
might
help
others. Douglas
Steere
claims
"the
queries
are
the
public
equivalent
of
the
Roman
Catholic
Examination
of
Conscience."
I
valued
my
discovery
of
Crauder's
awareness
exercise
as
a
gift
of
confirmation.
Now
I
was
no
longer
working
alone,
but
rather
building
on
the
work
of
Crauder
and
Steere
as
fel-low
seekers
accompanying
me
on
this
path.
The
steps
of
Renee
Crauder's
Awareness
Exercise
include:
a
cup
of
coffee,
a
place
[of
solitude],
a
prayerful
posture
[and
attitude];
locating
one's
self
single-mindedly
in
God's
presence;
asking
for
"light
to
see
myself
more
clearly
and
wisdom
to
understand
what
I
see";
thinking
about
"obeying
the
inner
Light"
in
1
or 2 events daily;
read
and
[thoroughly]
answer
the
monthly
query;
end
with
favorite
prayer
or
sitting
still
until
it
seems
right
to
get
up."
Her
integration
of
querying
with
praying
excited
my
efforts
to
make
another
proposal
to
enhance
the
use
of
a
query,
the
writing
of
a
prayer
as
part
of
addressing
it.
Renee
Crauder
says:
"I
find
myself
reflecting
on
the
particular
query
at
odd
moments,
quite
without
design.
[The
resulting]
deepening
may
well
enable
me
to
answer
that
of
God
in
others
more
easily."
Does
self-examination increase insight into one's relation to God?
[Awareness
Exercise &
Ignatian Examen
Prayer]—Ignatius
1st
calls
for
expression
of "gratitude" as foundation
for self-examination. Crauder seeks a prayerful attitude, one which
includes [implicit]
rather
than explicit expression of
gratitude.
2nd
is
a
petition
to
God
[e.g.]
"What
do you want me to see about this day?"
This
matches
Crauder's
"light
to
see
myself
more
clearly..."
The
examen
prayer
practice
seems
more
about
what
God
does,
which
helps
me
be
free
of
my
tendencies
to
think
that
"I"
am
capable
of
self-examination
["all
by
myself"].
3rd,
the
Examen
Prayer
practice
begins
self-examination.
Were there
inclinations and thoughts this day that were not of God? Was I able
to discern and resist them? Did
I
use
my
freedom
in
accord
with
God's
loving
desire
for
me?
This
step
corresponds
to
the
4th
step
of
Crauder's
exercise.
Her
adding
of
a
specific
query
is
a
practice
not
found
in
the
examen
prayer.
A
request
for
forgiveness
combined
with
an
expression
of
joy
for
the
opportunity
of
self-examination
is
the
4th
step of the examen
prayer.
"The
examen in its 5th
step is the prayer of spiritual
progress.
Thus
far
the
examen
has
illuminated
the
past
day. Now the examen becomes
the
cutting
edge
of
spiritual
growth
for
the
day
to
follow."
The
examen
prayer
practice
helps
me
look
forward
to
a
new
day
with
a
sense
of
appreciation
for
the
past
and
anticipation
for
the
future,
inspired
by
the
hope
for
renewal.
Writing
a
prayer
integrates
3
steps
in
the
awareness
exercise:
self-examination;
answering
a query; closing with a prayer. That extra writing step adds a
dimension that strengthens self-examination in the context of
God-attention.
III:
[Lectio Divina]—I
sought my own framework for connecting queries and prayer in an
adaptation of the Benedictine
practice of Lectio
Divina.
It
promotes
reading
as
prayer,
holy
or
divine
reading,
not
for
the
sake
of
study,
but
with
the
purpose
of
transformation.
The
process
is:
read
a
Bible
passage
(lectio);
meditate
on a striking
word
or
phrase
(meditatio);
talk,
pray
to
God
about
your
experience,
from
the
heart
(oratio);
wait
and
listen
for
what
comes
in
response
to
the
word
or
phrase
(contemplatio).
Reversing
the
order
seemed
a
way
of
conceiving
the
reading/prayer
process
in
a
new
way,
[beginning
with
the
brief
text
of
a
query,
continuing
with
contemplation,
writing
after each of the 4
steps
and
ending
with
a
longer
text
in
written
prayer].
[Query
&
Reversed Lectio Divina]—Am
I open to new Light and Truth from wherever it may come? Pulling
key
words
&
phrases,
I
get:
am
I
open;
new;
Light;
Truth;
from wherever. In
contemplation [I
feel]
required
to
wait
&
listen
to
the
prompting
of
each
part
of
it.
It
led
to
the
following
lines
[excerpt]: Darkness
conceals,
Light reveals./ Darkness confuses, Light awakens ... Truth hurts, but
Truth also heals./ Truth shows me my false self, but Truth also
shows/ me my true
self ... in the Light of your Truth. In
prayer
I
consider:
Am
I
open?
I
always
assume
that
it
is
possible
for
me
to
be
more
open
than
I
realize,
but
not
without
divine
aid.
[Prayer
yielded
the
written
words]:
Can I
will myself
to be open,
O God? Or
Must I only
rely on you,
the Opener?
[I am
opened]
like a
wound
or
like
a
vault
... Perhaps
being
open
to
being
closed
is
the
honest
place
for
me
to
start.
In
meditation
I
consider
"new"
and
the
phrase
"wherever
it
may
come."
If
"old"
means
comfortable
and
convenient,
then
looking
for
a
"new"
may
appear
necessary.
But it can feel so
discomforting, O God,/ to look for Light and Truth where I often
don't want to
gaze. Finally
at the point of reading a text, I aim to combine all these pieces in
a final prayer: O
God of Light
and Truth,/ praise be to you/ who yearns
for me to be open/ to these beacons of your guidance/ that help me
love you and others./ Help me to face myself as honestly/ as you see
me.
The
preliminary
set
of
reflections
can
inspire
future
consideration
of
the
same
query.
IV:
Limitations
in
writing a query
prayer—1st,
writing a
prayer
carries
the
risk
of
limiting
our
praying
to
just
those
words.
We
can
still
use
words
in
a
sensitive
and
broad
manner.
2nd,
a
written
prayer
is
not
an
end
in
itself,
but
a
means
to
focus
attention
on
God
while
practicing
self-examination,
and
to
develop
a
new
way
of
life.
3rd,
writing
a
prayer
complements
and
does
not
replace
spoken
or
silent
prayer;
it
can
provide
additional
opportunities
to
intensify
the
prayer
experience.
Finally,
writing
a
prayer
must
be
more
about
prayer
than
about
writing.
A
final
draft
is
not
the
objective
of
written
prayer.
My
lack
of
a
disciplined
prayer
practice
had
stifled
my
attentiveness
to
God,
making
"loving
God"
less
realizable
in
my
daily
life.
Prayer
heightens
power
of
discernment,
helping
to
distinguish
between
authentic
and
inauthentic
responses
to
God
and
others.
The
ultimate
purpose
for
writing
query
prayers
is
not
merely
to
produce
well-written
prayers
or
to
achieve
a
satisfying
self-examination,
but
"to
position
ourselves
in
that
active
cooperation
with
God
where
we
may
discern
what
is
authentic
and
be
ready
to
carry
it
out"
(Douglas
Steere)
Query
and Prayer—Do I have
a
clear
vision
of
what
living
in
the
"manner
of
Friends"
means
in
our
world
today?
Prayer:
O God,
our
greatest
Friend
... help
me
to
grasp
your
call/
to
embrace
you
as
a
Friend ...I choose
personal friends/ to share my life./ You choose spiritual friends/ to
share your life ... "love your enemy."/ presents a crucial
test/ the world's laughable jest./ Isn't this where
the "manner of Friends" begins?/
Thank you for leading ... simple saints/ living the light of
integrity/ of simplicity, equality, and peace ... Do
these testimonies still resonate today?
... Do I
fear standing apart,/
or fear not
being a part/
accepted, approved/
by giving up
these standards/
giving into the mocking?/
How well am I doing, O God?/
Only
you
in
my
heart
of
hearts
knows ...
Pray
through
me,
O
God/
that
I
may
show
your
Light/
in
the
manner
of
Friends.
V:
[Conclusion/ Queries]—At
a meeting for
worship
immediately
following
my
return
from
Collegeville,
I
sat
with
a
copy
of
my
written
prayer,
trying
to
discern
whether
to
share
it
with
the
meeting
or
not.
[I
wrestled
back
and
forth
with
the
decision].
Finally,
I
felt
led
to
stand
and
read.
Addressing
a
query
as
a
prayer
and
reading
it
that
morning
helped
me
return
from
a
period of lethargy and withdrawal and to recover my call to
vocal
ministry.
By writing prayers in response to queries, I find myself more open to
other leadings that I am now ready to share with others in meetings
and beyond. This approach revived my use of queries and intensified
my practice of prayer, for which I am [grateful].
Queries—What role have queries played in supporting your spiritual life and daily living? What is prayer and how do you pray? What kind of helpful or unhelpful structures for prayer or contemplation have you tried? After trying this approach, what did you find spiritually valuable about this approach? What to you is the value or limitation of writing your own prayers or on your spiritual life?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
Queries—What role have queries played in supporting your spiritual life and daily living? What is prayer and how do you pray? What kind of helpful or unhelpful structures for prayer or contemplation have you tried? After trying this approach, what did you find spiritually valuable about this approach? What to you is the value or limitation of writing your own prayers or on your spiritual life?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
424. Nonviolent Direct Action as a Spiritual Path (by Richard K. Taylor; 2013)
About the Author—Richard Taylor grew in Abington Friends Meeting (PA) and attended Quaker schools and colleges. Over the past 50 years, he led or participated in hundreds of nonviolent actions; he worked for 2 years on the national field staff of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He and his wife Phyllis have worked in nonviolent movements to abolish torture, support civil and human rights, protect the environment, protest the Vietnam War, uproot anti-Semitism, and more. In these movements, he has attempted to be open to the guidance of Christ's spirit and call to express faith in a strong but loving action.
[Introduction]/ What Does Nonviolent Direct Action Mean—If asked to make a list of our spiritual practices, most Friends probably would mention prayer, meditation, meeting for worship or serving others. I would want to be sure that nonviolent direct action is on the list. For me direct action often has gone hand in hand with deep spiritual experience. We would do well not to overlook the richness, depth, power in such action when we are considering the many ways that God's Spirit enriches our lives.
"Nonviolent direct action" conveys different meanings to different people. [Equating it with] simply avoiding violence, conflict resolution, or peacemaking does not do justice to the full meaning of the term. Often it emerges in struggles for social change that are anything but free of conflict. When Mohandas Gandhi mounted his famous "Salt March," it was hardly an act of peacemaking or conflict resolution. When I think of nonviolent direct action, I think of the Salt March, and of Martin Luther King's attempt to walk over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. Participants are engaging in nonviolent direct action when they stand together and use their unarmed bodies to act directly against injustice or oppression without using violence.
I include in "nonviolent direct action" Solidarity in Poland, Philippine nuns facing soldiers, Estonians facing the Soviets, American women marching for the right to vote. Quakers, of course, should be included in this history. Quakers like Reginald Reynolds, Jim Bristol, Bayard Rustin. Nonviolent action has been used by millions of people around the world in many cultures and historical eras [with remarkable results]. When I refer to nonviolent direct action I am thinking about an active, bold method of social change in which participants nonviolently put forward their unarmed bodies to resist injustice or oppression. Participation in nonviolent direct action is a path to a closer relationship with God. Will further reflection on such experiences be an important source of courage, guidance, and power as we seek to be faithful and in service to our crippled world?
Martin Luther King, Jr./ Marching for Voting Rights in Selma—Spirituality & nonviolent direct action intersected in a stunning way in Martin Luther King's life. [At one time he is] telling God he doesn't think he can go on as leader of the Montgomery movement & have his family face hate mail & threats. He writes: "I determined to take my problem to God ... I prayed aloud: 'I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.' At that moment, I experienced the Divine as never before. [An inner voice seemed to say], 'Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.' Almost at once my fears began to pass." Pervading the Montgomery bus boycott was the strength and inspiration that all the participants found in their common church worship that preceded nearly every direct action.
Before the 2nd planned march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge I consulted 2 activist friends to discern whether I should go. We flew to Montgomery & were bused to the little Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma. The singing, preaching & 1st-march testimonies added to everyone's determination & courage & increased our sense of community & purpose. A young, white Unitarian minister was beaten that night & died later. Ralph Abernathy said: "Let us pray for him ... & for his family, that they may be comforted & strengthened at this most difficult time. & let us pray for those who attacked him, that they might see [their error] & return to their full humanity."
Rarely have I felt God's Spirit so vividly, Still, it was frightening to think that, not far away, furious white segregationists were waiting with their clubs and axe handles, ready to do more beating. As we marched toward the bridge, I was committed, but also scared; my friend Jerry Rardin was "not particularly" sacred. I prayed for help, and my fear receded, at least a little. In spite of my fear, I was disappointed when King decided to end the march at the foot of the bridge. He felt we had made our point, with thousands of people there supporting voting rights for black people. He was reluctant to lead people where they might be badly hurt. Not long after the 3rd march that made it to Montgomery, the U.S. Congress passed the historic Voting Rights Act.
Courage—Others thought I had courage to go to Selma. I will quickly admit that I'm not always courageous. The anticipation of frightening, painful consequences might make me unable or unwilling to act on my beliefs & desire to be courageous. I have been courageous in the past. The roots of my courage comes from Quaker upbringing at Abington. We were told of early Friends & radical commitment to faith. We were frequently challenged whether we would have the courage to stand up for our beliefs. We saw that an important aspect of having courage was to have role models of people who showed courage in spite of intimidating circumstances.
Abington Friends were eager to hear the firsthand stories of Quakers on "freedom rides" (with African Americans on segregated buses into the South). Ralph Rose wrote: "It was scary to pull into the bus stop to see ... incensed crowds of white segregationists ... I prayed really hard and felt the Spirit's peace descend on me. I stepped out of the bus, and a burly man hit me in the face ... He kept swinging [wildly] ... I'd had some training in boxing [and was mentally giving him pointers on how to punch better] ... I was amazed at how peaceful and loving I felt in the midst of his pummeling." Courage does not require fearlessness; it requires the judgment that something else is more important than fear. As I reflect on the sources of courage in my own life, I see 3 factors: admiration for others, which provided role models; opportunities to test courage; God's help in overcoming fear.
Under a Collapsed Barn/ Becoming a Conscientious Objector —[In college I volunteered after a wind storm to rescue livestock trapped in collapsed barns. A dairy farmer pulled a leaning barn wall off of his cows that nearly hit me]. I remember crawling into blackness under the beams & splintered flooring, past crushed & injured cows, to find [savable] cows, while the barn threatened to come down farther. The farmer & we students were able to pull away some of the wood, help some cows to their feet, & lead them outside. I said to myself, "Maybe I do have some courage." Gandhi described himself as being a coward for years. He was only able to shed his cowardice as he came to see nonviolence as a courageous way to struggle for justice.
I transferred to Haverford College during the Korean War. It meant having to decide whether to apply for conscientious objector (CO) status. I asked: "Is my pacifism a deep conviction against killing other human beings or a lack of courage to face combat? I discerned that it really was conviction and not lack of courage. I also had a conviction that I must be willing to take risks comparable to battle risks to live out my own convictions. I chose to work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Mexico and El Salvador. I encountered life-threatening situations that required courage.
Fighting Housing Discrimination/ Spiritual Experiences during Protests against the Vietnam War/ Quaker Peacekeepers—Phyllis and I supported African American couples who had purchased houses in all-white communities. Protesting neighbors rioted, defacing the houses. We moved in with them for a few days to support them and help clean up the damage. I have manifested courage, but I would hesitate to describe myself as a courageous person; it is not a permanent feature of my personality. Courage is a gift from God to the person who wants to be courageous; it doesn't guarantee that one will be brave in every turn of events.
After a big, Powerful, inspiring, nonviolent demonstration, most of the people who attended would get on their buses and go home. Often, small bands of angry people would stay behind and express their outrage against U.S. policy by smashing store windows and overturning cars. The press coverage would focus on the violence, and the peaceful message was lost or compromised. As we prayerfully tried to discern if we could be a peaceful presence in the chaos following a large antiwar demonstration, a young Friend said, "let's just march peacefully toward the White House and see how the Spirit guides us."
At a corner near the White House we were confronted by a tall, powerfully built policeman, who warned us he would teargas or club us. We sat down on the sidewalk in silent prayer with the cop standing over us, teargas drifting by, searchlights scanning, [rioters and police running]. In deep, deep silent worship God's "still small voice of calm" became present. Some Friends spoke, [feeling led to caution], others felt led to go forward. Some withdrew, others moved forward. We acknowledged the officer's difficult night and job and said, "We feel we've gotten God's guidance to keep going." After repeating his earlier warning, the officer stopped the traffic and allowed us to cross and circle the White House for the rest of the night. Several of the running figures actually joined us, [glad for the alternative to the violence they had planned].
Quakers played key peacekeeping roles in a march of 250,000 peace advocates. After marching toward the White House, the march was to turn a hard left on 15th Street. I was stationed at the corner with a dozen young priests, all of whom had nonviolence training. Behind us was a large police and soldier presence. [Most marchers routinely made the turn]. Soon, a group known for violent disruption came down Pennsylvania Avenue. The police were concerned and asked if we could handle it. I took 4 priests from our line and headed for the rogue marchers. I prayed "God, please help us." Immediately, a powerful, totally unexpected warmth flooded my body. By God, with some arm gestures and admiring comments from us, they made the turn.
Strength to be Hit by a Train—The Philadelphia Life Center turned its attention to the Earle Naval Ammunition Depot near Leonardo, NJ, which shipped ammunition to Vietnam. We planned to walk down the beach and climb boulders to the pier that was 20 feet off the ground. The pier was lined with police and deputized civilians with long billy clubs. Soon, we were a long line of peace activists standing on rocks, clinging onto the dock, and looking up at the barricade of bodies & billy clubs.
I glanced down the line and saw my beloved Phyllis resting her elbows on the dock in an attitude of prayer. I prayed, "God please help us," & felt peace, strength, & energy come over me. I saw that there was some space below the train's undercarriage between the tracks. I jumped up onto the tracks & knelt between the rails. I grabbed a chain hanging down on the front of the train. I was pushed over and dragged a few years. They carried me to a police wagon, but I felt like I was floating weightlessly. At the trial, it seemed as though there was a sort of "path" of vibrating light between me and the judge. My words seemed to flow out effortlessly.
We were sentenced to 10 days in jail. Phyllis describes her spiritual experience in jail. "We refused to come out of our cells in protest of another inmate being punished and restricted to her cell ... I tried to see "that of God" in the officer on guard ... In a short while, she was sharing with me how important this job was to her, the 1st stable job she ever had ... We went from an "I-It" to an "I-thou" relationship ... I was an RN, and the officer came to me for help. We became allies rather than adversaries."
Blockading for Bangladesh—Not long after MLK's assassination, a group of us organized the Philadelphia Life Center. Seeing it as a way to carry on King's legacy, we also looked for opportunities to engage in direct action. Nixon was secretly sending military equipment by freighter to the dictator of Pakistan, who used it to kill 3,000,000 East Pakistanis and turn a million more into refugees. We hit on the idea of the publicity of using kayaks and canoes to "blockade" Pakistani freighters. [This led to long nights with little sleep, that left exhaustion in their wake]. I would pray "God help me." Instantly, my exhaustion fell away and I was given energy.
We were warned of by a police cutter. We yelled back that freighter was a death ship and we were trying to prevent the deaths of 10's of thousands of Bangladeshis. I guess all of us were ready to take big risks or die to stop the slaughter. Suddenly I "saw" the shimmering face of Jesus Christ, hovering over the water. As expected, we could not block the Padma, but the dramatic socio-drama caught the media's attention. The story literally went around the world. We have been assured that what we did in Baltimore harbor was an important factor in the cutting of US military aid and helping Bangladesh. For me it was also what Jesus did.
What I Owe to Christ—If I am to express honestly and in depth what is to me the spirituality of nonviolent direct action, I need to write about my belief in Jesus. Not all Friends will be comfortable with what I am about to say. Many unprogrammed Friends may ask: "But what about other religions?" What I am writing about the spirituality of nonviolent direct action wouldn't be complete without talking about what I owe to Christ.
In Abington Friends Meeting, I heard about George Fox and a religion of continuing revelation, personal experience, and direct communion with God. This religion of direct experience sounded very appealing to me. I wondered why Friends move so quickly from "Christ language" to "God language." What [I took in more of] was Jesus' ethical teachings, especially those picked up in Quaker testimonies: peace, equality, simplicity, integrity. I stood my ground as a "liberal" Quaker who saw Jesus as a wonderful teacher, but certainly not as divine. Evangelical Friends of the Midwest and West made a deep impression on me.
Moving Closer to Christ—To East Coast Christo-centric Quakers, Christ was God. Just as importantly, he was directly accessible in their daily lives. I was inspired to read Lewis Benson's Christ-centered interpretation of early Quakerism, and Albert Fowler's PHP #112 Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought. I discovered that, for me at least, the New Testament makes so many extraordinary claims about Jesus' uniqueness and divinity that it was impossible to give it a "humanistic" interpretation.
I recognized within me a deep hole, laced with anxiety, regrets, temptations & "demons." Driving my search was my intellect & hope for finding the "rest" that Jesus promised. I had a growing love for Jesus; he seemed the most loving & lovable person imaginable. For Brian Boyle Jesus "was the distilled essence of the unimaginable Force that created all that is." Imagine! We have that "distilled essence" within us! When I was at last able to confess that "Jesus is lord," I began to glimpse the reality of what Thomas Kelly wrote: "Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form & action. & He is within us all."
Jesus' Presence in Nonviolent Direct Action—Given who he was, how he acted, and what he taught while on earth, it should not be surprising that we find him by our side when we engage in nonviolent direct action. I am only describing my own experience of God through Christ in nonviolent direct action, and am not saying that Christ is a prerequisite for experiencing God in nonviolent action. God may or may not enter into the calculations of people around the world considering nonviolent action. What attitudes of mind and spirit might we keep in mind if we want to draw on our spirituality while engaging in nonviolent action?
We need to discern whether or not to take part. Do I agree with the action's goals? What will be my choice's impact on family, friends & associates? How will I maintain an attitude of goodwill toward opponents I may meet, especially hostile or aggressive ones? In Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola suggests making 2 columns on a piece of paper with the headings: "Why this is a good decision" & "Why this is a bad decision." Write down reasons in both columns. If one column brings disquiet to your spirit & the other brings peace, follow God's leading in the peace-filled choice. Imagine yourself making a decision. Does one decision make you feel closer to God than the other? What account of this decision would you want to tell to God?
I have felt the God of love respond to "Help me" by removing my fear and gracing me with peace, patience, love, and what the moment demands. We can be talking to God before, during and after the action. Expect God to be present in nonviolent direct action. Why would God not want to be present in the midst of people seeking justice through love? Isaiah celebrates this in Isaiah 58:8-9. God has said more than once to me, sometimes softly, sometimes unmistakably, "Here I am."
Queries: What in your spiritual practices do you find most meaningful? What has your non-violent direct action experience been like? Has prayer ever given you strength & courage in a situation? Who are the people in life that have modeled courage? If I am unwilling to face violent battle, must I then be willing to take similar risks to live out my own convictions? How do you make difficult decisions in your life?
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425. The Light Within: Then and Now (by Rex Ambler; 2013)
About the Author—Rex Ambler taught theology at Birmingham Univ. (UK) for 30+ years. He now writes mostly on Quaker faith & practice, & teaches Quaker meditation [in the form of] "Experiment with Light," & helps those interested to set up "light groups" to practice it. See www.experiment-with-light.org.uk., Light to Live By: Exploration in Quaker Spirituality, & End of Words: Issues in Contemporary Quaker Theology.
Then and Now—The Light Within is a fundamental concept of our Quaker faith. It is also a remarkably vague concept. There is little sense of a secure and lasting meaning grounded in our history or in our own experience. How do we make sense of our faith [using the Light Within as a fundamental concept]? How do we communicate our faith [using the Light Within as a fundamental concept]? [Modern definitions of the light struggle between being specific enough to be meaningful, and broad enough to include the wide] variety of Friends' understandings. [Such definitions do not come across as a coherent concept]. [Perhaps] the definition includes paradox, Christian, and Universalist components. What exactly does the Light refer to then? We cannot answer that question because in the course of our history we have forgotten. Life has changed since our beginning, and we can no longer recall our distinctive language then or know what it could mean today.
A Brief History—The 1st thing to note is that George Fox's message, and that of early Friends, was new and radical, a radical answer to radical times. George Fox said: "Your teacher is within you, look not forth." The outside things he was referring to included the Bible, [which could be used only in concert with the teacher within]. Fox said of the light: "The light is that by which ye come to see./ For with the light one sees one's self."
The Light as he understood it, wasn't something you saw in the distance, like a beacon or a lamp. It is something you see by. With it you could see reality around & inside you, normally covered by the dark. "Dark" & "light" were the time's regular metaphors, beginning a century before. [e.g. William Tyndale, Francis Rous]. They echoed the language of John's Gospel. Fox message was that if they could open themselves to God's light, it would show them all they needed to know. If the learned didn't really experience the reality they were talking about, they were no help to themselves or to anyone else. This message wasn't welcome in church or society. It threatened to undermine the given structures of society by persuading people to trust themselves. Church & state tried to eliminate the movement. The educated among them wrote some impressive books setting out their case.
Robert Barclay's book, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1676) was the most effective, brilliant piece of theological argument. It helped establish Quakerism as a respectable, law-abiding, Bible-reading religion. It had a negative effect. It established that Quakerism was based upon reason & the Bible. Although accepting in theory that Quakers depended on Light within them to show them the truth, [he used scripture & theological reason to interpret it]. The Light was reduced to a God-given faculty which enabled them to recognize truth.
Barclay played down those elements of their faith that had provoked the persecution in the 1st place, namely their rejection of external authority and affirmation of internal resources. This appealed to Friends too. For the next 200 years they accepted Barclay's defense as the best guide to faith. They continued to "wait in the Light" for illumination and guidance and have truth revealed to them and to live by it. But it was no longer the truth of their own life, but a distinctly religious truth about God and his will. The Light Within now took 2nd place to the Text without. We have been attracted to one religious position after another. In the process we have lost our distinctive understanding and therefore much of vibrancy and power of our distinctive faith.
A Closer Look at the Original Meaning—Over the years, we have stayed with our faith & practiced it the best we can. We recognize it when we see it, even in Hindu and Buddhist writing. I have also found it in the writings of the 1st Friends, which shows the richness and depth of our own tradition. The Light of God within people is central to their understanding. They "turned to the Light," "walked in the Light," and "knew experimentally" the deeper bond that held them together. I describe the early Quaker's understanding of the Light Within under 3 statements: The light was a capacity for awareness in every human being; The Light was revealed 1st as self-awareness; The Light revealed the source of life and unity.
The Light was a Capacity for Awareness in Every Human Being—What enables us to "see ourselves" isn't physical light but a spiritual one, & is internal. Reason & conscience aren't adequate to the task of enabling us really to see ourselves. They are connected to ego, which may not want to see the reality. We need a "light of God" to expose the deeper realities. We don't normally take all of reality in. We select what we want & we make up the the rest to suit our needs & desires. It detaches us from reality, & our images & ideas come to stand in for reality. George Fox said: "When once you deny truth then you are given over to believe lies ... Mind God's light in you, [hypocrites], which shows you the deceit of your hearts & obey that." If we are attached to our ideas & images, our normal thinking capacity may be bent on justifying these ideas & bolstering our self-image.
For Fox as with others who became Quakers, the theological stand-ins for reality were no longer adequate. They were open to some deeper or more immediate experience of life that would finally expose the truth of it. George Fox said: "And then the spiritual discerning came into me, which I did discern my own thoughts, groans and sighs, and what it was that did veil me, and what it was that did open me." It made him aware of what he was doing in one's self, and with other people, and the dire consequences of his behaviors. One saw others and one's self as they really were. He was in touch with reality and reconciled to it.
He saw the light "shine through all." Those who responded to his message were launched on a journey of discovery together to find life's truth that could make them whole. Fox said: "As there is a world without you there is a world in the heart." It was "experimental religion," comparable to the new, experimental science; everyone could try it for themselves, & live out of their insights in everyday life. They don't so much believe a set of truths or values, as trust a source of insight that can show them the truth, & then live according to that insight.
The Light was Revealed 1st as Self-Awareness—This is one of the most neglected themes of Quaker faith. Even the Quakers at the beginning of last century, who brought so much of the early understanding to life again, [did not mention this basic early understanding]. Early 20th century Quakers were so optimistic about human nature, they saw no obstacle to humans' [embracing] reality. 100 years, 2 world wars, & fairly constant conflict [somewhere in the world], we aren't so likely to be optimistic. We recognize the huge unconscious motivations that turn people down destructive ways of life, while convinced they're doing the right thing, much like the early Quakers insight that human life is blighted by deceit and make-believe.
Fox was emphatic; the truth had to begin with us. We have honed self-image to make it acceptable to ourselves & others. We have to pay attention to those neglected parts of ourselves & accept them as part of the picture. There will be much resistance to any such subversive inquiry, & the ego will defend itself vigorously. Early Quakers knew it took courage & patience to face the truth about themselves. They had the Light as a re-source within them that enabled them to see & accept what they saw. It gave a detached & holistic view of life, unaffected by fear & prejudice. George Fox said: "Which light being owned, self & the righteousness of self [are] denied." The self thought it was central & important & flawless; it can be seen in the Light to be none of these things. Being rooted in the deeper self, it will find it is bound up with others in the unity of life. The Light frees people from self-imposed restrictions by showing them the truth & enabling them to be truly themselves.
The Light Revealed the Source of Life and Unity—Since the deep self manifested itself initially as light, it was giving them a view of themselves somehow from outside themselves. As it showed them, and they accepted their failures and weaknesses. Fox could even say that it was love that had shown him the truth about himself, "as I was without him." By opening himself up to its truth and accepting it, he was connected to God, the source of his own being. Fox and 1st Friends did not want to say that the Light was "human." Barclay may have confused matters by saying that the Light was implanted [i.e. made part of us] by God. There is a tragic sense that humans are cut off from the ultimate source of their lives because, out of fear for their egos they have turned away from it. Turning back to it is where they found their true center in that of God within them, and where they could experience their oneness with God.
People of influence constructed great barriers to keep others at bay, with class, religion, & nationality, & persuaded themselves & others that these divisions were inevitable & even beneficial. Quakers saw through the pretense. In their various "testimonies" they were trying to act out in their everyday lives the truth about life which they had discovered for themselves, in hopes that others would recognize that truth. They could see how people were caught in a trap similar to their own. William Penn said: "God, having given them a sight of themselves, they saw the whole world in the same glass of truth, & sensibly discerned the affections & passions of men, & the rise & tendency of things." They could see the root of evil in others, in their denial of the truth, but they could also see the root of goodness in others, in their deep (if unacknowledged) awareness of truth.
The Light does all things & more things that I haven't described by making people aware of who they really are. George Fox said: "Through the light that enligheneth them they have life ... they have salvation, they have truth, they have peace with God ... All they that are in the light are in unity; for the light is but one." The various aspects of the Light's activity were well summarized by Elizabeth Bathurst: " The Principle of Truth is a principle of divine light & life of Christ Jesus, placed in the conscience, which opens the understanding, enlightens the eyes of the mind, discovers sin to the soul, reproves for & makes it appear exceeding sinful, quickens such as accept it ... makes them alive to God, and brings them into conformity to the image of God's son Christ Jesus ... Christianity consists of conformity unto that one eternal principle, to wit, the light of Christ manifest in the conscience, and yet leads into a heavenly order both in doctrine, principle and conversation."
A Reflection on its Meaning Today—The early understanding of the Light was very different from the understanding we may have now. Does what early Quakers were saying about the Light speak to our condition? Is it still relevant & important? In their time, people took the phrase "the light within," as a metaphor for a capacity within themselves to see the world & understand it. The Quakers said that the "true light within" was a capacity to see things as they are, to see reality, & that was beyond their normal capacity to think or discern. They needed a source that challenged their normal self & enabled them to get beyond it, a light of God.
It required giving up a familiar sense of self & trust a source within that was apparently beyond their control. Those with power feared losing it to [the people's reliance on something other than church & state for guidance of their behavior & views]. We don't have the rigid 17th century world hierarchies, but we do have structures of power, less visible perhaps, that determine how we live, & we look to authorities of a different kind, to tell us what to think [about reality]. Do we need to recover the early Quaker's immediate sense of reality?
They knew that they had to dig deep, and they needed one another to support them in this quest. They needed to trust the deep spirit within them and follow it. They had to wait patiently and listen to one another as each one bore witness; they found that it worked as an "experimental" religion. We would have to sit lightly by our treasured beliefs and values and put them to the test in experience. [We have to do more than tolerate the views of others, and seek to come to unity]. We have to be taken deeper than thought. We may have lost the understanding of the Light that inspired the Quaker movement, but we have kept the practice of sitting in silence that grew out of it. Our history can tell us what it means to be enlightened and how the experience can be prepared for and nurtured. In meeting for business we look for understanding we can all share. Light brings people to an awareness of the reality they share so they can embrace it and find fellowship together.
This understanding opens the way to a new approach for our Quaker life; it points the way to a deeper practice. One can sit and ponder, hoping for some bright idea, or let go of our ideas, and wait patiently for the reality of the situation to be disclosed to us. If there is family or group tension, we can respond in a number of ways. If we took our cues from early Friends, we would choose to sit quietly and open ourselves up to what is really happening, and what our part in it is. I have found that opening myself to the Light in this way makes a huge difference to the way I see my life and the possibilities before me; the answer is given when I wait patiently for it.
How do we speak to people of our faith without seeming to impose our opinion on them? We bear witness to what we know from our own experience and leave it to others to decide whether and how that witness might be relevant to them. We can tell them that there is a capacity in us humans to see the reality of life as we each have to live it and that that reality can be trusted and lived by. If they find our words puzzling or odd, we can give up words altogether, and let our lives do the talking, "Let our lives speak." They [can] exemplify what it means in practice to live in the Light of the God and follow the truth it reveals to us.
Queries—How would you define the Light? Why are reason and conscience not adequate to the task of enabling us really to see ourselves? What does it mean to be "judged with the light?" How does the Light connect people at a profound level with each other?
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"Nonviolent direct action" conveys different meanings to different people. [Equating it with] simply avoiding violence, conflict resolution, or peacemaking does not do justice to the full meaning of the term. Often it emerges in struggles for social change that are anything but free of conflict. When Mohandas Gandhi mounted his famous "Salt March," it was hardly an act of peacemaking or conflict resolution. When I think of nonviolent direct action, I think of the Salt March, and of Martin Luther King's attempt to walk over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. Participants are engaging in nonviolent direct action when they stand together and use their unarmed bodies to act directly against injustice or oppression without using violence.
I include in "nonviolent direct action" Solidarity in Poland, Philippine nuns facing soldiers, Estonians facing the Soviets, American women marching for the right to vote. Quakers, of course, should be included in this history. Quakers like Reginald Reynolds, Jim Bristol, Bayard Rustin. Nonviolent action has been used by millions of people around the world in many cultures and historical eras [with remarkable results]. When I refer to nonviolent direct action I am thinking about an active, bold method of social change in which participants nonviolently put forward their unarmed bodies to resist injustice or oppression. Participation in nonviolent direct action is a path to a closer relationship with God. Will further reflection on such experiences be an important source of courage, guidance, and power as we seek to be faithful and in service to our crippled world?
Martin Luther King, Jr./ Marching for Voting Rights in Selma—Spirituality & nonviolent direct action intersected in a stunning way in Martin Luther King's life. [At one time he is] telling God he doesn't think he can go on as leader of the Montgomery movement & have his family face hate mail & threats. He writes: "I determined to take my problem to God ... I prayed aloud: 'I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.' At that moment, I experienced the Divine as never before. [An inner voice seemed to say], 'Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.' Almost at once my fears began to pass." Pervading the Montgomery bus boycott was the strength and inspiration that all the participants found in their common church worship that preceded nearly every direct action.
Before the 2nd planned march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge I consulted 2 activist friends to discern whether I should go. We flew to Montgomery & were bused to the little Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma. The singing, preaching & 1st-march testimonies added to everyone's determination & courage & increased our sense of community & purpose. A young, white Unitarian minister was beaten that night & died later. Ralph Abernathy said: "Let us pray for him ... & for his family, that they may be comforted & strengthened at this most difficult time. & let us pray for those who attacked him, that they might see [their error] & return to their full humanity."
Rarely have I felt God's Spirit so vividly, Still, it was frightening to think that, not far away, furious white segregationists were waiting with their clubs and axe handles, ready to do more beating. As we marched toward the bridge, I was committed, but also scared; my friend Jerry Rardin was "not particularly" sacred. I prayed for help, and my fear receded, at least a little. In spite of my fear, I was disappointed when King decided to end the march at the foot of the bridge. He felt we had made our point, with thousands of people there supporting voting rights for black people. He was reluctant to lead people where they might be badly hurt. Not long after the 3rd march that made it to Montgomery, the U.S. Congress passed the historic Voting Rights Act.
Courage—Others thought I had courage to go to Selma. I will quickly admit that I'm not always courageous. The anticipation of frightening, painful consequences might make me unable or unwilling to act on my beliefs & desire to be courageous. I have been courageous in the past. The roots of my courage comes from Quaker upbringing at Abington. We were told of early Friends & radical commitment to faith. We were frequently challenged whether we would have the courage to stand up for our beliefs. We saw that an important aspect of having courage was to have role models of people who showed courage in spite of intimidating circumstances.
Abington Friends were eager to hear the firsthand stories of Quakers on "freedom rides" (with African Americans on segregated buses into the South). Ralph Rose wrote: "It was scary to pull into the bus stop to see ... incensed crowds of white segregationists ... I prayed really hard and felt the Spirit's peace descend on me. I stepped out of the bus, and a burly man hit me in the face ... He kept swinging [wildly] ... I'd had some training in boxing [and was mentally giving him pointers on how to punch better] ... I was amazed at how peaceful and loving I felt in the midst of his pummeling." Courage does not require fearlessness; it requires the judgment that something else is more important than fear. As I reflect on the sources of courage in my own life, I see 3 factors: admiration for others, which provided role models; opportunities to test courage; God's help in overcoming fear.
Under a Collapsed Barn/ Becoming a Conscientious Objector —[In college I volunteered after a wind storm to rescue livestock trapped in collapsed barns. A dairy farmer pulled a leaning barn wall off of his cows that nearly hit me]. I remember crawling into blackness under the beams & splintered flooring, past crushed & injured cows, to find [savable] cows, while the barn threatened to come down farther. The farmer & we students were able to pull away some of the wood, help some cows to their feet, & lead them outside. I said to myself, "Maybe I do have some courage." Gandhi described himself as being a coward for years. He was only able to shed his cowardice as he came to see nonviolence as a courageous way to struggle for justice.
I transferred to Haverford College during the Korean War. It meant having to decide whether to apply for conscientious objector (CO) status. I asked: "Is my pacifism a deep conviction against killing other human beings or a lack of courage to face combat? I discerned that it really was conviction and not lack of courage. I also had a conviction that I must be willing to take risks comparable to battle risks to live out my own convictions. I chose to work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Mexico and El Salvador. I encountered life-threatening situations that required courage.
Fighting Housing Discrimination/ Spiritual Experiences during Protests against the Vietnam War/ Quaker Peacekeepers—Phyllis and I supported African American couples who had purchased houses in all-white communities. Protesting neighbors rioted, defacing the houses. We moved in with them for a few days to support them and help clean up the damage. I have manifested courage, but I would hesitate to describe myself as a courageous person; it is not a permanent feature of my personality. Courage is a gift from God to the person who wants to be courageous; it doesn't guarantee that one will be brave in every turn of events.
After a big, Powerful, inspiring, nonviolent demonstration, most of the people who attended would get on their buses and go home. Often, small bands of angry people would stay behind and express their outrage against U.S. policy by smashing store windows and overturning cars. The press coverage would focus on the violence, and the peaceful message was lost or compromised. As we prayerfully tried to discern if we could be a peaceful presence in the chaos following a large antiwar demonstration, a young Friend said, "let's just march peacefully toward the White House and see how the Spirit guides us."
At a corner near the White House we were confronted by a tall, powerfully built policeman, who warned us he would teargas or club us. We sat down on the sidewalk in silent prayer with the cop standing over us, teargas drifting by, searchlights scanning, [rioters and police running]. In deep, deep silent worship God's "still small voice of calm" became present. Some Friends spoke, [feeling led to caution], others felt led to go forward. Some withdrew, others moved forward. We acknowledged the officer's difficult night and job and said, "We feel we've gotten God's guidance to keep going." After repeating his earlier warning, the officer stopped the traffic and allowed us to cross and circle the White House for the rest of the night. Several of the running figures actually joined us, [glad for the alternative to the violence they had planned].
Quakers played key peacekeeping roles in a march of 250,000 peace advocates. After marching toward the White House, the march was to turn a hard left on 15th Street. I was stationed at the corner with a dozen young priests, all of whom had nonviolence training. Behind us was a large police and soldier presence. [Most marchers routinely made the turn]. Soon, a group known for violent disruption came down Pennsylvania Avenue. The police were concerned and asked if we could handle it. I took 4 priests from our line and headed for the rogue marchers. I prayed "God, please help us." Immediately, a powerful, totally unexpected warmth flooded my body. By God, with some arm gestures and admiring comments from us, they made the turn.
Strength to be Hit by a Train—The Philadelphia Life Center turned its attention to the Earle Naval Ammunition Depot near Leonardo, NJ, which shipped ammunition to Vietnam. We planned to walk down the beach and climb boulders to the pier that was 20 feet off the ground. The pier was lined with police and deputized civilians with long billy clubs. Soon, we were a long line of peace activists standing on rocks, clinging onto the dock, and looking up at the barricade of bodies & billy clubs.
I glanced down the line and saw my beloved Phyllis resting her elbows on the dock in an attitude of prayer. I prayed, "God please help us," & felt peace, strength, & energy come over me. I saw that there was some space below the train's undercarriage between the tracks. I jumped up onto the tracks & knelt between the rails. I grabbed a chain hanging down on the front of the train. I was pushed over and dragged a few years. They carried me to a police wagon, but I felt like I was floating weightlessly. At the trial, it seemed as though there was a sort of "path" of vibrating light between me and the judge. My words seemed to flow out effortlessly.
We were sentenced to 10 days in jail. Phyllis describes her spiritual experience in jail. "We refused to come out of our cells in protest of another inmate being punished and restricted to her cell ... I tried to see "that of God" in the officer on guard ... In a short while, she was sharing with me how important this job was to her, the 1st stable job she ever had ... We went from an "I-It" to an "I-thou" relationship ... I was an RN, and the officer came to me for help. We became allies rather than adversaries."
Blockading for Bangladesh—Not long after MLK's assassination, a group of us organized the Philadelphia Life Center. Seeing it as a way to carry on King's legacy, we also looked for opportunities to engage in direct action. Nixon was secretly sending military equipment by freighter to the dictator of Pakistan, who used it to kill 3,000,000 East Pakistanis and turn a million more into refugees. We hit on the idea of the publicity of using kayaks and canoes to "blockade" Pakistani freighters. [This led to long nights with little sleep, that left exhaustion in their wake]. I would pray "God help me." Instantly, my exhaustion fell away and I was given energy.
We were warned of by a police cutter. We yelled back that freighter was a death ship and we were trying to prevent the deaths of 10's of thousands of Bangladeshis. I guess all of us were ready to take big risks or die to stop the slaughter. Suddenly I "saw" the shimmering face of Jesus Christ, hovering over the water. As expected, we could not block the Padma, but the dramatic socio-drama caught the media's attention. The story literally went around the world. We have been assured that what we did in Baltimore harbor was an important factor in the cutting of US military aid and helping Bangladesh. For me it was also what Jesus did.
What I Owe to Christ—If I am to express honestly and in depth what is to me the spirituality of nonviolent direct action, I need to write about my belief in Jesus. Not all Friends will be comfortable with what I am about to say. Many unprogrammed Friends may ask: "But what about other religions?" What I am writing about the spirituality of nonviolent direct action wouldn't be complete without talking about what I owe to Christ.
In Abington Friends Meeting, I heard about George Fox and a religion of continuing revelation, personal experience, and direct communion with God. This religion of direct experience sounded very appealing to me. I wondered why Friends move so quickly from "Christ language" to "God language." What [I took in more of] was Jesus' ethical teachings, especially those picked up in Quaker testimonies: peace, equality, simplicity, integrity. I stood my ground as a "liberal" Quaker who saw Jesus as a wonderful teacher, but certainly not as divine. Evangelical Friends of the Midwest and West made a deep impression on me.
Moving Closer to Christ—To East Coast Christo-centric Quakers, Christ was God. Just as importantly, he was directly accessible in their daily lives. I was inspired to read Lewis Benson's Christ-centered interpretation of early Quakerism, and Albert Fowler's PHP #112 Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought. I discovered that, for me at least, the New Testament makes so many extraordinary claims about Jesus' uniqueness and divinity that it was impossible to give it a "humanistic" interpretation.
I recognized within me a deep hole, laced with anxiety, regrets, temptations & "demons." Driving my search was my intellect & hope for finding the "rest" that Jesus promised. I had a growing love for Jesus; he seemed the most loving & lovable person imaginable. For Brian Boyle Jesus "was the distilled essence of the unimaginable Force that created all that is." Imagine! We have that "distilled essence" within us! When I was at last able to confess that "Jesus is lord," I began to glimpse the reality of what Thomas Kelly wrote: "Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form & action. & He is within us all."
Jesus' Presence in Nonviolent Direct Action—Given who he was, how he acted, and what he taught while on earth, it should not be surprising that we find him by our side when we engage in nonviolent direct action. I am only describing my own experience of God through Christ in nonviolent direct action, and am not saying that Christ is a prerequisite for experiencing God in nonviolent action. God may or may not enter into the calculations of people around the world considering nonviolent action. What attitudes of mind and spirit might we keep in mind if we want to draw on our spirituality while engaging in nonviolent action?
We need to discern whether or not to take part. Do I agree with the action's goals? What will be my choice's impact on family, friends & associates? How will I maintain an attitude of goodwill toward opponents I may meet, especially hostile or aggressive ones? In Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola suggests making 2 columns on a piece of paper with the headings: "Why this is a good decision" & "Why this is a bad decision." Write down reasons in both columns. If one column brings disquiet to your spirit & the other brings peace, follow God's leading in the peace-filled choice. Imagine yourself making a decision. Does one decision make you feel closer to God than the other? What account of this decision would you want to tell to God?
I have felt the God of love respond to "Help me" by removing my fear and gracing me with peace, patience, love, and what the moment demands. We can be talking to God before, during and after the action. Expect God to be present in nonviolent direct action. Why would God not want to be present in the midst of people seeking justice through love? Isaiah celebrates this in Isaiah 58:8-9. God has said more than once to me, sometimes softly, sometimes unmistakably, "Here I am."
Queries: What in your spiritual practices do you find most meaningful? What has your non-violent direct action experience been like? Has prayer ever given you strength & courage in a situation? Who are the people in life that have modeled courage? If I am unwilling to face violent battle, must I then be willing to take similar risks to live out my own convictions? How do you make difficult decisions in your life?
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425. The Light Within: Then and Now (by Rex Ambler; 2013)
About the Author—Rex Ambler taught theology at Birmingham Univ. (UK) for 30+ years. He now writes mostly on Quaker faith & practice, & teaches Quaker meditation [in the form of] "Experiment with Light," & helps those interested to set up "light groups" to practice it. See www.experiment-with-light.org.uk., Light to Live By: Exploration in Quaker Spirituality, & End of Words: Issues in Contemporary Quaker Theology.
Then and Now—The Light Within is a fundamental concept of our Quaker faith. It is also a remarkably vague concept. There is little sense of a secure and lasting meaning grounded in our history or in our own experience. How do we make sense of our faith [using the Light Within as a fundamental concept]? How do we communicate our faith [using the Light Within as a fundamental concept]? [Modern definitions of the light struggle between being specific enough to be meaningful, and broad enough to include the wide] variety of Friends' understandings. [Such definitions do not come across as a coherent concept]. [Perhaps] the definition includes paradox, Christian, and Universalist components. What exactly does the Light refer to then? We cannot answer that question because in the course of our history we have forgotten. Life has changed since our beginning, and we can no longer recall our distinctive language then or know what it could mean today.
A Brief History—The 1st thing to note is that George Fox's message, and that of early Friends, was new and radical, a radical answer to radical times. George Fox said: "Your teacher is within you, look not forth." The outside things he was referring to included the Bible, [which could be used only in concert with the teacher within]. Fox said of the light: "The light is that by which ye come to see./ For with the light one sees one's self."
The Light as he understood it, wasn't something you saw in the distance, like a beacon or a lamp. It is something you see by. With it you could see reality around & inside you, normally covered by the dark. "Dark" & "light" were the time's regular metaphors, beginning a century before. [e.g. William Tyndale, Francis Rous]. They echoed the language of John's Gospel. Fox message was that if they could open themselves to God's light, it would show them all they needed to know. If the learned didn't really experience the reality they were talking about, they were no help to themselves or to anyone else. This message wasn't welcome in church or society. It threatened to undermine the given structures of society by persuading people to trust themselves. Church & state tried to eliminate the movement. The educated among them wrote some impressive books setting out their case.
Robert Barclay's book, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1676) was the most effective, brilliant piece of theological argument. It helped establish Quakerism as a respectable, law-abiding, Bible-reading religion. It had a negative effect. It established that Quakerism was based upon reason & the Bible. Although accepting in theory that Quakers depended on Light within them to show them the truth, [he used scripture & theological reason to interpret it]. The Light was reduced to a God-given faculty which enabled them to recognize truth.
Barclay played down those elements of their faith that had provoked the persecution in the 1st place, namely their rejection of external authority and affirmation of internal resources. This appealed to Friends too. For the next 200 years they accepted Barclay's defense as the best guide to faith. They continued to "wait in the Light" for illumination and guidance and have truth revealed to them and to live by it. But it was no longer the truth of their own life, but a distinctly religious truth about God and his will. The Light Within now took 2nd place to the Text without. We have been attracted to one religious position after another. In the process we have lost our distinctive understanding and therefore much of vibrancy and power of our distinctive faith.
A Closer Look at the Original Meaning—Over the years, we have stayed with our faith & practiced it the best we can. We recognize it when we see it, even in Hindu and Buddhist writing. I have also found it in the writings of the 1st Friends, which shows the richness and depth of our own tradition. The Light of God within people is central to their understanding. They "turned to the Light," "walked in the Light," and "knew experimentally" the deeper bond that held them together. I describe the early Quaker's understanding of the Light Within under 3 statements: The light was a capacity for awareness in every human being; The Light was revealed 1st as self-awareness; The Light revealed the source of life and unity.
The Light was a Capacity for Awareness in Every Human Being—What enables us to "see ourselves" isn't physical light but a spiritual one, & is internal. Reason & conscience aren't adequate to the task of enabling us really to see ourselves. They are connected to ego, which may not want to see the reality. We need a "light of God" to expose the deeper realities. We don't normally take all of reality in. We select what we want & we make up the the rest to suit our needs & desires. It detaches us from reality, & our images & ideas come to stand in for reality. George Fox said: "When once you deny truth then you are given over to believe lies ... Mind God's light in you, [hypocrites], which shows you the deceit of your hearts & obey that." If we are attached to our ideas & images, our normal thinking capacity may be bent on justifying these ideas & bolstering our self-image.
For Fox as with others who became Quakers, the theological stand-ins for reality were no longer adequate. They were open to some deeper or more immediate experience of life that would finally expose the truth of it. George Fox said: "And then the spiritual discerning came into me, which I did discern my own thoughts, groans and sighs, and what it was that did veil me, and what it was that did open me." It made him aware of what he was doing in one's self, and with other people, and the dire consequences of his behaviors. One saw others and one's self as they really were. He was in touch with reality and reconciled to it.
He saw the light "shine through all." Those who responded to his message were launched on a journey of discovery together to find life's truth that could make them whole. Fox said: "As there is a world without you there is a world in the heart." It was "experimental religion," comparable to the new, experimental science; everyone could try it for themselves, & live out of their insights in everyday life. They don't so much believe a set of truths or values, as trust a source of insight that can show them the truth, & then live according to that insight.
The Light was Revealed 1st as Self-Awareness—This is one of the most neglected themes of Quaker faith. Even the Quakers at the beginning of last century, who brought so much of the early understanding to life again, [did not mention this basic early understanding]. Early 20th century Quakers were so optimistic about human nature, they saw no obstacle to humans' [embracing] reality. 100 years, 2 world wars, & fairly constant conflict [somewhere in the world], we aren't so likely to be optimistic. We recognize the huge unconscious motivations that turn people down destructive ways of life, while convinced they're doing the right thing, much like the early Quakers insight that human life is blighted by deceit and make-believe.
Fox was emphatic; the truth had to begin with us. We have honed self-image to make it acceptable to ourselves & others. We have to pay attention to those neglected parts of ourselves & accept them as part of the picture. There will be much resistance to any such subversive inquiry, & the ego will defend itself vigorously. Early Quakers knew it took courage & patience to face the truth about themselves. They had the Light as a re-source within them that enabled them to see & accept what they saw. It gave a detached & holistic view of life, unaffected by fear & prejudice. George Fox said: "Which light being owned, self & the righteousness of self [are] denied." The self thought it was central & important & flawless; it can be seen in the Light to be none of these things. Being rooted in the deeper self, it will find it is bound up with others in the unity of life. The Light frees people from self-imposed restrictions by showing them the truth & enabling them to be truly themselves.
The Light Revealed the Source of Life and Unity—Since the deep self manifested itself initially as light, it was giving them a view of themselves somehow from outside themselves. As it showed them, and they accepted their failures and weaknesses. Fox could even say that it was love that had shown him the truth about himself, "as I was without him." By opening himself up to its truth and accepting it, he was connected to God, the source of his own being. Fox and 1st Friends did not want to say that the Light was "human." Barclay may have confused matters by saying that the Light was implanted [i.e. made part of us] by God. There is a tragic sense that humans are cut off from the ultimate source of their lives because, out of fear for their egos they have turned away from it. Turning back to it is where they found their true center in that of God within them, and where they could experience their oneness with God.
People of influence constructed great barriers to keep others at bay, with class, religion, & nationality, & persuaded themselves & others that these divisions were inevitable & even beneficial. Quakers saw through the pretense. In their various "testimonies" they were trying to act out in their everyday lives the truth about life which they had discovered for themselves, in hopes that others would recognize that truth. They could see how people were caught in a trap similar to their own. William Penn said: "God, having given them a sight of themselves, they saw the whole world in the same glass of truth, & sensibly discerned the affections & passions of men, & the rise & tendency of things." They could see the root of evil in others, in their denial of the truth, but they could also see the root of goodness in others, in their deep (if unacknowledged) awareness of truth.
The Light does all things & more things that I haven't described by making people aware of who they really are. George Fox said: "Through the light that enligheneth them they have life ... they have salvation, they have truth, they have peace with God ... All they that are in the light are in unity; for the light is but one." The various aspects of the Light's activity were well summarized by Elizabeth Bathurst: " The Principle of Truth is a principle of divine light & life of Christ Jesus, placed in the conscience, which opens the understanding, enlightens the eyes of the mind, discovers sin to the soul, reproves for & makes it appear exceeding sinful, quickens such as accept it ... makes them alive to God, and brings them into conformity to the image of God's son Christ Jesus ... Christianity consists of conformity unto that one eternal principle, to wit, the light of Christ manifest in the conscience, and yet leads into a heavenly order both in doctrine, principle and conversation."
A Reflection on its Meaning Today—The early understanding of the Light was very different from the understanding we may have now. Does what early Quakers were saying about the Light speak to our condition? Is it still relevant & important? In their time, people took the phrase "the light within," as a metaphor for a capacity within themselves to see the world & understand it. The Quakers said that the "true light within" was a capacity to see things as they are, to see reality, & that was beyond their normal capacity to think or discern. They needed a source that challenged their normal self & enabled them to get beyond it, a light of God.
It required giving up a familiar sense of self & trust a source within that was apparently beyond their control. Those with power feared losing it to [the people's reliance on something other than church & state for guidance of their behavior & views]. We don't have the rigid 17th century world hierarchies, but we do have structures of power, less visible perhaps, that determine how we live, & we look to authorities of a different kind, to tell us what to think [about reality]. Do we need to recover the early Quaker's immediate sense of reality?
They knew that they had to dig deep, and they needed one another to support them in this quest. They needed to trust the deep spirit within them and follow it. They had to wait patiently and listen to one another as each one bore witness; they found that it worked as an "experimental" religion. We would have to sit lightly by our treasured beliefs and values and put them to the test in experience. [We have to do more than tolerate the views of others, and seek to come to unity]. We have to be taken deeper than thought. We may have lost the understanding of the Light that inspired the Quaker movement, but we have kept the practice of sitting in silence that grew out of it. Our history can tell us what it means to be enlightened and how the experience can be prepared for and nurtured. In meeting for business we look for understanding we can all share. Light brings people to an awareness of the reality they share so they can embrace it and find fellowship together.
This understanding opens the way to a new approach for our Quaker life; it points the way to a deeper practice. One can sit and ponder, hoping for some bright idea, or let go of our ideas, and wait patiently for the reality of the situation to be disclosed to us. If there is family or group tension, we can respond in a number of ways. If we took our cues from early Friends, we would choose to sit quietly and open ourselves up to what is really happening, and what our part in it is. I have found that opening myself to the Light in this way makes a huge difference to the way I see my life and the possibilities before me; the answer is given when I wait patiently for it.
How do we speak to people of our faith without seeming to impose our opinion on them? We bear witness to what we know from our own experience and leave it to others to decide whether and how that witness might be relevant to them. We can tell them that there is a capacity in us humans to see the reality of life as we each have to live it and that that reality can be trusted and lived by. If they find our words puzzling or odd, we can give up words altogether, and let our lives do the talking, "Let our lives speak." They [can] exemplify what it means in practice to live in the Light of the God and follow the truth it reveals to us.
Queries—How would you define the Light? Why are reason and conscience not adequate to the task of enabling us really to see ourselves? What does it mean to be "judged with the light?" How does the Light connect people at a profound level with each other?
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426. But Who do you say that I Am: Quakers and Christ Today (by Doug Gwyn;
2014)
2014)
About the Author—Douglas Gwyn grew up in the pastoral stream of Friends in Indiana. After experiencing a call to ministry in 1968, he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he began to know unprogrammed Friends better. His ministry has been as a Friends pastor, a writer for the American Friends Service Committee, and as a teacher at Pendle Hill and Woodbrooke. Doug has coined the term "bispiritual" to describe Friends like himself who are engaged and nurtured by pastoral and unprogrammed Friends.
[Introduction]—Some Friends maintain the traditional Quaker-Christian faith. They identify the Light within as Christ's presence in each person, & that Christ is somehow one with Jesus of Nazareth. At the spectrum's other end are non-theist Friends, who reject Christ's divinity, & divinity in general. Jesus may have something to tell us, but only as one among many sources. Many don't know what they believe about Christ. All perspectives on Christ are increasingly muted in the meeting for worship, in deference to those who hold other views.
Christ has become "the elephant in the living room" we hesitate to acknowledge. Jesus asks his disciples, Who do people say that I am? and Who do you say that I am? Simon blurts out: "You are the Messiah." Even "the right answer" about Jesus raises profound and troubling new questions, After centuries of "Jesus is the answer," he is free at last to be the question again. After centuries in the gilded cage of officially sanctioned religion, Jesus is free to be subversive again.
My Own Testimony—I write with a conviction grounded in life-changing experiences & 40 years of Christian devotion & ministry. My vision comes from experiences in early adulthood. I grew up in a comfortable but not very challenging pastoral Friends meeting in the Midwest. I had nothing to rebel against & not much to kindle my spirit. I was probably mostly a nature mystic. In 1968, in college, I received a distinct call to ministry, [even though my plans were to become a scientist]. I began to realize that ministry named some gifts I might have and called me to grow into them. I was not yet a Christian when I was called to be a minister.
I understood ministry in the idiom of the pastor. I trained for ministry at Union Theological Seminary. With my science background, I was interested in historical critical methods of interpreting the Bible. In 1974, in the Spirit, I embraced the risen Christ & understood that everything he had done & had suffered was in love for me. [Both this & my call] occurred at moments of crisis in my young life. It gave me the conviction to follow the call wherever it led, which has included periods of pastoral ministry, scholarship & writing, travel in ministry, & teaching. I was open to the experience and understanding of people of other religious convictions, or of none.
Given my encounter with Christ, it would be disingenuous of me to stifle Christian identity & understanding for the sake of fitting in. There is something absolutely unique in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a crystalline expression of the love, wisdom, & will of God for all creation. Yet he is also universally human, as common as a carpenter's son from Galilee. His divinity & his humanity are one, inseparable—& so are ours.
In 1977, I had begun reading George Fox and was struck by his highly experiential way of interpreting the Bible. Lewis Benson was a key mentor to me as I began my own journey of independent scholarship. I discovered a theological tradition that answered the Christian-universalist paradox of my own experience. Early, traditional Quaker Christian faith holds to both the biblical Christian meaning of the Light within and the universal extent of it in human experience. It has been one central concern of my ministry over the years to help Friends understand this paradox and to resist opting for one side or the other of its bewildering truth.
The Testimony of Early Friends—A free mysterious Christ has been at the center of Quaker faith & practice from the beginning. Fox said: "Christ has come to teach his people himself, & bring them off the world's ways & religions ... You will say, Christ saith this, the apostles say this, but what canst thou say?" Margaret Fell responded: "We are all thieves, we are all thieves; we have taken the Scriptures in words & know nothing of them in ourselves."
In the 19th century, Friends in both Britain and American were drawn into conversation with other vital streams in their culture. Some engaged with evangelical Christians, some with Unitarians and other humanists; [both groups remodeled their faith and practice accordingly]. Friends merged their Quaker-Christian understandings with either the Protestant Reformation or the liberal Enlightenment. We responded to the question: Who do people say that I am?" We lost something rare and precious when we stopped speaking in the Quaker voice, [when we stopped asking and answering the question]: "But who do you say that I am?"
The challenge for Friends today is to witness to Christ as Paul did: "From now on, therefore we regard no one from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything has become new" (2 Corinthians 5:16-17). To be "in Christ," one passes beyond the con-fused human conversation about Christ and begins to live in conversation with Christ. We find ourselves together in nothing less than a new creative process, in a divine wisdom beyond all reckoning. Early Christians experienced Christ as a new collective reality. The sign of the cross served as a perpetual reproach to Rome and any power that represses the free movement of the Spirit among all the peoples of the earth.
Only as Christ became the "Christ" of the creedal formulations of later Church councils did this profoundly humanistic faith become a "religion" that alienated men & women from the presence & power of God among them. "Christ" became mythic, an explanation & justification for why the world is & must be: violent, unjust, exploitive, unloving. The ["Holy Roman] Empire" appropriated the Church. The desert fathers & mothers fled into the wilderness in order to revive & preserve Christ's free Spirit. Celtic Christianity's creative synthesis of pagan & Christian beliefs & practices in western France, Britain, & Ireland may well have been a subliminal influence in the rise of early Quaker movement in northern England in the 17th century. I recognize that there are variations within each of the Quaker perspectives on Christ on Christ characterized here. Some Friends may not feel accurately portrayed. I hope this general mapping of the current Quaker landscape will serve a useful purpose.
Foundationist & Conservative Friends—Some Friends have rediscovered & embraced the Christian vision of early & traditional Quaker faith & practice. Typically, they have found it by reading early Quaker writings or through contact with Conservative Friends. Friends in this stream generally fall into the foundationist & Conservative Friends categories. Foundationists have been inspired by the radical, prophetic, early Quaker writings, which have remarkably integrated biblical language with personal experience. For these Friends, foundational Quaker faith is the measure by which all subsequent Quaker witness is tested—and usually found lacking.
While the Protestant Reformers had tried to renew early Christianity through chapter-and-verse reconstruction from the New Testament, early Friends immersed themselves in the power of the Spirit and let it reinvent the Church organically among them. I have devoted many years to research and writing on early Friends in order to recover the integrity and power of their witness and relate it to today. While there is much we can learn from early Friends, we cannot simply repeat their words and expect them to have the same effect today. Early Christians [eventually] began to know themselves as a new, universal humanity in Christ, a subversion of the vast, oppressive power of Rome. For early Friends in the 17th century, the crisis was the outcome of the English Civil War. Any Christian renewal will prove regressive if it gets lost in its 17th century frame of reference. My query to foundationist Friends is: What is the crisis of our time? What world is ending? Who do you say Christ is in this situation? Where is the creation unfolding?
Conservative Friends share an interest in early Quaker witness; they are drawn more to the classical Quaker faith and practice of the 18th and 19th centuries. While the new Conservative Friends are Christ-centered in their faith, they are often most drawn to traditional practices: deeper meetings for worship, a more worshipful and disciplined business method, the leadership of recorded, non professional ministers, the authority of elders to mentor Friends into a deeper spiritual life a more courageous lived testimony, and explicit answering of the Quaker queries. Without participation in the transcendent personality of Christ, in whom differences are reconciled and sins forgiven, we are simply too self-interested, too brittle and short-sighted, to thrive together. My Conservative Friends queries are: Who do you say Christ is? How do you find his personality revealed in good Quaker process? What is the heart that beats in the midst of a truly gathered meeting for worship? What is the mind that guides the meeting for business at its best?
Ecumenical & Interfaith Friends—The 1st generation of Friends saw themselves on the vanguard of God's redeeming work in history & believed that the rest of the world would soon follow them into new intimacy with Christ and with one another. They were forced to adopt a more hedged, sectarian posture. [We have seen what most inspired foundationist and Conservative Friends]. Many other Friends find spiritual riches in other traditions, some with other Christian churches, some with non-Christian groups. These ecumenical and interfaith Friends are motivated by a variety of leadings and concerns that deserve our appreciative but critical attention.
Ecumenical Friends engage locally, nationally, & internationally in dialogue & collaborative action with other churches. Friends have official membership in ecumenical organizations nationally & internationally. They also engage in a variety of local & regional collaborations with churches. These Friends are willing to put aside Quaker criticisms of the Christian mainstream & recognize that different churches speak to different personality types & cultural preferences. Quaker faith engenders spiritual hospitality that "makes room at the table" for all. But we aren't practiced in witnessing to Christ to others, or even among ourselves, even when our faith is ardent.
Even with our closest spiritual cousins, Friends can be surprisingly shy theologically, preferring story telling and quoting spiritual autobiography over doctrinal propositions. In the 1980's Friends were forced either to opt out of the World Council of Churches or make the case for their unique approach to baptism, eucharist, and ministry. British Friends published To Lima, With Love (1987), which contributed to the WCC's acceptance of the exceptional position of Friends. My ecumenical Friends queries are: Who do you that Christ is to your Christian sisters and brothers? How do your tell the story of your faith as you serve the poor and witness for peace and justice alongside more doctrinally and liturgically minded Christians?
Interfaith Friends are often involved in ecumenical work as well, but the 2 concerns are not identical; interfaith work arises from a different complex of concerns, such as seeking avenues of understanding to prevent future violence after the Holocaust and the "War on Terror." Judaism and Islam are faiths that have and respect strong identities and particular convictions. True interfaith dialogue does not begin until Friends speak from the depths of their own tradition; all 3 are strongly dialogical faiths. When we fail to keep up our side of the dialog, we may be viewed as either confused or patronizing.
[Part of the reason we fail] is the decline in recorded ministry among Friends. Ministers found biblical stories and truths confirmed in their own lives. With university education, the traditional spiritual authority of the humble Friends minister, who might not be formally educated at all, was gradually displaced by the articulate religious ideas of MAs and PhDs in the meeting. Jews and Muslims do not hear a partner in dialog, but instead oblique remarks from Friends hesitant to speak for Friends generally; this can be interpreted as evasion.
A different subgroup of interfaith Friends typically engages in conversation with Hindus and Buddhists. In particular, many Friends today find energizing affinities between Buddhist and Quaker practices. Where the traditional metaphors "wait upon the Lord," "stand still in the Light," or "sink down to the Seed," are no longer understood or embraced, Friends may understandably find themselves at loose ends in Quaker worship. There is a growing Quaker-Buddhist phenomenon, in which Friends meld the 2 traditions, combining what they find useful, ignoring the rest. There is also: Quaker-pagan; Quaker-Wicca. They can be fruitful for individuals, but they are often based on a limited acquaintance with Quaker faith and practice.
Queries—Who do you say Christ is, to those who have suffered violence and exclusion by so-called Western Christians? Who do you say Christ is to the people who gave birth to and nurtured Jesus? Who do you say Christ is to the followers of Mohammed, who recognized Jesus as a great prophet and reached out to Jews and Christians, seeking unity? Who do you say Christ is, in contrast to the western, imperialistic Christ? What has this Christ to say to Krishna and the Buddha?
Universalist & Non-theist Friends—From the beginning, Friends [believed in a paradoxical Light]. It was a Light one with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whose [teachings] lay the groundwork for Quaker social & peace testimonies. This same Light is in everyone, in people who don't believe the gospel, who have never heard it preached. It is a paradox modern Friends have found difficult to hold together. We tend to embrace either the Christian meaning or the universal extent of the Light. Some evangelical Friends deny the universal presence of the Light; some liberal Friends wish to shed Christian faith as an atavism we moderns can leave behind.
It started early in the 20th century with Rufus Jones and John W. Rowntree reframing "Quakerism" as a mystical religion, a religion of experience. The personal experience emphasis gained more humanistic and cross-cultural overtones as the century progressed. By the 1970's, there was the Quaker Universalist Group in Britain and the Quaker Universalist Fellowship in America. There was useful conversation between universalist and Christian Friends, though they often talked past each other.
By the beginning of this century, a nontheist voice emerged more clearly among universalist Friends. Secularization brackets "God" into smaller corners of our consciousness, away from public view & polite conversation. The news media has promoted stereotypical images of Christians & Muslims as fundamentalists & political reactionists. David Rush quotes several statements revealing caricatured & prejudiced views of Christians among nontheist Friends. Other nontheists address the journalistic stereotypes of Christian & Islamic fundamentalism that have come to represent theism generally. Jonathan Dale suggests that Friends have been "seduced by the age's dominant intellectual spirit [which is] pursuing self interest under skies swept clean ... of all transcendence." He models & advocates a social transcendent life that is the basis of a transcendent faith [as did] Paul, where "there is no longer Jew or Greek ... slave or free ... male & female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
The Religious Society of Friends today must beware of its middle-class, educated frame of reference. And some nontheist and other universalist Friends still hold to a modernist sense of progress, [and to an unlimited human destiny,] often couched in a scientistic outlook. They too, sought to discover "the real Jesus." A group of academics, teachers, found that Jesus was a teacher too; [i.e. they saw what there was of themselves in Jesus]. Albert Schweitzer writes: "The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which He stands before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal standpoint in regard to Him ... He will reveal Himself in the toils, conflicts, and sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship ... they shall learn in their own experience Who He is." Servanthood—pouring ourselves out in a form less dignified but more useful—puts us in the form of Christ in the world.
Christ took all of God into human form, even to death on the cross. It was the reconciliation of God & human in the reconciliation of human & human. The forgiveness Jesus preached from the beginning of his ministry reached its ultimate expression in the cross & is realized as we forgive one another & find common purpose in serving and freeing others. In rising from the dead Jesus became a living presence to many different kinds of human beings in the next few years; his new life is undeniable, even if it was not empirically observable. For "through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). None of this could be without the death of God. Christ is free again to move at large in surprising & liberating ways. But only those who see past the world's wisdom will recognize his form & follow his movements. God is dead and we are fools, but we see the irony in it, we feel the infinite joy in it, we know the immeasurable riches of fellowship with Christ and with one another in service.
John Lampen writes: "To apply the term 'God' is to say that we perceive intuitively a connection between the marvels of the natural world, the moral law, the life of Jesus, the depths of the human personality, intimations about time, death, and eternity, human forgiveness and love. Denying existence of "God" is to say we cannot see such connections. The word "God" is not an essential tool for grasping [the connection]."
Queries—Who is the Christ you have outgrown or find incredible? Are you judging Christ according to caricatures of Christians? Have you really encountered this Christ in the gospels or your heart? What canst thou say [of your experience of Christ]?
The Banished Host—Jesus reached out to the poor and a variety of social & religious outcasts. Spiritual transcendence and social transcendence were intimately woven together in the movement Jesus catalyzed in the few short years of his recorded ministry. His scattered contact with people outside the ethnic boundaries of his people pre-figured the wider mission of the movement that followed his death. And he was in no way inclined to sacrifice those at the center, [whose authority he challenged,] even at the risk and eventual loss of his own life.
The ethic of Jesus can thus be understood as one of radical hospitality. His parables constantly invite people into fellowship, sharing, and mutual forgiveness. He trained 70 disciples in itinerant preaching and entering the doors opened to them. The fatal conflict of Jesus' ministry took place at the Jerusalem temple. The central religious institution of the people had become ["a marketplace,"] an inhospitable place. The "house of the Lord" [was at its heart] an indeterminate space of mutual hospitality in Spirit. Handing Jesus over to the Roman occupation broke with the spirit and code of hospitality. The international Christian movement that followed Jesus' death replicated and expanded his ethic of hospitality in a variety of ways. In being merciful to strangers they were no longer strangers to the God they now experienced in their midst. Radical hospitality trangresses the boundaries that society holds as sacrosanct. [In following their god], they were accounted as atheists and soon persecuted for it.
The early Quaker movement can be compared to the early Christian movement. Radical hospitality is one. The chief conflict of the early movement was against the inhospitality of a state-enforced Church & its enfranchised clerical class. George Fox [noticed & reacted to a similar state in England in the 17th century]. By [comparison], the Quaker movement was a grassroots phenomenon gathered through networks of hospitality & mutual aid. The doors that opened to itinerant preachers became places where hospitality exchanged with a free gospel message. [Persecution drew them together for encouragement, counsel, & aid. The testimonies we today call simplicity, equality, community, peace, & integrity were forged through the experience of answering that of God in all. As they befriended the living Christ within, they found friendship extending outward in all directions.
Just as Jesus engaged & never forsook the center of his Jewish faith tradition, Friends must not turn their backs upon the wider Church. Our witness to the wider Church must remain prophetic and challenging but also collaborative wherever we find common cause in service and social action. Quaker faith and practice can be compared and combined with a wide variety of other traditions. Friends are present-day pioneers in a stream of radical hospitality that continues to open new doors of friendship and cooperation. Jesus opened that door to us [and welcomed us in]. Let us not banish the host.
427. Radical Hospitality (by Lloyd Lee Wilson; 2014)
About the Author—Lloyd Lee Wilson is a recorded minister of the gospel in West Grove MM (NCYM; Conservative). He wrote Essays on the Quaker Vision; Wrestling with Our Faith Tradition; Holy Surrender; and PHP #409, Who Do You Say I Am? His message is that "Christ has come to teach his people himself."
Lucie Stone—She was a tiny woman from England, who immigrated to this country after WWII. She visited German prisoners. They glued together pieces of wood, and made a bowl that she still has. Someone broke into her house in the middle of the night. She talked to him, fixed him breakfast, gave him work, and helped him find permanent work. She wouldn't have named it this way, but Lucie Stone was practicing radical hospitality, a way of living in the Kingdom of God in the present moment and a way of bringing the Kingdom into its fullness for everyone, making the Kingdom complete both now and everywhere. You probably believe that answers to or guidance for the most difficult questions we face can be found in the realms of spirituality and religious faith. [We are often not satisfied with the answers] because we are asking the wrong questions.
The Key Question—The great religious question of my time has been "How can I be saved?" One can hardly avoid engaging this question in today's world, even if only to deny its relevance. Whether the question feels relevant or not, it has profoundly shaped religious & secular cultures. This question perceives the world as dangerous & threatening; life's point is escape from those dangers. This question reflects the notion that the individual is at the center of her story. Inequality, oppressive structures, environmental distress, & other evils are subordinate to individual salvation. This question's typical answer takes the form of rules for avoiding danger.
How can I achieve happiness and security in such a dangerous world? When one combines this question with being saved, the most common answer becomes, "Follow this set of rules of behavior, except when they conflict too much with the accumulation of power, possessions and privileges." [The question about happiness and security] is the wrong question. The real great question is "How are we to live in God's creation, broken and troubled as it is?" We are to live in a way that helps bring the Kingdom of God in its entirety.
Perfect Harmony—God yearns for a perfect harmony with all creation & for that same harmony among all of creation's parts including humans, what Friends call gospel order. For we Friends, the universe is at the heart profoundly good; evil places are places of brokenness & distortion, which we are to help heal. [The prevailing] religious-cultural view says the universe is such that there is only so much of any good thing; more for you means less for me. The other view says the universe is inherently good & harmonious; the stranger is our friend. Our actions are testimony to the truth & a tool for facilitating the growth of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is already establishing itself in the world, here now but not yet present in its entirety. Creation is both profoundly good & unfinished. We were created to live in harmony with God of our own free will. It brings us the greatest happiness & security. We are invited to live into the relationship God yearns to have with us.
Ethical Basis: Consequentialist Ethics/ Deontological Ethics—How are we to live in the world in which God has placed us? A student asked me 3 questions about my nonviolent commitment. The 1st focused on the consequences of my ethical stand. In Consequentialist Ethics the ends do justify the means: one judges whether an act is ethical or not by its consequences. One should act so as to produce the best consequences possible. We can't accurately predict the consequences or outcomes of our actions. Ethics based on unknown or unpredictable consequences is inadequate for the life in harmony with the Kingdom of God that we seek to live.
In de-ontological ethics, an action is judged to be ethical or not depending on whether it is consistent with a given set of rules. Most of us are familiar with what is called the divine command theory, where God declares an act ethical. The actual practice of divine command has problems when people disagree on which rules are applicable in a given situation, or how to apply a rule. Jesus demonstrated how difficult it is to use divine command as the basis of ethical decision. Quakerism, with its continuing revelation, had to be wary of ethics that depends on a fixed understanding of divine instructions. In 1656, Balby elders wrote down 20 "necessary things, and then added: "These things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by; but that all with a measure of the Light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the Light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not in the letter; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."
Ethical Basis: Virtue Ethics—If I'm not choosing one of the 1st 2 Basis, how am I making ethical choices? Being committed to choose peace because that's the kind of person I want to be is part of virtue ethics. My ethical choices are designed to bring me closer to emulating Jesus. What sort of person is at home in God's Kingdom & would help that Kingdom get established & flourish? Greek classical ethics' goal was to reach eudaimonia, activity in accordance with perfect virtue. Our 1st task is for us to enter the Kingdom. 3 principles which are especially relevant to sustaining the Kingdom's harmony are inclusiveness, self-sacrifice, & non-coercion. Radical hospitality is lived "at the root," & says everyone is welcomed, has a place at the table, has enough; no one has too much. Jesus' life & teachings demonstrate radical hospitality [& the 3 principles mentioned above].
Inclusiveness—We gradually learn that there is something desirable about being different from the "others." We often express this as there being something undesirable about being an "other." The important thing about this behavior is that it isn't how God behaves. God is creator of everything & everyone, caring for & sustaining every person & every part of creation in every moment. We often want God to be on our side, against the other.
A lawyer asked Jesus essentially: "What is the minimum amount of love of neighbor required of me? Jesus responded with the "Good Samaritan" story. [Supposedly upright Jewish folk did not help a man in desperate need. Only a Samaritan, a bitter enemy of the Jews was willing to help. A Samaritan was by definition an outsider, a rebel, heretic, half-breed, political subversive worthy only to be despised by any good Jew. When the Samaritan stopped to help he did not see an enemy who despised him, he saw a neighbor who needed help. This is the inclusiveness of radical hospitality. [The unclean, "unacceptable" people Jesus dealt with and healed were placed at the center of the story of the Kingdom].
Kenosis—The metaphor for current North American life is someone constantly stuffing themselves with possessions, power, privilege, and rights to keep the wolf from the door. The problem for Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes and for all of us who walk the path of accumulation, is that God doesn't act that way and does not want us to act that way either. [Seeing God as the one of whom we say "For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory"] prevents us from seeing and hearing God more clearly than we do.
[In contrast to a life of accumulation,] Jesus' teaching and example gives us kenosis—self-emptying, a giving up of power, possessions, and privileges as a strategy or way of life. In Philippians 2, Paul writes of Jesus: "Christ Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness." God chose to become human, to practice solidarity with humanity, rather than use power or coercion; we are called to the same path.
In the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman, Jesus was tired—he had been teaching non-stop—and wanted some quiet time to rest and pray. His hoped-for privacy was immediately violated by a Gentile woman who barged into his presence unchaperoned and asked him to go back to work. He tried to give Jews precedence over her. She countered by saying she is not asking much—not more than the crumbs which fall from the table when the children eat; he healed the woman's daughter from a distance. He allowed her to question the truth of his statements. Jesus' example calls for us to set much of our safety aside and to engage others as though we were "nobody special"—just another human being. We are called to treat strangers like angels or the Christ.
Non-violence & Non-coercion—Nonviolence is a hard path to walk with consistency. I believe Jesus calls us to go beyond nonviolence to non-coercion. The innocent should be protected, & injustice & oppression should be resisted wherever they occur. God has demonstrably chosen not to act in certain ways to protect the innocent or end oppression, and we are called to behave in the same way. Authentic harmony is the result of a free choice on the part of all concerned. Jesus both prohibited others to use violence on his behalf and refused to defend himself violently, although he had the means to do so. "The scriptures ... say it must happen this way."
The meta-message of scripture is a growing realization that God's Kingdom cannot be achieved or defeated through violence. The Kingdom of God must happen by means of a commitment to non-violence and non-coercion. Jesus love the rich man in the parable. Jesus wanted the best for him, that he spend his life fol-lowing Jesus. Jesus could have spiritually made the rich man do what was needed. Instead, he was allowed to make the wrong decision. God refused to create a universe where human beings had no choice but to be good. Forcing people to change their behavior is not the Kingdom of God. We are called to the much more difficult task of helping build a world where hearts are changed so that humans want to be good and in harmony with each other, the universe and its Creator. Our tools are precept and example, teaching and living the Gospel.
Radical Hospitality—We have not achieved [the radical hospitality or] the inclusiveness of the Kingdom of God until we regard every person as part of our own community, beloved of God and therefore worthy of being loved by us. Until we can learn to love the Samaritans in our lives, those who appear to be diametrically opposed to our values and beliefs, and can have compassion on their circumstances, we have not begun to practice radical hospitality. We must also continue to practice care for those at the margins of society, to see to it that everyone has enough and no one has too much, and to be with the poor and oppressed, not merely for them.
To be truly with another person in his or her circumstances, means I must give up some of my individualism, power, possessions, and privilege that seem to define who I am, that seem to provide me with personal security. Our goal is the transformation of human hearts, so that persons want to be good and fair, to do the right thing for one another and creation. There may always be a place for legislation to inform one how to care for employees, creation, clients, or neighbors, and for separation of some individuals from society. These are and will always be intermediate measures, not ultimate solutions. Our success in bringing about the harmony of the Kingdom will come in becoming ourselves, in community, a living testimony to the truth that transforms hearts, that invites each person we meet to enter the Kingdom.
There will be failures and pain in the practice of radical hospitality, just as there will be failures and pain in the practice of individual pursuit of worldly power, prestige, and privilege. In the long-term radical hospitality is an effective path to the Kingdom of God; individualism is not. Suffering as Christ suffered is the only way to build up the virtue/values/character/society that comprises the Kingdom of God.
Cal Geiger—He was a member of Durham Friends Meeting in NC Conservative YM. Early in his life, Cal was plowing a neighbor's field when an escaped convict came up behind him and threatened to rob him. Cal talked him out of any "rough stuff" and out of running away. 5 years later Cal encountered a traffic accident. He felt led to help 2 drivers who were fighting. One man was beating and kicking the other. Cal wrapped his arms around the one doing the beating and held on until the police came and took control.
Some years later, Cal was volunteering at a mental hospital when he was sought out by a former patient named George Harris. This man was the convict Cal had talked into returning to the chain gang years ago. He was also the man doing the beating at the traffic accident. He was a patient in the mental hospital where Cal volunteered in the recreation program. Cal probably prevented George from murdering the man he was beating. He waged a losing battle with alcohol that landed him in the mental hospital where Cal was volunteering. George straightened out, went to school, became a teacher, married & had 2 children. His last visit with Cal was to thank him for helping save his life. Cal had no way of knowing what would be the outcome of his actions and did not act in accordance with a predetermined set of ethical rules. He acted as the kind of person he wanted to be.
To live in ways that hasten the Kingdom of God & to invite others to share in that life, we must practice radical hospitality. Once, the traveling Quaker minister Joseph Hoag was detained by a military force during the War of 1812. He explained traveling ministry & Friends faith & practice to a general & his staff. One of them said "Stranger, if all the world was of your mind, I would follow after." Joseph replied, "Thou hast a mind to be the last man in the world to do good. I have in mind to be one of the 1st, & set [an] example"; [be that example].
428. Spiritual Accompaniment: An Experience of Two Friends Traveling in the Ministry (by Cathy Walling & Elaine Emily; 2014)
About the Authors—Cathy Walling is a member of Chena Ridge Friends Meeting (Fairbanks, AK). She has been recognized as having gifts of Spirit-led eldering since 2002; a traveling minister recognized & called out those gifts. Cathy feels rightly used by the Spirit in this work. Elaine Emily is a seasoned Friend from Strawberry Creek Meeting (Berkeley, CA). She has traveled extensively as a spiritual companion & elder, accompanying many Friends in their service as traveling ministers; she has led workshops in eldering, and is living under a concern for eldering, and on the many ways this practice is being rediscovered among Friends today.
[Introduction]—Me as an elder was certainly not a way I had ever thought about myself. Jan Hoffman called out those gifts & asked for my eldering support in liberating the ministry she had been given for our meeting. Eldering has fallen out of use by Friends for many generations, but recently has started to be revived. Margery Larrabee has written that eldering is: "offering spiritual leadership, which is to support & encourage the life of the Spirit in or raise helpful questions & explore with an individual or group how they may be more faithful to the Spirit. It is the well-grounded intention & attitude of a compassionate heart & mind, led by Spirit." Some Quakers are uneasy about reviving this Quaker tradition [and its past abuses]. Other Friends are embracing return to a tradition that helps Friends support one another in their efforts to be faithful.
I have companioned Friends who served as traveling ministers. I longed to read accounts of the Quaker [companion-]elders from earlier centuries. It was ministers who wrote most historical Quaker journals we have today. They made infrequent mention of spiritual accompaniment or eldering support. I find myself led to share from the entries I made during 3 weeks as an elder accompanying Elaine Emily. This essay is a joint project. Elaine & Cathy wrote it together; both have offered their reflections. It is written in Cathy's 1st person voice.
Prelude—I flew to Alaska for a summer job and discovered my spiritual home. In January 2006, our family traveled to Australia. We attended 4 of 7 days of the Australian Quakers' Yearly Meeting (YM) gathering. Our daughters so enjoyed connecting with Australian Quaker children that they yearned for, [indeed demanded more the next year]. In 2007, Scott and I led a couple enrichment workshop. Australia Yearly Meeting's annual session usually begins on Sunday with an educational "summer school" day. That "summer school class" meets several times the rest of the week. There is an all-gathering meeting for worship on Sunday. The week was filled with many other planned events. The extent of organization and structure was quite new to me.
My question "Where are the elders?" continued to arise internally. I had a chance for a heart-to-heart exchange with Sheila Keane, when I talked about some of my eldering experiences. I heard in her a longing to elder. It was an "opportunity, a time of unprogrammed worship held any time or place, sometimes without human planning." I wondered what it would be like to share Elaine's gifts with Aussie Friends; this leading took root.
Preparation Phase—Through emails with Sheila & Helen Bayes, I heard affirmations to ask Elaine whether she might travel to Australia to share experiences of eldering. I asked her in person, and she was as joyful and delighted as I was at the thought of such an opportunity and felt a seed being planted. Elaine brought this to her oversight committee for further seasoning. This committee was supporting Elaine in staying faithful to the work God was calling her to, & was keeping her grounded in her monthly meeting. Meanwhile, I had a clearness committee, found clearness, and a support committee was convened to anchor this ministry in my meeting.
Sheila and Helen worked on a proposal for the Australia YM Standing Committee (AYMSC) in July 2007. We wanted to hold a retreat at the gathering. AYMSC wanted to use the 2008 gathering as a "venue for discernment." Nonetheless, they invited us. We offered a workshop titled "Spiritual Nurture and Rediscovering Eldering." AYM would also facilitate Elaine's visits to different regions of Australia for any regional meeting (RM) that invited her after YM. Elaine experienced no emotions or expectations [through the stormy and calm times of preparation], just a noticing of the journey. I received my leadings in preparation for this ministry one step at a time, often while cross-country skiing; way opened and there was no sense of burden. Both of our committees requested travel minutes from our monthly meetings. As we traveled in the ministry in Australia, we presented our travel minutes in each place and received the meeting's written endorsement.
Action Phase: December 26, 2007-January 3, 2008—We departed the United States, traveling 14 and 26 hours from California & Alaska respectively. Within 10 minutes of arriving, an Australian Friend was sharing meeting problems & worry about their effect on YM. I asked "Where is God in all of this?" I smiled with the sense that God wasn't wasting any time in putting us to work. I had pre-arranged a stay at a Meeting House cottage for recovery from jet lag, prayer time, & preparation. Reflection: God often inserts unexpected opportunities [to minister] during travel time, & provides resources when we are depleted. We were supported by Blue Mountain Friends & had our 1st morning worship time there, [with nature providing vocal ministry]. Reflection: We tried to have a daily meeting for worship, invited others, and tried to stay focused on the traveling ministry.
1/2/08 (Reflection): Friends traveling in ministry often experience other Friends opening up & sharing important information. The Clerk from Japan YM told her spiritual story one evening. Katherine of Canberra Regional Meeting (RM) offered us hospitality. I was invited to do a radio talk on couple enrichment, but I needed to keep my focus on this Australian visit's primary purpose. I declined the invitation. Reflection: Elaine was traveling for the 1st time as minister rather than elder. The primary focus was her ministry around the eldering topic.
It turned out Elaine needed to be alone in the morning, so I ended up giving the talk. Reflection: Elaine and I were settling into our role as minister and elder. The elder helps draw the minister's message out [as a kind of "midwife]." My job was to listen, support, affirm what sounded right for the workshop, offer cautions, and hold the workshop in prayer [the Light]. We often found that one had been awake in the night and the other had slept. Both us still felt refreshed from the night.
Action Phase: January 4-January 9, 2008—The next morning Elaine needed to be protected from the potential spiritual drain of a Friend's emotional need. That needy Friend's dog and Elaine's allergies made it prudent for Elaine to ride in the other car, without offending the needy Friend. Reflection: Time with needy or difficult people can help bring out the message to be drawn out of the minister. Individuals' emotional or spiritual needs can exhaust the minister. This particular Friend had gifts of ministry that were not being supported and she was making an unskilled called for help, which she has since received.
We arrived at the YM venue in Melborne; our workshop was the only one already full, and there was a waiting list. This felt like divine affirmation and at the same time quite humbling. Our workshop grew from 15 to 24. Elaine had a room on one side of me, and Sally Kingsland, a Canberra Friend [of previous acquaintance] on the other side. Sally gave me spiritual support & practical support in dealing with the extreme heat.Reflection: Sally's support of me during the week felt like a beautiful example of elders supporting elders, often with tangible practical assistance; her eldering gifts were specifically named 4 years later.
Sunday morning during the all-gathering meeting for worship I began feeling ministry rising in me from the ocean depths of worship. Nervously I shared the importance of planting out spiritual taproots deeply. I offered a prayer that we would tend those roots faithfully and assist others in that tending. Reflection: This was one of the grace-filled times during our trip when I was called into vocal ministry and Elaine anchored me. Many people think the elder must remain silent, but hasn't been our experience.
Our workshop met under hot, windowless conditions. Folks in the lobby space relocated because our open door disrupted them; we moved into their space. Reflection: Sometimes the elder's role is attending to physical needs so the minister is able to deliver the message and so those gathered are able to hear, and adjusting to changing circumstances to best support the liberation of the message. I focused on spiritual anchoring for her and the group. Elaine ask someone else to also hold the group in worship/[the Light]. [She asked for examples of informal eldering experiences, gave past and recent history of eldering in the US, and made a homework assignment of the question]: "How is God/Spirit moving in your life?"
I popped right up from the depths of spiritually grounding Elaine, thinking I should move into external support mode. Elaine called me back to attend to her. The experience left me disoriented. Elaine said: [The disorientation is] the spiritual bends," i.e. the experience of coming up from the "ocean floor" too quickly without taking time to reacclimatized to surface conditions. We needed to take 5 to 10 minutes to make the transition. While Elaine ministered in the next session regarding gifts, I remained "below the words" in support. This time we made the transition. Reflections: "Below the words" describes [what I feel while I hold] the minister & gathered group in prayer ... like holding the gathering in a bowl of divine Love and Light. I often don't specifically hear what is being said, but can sense the Spirit. [It can be deep, sweet worship, different from other worship].
In the 3rd session, another Friend offered to hold the group and later shared his experience with the group. Elaine had each person in a small group hold one another in the Light. Elaine named my sitting in prayer and holding the group for 6 hours as an essential piece of eldering and of her being able to do what she was doing. She said we were spiritually yoked. She was the more visible and vocal part; I was the spiritually grounding. Reflection: Yokemates names those working together in service to the Spirit to liberate the message. Eldering provides fuller, richer, truer liberation of the message for the community's benefit. After the 3rd session we both felt the joy of being rightly used, and I was exhausted—physically and spiritually. Elaine was surprised by how easily the sessions and energy had flowed, by [how hard people tried to attend].
On Monday morning we attended "Quaker Voices in the 21st century." Elaine spoke of FGC youth ministry program & of vibrant young adult ministry. During our 50-minute summer school session Monday afternoon, Elaine spoke about personal preparation of body, mind & spirit for doing the Spirit's work. I named to Elaine the importance of gathering with Friends from each RM Elaine would be visiting. Informal meetings happened around mealtimes. Reflection: Elders often facilitate logistics in providing a space for the ministry to unfold.
On Tuesday morning I had a spiritual discipline of reflecting on the day before 1st thing in the morning.Breakfasting with a young adult Friend & listening to her spiritual journey led to her asking if I would clerk a listening session between representatives of a RM & young Friends; it didn't seem spiritually right. We learned she was concerned about not feeling listened to by the regional meeting. We offered to attend as spiritual support; that felt right. I sat next to the young Friend, holding her & the group in prayer. The 2 groups heard how each group had faithfully discerned their way & had arrived at opposite decisions on a sensitive issue. The Spirit-led nature of the 2 discernment processes was evident, & Elaine's ministry was: "Sometimes we are called to live with the paradox, & not focus on the apparent contradictions." Elaine & I were thanked for our palpable spiritual grounding presence. Reflection: Sometimes visiting Friends provide a unique perspective on a conflict situation. We could hold the group in prayer while remaining emotionally detached from the specific content.
I noticed the group's interest in Elaine's oversight committee and suggested she sign up for "share-'n-tell" (interest group). We asked someone from the summer school group to provide additional eldering support, so that I could serve more as an assistant facilator. Another Friend from our summer school group joined us that evening for our preparation time; [Elaine complained about it]. Later in Canberra RM, this Friend was able to speak regarding [some of the behind-the-scenes preparation that] are paramount to faithfulness. Reflection: This felt like one of the few instances where Elaine unloaded on me, and I just held it. I heard an emotional download with an spiritual set of ears while yoked in a spiritual piece of work, and was given guidance in how to respond. I had the clear sense that while we didn't understand why the Friend joined us, she was supposed to be there.
40 people gathered to hear Elaine's "What the Hell is Oversight?" I felt pulled deeper into worship to hold Elaine more tenderly. A couple of times Elaine needed an anchor thread from me, that is a vocal prompt [e.g.] "submit & surrender." Reflections: The traveling minister often prepares [for a message] by spending time in prayer & contemplation; [the Spirit's "response" may come at any time of the day]. "Anchor threads" may serve to assist the minister in releasing the message's next piece. I was mindful of the need for daily walks to tend the physical body, move the energy, while doing this spiritual work. We called these our "discernment walks."
Queries: What are the differences and common features between elders, minsters, and overseers? Where does pastoral care fit into this framework? Where is the balance between speaking truth & keeping quiet, trusting to the sense of the meeting? Should [elderwork] be done "unofficially?" What sort of resistance is there to eldering and how should it be handled? How does an elder get eldered?
Action Phase: January 10-11—In the early hours of Thursday morning, I had the sense of a message taking form. God was referring me to earlier journal entries, in particular a time when a seasoned elder from Cleveland eldered me. [It was only now] that I named that experience as an elder eldering an elder. Reflection: Referring back to earlier journal entries helps call forth an experience for the new learning in the present. We both recognized that this was a day to trade places. We were kept busy with sending family emails, & meeting with a RM up until my time to speak. The ministry came forth with tears & was mostly in the form of stories in response to questions on eldering the group. [I shared the Cleveland story]. I explained what I did sitting next to Elaine. The gist & hardest part of the message was that while it might have been important to focus inwardly & be wary of strangers, if too much caution persisted, it was going to get in the way of having rich experiences. I sat down with my eyes closed, too spiritually naked to be able to handle Friends approaching me right away.
Reflection: My experience with voicing hard truths is that voicing them risks separation, injury,& estrangement rather than a positive outcome. The same risks exist in the failure to voice them. A container of love must be prepared for voicing the message; it helps the message be heard & received in the same spirit. "Love without truth is sentimentality & truth without love is violence." AYM has been enriched by bringing in Friends from other YMs. The Australia Quaker center, Silver Wattle, has been established to serve the same needs as Pendle Hill, Woodbrooke & other centers around the world. I felt tired and my feet were buzzing. We took a walk. I did not feel that my delivery was polished or neatly presented. I did feel that I had delivered as faithfully as I could under the circumstances, and I could rest in the peace that comes from knowing that.
Reflection: [I was reminded to pay attention to this experience for future reference when I am eldering]. [My] ministering image of a kite flying higher than it ever had (without floating away) was only possible because of the solid, firm grounding, and prayerful support that 2 elders provided me. [I was asked about rocking during meeting, I am usually not aware of it]. Perhaps the rocking settles the spiritual energy, like rocking a baby settles the baby. Perhaps it is a physical mantra.
Reflection: Physical manisfestations of the Spirit Elaine and I have experienced include: tears, rocking, shaking, quaking, buzzing, heart palpitations, giddiness, burping, ringing in the ears, goose bumps and sweating. On Friday, I returned to the eldering support function for Elaine at our final session. We briefly checked in with each other after this final session and felt okay. Elaine met with a young Friend regarding mystical and psychic experiences, while I gave eldering support to a Friend making a report.
Recovery Phase: January 12-16/ Epilogue—At the close of YM, Sally drove Elaine & me to our "recovery venue," the artist's retreat home of Tess Edwards & Lloyd Godman in Melbourne's outskirts. While driving there, Elaine became teary & emotional; she was depleted. I wondered if this teary experience might have been avoided if we had taken time apart from everyone on Friday. [Considering all we had done], I then wondered if the letdown was somewhat inevitable. Reflection: The one sorrow I have around AYM 2008 is our choice of the recovery space afterwards. It was a space lovingly created; the hosts & the space radiated healing presence.
Reflection: Elaine broke down emotionally again. Any social interaction was too much at that point. She wasn't getting enough quiet, unstructured, recovery time,cocooning, swaddled in eldering support, and she desperately needed it. The early Quaker Joseph Hoag, wrote of feeling naked as the old jaybird when he came home from delivering faithful ministry. He experienced feeling rightly used and then stripped of his skin, not having any protective covering. [What came after] listening to Elaine and to God, was to ask to be driven to the Melbourne meeting house accommodation early in the next day to have more quiet time together before my departure. After asking, I felt a wave of peace descend. Reflection: Elaine reflected on how elders need other elders for support; [a 2nd elder would have been helpful for YM ministry].
Our final 2 days together at the Melbourne Meeting apartment provided the needed cocooning time; mostly it was just the 2 of us, Elaine got the "womb time" she needed. I assisted Elaine's preparation for her next phase. She would traveling around the country for 3 1/2 weeks, calling forth the eldering assistance she needed from among people she would be serving. I don't think Elaine or I anticipated how much I would still be eldering for her after I left Australia. I held Elaine in my prayers, and often prayed for her during her eldering sessions. I listened to Elaine debrief, reflect, and describe her journey. Reflection: It has been interesting to approach the concept of long distance prayer support more intentionally. When I've asked for it, I feel the difference that prayer support makes. I return to a place of thanksgiving and joy for travel in ministry with Elaine, for the various learnings along the way, the apparent door closings and window openings, for the spiritual seeds that were planted, for the fruits already born, and now through remembering and writing about our experiences, sharing the story with the wider world. Joy is available to us when we listen and follow God's call.
Queries—How can the Quaker practice of traveling ministry strengthen the meetings involved as well as the individual who is traveling under a sense of leading? Why is a [companion-elder] important to a traveling minister? What are the different roles of minister and elder? How do elders provide support? What is your experience with prayer? What does it mean to be faithful? How does the elder get eldered? Why is keeping a journal valuable to you?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
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429. What We Stand On (by Paul Christiansen; 2014)
[Introduction]—Me as an elder was certainly not a way I had ever thought about myself. Jan Hoffman called out those gifts & asked for my eldering support in liberating the ministry she had been given for our meeting. Eldering has fallen out of use by Friends for many generations, but recently has started to be revived. Margery Larrabee has written that eldering is: "offering spiritual leadership, which is to support & encourage the life of the Spirit in or raise helpful questions & explore with an individual or group how they may be more faithful to the Spirit. It is the well-grounded intention & attitude of a compassionate heart & mind, led by Spirit." Some Quakers are uneasy about reviving this Quaker tradition [and its past abuses]. Other Friends are embracing return to a tradition that helps Friends support one another in their efforts to be faithful.
I have companioned Friends who served as traveling ministers. I longed to read accounts of the Quaker [companion-]elders from earlier centuries. It was ministers who wrote most historical Quaker journals we have today. They made infrequent mention of spiritual accompaniment or eldering support. I find myself led to share from the entries I made during 3 weeks as an elder accompanying Elaine Emily. This essay is a joint project. Elaine & Cathy wrote it together; both have offered their reflections. It is written in Cathy's 1st person voice.
Prelude—I flew to Alaska for a summer job and discovered my spiritual home. In January 2006, our family traveled to Australia. We attended 4 of 7 days of the Australian Quakers' Yearly Meeting (YM) gathering. Our daughters so enjoyed connecting with Australian Quaker children that they yearned for, [indeed demanded more the next year]. In 2007, Scott and I led a couple enrichment workshop. Australia Yearly Meeting's annual session usually begins on Sunday with an educational "summer school" day. That "summer school class" meets several times the rest of the week. There is an all-gathering meeting for worship on Sunday. The week was filled with many other planned events. The extent of organization and structure was quite new to me.
My question "Where are the elders?" continued to arise internally. I had a chance for a heart-to-heart exchange with Sheila Keane, when I talked about some of my eldering experiences. I heard in her a longing to elder. It was an "opportunity, a time of unprogrammed worship held any time or place, sometimes without human planning." I wondered what it would be like to share Elaine's gifts with Aussie Friends; this leading took root.
Preparation Phase—Through emails with Sheila & Helen Bayes, I heard affirmations to ask Elaine whether she might travel to Australia to share experiences of eldering. I asked her in person, and she was as joyful and delighted as I was at the thought of such an opportunity and felt a seed being planted. Elaine brought this to her oversight committee for further seasoning. This committee was supporting Elaine in staying faithful to the work God was calling her to, & was keeping her grounded in her monthly meeting. Meanwhile, I had a clearness committee, found clearness, and a support committee was convened to anchor this ministry in my meeting.
Sheila and Helen worked on a proposal for the Australia YM Standing Committee (AYMSC) in July 2007. We wanted to hold a retreat at the gathering. AYMSC wanted to use the 2008 gathering as a "venue for discernment." Nonetheless, they invited us. We offered a workshop titled "Spiritual Nurture and Rediscovering Eldering." AYM would also facilitate Elaine's visits to different regions of Australia for any regional meeting (RM) that invited her after YM. Elaine experienced no emotions or expectations [through the stormy and calm times of preparation], just a noticing of the journey. I received my leadings in preparation for this ministry one step at a time, often while cross-country skiing; way opened and there was no sense of burden. Both of our committees requested travel minutes from our monthly meetings. As we traveled in the ministry in Australia, we presented our travel minutes in each place and received the meeting's written endorsement.
Action Phase: December 26, 2007-January 3, 2008—We departed the United States, traveling 14 and 26 hours from California & Alaska respectively. Within 10 minutes of arriving, an Australian Friend was sharing meeting problems & worry about their effect on YM. I asked "Where is God in all of this?" I smiled with the sense that God wasn't wasting any time in putting us to work. I had pre-arranged a stay at a Meeting House cottage for recovery from jet lag, prayer time, & preparation. Reflection: God often inserts unexpected opportunities [to minister] during travel time, & provides resources when we are depleted. We were supported by Blue Mountain Friends & had our 1st morning worship time there, [with nature providing vocal ministry]. Reflection: We tried to have a daily meeting for worship, invited others, and tried to stay focused on the traveling ministry.
1/2/08 (Reflection): Friends traveling in ministry often experience other Friends opening up & sharing important information. The Clerk from Japan YM told her spiritual story one evening. Katherine of Canberra Regional Meeting (RM) offered us hospitality. I was invited to do a radio talk on couple enrichment, but I needed to keep my focus on this Australian visit's primary purpose. I declined the invitation. Reflection: Elaine was traveling for the 1st time as minister rather than elder. The primary focus was her ministry around the eldering topic.
It turned out Elaine needed to be alone in the morning, so I ended up giving the talk. Reflection: Elaine and I were settling into our role as minister and elder. The elder helps draw the minister's message out [as a kind of "midwife]." My job was to listen, support, affirm what sounded right for the workshop, offer cautions, and hold the workshop in prayer [the Light]. We often found that one had been awake in the night and the other had slept. Both us still felt refreshed from the night.
Action Phase: January 4-January 9, 2008—The next morning Elaine needed to be protected from the potential spiritual drain of a Friend's emotional need. That needy Friend's dog and Elaine's allergies made it prudent for Elaine to ride in the other car, without offending the needy Friend. Reflection: Time with needy or difficult people can help bring out the message to be drawn out of the minister. Individuals' emotional or spiritual needs can exhaust the minister. This particular Friend had gifts of ministry that were not being supported and she was making an unskilled called for help, which she has since received.
We arrived at the YM venue in Melborne; our workshop was the only one already full, and there was a waiting list. This felt like divine affirmation and at the same time quite humbling. Our workshop grew from 15 to 24. Elaine had a room on one side of me, and Sally Kingsland, a Canberra Friend [of previous acquaintance] on the other side. Sally gave me spiritual support & practical support in dealing with the extreme heat.Reflection: Sally's support of me during the week felt like a beautiful example of elders supporting elders, often with tangible practical assistance; her eldering gifts were specifically named 4 years later.
Sunday morning during the all-gathering meeting for worship I began feeling ministry rising in me from the ocean depths of worship. Nervously I shared the importance of planting out spiritual taproots deeply. I offered a prayer that we would tend those roots faithfully and assist others in that tending. Reflection: This was one of the grace-filled times during our trip when I was called into vocal ministry and Elaine anchored me. Many people think the elder must remain silent, but hasn't been our experience.
Our workshop met under hot, windowless conditions. Folks in the lobby space relocated because our open door disrupted them; we moved into their space. Reflection: Sometimes the elder's role is attending to physical needs so the minister is able to deliver the message and so those gathered are able to hear, and adjusting to changing circumstances to best support the liberation of the message. I focused on spiritual anchoring for her and the group. Elaine ask someone else to also hold the group in worship/[the Light]. [She asked for examples of informal eldering experiences, gave past and recent history of eldering in the US, and made a homework assignment of the question]: "How is God/Spirit moving in your life?"
I popped right up from the depths of spiritually grounding Elaine, thinking I should move into external support mode. Elaine called me back to attend to her. The experience left me disoriented. Elaine said: [The disorientation is] the spiritual bends," i.e. the experience of coming up from the "ocean floor" too quickly without taking time to reacclimatized to surface conditions. We needed to take 5 to 10 minutes to make the transition. While Elaine ministered in the next session regarding gifts, I remained "below the words" in support. This time we made the transition. Reflections: "Below the words" describes [what I feel while I hold] the minister & gathered group in prayer ... like holding the gathering in a bowl of divine Love and Light. I often don't specifically hear what is being said, but can sense the Spirit. [It can be deep, sweet worship, different from other worship].
In the 3rd session, another Friend offered to hold the group and later shared his experience with the group. Elaine had each person in a small group hold one another in the Light. Elaine named my sitting in prayer and holding the group for 6 hours as an essential piece of eldering and of her being able to do what she was doing. She said we were spiritually yoked. She was the more visible and vocal part; I was the spiritually grounding. Reflection: Yokemates names those working together in service to the Spirit to liberate the message. Eldering provides fuller, richer, truer liberation of the message for the community's benefit. After the 3rd session we both felt the joy of being rightly used, and I was exhausted—physically and spiritually. Elaine was surprised by how easily the sessions and energy had flowed, by [how hard people tried to attend].
On Monday morning we attended "Quaker Voices in the 21st century." Elaine spoke of FGC youth ministry program & of vibrant young adult ministry. During our 50-minute summer school session Monday afternoon, Elaine spoke about personal preparation of body, mind & spirit for doing the Spirit's work. I named to Elaine the importance of gathering with Friends from each RM Elaine would be visiting. Informal meetings happened around mealtimes. Reflection: Elders often facilitate logistics in providing a space for the ministry to unfold.
On Tuesday morning I had a spiritual discipline of reflecting on the day before 1st thing in the morning.Breakfasting with a young adult Friend & listening to her spiritual journey led to her asking if I would clerk a listening session between representatives of a RM & young Friends; it didn't seem spiritually right. We learned she was concerned about not feeling listened to by the regional meeting. We offered to attend as spiritual support; that felt right. I sat next to the young Friend, holding her & the group in prayer. The 2 groups heard how each group had faithfully discerned their way & had arrived at opposite decisions on a sensitive issue. The Spirit-led nature of the 2 discernment processes was evident, & Elaine's ministry was: "Sometimes we are called to live with the paradox, & not focus on the apparent contradictions." Elaine & I were thanked for our palpable spiritual grounding presence. Reflection: Sometimes visiting Friends provide a unique perspective on a conflict situation. We could hold the group in prayer while remaining emotionally detached from the specific content.
I noticed the group's interest in Elaine's oversight committee and suggested she sign up for "share-'n-tell" (interest group). We asked someone from the summer school group to provide additional eldering support, so that I could serve more as an assistant facilator. Another Friend from our summer school group joined us that evening for our preparation time; [Elaine complained about it]. Later in Canberra RM, this Friend was able to speak regarding [some of the behind-the-scenes preparation that] are paramount to faithfulness. Reflection: This felt like one of the few instances where Elaine unloaded on me, and I just held it. I heard an emotional download with an spiritual set of ears while yoked in a spiritual piece of work, and was given guidance in how to respond. I had the clear sense that while we didn't understand why the Friend joined us, she was supposed to be there.
40 people gathered to hear Elaine's "What the Hell is Oversight?" I felt pulled deeper into worship to hold Elaine more tenderly. A couple of times Elaine needed an anchor thread from me, that is a vocal prompt [e.g.] "submit & surrender." Reflections: The traveling minister often prepares [for a message] by spending time in prayer & contemplation; [the Spirit's "response" may come at any time of the day]. "Anchor threads" may serve to assist the minister in releasing the message's next piece. I was mindful of the need for daily walks to tend the physical body, move the energy, while doing this spiritual work. We called these our "discernment walks."
Queries: What are the differences and common features between elders, minsters, and overseers? Where does pastoral care fit into this framework? Where is the balance between speaking truth & keeping quiet, trusting to the sense of the meeting? Should [elderwork] be done "unofficially?" What sort of resistance is there to eldering and how should it be handled? How does an elder get eldered?
Action Phase: January 10-11—In the early hours of Thursday morning, I had the sense of a message taking form. God was referring me to earlier journal entries, in particular a time when a seasoned elder from Cleveland eldered me. [It was only now] that I named that experience as an elder eldering an elder. Reflection: Referring back to earlier journal entries helps call forth an experience for the new learning in the present. We both recognized that this was a day to trade places. We were kept busy with sending family emails, & meeting with a RM up until my time to speak. The ministry came forth with tears & was mostly in the form of stories in response to questions on eldering the group. [I shared the Cleveland story]. I explained what I did sitting next to Elaine. The gist & hardest part of the message was that while it might have been important to focus inwardly & be wary of strangers, if too much caution persisted, it was going to get in the way of having rich experiences. I sat down with my eyes closed, too spiritually naked to be able to handle Friends approaching me right away.
Reflection: My experience with voicing hard truths is that voicing them risks separation, injury,& estrangement rather than a positive outcome. The same risks exist in the failure to voice them. A container of love must be prepared for voicing the message; it helps the message be heard & received in the same spirit. "Love without truth is sentimentality & truth without love is violence." AYM has been enriched by bringing in Friends from other YMs. The Australia Quaker center, Silver Wattle, has been established to serve the same needs as Pendle Hill, Woodbrooke & other centers around the world. I felt tired and my feet were buzzing. We took a walk. I did not feel that my delivery was polished or neatly presented. I did feel that I had delivered as faithfully as I could under the circumstances, and I could rest in the peace that comes from knowing that.
Reflection: [I was reminded to pay attention to this experience for future reference when I am eldering]. [My] ministering image of a kite flying higher than it ever had (without floating away) was only possible because of the solid, firm grounding, and prayerful support that 2 elders provided me. [I was asked about rocking during meeting, I am usually not aware of it]. Perhaps the rocking settles the spiritual energy, like rocking a baby settles the baby. Perhaps it is a physical mantra.
Reflection: Physical manisfestations of the Spirit Elaine and I have experienced include: tears, rocking, shaking, quaking, buzzing, heart palpitations, giddiness, burping, ringing in the ears, goose bumps and sweating. On Friday, I returned to the eldering support function for Elaine at our final session. We briefly checked in with each other after this final session and felt okay. Elaine met with a young Friend regarding mystical and psychic experiences, while I gave eldering support to a Friend making a report.
Recovery Phase: January 12-16/ Epilogue—At the close of YM, Sally drove Elaine & me to our "recovery venue," the artist's retreat home of Tess Edwards & Lloyd Godman in Melbourne's outskirts. While driving there, Elaine became teary & emotional; she was depleted. I wondered if this teary experience might have been avoided if we had taken time apart from everyone on Friday. [Considering all we had done], I then wondered if the letdown was somewhat inevitable. Reflection: The one sorrow I have around AYM 2008 is our choice of the recovery space afterwards. It was a space lovingly created; the hosts & the space radiated healing presence.
Reflection: Elaine broke down emotionally again. Any social interaction was too much at that point. She wasn't getting enough quiet, unstructured, recovery time,cocooning, swaddled in eldering support, and she desperately needed it. The early Quaker Joseph Hoag, wrote of feeling naked as the old jaybird when he came home from delivering faithful ministry. He experienced feeling rightly used and then stripped of his skin, not having any protective covering. [What came after] listening to Elaine and to God, was to ask to be driven to the Melbourne meeting house accommodation early in the next day to have more quiet time together before my departure. After asking, I felt a wave of peace descend. Reflection: Elaine reflected on how elders need other elders for support; [a 2nd elder would have been helpful for YM ministry].
Our final 2 days together at the Melbourne Meeting apartment provided the needed cocooning time; mostly it was just the 2 of us, Elaine got the "womb time" she needed. I assisted Elaine's preparation for her next phase. She would traveling around the country for 3 1/2 weeks, calling forth the eldering assistance she needed from among people she would be serving. I don't think Elaine or I anticipated how much I would still be eldering for her after I left Australia. I held Elaine in my prayers, and often prayed for her during her eldering sessions. I listened to Elaine debrief, reflect, and describe her journey. Reflection: It has been interesting to approach the concept of long distance prayer support more intentionally. When I've asked for it, I feel the difference that prayer support makes. I return to a place of thanksgiving and joy for travel in ministry with Elaine, for the various learnings along the way, the apparent door closings and window openings, for the spiritual seeds that were planted, for the fruits already born, and now through remembering and writing about our experiences, sharing the story with the wider world. Joy is available to us when we listen and follow God's call.
Queries—How can the Quaker practice of traveling ministry strengthen the meetings involved as well as the individual who is traveling under a sense of leading? Why is a [companion-elder] important to a traveling minister? What are the different roles of minister and elder? How do elders provide support? What is your experience with prayer? What does it mean to be faithful? How does the elder get eldered? Why is keeping a journal valuable to you?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
429. What We Stand On (by Paul Christiansen; 2014)
About the Author—Paul Christiansen began giving vocal ministry as a teenager; he has been compelled to give it ever since. He was raised in Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue, WA and attended Earlham College (2006 Class). He does educational work, writes and does Quaker work. He has been involved with Young Adult Friends. This essay was born out of an intersection of several books and [vocal ministry].
The Enemy—[It happens fairly often at] the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza strip [that Israelis drive up to the perimeter in armored trucks, pour out insults through a loud speaker, and when boys respond in fury with rocks, shoot them]. War is born of hatred, fear, and lies—and war breeds hatred, fear and lies. The smallest slight becomes justification for revenge and the act of vengeance is avenged, round and round and round.
The truth is that there are no sides. [We are killing] kin, a part of ourselves. We must try to understand a little of war. War cannot actually be described, only seen. And heard. And smelled. The most potent written word and the most searing images, are in fact only hints. [2 unpleasant tasks for Quakers is to study war closely] and look at war through the eyes of war's makers. Why would anyone choose war? Chris Hedges explains war in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He is not alone in asserting that we go to war for what it gives us.
War is addicting and intoxicating. The power to wipe out life is highly seductive. William J. Broyle, Jr. writes: "The line between life and death is gossamer thin ... the step from the joy of being alive in death's presence to the joy of causing death is not a great step." The seduction of war is not limited to psychopaths or criminals, but potentially within us all. [War-writers] speak of the lust of battle and the more sexual lust that battle inspires, and of how war is an overwhelming experience, a heightened state, a drug. I have held a weapon in my hand; it filled me with such power, strength, potency, fascination, delight, alarm, and terror.
War also simplifies. Someone tells you what to do, or you just kill those things over there [that are] shaped like people, scream & weep & bleed like people, but aren't. They are bad guys, we are good guys; all uncertainty, and doubt of life are stripped away. It provides comradeship, patriotism, purpose, mission, drive, order. [A nation unifies in the face of a deadly enemy]. In 1982, the Argentine dictatorship lasted a few extra months, because they started and lost the Falkland Islands War; the people enthusiastically supported them briefly.
[We fear so many things]. So many conflicts are perpetuated for generations by people who fear to admit that their fathers were fools to keep fighting and who cannot bear to admit that their sons died for nothing. The fear of not enough is pervasive and all-consuming. [We come to giving and say] "if I give away that much, I won't have enough to ________. If we don't have enough, we'll wind up like them." And the false line that separates us from them is drawn again.
Wars and national policy are based on fear. The United States has backed dictators who violate every principle of freedom and democracy, and often the explanation is fear of communism. Fear has been the governing instinct of U.S foreign policy for centuries. Fear is at the heart of many things, and can grow to jealousy, greed, war. Fear keeps us from seeing the Other as human or as having the Divine in them at all.
War is the most terrible of all humanity's ills, for we choose it. Genocide is mostly a function of war, historically & because of degree. War is the worst disaster we have ever chosen to unleash. War has real lures. War gives meaning & unity, & so, out of our confusion & isolation we choose war. Quakers aren't entirely immune; there is satisfaction is drawing lines between people. We congratulate ourselves on being holier than them & more loving than them. Quakers are just as apt to build walls between human family members as any. Quakers are afraid. We have taken war off our list of options, but we haven't taken all the causes of war out of our hearts.
Morass: [Inconvenient Truth]—I'm rich. [The things that "Americans" expect out of life—graduations, healthcare, comfortable home—were never in doubt]. I am rich despite making less than $15,000/year. I am rich because my skin is poor in melanin, my body is poor in estrogen, parent- & government-paid diplomas, because I am an English-speaking US citizen. I am blessed with vast abundance that I simply never earned. It is a gift. (If you are one of exceptions to this description, I am sorry for coming to this understanding so late. Please, have patience with me).
Why are we rich? Violence and war. We live in an armed camp near the top of a hierarchy maintained by the US Marine Corps & the local police. We live on stolen land. Chris Hedges writes: "The message we send is: "We have everything and if you try to take it away from us we will kill you." What will Quakers do about being recipients of the plunder? While we may want to change things, we don't have to. Our backs are not against the wall. There are others who have no choice, who are the ones the system uses, starves, for whom simply existing is a battle and a half. We, the enriched, have the luxury to dabble.
But there is no testimony of dabbling. Are we not called to be patterns and examples? To live lives that speak? To seek the truth and then speak it to power? Some would say that token acts, however well meant, are what allow the injustices of the world to continue. Can we live lives that speak if our acts are small, everyday deeds? Can we be patterns and examples of a better world if we don't break the normal pattern? Donating the leftovers is not enough. We were given these gifts so that we could share them. All of them. we were given these gifts because the Light loves us so much, and because the Light loves everyone else so much. Can we be radically faithful to the way of the Spirit while also preserving our riches?
The wealth and comfort and status of middle- and upper-class Americans is a cause of war; the fear which motivate us to preserve it is a cause of war. We must choose between our treasures and peace, between life-comfort and the calling of Light. Friends of the 1st generation were often quite poor, because they stood apart from society and caused such a ruckus. Successful Quaker businessmen came from quieter and less disruptive later generations who were content not to rock the boat. If those who receive our generosity do a little better but still remain poor, and if injustices continue, is that good enough?
The world cannot afford for all humans to live as luxuriously as most American and Europeans live. If we keep on living this way, we grow the seeds of war in our homes and in our hearts. I had to be dragged [around] to this line of reasoning. Friends taught me that even in my most financially desperate moments, I, as a straight white male, was richer by far than many. I could give away money, but I could not give away my identity.
Morass: ["Go, Sell What you Own ...]—As I was reading the Bible, I quietly cheered whenever I saw a commandment for the rich to look after the poor. But slowly I realized the Bible was talking to me. It was no easy thing to realize that the way I have been living isn't good enough, that my points of pride are baby steps, praiseworthy only as beginnings, and terrifying to realize there's a gap between what I've said I believe and what I am really doing. Shall we stay on this side of the gap, not risk the leap [of radical faith and "sell all we own"]? Shall we lie again? We lie all the time, most of all to ourselves. Pay close attention: the Spirit has blessed us more than we want to know, and we are capable of far more than we want to admit, capable of true service to the Light and those the Light loves.
We must 1st admit we have not done enough. Too many are still poor. Can we still speak Truth to power when we are the power? We must admit that being truly Quaker and truly faithful is neither comfortable nor easy. We should be comforted, not comfortable. We were given the duty of leadership long ago, with all the panic and terror and confusion that goes with being out in front. The most crucial testimony of them all, is often overlooked: integrity. It means being whole in the sense of being one in the Spirit. It means having our deeds match our words. Why are we rich? Because we do not know how to part with our treasures or whom we should give them to instead. We are rich because we are served by the greatest war machine the world has ever known. We are afraid of what would happen if we resisted it, and we're afraid we don't know how. We are rich because we are resting on our laurels. Christ Hedges writes: "When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us choose contentment." Have you chosen truth?
What We Stand On—Chris Hedges and William Broyles, who know more about war than I, see no way out of it. I say Hedges and Broyles are right. To end war with the idea of "answering that of God in everyone—to appeal to a common humanity, when humanity must be the 1st casualty of every war—is impossible. And then I say, everything Quakers do is impossible.
In meeting for worship with attention to business, we are striving for discernment. We attempt to set aside all our own wants and plans and desires in order to find out what we are called to do. In the best and bravest meetings, we may come to a way that everyone dreads, yet is the way we need to go. [It is insane, impossible, yet] we manage. Not perfectly, not always well. From time to time, and not infrequently either, the Spirit moves us in unexpected ways, and the meeting sees its path.
[Consider the impossibility of] individuals attempting to find unity without for a moment surrendering their individuality. We are accepting and submitting to the highest authority on one hand, and rejecting every other form of authority on the other. We talk with God by becoming still and silent. We seek the Truth by sitting and waiting for it to arrive. It's as if we walk into a library, and patiently wait for the book we want, which may or may not exist, to check itself out and read itself to us. And sometimes, it works.
In 2012, I began a practice of daily meditation (or at least dailyish). [It grew from] 10 minutes, to 30, then for an hour or more. My roiling mind began to calm; my worship began to deepen. Messages I had been given before began to gather themselves together into a whole, which grew over the years into this essay & other works. Naturally this led to the Spirit's asking even more of me, & soon I found myself as scared as ever, now of being on my feet & speaking when I didn't want to, such as the 2013 plenary session of North Pacific YM. I rejoice in the memory of giving guidance by being [fearfully] led. [For all the scorn & wrath I have poured out], the Society that wavers between comfort & Truth is the same Society that hears the voice of God. [We know of gaining love by giving love, of coming as & remaining ourselves even as we join in something greater than ourselves, of raging, desiring, fearing while knowing we don't need to be ruled by it, nor anything else but love]. Despairing observers may say, "War is inevitable," but we can prove them wrong in our way of doing business and in our way of life. We are one peaceful voice in a growing nonviolent choir. We have a way that could help many, and even for those who cannot follow our path, it may be a great encouragement to know we exist.
My mind reels at the changes we will need to make. It may require giving up homes, surrendering careers, laying down dreams long held. It may require walking into danger. It will require being profoundly, visibly different. I expect us to be pretty bad at it for a long time. But the only way to be good at anything is to be bad at it for awhile. [There are all manner of things that we could do, that couldn't possibly make a difference or would take forever to work, that call for seemingly impossible changes in yourself; do them anyway]. What looks impossible is fact, underneath us all the time, more solid than anything, & holds us up. The impossible is what we stand on, for all the world to see.
If we choose to make ourselves patterns and examples, we are one day closer to the City of Light in the Peaceable Kingdom. Getting past the blocks [within us and around us] may be the 1st impossibility that we clamber up on. The world has seen many solitary peacemakers; we must show that humans can indeed live in peace and generosity as a group. If we stand fearfully but bravely and faithfully, we can show how fear can be overcome. Sometimes the Spirit will soothe us; sometimes the Spirit will lead us to something even scarier. The Spirit will never ask us to go alone. Be brave, seek the Truth, love the Light, and know the Light loves you. Trust beyond reason, and you will ultimately get results beyond hope."
Queries—What is your experience of war? How is fear an influence on your life? How have you sought release from those fears? How uncomfortable are you with choosing between your treasures and peace? How do you lie to others, to those who need your help, to yourself? In what ways do you think you may be too comfortable? How do you respond to the idea of "by standing on the impossible for all the world to see, we can reveal that whatever seems impossible [about ending war] is entirely real"? If you were to make a significant change to your life, what would it be? Are you inclined to dismiss the message of a young adult, [uninvolved with children or infirm parents or significant vulnerability]?
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430. The Door in (by Renee Crauder; 2014)
The Enemy—[It happens fairly often at] the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza strip [that Israelis drive up to the perimeter in armored trucks, pour out insults through a loud speaker, and when boys respond in fury with rocks, shoot them]. War is born of hatred, fear, and lies—and war breeds hatred, fear and lies. The smallest slight becomes justification for revenge and the act of vengeance is avenged, round and round and round.
The truth is that there are no sides. [We are killing] kin, a part of ourselves. We must try to understand a little of war. War cannot actually be described, only seen. And heard. And smelled. The most potent written word and the most searing images, are in fact only hints. [2 unpleasant tasks for Quakers is to study war closely] and look at war through the eyes of war's makers. Why would anyone choose war? Chris Hedges explains war in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He is not alone in asserting that we go to war for what it gives us.
War is addicting and intoxicating. The power to wipe out life is highly seductive. William J. Broyle, Jr. writes: "The line between life and death is gossamer thin ... the step from the joy of being alive in death's presence to the joy of causing death is not a great step." The seduction of war is not limited to psychopaths or criminals, but potentially within us all. [War-writers] speak of the lust of battle and the more sexual lust that battle inspires, and of how war is an overwhelming experience, a heightened state, a drug. I have held a weapon in my hand; it filled me with such power, strength, potency, fascination, delight, alarm, and terror.
War also simplifies. Someone tells you what to do, or you just kill those things over there [that are] shaped like people, scream & weep & bleed like people, but aren't. They are bad guys, we are good guys; all uncertainty, and doubt of life are stripped away. It provides comradeship, patriotism, purpose, mission, drive, order. [A nation unifies in the face of a deadly enemy]. In 1982, the Argentine dictatorship lasted a few extra months, because they started and lost the Falkland Islands War; the people enthusiastically supported them briefly.
[We fear so many things]. So many conflicts are perpetuated for generations by people who fear to admit that their fathers were fools to keep fighting and who cannot bear to admit that their sons died for nothing. The fear of not enough is pervasive and all-consuming. [We come to giving and say] "if I give away that much, I won't have enough to ________. If we don't have enough, we'll wind up like them." And the false line that separates us from them is drawn again.
Wars and national policy are based on fear. The United States has backed dictators who violate every principle of freedom and democracy, and often the explanation is fear of communism. Fear has been the governing instinct of U.S foreign policy for centuries. Fear is at the heart of many things, and can grow to jealousy, greed, war. Fear keeps us from seeing the Other as human or as having the Divine in them at all.
War is the most terrible of all humanity's ills, for we choose it. Genocide is mostly a function of war, historically & because of degree. War is the worst disaster we have ever chosen to unleash. War has real lures. War gives meaning & unity, & so, out of our confusion & isolation we choose war. Quakers aren't entirely immune; there is satisfaction is drawing lines between people. We congratulate ourselves on being holier than them & more loving than them. Quakers are just as apt to build walls between human family members as any. Quakers are afraid. We have taken war off our list of options, but we haven't taken all the causes of war out of our hearts.
Morass: [Inconvenient Truth]—I'm rich. [The things that "Americans" expect out of life—graduations, healthcare, comfortable home—were never in doubt]. I am rich despite making less than $15,000/year. I am rich because my skin is poor in melanin, my body is poor in estrogen, parent- & government-paid diplomas, because I am an English-speaking US citizen. I am blessed with vast abundance that I simply never earned. It is a gift. (If you are one of exceptions to this description, I am sorry for coming to this understanding so late. Please, have patience with me).
Why are we rich? Violence and war. We live in an armed camp near the top of a hierarchy maintained by the US Marine Corps & the local police. We live on stolen land. Chris Hedges writes: "The message we send is: "We have everything and if you try to take it away from us we will kill you." What will Quakers do about being recipients of the plunder? While we may want to change things, we don't have to. Our backs are not against the wall. There are others who have no choice, who are the ones the system uses, starves, for whom simply existing is a battle and a half. We, the enriched, have the luxury to dabble.
But there is no testimony of dabbling. Are we not called to be patterns and examples? To live lives that speak? To seek the truth and then speak it to power? Some would say that token acts, however well meant, are what allow the injustices of the world to continue. Can we live lives that speak if our acts are small, everyday deeds? Can we be patterns and examples of a better world if we don't break the normal pattern? Donating the leftovers is not enough. We were given these gifts so that we could share them. All of them. we were given these gifts because the Light loves us so much, and because the Light loves everyone else so much. Can we be radically faithful to the way of the Spirit while also preserving our riches?
The wealth and comfort and status of middle- and upper-class Americans is a cause of war; the fear which motivate us to preserve it is a cause of war. We must choose between our treasures and peace, between life-comfort and the calling of Light. Friends of the 1st generation were often quite poor, because they stood apart from society and caused such a ruckus. Successful Quaker businessmen came from quieter and less disruptive later generations who were content not to rock the boat. If those who receive our generosity do a little better but still remain poor, and if injustices continue, is that good enough?
The world cannot afford for all humans to live as luxuriously as most American and Europeans live. If we keep on living this way, we grow the seeds of war in our homes and in our hearts. I had to be dragged [around] to this line of reasoning. Friends taught me that even in my most financially desperate moments, I, as a straight white male, was richer by far than many. I could give away money, but I could not give away my identity.
Morass: ["Go, Sell What you Own ...]—As I was reading the Bible, I quietly cheered whenever I saw a commandment for the rich to look after the poor. But slowly I realized the Bible was talking to me. It was no easy thing to realize that the way I have been living isn't good enough, that my points of pride are baby steps, praiseworthy only as beginnings, and terrifying to realize there's a gap between what I've said I believe and what I am really doing. Shall we stay on this side of the gap, not risk the leap [of radical faith and "sell all we own"]? Shall we lie again? We lie all the time, most of all to ourselves. Pay close attention: the Spirit has blessed us more than we want to know, and we are capable of far more than we want to admit, capable of true service to the Light and those the Light loves.
We must 1st admit we have not done enough. Too many are still poor. Can we still speak Truth to power when we are the power? We must admit that being truly Quaker and truly faithful is neither comfortable nor easy. We should be comforted, not comfortable. We were given the duty of leadership long ago, with all the panic and terror and confusion that goes with being out in front. The most crucial testimony of them all, is often overlooked: integrity. It means being whole in the sense of being one in the Spirit. It means having our deeds match our words. Why are we rich? Because we do not know how to part with our treasures or whom we should give them to instead. We are rich because we are served by the greatest war machine the world has ever known. We are afraid of what would happen if we resisted it, and we're afraid we don't know how. We are rich because we are resting on our laurels. Christ Hedges writes: "When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us choose contentment." Have you chosen truth?
What We Stand On—Chris Hedges and William Broyles, who know more about war than I, see no way out of it. I say Hedges and Broyles are right. To end war with the idea of "answering that of God in everyone—to appeal to a common humanity, when humanity must be the 1st casualty of every war—is impossible. And then I say, everything Quakers do is impossible.
In meeting for worship with attention to business, we are striving for discernment. We attempt to set aside all our own wants and plans and desires in order to find out what we are called to do. In the best and bravest meetings, we may come to a way that everyone dreads, yet is the way we need to go. [It is insane, impossible, yet] we manage. Not perfectly, not always well. From time to time, and not infrequently either, the Spirit moves us in unexpected ways, and the meeting sees its path.
[Consider the impossibility of] individuals attempting to find unity without for a moment surrendering their individuality. We are accepting and submitting to the highest authority on one hand, and rejecting every other form of authority on the other. We talk with God by becoming still and silent. We seek the Truth by sitting and waiting for it to arrive. It's as if we walk into a library, and patiently wait for the book we want, which may or may not exist, to check itself out and read itself to us. And sometimes, it works.
In 2012, I began a practice of daily meditation (or at least dailyish). [It grew from] 10 minutes, to 30, then for an hour or more. My roiling mind began to calm; my worship began to deepen. Messages I had been given before began to gather themselves together into a whole, which grew over the years into this essay & other works. Naturally this led to the Spirit's asking even more of me, & soon I found myself as scared as ever, now of being on my feet & speaking when I didn't want to, such as the 2013 plenary session of North Pacific YM. I rejoice in the memory of giving guidance by being [fearfully] led. [For all the scorn & wrath I have poured out], the Society that wavers between comfort & Truth is the same Society that hears the voice of God. [We know of gaining love by giving love, of coming as & remaining ourselves even as we join in something greater than ourselves, of raging, desiring, fearing while knowing we don't need to be ruled by it, nor anything else but love]. Despairing observers may say, "War is inevitable," but we can prove them wrong in our way of doing business and in our way of life. We are one peaceful voice in a growing nonviolent choir. We have a way that could help many, and even for those who cannot follow our path, it may be a great encouragement to know we exist.
My mind reels at the changes we will need to make. It may require giving up homes, surrendering careers, laying down dreams long held. It may require walking into danger. It will require being profoundly, visibly different. I expect us to be pretty bad at it for a long time. But the only way to be good at anything is to be bad at it for awhile. [There are all manner of things that we could do, that couldn't possibly make a difference or would take forever to work, that call for seemingly impossible changes in yourself; do them anyway]. What looks impossible is fact, underneath us all the time, more solid than anything, & holds us up. The impossible is what we stand on, for all the world to see.
If we choose to make ourselves patterns and examples, we are one day closer to the City of Light in the Peaceable Kingdom. Getting past the blocks [within us and around us] may be the 1st impossibility that we clamber up on. The world has seen many solitary peacemakers; we must show that humans can indeed live in peace and generosity as a group. If we stand fearfully but bravely and faithfully, we can show how fear can be overcome. Sometimes the Spirit will soothe us; sometimes the Spirit will lead us to something even scarier. The Spirit will never ask us to go alone. Be brave, seek the Truth, love the Light, and know the Light loves you. Trust beyond reason, and you will ultimately get results beyond hope."
Queries—What is your experience of war? How is fear an influence on your life? How have you sought release from those fears? How uncomfortable are you with choosing between your treasures and peace? How do you lie to others, to those who need your help, to yourself? In what ways do you think you may be too comfortable? How do you respond to the idea of "by standing on the impossible for all the world to see, we can reveal that whatever seems impossible [about ending war] is entirely real"? If you were to make a significant change to your life, what would it be? Are you inclined to dismiss the message of a young adult, [uninvolved with children or infirm parents or significant vulnerability]?
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430. The Door in (by Renee Crauder; 2014)
About the Author—Renee Crauder and her husband Bob lived and worked in Burma, Lebanon, Syria, Bangladesh, and other 3rd World countries for 14 years. Renne has a ministry of offering retreats and workshops on prayer, discernment, spirituality, and faithfulness. She also offers 1-on-1 spiritual direction.
Preface—I wrote this essay to share with you my life-changing experiences of God between the late 1970's and the mid 1990's. In my search for life and truth, I received much spiritual nourishment from retreats at Jesuit centers, based on the writings of Ignatius of Loyola. The spiritual directors there accepted me as a Quaker. I never thought of myself as other than a Friend. Jesuit spirituality, like Quaker spirituality, goes from head to heart. The Jesuit maxim of "contemplation into action" is close to the Quaker thought of "faith and practice." It was the convergence of my seeking, the desire and the time to engage in the search, and persons to guide me. My hope is that sharing my experience of moving into the Light, into the Spirit of God, may help others to listen carefully and go deeper into this mystery. There is only now to do so.
Beginning—In 1978 4 Friends start a meeting for worship in our living room in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Perhaps God led me to Sr. Joann, an American nun & a girl-school principal. We met for an hour each Thursday afternoon for 3 years. She says, " We see God in people," [i.e.] in me. Someone/thing loves me unconditionally; that is amazing & life-changing. I am a new person who realizes that my worship & my life have to flow seamlessly into each other. Thomas Kelly writes: "The stabilizing of our lives, so that we can live in God & in time, in fruitful interplay, is the task of a maturing religious life." How do I begin to know myself? There are layers of self-justification, pride, and dishonesty to peel back to see myself as God must see me. I rediscover the Bible and its wisdom. Am I even on the right road? How does one know? As prayer deepens, we have to trust that we're being led the right way. Often I have a deeper awareness of God at odd moments of day, than during prayer.
1st Retreat—[Joann invited me on a day-long retreat]. I have butterflies: can I really fast for a day? I am deeply moved when I am prayed for during morning worship. I feel God's love & become still. I read Bible verse & Joann instructed me not to take the cultural parts of the Bible too seriously. The last few days I have felt converted. No blindingly clarifying experience of God, but, yes, a conversion. Until now, God gave me the courage to go on & my pride sustained me. Now, I need & desire for God to lead me on. I can't go back to who I was & I am not yet who I am to be. Pulled both ways, I sometimes feel lost. I don't yet recognize this new life's rules.
Months later, I'm on an unstressful, unpeaked, boring plateau. Prayer is ragged, flat. [I get some sense that I won't drown in dryness]. One morning I pray, "God, you can do with me what you like—I'll wait & hope & suffer & submit & obey," then God returns. I read with dawning understanding Evelyn Underhill's words: "True mysticism is active & practical, not passive & theoretical." Months later, I say yes to God. I go deep into myself, then pass through an opening like a Chinese moon gate in my innermost self. I am given back all of my self, free, unencumbered, joyous. In a way I don't understand, my prayer life & active life are fusing. This integration makes me less self-centered. The intensity of my love of God surprises me. I find I love Bob more tenderly.
From my trekking adventures in the Himalaya, it comes to me that Jesus is my guide, my sherpa. He stretches my possibilities, urges me past previous limits, the known landscape, past my reluctance. I realize once again that only as I own all of who I am will I be able to give myself to God. We left Dhaka after 6 years to return to the US. The Sisters left me with "We loved having you pray in our house." I see the way I must grow now—from peace, joy, and love, to patience, kindness, and goodness, to trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
1st 8-day Silent Retreat—In November 1983, I make my 1st 8-day retreat at a Jesuit Retreat Center. Each day Sr. Celeste listens to the content of my prayer and gives me Bible verses to be with. My prayer become deeper. I feel one with creation. I go outdoors. A feeling of God-with-me grows stronger, and then what happens I have no words for. I feel filled with Light, the Light expands in me. I cry, "I am not worthy, I don't deserve this," and Light and Fire touch me and cleanse me and heal me. "I am Yours to do with as You like." Ashes fall deep inside me, ashes of peace, of the dying of inordinate desires. "I want to die now, to be like this forever." Nothing specific was asked of me, "Obedience." During this retreat I have emptied myself enough so that God can enter. My desire is to lead other Friends into their own fullness with God.
At Radnor Meeting, I speak about my understanding of God's love in my life; this is the same for us as individuals & as a people. Douglas & Dorothy Steere [affirm my vocal ministry & my newly chosen ministry. Are others called to action & I to contemplate & help others to God? I participate in a spiritual directing course. Slowly, seekers come to tell me their stories, & I begin an ongoing ministry of one-on-one spiritual guidance. I continue to make annual 8-day retreats [with the Jesuits] at Wernersville & take workshops there & at Pendle Hill, balancing Quaker with Ignatian input. I work on Ignatian techniques that can be used by Friends to deepen their understanding of God. I still chafe because I think I ought to be more active in the world. Does the expectation to be more active in the world arise from deep inside or is it a form of self-imposed peer pressure from news of active Friends? This is a measuring of myself against others, not listening to God's voice in me.
There are expectations of how I am to be a "spiritual person." Do I have to meet others' expectations of a "spiritual person" to keep faith with you, God? The recognition of the rightness of Ignatian prayers, exercises, and approaches for me is disturbing. God says I am to continue to speak God's name and God's faithfulness and love to Friends now. [I agree with] Douglas Steere about how important ecumenism is. I return from a workshop or retreat at a Catholic house a stronger Quaker. My life with God has a timelessness to it; time doesn't exist. "Living in eternity" might be the best term.
I suddenly realize I am no longer on the mountain journey. The sailboat journey has begun, in a small, sturdy sailboat, with steady breezes, & unexpected gusts. [I am in a similar boat in a dream]. I am doing very little, almost nothing. It is the water & God who are active; I'm passive. I want to live George Fox's message: "Be patterns, be examples in all countries ... wherever you come; that your carriage & life may preach among all sorts of people, & to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one."
We want to transform our meetings & the Society; what we need to do 1st is to listen to what God is asking us to do. If it weren't for you, God, I might think I was losing touch with reality, but I know that I feel more tenderly toward mundane reality & try to be your presence to all. Words are becoming less & less useful in my life in you. Worship & Ministry Committee accepted my proposal to find retreat places within 2 hours of everyone in Philadelphia YM (PYM). I spend 2 years making short retreats & writing a pamphlet. After each 8-day retreat, I yearn to offer other Friends these experiences that have enhanced my life. I am also drawn to Ignatius' "long," 30-day retreat. There is one at Loyola House in Guelph, Canada, that begins right after Bob leaves for Kenya.
The Long Retreat: January 1988, Loyola House Guelph—How do you pray? I struggle to answer Virginia, my spiritual director, realizing how inadequate words are in describing the soul's inner movements. In mid-16th Spain, Ignatius had deep religious openings. He developed spiritual practices to help others into the fullness of life in God, described in his book, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. This retreat experience lasts about 4 weeks, with 5 hour-long prayer periods each day using the biblical record of Jesus' life on earth.
Ignatius found a way to pray that he called "contemplation." The retreatant reads & rereads a Bible passage from Jesus' life. One fully develops the passage in one's imagination: place, people, conversation, food. After additional readings, & asking for the gift one desires, one inserts oneself into the story, as any character or one's self. After each prayer period is a "review of prayer," when one writes what the prayer has meant & what truths about one's self, God & the world it has opened. [To me,] Ignatius' way of being with Bible stories isn't so different from George Fox's "but what canst thou say?" [I lived in] the surroundings where Jesus walked in the 1950s. Some of the scripture passages are especially meaningful to me.
The 1st prayer of the day is to be just after midnight; sometimes we fall asleep. Yet often this is a powerful time to be with God. The other 4 prayer times are spread over the day. The silence becomes immense and deep. Except for the short daily meeting with the director and wishing each other the Peace at liturgy, there is no need and increasingly little desire to speak. Over the weeks I grow more understanding of Jesus' life and ministry and how that affects my own life. I realized it's one thing to look for that of God in everyone, another but related thing to understand that evil exists, in me and in everyone.
Just as I leave the Center, Bob calls from Nairobi. "I accepted for you to give a 3-day workshop of Quakerism to pastors of Eglon YM in Kenya, & an inspirational talk to the teenage girls of the Lugulu Friends School." I speak to 120 pastors about early Friends & faithfulness. I find God throughout the vastness of Africa. I stop in England to visit one spiritual friend in particular, the Anglican Sr. Heather, whose poetry moved me to write her. At PYM a respected older Friend said, "I've sat at your feet ... something must have already rubbed off." How do You, God, want me to think about someone sitting at my feet? It must have been at Your feet at which she sat.
The 1990 Summer Practicum at Guelph—The Practicum is 7 "staff associates"—4 Jesuits, 1 parish priest, 1 Catholic lay women, and 1 Quaker. We studied Ignatius' autobiography. I am struck by the similarities between Ignatius and George Fox. Luis Gonzales de Camara wrote that: "[Ignatius'] understanding began to open ... he saw and understood many things ... This took place with so great an illumination that these things appeared to be something altogether new. I dream I am on a major league baseball team. I feel accepted. I wake up feeling competent and that I belong. I like being part of a team; I like to empower people, not to lead them. We each direct several 8-day retreats, write papers, pray.
I say in answer to my son, "I love what I'm doing. I want to do that for and with Friends and live in Wayne with Dad." I lead a retreat and give the keynote address at Southeastern YM. Friends ask when the speech will be published. The Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia has me listed as a spiritual director. I continue my service from PA, to AK, to IN, to FL. The 1st weekend retreat I direct shows that Friends can pray productively with the Ignatian way of prayer. I ask Radnor Friends for a clearness committee, as I need to not "outrun the Guide." I visit Bhutan and explore spirituality with a lama, who says that in his deepest meditations, he finds "Love."
I am diagnosed with bladder cancer. [With family support, the laying of healing hands on, prayer, & surgery, I pass] through the crisis cleanly & painlessly. I give my 1st 8-day retreat for Friends, many of them spiritual directors themselves, in Wernersville. God is re-patterning me, & I am living into it joyfully & with abandon. Over the last 20 years, my prayer has changed. More and more, prayer for me has become looking for and answering that of God in everyone I meet. Prayer is knowledge that God is and deeply cares for me and all creation.
God is Mystery. I will never solve that Mystery, nor am I supposed to. When I deliberately place myself into God's presence, chronological time as I understand it disappears. I know that everything is in God's love and care. John Pitman mentions that in individuation, the ego is being superceded by the self; ego is fighting for its life and needs to lose so we may be whole. I reflect that while God may have stripped and pruned me, I don't miss whatever was pruned—I hardly remember what it was.
The Door In—In the mid-1990's, I experience myself sitting for many weeks before a wall with a door's outline cut into it; I am waiting. Later, the door has a knob & hinges; it opens a little, then wide open to darkness, which gradually becomes a thick snow cloud. I hear, "you'll enter when the time is right." Heather writes that when I go through, I will find more faith, joy, peace, & love in God. I go through & feel totally fulfilled. I feel unworthy, sinful, and small. A voice suggest that this sentiment may well be a way not to accept these gifts. God's concentrated love is so strong that it feels like pain and yet wonderful love at the same time.
My boundaries are blurring, and I am disappearing more and more into the clouds. Part of me is sitting cross-legged on the bed, writing these lines. Where is the part of me that was in the cloud? God says: "Sleep then, my love." Bernadette Robert's The Experience of No-Self tells of "The relative difference between life with the old self, and life with a new self that cannot be moved from its center in God. I am anchored in God. Through the open entrance door is black now. Suggestions and readings convince me it is not my self that is lost; much of my ego has disappeared. "You have to get rid of all images to be with me."
I go through the door again. The black center is now surrounded by blue and white clouds. I am a black line, almost invisible. It feels like utter rightness, a willingness to let of my own agenda, a passionate wanting of what God wants. I go through the door later and am there and not there but do not have the feeling of being as safe in God's heart as earlier. The next day the frame and the door are broken, and I am not to enter.
I have been reaching out to people in what amounts to tiny community cells. I feel inordinately, outrageously loved, yet I can't grasp where I am—not intellectually, affectively, nor any other way. When I 1st walked through the door, I thought I was losing my self. I now realize I was asked to give up human depictions of God. It is difficult to love a God I can't—am not permitted to—imagine. It is a lonely journey that I have to make alone but can't make alone. God is a force holding everything together in loving care; I have to align myself with that force. Through my work & beyond it, I feel intimately, indivisibly, connected with all that is created.
[Queries]—What implications does having only "now" have for the spiritual life and for life in general? If you have strived to know yourself in a "totally honest and "excruciatingly painful" way, what has been your experience? How has the Bible been helpful in your own spiritual life? Where is your support in spiritual growth? What did you do with spiritual "dryness?" How do you see Jesus? Have you had experiences where God is "much more real than the physical reality of anything else"? How has your spirituality affected your relationships with people? How do you pray? Would you choose to totally "dissolve yourself" in God or pass "through the narrow door"? Why or Why not?
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431. Revelation and Revolution: Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness (by Steve Chase; 2014)
About the Author—Steve Chase assumed the education director position at Pendle Hill in 2014, after 12 years as the founding director of Antioch's program in Advocacy for Social Justice & Sustainability. In [his efforts to be] a community activist, Steve has sought to answer the spiritual call he experienced as a teenager in the Religious Society of Friends. Steve is co-author of the book Building Beloved Communities: A Transition Town Primer for People of Faith. This pamphlet goes back to a talk Steve gave at the 2012 PH Young Adult Friends Conference, which he later entitled
"Revelation & Revolution: Quaker Activism as a Path Toward Faithfulness."
[Introduction]—When I was a teenager, my dad took me backpacking for several days in Yosemite National Park. Another awestruck backpacker showed up at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp, & we talked late into the night. Our new companion asked me what I wanted to be. I replied, "A nonviolent revolutionary ... because I'm a Quaker." For me, the connection between Quakers & nonviolent revolution was self-evident. I liked how the book, Revolution: A Quaker Prescription for a Sick Society, built on Martin Luther King's (MLK) 1967 call for us to engage in "a radical revolution of values."
The founders of A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) were my inspiring, living "patterns & examples" of faithfulness. They started AQAG in 1966, with creative & daring nonviolent direct action to oppose the US [role] in Vietnam. [They later broadened their scope in the] "hope to catalyze a movement for a new society ... in concert with other change movements." The "Kingdom of God" teaching meant fostering another way of life that leaves behind a love of justice, solidarity, & unity with neighbors & nature. Almost a few decades later I founded the Advocacy for Social Justice & Sustainability program "to create a sustainable society that embodies respect ... for life's community, [ecology], social-economic justice, democracy, non-violence & peace." Being a nonviolent revolutionary has been a joyful part of my spiritual practice for over 4 decades through both good times and bad.
A Little More History—Many Quaker historians say this radical vision of faithfulness goes all the way back to the beginning of the Quaker movement. Gerard Guiton, in The Early Quakers and the "Kingdom of God": Peace, Testimony, and Revolution, documents how 17th century Quakers claimed the "rediscovery" of "Jesus' central & 'pure doctrine' of the Kingdom of God ... " In response to this radical revelation of their role in the unfolding of God's just & compassionate ways, early Quakers risked repression to promote a "spiritual revolution with social & political consequences. They were waging a non-violent "Lamb's War," a visionary and persistent effort designed to turn the world upside down by placing the Jesus designed to turn the world upside down by placing the Jesus Way ... at the very heart of life."
Guiton claims that "the early Quakers are little understood among present-day Friends," and not often followed as powerful patterns and examples by today's Quaker. Rosemary Moore points out that divergence from a radical faith and practice began "in the course of a few years ... and it was not long before the weight of Quaker opinion came down on side of solid respectability." While the spirit of Quaker faith and practice has been crucified many times, it has also been resurrected many times as a rising flame emerging from still glowing embers, [in the guise of] John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, and the founders of AQAG. [Most recently] we see this rising flame in the recent Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice.
The Call from Kenya—This Call is a Quaker faith & practice statement from the 6th World Conference of Friends held in April 2012 in Kenya . Among 850 Quakers, the question was asked: "What is God calling us to do & be now ?" The following statement, in spite of difficulties and momentary antagonisms, was approved in a nearly unanimous "sense of the meeting" decision. [Excerpts follow] " They witnessed to health & climate disasters], "wars & rumors of war, job loss, inequality, violence. We fear our neighbors. We waste our children's heritage. These are driven by dominant economic systems—by greed not need, by worship of the market, by Mammon & Caesar. Is this how Jesus showed us to live?"
"... We are called to work for the peaceable Kingdom of God on the whole earth, in right sharing with all people." We are called to see what love can do, [to follow the Scripture's admonitions in the treatment of our neighbor]. We are called to teach our children right relationship and harmony with each other [and the world]. We are called to do justice to all and walk humbly with our God, to cooperate lovingly with those who share our hopes for the earth's future. We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace & eco-justice. We dedicate ourselves to building the peace that passeth all understanding, to the repair of the world, opening our lives to the Light to guide us in each small step."
The Call from Louisiana—I have personally seen such faith in action while leading a field studies trip to Louisiana with 12 students. Besides [showing the realities of corporate power, regulatory agencies, pollution, public health, & racism, I wanted the students to get to know some tough creative people who have resisted these powerful forces & won some real community victories between Baton Rouge & New Orleans, known as "Chemical Corridor" or "Cancer Alley." Louisiana produces roughly 25% of domestically produced petrochemicals from 150 plants in Cancer Alley, yet is the 2nd poorest state, with the worst national public health record.
Margie Richard, a retired school-teacher who used to lived in Diamond, Louisiana led a community rebellion in Diamond, to make sure the Shell Oil Company paid every homeowner [not just whites] enough to move. She pointed to the spot where a 17-year-old boy mowing the lawn, died in a fireball from a chemical plant explosion. Shell offered the boy's mother $500 for her son's death if the mother would sign away her right to sue the company. Shell voluntarily offered a buyout deal to white residents of Diamond, but not to African Americans.
She became a community organizer & started pressuring Shell to buy out all the neighbors in Diamond. She built an alliance with Greenpeace & the Sierra Club. Her community bought a few shares of Shell stock & sent her to Europe to Shell's shareholders meeting. Margie poured glasses of Diamond well water for the directors & encouraged them to drink it if they thought it was safe. Shell finally offered enough money for everyone's homes so all could move. Margie said, "Aw honey, if Jesus can die on the cross for me, I can damn well take care of the babies in my community."
The Kingdom as Beloved Community—I completely resonated with Margie's radical Christian faithfulness in that moment. We both recognized each other as God intoxicated, Creation-loving, Bible-studying, Jesus-following activists. We had disagreements about particulars, & theology. Yet we also shared a common prophetic spiritual tradition that inspires us to engage in a nonviolent revolution of values within our communities.
Many "who share our hopes for the future of the earth" aren't comfortable expressing long range visions using the biblical language of the "kingdom of God." I have been able to find common ground with my students by using MLK's "beloved community." During the mid-1980's in the African American neighborhood in Seattle, they understood that it is a big problem that most "students from high school know little about MLK & the civil & human rights movements. This neighborhood got the city council to agree to their proposal. The organizers of this campaign had a celebration in a local baptist church.
Vincent Harding, a radical Mennonite, and longtime associate of MLK focused his talk on King's long-range vision of building the beloved community. Harding described how King's vision of the beloved community held an inclusive appeal for secular people seeking to help form a "more perfect union" as talked about in the U. S. Constitution. Whether we see ourselves as secular or religious people, we should all learn to work together to continue King's nonviolent revolution of values in our personal, professional, and public lives. Harding believed that the fundamental challenge we face in our society today is changing the road we travel from the Empire Way (the street's old name) to MLK Way, from imperial life to the beloved community that King dreamed of and worked so hard to advance.
I ask my students if this story comes anywhere close to capturing the spirit of what they most hope to accomplish as well-trained activists and organizers working for social justice and sustainability. I get the same quick "Yes"—even though the room is usually filled with atheists or folks who identify as "spiritual, not religious." They resonate with King's vision's of the beloved community, which they feel poetically captures the spirit of their own calling. All of the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter want to live in a socially just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling community. There is a latent goodwill all around us that we can work with, even if it is muted by denial, distraction, and despair.
Needed: "Transformed Nonconformists—My mother & I watched news coverage of the civil rights movement, particularly the Birmingham, Alabama demonstrations, when I was 8. My mom said, "Stevie, these are God's people. I want you to be like them when you grow up." She took me to a "black" beach at Lake Story, & refused to go when a policeman told her to go to the other beach to "keep the peace." My mother's white privilege protected her in a way that wouldn't have applied to a black mother refusing to leave a "white" beach.
Perhaps this is why I resonate with MLK's gospel message of "creative maladjustment." Certain non-conformist actions shake things up and make new things possible. They create openings and places where God's Spirit can come into this world right here and right now. King said: "You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word "maladjusted." It is good ... that destructive maladjustment should be eradicated. But ... we all recognize that there are some things in our society and world to which ... we must always be maladjusted to if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust to [:] racial discrimination ... racial segregation ... religious bigotry ... transferring resources from poor to rich ... militarism and violence."
King argued that it is actually pathological for any person to become well adjusted to a world of injustice. Psychologists should find ways to help ordinary citizens to deepen their capacity for creative maladjustment. King also wrote: " This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists ... The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a non-conforming minority." [Paul said it a slightly different way in Romans 12:2].
King also makes clear that this is an issue of psychological wellbeing and spiritual faithfulness. Over time, the mainstream Christian church has become "so entrenched in wealth and prestige that it began to dilute the strong demands of the gospel and conform to the ways of the world." The biblical story of Samuel is another good example. The federated tribes of Israel are growing tired of living without a human monarchy; they want a human kingdom just like everyone else. In the story, God views this course as a sinful folly doomed to create very negative consequences for the people and land of Israel. Yet God seems to believe that these people might learn something from their social experiment with kings and earthly empires.
Hebrew scriptures, texts of the Jesus movement, and Islamic scriptures repeatedly depict God as experimenting over the millennia with various ways to educate us in the ways of beloved community—sometimes veering off into exasperation and punishment, at other times [using] compassion, forgivenness, and guidance. God is often pictured as seeking to reach us and teach us, sending [holy men and women] to [teach] the Way, the Truth, and the Life—as well as embedding in our hearts the spirit as our Inward Teacher.
Most modern Quakers probably feel the pull of the beloved community, but continue to miss the mark to varying degrees. King believed, "We need to recapture the gospel glow of early Christians, who ... refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world." I took great inspiration from reading the many stories of the creative maladjustment of early Quakers, [who refused any recognition] of the hierarchical privileges of social class. They also refused to pay tithes to the state church, swear oaths in British courts. They were frequently convicted of heresy and blasphemy, their property was often seized, and some were tortured or died in prison. Early Quakers had to face some of their deepest fears, become willing to appear foolish in the eyes of others, and learn to take action in alignment with their deepest faith commitments.
The Journey to Creative Maladjustment—In 2008, Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering honored MLK's 1958 keynote address to the FGC Gathering. MLK is one of the most powerful patterns and examples of faithfulness through social activism—but perhaps not in the way most of us think. In reality, King's journey to social activism is really a testament to the power of "fearful faithfulness." Charles Marsh notes: "MLK arrived in Montgomery, AL in late summer 1954 with his eye set on denominational fame and fortune. His ambitions were: solid church program; nice house; magazine writing; adjunct teaching.
Racism and social justice were "back burner" concerns for King. Marsh reports, the members of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church "shared a hope for a future without Jim Crow, but they were not going to be the ones to ignite the fires of dissent." If it had been left to King's initiative, the Montgomery Bus Boycott would never have happened. E. D. Nixon, on the other hand, bailed Rosa Parks out of jail. Both of them started phoning people. Nixon phoned King among others. King said, " ... Let me think about awhile ... "
The 1st discussion of it was at King's church. King had doubts that boycotts were ethical or moral. He began to sway other ministers to his side, until Nixon challenged the ministers to stand up like grown men against segregation. To save face, King agreed to a long-term boycott. Nixon nominated King president of the new Montgomery Improvement Association; he was elected & had to give the main address in 20 minutes. King wrote: "I was now almost overcome, obsessed by a feeling of inadequacy ... I turned to God in prayer ... asking God to restore my balance and to be with me in a time when I needed [divine] guidance"; his speech was electrifying.
Serving as the leader of the Montgomery Boycott for the next 13 months changed King. By watching 42,000 poor and working-class black folks stay organized and do without public transportation for over a year, King discovered the hidden capacity of ordinary people to resist oppression and move toward freedom together. He experienced the power of mass nonviolent direct action campaigns to win real victories; he also discovered what kind of leader he wanted to be. We do not have to attain perfect spiritual wisdom or confidence before we become active. We just have to get started building the beloved community right here, right now. It is an invitation to take up the cross of fearful faithfulness.
Seeking a "Spiritual" Way Out?/ A Renewed Vision of Faith—Paul Rogat Loeb writes: "Whatever the issue, whatever the approach, we never feel we have enough knowledge or standing. [We fear error and being mistaken for a hypocrite]." Waiting for perfection in social activism has never once led to a successful social movement—or real faithfulness. Ordinary people create effective social movements only when they surrender themselves to the power of fearful faithfulness, even if it involves insecure pride or some other form of spiritual immaturity. MLK grew in faithfulness and increasingly opened himself up to a life of active civic engagement in the service of the beloved community. King did not wait on either inner peace or spiritual maturity before becoming active. Instead, King grew in his faith and experienced deep personal transformation in the midst of working with imperfect people, including himself, as part of his fearful, faithful, activism on behalf of the beloved community.
There is in the anthology Working for Peace: A Handbook of Practical Psychology & Other Tools, a piece by Christina Michaelson, a clinical psychologist, which seems to advocate "spiritual avoidance" of public life. In many ways, Michaelson is "creatively maladjusted" & supports peace activist work, & claims that this work can be made more effective, & more soul satisfying, if activists cultivate meditation, nature experiences, counseling, worship & prayer. I am grateful for the blessing of a spiritual reawakening in my mid-40's. Michaelson writes: "Your peace work in the world should begin with cultivating an inner state of peacefulness & then you truly can offer peace to others ... If you want to see peace in the world, then you must 'be' peace in the world."
Michaelson also argues that both outward activism & inward spiritual growth [are involved in] faithfulness. Both of these elements feed off each other in creative & reciprocal ways. There are multiple pathways available to us for fostering the peaceable kingdom in partnership with God. Depending on our spiritual gifts and leadings we can choose: direct service; election campaigning, lobbying, advocacy, organizing, nonviolent resistance; civil disobedience; building alternative institutions and new cultural practices. If more of us adopt a more balanced approach, Friends will be in a much better position to grow spiritually & respond to the Spirit's call for faithful social action. D. Elton Trueblood notes, "The great significance of the central Quaker idea is that it avoids damaging separation [of these elements] by uniting, bonding, the inner & outer aspects of our faith."
Will we answer the call to faithfully embody God's divine love & power in our personal, professional, & public lives? Will we stay lost in denial, despair, & distraction? MLK offered this prophetic challenge: "If we don't act we shall be dragged down the long dark, shameful corridors of time reserved for those who have power without compassion, might without morality, strength without sight. Let us rededicate ourselves to the long & bitter struggle for a new world ... The choice is ours, [surrender or solidarity] & though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of history." We can make the choice to rejoin the Lamb's War [of our early Quaker ancestors] and become ever more faithful nonviolent revolutionaries in service to the beloved community. Let us join together and joyfully see what love can do.
Queries—What does "creative maladjustment" mean to you? What are some situation today to which Quakers should not be "adjusted"? How can Quakers support each other in faithful activism? What does it mean to renew your mind as opposed to conforming to this world? Why is this transformation important for discerning God's will? Do you agree that we must achieve inward peace before we can work effectively for outward peace? Why or why not? How do you seek to be a faithful activist? How does your meeting express and promote the "beloved community"?
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432. A Death Chosen, a Life Given (by Hannah Russell; 2015)
About the Author—Hannah Russell became an attender of Port Townsend Friends Meeting in 2001 & a member in 2003. She still lives in the home she & her husband built in 1999. Hannah Russell looks to writing as a way of finding meaning, balance, & purpose in a tumultuous, chaotic world. She has wrestled with violence concerns since her childhood in wartime London. Hannah is indebted to those who gave time, space, & encouragement to complete the writing of this essay on her husband's chosen death. She attended Pendle Hill in 2014.
Introduction—My husband died by his own hand on June 24, 2011, after a surprise diagnosis of advanced lymphoma. I found myself searching for understanding, for meaning and context in that experience, which had so shaken my foundation. Only by looking deeply at what I most fear, what is most abhorrent to me, can I move forward spiritually. Karen Armstrong writes: "Language has an inherent inadequacy. There is always something left unsaid; something that remains inexpressible. Our speech makes us conscious of the transcendence that characterizes human experience." There is no way to express adequately the tortuous inner experience of my husband's death, moving beyond its violence and into the realm of acceptance and profound gratitude.
I returned to the gospels after several years' absence, and I returned to them in a troubled time, a time of intense mourning and painful self-reckoning. I read the gospel as any ordinary person would, looking for any insight or guidance they may offer at this particular time. Its pages are peopled with flawed human beings such as we are ourselves. I began to record my own journey into uncharted territory. I saw that I needed to go beyond my own exploration of the spiritual and psychological dimensions of our story. I must look for the "fruit of the spirit" in some kind of broader action that might sustain others.
A Journey to Redemption/ A Search for Meaning—12 days after my husband & I had been shaken to our core by the diagnosis of his advanced lymphona, I stood by the garage as he pulled something out of its loft. As I stood there, I saw with awful clarity what he had in mind. I said: "I know what you're going to do. I love & I won't stop you." It seemed like the only gift of love I [had left to] give; I called 2 old, trusted friends. Both said they would come at once. It ended with my husband on the garage floor, wrapped in a sleeping bag with a deflated air mattress under him. We 3 held onto one another, a little circle of shattered souls, & wept.
[I received little in the way of comfort from any of the professionals responding to his death, not even the funeral parlor's representative]. When the death certificate arrived 2 days later, the violence of the fearful words "suicide" and "gunshot" screamed out at me. They couldn't describe something my beloved had done. [I and his family] inevitably asked the questions of doubts and fears that they themselves were somehow to blame. He and I had discussed his death, but nothing had prepared me for his action.
In September 2001, propelled by the senseless violence of 9/11/01, I came home to Friends. [My husband's violent death] was an intrusion of violence so direct, so intimate, so imperative of attention that it seemed not to fit into my experience nor in my ability to understand it in my faith journey's context. In an instant, this trusted relationship seemed to fail each of us in different ways. Life is full of seeming ambiguity & paradox & only by "living into the question" can we begin to glimpse the deeper unity & life-giving hope, which lie beneath.
Living into the Question—Evelyn Underhill writes: "[The] germ of the same transcendent life, the spring of the amazing energy which enables the great mystic to rise to freedom ... is latent in all of us; an integral part of our humanity." The questions I had to live into were the difficult ones of profound loss, guilt, and betrayal of the paradox of a life taken violently out of respect for the dignity of life itself and out of a loving desire to reduce suffering in the life of another. What is the connection between the reality of violence in our lives and a redeeming love, which can embrace the suffering and transform it?
My husband, as a "convinced atheist," embraced many Friends testimonies. We lived life simply, and we had no interest in money or status. We engaged in nonviolent resistance together, promoted social justice, and respected the environment. We agreed that in the case of cancer we would not seek treatment for it other than possibly surgery. After diagnosis, we refused surgery to determine a treatment we would refuse anyway; the surgery would risk his remaining life in his weakened condition.
We initiated the lengthy process to use physician aid in dying. [One physician certified soundness of mind, another prescribed medication]. Only family & friends would be present at the patient's time of death. My husband's condition made him fearful there wouldn't be time for him to use this aid. He feared losing everything that made him a person of dignity & worth as he understood it. He began making plans & talking them over with me. How could I sit beside him & discuss ways of ending life? I was reminded of Jesus speaking of the manner of his death to his disciples. They must have experienced the same sense of unreality; Luke's gospel comments that they didn't understand." What remained was for me to be present in love as he moved toward the end of his life.
Betrayal and Forgiveness/ The Gift of Love and Life—[I tried and failed to assist him in a chosen death attempt. He overdosed and at one point, unconscious, he struggled to breath when] the remaining oxygen in the bag was exhausted. I removed the bag from his head and his breathing became slow and deep. He woke to find himself temporarily paralyzed. I knew that I had failed him. [I had many questions revolving around betrayal, the last being] did I betray him by not pleading with him to wait ? I felt betrayed that my trusted mate had concealed that he had a a gun and chose a death that separated us on the issue of nonviolence. Inevitably betrayal brings questions about one's character, the person one trusted, and the relationship itself.
Judas' betrayal seems a case apart. Despite Judas' profound repentance, there is no forgiveness for him. [The other disciples were forgiven, even though they had all betrayed Jesus in some way. Was the difference between Judas' betrayal and the other betrayals one of degree or motivation? Was Judas the scapegoat for the disciples' guilt for their betrayals? Perhaps Judas has an essential role to play in the divine plan of redemption, surrendering all that he has—the love and trust of friends, his own reputation—because [Jesus asked him to, and love requires it of him. Then no forgiveness is necessary.
When my husband did these things, he saw the necessity of them in his inner landscape, saw them as right and in harmony with the inner sense of his own truth. [He did it out of] his love for me, [not wanting to prolong either my suffering or his own]. For my own "loss of courage" and betrayal of him, a wise Friend, Jacob Stone suggested that there are 2 conflicting duties in any moral or ethical decision—duty to self and duty to other. My decision was to choose duty to self in not completing an action which was repugnant to my moral sense. I had been led by guidance from the inner Light. I was then able to forgive myself for my action.
[There were indications later] that part of his motivation to end his life this way was to save me further distress in caring for him. How does one respond to another person surrendering life partly out of a belief that it will enhance the one you must go on living? What about Jesus' offering of love and life in the violence of the cross? My belief as a Quaker is not in Jesus' "redeeming sacrifice," but rather in the sum of Jesus' whole life, that call me to live in tune with that truth and life as best I can. I feel that my husband and I are one, that I have not lost him so much as gained his spirit, his strength, and his wisdom, that I am living life fully for both of us.
Abandonment & the Loneliness of Death—For many months after his death, I found I was trying to place myself in his mind, in his heart, as I took each step down the stairs he walked, much like the Catholic Stations of the Cross. Was my husband afraid, as Jesus was? Was there a surrender to the unseen world he couldn't believe in? There must have been courage, the motivation of love, & the dignity of life. His models were the great teachers of nonviolence—Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King & others who followed truth according to the light that was in them. Each knew that violent death was a likely result. Some regard Jesus' death, & the death of the Quaker's Mary Dyer as a kind of suicide. I think of the disciples abandoning Jesus, as I think of leaving him in the garage. I needed to leave him to the dignity of his choice, to the way he told his truth. I had been given the grace to surrender my cherished commitment to nonviolence,my beloved husband & my marriage. In the months that followed, there were lovely, comforting signs of my husband's presence, of his love & forgiveness: a blue heron flying low overhead, his presence in the garage & on a walk along a cliff top edge.
The Great Paradox of Violence—Though it's probably not a choice I would make myself, I believe strongly in the right to choose physician-assisted suicide or even an "unauthorized" self-administered death. Yet the violence of his chosen death felt like an assault to my very being. In American popular culture we don't pay attention to Good Friday. Christian churches focus their gaze on Easter. Liberal Friends seem to have lost completely the language of the cross as well as the shocking realization of it.
I believe we need to engage with the cross if we are to move into fuller humanity. Redemption is in some mysterious way bound up inextricably with the violence itself. When we encounter this kind of violence, we have to dig deep into ourselves. [We have to experience Good Friday along with Easter]. Anne Liem points out that the divine will expresses itself "in a vast plan of intricate design, interwoven with threads from the dark source, enabling the light to be visible. What appeared in my experience as wrong and painful may be necessary in the divine plan of creation. Violence has a place somehow in the ongoing movement of Love. The divine plan of creation moves slowly and inexorably toward unity, the unity of all things in love.
Living into the Wider Questions—Now I have in my heart a desire to talk with others about our understandings of the end of life however it may come. How can we bring ourselves to talk about our deepest fears, our wishes and desires about our own dying? How do we support our partners and friends through this time? How do we deal honestly with the medicalization of dying, or the choices of physician assisted dying, or of "suicide" at the end of life? How can we support those dealing with loss through suicide?
The physician we asked for aid in dying felt betrayed that we had not told her he was "suicidal." I was told to "call the police" the morning of my husband's death. It seemed my husband was guilty of a quasi-crime—taking his life without the proper authorization from the medical, legal, and legislative communities. I was guilty because I had not tried to stop him. I found in telling friends that many completely accepted his choice and expressed admiration for his courage. Our language still reflects the ancient legal stance on suicide: a person "commits" suicide; and one must call the
police, even though suicide is not now a crime.
Are there occasions when dying a lingering and painful death, having lost all sense of meaning and dignity, is the true evil? Are there motivations which take it from the realm of suicide and into self-sacrifice? When should a person be stopped from dying by his or her own hand? How does our faith inform our choices? As it was for early Friends, isn't death the gateway to transcendent life whether or not we choose another way of dying other than the natural progression of a terminal disease?
Why is self-starvation, & the refusal to take medication, "acceptable" ways to "commit suicide," but a gunshot or overdose not? Where do we fail the dying in medical & professional systems? [Where is the proper place for a person to die, hospital or home? Where do we fail the dying in religious & societal attitudes, which resists discussion of alternatives? How can we better help surviving family members?
We have already begun to pathologize grief, even to medicalize it, providing anti-depressants if the mourner grieves "too long" or in "inappropriate ways." But grief has its own calendar [and degrees]. There are so many questions to be resolved, so many turning points, so many layers. Elaine Pryce writes: "Grief is an irrational process ... It defies the processes of a "normal" way of being in the world ... Yet given the heroic work of integrating the event into mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual being, its effects are entirely rational." As Quakers we have barely begun to live into these
questions.
Hallowing the Diminishment of Death by Suicide/ Way Forward—John Yungblut writes: "[If there is] suicide, there is guilt and reliving every moment prior to it, 2nd -guessing what one might have done differently ... It is like a sudden, unprepared-for psychic amputation ... the relative wholeness the psyche enjoyed before is shattered ... Can such a diminishment [as suicide be hallowed]? Yes ... 1st, commit the loved one into God's keeping, knowing that with God all things are well. 2nd, embrace forgiveness and live into the forgiven life ... 3rd, transfer energy of lost relationship to some [service] of some other human need ... 4th, from the 1st 3, one becomes more sensitive to and available for the suffering of others."
I believe that God speaks to me in many ways & in God' own time, & I can't say that the inner guide may not encourage the relief of my suffering when the time comes. I have clung close to the guide, & have found that I can hallow even the diminishment [of my husband's death]. I believe redemption lies not in the cross, but in the qualities that lead to the cross: love of neighbor, clarity of way, integrity & courage to follow way. I hope to practice these qualities every day, & to learn to live deeply into my own dying with acceptance & joy.
Queries—If you have lived through an experience which shook your being's foundation, how do you find meaning & strength? Do you perceive violence as a violent act? How can Quaker meetings support those living through agonizing experiences? What are the questions before you now? How do you understand the paradox of life taken violently so as to respect the dignity of one's life & to reduce the suffering in another's? How do you believe simplicity, equality, & stewardship testimonies should affect decisions regarding medical care? How have you sought forgiveness or forgiven when profound betrayal has occurred? How have you sought to honor a loved one whose death profoundly affected you? What are your fears, wishes, & desires concerning your dying? What is "redemption" to you? What has led to healing & wholeness in your life?
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433. Recovering Sacred Presence in a Disenchanted World (by Mary Conrow Coelho; 2015)
About the Author—Mary Conrow Coelho was a physiology lab assistant and a high school biology teacher. She left the science world in her 30's to study theology; she earned a MDiv degree, and a PhD in Historical Theology. She has co-led workshops, among them "The Depth of our Belonging." She is the coordinator of the New Story Group at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, and is active in Quakercare Witness.
[Introduction]—One day in my late 20's, I was unexpectedly brought to my knees by a mysterious power, hitherto unknown to me; a numinous [sacred] experience occurred. I could not rationally defend it. Thomas Berry said: "In my view, the human community and the natural world will go into the future as a single sacred community or we will both perish in the desert. It was an experience of falling in love in the sense of wanting to be intimately related to that which I had known. I assumed the experience came from outside of me. In scientific materialism, ideas about matter left no room for Sacred Presence. We can find in scientific discoveries of the last 2 centuries how numinous experiences can arise from an inner sacred Presence.
Quakerism is an experiential heritage that is challenged in explaining such numinous experiences that traditional science cannot account for. There are startling changes in the way we understand the world, changes that offer a basis for reclaiming and perhaps deepening the early insights and practices of Friends and of other spiritual traditions as well. I learned that physical beings do not have an intrinsic non-material dimension. The earth became disenchanted and my own identity severely narrowed. Numinous experiences of Presence, Light, beauty, and truth have no home in modern reductive scientific understanding.
There have been discoveries in the 20th century that have revealed major fissures in the modern materialistic worldview. Significant changes in both science and theology offer a home for spiritual experiences and hopes and the opportunity for a fuller expression of the Religious Society of Friends. Some scientists have looked for ways to incorporate discoveries that reductive materialism cannot contain or explain. We are awakened to the need to move away from objectification of the natural world and unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.
New Understandings that Transform Our Assumptions: The Nonvisible Interiority of Matter—Scientists in the 1920's expected to find tiny particles of matter [as the basis for all matter]. They discovered instead, that including atoms, matter is 99.99% empty space. "Empty" means empty of that which can be known by human senses & instruments. John Polkinghorne wrote that the emptiness or "quantum vacuum" is "more like a plenum than like empty space." Plenum roughly seems empty when it is full. Plenum is a realm of pure generativity, a boiling "sea of energy" that generates matter. Plenum is the basic generative power of the universe.
What was thought to be "particles" within atoms have been discovered to be very small knots of energy, called quanta, which sometimes are particle-like and sometimes are wavelike. [Down to a particular scale] our formulas and discoveries are reliable; after that quantum theory is also required. Quantum theory brings the study of the hidden, nonvisible inner world into the world of science. [Here I seek] to ponder the consequences of quantum physics for our understanding of self and spiritual traditions.
Given old assumptions, it would have been true that numinous experience must arise from outside the world of physical things. Quantum studies of the vast nonvisible plenum brought this assumption into question. A spiritual experience within the body of the person can be considered with fresh eyes. Thomas Kelly writes of a "subterranean sanctuary of the soul, where the Light never fades, a perpetual Flame burns, where the wells of living water of divine revelation rise up continuously, day by day, and hour by hour, steady and transfiguring."
The New Story of Our Origins/ The Emergent, Creative Character of the World/ Belonging Within the Ongoing Story—Another major scientific breakthrough is a new cosmic creation story. The nuclei of future hydrogen & helium atoms were formed 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was born. Some lighter elements, like carbon, were forged within stars, & the heavier elements were formed within supernovae. Earth coalesced 4.6 billion years ago. Chlorophyll developed within the early tiny creatures, enabling them to use the sun's energy. Arising from a long line of hominids, human beings—a self-reflective form of the earth—came into being.
We now see a world in which we can recognize radical novelty throughout the great unfolding drama, rather than the "dire news of scientific inevitability." Physicist Paul Davies calculates that there is essentially zero probability of achieving even 1 protein by chance alone. Emergence is the term used for the appearance of genuinely novel structures and patterns within the evolutionary story, that cannot be reduced to their sum or difference. It is also suggested that there is directionality in evolution. When I studied evolutionary biology in college, I learned that life on earth is ancient, but such knowledge did not speak to me personally. While objective detachment has led to remarkable discoveries, it has a price. Many of us learned to intentionally sever any sense of sacred connection to the earth, [to view] "the world as inert stuff out there and that we are the active agents of change whose role it is to get that stuff in shape" [Parker Palmer].
Self-Organization: in Nature and within Humans—By the 20th century, the origin of the great diversity & complexity of the world became a major question. The evolution of increasingly complex plants & animals apparently contradicts the law of ever-increasing disorder or dissipation. The capacity to dissipate energy as heat while continually importing energy from the environment makes it possible for living beings to overcome disorder. Self-organizing systems can be galaxy superclusters, or subatomic particles/waves. Self-organized forms, such as a cell, may become nested in a larger self-organizing whole. The new whole is a complex nesting of self-organizing forms, and it may have new properties that can't be traced as having arisen from the constituent parts.
New levels that develop through the self-organizing processes of simpler cells combining into a more complex cell are emergent levels, for the novel structures and patterns that appear. How is my inner life integral to the ongoing unfolding evolutionary story? Carl Jung identifies patterns in the human psyche, which he calls archetypes, deep psychological structures which order and integrate experience. Michael Comforti observes that archetypes are the psychological parallel to to the scientific theory of self-organizing dynamics in nature. The Self, similar to the Soul, is the creative, inner center of the person. The Self is unknowable, but is experienced in alternative forms of knowing, such as some dreams, mythic material, and numinous experiences. Inner ordering and creativity is an inner dynamic found throughout the natural world. It also can be identified as acting within the human person. With self-organizing in mind and body, we find a way to begin to heal the all-too-common separation of soul from the earth. Since experiences of the Self can be numinous, we gain confidence that we may find pathways to experience the indwelling sacred Presence.
New Understandings that Transform Our Assumptions: Common Origin of Mind & Matter/ Another Change in Our Assumption/ Drawing Near to the Whole—Self-Organizing dynamics free us from the assumption that the evolutionary story is only about the evolution of the physical world. In Jung's thought, archetypes order both body and mind into a functioning whole grounded in the nonvisible. Polkinghorne notes that time and again mathematics has provided the key to unlocking the secrets of the physical world. What links together mathematics with the structures of the physical world? The world has all through it Polkinghorne's "signs of mind," or Jung's archetypal patterns that link mind and body.
Discoveries in quantum physics make it possible for there to be spiritual life within the evolutionary world. Even though large objects' behavior can be predicted, specific events on a small scale are unpredictable. Ian Barbour explains indeterminancy's consequence at the quantum level as: "The future isn't simply unknown; it 'isn't decided' ... there is an opening for unpredictable novelty." Indeterminancy may be a chance for divine influence & for human participation in the unfolding of divine purpose, [without having] a precise predetermined plan.
Teilhard de Chardin writes: "Like meridans as they approach the poles, science, philosophy, & religion are bound to converge as they draw near the whole." We can now imagine that there is a whole, such that the earth & its human beings are a place for numinious experiences & spiritual insights. Anne Hill describes an experience of being flooded by a great power pervading every atom of her body. She writes: "Suddenly, something in you—[not a usual sense] but some other faculty—beholds a vast & boiling ocean that pours itself into the room/into you & leaves you streaming with energy. You feel an immediate bodily connection to aliveness you never knew existed, one that is inside/ outside you at once. Boulding writes that reality underlying religious experience "must be postulated, just as we postulate reality underlying our carefully learned experience of the senses." Could images of a "vast, boiling ocean," "burning oneness binding everything," & "perpetual flame" be a manner of "knowing" the infinite energy of the "emptiness" or plenum that physicists have enountered?
Theological Reflections—I will be using the word of God with some hesitation because it is unfortunately widely associated with the image of a being of omnipotent and supernatural power. Yet experiences of a sacred Presence need to be named so they may be part of the shared knowledge of a culture. Should we not embrace new variations in the meaning of the word God, rather than discard the word? Jung refers to God as a "psychic fact." Ken Wilder uses the phrase "the eye of contemplation" to identify the spiritual mode of knowing. [The images mentioned earlier] arise from the eye of contemplation. 2 other modes of knowing are the eye of flesh (sensed, witnessed knowledge), and eye of the mind (e.g. logic, mathematics).
The understanding of God espoused by panentheism holds that the world is "in" God & God is "in" the world. The sacred Presence permeates the physical world & our interiority. While God's transcendence isn't spatial, God transcends in the sense that God is always, everywhere moving us toward full expression of divine aim & love. The manifest world of matter takes form within the vast emptiness, the plenum. particles that comprise the physical world are plenum taking form. The generation & sustaining of the manifest world out of the plenum is a place where our ideas of God as the creative Ground & the non-visible reality seem to come together.
The evolutionary story and the discovery of the generative plenum affirm the emergence of the manifest world out of a vast inner "emptiness." God is an influence in the unfolding story of the universe, rather than an outside force that abrogates the laws of nature at will. God's role as an immanent persuasive power within the vast plenum is central to the directionality of the evolutionary world and to including Friends' leadings in that story. Even though God does not have omnipotent power, there is the powers of persuasion and allure, healing & sustaining.
Everything that exists is interconnected and interrelated. There is the unity of the earth, and interdependence within the earth, in ecological systems, communities, and families. Until recently, it had been assumed that physical change came only from local causes. Experiments show that the "spin" of a photon can be instantaneously affected by the spin of another correlated particle, even though the particles are great distances away from each other; this is non-local causality. There is interconnected, mutual influence in nature beyond our ability to explain. Does this help to explain the Quaker experience of a gathered meeting, an awareness of Presence? We know life and the world from within.
Learning to Inhabit Ourselves—There may be personal, psychological reasons that we fail to fully partake of the revelations of our new origin story. We may be oblivious to the sacred depths of our world, so a healing journey may be a necessary part of becoming open to God's allure. Jung says that real healing accompanies the approach to the numinous experience. Their result is the full, well-lived life, and community. Numinous experiences that bring healing may occur in: images, icons; dreams, visions; silent meeting; nature. Leadings are sometimes of this numinous nature. Without the power of the numinous realm, our wounded psychological patterns will prevail. Louis Dupré writes: "Following the years of gradual change, the real is no longer an object that reason places before the mind, but rather a totality in which the mind constitutes an integral dynamic part." We are drawn into depths of things, into participation in the unfolding story. Peter Todd writes that it is humankind's participation in God that will further evolution as well as the survival of the species.
We are Allured & Drawn Forth by Truth, Beauty, & Goodness/ Evolution's Purpose Felt on the Inside—Through the healing journey, a person becomes increasingly available to participate fully in the unfolding creative process, to share in [& support] the evolutionary story's [positive] direction. Alluring experiences of truth, beauty, & goodness touch us deeply; they may involve numinosity or a kind of resonance with the sacred Presence. In process theology, the drive to discover or advocate truth is divinely instilled. [Evolution has brought] increased capacity for truth & beauty in conscious experience [alongside] the increased complexity of structure.
Friend's know from experience inner participation in the allure of truth, love, and beauty as "leadings." In the emerging conception God as the immanent, alluring element, continually creating through the processes of the natural order, leadings find a home in the evolutionary universe. In leadings, God is dependent on human love, wisdom, and our courage to be and act. Leadings may go beyond our routine daily habits of thought. There can be a new order inspired by Divine Reality.
Pervasive Evil/ The Wide Range of Possibilities Open to the Divine Aim/ Images of Divine Presence—Brian Swimme states that beauty & allurement are the root cause of all evil activity, [because we are prone to addiction to even imperfect beauty, & to misunderstanding distorted, partial truths we follow as clear, whole truths]. The divine creative power can't evoke a [new & right possibility, contrary to the wrong choices that are being made]. How are we to find hope in the face of the pervasive misuse of power & dishonesty? Even in the face of evil, we affirm the healing power of love. God's persuasive power [has a real influence] on the consciousness of an individual or group.
In the old mechanistic story of scientific rationalism, the sacred Presence had to interfere with the natural order to have divine influence on the direction of evolution—God had to enact miracles. Now we can see widespread unpredictabilities and flexibilities, [in the form of] indeterminancy, new order from chaotic processes, non-local causality, and self-organizing dynamics, which offer the divine aim more possibilities. [These forms interact with one another in creating new possibilities]. If God is not omnipotent, where is the basis for hope?
It is in the new, unimagined emergence that we see a kind of transcendence expressed throughout the manifest world, and in human consciousness. This is transcendence that does not override the natural world; it is not from outside. It is based on sacred persuasion, creativity, and aim within the natural world and the individual. The evolutionary story helps us avoid the spirit of tragic resignation. [When someone asked], What is my purpose? The answer came that God has an infinite longing to know itself and that as one continued to grow in self-awareness one was doing God's work. With new self-awareness there are new ways of being a person. How are we to speak about God's presence in the very fabric of the universe? Symeon the New Theologian (949 A.D.) writes several moving images as invocations at the beginning of his Hymns of Divine Eros: "Come, true light. Come, eternal life. Come, hidden mystery. Come, nameless treasure. Come, inexpressible reality. Come, inconceivable Person. Come, endless happiness. Come, light that never sets."
Intrinsic Values as Guidance for Community and Culture/ Group Decision Making/ Ecological Witness: The Natural World is the Primary Manifestation of the Divine/ Friends as Part of the Emerging Worldview: A Foundation for Friends Renewal—In some post-modern thought, values & meaning are considered culturally relative human projections. In this worldview, reality has no value or meaning; the universe is pointless. Here a magnificent forest can be turned into a commodity for unlimited exploitation. The insight that alluring values of truth, beauty & goodness are intrinsic to the unfolding evolutionary story means they are an expression of the nature of things. [Believing this], people can act with great conviction.
Leadings toward truth, beauty, love & caring join persons, groups & meetings in the direction of evolution. We are part of the process of evolution & the process itself come into self-awareness. Quaker decision making, the search for unity in a business meeting, can facilitate the transformation of consciousness in individuals & in a community. [In this process], what seems impossible may come forth. Thomas Berry writes: "Only when we begin to think of the emergent universe as the comprehensive realm of the sacred will we be able to overcome the present assault on the universe in its Earth manifestation."
Remarkably, we can now hear our ancestors freshly, given the radical change in our worldview, a change in the lens through which we see. The essential truths of religion would find a far vaster and more profound form when expressed within the context of the dynamics of the developing universe. Our culture is being forced out of the current dysfunctional phase that threatens the viability of earth and its inhabitants. We may have confidence that, as Boulding proposed, "the evolutionary potential of Quakerism is not yet exhausted and indeed is still very high." Friends have a vital role to play in the unfolding adventure of the earth and its many beings.
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434. A Quietness Within: The Quiet Way as Faith and Spirituality (By Elaine Pryce; 2015)
About the Author—Elaine Pryce qualified as a teacher specializing in multicultural education. Some of her most formative life experiences and learning have derived from the wisdoms of migrant and indigenous people and cultures she has lived and worked with [in the UK] and overseas, in particular a Papuan priest, who advised her to "find God within; say 'Yes' to the divine life within you." It has become a lifelong exploration.
The Depth in Which we are Quiet—Paul Tillich believed our actions would be more effective if they were found in a more profound, creative depth, "the depth in which we are quiet." We can't experience deep joy, unless we accept an uncomfortable, demanding way, risking & breaking through the surface things to the depths. Our lives are in such constant motion that we don't pause to consider more profound levels of being. True roads may travel in a different direction from the one we are following; in our haste "we feel something radical, total, & unconditional is demanded of us; we rebel against it, try to escape its urgency, & won't accept its promise." In the 15th century, Thomas à Kempis writes things about devoting our energy to material affairs that could be about our century. On the more authentic & sometimes suffering path we discover the spirit's depths & our true life.
Christian Origins: The Inner Quest/ Later Teachings—Early on, another word for contemplation was quies or quietud—quiet or quietude. The word conveyed a sense of resting [peaceably], both in & before God. Quietude here, came from the secure depths of the believer's spiritual life. [To pursue this], Christian men & women ventured into the desert. Away from distractions, they explored the source of their faith's tributaries; monastic life developed from this. [They felt they were following Jesus' example]. Mystics & quietists were often regarded as spiritual adventurers, & dissenting pathfinders who ventured the depths of their consciousness to find God. They sought authentic ground of eternal truth, transformational encounters at the deepest level of being. If there emerged a credo in this quiet way, it spoke of questing spirit in the boundless compass of sacred mystery.
In the 15th century, Thomas à Kempis wrote The Imitation of Christ, which was especially prized by 17th- & 18th-century Quakers. Thomas believed [with Quakers] that spiritual renewal required radically yet simply emu-lating Christ's life & the earliest Christians' unadorned, devotional faith. Thomas cautions that community & we ourselves can be demanding & burdensome. Therefore know when to retreat to a place of quietude in order to re-claim & renew your spiritual self; just present yourself as you are before God. Thomas writes: "Enter like Moses into the ... [Tent of Meeting] to ask guidance of the Lord." Take refuge also in prayer, in the depths of your heart.
The Franciscan Francisco de Cisneros believed spiritual knowledge is for everybody, [regardless of] wealth, social status, education. If you bring as many people as possible to experience the God within the heart and to know the simple reality of divine love where and as each person is, the outcome will be a reformed and renewed church. There is a both/ and interrelationship between the individual and the wider community. For Quakers and Christian mystics, the way of quies connects deeply to a more open, accessible spirituality, expressed and lived out personally and in community. The early Quakers themselves were a new generation of venturers of renewal in the Christian tradition, calling people to the original undiluted source of the faith. They plowed their audacious furrows through the rutted landscapes of 17th century religion.
The Quiet Way as Mystery—The quiet way engages the heart and soul in the wisdom and emptiness of the still center, the sacred mystery within. This way, this theological boat invites on board the paradoxes of: fullness in emptiness; [in giving up our selves], we find our [true] selves; knowing in unknowing; [finding the way] by losing it. In the space [between the "poles" of these paradoxes] resides the truth of a God who refuses to be hostage to the limits of human reason and its constructs.
Mystery is what we know we don't know. For the quietist, this not knowing expresses a quality of the sacred. It is like a seed in the loam of sheltered darkness, waiting for optimal conditions to germinate, to be revealed. Mystery is also letting go of what we think we know about God in order to let God be who God is. [Kenyans have a myth that after creating everything, God lived with humankind], but they constantly made re-quests, petitions and complaints, so] a wearied God decided to leave in the night. [The people were frantic] and called for God to return. Then, they realized that everything around them, even themselves, had acquired a sub-lime beauty. God had gone, yet only to be present in a different way. God in absence is yet present as God truly is. God, spirit, the eternal, is Presence itself. God said, "I am here, but not as you have known me."
Soon after George Fox's initial transformational experience, he was to write in 1653 of the "mystery" of the second birth, a spiritual rebirth, which accesses knowledge of God, accessible through the way of stillness and peace. Whatever you thought of God previously, God is more than the very summit of your thoughts. George Fox wrote that we need to enter a new world of being, a world of silence before God; to die to our natural wisdom, reasoning, and understandings, so that we can experience the life of God within.
Mystery as Sacred—Sacred mystery is profound. It inhabits whatever is inexpressible & unavailable to the [results] of reason & language; it is [the stuff of] questions without answers. The mystery of suffering has [puzzled] scholars & people of faith since Job's time & before. There is at times a paradoxical transformation that oc-curs in suffering's unanswerable mystery. We question Providence, yet Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, tells us that it's Providence that questions us. Abraham J. Heschel writes: "... our lives can be the spelling of answers."
The mystery of suffering is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus was a master of the deep, healing one-to-one encounter. What renders the Christian faith sacred is its message of love, healing, hope, and reclamation, and its belief in human strength, survival, and inner renewal in the presence of the accompanying mystery, the Eternal Thou. From numerous accounts, it appears that Jesus was at heart, and by spiritual practice, a contemplative, who knew that we alone are accountable for the depths of our spiritual journey.
Contemplative practice's relevance in times of difficulty or suffering is expressed throughout world religion. Buddha said that existence itself causes suffering, but this shouldn't dictate or define who we are in our deepest or highest being. For the Sufi, everything indicates & embraces its complementary opposite, [i.e.] in joy is the possibility of pain, & vice versa. For the earliest Quakers, suffering wasn't to be avoided when truth was at stake. They taught always to seek the purity of truth in the sacredness of interior silence where [guidance is found].
Transformation comes in the nitty-gritty of simply getting through life and its challenges with an unbroken soul. Sometimes we experience a mystery that touches the soul with beauty, with pure perception of Presence and giftedness [through moments of tenderness, quiet and awesome beauty]. It is the mystic in us that causes us to "dwell poetically" in our lives, to harness more expansive dimensions of being.
The Quiet Way and Early Quakers—George Fox wasn't a stranger to paradox. He said that God is mystery, a hidden, "incomprehensible spirit; but wait ... God is also the living God, always present & accessible to us"; God is Presence itself. There is a "sinking down to that which is pure," & an upward trajectory which lifts us "up to God—out of the mortal into the immortal." Fox embraces the life within, [& the] presence, power, spirit, mystery, light & truth that are enfolded [in it]. [The experience of God in silence] brings each person's "heart, mind, soul & spirit to the infinite & incomprehensible God, & from it flows a love to all the universal creation."
Fox writes: "I saw into that which was without end, and things that cannot be uttered, and of the greatness and infiniteness of the love of God, which cannot be expressed by words." And again: "See and feel the Lord's presence amongst you ... and know one another in the power of it." "And so comes every spirit here to have a particular satisfaction and quietness in [ones] own mind ... and so that of God manifested in [one], leads [ones] mind up to God, [one] comes to the quiet and peaceable life, and comes to retain God in [ones] knowledge, and [ones] spirit is quieted, and [one] comes to hold the truth in righteousness." After Fox's death, William Penn wrote: "[As] a child, he was more religious, inward, still, solid and observing," and that as a young man "he taught and was an example of silence." Fox's numerous epistles were mostly addressed to groups of Friends; they contained teaching, inspiration, instruction, warning, and sometimes rebuke.
Isaac Penington sheltered a more sensitive & tender soul. He wrote extensive letters, many from prison, of both pastoral care for individual Quakers & encouragement for Quaker groups. Individual transformation leads to transformation of the spiritual community, & beyond that, of the world. His quies-focused faith acknowledged the most painful kind of personal struggle. To Widow Henning, he advises, "learn in quietness & stillness to re-tire to the Lord & wait upon him; thou shalt feel peace & joy." Attentive passivity for Penington naturally results in an experience of unity with God & the subsequent transformative effect of God's "visitation to the soul."
William Penn wrote: "Soon as you wake, retire your mind into pure silence from all thoughts & ideas of worldly things; in that frame wait upon God to feel God's good presence ... delight to step home (within yourselves, I mean), commune with your own hearts & be still."There, in the home within, you will feel & experience God's presence. Jesus taught us to love God with everything you are; love yourself (by willing the best possible good for yourself); in the same way, love your neighbor. In this is the inner mystical law of the quiet way.
Signposts of the Way—Francis de Sales perceived the world as an interpersonal unity, a wholeness, and the inner life as essentially about journeying, developing the depths of the soul. He was a deep sea diver plunging heroically into waves of seismic change in the 17th-century worldview. Teresa of Avila was a scaler of the spiritual heights through her "mansions" of the soul. Pioneers of the spirit began to sculpt new, more expansive forms in which to shape their perspectives; they found God everywhere. Fox wrote in a psalm-like prose poem [shared in part]: "[God] is the living God, who clothes the world with grass and herbs, [and trees] ... and bring[s] forth food for you. [God] is the living God, who causes the stars to arise in the night to give you light, and the moon to arise to be a light in the night ... and the sun to give warmth [and weather] to you ... [God] is the living God, who made the heaven and the earth, the clouds ... the springs ... the great sea ... the light ... [God] is the living God who gives you breath and life and strength ... [God] is the living God, and God is to be worshiped."
Fox saw no contradiction between the "second-moment" expression of the spirit in an outwardly spoken hymn of praise and the "first-moment" experience of the spirit in inward, silent worship. In vision, metaphor, poetry, and imagination, he signposts us to God as living Presence, primal "cause" of all creation who deserves to be worshipped. Those who are estranged from "the witness of God in themselves, cannot be still, cannot be silent." Words (as in spoken ministry) are simply for leading us to the sublimity, the melding of the seeking self and the divine, of a first-moment encounter.
Signposts of the Quiet Way: A Personal Journey Begun—The quiet way calls us to fathom who we are & how we fit the shape of the depths, of our deepest calling in our life project & spiritual experience. The quiet way encourages us to begin an experiment with the sacred, with soul. The task of poets & mystics of the soul has generally been to attempt to give language & meaning to the Mystery, to the call to co-venture with the divine.
I was born in North Wales, in a stone cottage built by my paternal great-grandfather in a small settlement of 7 houses. 5 of these were built by my great-grandfather for himself and members of his family on hilly fields of wild gorse and fern banks. The large, 3-generation family home, Olive House, is still, in my heart, home. [I lived there with my godparents when my grieving mother could not take care of me]. I was with family members who gathered in Olive House to express their condolences after my brother's tragic death. We inadvertently formed a circle; one aunt got up and held my head close against her and gently stroking my hair while I wept. I remember mostly the experience of comforting silence, the deepest sense of being accompanied. As I listened to my godmother, I realized that faith itself had become a mystery to her, & that faith could be explored, questioned, reflected on. Faith was a flowing malleable concept, an ongoing, questing dialogue with self and God.
My mother's widowed mother lived a quarter-mile away in a tiny hamlet. She kept chickens for eggs, 2 cows for milk, damson trees for jam, her faith, and her own quiet counsel. Undoubtedly, I absorbed from her, and from my father's ability to be quietly present to himself, how to be a hospitable presence to myself in time of solitude. My grandmother was a wise elder ... perhaps because her life had been anything but easy.
[How does one] tell how life experiences mold themselves into the shape of our later psyches? How do things remembered and not remembered determine who we are? The thing about the work of transformation is not to let former "skins" continue to define us, nor to let others define us by "old skins", nor indeed to attire us with remnants of their own unshed skins. The people who have most influenced me have been those who, at some level, have nurtured close companionship with the depths of the quiet way. I have learned to recognize profound spiritual presences as pilgrims of the spirit and as soul companions on the human journey. I am molded for better or worse by the psychical paradox of my family's proximity in my life and journeying. My life story is attached to my psyche, but I am not my life story.
Conclusion—In the Welsh language, taith means more than journey. It indicates what happens along the way, the developmental progress of the journey. Hireath [roughly translates] as longing for home and [connection with ancestors]. Many years ago I experienced a traditional Maori funeral, a tangi. A Maori woman began a ceremonial call, a karanga. The powerful, soulful, primal sounding of the call seemed to fill the mountainous space, rebounding with a resonance that sank deep into my soul, with spirit and ancestoral longing and home. Waldo Williams used the Welsh word Awen to exemplify a sense of return to our true spiritual source and to transformation. For him, Awen is what arises from the quiet, hidden depths of the soul (the Awen) that transforms the world, that brings us home again.
Queries—Have you experienced deep inner peacefulness in quietness? What is your experience with knowing God? How is George Fox's "deeply & inwardly spiritual man" connected to his "fire-brand preacher? What is the difference between "first-moment" experience of spirit & "second-moment" expression of spirit? What do you believe about the source of personal & communal transformation?
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435. You Are My Witnesses: Witness and Testimony in the Biblical and Quaker Traditions (By Thomas Gates; 2015)
About the Author—Thomas Gates is a member of Lancaster (PA) MM; he has served the Committee for Worship & Ministry locally, & the Working Group on Deepening & Strengthening Our Meeting from Philadelphia YM. He spent 8 years of his medical career as a family doctor in rural NH. He & his family lived & worked at Friends Lugulu Hospital in Kenya (Stories from Kenya; PHP #319). He has been on the faculty of the Family Medicine Residency at Lancaster General Hospital, and currently has discerned a need to serve in rural Malawi. This essay is based on 5 talks given at New England YM 2014.
Introduction: A Cloud of Witnesses/ Is Your God Big Enough?: Witness against Idolatry—Hebrews 12:1 speaks of being surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses." In Isaiah 43:10; 43:12; & 44:8 God declares: "You are my witnesses!" Through these verses & early Quaker witness, I'll explore what our tradition tells us about being witnesses now. Isaiah's "witness" passages were written by a Babylonian Jew in a section sometimes called "2nd Isaiah." This anonymous poet & prophet announces that Yahweh is about to end exile & bring the Jewish community back to Jerusalem. The writer uses the scene of a heavenly trial, with the Babylonian gods on trial (See Isaiah 43: 9-13). The issue here is idolatry; Isaiah mocks the wooden idols of Babylon, who can't answer the charges.
Just because we don't worship graven images or idols, we should not assume that the idolatry issue is no longer relevant. Everywhere we look, we see the de facto worship of lesser gods: money; power; career; consumerism; ideology; political causes; security. Is your God big enough? The issue is God's transcendence, God "going beyond" our normal, everyday experience. The prophet's poetry is replete with images of transcendence in Isaiah 55: 8-9 and Isaiah 40: 21-23. They are poetic and beautiful, but if we are honest, we are likely to admit that these ancient images of an all-powerful God [the puppeteer] are lost on us. Our images are necessary, but always inadequate, so the spiritual life often means a successive smashing of idols.
God 's new images have emerged. In particular, panentheism, "all in God, God in all," allows us to reclaim God's transcendent dimension. God is both transcendent & immanent. In panentheism, transcendence refers to the "More" of an added dimension. Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls God "the beyond in our midst." Abraham Joshua Heschel writes: "There are no proofs for the God of Abraham ... only witnesses. Dorothy Day writes: "To be a witness ... means to live in such a way that one's life wouldn't make sense if God didn't exist. [We need to live as a part of the greater mystery that is God, & our lives need to appear as a mystery from the world's perspective].
Is Your God Close Enough?: The Witness Within—In the biblical worldview God was both transcendent and immanent. 2 broad spiritual paths resulted: ascending spirituality [transcendence, seeking God beyond]; descending spirituality [immanence, looking for God in the world]. Beginning around 400 CE, and continuing for over 1,000 years, God's transcendence came to be emphasized and God's immanence neglected, except in the forms of Celtic Christianity, Francis of Assisi, medieval mystics and reformers.
One way to understand the significance of early Friends is to see them at the end of this 1,000 year detour, trying to recapture a fresh sense of God's immanence, in both their experience & their language. In a sense they were asking: Is your God close enough? Quakers had a rich language for immanence: Inward Light; the Seed; Inward Teacher; that of God in everyone. Based on I John 5:10, Fox exhorts Friends to "keep to the witness of God in yourselves," & "live up to the Witness." Fox talks of "reaching the witness" in those he is in dispute with, [& as living examples of "that of God," making] "the witness of God in them bless you."
Isaac Penington writes: "As God hath not left God's self without an outward witness ... so God hath not left God's self without a witness inwardly; there is something in men to testify of God." [Sarah Blackborrow speaks of her convincement by inner witness beginning when she was 8 or 9 without knowing what it was, & of realizing it & testifying with her own witness] "when it was spoken of to me by the Servants of the living God." Truth for early Friends was deceit's opposite, so the witness led Friends to 1st confront self-deceit & then deceit in others. The witness is the capacity to see our identities as limited in perspective. Light is the means by which we see all things. This inward witness or light seemed to help them see their lives through God's eyes, not their own. This allows dis-identifying with our ego-projects & concerns, our fears and insecurities, & vanities.
[Fox's experience was that]: "I was a man of sorrows in the times of the 1st workings of the Lord in me ... [And] now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all creation gave another smell ... beyond what words can utter." George Fox counseled early Friends: "Keep within ... For Christ is within you ... the measure is within ... the word of God is within, and you are the Temples of God." The pearl of great price cannot be inherited, but must be re-discovered by each generation.
Is Your God Real Enough?: Witness as Testimony—Is our God real enough? For early Friends, only a direct relationship with the Divine would give their lives meaning, purpose, wholeness, [and Truth]. This truth must have consequences for the way they lived their lives. In John 3:21, the Evangelist suggests the truth is not mere words, but rather something we do. Early Friends spoke of "having a testimony" and understood this as the way in which they witnessed to the truth they had experienced. Early Friends thought of their testimony in terms of what they did, the way they lived their lives. They did not swear oaths, because they believed in a single standard of truth. They did not pay tithes, because the gospel ministry had been freely received and was to be freely given. They would not fight, because they were to love their enemies and overcome evil with good.
Of all these aspects of Friends testimony, perhaps the basic was their manner of worship. After the restoration of the monarchy and the established church, anything resembling Quaker worship was against the law. [Friends were forced out of their "meeting house" and started meeting in the fields]. The men of the meeting were arrested, and the women and children continued to meet. When most of the women were arrested, the children continued to meet. The widow Margaret Whithart, proclaimed, "This is the place we have met since the beginning ... We do not meet here in willfulness or stubbornness, God is our witness ... we must bear our testimony publicly in this thing, whatever we suffer."
Early Friends' best known testimony was for peace. Before the historical Declaration of 1661, [there was a remarkable earlier incident]. Thomas Lurting was an artillery officer in the navy. There was a small group who met regularly in Quaker worship. [Impressed by their sense of community], Lurting was eventually drawn to join in their worship. [In the midst of battle, he realized the possibility of killing a man]. After sharing his new conviction with the small group of Quakers, and in a subsequent battle, he refused to report to his station, even under threat of death. What is most remarkable about this story is that at the time there was no public statement of the peace testimony. His action came solely from his silent waiting on the Light. This is one of many such stories of those risking or actually experiencing great suffering in bearing witness to the Truth.
These stories provide raw material from which we distill our modern testimonies. Originally, a martyr was simply a witness. Early Friends often found that Truth required suffering. This resonates with 2nd Isaiah, where the "servant songs" culminate in Isaiah 53's suffering servant. If I were on trial for being a Quaker, would there be enough evidence to convict me? Early Friends witness in the face of suffering & persecution makes no sense without including the transforming experience of the Divine Presence, the Light Within, the Inward Christ, the Witness of God in their hearts. William Penn said: "They were changed men themselves before they went about to change others." Early Friends lived in an authoritarian & hierarchical society. We live in a society that is individualistic, & not threatened by Quaker peculiarities, which are likely to be tolerated, but not likely to be taken seriously. What might it mean to witness to the Truth in today's culture? Might there even be ways in which we will be asked to suffer for the Truth?
Testimony as Stories of Witness—What are the Quaker testimonies? What were the Quaker testimonies early on? Many of us would spell out S.P.I.C.E.S. [simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship] that would have the character of virtues or abstract principles. Before the testimonies were a list, Michael Levi wrote: "Testimonies were leadings, stories from bygone days, many of which of which are still relevant to the challenges I face today." Early Friends did not think of them [as abstract testimonies of "integrity," "equality," "peace," and act accordingly], but by listening to the still small voice and responding to the choices before them. The testimonies as they have come to us are the distillation of generations of stories of faithfulness to the leadings of the Light. [In a pastoral visit I talked of] "my activist period" years before [and was asked] "And what are you doing now?" That question could be addressed to the entire Society of Friends.
[Testimonies are not to be found in lists]. They come from the bottom up; they are the end result of thousands of Friends around the world who are faithful to the leadings of the Light, to the Witness within them. How do we cultivate the ability to listen to promptings of love & truth in our hearts? What is love asking? If it sometimes seems that Friends' sense of testimony has waned in recent years, it is certainly not for lack of issues, global & local. I suspect that all of us have at times struggled with the temptation to hopelessness & despair.
Although we need to think globally, faithful action is likely to be local, modest in scope, humble in its aspirations, qualitatively persuasive rather than quantitatively decisive, more like yeast than the whole loaf. God doesn't require that we be successful, only that we be faithful. We do what we do because we are called to do it; not to achieve some calculated end or goal. A renewed testimony is likely to be personal, rooted in the particular circumstances of individual lives & local communities. Thomas Kelly writes: "For each of us [there are] special undertakings that are our particular share in the joyous burdens of love ... We can't die on every cross, nor are we expected to." If our testimony is rooted & grounded in love & spiritual abundance, then the burden is light. Truth isn't something we know but something we do. If our spiritual truth doesn't transform us & bear fruit, then it isn't truth but self-deception. How are the promptings of love & truth leading us to be "doers of the word"?
Witness in the Shadow of Empire—I want to explore the themes of empire and exile. These concerns are central to the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the New Testament we can't comprehend the church's claim that "Christ is Lord" without understanding it as a subversive counter to the empire's claim that "Caesar is Lord." Exile is not just geographical, but political, moral, and cultural, a loss of the structured, reliable world which gave meaning and coherence, while facing the twin temptations of assimilation and despair. [Jews endured this for 50 years]. Walter Brueggmann says that we should 1st read Hebrew poetry with an eye to the original historical context, remembering the Jews were the Palestinians of that time. [With our economic and military dominance in the world] we are uncomfortably reminiscent of Babylon.
Friends and others of prophetic faith find themselves a captive people, living in that strange land of exile, in the shadow of empire. We too are forced to choose between [assimilation and despair]. Where do we fit in the story of empire and exile, assimilation and despair? What is our testimony? One of the most pernicious tools of empire is to convince us that nothing can ever change. Over and over in history, things stay the same—until they change. Change when it comes is often sudden, unanticipated, seemingly miraculous [e.g. end] of Iron Curtain and apartheid. [For change to happen there must be "active hope."] Doug Gwyn has observed that, "Work for a sustainable human society on earth will focus much of our imagination and energies in this century."
According to Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone, The 1st step in active hope is about recognizing, appreciating, & delighting in what is now present in our experience (See Isaiah 42:10; 43:1, 2, 4, 5; 45:18). The 2nd step in the spiral, honoring our pain for the world, allows us to break through avoidance & denial [of how bad things are.] It means we notice, & we care. Old Testament expression of pain & grief is seen in psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations & traces in 2nd Isaiah (See Isaiah 51:17-19). Thich Nhat Hahn says: "What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying." Most of us spend a lot of energy not noticing [the earth's crying].
The 3rd step in the spiral is "seeing with new eyes," seeing new possibilities that inspire hope (See Isaiah 43:18-19). It will mean coming to a wider sense of self, [transcending culture]. It will mean power with rather than power over, where cooperation & synergy replace hierarchy. Friend Eileen Flanagan reminds that seeing with new eyes is seeing that it is a question of the earth saving us; saving us from false separation [from nature], from the divine spirit that connects us all. Our hope is that once a certain portion of humanity makes a daunting shift in our thinking, our politics, & our spirituality, decisive change may come quite suddenly & unexpectedly.
The 4th and final step in the spiral is "going forth." Going forth means action [taken with] imagination and vision. There must be clarity about what it is we hope for. The new Jerusalem for which Jews yearn was a to be a light to all nations, a universal beacon of shalom, of peace and salvation [See Isaiah 49:6; 60:1,3]. How are we called to be God's witnesses in our time? What testimony do we have for this troubled & hopeless world? Let us take the 4 steps of active hope. And may God grant us a vision worthy of our task, a vision of God's shalom for all people, and for the earth.
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436. Spreading the Fire: Challenging and Encouraging Friends through Travel in the Ministry (By Debbie Humphries; 2015)
About the Author—Debbie Humphries grew up Mormon & came to Quakerism in the early 1990's. Since then she been a member of Ithaca, Charleston, and Hartford (currently]; in NY, Southern Appalachian, and New England (NE) YM's respectively. She is currently clerk of the Ministry and Counsel Committee of NEYM. Debbie teaches at the Yale School of Public Health and conducts research in nutrition and community health.
Prologue/ Introduction—When visiting far from where I live, midweek opportunities were [often] all I could offer. Myself & a friend serving as elder, & 2 members from the host meeting were there. I listened for whether there was something to share. After asking permission, I placed my hands on their heads & blessed them with words & Spirit that flowed. After 8 years of traveling in ministry, this was a new experience in ministry.
Traveling in the ministry is a particularly Quaker tradition of the spiritual path. For early Quakers, this travel was at 1st evangelical in nature. I share my own story following the prompting of the Divine to travel in the ministry to support this living movement [among] Friends today [by]: providing stories for those called to travel; encouraging meetings contacted by a traveling minister to trust the Quaker tradition. I pray that my ministry in traveling and writing and throughout my life can provide encouragement and challenge to others.
The Call and Preparation for Ministry—During our 1st NEYM, some 700-plus Quakers celebrated the 350th annual session. We worshiped in the historic Newport Meeting House. I felt myself shaking and a message rising: As Quakers, we are heirs to a powerful tradition. Today we are a pale shadow of who we are called to be. This transformative experience set me on an internal journey to more closely following the promptings of the Spirit. [I proceeded with encouragement and support from a broad base].
Personal Preparation—I started making time for an hour meditation and worship every morning, & I read voraciously about the fire & vitality of early Friends & writing by Friends of other eras [e.g. John Woolman, Howard Brinton, Thomas Kelly, & Samuel Bownas. My morning time has remained a critical source of encouragement and challenge through the years. The spring following worship and my vocal ministry at Newport meeting house, John and I were invited to attend the Emerging Ministries Retreat at Woolman Hill Quaker Conference Center in MA. I told my small group I felt called to the Friends tradition of traveling in the ministry.
Once one's meeting has clarity in someone's leading to travel in ministry, The clerk writes a travel minute, which is given to the person. The minute serves as a letter of introduction & an affirmation of the person's gifts. Daughters of Light, Wilt Thou Go on My Errand & On Resistance & Obedience to God are 2 books about women traveling ministers. My 1st visit were ad hoc, making opportunities to worship with other communities wherever they arose. In our family travels, we visited meetings all over the country. Even though I came late to the Colorado Springs Meeting, I was called by the Spirit to share We are not called to transform the world; we are called to transform ourselves.
Support from the Quaker Community—I asked a few seasoned Friends from Hartford to sit with me regularly. I needed help making sure I wasn't running ahead of or behind my leading. I felt a nudge to do 10 retreats in 10 months, in hopes of a greater awareness of the motion of the Spirit in my body and a better ability to listen and interpret that motion. I stayed at a Benedictine abbey, joined a group silent retreat, took several individual retreats, and concluded the year backpacking along the Appalachian Trail in CT. My support committee provided a space to reflect on what I was learning in these retreats and to seek feedback and guidance.
I took 2 Earlham School of Religion's online courses: Christianity's history; Introduction to Preaching. I felt the Spirit moving as I sat with choices of topics. I knew I was to write a letter about the resurrection to the Apostle Paul from the Corinth Church 's Ministry & Counsel Committee. I learned to think more about stories & how to hear & use stories in a loving & community-building. I was led to ask Hartford Meeting for oversight of my ministry to reflect the meeting's ownership of the ministry. The meeting wasn't in unity to provide oversight, but wanted to make sure I had the support I needed. I had been visiting as an individual Friends & talking with individuals. I was now feeling the need to gather with meetings as a whole. For that I needed a travel minute. My leading was described as "her concern is to deepen the spiritual life of the Religious Society of Friends, to re-awaken us to experience the vitality & power of the Spirit, & to remind Friends of the truths of our tradition." The CT Valley QM & the Permanent Board of the NEYM approved it; the minute is still active.
Traveling in New England (2005-2012)—During the 1st 8 years I wrote to every New England meeting; I visited all that chose to have me. I visited meetings in 1 of NEYM's 8 QMs each year. I sought worship outside the regular meeting for worship, to be led by the Spirit in the moment, without pre-discerned focus. I wonder whether the meetings' discussion around my request helped foster expectation among those who worshiped with me. Several Friends shared excitement about participating in a old tradition which they had not experienced.
Personal Challenges—The biggest challenges for me were the personal lessons & growth from a particular lesson or across a series of lessons that had to happen for me to learn my own process of being faithful. The lessons were: It's not about me; let go of expectations; trust the Spirit; wallowing in inadequacies and failure; listen for what I'm carrying. When I reluctantly asked for meeting support, it was about the ministry, not me. When people responded gratefully to words I'd been led to share in worship, it was a response to Spirit, not me.
When Friends expected "a workshop on worship," rather than just worship, I struggled to let go of that expectation, & instead listened for how the Spirit was moving. I have learned to trust & wait for what the Spirit leads me to share. Once I was led to talk about the Bible & treating the stories there as people's stories of their experience of the Divine, which seemed well-received. A week or so before a ministry engagement, I was pulled into a deeply felt awareness of all the ways I fell short as teacher, Quaker, & vessel for God. I learned that: "The work of preparing for ministry ... is to get the ego out of the way to be a more faithful & consistent instrument."
Over and over again I have been challenged to hear and respond to the many different ways in which leadings and the motion of the Spirit come. [After I had done some lackluster sharing in a forum], I realized that I needed to express the reflection of love that I had been carrying in the weeks prior to the visit. When given a forum, I needed to share as led, not necessarily as planned or requested.
Openings into Truth—Quakerism is a tradition that encourages us to walk with our deepest questions, & to believe that we can be answered. Who am I? How should I be living? What is my relationship to God & earth? Today we are successors to this tradition which tells us that openings to the Divine happens here & now, if we are open. In addition to answers, early Friends also experienced openings, those truths that came unbidden. I believe that much of early Friends' success is that they spoke truths they knew in their bones, & those truths resonated with listeners, who by accepting those truths were transformed. Questions grab me & I wrestle with them. What does God's safety look like? What is the kingdom of heaven here & now? What is the tree of knowledge of good & evil in Genesis? Many truths come in worship, but they come in other places as well. The following are truths I recognize in my bones: God's safety; yes & no; reframing the trinity; Seeing the war anew.
Jeremiah was told: "Fear none of them, for I am with you & will keep you safe." Yet, Jeremiah was beaten, imprisoned, & made an outcast & exile." This statement came at Arcadia meeting: God's promise of safety is no more & no less than the promise that there will always be a path of integrity & we won't be alone. At Yarmouth Preparative Meeting on Cape Cod, the message came: If "no" isn't an option, our "yes" becomes meaningless. For the "yes" to be meaningful, we need to be ready to make people uncomfortable, to use serious discernment in our Quaker culture. Each of us has to understand both at the individual & at the meeting level that a "no" isn't a rejection or criticism, but rather an honest statement of where the community is. We believe that we're faithful, unbiased, & loving people. It's hard for us to accept the reality that we're also conflicted, prejudiced, and flawed.
At the retreat center at Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio, I woke up several times [one night] with an image of physics & light, & how scientists experience light depending on how they measure it. Perhaps the same is true of the Divine: If we approach in one way, then we experience a particle. If we approach a different way, we experience a wave. [If we examine the apparent source of light, like the sun, that is a different experience]. [The trinity can be a] metaphor for how we experience God: God as a particle is a transcendent other, a father; God as a wave is an immanent presence, a holy spirit; [God as an apparent worldly source] is other human and nonhuman beings, a son. Each of these dimensions of the Divine can be seen as true and as incomplete.
An opening came to me in Hartford Meeting worship: war's philosophy is that the ends justifies the means. The end never justifies the means, because we can't know the end, [the future]. To achieve an end that speaks of wholeness & love, the means must embody wholeness & love. Since we can never know the end, we need the faith to release the ends, & to focus [on the means and] on whether our lives and actions speak of wholeness and love. The insight about ends and means changed my world view and continues to pervade my professional life.
Spiritual Conditions of New England Friends Today—I now offer observations of patterns among Friends, and seek to encourage and challenge Friends by describing what I have witnessed in my visits: Being Quakers is often central to our personal sense of identity. Our hunger to do good work is often thwarted by our desire for comfort. Few of us put our spiritual journeys at the center of our lives.
People would often describe experiences of coming into meeting for worship and feeling that they had come home or had felt the vibrant, living presence of the Divine. Time and again, I have been encouraged by small meetings where those present were committed to being Quaker, felt themselves to be Quaker, and savored a tender and sweet spirit in their midst. We are all new to Friends, and it has little to do with how much time someone has spent hanging around Quakers. I have given voice to something that rings true in my bones before I can get there rationally. The depths of this tradition are profound, but we tend to skate on the surface [most of the time]. Without a personal experience of [deep], immediate guidance, it can be difficult to fully understand these practices, leaving Friends to follow the forms without the moving of the Spirit.
Our hunger for comfort keeps us closer to the world around us than we would like to be, [inspite of] an undercurrent of a deep hunger for good work. That hunger for meaningful, daily work, ministry that challenges us is the motion of the Spirit working within us. Northrup Frye writes: "A life divided only between dull work and distracted play is not life but ... a waiting for death ..." War is a rich and enlivening experience because it requires challenge. We are afraid of change, sticking with situations that don't work because we know them, rather than taking risks. We don't often turn to God's everlasting arms after we've lost every other option. [We construct] a barrier of comfort, possessions and relationships [that stifles] spiritual growth.
The connection to the Eternal Presence is a tranformative experience; around that connection, the traditions of Friends grew up. Individual Friends have touched, waded, & swum in a living vital stream of the Divine. It is through immersing ourselves in the living stream at [a distinctly] Quaker "beach" that we will be able to be Quakerism's message, & own for ourselves the experience of that originating fire. A living, vital tradition is dependent on the presence of a number of Friends who continue to walk to, wade, & swim at the Quaker beach. In my journal I write: "[We who] are grafted in to the Religious Society of Friends ... need to learn and understand what it means to sink our roots into this tradition. It is much more than sitting in meeting on Sunday. We need to learn more about the Quakers that have come before, and to make the Judeo-Christian heritage our own."
Conclusion/ Epilogue—I remember the feeling in [meeting rooms around the country]. Growing out of that feeling in those rooms is an immense respect, honor, and love for people right where they are. The world is exactly right and perfect right now and simultaneously there's so much work to be done. The opportunity to travel among Friends in this way has been a gift. I hope that other Friends will consider whether they are led to similar travel, and that meetings will be aware of and open to the traveling ministry tradition.
I haven't asked about my travels' impact on others, as those are the Spirit's fruits, & not mine to carry. As I lived into the leadings given to me in this process, I was being made more whole. I feel deeply about the importance of travel in ministry to the Quaker tradition, for the individuals traveling & the meetings visited. [For myself], I trust that the Spirit has made use of my service. I think back to my 1st opportunity to travel with my new travel minute. Could I listen to the Spirit? What were people expecting? What if I didn't have anything to share? No message came, but we all left on Sunday with a sense of what travel in the ministry might mean.
Appendix 1: Queries for individuals—How have you been challenged in your spiritual journey? Where have you found encouragement? How have you met those challenges? What openings have you experienced? How do you listen to the Divine and embody the Divine in your life? What ministry are you led to? Queries for meetings—How does the meeting encourage and nurture individual gifts of ministry? Are there individuals in your meeting in whom you see gifts of ministry growing?
Appendix 2:[Copy of Travel Minute]
Appendix 3: Nuts and Bolts—My specific suggestion are: Be flexible; Talk with meetings to help them prepare; Pay attention to the details; Elders and companions. After a while I learned to ask for a forum-type venue, and then accepted gratefully whatever the meeting could arrange. I have offered ministry before meeting; for 5 minutes after meeting; Saturday nights; after meeting; at weekday lunches and dinners. After sending a letter, I wait a while and then follow up with a phone call to the clerk. We heard numerous stories of the struggles meetings had with my letter. In the phone conversation, I explained that my priority throughout the visits was to be faithful to the promptings of the Spirit, and that this is how early Friends traveled.
I was once late because I didn't bring a watch or cellphone with. Bill Taber said that the Spirit's motion, & the words that come, often come through emotions & includes tears; bring a handkerchief. Some people need to find a quiet place to decompress after speaking; some need an elder or companion. I have always tried to have someone as "elder" to offer support & hold me & those gathered in prayer, and help me stay accountable to the leadings of the Spirit. A few times I worked with an elder-at-a-distance, someone who could accompany me in Spirit. What was [most] important for me was the sharing and reflections after a visit. Had I been faithful?
Queries—What is the value of traveling ministry to a meeting and its members? Do you have a call or leading in your own life that you perceive as a ministry? What is an oversight committee? A support committee? What has your experience been with meeting decisions that are different from your personal hopes? What are the pros and cons of the often long time-frame of the Quaker decision-making process? What are the question you walk with and wrestle with today? How do you experience God? How much is your desire to do good works thwarted by your desire for comfort?
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437. Metaphors of Meaning (by Linda Wilson; 2016).
About the Author/ Some Things About Me—Greetings: [My homeplace, mountain, river, and sea] are Waiwhetū, Tararu, Heretaunga, and Wellington Harbor, respectively. I now live in the Waikato, sheltered by the Waikato Tainui. [My descent is from]: the Scottish clan Gunn; Ellen Peterson & Rosalie Williams (grand-mothers); Henry Fox & Gavin Wilson (grandfathers); Margery Fox & Donald Wilson (parents), now twinkling stars. My name is Linda Wilson. I have a foster daughter and my husband is Robert.
[Editor's note: The above is a slightly condensed version of a traditional Maori mihimihi, a formal introduction, which included a passage in Maori]. To locate a person geographically and ancestrally is common practice in Aoteartoa New Zealand. Naming your place by land and water, your tribe, the bones [you came from], & your immediate ancestors, comes before you name yourself. How does who you are and where your people are from shape you or influence your spirituality? It locates you in relation to others and enables people to place you and know your connections. For Maori, where and who you are from is intrinsic to who you are. These ideas have shaped the understandings of more recent, 4th-generation New Zealanders like myself. Natural features of the land and the waters are of great significance; they shape who you are, where you stand, and what you do.
Much of my work has been in occupational therapy. Therefore I am used to thinking about the importance of daily routines, and the ordinariness of day-to-day living. It is the ordinary daily activities that actually occupy the major part of our lives. Peak and special moments we like to remember are the exceptions. I am used to thinking about who & where I am, what I am doing, and the part that each plays in my life. [I once hiked across Stewart Island]. As I felt so alone and disconnected, a small gecko ran across the path, climbing over the toe of my boot to continue on its way. For it, I was just a part of its world. Which places have been important in your spiritual experiences? How has place contributed to your spirituality?
2004-05 Pendle Hill—Many of my understandings from my Pendle Hill residential year remain with me 10 years later. They formed a continuing spiritual practice & much of my life's joy. It took almost 16 weeks of being away from my work & daily responsibilities till I [recovered from] depression & bone-deep fatigue. For 2 weeks in January, I snuggled down in my bed, feeling great joy & happiness. I was warm, I was safe, & I was happy.
When I talked about these joyful feelings, Mariah said she thought that everyone could experience similar feelings but used very different words to describe them. This led me to [work] with different images & words for my nocturnal feelings of joy; none of them truly felt right. I began to pay attention to spiritual metaphors. I will use the term spiritual metaphor to include all images, phrases, & analogies used to talk or write about spiritual things. This essay reflects on metaphors or ways people may see their spiritual experiences. It invites testing of common & uncommon metaphors to see what feels familiar, useful, or irrelevant. I will explore a meaningful metaphor for how we live our spirituality, a way of thinking about & attending to my spirituality on a daily basis.
Spiritual Metaphors—I spent 9 months at Pendle Hill. That time [half a world] away from home helped me to see my spirituality in new and different ways. I thought about myself in relation to my experience of and concepts of "god" (capitalizing god suggests a hierarchical [relationship] rather than god as spirit moving between and among us). I explored my childhood memories of prayer and realized that all these are prayers where humans do the talking. I am not personally keen on [these kinds of prayer]. I came to see centering prayer as the other side of conversation. I had to think about what my concept of god actually was.
I have long felt uncomfortable with male divinity words: "he; King; Lord; Father." Exploring feminist theology exposed me to: "she; goddess; and mother god." They still denoted a supreme being. I explored "water," "vibration," and "light." One way of finding metaphors that do have individual meaning is to examine in depth the images that don't work for you. [Take shepherding for instance. Some can view it as a loving, profession, as it is presented in the Bible. In my Maori/ New Zealand culture, it is seen in the light of European mismanagement of the land, and currently as a heartless industry]. Metaphors are so culturally shaped by their original context that transporting them across time and place can make them meaningless. Carol Lee Flinders argues that many deeply spiritual traditions have features mainly related to men's lives. What represented sacrifices in men's lives [were an established part of] women's lives. Women need to find and create understandings and spiritual practices that are linked to the realities of women's lives to sustain us.
I saw that I had resistance to the metaphor of spiritual journey, of being elsewhere than where you are, an external "other place" in the future; it involves traveling with baggage, and doesn't work for me. I needed a different sort of metaphor that reflected my experience of personal spirituality as up close and internal rather than external & supreme. It needed to help connect and integrate my spirituality into other parts of my life. Is the "spiritual journey" metaphor useful for you? What do you like or dislike about it? What other metaphors resonate for you? It seemed to me that notions of spirit and light don't personify, but rather carry ideas of power and forces. To see god as the source of spirit and light felt as though it fitted in both my head and heart.
Connectedness—During Rex Ambler's "Experiment with Light, I heard within "the sense of connectedness." I have discovered that this sense of connectedness is a common way to describe one's experience of the holy. David James and Jillian Wychel say: "The spirituality that is real to us finds its inner strength in the mystical experience of connectedness with each other and with ... creation ... [One can then] turn outward and work in one's own available and chosen action spaces to manifest the harmony already known."
Personal or internal connectedness is about integrity & congruity, past & present. Connectedness includes deliberate attending to my internal workings—feelings & responses, awareness of behavior, insights, awareness of inner teacher [& advocate] [John 14: 16-17 cited]. This advocate is the light within. Together my internal knowings present as my intuition. My internal connectedness is informed by synchronicities, deep honest contact or conversations with friends. Who or what connects you spiritually, internally, externally, & to the world?
From my Quaker community and the occupational therapy community, I have opportunities to connect with people on a daily basis, in celebration and crisis over extended periods of time. We make connections with this world & the spirit which lies within all creation when we attend to and focus on it. When we are connected, we attend to the actions of humans that compromise its future. I think of the universal spirit as a sense of the potential for connectedness. The spirit is activated by connections, little impulses of energy along the invisible cables that connect us to each other and the world. Maybe the little impulses, or the spirit web itself is love. Impulses can be sent or received, initiated, or attended. Accumulated, they become the light within, the illuminated connection. When I am in a negative space, I disconnect, I withdraw from offers to connect; I resist such opportunities. Consciously looking for and reducing barriers or disruptions to connection and retrieving memories of being captured by the spirit helps maintain my equilibrium and keeps my spirit flowing.
Cape Reinga at the North Island's northern tip is where the dead's spirits leap from the headland, climb down the roots of the pohuthukawa tree there, & descend into the underworld, to return to their traditional homeland, Hawaii-iki. This venerated tree is reputed to be 800 years old & flares into a crimson display from late October into late December. It is acknowledged as the New Zealand Christmas tree. I remember sitting there, captured by the feeling of the place & filled with awe at the massive forces [displayed] in the convergence of the Tasman & Pacific seas. This is a time when I was truly connected with the world & filled with an abundance of spirit.
I have come to see Quaker testimonies as ways we can facilitate connectedness within & between each being in the human & nonhuman environments we are part of. Throughout, the integrity of diversity, community, nonviolence, simplicity, connectedness, & continuing revelation testimonies with each other provides guidance to my integrity, the internal & external connectedness of my actions. That sense of connectedness is me feeling in tune with the spirit, at one with the universe, with the "that of god" in me, the spirit of me flowing with & into the light within the other person or the world. Spirituality is the basis of connectedness to other & to the planet.
Different Spiritualities, Experiences, & Metaphors—I have long been aware that some other people seem to have stronger spirituality than I. For me there has been no personal experience of a shoulder tap, a calling, a road-to-Damascus experience that has brought me to my knees. My spirituality is present & real for me even if it hasn't been in the form of major, dramatic life experiences. I have [re-conceived] my spirituality & now realize I have had spiritual experiences. I have a spiritual connectedness to decision-making that I can depend on.
Some of my peak spiritual experiences have happened when I have been in extraordinary settings, and/or away from ordinary life's pressures. I have swam with the dusky dolphins at Kaikoura on the east coast of South Island. They dived around us, swimming alongside before cutting & twisting around in front of us & making eye contact. I grinned for the next 3 days, & the memory of it still brings joy to my heart & makes my spirit sing. What spiritual experiences have been important in your life? Did they involve just you, other people, or the natural world? What do you know experimentally that may help others find & appreciate that of god in themselves or others? I have had experiences of equally profound satisfaction & acute awareness of connectedness in the very common places of daily life. Some of these experiences are in the moment, & others develop over time.
I joined the prayer shawl ministry group near Pendle Hill. I remember completing a shawl for a friend that was "just what she needed," and "was the same shade of reddish-purple" as the healing blanket the friend had imagined. Being wrapped in a blanket is both physically and emotionally warming. I understand how people like the idea of being wrapped in god's blanket of peace. People find different metaphors meaningful, both to make sense of and to communicate their experiences. I need to focus on where I am from, that within, connecting outward from myself, rather than trying to experience an external god connecting inward to me.
My Metaphor: Tending One's Spiritual Home—The metaphor I developed for my spiritual practice is: to tend one's spiritual home. It portrays spirituality as the internal "place" that protects, restores, & energizes a person's capacity for interaction. Our spiritual home needs tending, care & attention. Home is "a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin" & "the place where something is discovered, founded, developed, or promoted; a source." This metaphor can help focus spirituality in the present, where we are & as part of our daily life.
At Pendle Hill, I did spiritual spring house cleaning. I sorted and tidied and relabeled. I found some important treasures that needed to come back out into daily use; I found antiques and rubbish. I also recognized that some important resources were lacking. The way some people have used the term "spiritual housekeeping" is for the clearing out of unhealthy episodes of thought and deed and the modifying of patterns damaging to self and others. Much of the day-to-day tending or housekeeping carries more of an idea of keeping things in order with overtones unappreciated labor and loving, continuing service. Daily prayer sustains us as the bread of life, ensuring that we are sustained and have the energy to live our spiritual lives.
Sometimes this work is immediately inconvenient, but it ensures a valuable resource for later. What do you invest in, spiritually, in times of plenty, so it will be there in leaner times? [In our spiritual home], we hold close our stories of significant spiritual experiences to sustain us when our spiritual life feels more distant. We clothe ourselves from this home, ensuring that how we present ourselves to the world is an adequate representation of who we are. The way we see ourselves changes over time, and so we need to change how we present ourselves to others. When we have tended to our spiritual homes, we will recognize and welcome the visiting spirit.
We take our spirituality with us wherever we go, even though the form and process of it may change over time. Those without experience of a happy home (physical or spiritual) adopt new habitats, sometimes with unrealistic fervor. What appeals or doesn't appeal to you about tending one's spiritual home as a metaphor? Do you understand either your liking it, or your resistance to it? When physical and spiritual home is well-tended, both materially and relationally, there is no safer place to be who you are. The way we see our home changes as we change the meaning and senses we make of our lives. What is special about your home? What do you do there that you do nowhere else? We may invest in activities now that we know will only come to fruition later.
Our habits and practices permit us to get through some parts of life with minimal attention so that we can concentrate on that which is new or challenging; we also need to interrupt routine with celebrations, & with creativity. Tending our homes has as much to do with maintaining the relationships that support and affirm us as it has to do with tending to the physical environments. We need a sense of home in our heads, hearts, and bodies. What is the nature of spiritual homelessness and what are we called to do to address it?
Ways of Tending—How can we tend our spiritual home? The process might include: establishing a regular spirituality pattern; effecting spiritual "home repairs" as needed; connecting with support communities; forming community support networks; connect with those who share our home; being open to new experiences; plan time to have fun, create and play; spring cleaning periodically; keep a commonplace book (record of places and activities important to you); lay in resources for times of scarcity; take time to notice spiritual moments.
Further Considerations—The metaphor of tending one's spiritual home implies being & doing & emphasizes place over pursuit. I had some reservations about homemaking analogies because of gender role stereotyping. But I think most metaphors cross genders; some women have told me that the journey metaphor works well for them. The home-tending metaphor carries a sense of a central core around & from which connections "radiate out" or "emanate from." How do you tend your spiritual home? Are there other ways in which you might tend your spiritual home? Attending to one's spirituality is framed without reference to a supreme being.
The home-tending metaphor is grounded in place, locates the spiritual process internally rather than externally, & is concerned with life in the present rather than the future. This metaphor legitimizes daily self-care, service, & work as significant spiritual activities. The notions of nurturing where I am now, acknowledging where I have come from, & spiritually investing today to create places for the spirit, feels useful, for now & tomorrow.
3 particularly appealing metaphors emerged from an Aoteara New Zealand workshop: spiritual landscape; tree; and mirror. [When they are formed, as though] by a volcano, spiritual upheavals are a long time in the making and are often immediately distressing and apparently damaging, they transform the land, providing rich resources that support later growth. A tree may look dormant, but if appropriate nourishment continues, it will bear fruit and flower, and grow deeper roots to ensure more nourishment over time. The mirror is a perfect surface that can reflect back to us who we are. We can all develop metaphors that help us make sense of and communicate our spiritual experiences and practices. I encourage Friends, individually and collectively, to find metaphors of meaning for themselves, share them now, and leave them for future Friends.
Conclusions—The metaphor presented here grew out of my year at Pendle Hill. The space it created gave me time to learn and think. I learned to attend to myself, to recognize how important connectedness was to me. I found ways to stay connected internally, externally, & to the world. I negotiated a different role for myself at work that suits the daily tending of my spiritual home. There are major renovations on myself going on designed to keep me healthy, safe, & active; I keep a time for sabbath more often than not. I have found room in my head & heart for another & have since married.
We are setting up an "our" home in a new community. On the whole I can catch up comfortably & usually get done what needs to be done at a spiritual & domestic level. I recognize when I'm not tending to myself & can thus restore myself promptly. I am busy, active, and helpful to my work, friends and family, and spiritual community. I am happy, alive, connected, and therefore I am in good spirits and tended by a good spirit. Now that I am home, in myself and in my own place in the world, connected with long-standing [friends and associates], I give thanks for the spirit that is between and among and within us all.
What metaphors come to mind right now? What metaphors might work for you in sustaining and maintaining your spirituality across time and place and the ebbs and flows of life? How might you identify, explore, and share them and weave them into your life?
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438. A Seal upon the Heart: Quaker Readings in the Song of Songs (by Michael Birkel; 2016)
About the Author—Michael Birkel teaches in the Religion Department at Earlham College. He wrote the Pendle Hill Pamphlet #398 The Messenger that Goes Before: Reading Margaret Fell for Spiritual Nurture and edited #406 The Mind of Christ: Bill Taber on Meeting for Business. In his book Qur'an in Conversation, Muslim religious leaders and scholars grapple with interpretations of key suras of the Qur'an.
[Introduction]—[Song of Songs 2:10-12 cited] Old love songs never die, not the good ones. Good love songs arouse memory and imagination. [Otherwise they would only be history and information]. Likewise, people often read the Bible to discover a living God, not a historical, ancient deity. Why should a biblical collection of love poems be of interest to anyone today? Early Friends spoke Bible. Scripture provided a language for their inward encounters. Exploring how early Friends read the Song of Songs can open new possibilities for understanding their experiences and for fresh encounters with the Spirit that inspired them. These candid, sensual, poetic love lyrics have attracted lovers of God across the centuries in church and synagogue, Earlier Friends found in the beauty and intensity of these verses a fitting dialect to speak of their experiences of divine presence. Contemporary biblical scholars understand the book's original intent as a playful celebration of love; pious readers have interpreted its message symbolically.
The Song as a Love Poem—From the famous opening lines, spoken in the woman's voice, the poem is passionate. The lovers speak of each other with metaphors drawn from the natural world. The delight of this text is that it is suggestive in the extreme, but it is never more than that; it is playful, yet reticent. This is a book for grownups, not merely in its adult subject matter, but also in its grownup way of avoiding voyeuristic indulgence. [Song 1: 7, 9, 13-14 cited]. In the Song of Songs the lovers tease each other, and thus the reader, relentlessly.
One of the verses just cited mentions En Gedi, which is a fertile oasis in the Judean wilderness, an eruption of beauty in the desert. Vineyards appear in the text, but there is no evidence of them at En Gedi, so this may be a subtle allusion to the woman's body. [Being too concerned with precise interpretation] is to risk spoiling its beauty, which relies so much on its ambiguity. The poem resists precision. Their poetic description of one another's beauty draws on the senses & invites the reader into a world of sight, sound, smell, & taste. She is a locked garden, filled with aromatic spices (Song 4:11-16). Many readers find the high point of the Song's celebration of love in the following verse: Set me as a seal upon your heart,/ as a seal upon your arm;/ for love is strong as death,/ ardor is fierce as Sheol./ Its flashes are flashes of fire,/ a godlike flame.
The Song as Scripture—Love and romance appear elsewhere in the Bible, but nothing else compares to the Song of Songs in quality or quantity. How did the Song of Songs make its way into the Bible? It got into Scripture by virtue of being read allegorically. Other biblical passages inspired the concept of the church as the bride of Christ, so ancient and medieval interpreters found it natural to embrace the Song as a thesaurus of divine love. Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and others read it as an allegory.
It is possible to interpret the Songs of Songs as love song and allegory. The Song evokes a spirit of playfulness among its readers and commentators, and provides ample images and challenges to its readers. Christian commentary on the Song flourished as early as the third century in the writings of Origen of Alexandria. The 12th century monk Bernard of Clairvaux composed 86 sermons on the Song of Songs. Since "soul" in Latin and other European languages is feminine, any human reader could identify with the female voice in the Song.
The Puritan Geneva Bible describes the Song this way: "Solomon, by sweet and comfortable allegories and parables describeth the perfect love of Jesus Christ, the true Solomon and King of Peace ... The faithful soul of his Church ... [is] his spouse, holy and chaste." [Puritan may have had] suspicions regarding intense, individual spiritual experience. Early Quaker interpretation would speak of divine love for both the individual and the community. Jeanne Guyon, a French Catholic Quietist, describes the beloved's kiss as a spiritual marriage. In the intimate union of the self with God, the soul is "so dissolved, rendered nothing, and dispossessed from itself that it can without hindrance flow into God ... the drop has become the sea, though it always remains a tiny drop."
The Song of Songs among Early Friends:[Isabel Fell Yeamans]—Early Quakers did not have a tradition of composed sermons. Neither did they develop a tradition of [orderly] commenting verse by verse on biblical texts. Wary of such practice and of allegories, early Quaker use of biblical texts typically focused on direct spiritual experience. Quaker writings seldom demonstrate the sustained attention on a single biblical text necessary for a dedicated commentary. An image from one biblical source evoked or aroused the memory of a similar image from elsewhere in scripture, resulting in "commentary by juxtaposition."
Isabel Fell Yeamans was one of Margaret Fell's illustrious daughters. Isabel's writings exemplify this associative method of reading the Song of Songs; she urges her readers to welcome the inward Christ. For Isabel, [the passage where] the young lover asks the night sentinels if they have seen her beloved, and then is beaten, keeps searching & is reunited with her beloved, describes the experience of early seekers who sought counsel from those guarding the conventional church. [They were told] that God was to be encountered in the church's external rituals, which many at that time found to be lacking [in spiritual nourishment]. [Besides physical abuse], Isabel describes a spiritual abuse. It felt like a beating when trusted clergy denied direct [access to God's] radically transforming power. Early Friends passed beyond the guardians of the state church & found their Beloved.
[Early Quakers believed that the prophet Joel's prediction of a pouring forth of the Spirit upon women was fulfilled in the Acts of the Apostles & in their own time. Isabel writes of this, juxtaposing Joel, Psalm 71:17, Revelation 3:20, and Song of Songs 5:2 in the process]. She refers to the watchmen, writing: "Come, you that have been enquiring of the blind watchmen of the night. I will tell you where we have found the beloved of our souls ... They smote us and wounded us, but blessed be our God forever, who turned us from them, to the light of Christ Jesus, which gave us knowledge of our beloved, and directed our feet into the right way." The soul's beloved was inwardly revealed, not found in empty ritual that did not satisfy the soul's deep longing.
The Song of Songs among Early Friends: [John Burnyeat, William Smith, and Others]—John Burnyeat used "we" language rather than first-person singular because he was speaking of a collective experience in 1653. He applied the language of the Song of Songs explicitly to the group experience of meeting for worship. He offered an account of his convincement. Biblical references in this selection include: Song 1:2-3, 4:16, 6:2; Psalm 23; Leviticus 2:2, 6:15; Colossians 2:2 3:14, [and God in the Garden of Eden].
[Examples follow]: "& thus being gathered ... our shepherd taught us, led us forth into green pastures, where we did feed & rest together with great delight ... Our spirits as oil, frankincense, & myrrh were offered up as incense, when not a word outwardly in all our assembly has been uttered. & then did the Lord delight to come down into his garden, & walk in the midst of beds of spices & cause [the winds to blow] ... Thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the maidens love thee ... & growing thus into this experience of the goodness of the Lord & divine power in assemblies, we grew in strength & zeal ... knit together in the perfect bond of love." Such exalted language was not rare among early Friends.
Sarah Blackbarrow, an early Quaker writer, [weaves together Song of Songs & Proverbs to come up with]: "A love there is which doth not cease, to the seed of God in you all, & therefore doth invite you...to return into it, that into Wisdom's house you may come... All of you who thirst after your beloved, come into Wisdom's house ... love truth & its testimony... be embraced of my dearly beloved. Love is his name, love is his nature, love is life."
Writing in the shadow of Margaret Fell's Peace Declaration in 1660, William Smith wrote on the peace testimony in which his chief scriptural text was from the Song of Songs 2:4: "[There is a birth which is] that of God ... And the Father spreads his love over it like a banner, by which it is protected and preserved in its growth and increase ... And their weapons are love and patience, by which they overcome."
Dorothy White, the most prolific woman writer next to Margaret Fell, carried on this ecstatic turn into the 1680s. Dorothy wrote in a prose so highly dense with biblical imagery that the fig tree of Song 2:13 is one with the fig tree in Matt. 24:32-33. The garden of Songs is also the garden of Is. 5:11 or Jer. 31:12. [Other verses she uses in juxtaposition] include: Joel 2:23 (possibly with James 5:7); Lam. 3:22-23; John 4:14. Dimmer echoes of other passages may also be in her The Day Dawned Both to Jews and Gentiles ... A century later in his Journal writing, John Woolman drew on many biblical sources [e.g. Numbers, Hebrews, Romans]. In recounting an experience of encountering God as justice and righteousness, John Woolman turned to the ecstatic expressions from the opening verses of the Song of Songs [on p. 177 of Moulton's edition of Woolman's Journal,].
The Fragrance of Desire/To the Other Side of Words—The desire for God can be as elusive & as subtle as a blooming spring flower's scent. The experience of divine presence can be like a fragrance. The faintest memory of it arouses desire, like a fragrance. Desire is transformed into consent to what cannot be adequately described, or even known. This consent becomes a relinguishing of expectation, in order to be present to the spiritual experience. Even the person experiencing this unutterable sweetness can seem to dissolve. Awareness of the boundaries of selfhood can grow faint. All that remains is the enrapturing fragrance, itself melting away.
George Fox certainly made encyclopedic use of the Bible, including the Song of Songs. Concerning silent meetings: "The intent of all speaking is to bring into the life,/ and to walk in, and to possess the same,/ and to live in and enjoy it, and to feel God's presence,/ and that is in the silence,/ not in the wandering whirling tempestuous part of man or woman,/ for there is the flock lying down at noonday,/ and feeding of the bread of life, and drinking at the springs of life, when they do not speak words;/ for words declared are to bring people to it,/ and to confess God's goodness and love,/ as they are moved by the eternal God and his spirit."
What in the Song of Songs is a request for a lovers' rendezvous becomes a request of the soul's beloved. In sum, George Fox takes this phrase from the Song of Songs that is a tender hint at a loving reunion and applies that loving intimacy to meeting for worship, where the gathered community lies down, resting in silence, to receive nourishment [in a collective experience]. Fox's words point to the silence on the other side of words; he alludes to the Song of Songs for this purpose.
What kind of language is capable of pointing beyond its own limits and of encouraging the mind to be transformed by wonder? The radiant natural world becomes, in the world of Song of Songs, a vocabulary for amazement. The natural images ... employed by the lovers to convey their [unfulfilled] longing ... is the raw material out of which the vision of the soul's beloved is crafted among its readers. The language of desire in the Song of Songs has for centuries beckoned lovers of God into the silent wonder beyond.
Queries—Do you experience the Song of Songs as a "celebration of the holiness of human love," read it allegorically, both, or something different? Why is or why isn't the Song of Songs an integral part of the Bible? How good is human love at being a metaphor for intense spiritual experience of divine presence? What metaphor would you use? How is your description of your worship experience compare with those of early Quakers? How does spiritual love & longing similar to & different from the love between persons? How would you describe the relationship between love & Quaker witness for peace? Why is it significant that the "tender hint at a loving reunion" is a collective experience rather than a private one?
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439. Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One (by Robert Griswold; 2016)
About the Author—Robert Griswold has been a convinced Friend since 1947. [He has gone from a Friends Church to Mountain View Friends (unprogrammed) to Anchorage, to Director of Scattergood Friends School to West Branch Friends (Iowa YM Conservative) to Brinton Visitor in Pacific YM; he welcomes other views of Christianity]. He has published several articles in Western Friend and Friends Journal. His other Pendle Hill Pamphlet is #377, Creeds and Quakers:What's Belief got to do with it?
Introduction—Becoming a member has only a little bit to do with being a Quaker. [It was a long time before I realized that] being a Quaker means being on a lifelong path. When George Fox said, "Now I am clear, I am fully clear," it meant that he hadn't been called to take up any more service or leadings. Quaker membership can seem to be even easier than with groups using creeds, because we have no hurdles of belief to memorize. That is not the case; much more is required of us.
How do Friends become aware of the Quaker path & the need to keep growing?
[Queries]—What implications does having only "now" have for the spiritual life and for life in general? If you have strived to know yourself in a "totally honest and "excruciatingly painful" way, what has been your experience? How has the Bible been helpful in your own spiritual life? Where is your support in spiritual growth? What did you do with spiritual "dryness?" How do you see Jesus? Have you had experiences where God is "much more real than the physical reality of anything else"? How has your spirituality affected your relationships with people? How do you pray? Would you choose to totally "dissolve yourself" in God or pass "through the narrow door"? Why or Why not?
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About the Author—Steve Chase assumed the education director position at Pendle Hill in 2014, after 12 years as the founding director of Antioch's program in Advocacy for Social Justice & Sustainability. In [his efforts to be] a community activist, Steve has sought to answer the spiritual call he experienced as a teenager in the Religious Society of Friends. Steve is co-author of the book Building Beloved Communities: A Transition Town Primer for People of Faith. This pamphlet goes back to a talk Steve gave at the 2012 PH Young Adult Friends Conference, which he later entitled
"Revelation & Revolution: Quaker Activism as a Path Toward Faithfulness."
[Introduction]—When I was a teenager, my dad took me backpacking for several days in Yosemite National Park. Another awestruck backpacker showed up at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp, & we talked late into the night. Our new companion asked me what I wanted to be. I replied, "A nonviolent revolutionary ... because I'm a Quaker." For me, the connection between Quakers & nonviolent revolution was self-evident. I liked how the book, Revolution: A Quaker Prescription for a Sick Society, built on Martin Luther King's (MLK) 1967 call for us to engage in "a radical revolution of values."
The founders of A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) were my inspiring, living "patterns & examples" of faithfulness. They started AQAG in 1966, with creative & daring nonviolent direct action to oppose the US [role] in Vietnam. [They later broadened their scope in the] "hope to catalyze a movement for a new society ... in concert with other change movements." The "Kingdom of God" teaching meant fostering another way of life that leaves behind a love of justice, solidarity, & unity with neighbors & nature. Almost a few decades later I founded the Advocacy for Social Justice & Sustainability program "to create a sustainable society that embodies respect ... for life's community, [ecology], social-economic justice, democracy, non-violence & peace." Being a nonviolent revolutionary has been a joyful part of my spiritual practice for over 4 decades through both good times and bad.
A Little More History—Many Quaker historians say this radical vision of faithfulness goes all the way back to the beginning of the Quaker movement. Gerard Guiton, in The Early Quakers and the "Kingdom of God": Peace, Testimony, and Revolution, documents how 17th century Quakers claimed the "rediscovery" of "Jesus' central & 'pure doctrine' of the Kingdom of God ... " In response to this radical revelation of their role in the unfolding of God's just & compassionate ways, early Quakers risked repression to promote a "spiritual revolution with social & political consequences. They were waging a non-violent "Lamb's War," a visionary and persistent effort designed to turn the world upside down by placing the Jesus designed to turn the world upside down by placing the Jesus Way ... at the very heart of life."
Guiton claims that "the early Quakers are little understood among present-day Friends," and not often followed as powerful patterns and examples by today's Quaker. Rosemary Moore points out that divergence from a radical faith and practice began "in the course of a few years ... and it was not long before the weight of Quaker opinion came down on side of solid respectability." While the spirit of Quaker faith and practice has been crucified many times, it has also been resurrected many times as a rising flame emerging from still glowing embers, [in the guise of] John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, and the founders of AQAG. [Most recently] we see this rising flame in the recent Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice.
The Call from Kenya—This Call is a Quaker faith & practice statement from the 6th World Conference of Friends held in April 2012 in Kenya . Among 850 Quakers, the question was asked: "What is God calling us to do & be now ?" The following statement, in spite of difficulties and momentary antagonisms, was approved in a nearly unanimous "sense of the meeting" decision. [Excerpts follow] " They witnessed to health & climate disasters], "wars & rumors of war, job loss, inequality, violence. We fear our neighbors. We waste our children's heritage. These are driven by dominant economic systems—by greed not need, by worship of the market, by Mammon & Caesar. Is this how Jesus showed us to live?"
"... We are called to work for the peaceable Kingdom of God on the whole earth, in right sharing with all people." We are called to see what love can do, [to follow the Scripture's admonitions in the treatment of our neighbor]. We are called to teach our children right relationship and harmony with each other [and the world]. We are called to do justice to all and walk humbly with our God, to cooperate lovingly with those who share our hopes for the earth's future. We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace & eco-justice. We dedicate ourselves to building the peace that passeth all understanding, to the repair of the world, opening our lives to the Light to guide us in each small step."
The Call from Louisiana—I have personally seen such faith in action while leading a field studies trip to Louisiana with 12 students. Besides [showing the realities of corporate power, regulatory agencies, pollution, public health, & racism, I wanted the students to get to know some tough creative people who have resisted these powerful forces & won some real community victories between Baton Rouge & New Orleans, known as "Chemical Corridor" or "Cancer Alley." Louisiana produces roughly 25% of domestically produced petrochemicals from 150 plants in Cancer Alley, yet is the 2nd poorest state, with the worst national public health record.
Margie Richard, a retired school-teacher who used to lived in Diamond, Louisiana led a community rebellion in Diamond, to make sure the Shell Oil Company paid every homeowner [not just whites] enough to move. She pointed to the spot where a 17-year-old boy mowing the lawn, died in a fireball from a chemical plant explosion. Shell offered the boy's mother $500 for her son's death if the mother would sign away her right to sue the company. Shell voluntarily offered a buyout deal to white residents of Diamond, but not to African Americans.
She became a community organizer & started pressuring Shell to buy out all the neighbors in Diamond. She built an alliance with Greenpeace & the Sierra Club. Her community bought a few shares of Shell stock & sent her to Europe to Shell's shareholders meeting. Margie poured glasses of Diamond well water for the directors & encouraged them to drink it if they thought it was safe. Shell finally offered enough money for everyone's homes so all could move. Margie said, "Aw honey, if Jesus can die on the cross for me, I can damn well take care of the babies in my community."
The Kingdom as Beloved Community—I completely resonated with Margie's radical Christian faithfulness in that moment. We both recognized each other as God intoxicated, Creation-loving, Bible-studying, Jesus-following activists. We had disagreements about particulars, & theology. Yet we also shared a common prophetic spiritual tradition that inspires us to engage in a nonviolent revolution of values within our communities.
Many "who share our hopes for the future of the earth" aren't comfortable expressing long range visions using the biblical language of the "kingdom of God." I have been able to find common ground with my students by using MLK's "beloved community." During the mid-1980's in the African American neighborhood in Seattle, they understood that it is a big problem that most "students from high school know little about MLK & the civil & human rights movements. This neighborhood got the city council to agree to their proposal. The organizers of this campaign had a celebration in a local baptist church.
Vincent Harding, a radical Mennonite, and longtime associate of MLK focused his talk on King's long-range vision of building the beloved community. Harding described how King's vision of the beloved community held an inclusive appeal for secular people seeking to help form a "more perfect union" as talked about in the U. S. Constitution. Whether we see ourselves as secular or religious people, we should all learn to work together to continue King's nonviolent revolution of values in our personal, professional, and public lives. Harding believed that the fundamental challenge we face in our society today is changing the road we travel from the Empire Way (the street's old name) to MLK Way, from imperial life to the beloved community that King dreamed of and worked so hard to advance.
I ask my students if this story comes anywhere close to capturing the spirit of what they most hope to accomplish as well-trained activists and organizers working for social justice and sustainability. I get the same quick "Yes"—even though the room is usually filled with atheists or folks who identify as "spiritual, not religious." They resonate with King's vision's of the beloved community, which they feel poetically captures the spirit of their own calling. All of the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter want to live in a socially just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling community. There is a latent goodwill all around us that we can work with, even if it is muted by denial, distraction, and despair.
Needed: "Transformed Nonconformists—My mother & I watched news coverage of the civil rights movement, particularly the Birmingham, Alabama demonstrations, when I was 8. My mom said, "Stevie, these are God's people. I want you to be like them when you grow up." She took me to a "black" beach at Lake Story, & refused to go when a policeman told her to go to the other beach to "keep the peace." My mother's white privilege protected her in a way that wouldn't have applied to a black mother refusing to leave a "white" beach.
Perhaps this is why I resonate with MLK's gospel message of "creative maladjustment." Certain non-conformist actions shake things up and make new things possible. They create openings and places where God's Spirit can come into this world right here and right now. King said: "You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word "maladjusted." It is good ... that destructive maladjustment should be eradicated. But ... we all recognize that there are some things in our society and world to which ... we must always be maladjusted to if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust to [:] racial discrimination ... racial segregation ... religious bigotry ... transferring resources from poor to rich ... militarism and violence."
King argued that it is actually pathological for any person to become well adjusted to a world of injustice. Psychologists should find ways to help ordinary citizens to deepen their capacity for creative maladjustment. King also wrote: " This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists ... The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a non-conforming minority." [Paul said it a slightly different way in Romans 12:2].
King also makes clear that this is an issue of psychological wellbeing and spiritual faithfulness. Over time, the mainstream Christian church has become "so entrenched in wealth and prestige that it began to dilute the strong demands of the gospel and conform to the ways of the world." The biblical story of Samuel is another good example. The federated tribes of Israel are growing tired of living without a human monarchy; they want a human kingdom just like everyone else. In the story, God views this course as a sinful folly doomed to create very negative consequences for the people and land of Israel. Yet God seems to believe that these people might learn something from their social experiment with kings and earthly empires.
Hebrew scriptures, texts of the Jesus movement, and Islamic scriptures repeatedly depict God as experimenting over the millennia with various ways to educate us in the ways of beloved community—sometimes veering off into exasperation and punishment, at other times [using] compassion, forgivenness, and guidance. God is often pictured as seeking to reach us and teach us, sending [holy men and women] to [teach] the Way, the Truth, and the Life—as well as embedding in our hearts the spirit as our Inward Teacher.
Most modern Quakers probably feel the pull of the beloved community, but continue to miss the mark to varying degrees. King believed, "We need to recapture the gospel glow of early Christians, who ... refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world." I took great inspiration from reading the many stories of the creative maladjustment of early Quakers, [who refused any recognition] of the hierarchical privileges of social class. They also refused to pay tithes to the state church, swear oaths in British courts. They were frequently convicted of heresy and blasphemy, their property was often seized, and some were tortured or died in prison. Early Quakers had to face some of their deepest fears, become willing to appear foolish in the eyes of others, and learn to take action in alignment with their deepest faith commitments.
The Journey to Creative Maladjustment—In 2008, Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering honored MLK's 1958 keynote address to the FGC Gathering. MLK is one of the most powerful patterns and examples of faithfulness through social activism—but perhaps not in the way most of us think. In reality, King's journey to social activism is really a testament to the power of "fearful faithfulness." Charles Marsh notes: "MLK arrived in Montgomery, AL in late summer 1954 with his eye set on denominational fame and fortune. His ambitions were: solid church program; nice house; magazine writing; adjunct teaching.
Racism and social justice were "back burner" concerns for King. Marsh reports, the members of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church "shared a hope for a future without Jim Crow, but they were not going to be the ones to ignite the fires of dissent." If it had been left to King's initiative, the Montgomery Bus Boycott would never have happened. E. D. Nixon, on the other hand, bailed Rosa Parks out of jail. Both of them started phoning people. Nixon phoned King among others. King said, " ... Let me think about awhile ... "
The 1st discussion of it was at King's church. King had doubts that boycotts were ethical or moral. He began to sway other ministers to his side, until Nixon challenged the ministers to stand up like grown men against segregation. To save face, King agreed to a long-term boycott. Nixon nominated King president of the new Montgomery Improvement Association; he was elected & had to give the main address in 20 minutes. King wrote: "I was now almost overcome, obsessed by a feeling of inadequacy ... I turned to God in prayer ... asking God to restore my balance and to be with me in a time when I needed [divine] guidance"; his speech was electrifying.
Serving as the leader of the Montgomery Boycott for the next 13 months changed King. By watching 42,000 poor and working-class black folks stay organized and do without public transportation for over a year, King discovered the hidden capacity of ordinary people to resist oppression and move toward freedom together. He experienced the power of mass nonviolent direct action campaigns to win real victories; he also discovered what kind of leader he wanted to be. We do not have to attain perfect spiritual wisdom or confidence before we become active. We just have to get started building the beloved community right here, right now. It is an invitation to take up the cross of fearful faithfulness.
Seeking a "Spiritual" Way Out?/ A Renewed Vision of Faith—Paul Rogat Loeb writes: "Whatever the issue, whatever the approach, we never feel we have enough knowledge or standing. [We fear error and being mistaken for a hypocrite]." Waiting for perfection in social activism has never once led to a successful social movement—or real faithfulness. Ordinary people create effective social movements only when they surrender themselves to the power of fearful faithfulness, even if it involves insecure pride or some other form of spiritual immaturity. MLK grew in faithfulness and increasingly opened himself up to a life of active civic engagement in the service of the beloved community. King did not wait on either inner peace or spiritual maturity before becoming active. Instead, King grew in his faith and experienced deep personal transformation in the midst of working with imperfect people, including himself, as part of his fearful, faithful, activism on behalf of the beloved community.
There is in the anthology Working for Peace: A Handbook of Practical Psychology & Other Tools, a piece by Christina Michaelson, a clinical psychologist, which seems to advocate "spiritual avoidance" of public life. In many ways, Michaelson is "creatively maladjusted" & supports peace activist work, & claims that this work can be made more effective, & more soul satisfying, if activists cultivate meditation, nature experiences, counseling, worship & prayer. I am grateful for the blessing of a spiritual reawakening in my mid-40's. Michaelson writes: "Your peace work in the world should begin with cultivating an inner state of peacefulness & then you truly can offer peace to others ... If you want to see peace in the world, then you must 'be' peace in the world."
Michaelson also argues that both outward activism & inward spiritual growth [are involved in] faithfulness. Both of these elements feed off each other in creative & reciprocal ways. There are multiple pathways available to us for fostering the peaceable kingdom in partnership with God. Depending on our spiritual gifts and leadings we can choose: direct service; election campaigning, lobbying, advocacy, organizing, nonviolent resistance; civil disobedience; building alternative institutions and new cultural practices. If more of us adopt a more balanced approach, Friends will be in a much better position to grow spiritually & respond to the Spirit's call for faithful social action. D. Elton Trueblood notes, "The great significance of the central Quaker idea is that it avoids damaging separation [of these elements] by uniting, bonding, the inner & outer aspects of our faith."
Will we answer the call to faithfully embody God's divine love & power in our personal, professional, & public lives? Will we stay lost in denial, despair, & distraction? MLK offered this prophetic challenge: "If we don't act we shall be dragged down the long dark, shameful corridors of time reserved for those who have power without compassion, might without morality, strength without sight. Let us rededicate ourselves to the long & bitter struggle for a new world ... The choice is ours, [surrender or solidarity] & though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of history." We can make the choice to rejoin the Lamb's War [of our early Quaker ancestors] and become ever more faithful nonviolent revolutionaries in service to the beloved community. Let us join together and joyfully see what love can do.
Queries—What does "creative maladjustment" mean to you? What are some situation today to which Quakers should not be "adjusted"? How can Quakers support each other in faithful activism? What does it mean to renew your mind as opposed to conforming to this world? Why is this transformation important for discerning God's will? Do you agree that we must achieve inward peace before we can work effectively for outward peace? Why or why not? How do you seek to be a faithful activist? How does your meeting express and promote the "beloved community"?
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About the Author—Hannah Russell became an attender of Port Townsend Friends Meeting in 2001 & a member in 2003. She still lives in the home she & her husband built in 1999. Hannah Russell looks to writing as a way of finding meaning, balance, & purpose in a tumultuous, chaotic world. She has wrestled with violence concerns since her childhood in wartime London. Hannah is indebted to those who gave time, space, & encouragement to complete the writing of this essay on her husband's chosen death. She attended Pendle Hill in 2014.
Introduction—My husband died by his own hand on June 24, 2011, after a surprise diagnosis of advanced lymphoma. I found myself searching for understanding, for meaning and context in that experience, which had so shaken my foundation. Only by looking deeply at what I most fear, what is most abhorrent to me, can I move forward spiritually. Karen Armstrong writes: "Language has an inherent inadequacy. There is always something left unsaid; something that remains inexpressible. Our speech makes us conscious of the transcendence that characterizes human experience." There is no way to express adequately the tortuous inner experience of my husband's death, moving beyond its violence and into the realm of acceptance and profound gratitude.
I returned to the gospels after several years' absence, and I returned to them in a troubled time, a time of intense mourning and painful self-reckoning. I read the gospel as any ordinary person would, looking for any insight or guidance they may offer at this particular time. Its pages are peopled with flawed human beings such as we are ourselves. I began to record my own journey into uncharted territory. I saw that I needed to go beyond my own exploration of the spiritual and psychological dimensions of our story. I must look for the "fruit of the spirit" in some kind of broader action that might sustain others.
A Journey to Redemption/ A Search for Meaning—12 days after my husband & I had been shaken to our core by the diagnosis of his advanced lymphona, I stood by the garage as he pulled something out of its loft. As I stood there, I saw with awful clarity what he had in mind. I said: "I know what you're going to do. I love & I won't stop you." It seemed like the only gift of love I [had left to] give; I called 2 old, trusted friends. Both said they would come at once. It ended with my husband on the garage floor, wrapped in a sleeping bag with a deflated air mattress under him. We 3 held onto one another, a little circle of shattered souls, & wept.
[I received little in the way of comfort from any of the professionals responding to his death, not even the funeral parlor's representative]. When the death certificate arrived 2 days later, the violence of the fearful words "suicide" and "gunshot" screamed out at me. They couldn't describe something my beloved had done. [I and his family] inevitably asked the questions of doubts and fears that they themselves were somehow to blame. He and I had discussed his death, but nothing had prepared me for his action.
In September 2001, propelled by the senseless violence of 9/11/01, I came home to Friends. [My husband's violent death] was an intrusion of violence so direct, so intimate, so imperative of attention that it seemed not to fit into my experience nor in my ability to understand it in my faith journey's context. In an instant, this trusted relationship seemed to fail each of us in different ways. Life is full of seeming ambiguity & paradox & only by "living into the question" can we begin to glimpse the deeper unity & life-giving hope, which lie beneath.
Living into the Question—Evelyn Underhill writes: "[The] germ of the same transcendent life, the spring of the amazing energy which enables the great mystic to rise to freedom ... is latent in all of us; an integral part of our humanity." The questions I had to live into were the difficult ones of profound loss, guilt, and betrayal of the paradox of a life taken violently out of respect for the dignity of life itself and out of a loving desire to reduce suffering in the life of another. What is the connection between the reality of violence in our lives and a redeeming love, which can embrace the suffering and transform it?
My husband, as a "convinced atheist," embraced many Friends testimonies. We lived life simply, and we had no interest in money or status. We engaged in nonviolent resistance together, promoted social justice, and respected the environment. We agreed that in the case of cancer we would not seek treatment for it other than possibly surgery. After diagnosis, we refused surgery to determine a treatment we would refuse anyway; the surgery would risk his remaining life in his weakened condition.
We initiated the lengthy process to use physician aid in dying. [One physician certified soundness of mind, another prescribed medication]. Only family & friends would be present at the patient's time of death. My husband's condition made him fearful there wouldn't be time for him to use this aid. He feared losing everything that made him a person of dignity & worth as he understood it. He began making plans & talking them over with me. How could I sit beside him & discuss ways of ending life? I was reminded of Jesus speaking of the manner of his death to his disciples. They must have experienced the same sense of unreality; Luke's gospel comments that they didn't understand." What remained was for me to be present in love as he moved toward the end of his life.
Betrayal and Forgiveness/ The Gift of Love and Life—[I tried and failed to assist him in a chosen death attempt. He overdosed and at one point, unconscious, he struggled to breath when] the remaining oxygen in the bag was exhausted. I removed the bag from his head and his breathing became slow and deep. He woke to find himself temporarily paralyzed. I knew that I had failed him. [I had many questions revolving around betrayal, the last being] did I betray him by not pleading with him to wait ? I felt betrayed that my trusted mate had concealed that he had a a gun and chose a death that separated us on the issue of nonviolence. Inevitably betrayal brings questions about one's character, the person one trusted, and the relationship itself.
Judas' betrayal seems a case apart. Despite Judas' profound repentance, there is no forgiveness for him. [The other disciples were forgiven, even though they had all betrayed Jesus in some way. Was the difference between Judas' betrayal and the other betrayals one of degree or motivation? Was Judas the scapegoat for the disciples' guilt for their betrayals? Perhaps Judas has an essential role to play in the divine plan of redemption, surrendering all that he has—the love and trust of friends, his own reputation—because [Jesus asked him to, and love requires it of him. Then no forgiveness is necessary.
When my husband did these things, he saw the necessity of them in his inner landscape, saw them as right and in harmony with the inner sense of his own truth. [He did it out of] his love for me, [not wanting to prolong either my suffering or his own]. For my own "loss of courage" and betrayal of him, a wise Friend, Jacob Stone suggested that there are 2 conflicting duties in any moral or ethical decision—duty to self and duty to other. My decision was to choose duty to self in not completing an action which was repugnant to my moral sense. I had been led by guidance from the inner Light. I was then able to forgive myself for my action.
[There were indications later] that part of his motivation to end his life this way was to save me further distress in caring for him. How does one respond to another person surrendering life partly out of a belief that it will enhance the one you must go on living? What about Jesus' offering of love and life in the violence of the cross? My belief as a Quaker is not in Jesus' "redeeming sacrifice," but rather in the sum of Jesus' whole life, that call me to live in tune with that truth and life as best I can. I feel that my husband and I are one, that I have not lost him so much as gained his spirit, his strength, and his wisdom, that I am living life fully for both of us.
Abandonment & the Loneliness of Death—For many months after his death, I found I was trying to place myself in his mind, in his heart, as I took each step down the stairs he walked, much like the Catholic Stations of the Cross. Was my husband afraid, as Jesus was? Was there a surrender to the unseen world he couldn't believe in? There must have been courage, the motivation of love, & the dignity of life. His models were the great teachers of nonviolence—Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King & others who followed truth according to the light that was in them. Each knew that violent death was a likely result. Some regard Jesus' death, & the death of the Quaker's Mary Dyer as a kind of suicide. I think of the disciples abandoning Jesus, as I think of leaving him in the garage. I needed to leave him to the dignity of his choice, to the way he told his truth. I had been given the grace to surrender my cherished commitment to nonviolence,my beloved husband & my marriage. In the months that followed, there were lovely, comforting signs of my husband's presence, of his love & forgiveness: a blue heron flying low overhead, his presence in the garage & on a walk along a cliff top edge.
The Great Paradox of Violence—Though it's probably not a choice I would make myself, I believe strongly in the right to choose physician-assisted suicide or even an "unauthorized" self-administered death. Yet the violence of his chosen death felt like an assault to my very being. In American popular culture we don't pay attention to Good Friday. Christian churches focus their gaze on Easter. Liberal Friends seem to have lost completely the language of the cross as well as the shocking realization of it.
I believe we need to engage with the cross if we are to move into fuller humanity. Redemption is in some mysterious way bound up inextricably with the violence itself. When we encounter this kind of violence, we have to dig deep into ourselves. [We have to experience Good Friday along with Easter]. Anne Liem points out that the divine will expresses itself "in a vast plan of intricate design, interwoven with threads from the dark source, enabling the light to be visible. What appeared in my experience as wrong and painful may be necessary in the divine plan of creation. Violence has a place somehow in the ongoing movement of Love. The divine plan of creation moves slowly and inexorably toward unity, the unity of all things in love.
Living into the Wider Questions—Now I have in my heart a desire to talk with others about our understandings of the end of life however it may come. How can we bring ourselves to talk about our deepest fears, our wishes and desires about our own dying? How do we support our partners and friends through this time? How do we deal honestly with the medicalization of dying, or the choices of physician assisted dying, or of "suicide" at the end of life? How can we support those dealing with loss through suicide?
The physician we asked for aid in dying felt betrayed that we had not told her he was "suicidal." I was told to "call the police" the morning of my husband's death. It seemed my husband was guilty of a quasi-crime—taking his life without the proper authorization from the medical, legal, and legislative communities. I was guilty because I had not tried to stop him. I found in telling friends that many completely accepted his choice and expressed admiration for his courage. Our language still reflects the ancient legal stance on suicide: a person "commits" suicide; and one must call the
police, even though suicide is not now a crime.
Are there occasions when dying a lingering and painful death, having lost all sense of meaning and dignity, is the true evil? Are there motivations which take it from the realm of suicide and into self-sacrifice? When should a person be stopped from dying by his or her own hand? How does our faith inform our choices? As it was for early Friends, isn't death the gateway to transcendent life whether or not we choose another way of dying other than the natural progression of a terminal disease?
Why is self-starvation, & the refusal to take medication, "acceptable" ways to "commit suicide," but a gunshot or overdose not? Where do we fail the dying in medical & professional systems? [Where is the proper place for a person to die, hospital or home? Where do we fail the dying in religious & societal attitudes, which resists discussion of alternatives? How can we better help surviving family members?
We have already begun to pathologize grief, even to medicalize it, providing anti-depressants if the mourner grieves "too long" or in "inappropriate ways." But grief has its own calendar [and degrees]. There are so many questions to be resolved, so many turning points, so many layers. Elaine Pryce writes: "Grief is an irrational process ... It defies the processes of a "normal" way of being in the world ... Yet given the heroic work of integrating the event into mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual being, its effects are entirely rational." As Quakers we have barely begun to live into these
questions.
Hallowing the Diminishment of Death by Suicide/ Way Forward—John Yungblut writes: "[If there is] suicide, there is guilt and reliving every moment prior to it, 2nd -guessing what one might have done differently ... It is like a sudden, unprepared-for psychic amputation ... the relative wholeness the psyche enjoyed before is shattered ... Can such a diminishment [as suicide be hallowed]? Yes ... 1st, commit the loved one into God's keeping, knowing that with God all things are well. 2nd, embrace forgiveness and live into the forgiven life ... 3rd, transfer energy of lost relationship to some [service] of some other human need ... 4th, from the 1st 3, one becomes more sensitive to and available for the suffering of others."
I believe that God speaks to me in many ways & in God' own time, & I can't say that the inner guide may not encourage the relief of my suffering when the time comes. I have clung close to the guide, & have found that I can hallow even the diminishment [of my husband's death]. I believe redemption lies not in the cross, but in the qualities that lead to the cross: love of neighbor, clarity of way, integrity & courage to follow way. I hope to practice these qualities every day, & to learn to live deeply into my own dying with acceptance & joy.
Queries—If you have lived through an experience which shook your being's foundation, how do you find meaning & strength? Do you perceive violence as a violent act? How can Quaker meetings support those living through agonizing experiences? What are the questions before you now? How do you understand the paradox of life taken violently so as to respect the dignity of one's life & to reduce the suffering in another's? How do you believe simplicity, equality, & stewardship testimonies should affect decisions regarding medical care? How have you sought forgiveness or forgiven when profound betrayal has occurred? How have you sought to honor a loved one whose death profoundly affected you? What are your fears, wishes, & desires concerning your dying? What is "redemption" to you? What has led to healing & wholeness in your life?
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About the Author—Mary Conrow Coelho was a physiology lab assistant and a high school biology teacher. She left the science world in her 30's to study theology; she earned a MDiv degree, and a PhD in Historical Theology. She has co-led workshops, among them "The Depth of our Belonging." She is the coordinator of the New Story Group at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, and is active in Quakercare Witness.
[Introduction]—One day in my late 20's, I was unexpectedly brought to my knees by a mysterious power, hitherto unknown to me; a numinous [sacred] experience occurred. I could not rationally defend it. Thomas Berry said: "In my view, the human community and the natural world will go into the future as a single sacred community or we will both perish in the desert. It was an experience of falling in love in the sense of wanting to be intimately related to that which I had known. I assumed the experience came from outside of me. In scientific materialism, ideas about matter left no room for Sacred Presence. We can find in scientific discoveries of the last 2 centuries how numinous experiences can arise from an inner sacred Presence.
Quakerism is an experiential heritage that is challenged in explaining such numinous experiences that traditional science cannot account for. There are startling changes in the way we understand the world, changes that offer a basis for reclaiming and perhaps deepening the early insights and practices of Friends and of other spiritual traditions as well. I learned that physical beings do not have an intrinsic non-material dimension. The earth became disenchanted and my own identity severely narrowed. Numinous experiences of Presence, Light, beauty, and truth have no home in modern reductive scientific understanding.
There have been discoveries in the 20th century that have revealed major fissures in the modern materialistic worldview. Significant changes in both science and theology offer a home for spiritual experiences and hopes and the opportunity for a fuller expression of the Religious Society of Friends. Some scientists have looked for ways to incorporate discoveries that reductive materialism cannot contain or explain. We are awakened to the need to move away from objectification of the natural world and unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.
New Understandings that Transform Our Assumptions: The Nonvisible Interiority of Matter—Scientists in the 1920's expected to find tiny particles of matter [as the basis for all matter]. They discovered instead, that including atoms, matter is 99.99% empty space. "Empty" means empty of that which can be known by human senses & instruments. John Polkinghorne wrote that the emptiness or "quantum vacuum" is "more like a plenum than like empty space." Plenum roughly seems empty when it is full. Plenum is a realm of pure generativity, a boiling "sea of energy" that generates matter. Plenum is the basic generative power of the universe.
What was thought to be "particles" within atoms have been discovered to be very small knots of energy, called quanta, which sometimes are particle-like and sometimes are wavelike. [Down to a particular scale] our formulas and discoveries are reliable; after that quantum theory is also required. Quantum theory brings the study of the hidden, nonvisible inner world into the world of science. [Here I seek] to ponder the consequences of quantum physics for our understanding of self and spiritual traditions.
Given old assumptions, it would have been true that numinous experience must arise from outside the world of physical things. Quantum studies of the vast nonvisible plenum brought this assumption into question. A spiritual experience within the body of the person can be considered with fresh eyes. Thomas Kelly writes of a "subterranean sanctuary of the soul, where the Light never fades, a perpetual Flame burns, where the wells of living water of divine revelation rise up continuously, day by day, and hour by hour, steady and transfiguring."
The New Story of Our Origins/ The Emergent, Creative Character of the World/ Belonging Within the Ongoing Story—Another major scientific breakthrough is a new cosmic creation story. The nuclei of future hydrogen & helium atoms were formed 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was born. Some lighter elements, like carbon, were forged within stars, & the heavier elements were formed within supernovae. Earth coalesced 4.6 billion years ago. Chlorophyll developed within the early tiny creatures, enabling them to use the sun's energy. Arising from a long line of hominids, human beings—a self-reflective form of the earth—came into being.
We now see a world in which we can recognize radical novelty throughout the great unfolding drama, rather than the "dire news of scientific inevitability." Physicist Paul Davies calculates that there is essentially zero probability of achieving even 1 protein by chance alone. Emergence is the term used for the appearance of genuinely novel structures and patterns within the evolutionary story, that cannot be reduced to their sum or difference. It is also suggested that there is directionality in evolution. When I studied evolutionary biology in college, I learned that life on earth is ancient, but such knowledge did not speak to me personally. While objective detachment has led to remarkable discoveries, it has a price. Many of us learned to intentionally sever any sense of sacred connection to the earth, [to view] "the world as inert stuff out there and that we are the active agents of change whose role it is to get that stuff in shape" [Parker Palmer].
Self-Organization: in Nature and within Humans—By the 20th century, the origin of the great diversity & complexity of the world became a major question. The evolution of increasingly complex plants & animals apparently contradicts the law of ever-increasing disorder or dissipation. The capacity to dissipate energy as heat while continually importing energy from the environment makes it possible for living beings to overcome disorder. Self-organizing systems can be galaxy superclusters, or subatomic particles/waves. Self-organized forms, such as a cell, may become nested in a larger self-organizing whole. The new whole is a complex nesting of self-organizing forms, and it may have new properties that can't be traced as having arisen from the constituent parts.
New levels that develop through the self-organizing processes of simpler cells combining into a more complex cell are emergent levels, for the novel structures and patterns that appear. How is my inner life integral to the ongoing unfolding evolutionary story? Carl Jung identifies patterns in the human psyche, which he calls archetypes, deep psychological structures which order and integrate experience. Michael Comforti observes that archetypes are the psychological parallel to to the scientific theory of self-organizing dynamics in nature. The Self, similar to the Soul, is the creative, inner center of the person. The Self is unknowable, but is experienced in alternative forms of knowing, such as some dreams, mythic material, and numinous experiences. Inner ordering and creativity is an inner dynamic found throughout the natural world. It also can be identified as acting within the human person. With self-organizing in mind and body, we find a way to begin to heal the all-too-common separation of soul from the earth. Since experiences of the Self can be numinous, we gain confidence that we may find pathways to experience the indwelling sacred Presence.
New Understandings that Transform Our Assumptions: Common Origin of Mind & Matter/ Another Change in Our Assumption/ Drawing Near to the Whole—Self-Organizing dynamics free us from the assumption that the evolutionary story is only about the evolution of the physical world. In Jung's thought, archetypes order both body and mind into a functioning whole grounded in the nonvisible. Polkinghorne notes that time and again mathematics has provided the key to unlocking the secrets of the physical world. What links together mathematics with the structures of the physical world? The world has all through it Polkinghorne's "signs of mind," or Jung's archetypal patterns that link mind and body.
Discoveries in quantum physics make it possible for there to be spiritual life within the evolutionary world. Even though large objects' behavior can be predicted, specific events on a small scale are unpredictable. Ian Barbour explains indeterminancy's consequence at the quantum level as: "The future isn't simply unknown; it 'isn't decided' ... there is an opening for unpredictable novelty." Indeterminancy may be a chance for divine influence & for human participation in the unfolding of divine purpose, [without having] a precise predetermined plan.
Teilhard de Chardin writes: "Like meridans as they approach the poles, science, philosophy, & religion are bound to converge as they draw near the whole." We can now imagine that there is a whole, such that the earth & its human beings are a place for numinious experiences & spiritual insights. Anne Hill describes an experience of being flooded by a great power pervading every atom of her body. She writes: "Suddenly, something in you—[not a usual sense] but some other faculty—beholds a vast & boiling ocean that pours itself into the room/into you & leaves you streaming with energy. You feel an immediate bodily connection to aliveness you never knew existed, one that is inside/ outside you at once. Boulding writes that reality underlying religious experience "must be postulated, just as we postulate reality underlying our carefully learned experience of the senses." Could images of a "vast, boiling ocean," "burning oneness binding everything," & "perpetual flame" be a manner of "knowing" the infinite energy of the "emptiness" or plenum that physicists have enountered?
Theological Reflections—I will be using the word of God with some hesitation because it is unfortunately widely associated with the image of a being of omnipotent and supernatural power. Yet experiences of a sacred Presence need to be named so they may be part of the shared knowledge of a culture. Should we not embrace new variations in the meaning of the word God, rather than discard the word? Jung refers to God as a "psychic fact." Ken Wilder uses the phrase "the eye of contemplation" to identify the spiritual mode of knowing. [The images mentioned earlier] arise from the eye of contemplation. 2 other modes of knowing are the eye of flesh (sensed, witnessed knowledge), and eye of the mind (e.g. logic, mathematics).
The understanding of God espoused by panentheism holds that the world is "in" God & God is "in" the world. The sacred Presence permeates the physical world & our interiority. While God's transcendence isn't spatial, God transcends in the sense that God is always, everywhere moving us toward full expression of divine aim & love. The manifest world of matter takes form within the vast emptiness, the plenum. particles that comprise the physical world are plenum taking form. The generation & sustaining of the manifest world out of the plenum is a place where our ideas of God as the creative Ground & the non-visible reality seem to come together.
The evolutionary story and the discovery of the generative plenum affirm the emergence of the manifest world out of a vast inner "emptiness." God is an influence in the unfolding story of the universe, rather than an outside force that abrogates the laws of nature at will. God's role as an immanent persuasive power within the vast plenum is central to the directionality of the evolutionary world and to including Friends' leadings in that story. Even though God does not have omnipotent power, there is the powers of persuasion and allure, healing & sustaining.
Everything that exists is interconnected and interrelated. There is the unity of the earth, and interdependence within the earth, in ecological systems, communities, and families. Until recently, it had been assumed that physical change came only from local causes. Experiments show that the "spin" of a photon can be instantaneously affected by the spin of another correlated particle, even though the particles are great distances away from each other; this is non-local causality. There is interconnected, mutual influence in nature beyond our ability to explain. Does this help to explain the Quaker experience of a gathered meeting, an awareness of Presence? We know life and the world from within.
Learning to Inhabit Ourselves—There may be personal, psychological reasons that we fail to fully partake of the revelations of our new origin story. We may be oblivious to the sacred depths of our world, so a healing journey may be a necessary part of becoming open to God's allure. Jung says that real healing accompanies the approach to the numinous experience. Their result is the full, well-lived life, and community. Numinous experiences that bring healing may occur in: images, icons; dreams, visions; silent meeting; nature. Leadings are sometimes of this numinous nature. Without the power of the numinous realm, our wounded psychological patterns will prevail. Louis Dupré writes: "Following the years of gradual change, the real is no longer an object that reason places before the mind, but rather a totality in which the mind constitutes an integral dynamic part." We are drawn into depths of things, into participation in the unfolding story. Peter Todd writes that it is humankind's participation in God that will further evolution as well as the survival of the species.
We are Allured & Drawn Forth by Truth, Beauty, & Goodness/ Evolution's Purpose Felt on the Inside—Through the healing journey, a person becomes increasingly available to participate fully in the unfolding creative process, to share in [& support] the evolutionary story's [positive] direction. Alluring experiences of truth, beauty, & goodness touch us deeply; they may involve numinosity or a kind of resonance with the sacred Presence. In process theology, the drive to discover or advocate truth is divinely instilled. [Evolution has brought] increased capacity for truth & beauty in conscious experience [alongside] the increased complexity of structure.
Friend's know from experience inner participation in the allure of truth, love, and beauty as "leadings." In the emerging conception God as the immanent, alluring element, continually creating through the processes of the natural order, leadings find a home in the evolutionary universe. In leadings, God is dependent on human love, wisdom, and our courage to be and act. Leadings may go beyond our routine daily habits of thought. There can be a new order inspired by Divine Reality.
Pervasive Evil/ The Wide Range of Possibilities Open to the Divine Aim/ Images of Divine Presence—Brian Swimme states that beauty & allurement are the root cause of all evil activity, [because we are prone to addiction to even imperfect beauty, & to misunderstanding distorted, partial truths we follow as clear, whole truths]. The divine creative power can't evoke a [new & right possibility, contrary to the wrong choices that are being made]. How are we to find hope in the face of the pervasive misuse of power & dishonesty? Even in the face of evil, we affirm the healing power of love. God's persuasive power [has a real influence] on the consciousness of an individual or group.
In the old mechanistic story of scientific rationalism, the sacred Presence had to interfere with the natural order to have divine influence on the direction of evolution—God had to enact miracles. Now we can see widespread unpredictabilities and flexibilities, [in the form of] indeterminancy, new order from chaotic processes, non-local causality, and self-organizing dynamics, which offer the divine aim more possibilities. [These forms interact with one another in creating new possibilities]. If God is not omnipotent, where is the basis for hope?
It is in the new, unimagined emergence that we see a kind of transcendence expressed throughout the manifest world, and in human consciousness. This is transcendence that does not override the natural world; it is not from outside. It is based on sacred persuasion, creativity, and aim within the natural world and the individual. The evolutionary story helps us avoid the spirit of tragic resignation. [When someone asked], What is my purpose? The answer came that God has an infinite longing to know itself and that as one continued to grow in self-awareness one was doing God's work. With new self-awareness there are new ways of being a person. How are we to speak about God's presence in the very fabric of the universe? Symeon the New Theologian (949 A.D.) writes several moving images as invocations at the beginning of his Hymns of Divine Eros: "Come, true light. Come, eternal life. Come, hidden mystery. Come, nameless treasure. Come, inexpressible reality. Come, inconceivable Person. Come, endless happiness. Come, light that never sets."
Intrinsic Values as Guidance for Community and Culture/ Group Decision Making/ Ecological Witness: The Natural World is the Primary Manifestation of the Divine/ Friends as Part of the Emerging Worldview: A Foundation for Friends Renewal—In some post-modern thought, values & meaning are considered culturally relative human projections. In this worldview, reality has no value or meaning; the universe is pointless. Here a magnificent forest can be turned into a commodity for unlimited exploitation. The insight that alluring values of truth, beauty & goodness are intrinsic to the unfolding evolutionary story means they are an expression of the nature of things. [Believing this], people can act with great conviction.
Leadings toward truth, beauty, love & caring join persons, groups & meetings in the direction of evolution. We are part of the process of evolution & the process itself come into self-awareness. Quaker decision making, the search for unity in a business meeting, can facilitate the transformation of consciousness in individuals & in a community. [In this process], what seems impossible may come forth. Thomas Berry writes: "Only when we begin to think of the emergent universe as the comprehensive realm of the sacred will we be able to overcome the present assault on the universe in its Earth manifestation."
Remarkably, we can now hear our ancestors freshly, given the radical change in our worldview, a change in the lens through which we see. The essential truths of religion would find a far vaster and more profound form when expressed within the context of the dynamics of the developing universe. Our culture is being forced out of the current dysfunctional phase that threatens the viability of earth and its inhabitants. We may have confidence that, as Boulding proposed, "the evolutionary potential of Quakerism is not yet exhausted and indeed is still very high." Friends have a vital role to play in the unfolding adventure of the earth and its many beings.
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About the Author—Elaine Pryce qualified as a teacher specializing in multicultural education. Some of her most formative life experiences and learning have derived from the wisdoms of migrant and indigenous people and cultures she has lived and worked with [in the UK] and overseas, in particular a Papuan priest, who advised her to "find God within; say 'Yes' to the divine life within you." It has become a lifelong exploration.
The Depth in Which we are Quiet—Paul Tillich believed our actions would be more effective if they were found in a more profound, creative depth, "the depth in which we are quiet." We can't experience deep joy, unless we accept an uncomfortable, demanding way, risking & breaking through the surface things to the depths. Our lives are in such constant motion that we don't pause to consider more profound levels of being. True roads may travel in a different direction from the one we are following; in our haste "we feel something radical, total, & unconditional is demanded of us; we rebel against it, try to escape its urgency, & won't accept its promise." In the 15th century, Thomas à Kempis writes things about devoting our energy to material affairs that could be about our century. On the more authentic & sometimes suffering path we discover the spirit's depths & our true life.
Christian Origins: The Inner Quest/ Later Teachings—Early on, another word for contemplation was quies or quietud—quiet or quietude. The word conveyed a sense of resting [peaceably], both in & before God. Quietude here, came from the secure depths of the believer's spiritual life. [To pursue this], Christian men & women ventured into the desert. Away from distractions, they explored the source of their faith's tributaries; monastic life developed from this. [They felt they were following Jesus' example]. Mystics & quietists were often regarded as spiritual adventurers, & dissenting pathfinders who ventured the depths of their consciousness to find God. They sought authentic ground of eternal truth, transformational encounters at the deepest level of being. If there emerged a credo in this quiet way, it spoke of questing spirit in the boundless compass of sacred mystery.
In the 15th century, Thomas à Kempis wrote The Imitation of Christ, which was especially prized by 17th- & 18th-century Quakers. Thomas believed [with Quakers] that spiritual renewal required radically yet simply emu-lating Christ's life & the earliest Christians' unadorned, devotional faith. Thomas cautions that community & we ourselves can be demanding & burdensome. Therefore know when to retreat to a place of quietude in order to re-claim & renew your spiritual self; just present yourself as you are before God. Thomas writes: "Enter like Moses into the ... [Tent of Meeting] to ask guidance of the Lord." Take refuge also in prayer, in the depths of your heart.
The Franciscan Francisco de Cisneros believed spiritual knowledge is for everybody, [regardless of] wealth, social status, education. If you bring as many people as possible to experience the God within the heart and to know the simple reality of divine love where and as each person is, the outcome will be a reformed and renewed church. There is a both/ and interrelationship between the individual and the wider community. For Quakers and Christian mystics, the way of quies connects deeply to a more open, accessible spirituality, expressed and lived out personally and in community. The early Quakers themselves were a new generation of venturers of renewal in the Christian tradition, calling people to the original undiluted source of the faith. They plowed their audacious furrows through the rutted landscapes of 17th century religion.
The Quiet Way as Mystery—The quiet way engages the heart and soul in the wisdom and emptiness of the still center, the sacred mystery within. This way, this theological boat invites on board the paradoxes of: fullness in emptiness; [in giving up our selves], we find our [true] selves; knowing in unknowing; [finding the way] by losing it. In the space [between the "poles" of these paradoxes] resides the truth of a God who refuses to be hostage to the limits of human reason and its constructs.
Mystery is what we know we don't know. For the quietist, this not knowing expresses a quality of the sacred. It is like a seed in the loam of sheltered darkness, waiting for optimal conditions to germinate, to be revealed. Mystery is also letting go of what we think we know about God in order to let God be who God is. [Kenyans have a myth that after creating everything, God lived with humankind], but they constantly made re-quests, petitions and complaints, so] a wearied God decided to leave in the night. [The people were frantic] and called for God to return. Then, they realized that everything around them, even themselves, had acquired a sub-lime beauty. God had gone, yet only to be present in a different way. God in absence is yet present as God truly is. God, spirit, the eternal, is Presence itself. God said, "I am here, but not as you have known me."
Soon after George Fox's initial transformational experience, he was to write in 1653 of the "mystery" of the second birth, a spiritual rebirth, which accesses knowledge of God, accessible through the way of stillness and peace. Whatever you thought of God previously, God is more than the very summit of your thoughts. George Fox wrote that we need to enter a new world of being, a world of silence before God; to die to our natural wisdom, reasoning, and understandings, so that we can experience the life of God within.
Mystery as Sacred—Sacred mystery is profound. It inhabits whatever is inexpressible & unavailable to the [results] of reason & language; it is [the stuff of] questions without answers. The mystery of suffering has [puzzled] scholars & people of faith since Job's time & before. There is at times a paradoxical transformation that oc-curs in suffering's unanswerable mystery. We question Providence, yet Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, tells us that it's Providence that questions us. Abraham J. Heschel writes: "... our lives can be the spelling of answers."
The mystery of suffering is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus was a master of the deep, healing one-to-one encounter. What renders the Christian faith sacred is its message of love, healing, hope, and reclamation, and its belief in human strength, survival, and inner renewal in the presence of the accompanying mystery, the Eternal Thou. From numerous accounts, it appears that Jesus was at heart, and by spiritual practice, a contemplative, who knew that we alone are accountable for the depths of our spiritual journey.
Contemplative practice's relevance in times of difficulty or suffering is expressed throughout world religion. Buddha said that existence itself causes suffering, but this shouldn't dictate or define who we are in our deepest or highest being. For the Sufi, everything indicates & embraces its complementary opposite, [i.e.] in joy is the possibility of pain, & vice versa. For the earliest Quakers, suffering wasn't to be avoided when truth was at stake. They taught always to seek the purity of truth in the sacredness of interior silence where [guidance is found].
Transformation comes in the nitty-gritty of simply getting through life and its challenges with an unbroken soul. Sometimes we experience a mystery that touches the soul with beauty, with pure perception of Presence and giftedness [through moments of tenderness, quiet and awesome beauty]. It is the mystic in us that causes us to "dwell poetically" in our lives, to harness more expansive dimensions of being.
The Quiet Way and Early Quakers—George Fox wasn't a stranger to paradox. He said that God is mystery, a hidden, "incomprehensible spirit; but wait ... God is also the living God, always present & accessible to us"; God is Presence itself. There is a "sinking down to that which is pure," & an upward trajectory which lifts us "up to God—out of the mortal into the immortal." Fox embraces the life within, [& the] presence, power, spirit, mystery, light & truth that are enfolded [in it]. [The experience of God in silence] brings each person's "heart, mind, soul & spirit to the infinite & incomprehensible God, & from it flows a love to all the universal creation."
Fox writes: "I saw into that which was without end, and things that cannot be uttered, and of the greatness and infiniteness of the love of God, which cannot be expressed by words." And again: "See and feel the Lord's presence amongst you ... and know one another in the power of it." "And so comes every spirit here to have a particular satisfaction and quietness in [ones] own mind ... and so that of God manifested in [one], leads [ones] mind up to God, [one] comes to the quiet and peaceable life, and comes to retain God in [ones] knowledge, and [ones] spirit is quieted, and [one] comes to hold the truth in righteousness." After Fox's death, William Penn wrote: "[As] a child, he was more religious, inward, still, solid and observing," and that as a young man "he taught and was an example of silence." Fox's numerous epistles were mostly addressed to groups of Friends; they contained teaching, inspiration, instruction, warning, and sometimes rebuke.
Isaac Penington sheltered a more sensitive & tender soul. He wrote extensive letters, many from prison, of both pastoral care for individual Quakers & encouragement for Quaker groups. Individual transformation leads to transformation of the spiritual community, & beyond that, of the world. His quies-focused faith acknowledged the most painful kind of personal struggle. To Widow Henning, he advises, "learn in quietness & stillness to re-tire to the Lord & wait upon him; thou shalt feel peace & joy." Attentive passivity for Penington naturally results in an experience of unity with God & the subsequent transformative effect of God's "visitation to the soul."
William Penn wrote: "Soon as you wake, retire your mind into pure silence from all thoughts & ideas of worldly things; in that frame wait upon God to feel God's good presence ... delight to step home (within yourselves, I mean), commune with your own hearts & be still."There, in the home within, you will feel & experience God's presence. Jesus taught us to love God with everything you are; love yourself (by willing the best possible good for yourself); in the same way, love your neighbor. In this is the inner mystical law of the quiet way.
Signposts of the Way—Francis de Sales perceived the world as an interpersonal unity, a wholeness, and the inner life as essentially about journeying, developing the depths of the soul. He was a deep sea diver plunging heroically into waves of seismic change in the 17th-century worldview. Teresa of Avila was a scaler of the spiritual heights through her "mansions" of the soul. Pioneers of the spirit began to sculpt new, more expansive forms in which to shape their perspectives; they found God everywhere. Fox wrote in a psalm-like prose poem [shared in part]: "[God] is the living God, who clothes the world with grass and herbs, [and trees] ... and bring[s] forth food for you. [God] is the living God, who causes the stars to arise in the night to give you light, and the moon to arise to be a light in the night ... and the sun to give warmth [and weather] to you ... [God] is the living God, who made the heaven and the earth, the clouds ... the springs ... the great sea ... the light ... [God] is the living God who gives you breath and life and strength ... [God] is the living God, and God is to be worshiped."
Fox saw no contradiction between the "second-moment" expression of the spirit in an outwardly spoken hymn of praise and the "first-moment" experience of the spirit in inward, silent worship. In vision, metaphor, poetry, and imagination, he signposts us to God as living Presence, primal "cause" of all creation who deserves to be worshipped. Those who are estranged from "the witness of God in themselves, cannot be still, cannot be silent." Words (as in spoken ministry) are simply for leading us to the sublimity, the melding of the seeking self and the divine, of a first-moment encounter.
Signposts of the Quiet Way: A Personal Journey Begun—The quiet way calls us to fathom who we are & how we fit the shape of the depths, of our deepest calling in our life project & spiritual experience. The quiet way encourages us to begin an experiment with the sacred, with soul. The task of poets & mystics of the soul has generally been to attempt to give language & meaning to the Mystery, to the call to co-venture with the divine.
I was born in North Wales, in a stone cottage built by my paternal great-grandfather in a small settlement of 7 houses. 5 of these were built by my great-grandfather for himself and members of his family on hilly fields of wild gorse and fern banks. The large, 3-generation family home, Olive House, is still, in my heart, home. [I lived there with my godparents when my grieving mother could not take care of me]. I was with family members who gathered in Olive House to express their condolences after my brother's tragic death. We inadvertently formed a circle; one aunt got up and held my head close against her and gently stroking my hair while I wept. I remember mostly the experience of comforting silence, the deepest sense of being accompanied. As I listened to my godmother, I realized that faith itself had become a mystery to her, & that faith could be explored, questioned, reflected on. Faith was a flowing malleable concept, an ongoing, questing dialogue with self and God.
My mother's widowed mother lived a quarter-mile away in a tiny hamlet. She kept chickens for eggs, 2 cows for milk, damson trees for jam, her faith, and her own quiet counsel. Undoubtedly, I absorbed from her, and from my father's ability to be quietly present to himself, how to be a hospitable presence to myself in time of solitude. My grandmother was a wise elder ... perhaps because her life had been anything but easy.
[How does one] tell how life experiences mold themselves into the shape of our later psyches? How do things remembered and not remembered determine who we are? The thing about the work of transformation is not to let former "skins" continue to define us, nor to let others define us by "old skins", nor indeed to attire us with remnants of their own unshed skins. The people who have most influenced me have been those who, at some level, have nurtured close companionship with the depths of the quiet way. I have learned to recognize profound spiritual presences as pilgrims of the spirit and as soul companions on the human journey. I am molded for better or worse by the psychical paradox of my family's proximity in my life and journeying. My life story is attached to my psyche, but I am not my life story.
Conclusion—In the Welsh language, taith means more than journey. It indicates what happens along the way, the developmental progress of the journey. Hireath [roughly translates] as longing for home and [connection with ancestors]. Many years ago I experienced a traditional Maori funeral, a tangi. A Maori woman began a ceremonial call, a karanga. The powerful, soulful, primal sounding of the call seemed to fill the mountainous space, rebounding with a resonance that sank deep into my soul, with spirit and ancestoral longing and home. Waldo Williams used the Welsh word Awen to exemplify a sense of return to our true spiritual source and to transformation. For him, Awen is what arises from the quiet, hidden depths of the soul (the Awen) that transforms the world, that brings us home again.
Queries—Have you experienced deep inner peacefulness in quietness? What is your experience with knowing God? How is George Fox's "deeply & inwardly spiritual man" connected to his "fire-brand preacher? What is the difference between "first-moment" experience of spirit & "second-moment" expression of spirit? What do you believe about the source of personal & communal transformation?
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About the Author—Thomas Gates is a member of Lancaster (PA) MM; he has served the Committee for Worship & Ministry locally, & the Working Group on Deepening & Strengthening Our Meeting from Philadelphia YM. He spent 8 years of his medical career as a family doctor in rural NH. He & his family lived & worked at Friends Lugulu Hospital in Kenya (Stories from Kenya; PHP #319). He has been on the faculty of the Family Medicine Residency at Lancaster General Hospital, and currently has discerned a need to serve in rural Malawi. This essay is based on 5 talks given at New England YM 2014.
Introduction: A Cloud of Witnesses/ Is Your God Big Enough?: Witness against Idolatry—Hebrews 12:1 speaks of being surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses." In Isaiah 43:10; 43:12; & 44:8 God declares: "You are my witnesses!" Through these verses & early Quaker witness, I'll explore what our tradition tells us about being witnesses now. Isaiah's "witness" passages were written by a Babylonian Jew in a section sometimes called "2nd Isaiah." This anonymous poet & prophet announces that Yahweh is about to end exile & bring the Jewish community back to Jerusalem. The writer uses the scene of a heavenly trial, with the Babylonian gods on trial (See Isaiah 43: 9-13). The issue here is idolatry; Isaiah mocks the wooden idols of Babylon, who can't answer the charges.
Just because we don't worship graven images or idols, we should not assume that the idolatry issue is no longer relevant. Everywhere we look, we see the de facto worship of lesser gods: money; power; career; consumerism; ideology; political causes; security. Is your God big enough? The issue is God's transcendence, God "going beyond" our normal, everyday experience. The prophet's poetry is replete with images of transcendence in Isaiah 55: 8-9 and Isaiah 40: 21-23. They are poetic and beautiful, but if we are honest, we are likely to admit that these ancient images of an all-powerful God [the puppeteer] are lost on us. Our images are necessary, but always inadequate, so the spiritual life often means a successive smashing of idols.
God 's new images have emerged. In particular, panentheism, "all in God, God in all," allows us to reclaim God's transcendent dimension. God is both transcendent & immanent. In panentheism, transcendence refers to the "More" of an added dimension. Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls God "the beyond in our midst." Abraham Joshua Heschel writes: "There are no proofs for the God of Abraham ... only witnesses. Dorothy Day writes: "To be a witness ... means to live in such a way that one's life wouldn't make sense if God didn't exist. [We need to live as a part of the greater mystery that is God, & our lives need to appear as a mystery from the world's perspective].
Is Your God Close Enough?: The Witness Within—In the biblical worldview God was both transcendent and immanent. 2 broad spiritual paths resulted: ascending spirituality [transcendence, seeking God beyond]; descending spirituality [immanence, looking for God in the world]. Beginning around 400 CE, and continuing for over 1,000 years, God's transcendence came to be emphasized and God's immanence neglected, except in the forms of Celtic Christianity, Francis of Assisi, medieval mystics and reformers.
One way to understand the significance of early Friends is to see them at the end of this 1,000 year detour, trying to recapture a fresh sense of God's immanence, in both their experience & their language. In a sense they were asking: Is your God close enough? Quakers had a rich language for immanence: Inward Light; the Seed; Inward Teacher; that of God in everyone. Based on I John 5:10, Fox exhorts Friends to "keep to the witness of God in yourselves," & "live up to the Witness." Fox talks of "reaching the witness" in those he is in dispute with, [& as living examples of "that of God," making] "the witness of God in them bless you."
Isaac Penington writes: "As God hath not left God's self without an outward witness ... so God hath not left God's self without a witness inwardly; there is something in men to testify of God." [Sarah Blackborrow speaks of her convincement by inner witness beginning when she was 8 or 9 without knowing what it was, & of realizing it & testifying with her own witness] "when it was spoken of to me by the Servants of the living God." Truth for early Friends was deceit's opposite, so the witness led Friends to 1st confront self-deceit & then deceit in others. The witness is the capacity to see our identities as limited in perspective. Light is the means by which we see all things. This inward witness or light seemed to help them see their lives through God's eyes, not their own. This allows dis-identifying with our ego-projects & concerns, our fears and insecurities, & vanities.
[Fox's experience was that]: "I was a man of sorrows in the times of the 1st workings of the Lord in me ... [And] now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all creation gave another smell ... beyond what words can utter." George Fox counseled early Friends: "Keep within ... For Christ is within you ... the measure is within ... the word of God is within, and you are the Temples of God." The pearl of great price cannot be inherited, but must be re-discovered by each generation.
Is Your God Real Enough?: Witness as Testimony—Is our God real enough? For early Friends, only a direct relationship with the Divine would give their lives meaning, purpose, wholeness, [and Truth]. This truth must have consequences for the way they lived their lives. In John 3:21, the Evangelist suggests the truth is not mere words, but rather something we do. Early Friends spoke of "having a testimony" and understood this as the way in which they witnessed to the truth they had experienced. Early Friends thought of their testimony in terms of what they did, the way they lived their lives. They did not swear oaths, because they believed in a single standard of truth. They did not pay tithes, because the gospel ministry had been freely received and was to be freely given. They would not fight, because they were to love their enemies and overcome evil with good.
Of all these aspects of Friends testimony, perhaps the basic was their manner of worship. After the restoration of the monarchy and the established church, anything resembling Quaker worship was against the law. [Friends were forced out of their "meeting house" and started meeting in the fields]. The men of the meeting were arrested, and the women and children continued to meet. When most of the women were arrested, the children continued to meet. The widow Margaret Whithart, proclaimed, "This is the place we have met since the beginning ... We do not meet here in willfulness or stubbornness, God is our witness ... we must bear our testimony publicly in this thing, whatever we suffer."
Early Friends' best known testimony was for peace. Before the historical Declaration of 1661, [there was a remarkable earlier incident]. Thomas Lurting was an artillery officer in the navy. There was a small group who met regularly in Quaker worship. [Impressed by their sense of community], Lurting was eventually drawn to join in their worship. [In the midst of battle, he realized the possibility of killing a man]. After sharing his new conviction with the small group of Quakers, and in a subsequent battle, he refused to report to his station, even under threat of death. What is most remarkable about this story is that at the time there was no public statement of the peace testimony. His action came solely from his silent waiting on the Light. This is one of many such stories of those risking or actually experiencing great suffering in bearing witness to the Truth.
These stories provide raw material from which we distill our modern testimonies. Originally, a martyr was simply a witness. Early Friends often found that Truth required suffering. This resonates with 2nd Isaiah, where the "servant songs" culminate in Isaiah 53's suffering servant. If I were on trial for being a Quaker, would there be enough evidence to convict me? Early Friends witness in the face of suffering & persecution makes no sense without including the transforming experience of the Divine Presence, the Light Within, the Inward Christ, the Witness of God in their hearts. William Penn said: "They were changed men themselves before they went about to change others." Early Friends lived in an authoritarian & hierarchical society. We live in a society that is individualistic, & not threatened by Quaker peculiarities, which are likely to be tolerated, but not likely to be taken seriously. What might it mean to witness to the Truth in today's culture? Might there even be ways in which we will be asked to suffer for the Truth?
Testimony as Stories of Witness—What are the Quaker testimonies? What were the Quaker testimonies early on? Many of us would spell out S.P.I.C.E.S. [simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship] that would have the character of virtues or abstract principles. Before the testimonies were a list, Michael Levi wrote: "Testimonies were leadings, stories from bygone days, many of which of which are still relevant to the challenges I face today." Early Friends did not think of them [as abstract testimonies of "integrity," "equality," "peace," and act accordingly], but by listening to the still small voice and responding to the choices before them. The testimonies as they have come to us are the distillation of generations of stories of faithfulness to the leadings of the Light. [In a pastoral visit I talked of] "my activist period" years before [and was asked] "And what are you doing now?" That question could be addressed to the entire Society of Friends.
[Testimonies are not to be found in lists]. They come from the bottom up; they are the end result of thousands of Friends around the world who are faithful to the leadings of the Light, to the Witness within them. How do we cultivate the ability to listen to promptings of love & truth in our hearts? What is love asking? If it sometimes seems that Friends' sense of testimony has waned in recent years, it is certainly not for lack of issues, global & local. I suspect that all of us have at times struggled with the temptation to hopelessness & despair.
Although we need to think globally, faithful action is likely to be local, modest in scope, humble in its aspirations, qualitatively persuasive rather than quantitatively decisive, more like yeast than the whole loaf. God doesn't require that we be successful, only that we be faithful. We do what we do because we are called to do it; not to achieve some calculated end or goal. A renewed testimony is likely to be personal, rooted in the particular circumstances of individual lives & local communities. Thomas Kelly writes: "For each of us [there are] special undertakings that are our particular share in the joyous burdens of love ... We can't die on every cross, nor are we expected to." If our testimony is rooted & grounded in love & spiritual abundance, then the burden is light. Truth isn't something we know but something we do. If our spiritual truth doesn't transform us & bear fruit, then it isn't truth but self-deception. How are the promptings of love & truth leading us to be "doers of the word"?
Witness in the Shadow of Empire—I want to explore the themes of empire and exile. These concerns are central to the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the New Testament we can't comprehend the church's claim that "Christ is Lord" without understanding it as a subversive counter to the empire's claim that "Caesar is Lord." Exile is not just geographical, but political, moral, and cultural, a loss of the structured, reliable world which gave meaning and coherence, while facing the twin temptations of assimilation and despair. [Jews endured this for 50 years]. Walter Brueggmann says that we should 1st read Hebrew poetry with an eye to the original historical context, remembering the Jews were the Palestinians of that time. [With our economic and military dominance in the world] we are uncomfortably reminiscent of Babylon.
Friends and others of prophetic faith find themselves a captive people, living in that strange land of exile, in the shadow of empire. We too are forced to choose between [assimilation and despair]. Where do we fit in the story of empire and exile, assimilation and despair? What is our testimony? One of the most pernicious tools of empire is to convince us that nothing can ever change. Over and over in history, things stay the same—until they change. Change when it comes is often sudden, unanticipated, seemingly miraculous [e.g. end] of Iron Curtain and apartheid. [For change to happen there must be "active hope."] Doug Gwyn has observed that, "Work for a sustainable human society on earth will focus much of our imagination and energies in this century."
According to Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone, The 1st step in active hope is about recognizing, appreciating, & delighting in what is now present in our experience (See Isaiah 42:10; 43:1, 2, 4, 5; 45:18). The 2nd step in the spiral, honoring our pain for the world, allows us to break through avoidance & denial [of how bad things are.] It means we notice, & we care. Old Testament expression of pain & grief is seen in psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations & traces in 2nd Isaiah (See Isaiah 51:17-19). Thich Nhat Hahn says: "What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying." Most of us spend a lot of energy not noticing [the earth's crying].
The 3rd step in the spiral is "seeing with new eyes," seeing new possibilities that inspire hope (See Isaiah 43:18-19). It will mean coming to a wider sense of self, [transcending culture]. It will mean power with rather than power over, where cooperation & synergy replace hierarchy. Friend Eileen Flanagan reminds that seeing with new eyes is seeing that it is a question of the earth saving us; saving us from false separation [from nature], from the divine spirit that connects us all. Our hope is that once a certain portion of humanity makes a daunting shift in our thinking, our politics, & our spirituality, decisive change may come quite suddenly & unexpectedly.
The 4th and final step in the spiral is "going forth." Going forth means action [taken with] imagination and vision. There must be clarity about what it is we hope for. The new Jerusalem for which Jews yearn was a to be a light to all nations, a universal beacon of shalom, of peace and salvation [See Isaiah 49:6; 60:1,3]. How are we called to be God's witnesses in our time? What testimony do we have for this troubled & hopeless world? Let us take the 4 steps of active hope. And may God grant us a vision worthy of our task, a vision of God's shalom for all people, and for the earth.
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About the Author—Debbie Humphries grew up Mormon & came to Quakerism in the early 1990's. Since then she been a member of Ithaca, Charleston, and Hartford (currently]; in NY, Southern Appalachian, and New England (NE) YM's respectively. She is currently clerk of the Ministry and Counsel Committee of NEYM. Debbie teaches at the Yale School of Public Health and conducts research in nutrition and community health.
Prologue/ Introduction—When visiting far from where I live, midweek opportunities were [often] all I could offer. Myself & a friend serving as elder, & 2 members from the host meeting were there. I listened for whether there was something to share. After asking permission, I placed my hands on their heads & blessed them with words & Spirit that flowed. After 8 years of traveling in ministry, this was a new experience in ministry.
Traveling in the ministry is a particularly Quaker tradition of the spiritual path. For early Quakers, this travel was at 1st evangelical in nature. I share my own story following the prompting of the Divine to travel in the ministry to support this living movement [among] Friends today [by]: providing stories for those called to travel; encouraging meetings contacted by a traveling minister to trust the Quaker tradition. I pray that my ministry in traveling and writing and throughout my life can provide encouragement and challenge to others.
The Call and Preparation for Ministry—During our 1st NEYM, some 700-plus Quakers celebrated the 350th annual session. We worshiped in the historic Newport Meeting House. I felt myself shaking and a message rising: As Quakers, we are heirs to a powerful tradition. Today we are a pale shadow of who we are called to be. This transformative experience set me on an internal journey to more closely following the promptings of the Spirit. [I proceeded with encouragement and support from a broad base].
Personal Preparation—I started making time for an hour meditation and worship every morning, & I read voraciously about the fire & vitality of early Friends & writing by Friends of other eras [e.g. John Woolman, Howard Brinton, Thomas Kelly, & Samuel Bownas. My morning time has remained a critical source of encouragement and challenge through the years. The spring following worship and my vocal ministry at Newport meeting house, John and I were invited to attend the Emerging Ministries Retreat at Woolman Hill Quaker Conference Center in MA. I told my small group I felt called to the Friends tradition of traveling in the ministry.
Once one's meeting has clarity in someone's leading to travel in ministry, The clerk writes a travel minute, which is given to the person. The minute serves as a letter of introduction & an affirmation of the person's gifts. Daughters of Light, Wilt Thou Go on My Errand & On Resistance & Obedience to God are 2 books about women traveling ministers. My 1st visit were ad hoc, making opportunities to worship with other communities wherever they arose. In our family travels, we visited meetings all over the country. Even though I came late to the Colorado Springs Meeting, I was called by the Spirit to share We are not called to transform the world; we are called to transform ourselves.
Support from the Quaker Community—I asked a few seasoned Friends from Hartford to sit with me regularly. I needed help making sure I wasn't running ahead of or behind my leading. I felt a nudge to do 10 retreats in 10 months, in hopes of a greater awareness of the motion of the Spirit in my body and a better ability to listen and interpret that motion. I stayed at a Benedictine abbey, joined a group silent retreat, took several individual retreats, and concluded the year backpacking along the Appalachian Trail in CT. My support committee provided a space to reflect on what I was learning in these retreats and to seek feedback and guidance.
I took 2 Earlham School of Religion's online courses: Christianity's history; Introduction to Preaching. I felt the Spirit moving as I sat with choices of topics. I knew I was to write a letter about the resurrection to the Apostle Paul from the Corinth Church 's Ministry & Counsel Committee. I learned to think more about stories & how to hear & use stories in a loving & community-building. I was led to ask Hartford Meeting for oversight of my ministry to reflect the meeting's ownership of the ministry. The meeting wasn't in unity to provide oversight, but wanted to make sure I had the support I needed. I had been visiting as an individual Friends & talking with individuals. I was now feeling the need to gather with meetings as a whole. For that I needed a travel minute. My leading was described as "her concern is to deepen the spiritual life of the Religious Society of Friends, to re-awaken us to experience the vitality & power of the Spirit, & to remind Friends of the truths of our tradition." The CT Valley QM & the Permanent Board of the NEYM approved it; the minute is still active.
Traveling in New England (2005-2012)—During the 1st 8 years I wrote to every New England meeting; I visited all that chose to have me. I visited meetings in 1 of NEYM's 8 QMs each year. I sought worship outside the regular meeting for worship, to be led by the Spirit in the moment, without pre-discerned focus. I wonder whether the meetings' discussion around my request helped foster expectation among those who worshiped with me. Several Friends shared excitement about participating in a old tradition which they had not experienced.
Personal Challenges—The biggest challenges for me were the personal lessons & growth from a particular lesson or across a series of lessons that had to happen for me to learn my own process of being faithful. The lessons were: It's not about me; let go of expectations; trust the Spirit; wallowing in inadequacies and failure; listen for what I'm carrying. When I reluctantly asked for meeting support, it was about the ministry, not me. When people responded gratefully to words I'd been led to share in worship, it was a response to Spirit, not me.
When Friends expected "a workshop on worship," rather than just worship, I struggled to let go of that expectation, & instead listened for how the Spirit was moving. I have learned to trust & wait for what the Spirit leads me to share. Once I was led to talk about the Bible & treating the stories there as people's stories of their experience of the Divine, which seemed well-received. A week or so before a ministry engagement, I was pulled into a deeply felt awareness of all the ways I fell short as teacher, Quaker, & vessel for God. I learned that: "The work of preparing for ministry ... is to get the ego out of the way to be a more faithful & consistent instrument."
Over and over again I have been challenged to hear and respond to the many different ways in which leadings and the motion of the Spirit come. [After I had done some lackluster sharing in a forum], I realized that I needed to express the reflection of love that I had been carrying in the weeks prior to the visit. When given a forum, I needed to share as led, not necessarily as planned or requested.
Openings into Truth—Quakerism is a tradition that encourages us to walk with our deepest questions, & to believe that we can be answered. Who am I? How should I be living? What is my relationship to God & earth? Today we are successors to this tradition which tells us that openings to the Divine happens here & now, if we are open. In addition to answers, early Friends also experienced openings, those truths that came unbidden. I believe that much of early Friends' success is that they spoke truths they knew in their bones, & those truths resonated with listeners, who by accepting those truths were transformed. Questions grab me & I wrestle with them. What does God's safety look like? What is the kingdom of heaven here & now? What is the tree of knowledge of good & evil in Genesis? Many truths come in worship, but they come in other places as well. The following are truths I recognize in my bones: God's safety; yes & no; reframing the trinity; Seeing the war anew.
Jeremiah was told: "Fear none of them, for I am with you & will keep you safe." Yet, Jeremiah was beaten, imprisoned, & made an outcast & exile." This statement came at Arcadia meeting: God's promise of safety is no more & no less than the promise that there will always be a path of integrity & we won't be alone. At Yarmouth Preparative Meeting on Cape Cod, the message came: If "no" isn't an option, our "yes" becomes meaningless. For the "yes" to be meaningful, we need to be ready to make people uncomfortable, to use serious discernment in our Quaker culture. Each of us has to understand both at the individual & at the meeting level that a "no" isn't a rejection or criticism, but rather an honest statement of where the community is. We believe that we're faithful, unbiased, & loving people. It's hard for us to accept the reality that we're also conflicted, prejudiced, and flawed.
At the retreat center at Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio, I woke up several times [one night] with an image of physics & light, & how scientists experience light depending on how they measure it. Perhaps the same is true of the Divine: If we approach in one way, then we experience a particle. If we approach a different way, we experience a wave. [If we examine the apparent source of light, like the sun, that is a different experience]. [The trinity can be a] metaphor for how we experience God: God as a particle is a transcendent other, a father; God as a wave is an immanent presence, a holy spirit; [God as an apparent worldly source] is other human and nonhuman beings, a son. Each of these dimensions of the Divine can be seen as true and as incomplete.
An opening came to me in Hartford Meeting worship: war's philosophy is that the ends justifies the means. The end never justifies the means, because we can't know the end, [the future]. To achieve an end that speaks of wholeness & love, the means must embody wholeness & love. Since we can never know the end, we need the faith to release the ends, & to focus [on the means and] on whether our lives and actions speak of wholeness and love. The insight about ends and means changed my world view and continues to pervade my professional life.
Spiritual Conditions of New England Friends Today—I now offer observations of patterns among Friends, and seek to encourage and challenge Friends by describing what I have witnessed in my visits: Being Quakers is often central to our personal sense of identity. Our hunger to do good work is often thwarted by our desire for comfort. Few of us put our spiritual journeys at the center of our lives.
People would often describe experiences of coming into meeting for worship and feeling that they had come home or had felt the vibrant, living presence of the Divine. Time and again, I have been encouraged by small meetings where those present were committed to being Quaker, felt themselves to be Quaker, and savored a tender and sweet spirit in their midst. We are all new to Friends, and it has little to do with how much time someone has spent hanging around Quakers. I have given voice to something that rings true in my bones before I can get there rationally. The depths of this tradition are profound, but we tend to skate on the surface [most of the time]. Without a personal experience of [deep], immediate guidance, it can be difficult to fully understand these practices, leaving Friends to follow the forms without the moving of the Spirit.
Our hunger for comfort keeps us closer to the world around us than we would like to be, [inspite of] an undercurrent of a deep hunger for good work. That hunger for meaningful, daily work, ministry that challenges us is the motion of the Spirit working within us. Northrup Frye writes: "A life divided only between dull work and distracted play is not life but ... a waiting for death ..." War is a rich and enlivening experience because it requires challenge. We are afraid of change, sticking with situations that don't work because we know them, rather than taking risks. We don't often turn to God's everlasting arms after we've lost every other option. [We construct] a barrier of comfort, possessions and relationships [that stifles] spiritual growth.
The connection to the Eternal Presence is a tranformative experience; around that connection, the traditions of Friends grew up. Individual Friends have touched, waded, & swum in a living vital stream of the Divine. It is through immersing ourselves in the living stream at [a distinctly] Quaker "beach" that we will be able to be Quakerism's message, & own for ourselves the experience of that originating fire. A living, vital tradition is dependent on the presence of a number of Friends who continue to walk to, wade, & swim at the Quaker beach. In my journal I write: "[We who] are grafted in to the Religious Society of Friends ... need to learn and understand what it means to sink our roots into this tradition. It is much more than sitting in meeting on Sunday. We need to learn more about the Quakers that have come before, and to make the Judeo-Christian heritage our own."
Conclusion/ Epilogue—I remember the feeling in [meeting rooms around the country]. Growing out of that feeling in those rooms is an immense respect, honor, and love for people right where they are. The world is exactly right and perfect right now and simultaneously there's so much work to be done. The opportunity to travel among Friends in this way has been a gift. I hope that other Friends will consider whether they are led to similar travel, and that meetings will be aware of and open to the traveling ministry tradition.
I haven't asked about my travels' impact on others, as those are the Spirit's fruits, & not mine to carry. As I lived into the leadings given to me in this process, I was being made more whole. I feel deeply about the importance of travel in ministry to the Quaker tradition, for the individuals traveling & the meetings visited. [For myself], I trust that the Spirit has made use of my service. I think back to my 1st opportunity to travel with my new travel minute. Could I listen to the Spirit? What were people expecting? What if I didn't have anything to share? No message came, but we all left on Sunday with a sense of what travel in the ministry might mean.
Appendix 1: Queries for individuals—How have you been challenged in your spiritual journey? Where have you found encouragement? How have you met those challenges? What openings have you experienced? How do you listen to the Divine and embody the Divine in your life? What ministry are you led to? Queries for meetings—How does the meeting encourage and nurture individual gifts of ministry? Are there individuals in your meeting in whom you see gifts of ministry growing?
Appendix 2:[Copy of Travel Minute]
Appendix 3: Nuts and Bolts—My specific suggestion are: Be flexible; Talk with meetings to help them prepare; Pay attention to the details; Elders and companions. After a while I learned to ask for a forum-type venue, and then accepted gratefully whatever the meeting could arrange. I have offered ministry before meeting; for 5 minutes after meeting; Saturday nights; after meeting; at weekday lunches and dinners. After sending a letter, I wait a while and then follow up with a phone call to the clerk. We heard numerous stories of the struggles meetings had with my letter. In the phone conversation, I explained that my priority throughout the visits was to be faithful to the promptings of the Spirit, and that this is how early Friends traveled.
I was once late because I didn't bring a watch or cellphone with. Bill Taber said that the Spirit's motion, & the words that come, often come through emotions & includes tears; bring a handkerchief. Some people need to find a quiet place to decompress after speaking; some need an elder or companion. I have always tried to have someone as "elder" to offer support & hold me & those gathered in prayer, and help me stay accountable to the leadings of the Spirit. A few times I worked with an elder-at-a-distance, someone who could accompany me in Spirit. What was [most] important for me was the sharing and reflections after a visit. Had I been faithful?
Queries—What is the value of traveling ministry to a meeting and its members? Do you have a call or leading in your own life that you perceive as a ministry? What is an oversight committee? A support committee? What has your experience been with meeting decisions that are different from your personal hopes? What are the pros and cons of the often long time-frame of the Quaker decision-making process? What are the question you walk with and wrestle with today? How do you experience God? How much is your desire to do good works thwarted by your desire for comfort?
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About the Author/ Some Things About Me—Greetings: [My homeplace, mountain, river, and sea] are Waiwhetū, Tararu, Heretaunga, and Wellington Harbor, respectively. I now live in the Waikato, sheltered by the Waikato Tainui. [My descent is from]: the Scottish clan Gunn; Ellen Peterson & Rosalie Williams (grand-mothers); Henry Fox & Gavin Wilson (grandfathers); Margery Fox & Donald Wilson (parents), now twinkling stars. My name is Linda Wilson. I have a foster daughter and my husband is Robert.
[Editor's note: The above is a slightly condensed version of a traditional Maori mihimihi, a formal introduction, which included a passage in Maori]. To locate a person geographically and ancestrally is common practice in Aoteartoa New Zealand. Naming your place by land and water, your tribe, the bones [you came from], & your immediate ancestors, comes before you name yourself. How does who you are and where your people are from shape you or influence your spirituality? It locates you in relation to others and enables people to place you and know your connections. For Maori, where and who you are from is intrinsic to who you are. These ideas have shaped the understandings of more recent, 4th-generation New Zealanders like myself. Natural features of the land and the waters are of great significance; they shape who you are, where you stand, and what you do.
Much of my work has been in occupational therapy. Therefore I am used to thinking about the importance of daily routines, and the ordinariness of day-to-day living. It is the ordinary daily activities that actually occupy the major part of our lives. Peak and special moments we like to remember are the exceptions. I am used to thinking about who & where I am, what I am doing, and the part that each plays in my life. [I once hiked across Stewart Island]. As I felt so alone and disconnected, a small gecko ran across the path, climbing over the toe of my boot to continue on its way. For it, I was just a part of its world. Which places have been important in your spiritual experiences? How has place contributed to your spirituality?
2004-05 Pendle Hill—Many of my understandings from my Pendle Hill residential year remain with me 10 years later. They formed a continuing spiritual practice & much of my life's joy. It took almost 16 weeks of being away from my work & daily responsibilities till I [recovered from] depression & bone-deep fatigue. For 2 weeks in January, I snuggled down in my bed, feeling great joy & happiness. I was warm, I was safe, & I was happy.
When I talked about these joyful feelings, Mariah said she thought that everyone could experience similar feelings but used very different words to describe them. This led me to [work] with different images & words for my nocturnal feelings of joy; none of them truly felt right. I began to pay attention to spiritual metaphors. I will use the term spiritual metaphor to include all images, phrases, & analogies used to talk or write about spiritual things. This essay reflects on metaphors or ways people may see their spiritual experiences. It invites testing of common & uncommon metaphors to see what feels familiar, useful, or irrelevant. I will explore a meaningful metaphor for how we live our spirituality, a way of thinking about & attending to my spirituality on a daily basis.
Spiritual Metaphors—I spent 9 months at Pendle Hill. That time [half a world] away from home helped me to see my spirituality in new and different ways. I thought about myself in relation to my experience of and concepts of "god" (capitalizing god suggests a hierarchical [relationship] rather than god as spirit moving between and among us). I explored my childhood memories of prayer and realized that all these are prayers where humans do the talking. I am not personally keen on [these kinds of prayer]. I came to see centering prayer as the other side of conversation. I had to think about what my concept of god actually was.
I have long felt uncomfortable with male divinity words: "he; King; Lord; Father." Exploring feminist theology exposed me to: "she; goddess; and mother god." They still denoted a supreme being. I explored "water," "vibration," and "light." One way of finding metaphors that do have individual meaning is to examine in depth the images that don't work for you. [Take shepherding for instance. Some can view it as a loving, profession, as it is presented in the Bible. In my Maori/ New Zealand culture, it is seen in the light of European mismanagement of the land, and currently as a heartless industry]. Metaphors are so culturally shaped by their original context that transporting them across time and place can make them meaningless. Carol Lee Flinders argues that many deeply spiritual traditions have features mainly related to men's lives. What represented sacrifices in men's lives [were an established part of] women's lives. Women need to find and create understandings and spiritual practices that are linked to the realities of women's lives to sustain us.
I saw that I had resistance to the metaphor of spiritual journey, of being elsewhere than where you are, an external "other place" in the future; it involves traveling with baggage, and doesn't work for me. I needed a different sort of metaphor that reflected my experience of personal spirituality as up close and internal rather than external & supreme. It needed to help connect and integrate my spirituality into other parts of my life. Is the "spiritual journey" metaphor useful for you? What do you like or dislike about it? What other metaphors resonate for you? It seemed to me that notions of spirit and light don't personify, but rather carry ideas of power and forces. To see god as the source of spirit and light felt as though it fitted in both my head and heart.
Connectedness—During Rex Ambler's "Experiment with Light, I heard within "the sense of connectedness." I have discovered that this sense of connectedness is a common way to describe one's experience of the holy. David James and Jillian Wychel say: "The spirituality that is real to us finds its inner strength in the mystical experience of connectedness with each other and with ... creation ... [One can then] turn outward and work in one's own available and chosen action spaces to manifest the harmony already known."
Personal or internal connectedness is about integrity & congruity, past & present. Connectedness includes deliberate attending to my internal workings—feelings & responses, awareness of behavior, insights, awareness of inner teacher [& advocate] [John 14: 16-17 cited]. This advocate is the light within. Together my internal knowings present as my intuition. My internal connectedness is informed by synchronicities, deep honest contact or conversations with friends. Who or what connects you spiritually, internally, externally, & to the world?
From my Quaker community and the occupational therapy community, I have opportunities to connect with people on a daily basis, in celebration and crisis over extended periods of time. We make connections with this world & the spirit which lies within all creation when we attend to and focus on it. When we are connected, we attend to the actions of humans that compromise its future. I think of the universal spirit as a sense of the potential for connectedness. The spirit is activated by connections, little impulses of energy along the invisible cables that connect us to each other and the world. Maybe the little impulses, or the spirit web itself is love. Impulses can be sent or received, initiated, or attended. Accumulated, they become the light within, the illuminated connection. When I am in a negative space, I disconnect, I withdraw from offers to connect; I resist such opportunities. Consciously looking for and reducing barriers or disruptions to connection and retrieving memories of being captured by the spirit helps maintain my equilibrium and keeps my spirit flowing.
Cape Reinga at the North Island's northern tip is where the dead's spirits leap from the headland, climb down the roots of the pohuthukawa tree there, & descend into the underworld, to return to their traditional homeland, Hawaii-iki. This venerated tree is reputed to be 800 years old & flares into a crimson display from late October into late December. It is acknowledged as the New Zealand Christmas tree. I remember sitting there, captured by the feeling of the place & filled with awe at the massive forces [displayed] in the convergence of the Tasman & Pacific seas. This is a time when I was truly connected with the world & filled with an abundance of spirit.
I have come to see Quaker testimonies as ways we can facilitate connectedness within & between each being in the human & nonhuman environments we are part of. Throughout, the integrity of diversity, community, nonviolence, simplicity, connectedness, & continuing revelation testimonies with each other provides guidance to my integrity, the internal & external connectedness of my actions. That sense of connectedness is me feeling in tune with the spirit, at one with the universe, with the "that of god" in me, the spirit of me flowing with & into the light within the other person or the world. Spirituality is the basis of connectedness to other & to the planet.
Different Spiritualities, Experiences, & Metaphors—I have long been aware that some other people seem to have stronger spirituality than I. For me there has been no personal experience of a shoulder tap, a calling, a road-to-Damascus experience that has brought me to my knees. My spirituality is present & real for me even if it hasn't been in the form of major, dramatic life experiences. I have [re-conceived] my spirituality & now realize I have had spiritual experiences. I have a spiritual connectedness to decision-making that I can depend on.
Some of my peak spiritual experiences have happened when I have been in extraordinary settings, and/or away from ordinary life's pressures. I have swam with the dusky dolphins at Kaikoura on the east coast of South Island. They dived around us, swimming alongside before cutting & twisting around in front of us & making eye contact. I grinned for the next 3 days, & the memory of it still brings joy to my heart & makes my spirit sing. What spiritual experiences have been important in your life? Did they involve just you, other people, or the natural world? What do you know experimentally that may help others find & appreciate that of god in themselves or others? I have had experiences of equally profound satisfaction & acute awareness of connectedness in the very common places of daily life. Some of these experiences are in the moment, & others develop over time.
I joined the prayer shawl ministry group near Pendle Hill. I remember completing a shawl for a friend that was "just what she needed," and "was the same shade of reddish-purple" as the healing blanket the friend had imagined. Being wrapped in a blanket is both physically and emotionally warming. I understand how people like the idea of being wrapped in god's blanket of peace. People find different metaphors meaningful, both to make sense of and to communicate their experiences. I need to focus on where I am from, that within, connecting outward from myself, rather than trying to experience an external god connecting inward to me.
My Metaphor: Tending One's Spiritual Home—The metaphor I developed for my spiritual practice is: to tend one's spiritual home. It portrays spirituality as the internal "place" that protects, restores, & energizes a person's capacity for interaction. Our spiritual home needs tending, care & attention. Home is "a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin" & "the place where something is discovered, founded, developed, or promoted; a source." This metaphor can help focus spirituality in the present, where we are & as part of our daily life.
At Pendle Hill, I did spiritual spring house cleaning. I sorted and tidied and relabeled. I found some important treasures that needed to come back out into daily use; I found antiques and rubbish. I also recognized that some important resources were lacking. The way some people have used the term "spiritual housekeeping" is for the clearing out of unhealthy episodes of thought and deed and the modifying of patterns damaging to self and others. Much of the day-to-day tending or housekeeping carries more of an idea of keeping things in order with overtones unappreciated labor and loving, continuing service. Daily prayer sustains us as the bread of life, ensuring that we are sustained and have the energy to live our spiritual lives.
Sometimes this work is immediately inconvenient, but it ensures a valuable resource for later. What do you invest in, spiritually, in times of plenty, so it will be there in leaner times? [In our spiritual home], we hold close our stories of significant spiritual experiences to sustain us when our spiritual life feels more distant. We clothe ourselves from this home, ensuring that how we present ourselves to the world is an adequate representation of who we are. The way we see ourselves changes over time, and so we need to change how we present ourselves to others. When we have tended to our spiritual homes, we will recognize and welcome the visiting spirit.
We take our spirituality with us wherever we go, even though the form and process of it may change over time. Those without experience of a happy home (physical or spiritual) adopt new habitats, sometimes with unrealistic fervor. What appeals or doesn't appeal to you about tending one's spiritual home as a metaphor? Do you understand either your liking it, or your resistance to it? When physical and spiritual home is well-tended, both materially and relationally, there is no safer place to be who you are. The way we see our home changes as we change the meaning and senses we make of our lives. What is special about your home? What do you do there that you do nowhere else? We may invest in activities now that we know will only come to fruition later.
Our habits and practices permit us to get through some parts of life with minimal attention so that we can concentrate on that which is new or challenging; we also need to interrupt routine with celebrations, & with creativity. Tending our homes has as much to do with maintaining the relationships that support and affirm us as it has to do with tending to the physical environments. We need a sense of home in our heads, hearts, and bodies. What is the nature of spiritual homelessness and what are we called to do to address it?
Ways of Tending—How can we tend our spiritual home? The process might include: establishing a regular spirituality pattern; effecting spiritual "home repairs" as needed; connecting with support communities; forming community support networks; connect with those who share our home; being open to new experiences; plan time to have fun, create and play; spring cleaning periodically; keep a commonplace book (record of places and activities important to you); lay in resources for times of scarcity; take time to notice spiritual moments.
Further Considerations—The metaphor of tending one's spiritual home implies being & doing & emphasizes place over pursuit. I had some reservations about homemaking analogies because of gender role stereotyping. But I think most metaphors cross genders; some women have told me that the journey metaphor works well for them. The home-tending metaphor carries a sense of a central core around & from which connections "radiate out" or "emanate from." How do you tend your spiritual home? Are there other ways in which you might tend your spiritual home? Attending to one's spirituality is framed without reference to a supreme being.
The home-tending metaphor is grounded in place, locates the spiritual process internally rather than externally, & is concerned with life in the present rather than the future. This metaphor legitimizes daily self-care, service, & work as significant spiritual activities. The notions of nurturing where I am now, acknowledging where I have come from, & spiritually investing today to create places for the spirit, feels useful, for now & tomorrow.
3 particularly appealing metaphors emerged from an Aoteara New Zealand workshop: spiritual landscape; tree; and mirror. [When they are formed, as though] by a volcano, spiritual upheavals are a long time in the making and are often immediately distressing and apparently damaging, they transform the land, providing rich resources that support later growth. A tree may look dormant, but if appropriate nourishment continues, it will bear fruit and flower, and grow deeper roots to ensure more nourishment over time. The mirror is a perfect surface that can reflect back to us who we are. We can all develop metaphors that help us make sense of and communicate our spiritual experiences and practices. I encourage Friends, individually and collectively, to find metaphors of meaning for themselves, share them now, and leave them for future Friends.
Conclusions—The metaphor presented here grew out of my year at Pendle Hill. The space it created gave me time to learn and think. I learned to attend to myself, to recognize how important connectedness was to me. I found ways to stay connected internally, externally, & to the world. I negotiated a different role for myself at work that suits the daily tending of my spiritual home. There are major renovations on myself going on designed to keep me healthy, safe, & active; I keep a time for sabbath more often than not. I have found room in my head & heart for another & have since married.
We are setting up an "our" home in a new community. On the whole I can catch up comfortably & usually get done what needs to be done at a spiritual & domestic level. I recognize when I'm not tending to myself & can thus restore myself promptly. I am busy, active, and helpful to my work, friends and family, and spiritual community. I am happy, alive, connected, and therefore I am in good spirits and tended by a good spirit. Now that I am home, in myself and in my own place in the world, connected with long-standing [friends and associates], I give thanks for the spirit that is between and among and within us all.
What metaphors come to mind right now? What metaphors might work for you in sustaining and maintaining your spirituality across time and place and the ebbs and flows of life? How might you identify, explore, and share them and weave them into your life?
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About the Author—Michael Birkel teaches in the Religion Department at Earlham College. He wrote the Pendle Hill Pamphlet #398 The Messenger that Goes Before: Reading Margaret Fell for Spiritual Nurture and edited #406 The Mind of Christ: Bill Taber on Meeting for Business. In his book Qur'an in Conversation, Muslim religious leaders and scholars grapple with interpretations of key suras of the Qur'an.
[Introduction]—[Song of Songs 2:10-12 cited] Old love songs never die, not the good ones. Good love songs arouse memory and imagination. [Otherwise they would only be history and information]. Likewise, people often read the Bible to discover a living God, not a historical, ancient deity. Why should a biblical collection of love poems be of interest to anyone today? Early Friends spoke Bible. Scripture provided a language for their inward encounters. Exploring how early Friends read the Song of Songs can open new possibilities for understanding their experiences and for fresh encounters with the Spirit that inspired them. These candid, sensual, poetic love lyrics have attracted lovers of God across the centuries in church and synagogue, Earlier Friends found in the beauty and intensity of these verses a fitting dialect to speak of their experiences of divine presence. Contemporary biblical scholars understand the book's original intent as a playful celebration of love; pious readers have interpreted its message symbolically.
The Song as a Love Poem—From the famous opening lines, spoken in the woman's voice, the poem is passionate. The lovers speak of each other with metaphors drawn from the natural world. The delight of this text is that it is suggestive in the extreme, but it is never more than that; it is playful, yet reticent. This is a book for grownups, not merely in its adult subject matter, but also in its grownup way of avoiding voyeuristic indulgence. [Song 1: 7, 9, 13-14 cited]. In the Song of Songs the lovers tease each other, and thus the reader, relentlessly.
One of the verses just cited mentions En Gedi, which is a fertile oasis in the Judean wilderness, an eruption of beauty in the desert. Vineyards appear in the text, but there is no evidence of them at En Gedi, so this may be a subtle allusion to the woman's body. [Being too concerned with precise interpretation] is to risk spoiling its beauty, which relies so much on its ambiguity. The poem resists precision. Their poetic description of one another's beauty draws on the senses & invites the reader into a world of sight, sound, smell, & taste. She is a locked garden, filled with aromatic spices (Song 4:11-16). Many readers find the high point of the Song's celebration of love in the following verse: Set me as a seal upon your heart,/ as a seal upon your arm;/ for love is strong as death,/ ardor is fierce as Sheol./ Its flashes are flashes of fire,/ a godlike flame.
The Song as Scripture—Love and romance appear elsewhere in the Bible, but nothing else compares to the Song of Songs in quality or quantity. How did the Song of Songs make its way into the Bible? It got into Scripture by virtue of being read allegorically. Other biblical passages inspired the concept of the church as the bride of Christ, so ancient and medieval interpreters found it natural to embrace the Song as a thesaurus of divine love. Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and others read it as an allegory.
It is possible to interpret the Songs of Songs as love song and allegory. The Song evokes a spirit of playfulness among its readers and commentators, and provides ample images and challenges to its readers. Christian commentary on the Song flourished as early as the third century in the writings of Origen of Alexandria. The 12th century monk Bernard of Clairvaux composed 86 sermons on the Song of Songs. Since "soul" in Latin and other European languages is feminine, any human reader could identify with the female voice in the Song.
The Puritan Geneva Bible describes the Song this way: "Solomon, by sweet and comfortable allegories and parables describeth the perfect love of Jesus Christ, the true Solomon and King of Peace ... The faithful soul of his Church ... [is] his spouse, holy and chaste." [Puritan may have had] suspicions regarding intense, individual spiritual experience. Early Quaker interpretation would speak of divine love for both the individual and the community. Jeanne Guyon, a French Catholic Quietist, describes the beloved's kiss as a spiritual marriage. In the intimate union of the self with God, the soul is "so dissolved, rendered nothing, and dispossessed from itself that it can without hindrance flow into God ... the drop has become the sea, though it always remains a tiny drop."
The Song of Songs among Early Friends:[Isabel Fell Yeamans]—Early Quakers did not have a tradition of composed sermons. Neither did they develop a tradition of [orderly] commenting verse by verse on biblical texts. Wary of such practice and of allegories, early Quaker use of biblical texts typically focused on direct spiritual experience. Quaker writings seldom demonstrate the sustained attention on a single biblical text necessary for a dedicated commentary. An image from one biblical source evoked or aroused the memory of a similar image from elsewhere in scripture, resulting in "commentary by juxtaposition."
Isabel Fell Yeamans was one of Margaret Fell's illustrious daughters. Isabel's writings exemplify this associative method of reading the Song of Songs; she urges her readers to welcome the inward Christ. For Isabel, [the passage where] the young lover asks the night sentinels if they have seen her beloved, and then is beaten, keeps searching & is reunited with her beloved, describes the experience of early seekers who sought counsel from those guarding the conventional church. [They were told] that God was to be encountered in the church's external rituals, which many at that time found to be lacking [in spiritual nourishment]. [Besides physical abuse], Isabel describes a spiritual abuse. It felt like a beating when trusted clergy denied direct [access to God's] radically transforming power. Early Friends passed beyond the guardians of the state church & found their Beloved.
[Early Quakers believed that the prophet Joel's prediction of a pouring forth of the Spirit upon women was fulfilled in the Acts of the Apostles & in their own time. Isabel writes of this, juxtaposing Joel, Psalm 71:17, Revelation 3:20, and Song of Songs 5:2 in the process]. She refers to the watchmen, writing: "Come, you that have been enquiring of the blind watchmen of the night. I will tell you where we have found the beloved of our souls ... They smote us and wounded us, but blessed be our God forever, who turned us from them, to the light of Christ Jesus, which gave us knowledge of our beloved, and directed our feet into the right way." The soul's beloved was inwardly revealed, not found in empty ritual that did not satisfy the soul's deep longing.
The Song of Songs among Early Friends: [John Burnyeat, William Smith, and Others]—John Burnyeat used "we" language rather than first-person singular because he was speaking of a collective experience in 1653. He applied the language of the Song of Songs explicitly to the group experience of meeting for worship. He offered an account of his convincement. Biblical references in this selection include: Song 1:2-3, 4:16, 6:2; Psalm 23; Leviticus 2:2, 6:15; Colossians 2:2 3:14, [and God in the Garden of Eden].
[Examples follow]: "& thus being gathered ... our shepherd taught us, led us forth into green pastures, where we did feed & rest together with great delight ... Our spirits as oil, frankincense, & myrrh were offered up as incense, when not a word outwardly in all our assembly has been uttered. & then did the Lord delight to come down into his garden, & walk in the midst of beds of spices & cause [the winds to blow] ... Thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the maidens love thee ... & growing thus into this experience of the goodness of the Lord & divine power in assemblies, we grew in strength & zeal ... knit together in the perfect bond of love." Such exalted language was not rare among early Friends.
Sarah Blackbarrow, an early Quaker writer, [weaves together Song of Songs & Proverbs to come up with]: "A love there is which doth not cease, to the seed of God in you all, & therefore doth invite you...to return into it, that into Wisdom's house you may come... All of you who thirst after your beloved, come into Wisdom's house ... love truth & its testimony... be embraced of my dearly beloved. Love is his name, love is his nature, love is life."
Writing in the shadow of Margaret Fell's Peace Declaration in 1660, William Smith wrote on the peace testimony in which his chief scriptural text was from the Song of Songs 2:4: "[There is a birth which is] that of God ... And the Father spreads his love over it like a banner, by which it is protected and preserved in its growth and increase ... And their weapons are love and patience, by which they overcome."
Dorothy White, the most prolific woman writer next to Margaret Fell, carried on this ecstatic turn into the 1680s. Dorothy wrote in a prose so highly dense with biblical imagery that the fig tree of Song 2:13 is one with the fig tree in Matt. 24:32-33. The garden of Songs is also the garden of Is. 5:11 or Jer. 31:12. [Other verses she uses in juxtaposition] include: Joel 2:23 (possibly with James 5:7); Lam. 3:22-23; John 4:14. Dimmer echoes of other passages may also be in her The Day Dawned Both to Jews and Gentiles ... A century later in his Journal writing, John Woolman drew on many biblical sources [e.g. Numbers, Hebrews, Romans]. In recounting an experience of encountering God as justice and righteousness, John Woolman turned to the ecstatic expressions from the opening verses of the Song of Songs [on p. 177 of Moulton's edition of Woolman's Journal,].
The Fragrance of Desire/To the Other Side of Words—The desire for God can be as elusive & as subtle as a blooming spring flower's scent. The experience of divine presence can be like a fragrance. The faintest memory of it arouses desire, like a fragrance. Desire is transformed into consent to what cannot be adequately described, or even known. This consent becomes a relinguishing of expectation, in order to be present to the spiritual experience. Even the person experiencing this unutterable sweetness can seem to dissolve. Awareness of the boundaries of selfhood can grow faint. All that remains is the enrapturing fragrance, itself melting away.
George Fox certainly made encyclopedic use of the Bible, including the Song of Songs. Concerning silent meetings: "The intent of all speaking is to bring into the life,/ and to walk in, and to possess the same,/ and to live in and enjoy it, and to feel God's presence,/ and that is in the silence,/ not in the wandering whirling tempestuous part of man or woman,/ for there is the flock lying down at noonday,/ and feeding of the bread of life, and drinking at the springs of life, when they do not speak words;/ for words declared are to bring people to it,/ and to confess God's goodness and love,/ as they are moved by the eternal God and his spirit."
What in the Song of Songs is a request for a lovers' rendezvous becomes a request of the soul's beloved. In sum, George Fox takes this phrase from the Song of Songs that is a tender hint at a loving reunion and applies that loving intimacy to meeting for worship, where the gathered community lies down, resting in silence, to receive nourishment [in a collective experience]. Fox's words point to the silence on the other side of words; he alludes to the Song of Songs for this purpose.
What kind of language is capable of pointing beyond its own limits and of encouraging the mind to be transformed by wonder? The radiant natural world becomes, in the world of Song of Songs, a vocabulary for amazement. The natural images ... employed by the lovers to convey their [unfulfilled] longing ... is the raw material out of which the vision of the soul's beloved is crafted among its readers. The language of desire in the Song of Songs has for centuries beckoned lovers of God into the silent wonder beyond.
Queries—Do you experience the Song of Songs as a "celebration of the holiness of human love," read it allegorically, both, or something different? Why is or why isn't the Song of Songs an integral part of the Bible? How good is human love at being a metaphor for intense spiritual experience of divine presence? What metaphor would you use? How is your description of your worship experience compare with those of early Quakers? How does spiritual love & longing similar to & different from the love between persons? How would you describe the relationship between love & Quaker witness for peace? Why is it significant that the "tender hint at a loving reunion" is a collective experience rather than a private one?
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439. Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One (by Robert Griswold; 2016)
About the Author—Robert Griswold has been a convinced Friend since 1947. [He has gone from a Friends Church to Mountain View Friends (unprogrammed) to Anchorage, to Director of Scattergood Friends School to West Branch Friends (Iowa YM Conservative) to Brinton Visitor in Pacific YM; he welcomes other views of Christianity]. He has published several articles in Western Friend and Friends Journal. His other Pendle Hill Pamphlet is #377, Creeds and Quakers:What's Belief got to do with it?
Introduction—Becoming a member has only a little bit to do with being a Quaker. [It was a long time before I realized that] being a Quaker means being on a lifelong path. When George Fox said, "Now I am clear, I am fully clear," it meant that he hadn't been called to take up any more service or leadings. Quaker membership can seem to be even easier than with groups using creeds, because we have no hurdles of belief to memorize. That is not the case; much more is required of us.
How do Friends become aware of the Quaker path & the need to keep growing?
How do we let new seekers know they are starting a spiritual journey? How do we guide them? [How do we find & correct mistaken assumptions new seekers bring with them? Even experienced Friends may sometimes lose sight of where we've been & where we're going. How do we know we are making personal & community progress?
There are words that have special meanings & connections to our inherited wisdom, that we have developed to guide us on this path. Many of the words I will review are separately studied & thought about by Friends. We can benefit by looking at them as a sequence. They point to something that is integral to inner spiritual life, & a witness to the world, but only if we bring them into our personal experience so that they are sealed in our hearts. [They need to lead us to live who we are]. The 7 words & their sequence that I suggest is: condition; experience; covenant; discipline; discernment; authority; & beloved community. [The "plus one" of the title is submission].
Condition—Condition has the least familiarity among modern Friends. I wasn't asked about my condition when I applied for membership.We can't gather the strength to undertake a genuine spiritual path unless we are aware of the condition that has been keeping us from moving forward; it is likely we cannot easily perceive it. The kind of emotional blackmail present in threats of eternal suffering was indigestible for me. Without an acute awareness of ourselves as being in a condition requiring change, we will not be able to even begin the journey.
George Fox wrote: "I did discern ... what it was that did veil me ... & couldn't give up self to die by the Cross, God's power." Sense of self or ego is developed unconsciously & becomes the core of who we think we are. Self deception keeps us lost in our notions & certainties. Self comes to be in charge of our lives. Divine Reality won't be heard ... unless we surrender authority of the voice we have been given & taken to be our self. Elias Hicks reported: "He was [only] self in man ... doing good & performing acts under a show of religion ... but all done in his own will, time, & iniquity ... His salvation wholly consists in surrendering up self-ability, letting it die ... & returning to ... full submission to ... the inspiring spirit of God." If you're in charge, you're in trouble.
If we think upbringing & culture hasn't affected us, we haven't explored our condition enough. [All the well-meaning people of our childhood] almost certainly taught us to place self in charge of life, before we were able to be aware or critical of what was happening. We were given a choice of roles & images to be filled. These roles & images alone won't lead to spiritual life. Where do we find the meaning of life? How are we connected to the Eternal? We can choose to get in touch with that within that allows us to live in authentic relation to what is.
Early Friends felt it necessary to keep even their dress & manners plain so that they could adequately attend to their spiritual lives. [Distractions that led back to serving self had to be avoided]. These distractions have been an ongoing struggle for me. How do we avoid falling back into the illusions our egos provide? How do I do good without feeling excessively proud of my work? We need a sense of our condition that totally humbles us and brings the "still small voice" near, making it the center of our experience and our continuing guide.
Experience—An experience of Divine Reality changes us from fearful, wounded, and lost people into a safe, healing and compassionate people on a meaningful journey. In order to have this experience, George Fox writes: "Stand still in that which is pure, after you see your self, and then mercy comes in ... Stand still in the light and submit to it,and the other will be hushed and gone ... Your strength is to stand still." Isaac Penington writes: "The main thing in religion is to receive a principle of life from God, whereby the mind may be changed, and the heart made able to understand the mysteries of God's kingdom, and to see and walk in the way of life."
A great obstacle in coming to this experience is that [culture denies existence to anything which can't be] verbalized, rationalized, or scientifically explained. Inner experience is never provable under these conditions. [How is something that doesn't lend itself to a narrow range of expression automatically non-existent]? The person who is strictly determined not to allow for spiritual experience's existence may very well never have one. We are part of a Reality that includes our self but is greater than we. As a part we can never grasp the whole. We need to let go of notional life, quietly open, & be. Our life will be grounded, & we will own it while we live.
A 2nd obstacle to spiritual experience is thinking it can be taught. Naomi Remen said: "Spiritual experience ... is found [within], uncovered [from layers of deception], discovered [to be our inheritance], recovered [from where we left it as children]." We can look everywhere outward & never find it. [The light in every man is the basis for seeing all external signs]; the light itself must be immediate without external sign. God is uncreated and infinite, so it is impossible to express God in created, finite words].
What did early Friends mean by their use of "being convince," & "convincement?" It sounds like the outcome of a debate or an argument before a jury leading to the acceptance of a doctrine; what happened to early Friends was entirely different. They were convinced [by experience, not argument, of the Inward Light] that they were in a condition that needed to change. Inward experience provides knowledge of who & where we are, & a basis for putting faith & trust in the Inward Light. We can make this knowledge our friend & daily companion (& let belief & notions be things we visit rarely). [The "external sign"] of our knowledge will appear in the life we lead. We can't afford to stop short of this experience of the Spirit. We must be patient & wait in openness until the experience comes; there is nothing better to do, for it leads us into a covenant of peace with all of creation.
Covenant—[A covenant is like traditional, open-ended marriage vows]; it isn't a contract, where I don't agree to anything that isn't specified. I agree to do certain things in return for other things I want from someone else. A lot of people want a contract with the Divine; they want to bargain with God. Bargaining tries to limit our relationship with the Divine, which is unconditional & permanent or it's nothing. Divine Reality doesn't bargain; if we try we will fail. Our relationship with the Divine has to be a covenant, or else we are fooling ourselves.
The only genuine relationship we can have with the Divine is when we enter into a covenant that is open to whatever may come, including suffering and pain. Jesus' narrow gate and [destructive paths is about an open covenant relationship]. A Sacred Covenant is a promise of the heart to perfect a relationship to Divine Reality. [The promise includes the idea that], "I will stay open to what is so that I can live what I am." Covenant is about holding to a relationship in order to overcome mistakes, & coming back if we get off track. A new, covenant relationship is a new relationship with the people in our lives; the covenant spreads to enfold all, friend and enemy.
Early Friends declined to seek legal redress for wrongful imprisonment & deportation, even when advised that they could. Refusal to exercise legals rights may seem strange to us, yet it isn't when we consider that our new covenant with the Divine requires us to bless as we have been blessed, to love our neighbors & enemies, not to exact recompense. We can't coerce anyone to a [conversion] experience. The covenant blesses us, so our relation with others will be a blessing too. We no longer need to gather to our self more than what will help serve to fulfill our covenant. When we open our self to the Divine, the ego's demands subside, & our needs are simpler. We must be slow to judge & loving toward all, quelling the unruly spirits we have in us. This requires discipline.
Discipline—No discipline is needed or desired in a consumer shopping culture. Sometimes we spread our shopping habits to religion. [Picking and choosing] appealing aspects of other religions probably won't harm us, and can help us appreciate of the faith experiences of others. They may also distract us from the disciplines we need to grow as Friends. [Besides the better-known epistles], I recommend reading Steven Crisp, William Sewell, and Elizabeth Bathurst to provide a strong counter to the cacophony of the culture surrounding us.
Discipline must involve a practice. A little thinking is fine, but unless we have the experience of following a discipline, we won't even begin to have the tools we need for useful thinking. Without it even being part of our awareness, discipline can give us confidence that we are capable. We can benefit from discipline without an intellectual endorsement. Being a Quaker is like perfecting a craft or a skill. Quaker disciplinary practices have been forged in the depths of personal experience and tested in the fires of persecution. [Discipline must be practiced or it remains a good-sounding idea]. There are 2 kinds of discipline needed—personal discipline and group discipline. We won't come close to Gospel order, to aligning our actions with the truth, without discipline.
Confession, genuflecting, ritual bathing, bowing toward icons or certain places, smoking tobacco, or fasting, are traditional disciplines. These things aren't bad in themselves, but are easily corrupted into forms, or even empty forms, [over which our self is in complete control]. Friends have tried to avoid these forms in favor of a silent presence discipline. Penington writes: "Take heed of the fleshly wisdom, [thy understanding, reasoning or disputing]; these are the weapons by which witness is slain ... Wisdom & understanding must be destroyed ... that understanding brought to naught, & thou become [& learn as] a child ... if ever thou know the things of God.
Queries—How we retire daily into silence and quiet the turmoil of our minds? How do we study the words of Early Friends, their trial and their gains? How do we know in our hearts what the Gospels have to tell us when opened by the Spirit? How do we encourage other Friends to question us about our inner life and the trajectory our life is taking?
Early Friends spoke of nurturing the Seed within. Spiritual discipline could be seen as tending the soil that nurtures the seed. Unless we add nutrients by reading the words of those who have gone before, & water the soil with serious discussions with other Friends, the Seed may fail to bring forth fruit. The Light within us must be kept shining on all aspect of our lives, or it will fade. As new members and religious refugees, we tend to suspect any instituted uniform practice. Friends have worked out practices that can help us, and new members especially need to submit to them, even when our understanding of the practices' spiritual [roots] is limited.
Friends don't get to be just Sunday worshipers. [Worship in a meeting, without office, teaching, or committee work leaves out] a key element that will let us grow as a Quaker. Spiritual tasks go better alongside others. Busyness in society at large isn't a virtue, or an excuse for not sharing the meeting community's work. When we work with other Friends, some Light coming through other Friends may shine into corners unfamiliar to us, revealing gifts we never knew we had, or illuminate a dark corner in our self that we hadn't noticed. Lessons teaching love, courage & patience through sharing work don't take root in us by our thinking about or wishing for them; they become our humble strength by practice. If we shirk this discipline, we place our self & our meeting in peril.
Listening is a discipline that must be cultivated. It must be more than listening only to make a quick & snappy reply, or a listening that hears only words, & gains only intellectual understanding. The message is in words, tone of voice, body posture & motion, & in face. How do I listen so as to get all the messages from the whole person? How long do I wait for all the message to register before I reply? As Friends we need to learn the discipline of listening fully & compassionately. In clearness committees we have to learn to listen closely, & we will witness others hearing things we missed. Secondary benefits that come to all who serve on them are vital for the spiritual growth of the community. If we practice our disciplines faithfully, we will be led to discernment.
Discernment—We know how easy it is to be wrong in our understanding, and that actions and judgments based only on the intellect and information are not adequate. We need to take the time to bring our hearts and heads to a point of humility that makes unity of action possible; gathering facts is not enough. Facts, opinions and the deepest feelings of our hearts all need to be sifted. Actions and judgments have to be lived out. Believing that everyone's measure of truth and viewpoint is equal is a misunderstanding of our testimony on equality. It is true that the Divine is accessible to all, but it is not true that all of us, in equal measure, have disciplined our self in our commitment to a spiritual life. Until we submit our measure to be aligned with the measure of others who are undertaking the same discipline, we will not have done what it takes to be a Friend.
All aspects of an active Quaker life must be subjected to a discernment process. George Fox writes: "[After being turned by that of God from evil, and emptied of it, there will be some room in them for something of God to be revealed and inspired into them." Our culture thinks it can ignore the wisdom of self-restraint by ignoring connections between what is done and the consequences." The consequences of achievements and inventions are ignored until the new and greater problems slap us in the face. George Fox wanted Friends to "stay within their measure" by employing the discernment process. He also said that Friends need to "keep in discerning that you may not be ensnared nor made prey" to the wiles of ego and others.
[We need to discern within our self] & within the group as part of our progress. We expose our self to the other Friends' counsel. We withhold judgment until the ground of Divine Reality manifests itself & we can stand on it together. Patience is required to not "run before" one's true Guide. By not aligning understanding with other Friends' discernment, we aren't Friends but only Quaker "fellow travelers." We like the ideas but are unwilling to trust the process. We want to be saints but recoil from submitting [to Divine Guidance].
Friends are sometimes not very trusting of each other, and do not share struggles and doubts. This keeps us safely in a bubble, where other Friends cannot help us grow. Discernment requires trust in other Friends and in the Truth's accessibility. George Fox writes: "All Friends ye must come into [certain things]: patience; moderation; wisdom; knowledge; understanding; sobriety; gravity; seasoned state above all the world."
Authority/ The Beloved Community—If we stay committed to the discernment practice, we will acquire authority. Until we have courage to exercise authority we have been given, our development as Friends is stunted. George Fox writes: "Be bold in Truth's Power, & valiant for it upon the Earth ... triumphing over ... all Deceit ... inward & outward, having done it in your self ..., ye have the power over the World in general." Failure to exercise authority can damage a meeting. Questioning authority may have a good side because there are false authorities that seek to oppress, but we must be careful to affirm [& exercise] true authority that belongs to us individually & collectively. The strength of every meeting is reflected by the willingness of members to take on duties & [exercise] the authority that goes with those responsibilities. Individuals will strive to respond positively to calls from the nominating committee, even when they initially feel unready or not inclined to say "yes."
This authority is an authority to love, and the world desperately needs to be authoritatively loved, which may require us to confront others and speak to them when they are out of good order. Only when this authority is at work in our meetings can we hope to be part of a beloved community. How can we be clear that authority is working? Eldering is loving authoritatively. Eldering probably became suspect because we forgot how to do it lovingly. We must be able to offer each other the correction and encouragement we need; the Divine will not let us off the hook. Things swept under the rug in our meetings will blow up in our faces later. Or people will drift away in frustration for the lack of vitality among us. The world will hear the authority of our message when we learn how to exercise authority in our own meetings. We cannot exercise the authority of our lives unless we reveal and share our doubts and fears. It is too easy to satisfy our self in our own minds that we know what to do. A clearness to act needs to be tested with those who are committed to discernment.
We need a community loving us & helping us find Truth, & that we can love & help. A beloved community doesn't come about by wanting it. The beloved community is the fruit of lives lived in covenant with the Reality of Divine Love. Loving each other isn't a [friendly suggestion]. We are commanded to love & be a blessing; no exceptions. Isaac Penington described community as "a heap of fresh & living coals, warming one another ... Our life is love, & peace, & tenderness, & bearing with one another ... not laying accusations ... but praying one for another, & helping one another up with a tender hand." [To recap briefly], we need to: know our condition; seek to experience Divinity Reality; accept a Divine covenant with God; practice a spiritual discipline; practice discernment; exercise authority given to us; & bring these practices together in beloved community.
Submission—Progress in the Spiritual Life isn't one aspect of our life; it is our life. If you think you can be the primary manager of your life, you will be ... But you will miss being a manifestation of the Divine Reality that would give ... life meaning. Elias Hicks writes: "I was led, in a clear full testimony, to show ... why all have not faith ... The means of obtaining it are freely offered to the acceptance of all; yet it [can] be obtained only by & through operation & inspiration of God's grace & spirit, as man yields in obedience & submission thereunto. He comes to know God, by inward experimental touches of his own life ... [Those who] exercise themselves in their own speculative wisdom, & refuse submission to the manifestations of divine grace, have not faith, because they reject the only means by which it can be obtained."
Pride & a stiff neck are a greater weakness than submission, Being blind to anything that doesn't fit our notions makes us a danger to ourselves & others. If we have submissiveness with a deep humility, we will see more of Divine Reality, & act more wisely. When we recognize an authority as false we stand fast in the truth we are given & let their falseness break itself against us. We fully submit to: the reality of our condition; the knowledge of our experience to the Divine; the terms of our Divine covenant; the necessary disciplines; the discernment process; the proper exercise of our authority; and the power of love that binds us in loving community.
Queries—How have you prepared your self to follow this journey wherever it may lead? How can Friends seek to avoid a "notional" faith? How would you describe your present "condition?" How do you imagine or how was your actual "experience of Divine Reality?" What does a "sacred covenant with the Divine Reality" mean to you? Why is being willing to take on committee work important? What are the problems of trying to discern the way forward by one's self? How does group discernment work? What does "proper use of our true authority" look like? What does your beloved community look like? Why is "submission" critical to the Quaker spiritual journey?
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440. Enlarging Our Circle of Love (by Margaret Fisher; 2016)
There are words that have special meanings & connections to our inherited wisdom, that we have developed to guide us on this path. Many of the words I will review are separately studied & thought about by Friends. We can benefit by looking at them as a sequence. They point to something that is integral to inner spiritual life, & a witness to the world, but only if we bring them into our personal experience so that they are sealed in our hearts. [They need to lead us to live who we are]. The 7 words & their sequence that I suggest is: condition; experience; covenant; discipline; discernment; authority; & beloved community. [The "plus one" of the title is submission].
Condition—Condition has the least familiarity among modern Friends. I wasn't asked about my condition when I applied for membership.We can't gather the strength to undertake a genuine spiritual path unless we are aware of the condition that has been keeping us from moving forward; it is likely we cannot easily perceive it. The kind of emotional blackmail present in threats of eternal suffering was indigestible for me. Without an acute awareness of ourselves as being in a condition requiring change, we will not be able to even begin the journey.
George Fox wrote: "I did discern ... what it was that did veil me ... & couldn't give up self to die by the Cross, God's power." Sense of self or ego is developed unconsciously & becomes the core of who we think we are. Self deception keeps us lost in our notions & certainties. Self comes to be in charge of our lives. Divine Reality won't be heard ... unless we surrender authority of the voice we have been given & taken to be our self. Elias Hicks reported: "He was [only] self in man ... doing good & performing acts under a show of religion ... but all done in his own will, time, & iniquity ... His salvation wholly consists in surrendering up self-ability, letting it die ... & returning to ... full submission to ... the inspiring spirit of God." If you're in charge, you're in trouble.
If we think upbringing & culture hasn't affected us, we haven't explored our condition enough. [All the well-meaning people of our childhood] almost certainly taught us to place self in charge of life, before we were able to be aware or critical of what was happening. We were given a choice of roles & images to be filled. These roles & images alone won't lead to spiritual life. Where do we find the meaning of life? How are we connected to the Eternal? We can choose to get in touch with that within that allows us to live in authentic relation to what is.
Early Friends felt it necessary to keep even their dress & manners plain so that they could adequately attend to their spiritual lives. [Distractions that led back to serving self had to be avoided]. These distractions have been an ongoing struggle for me. How do we avoid falling back into the illusions our egos provide? How do I do good without feeling excessively proud of my work? We need a sense of our condition that totally humbles us and brings the "still small voice" near, making it the center of our experience and our continuing guide.
Experience—An experience of Divine Reality changes us from fearful, wounded, and lost people into a safe, healing and compassionate people on a meaningful journey. In order to have this experience, George Fox writes: "Stand still in that which is pure, after you see your self, and then mercy comes in ... Stand still in the light and submit to it,and the other will be hushed and gone ... Your strength is to stand still." Isaac Penington writes: "The main thing in religion is to receive a principle of life from God, whereby the mind may be changed, and the heart made able to understand the mysteries of God's kingdom, and to see and walk in the way of life."
A great obstacle in coming to this experience is that [culture denies existence to anything which can't be] verbalized, rationalized, or scientifically explained. Inner experience is never provable under these conditions. [How is something that doesn't lend itself to a narrow range of expression automatically non-existent]? The person who is strictly determined not to allow for spiritual experience's existence may very well never have one. We are part of a Reality that includes our self but is greater than we. As a part we can never grasp the whole. We need to let go of notional life, quietly open, & be. Our life will be grounded, & we will own it while we live.
A 2nd obstacle to spiritual experience is thinking it can be taught. Naomi Remen said: "Spiritual experience ... is found [within], uncovered [from layers of deception], discovered [to be our inheritance], recovered [from where we left it as children]." We can look everywhere outward & never find it. [The light in every man is the basis for seeing all external signs]; the light itself must be immediate without external sign. God is uncreated and infinite, so it is impossible to express God in created, finite words].
What did early Friends mean by their use of "being convince," & "convincement?" It sounds like the outcome of a debate or an argument before a jury leading to the acceptance of a doctrine; what happened to early Friends was entirely different. They were convinced [by experience, not argument, of the Inward Light] that they were in a condition that needed to change. Inward experience provides knowledge of who & where we are, & a basis for putting faith & trust in the Inward Light. We can make this knowledge our friend & daily companion (& let belief & notions be things we visit rarely). [The "external sign"] of our knowledge will appear in the life we lead. We can't afford to stop short of this experience of the Spirit. We must be patient & wait in openness until the experience comes; there is nothing better to do, for it leads us into a covenant of peace with all of creation.
Covenant—[A covenant is like traditional, open-ended marriage vows]; it isn't a contract, where I don't agree to anything that isn't specified. I agree to do certain things in return for other things I want from someone else. A lot of people want a contract with the Divine; they want to bargain with God. Bargaining tries to limit our relationship with the Divine, which is unconditional & permanent or it's nothing. Divine Reality doesn't bargain; if we try we will fail. Our relationship with the Divine has to be a covenant, or else we are fooling ourselves.
The only genuine relationship we can have with the Divine is when we enter into a covenant that is open to whatever may come, including suffering and pain. Jesus' narrow gate and [destructive paths is about an open covenant relationship]. A Sacred Covenant is a promise of the heart to perfect a relationship to Divine Reality. [The promise includes the idea that], "I will stay open to what is so that I can live what I am." Covenant is about holding to a relationship in order to overcome mistakes, & coming back if we get off track. A new, covenant relationship is a new relationship with the people in our lives; the covenant spreads to enfold all, friend and enemy.
Early Friends declined to seek legal redress for wrongful imprisonment & deportation, even when advised that they could. Refusal to exercise legals rights may seem strange to us, yet it isn't when we consider that our new covenant with the Divine requires us to bless as we have been blessed, to love our neighbors & enemies, not to exact recompense. We can't coerce anyone to a [conversion] experience. The covenant blesses us, so our relation with others will be a blessing too. We no longer need to gather to our self more than what will help serve to fulfill our covenant. When we open our self to the Divine, the ego's demands subside, & our needs are simpler. We must be slow to judge & loving toward all, quelling the unruly spirits we have in us. This requires discipline.
Discipline—No discipline is needed or desired in a consumer shopping culture. Sometimes we spread our shopping habits to religion. [Picking and choosing] appealing aspects of other religions probably won't harm us, and can help us appreciate of the faith experiences of others. They may also distract us from the disciplines we need to grow as Friends. [Besides the better-known epistles], I recommend reading Steven Crisp, William Sewell, and Elizabeth Bathurst to provide a strong counter to the cacophony of the culture surrounding us.
Discipline must involve a practice. A little thinking is fine, but unless we have the experience of following a discipline, we won't even begin to have the tools we need for useful thinking. Without it even being part of our awareness, discipline can give us confidence that we are capable. We can benefit from discipline without an intellectual endorsement. Being a Quaker is like perfecting a craft or a skill. Quaker disciplinary practices have been forged in the depths of personal experience and tested in the fires of persecution. [Discipline must be practiced or it remains a good-sounding idea]. There are 2 kinds of discipline needed—personal discipline and group discipline. We won't come close to Gospel order, to aligning our actions with the truth, without discipline.
Confession, genuflecting, ritual bathing, bowing toward icons or certain places, smoking tobacco, or fasting, are traditional disciplines. These things aren't bad in themselves, but are easily corrupted into forms, or even empty forms, [over which our self is in complete control]. Friends have tried to avoid these forms in favor of a silent presence discipline. Penington writes: "Take heed of the fleshly wisdom, [thy understanding, reasoning or disputing]; these are the weapons by which witness is slain ... Wisdom & understanding must be destroyed ... that understanding brought to naught, & thou become [& learn as] a child ... if ever thou know the things of God.
Queries—How we retire daily into silence and quiet the turmoil of our minds? How do we study the words of Early Friends, their trial and their gains? How do we know in our hearts what the Gospels have to tell us when opened by the Spirit? How do we encourage other Friends to question us about our inner life and the trajectory our life is taking?
Early Friends spoke of nurturing the Seed within. Spiritual discipline could be seen as tending the soil that nurtures the seed. Unless we add nutrients by reading the words of those who have gone before, & water the soil with serious discussions with other Friends, the Seed may fail to bring forth fruit. The Light within us must be kept shining on all aspect of our lives, or it will fade. As new members and religious refugees, we tend to suspect any instituted uniform practice. Friends have worked out practices that can help us, and new members especially need to submit to them, even when our understanding of the practices' spiritual [roots] is limited.
Friends don't get to be just Sunday worshipers. [Worship in a meeting, without office, teaching, or committee work leaves out] a key element that will let us grow as a Quaker. Spiritual tasks go better alongside others. Busyness in society at large isn't a virtue, or an excuse for not sharing the meeting community's work. When we work with other Friends, some Light coming through other Friends may shine into corners unfamiliar to us, revealing gifts we never knew we had, or illuminate a dark corner in our self that we hadn't noticed. Lessons teaching love, courage & patience through sharing work don't take root in us by our thinking about or wishing for them; they become our humble strength by practice. If we shirk this discipline, we place our self & our meeting in peril.
Listening is a discipline that must be cultivated. It must be more than listening only to make a quick & snappy reply, or a listening that hears only words, & gains only intellectual understanding. The message is in words, tone of voice, body posture & motion, & in face. How do I listen so as to get all the messages from the whole person? How long do I wait for all the message to register before I reply? As Friends we need to learn the discipline of listening fully & compassionately. In clearness committees we have to learn to listen closely, & we will witness others hearing things we missed. Secondary benefits that come to all who serve on them are vital for the spiritual growth of the community. If we practice our disciplines faithfully, we will be led to discernment.
Discernment—We know how easy it is to be wrong in our understanding, and that actions and judgments based only on the intellect and information are not adequate. We need to take the time to bring our hearts and heads to a point of humility that makes unity of action possible; gathering facts is not enough. Facts, opinions and the deepest feelings of our hearts all need to be sifted. Actions and judgments have to be lived out. Believing that everyone's measure of truth and viewpoint is equal is a misunderstanding of our testimony on equality. It is true that the Divine is accessible to all, but it is not true that all of us, in equal measure, have disciplined our self in our commitment to a spiritual life. Until we submit our measure to be aligned with the measure of others who are undertaking the same discipline, we will not have done what it takes to be a Friend.
All aspects of an active Quaker life must be subjected to a discernment process. George Fox writes: "[After being turned by that of God from evil, and emptied of it, there will be some room in them for something of God to be revealed and inspired into them." Our culture thinks it can ignore the wisdom of self-restraint by ignoring connections between what is done and the consequences." The consequences of achievements and inventions are ignored until the new and greater problems slap us in the face. George Fox wanted Friends to "stay within their measure" by employing the discernment process. He also said that Friends need to "keep in discerning that you may not be ensnared nor made prey" to the wiles of ego and others.
[We need to discern within our self] & within the group as part of our progress. We expose our self to the other Friends' counsel. We withhold judgment until the ground of Divine Reality manifests itself & we can stand on it together. Patience is required to not "run before" one's true Guide. By not aligning understanding with other Friends' discernment, we aren't Friends but only Quaker "fellow travelers." We like the ideas but are unwilling to trust the process. We want to be saints but recoil from submitting [to Divine Guidance].
Friends are sometimes not very trusting of each other, and do not share struggles and doubts. This keeps us safely in a bubble, where other Friends cannot help us grow. Discernment requires trust in other Friends and in the Truth's accessibility. George Fox writes: "All Friends ye must come into [certain things]: patience; moderation; wisdom; knowledge; understanding; sobriety; gravity; seasoned state above all the world."
Authority/ The Beloved Community—If we stay committed to the discernment practice, we will acquire authority. Until we have courage to exercise authority we have been given, our development as Friends is stunted. George Fox writes: "Be bold in Truth's Power, & valiant for it upon the Earth ... triumphing over ... all Deceit ... inward & outward, having done it in your self ..., ye have the power over the World in general." Failure to exercise authority can damage a meeting. Questioning authority may have a good side because there are false authorities that seek to oppress, but we must be careful to affirm [& exercise] true authority that belongs to us individually & collectively. The strength of every meeting is reflected by the willingness of members to take on duties & [exercise] the authority that goes with those responsibilities. Individuals will strive to respond positively to calls from the nominating committee, even when they initially feel unready or not inclined to say "yes."
This authority is an authority to love, and the world desperately needs to be authoritatively loved, which may require us to confront others and speak to them when they are out of good order. Only when this authority is at work in our meetings can we hope to be part of a beloved community. How can we be clear that authority is working? Eldering is loving authoritatively. Eldering probably became suspect because we forgot how to do it lovingly. We must be able to offer each other the correction and encouragement we need; the Divine will not let us off the hook. Things swept under the rug in our meetings will blow up in our faces later. Or people will drift away in frustration for the lack of vitality among us. The world will hear the authority of our message when we learn how to exercise authority in our own meetings. We cannot exercise the authority of our lives unless we reveal and share our doubts and fears. It is too easy to satisfy our self in our own minds that we know what to do. A clearness to act needs to be tested with those who are committed to discernment.
We need a community loving us & helping us find Truth, & that we can love & help. A beloved community doesn't come about by wanting it. The beloved community is the fruit of lives lived in covenant with the Reality of Divine Love. Loving each other isn't a [friendly suggestion]. We are commanded to love & be a blessing; no exceptions. Isaac Penington described community as "a heap of fresh & living coals, warming one another ... Our life is love, & peace, & tenderness, & bearing with one another ... not laying accusations ... but praying one for another, & helping one another up with a tender hand." [To recap briefly], we need to: know our condition; seek to experience Divinity Reality; accept a Divine covenant with God; practice a spiritual discipline; practice discernment; exercise authority given to us; & bring these practices together in beloved community.
Submission—Progress in the Spiritual Life isn't one aspect of our life; it is our life. If you think you can be the primary manager of your life, you will be ... But you will miss being a manifestation of the Divine Reality that would give ... life meaning. Elias Hicks writes: "I was led, in a clear full testimony, to show ... why all have not faith ... The means of obtaining it are freely offered to the acceptance of all; yet it [can] be obtained only by & through operation & inspiration of God's grace & spirit, as man yields in obedience & submission thereunto. He comes to know God, by inward experimental touches of his own life ... [Those who] exercise themselves in their own speculative wisdom, & refuse submission to the manifestations of divine grace, have not faith, because they reject the only means by which it can be obtained."
Pride & a stiff neck are a greater weakness than submission, Being blind to anything that doesn't fit our notions makes us a danger to ourselves & others. If we have submissiveness with a deep humility, we will see more of Divine Reality, & act more wisely. When we recognize an authority as false we stand fast in the truth we are given & let their falseness break itself against us. We fully submit to: the reality of our condition; the knowledge of our experience to the Divine; the terms of our Divine covenant; the necessary disciplines; the discernment process; the proper exercise of our authority; and the power of love that binds us in loving community.
Queries—How have you prepared your self to follow this journey wherever it may lead? How can Friends seek to avoid a "notional" faith? How would you describe your present "condition?" How do you imagine or how was your actual "experience of Divine Reality?" What does a "sacred covenant with the Divine Reality" mean to you? Why is being willing to take on committee work important? What are the problems of trying to discern the way forward by one's self? How does group discernment work? What does "proper use of our true authority" look like? What does your beloved community look like? Why is "submission" critical to the Quaker spiritual journey?
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About the Author—Margaret Fisher is a physician practicing theumatology in Northern Virginia. She raised money for the Student Peace Awards by writing Take Our Advice: A Handbook for Gardening in Northern Virginia. She is in Baltimore YM's Working Group on Right Relationship with Animals. Queries: How does our food connect us to the rest of the living world? How can we live in unity with that world?
I was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in a inward life, where the heart doth love & reverence God the Creator & learn to exercise true justice & goodness, ... toward all men and also toward brute creatures ... to love God as invisible ... being ... & in God's manifestations in the visible world ... To say that we love God as unseen, & at the same time exercise cruelty toward [God's] least creature ... was a contradiction.] John Woolman
[Introduction]—[Singing or being in] harmony feels like a direct pipeline to the Spirit; ego falls away. Friends School in the 1960s included Bible verse memorization. [I read the gospels many times] until they were firmly imprinted. [Waiting for] the "Holy Ghost to teach ... what you ought to say," led to decades of mute attendance at meeting for worship, waiting for words to materialize. I find speaking out for justice easier to achieve when accompanied by the music of people around me. Animal rights were far from my childhood mind.
I adopted a vegan diet without offering my reasons. It is impossible to engage in discussion of the animals we use without describing repellent details; [without those details], the victims remain invisible. Finding a way to share that information without causing people to shut down is only the first of many challenges to stimulating this conversation. The time frame for human beings to prevent planetary destruction is now short. The human mind can change in a flash; even a few words can provide impetus for sudden action.
Openings/ Boy Chickens/ Human Health—As a great admirer of my mother & her cooking, & a conflict-averse person, only a great shock could ever induce me to introduce the subject of vegetarianism to my family. [My mutilation of a frog in college biology class to learn about muscle physiology was a turning point]. I was horrified by the possibility the frog could feel what was happening. If it was wrong to inflict suffering & death on frogs, how could it be right to do so to a fish or a chicken. I joined a vegetarian eating club, and became the vegetarian food director. My moral reasons for the choice were reinforced by environmental reasons for making it, and by the health benefits of a vegan diet. I continued as a vegetarian without giving it much further thought.
Very few "boy chickens" are needed in egg factories. Approximately ½ the chicks are killed very shortly after death; they are ground up or suffocated in bags. Chickens, who normally would live 8 years, go to slaughter at 6-8 weeks or subsist a little over a year in a laying facility. At around 4 years dairy cows become a source of hamburger in this country because their milk production starts to fall off. Normally they could live 15-20 years.
Dr. Caldwell Esstyn was faced with patients who had run out of treatment options for their vascular disease. They went on a low-fat, plant-based diet with lots of vegetables.Their symptoms resolved & they found themselves with the unexpected gift of longevity. Accumulation of cholesterol had always been considered a one way street. All animal products have more fat than the body needs; that contributes to plaque buildup. Research shows we can reverse this process & clean out our arteries by not smoking, getting some exercise, and adopting a plant-based diet that is low in fat and sugar. How much better would it be to prevent [rather than reverse] it?
Other health concerns around meat are the [scientific additives] & pesticides poured into animals, & excessive amount of meat & milk we consume. Physicians are encouraged to ask: What can we do to keep everyone healthy? The conditions for workers in the meat industry are unhealthy, exploitative, brutalizing & hazardous. How are we inflicting moral injury on others when we ask them to slaughter animals for our consumption?
The Living World—I used to think of the "natural environment" as some distant place; nature surrounds us as soon as we walk outside. I enjoy gardening, but never considered it to be connected to the natural world; indeed it wasn't, given my gardening style. The book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, by Doug Tallamy, has galvanized the native plant movement. A new style of gardening could be my small gift to saving a planet. In re-examining the living organism in my garden, [I gained new appreciation of] Nature's color & beauty; my yard is now a [diverse], boisterous community that seems aware of my presence.
When environmentalism takes on personal meaning, joining with others to preserve the living world feels more urgent. [Much of] environmental destruction as well as waste is due to consumption of animal products by an ever-growing human population. Feeding grain to farm animals involves many times as much grain, pesticide, fertilizer, fuel, & water to create protein & calories from meat as it does from plants. More than 80% of food production land is dedicated to grazing or feed crops for the animals we eat. If "feed crop" land were to grow grains for humans, that grain could feed approximately 1 billion people; this waste is a worldwide phenomenon.
The threat to fresh water caught the public's attention as drought & aquifer depletion [increased]. More than a ⅓ of drinking US water goes directly or indirectly to raising farm animals. Greenhouse emissions generated by animal production far exceeds that generated by an equivalent amount of plant calories. Animal sewage frequently doesn't get thoroughly processed. The consequences for our water supply & even our oceans are dire.
Why is destroying the bottom of the ocean accepted just because it happens under water where we can't see it? A large percentage of animals caught in nets are thrown back into the water, dead or mortally wounded. As human population grows and the wildlife population shrinks, we are rapidly approaching the point at which the standard US diet is unsustainable. There is no avoiding the fact that to save the planet, we must be prepared to be less self-indulgent in all our purchases, not just our food choices. If we shift our demand away from meat, so will the farmers shift their production to match the changing market.
Turning Thought into Action—I can make no claim that I never touched meat, egg, or milk after dissecting a frog or learning about boy chickens. What keeps us from translating principles into action? In 1977 sticking to a vegetarian diet was only mildly difficult. Alfalfa sprouts & bulgur were mainstays of the vegetarian diet then. My local supermarket is full of animal-free offerings. Most restaurant now offer plant-based entrees or at least a few options that can be easily adapted. It took time to develop a repertoire of alternative meal plans.
Simplicity is about clearing away things that separate us from awe & delight in the universe. Where we have choices in diet, I believe that integrity demands we awaken to the harm we do & take action to minimize it. Animals have long been invisible and institutions of society are designed to keep them so. [Naming the animals we eat has been replaced with words like steak and ham]. If contamination occurs, the recalled flesh is referred to as pounds of flesh rather than number of animals who died for nothing. [Even in the countryside the billions of US animals are literally invisible]. [Filming mistreatment of animals is restricted in several states]. My motivation is the certain knowledge that every bite contributes to the intolerable suffering of another being.
In experiencing an animal's love & joy, I would say that most of us find such love far less complicated & more unconditional than any we receive from human beings. I find it more difficult to relate to farm animals. When we fail to perceive animals as individuals, we objectify them. Farm animals have identities & personalities, a strong desire to live, the capacity for happiness, & the ability to suffer. Henry Beston writes: "We need another, wiser, & more mystical concept of animals ... Civilized man surveys creatures through the glass of knowledge & sees thereby a feather magnified & [a distorted image]. We patronize them for incompleteness, & [the form they took] so far below ours ... They move finished & complete [for the world they live in], living by voices we shall never hear ... They are other nations ... fellow prisoners of the splendor & travail of the earth."
I find it harder & harder to cling to any idea of humanity as a superior species. To do more good than harm, we can start recognizing animals as individuals, each with their own life to live. [Our comforting images of well-treated animals allow us to] look away from disturbing truths. Original Quakers called themselves "Friends of the Truth." Truth is accuracy in speech & a willingness to fully encounter Divine Reality. What is Light, if not that which shines in dark corners & illuminates the obscure? Why is it so important to see things clearly? How far are we from living with intention in the moment? Failure to see things as are leads to much of the world's suffering. When we open ourselves to the Spirit, we come to feel the interconnectedness of all things.
Confronting the Details—In the US, there is a relatively small specialty market for grass-finished beef & humanely produced eggs & milk. Most poultry, pigs, & dairy cows are factory-raised. 10 billion farm animals are killed every year; 800 million animals die from abuse or disease before they get to market. I had concluded I didn't need to burden myself with grisly details of factory farm practice. Some of what I learned was so grisly it made me dizzy; I had to force myself to glance at a few of the online videos. Animals spent whole lives in conditions that would traumatize humans after a few minutes, in enclosures no wider than they are, in overwhelming stench, pumped full of chemicals, fed unnatural diets, growing in deformed & painful ways; they are surrounded with the same suffering of 1,000's of others. [There is this inhumane living, & perhaps inhumane dying]. Some believe that the energy of the animal's suffering is transferred to our own bodies and causes suffering in us.
The living condition in factory farms are intrinsically cruel. We pay for that violence both literally with our food purchases and spiritually with the diminishment of our humanity. The most important obstacle of all to my being faithful to my leading over the years has been its implications for human relationship. We value the rituals, the sharing, the family traditions, and the joy of preparing a meal for others. I preferred to eat turkey on Thanksgiving rather than draw attention to myself or introduce what I feared would be a jarring note into the occasion, or to imply that I thought myself better than everyone else. I cooked meat for my children in a misguided attempt to reproduce for them the family meal experiences of my childhood. Knowing the truth of a matter is seldom the same as acting accordingly. I ignored my conscience and continued to use eggs and milk in coo-king. My husband went on a week-long silent retreat a meat-eater and came back a vegan, His change of heart gave me the impetus to finally do what I knew to be right.
Complications—I have an abundance of choice, & that choice creates a need for discernment. It is wrong to inflict "unnecessary" death or suffering on another being, but when may it be necessary? Much of the tremendous improvements in the treatment of a multitude of diseases stems from basic research involving animals. Research studies require replication of results for validation. Where is the justification in repeating the experiment simply for demonstration purposes? What do students take away from gruesome lessons involving wild frog deaths in the 1,000s? In the case of medical research that hopes to cure cancer, animal experiments are often chosen out of habit when other methods are available. [How much of other life on this planet can we justify sacrificing to ensure the continuation of "priceless" human life]? [We can no more justify sacrificing huge numbers of animals for our benefit than we can be comfortable benefiting from living in a militaristic society. Research animals should have a value far greater than the near-zero value we now give them.
Integrity is not the same as consistency. I should not find it surprising that other people don't always agree with me when I may not even agree with myself. We teach our selves to ignore the dissonance of treasuring the beloved animals we call "pets" while abusing those we call "farm animals." When we allow love to be the 1st motion, the difficulties of discerning the best action start to fall away. Once you accept that the lives of other animals should be considered, the concept of sustainability seems inadequate, and every purchase needs to be re-evaluated. There are limits to how much any one of us can cut back on physical possessions.
Ministry—I seldom bothered to mention the benefits of a plant-based diet to patients. I assumed they would vigorously resist giving up meat. I was struck by the inadequacy of helping someone with their arthritis only to have them die of a heart attack. I was reminded I must beware of my assumptions. People from all backgrounds are interested in health; some have qualms about eating animals & only need a small push to put their qualms into action. Discussing medical matters is one thing; raising the issue of personal morality is very different. [I felt disloyal to my family in publicly condemning meat-eating]. That barrier fell when my husband became vegan.
I requested a clearness committee for traveling to other meetings to share my concern. The committee was only concerned that I might be disappointed if my message fell on deaf ears. The monthly meeting's approval demonstrated that agreement on every point isn't a prerequisite for spiritual unity. I don't think of myself as a minister. My "ministry" about animals is only a tiny contribution to society's steady progress toward living in harmony with all beings. Stories are powerful, so I tell mine; none of this is meant to be about me. It is about animals.
[I am greatly inspired by well-known Quakers, but I do not share their "measure" of outstanding qualities]. I must be as effective as I can without [that great measure]. Corporate discernment, when informed with enough factual knowledge and prayerful consideration, can bring us to where we need to be. As I talk to others, my own understanding continues to be exercised and deepened. Some have devoted their lives to the care and well being of their animals and express hurt at my blanket description of inhumane conditions. What can I say to those among us who may have to choose between bankruptcy and killing? I can see that the discussion about eating animals will never by an easy discussion. In my travels, I have found others seeking to live in right relationship with animals. As members of a minority, we labor to truly listen to all those who have different ideas.
Living in Community/ The Flame of Life—Philosophy & ethics are abstractions unless we practice them; our testimony is in the things we do. [We participate in cruelty]. If we truly love each other, we must express hard truths, & defend those who can't defend themselves. [I feared appearing] unloving, ungracious, & presumptuous. Friends were supportive, & put up with my single-mindedness with good humor; one traveled with me as my accompanying elder. [I often didn't have much of an audience in the meetings I visited]. What role does the meeting community have in changing its members' hearts? The number of animals slaughtered in the US has declined noticeably in the last decade; non-vegetarians have reduced meat consumption. Quakerism is about helping each other on our spiritual paths; [together we] work through difficult issues. We listen deeply & learn from each other. We can approach matters of ethics & allow a new perspective to be present as a community. We can create a loving environment, grounded in the Spirit, where we challenge each other to live up to our ideals.
Awareness of truth is seldom enough by itself to move us to action. We ignore the truth when it suits us to do so. Heat and passion produced by that Light impels us toward needed change. Let us open ourselves and be guided by love; love does not divide, it multiplies. Society's norms have undergone radical changes. What further revelations could await us as a community? Let us truly come, with John Woolman, "to love God is all God's manifestations in the visible world."
Queries—What are some reasons that meals provide lasting memories, & eating plays a significant role in our lives? What is a very meaningful pet memory for you & explain why? How & why have you altered your habits to benefit other living beings? What is your reaction to the pamphlet's argument? Why adopt a vegan diet? How do actual contemporary farming practices differ from comfortable, popular images given to us? How has your meeting dealt with a difficult issue? What attitudes & approaches have been most helpful in moving a concern forward? How is there a relationship between your diet and your spiritual life? How do we move beyond simple awareness of truth to action?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
I was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in a inward life, where the heart doth love & reverence God the Creator & learn to exercise true justice & goodness, ... toward all men and also toward brute creatures ... to love God as invisible ... being ... & in God's manifestations in the visible world ... To say that we love God as unseen, & at the same time exercise cruelty toward [God's] least creature ... was a contradiction.] John Woolman
[Introduction]—[Singing or being in] harmony feels like a direct pipeline to the Spirit; ego falls away. Friends School in the 1960s included Bible verse memorization. [I read the gospels many times] until they were firmly imprinted. [Waiting for] the "Holy Ghost to teach ... what you ought to say," led to decades of mute attendance at meeting for worship, waiting for words to materialize. I find speaking out for justice easier to achieve when accompanied by the music of people around me. Animal rights were far from my childhood mind.
I adopted a vegan diet without offering my reasons. It is impossible to engage in discussion of the animals we use without describing repellent details; [without those details], the victims remain invisible. Finding a way to share that information without causing people to shut down is only the first of many challenges to stimulating this conversation. The time frame for human beings to prevent planetary destruction is now short. The human mind can change in a flash; even a few words can provide impetus for sudden action.
Openings/ Boy Chickens/ Human Health—As a great admirer of my mother & her cooking, & a conflict-averse person, only a great shock could ever induce me to introduce the subject of vegetarianism to my family. [My mutilation of a frog in college biology class to learn about muscle physiology was a turning point]. I was horrified by the possibility the frog could feel what was happening. If it was wrong to inflict suffering & death on frogs, how could it be right to do so to a fish or a chicken. I joined a vegetarian eating club, and became the vegetarian food director. My moral reasons for the choice were reinforced by environmental reasons for making it, and by the health benefits of a vegan diet. I continued as a vegetarian without giving it much further thought.
Very few "boy chickens" are needed in egg factories. Approximately ½ the chicks are killed very shortly after death; they are ground up or suffocated in bags. Chickens, who normally would live 8 years, go to slaughter at 6-8 weeks or subsist a little over a year in a laying facility. At around 4 years dairy cows become a source of hamburger in this country because their milk production starts to fall off. Normally they could live 15-20 years.
Dr. Caldwell Esstyn was faced with patients who had run out of treatment options for their vascular disease. They went on a low-fat, plant-based diet with lots of vegetables.Their symptoms resolved & they found themselves with the unexpected gift of longevity. Accumulation of cholesterol had always been considered a one way street. All animal products have more fat than the body needs; that contributes to plaque buildup. Research shows we can reverse this process & clean out our arteries by not smoking, getting some exercise, and adopting a plant-based diet that is low in fat and sugar. How much better would it be to prevent [rather than reverse] it?
Other health concerns around meat are the [scientific additives] & pesticides poured into animals, & excessive amount of meat & milk we consume. Physicians are encouraged to ask: What can we do to keep everyone healthy? The conditions for workers in the meat industry are unhealthy, exploitative, brutalizing & hazardous. How are we inflicting moral injury on others when we ask them to slaughter animals for our consumption?
The Living World—I used to think of the "natural environment" as some distant place; nature surrounds us as soon as we walk outside. I enjoy gardening, but never considered it to be connected to the natural world; indeed it wasn't, given my gardening style. The book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, by Doug Tallamy, has galvanized the native plant movement. A new style of gardening could be my small gift to saving a planet. In re-examining the living organism in my garden, [I gained new appreciation of] Nature's color & beauty; my yard is now a [diverse], boisterous community that seems aware of my presence.
When environmentalism takes on personal meaning, joining with others to preserve the living world feels more urgent. [Much of] environmental destruction as well as waste is due to consumption of animal products by an ever-growing human population. Feeding grain to farm animals involves many times as much grain, pesticide, fertilizer, fuel, & water to create protein & calories from meat as it does from plants. More than 80% of food production land is dedicated to grazing or feed crops for the animals we eat. If "feed crop" land were to grow grains for humans, that grain could feed approximately 1 billion people; this waste is a worldwide phenomenon.
The threat to fresh water caught the public's attention as drought & aquifer depletion [increased]. More than a ⅓ of drinking US water goes directly or indirectly to raising farm animals. Greenhouse emissions generated by animal production far exceeds that generated by an equivalent amount of plant calories. Animal sewage frequently doesn't get thoroughly processed. The consequences for our water supply & even our oceans are dire.
Why is destroying the bottom of the ocean accepted just because it happens under water where we can't see it? A large percentage of animals caught in nets are thrown back into the water, dead or mortally wounded. As human population grows and the wildlife population shrinks, we are rapidly approaching the point at which the standard US diet is unsustainable. There is no avoiding the fact that to save the planet, we must be prepared to be less self-indulgent in all our purchases, not just our food choices. If we shift our demand away from meat, so will the farmers shift their production to match the changing market.
Turning Thought into Action—I can make no claim that I never touched meat, egg, or milk after dissecting a frog or learning about boy chickens. What keeps us from translating principles into action? In 1977 sticking to a vegetarian diet was only mildly difficult. Alfalfa sprouts & bulgur were mainstays of the vegetarian diet then. My local supermarket is full of animal-free offerings. Most restaurant now offer plant-based entrees or at least a few options that can be easily adapted. It took time to develop a repertoire of alternative meal plans.
Simplicity is about clearing away things that separate us from awe & delight in the universe. Where we have choices in diet, I believe that integrity demands we awaken to the harm we do & take action to minimize it. Animals have long been invisible and institutions of society are designed to keep them so. [Naming the animals we eat has been replaced with words like steak and ham]. If contamination occurs, the recalled flesh is referred to as pounds of flesh rather than number of animals who died for nothing. [Even in the countryside the billions of US animals are literally invisible]. [Filming mistreatment of animals is restricted in several states]. My motivation is the certain knowledge that every bite contributes to the intolerable suffering of another being.
In experiencing an animal's love & joy, I would say that most of us find such love far less complicated & more unconditional than any we receive from human beings. I find it more difficult to relate to farm animals. When we fail to perceive animals as individuals, we objectify them. Farm animals have identities & personalities, a strong desire to live, the capacity for happiness, & the ability to suffer. Henry Beston writes: "We need another, wiser, & more mystical concept of animals ... Civilized man surveys creatures through the glass of knowledge & sees thereby a feather magnified & [a distorted image]. We patronize them for incompleteness, & [the form they took] so far below ours ... They move finished & complete [for the world they live in], living by voices we shall never hear ... They are other nations ... fellow prisoners of the splendor & travail of the earth."
I find it harder & harder to cling to any idea of humanity as a superior species. To do more good than harm, we can start recognizing animals as individuals, each with their own life to live. [Our comforting images of well-treated animals allow us to] look away from disturbing truths. Original Quakers called themselves "Friends of the Truth." Truth is accuracy in speech & a willingness to fully encounter Divine Reality. What is Light, if not that which shines in dark corners & illuminates the obscure? Why is it so important to see things clearly? How far are we from living with intention in the moment? Failure to see things as are leads to much of the world's suffering. When we open ourselves to the Spirit, we come to feel the interconnectedness of all things.
Confronting the Details—In the US, there is a relatively small specialty market for grass-finished beef & humanely produced eggs & milk. Most poultry, pigs, & dairy cows are factory-raised. 10 billion farm animals are killed every year; 800 million animals die from abuse or disease before they get to market. I had concluded I didn't need to burden myself with grisly details of factory farm practice. Some of what I learned was so grisly it made me dizzy; I had to force myself to glance at a few of the online videos. Animals spent whole lives in conditions that would traumatize humans after a few minutes, in enclosures no wider than they are, in overwhelming stench, pumped full of chemicals, fed unnatural diets, growing in deformed & painful ways; they are surrounded with the same suffering of 1,000's of others. [There is this inhumane living, & perhaps inhumane dying]. Some believe that the energy of the animal's suffering is transferred to our own bodies and causes suffering in us.
The living condition in factory farms are intrinsically cruel. We pay for that violence both literally with our food purchases and spiritually with the diminishment of our humanity. The most important obstacle of all to my being faithful to my leading over the years has been its implications for human relationship. We value the rituals, the sharing, the family traditions, and the joy of preparing a meal for others. I preferred to eat turkey on Thanksgiving rather than draw attention to myself or introduce what I feared would be a jarring note into the occasion, or to imply that I thought myself better than everyone else. I cooked meat for my children in a misguided attempt to reproduce for them the family meal experiences of my childhood. Knowing the truth of a matter is seldom the same as acting accordingly. I ignored my conscience and continued to use eggs and milk in coo-king. My husband went on a week-long silent retreat a meat-eater and came back a vegan, His change of heart gave me the impetus to finally do what I knew to be right.
Complications—I have an abundance of choice, & that choice creates a need for discernment. It is wrong to inflict "unnecessary" death or suffering on another being, but when may it be necessary? Much of the tremendous improvements in the treatment of a multitude of diseases stems from basic research involving animals. Research studies require replication of results for validation. Where is the justification in repeating the experiment simply for demonstration purposes? What do students take away from gruesome lessons involving wild frog deaths in the 1,000s? In the case of medical research that hopes to cure cancer, animal experiments are often chosen out of habit when other methods are available. [How much of other life on this planet can we justify sacrificing to ensure the continuation of "priceless" human life]? [We can no more justify sacrificing huge numbers of animals for our benefit than we can be comfortable benefiting from living in a militaristic society. Research animals should have a value far greater than the near-zero value we now give them.
Integrity is not the same as consistency. I should not find it surprising that other people don't always agree with me when I may not even agree with myself. We teach our selves to ignore the dissonance of treasuring the beloved animals we call "pets" while abusing those we call "farm animals." When we allow love to be the 1st motion, the difficulties of discerning the best action start to fall away. Once you accept that the lives of other animals should be considered, the concept of sustainability seems inadequate, and every purchase needs to be re-evaluated. There are limits to how much any one of us can cut back on physical possessions.
Ministry—I seldom bothered to mention the benefits of a plant-based diet to patients. I assumed they would vigorously resist giving up meat. I was struck by the inadequacy of helping someone with their arthritis only to have them die of a heart attack. I was reminded I must beware of my assumptions. People from all backgrounds are interested in health; some have qualms about eating animals & only need a small push to put their qualms into action. Discussing medical matters is one thing; raising the issue of personal morality is very different. [I felt disloyal to my family in publicly condemning meat-eating]. That barrier fell when my husband became vegan.
I requested a clearness committee for traveling to other meetings to share my concern. The committee was only concerned that I might be disappointed if my message fell on deaf ears. The monthly meeting's approval demonstrated that agreement on every point isn't a prerequisite for spiritual unity. I don't think of myself as a minister. My "ministry" about animals is only a tiny contribution to society's steady progress toward living in harmony with all beings. Stories are powerful, so I tell mine; none of this is meant to be about me. It is about animals.
[I am greatly inspired by well-known Quakers, but I do not share their "measure" of outstanding qualities]. I must be as effective as I can without [that great measure]. Corporate discernment, when informed with enough factual knowledge and prayerful consideration, can bring us to where we need to be. As I talk to others, my own understanding continues to be exercised and deepened. Some have devoted their lives to the care and well being of their animals and express hurt at my blanket description of inhumane conditions. What can I say to those among us who may have to choose between bankruptcy and killing? I can see that the discussion about eating animals will never by an easy discussion. In my travels, I have found others seeking to live in right relationship with animals. As members of a minority, we labor to truly listen to all those who have different ideas.
Living in Community/ The Flame of Life—Philosophy & ethics are abstractions unless we practice them; our testimony is in the things we do. [We participate in cruelty]. If we truly love each other, we must express hard truths, & defend those who can't defend themselves. [I feared appearing] unloving, ungracious, & presumptuous. Friends were supportive, & put up with my single-mindedness with good humor; one traveled with me as my accompanying elder. [I often didn't have much of an audience in the meetings I visited]. What role does the meeting community have in changing its members' hearts? The number of animals slaughtered in the US has declined noticeably in the last decade; non-vegetarians have reduced meat consumption. Quakerism is about helping each other on our spiritual paths; [together we] work through difficult issues. We listen deeply & learn from each other. We can approach matters of ethics & allow a new perspective to be present as a community. We can create a loving environment, grounded in the Spirit, where we challenge each other to live up to our ideals.
Awareness of truth is seldom enough by itself to move us to action. We ignore the truth when it suits us to do so. Heat and passion produced by that Light impels us toward needed change. Let us open ourselves and be guided by love; love does not divide, it multiplies. Society's norms have undergone radical changes. What further revelations could await us as a community? Let us truly come, with John Woolman, "to love God is all God's manifestations in the visible world."
Queries—What are some reasons that meals provide lasting memories, & eating plays a significant role in our lives? What is a very meaningful pet memory for you & explain why? How & why have you altered your habits to benefit other living beings? What is your reaction to the pamphlet's argument? Why adopt a vegan diet? How do actual contemporary farming practices differ from comfortable, popular images given to us? How has your meeting dealt with a difficult issue? What attitudes & approaches have been most helpful in moving a concern forward? How is there a relationship between your diet and your spiritual life? How do we move beyond simple awareness of truth to action?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
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