Spirituality: General
SPIRITUALITY: GENERAL
173. Evolution & the Inward Light (by Howard Haines Brinton; 1970)
About the Author—When Howard Brinton & Anna started at Pendle Hill in 1936 as director, part of his role in a pioneer school/community was odd jobs. He was followed by Tibbar (rabbit) & Nuto (dog). Gerald Heard saw this Peaceable Kingdom procession as illustration of survival by reconciliation philosophy. Howard finds a place for this philosophy in Evolution & Inward Light, which summarizes a lifetime’s thought & purpose.
Introduction—The following [pamphlet] illustrates my former statement on The Religion of George Fox (#161). It is a simple, elemental, philosophy easily understood by any Christian. It is idealistic, pragmatic, and existential [i.e.] capable of being lived, and is formulated from John’s Prologue, Ephesians and Colossians. Early Quakerism made a great effort to resemble early Christianity. The unprogrammed meeting of today has the same goal as early Quaker meetings, though the messages may be quite different.
George Fox had no conception of evolution as Darwin did, but he knew human evolution, calling it “new birth,” which brings higher level of life. “New birth's” source was “Christ, God’s Power” (Paul), or “Word” (John). Fox applied this doctrine only to humanity's spiritual evolution. If early Christian philosophy is true, the most Christ-like are the fittest. This essay endeavors to apply Fox’s philosophy or theology to all life. What will enable humans to survive? The reconciliation-gospel will; it is an effective creed but never easy to carry out.
God’s Method of Creation—George Fox believed in the Inward Light as that which produces unity & reconciliation, indispensable in a group held together by no human authority & only a minimum of external organization. 3 stages of [spiritual] development appear in Quaker journals: Divine Seed begins to grow, early ecstatic experiences, feeling union with the God of Nature (Ages 7-12); playfulness or useless frivolity, inevitable conflict between law & spirit, unable to satisfy the demands of either; complete acceptance of the leadings of the Light, no instant conversion, but a gradual change sometimes with setbacks. In the last state, the journal writer is to some degree in the Kingdom of God, and is accepting of the Kingdom’s standard of conduct and ethics.
Many theologians do not understand the Quaker conception of perfection. Perfection is not satisfaction with one’s own condition. To be “perfect” in the Quaker sense meant to live up to one’s own “measure” of the Light, however small it might be; if that is done, more is given. The Kingdom of Heaven, if it is to begin on Earth must begin some time somewhere, so why not with the individual who has adopted its ethical code? Reconciliation [with God] is God’s method of creation and marks the survival of the fittest throughout life.
For Puritans, the assumption of total depravity led to searches for evidence of divine favor, and resulted in continuous anxiety interrupted occasionally by flashes of rapturous assurance. Even though a “leap of faith beyond life’s boundary may bring us face to face with God some elements of [irrational] doubt remain. In comparison with the Puritan journals, the Quaker journals are pervaded by a spirit of peace and relaxation, [not into] self-satisfaction, but in a feeling of obedience to the divine will.
The Quaker Christology—Fox and the early Quakers derived their Christology almost entirely from John’s gospel, Ephesians and Colossians, and Paul’s concept of the 1st and 2nd Adam. They put them to vigorous use in holding together a religious group having no human authority over it. Translating the Greek logos as “Word” is inadequate. Since there is no other word in English or in any other language that exactly corresponds to Logos, we will use it. If it is true that the “Light enlightens every man” (John 1:9), than every man is in some degree or “measure” a son of God, an incarnation of the Light. It is obvious in our experience that the Spirit is given with various degree of limitation, depending on the individual (John 3:34). George Fox speaks of Christ as possessing the Spirit without limitation. Jesus is unique in that in him was a full measure of Light.
The Functions of the Logos—In the pages following the prologue John endeavors to describe the functions of Logos as Creator. There are no birth stories in John, for Jesus does not feel himself to be the Logos until the Spirit descends on him at his baptism. Jesus has always been giving the Spirit; this eternal function is symbolized by temporal acts. Jesus is “The Way, the Truth, and the Life”; he is not only the goal, but the way toward it. The creative principle of the Logos operates in both Christ and the disciples.
New Testament's (NT) & early Christianity's religious philosophy, is not fully given to us in any one place. Its clearest exposition outside of the Gospel appears in the epistles to Ephesians & Colossians. [See Colossians 1:3-20] The bond of unity created by the blood of a sacrificial offering is an Old Testament (OT) idea carried over to the NT. It comes from the OT conception of a blood sacrifice as a means of reconciliation. That was the old covenant or testament. In the new covenant or testament, Christ was the lamb of God “slain from the World's foundation.” Nearly 500 Quakers died in English prisons because they believed that they were saved by Christ's Light within them and not by the death of Christ on the cross, by which an angry OT God was appeased.
Philo of Alexandria—This illustrates the union of Greek immanence & Hebrew transcendence attained in Philo of Alexandria’s philosophy; he was Jesus' contemporary. The Logos philosophy had come to its climax in Stoicism, in which Logos was the Universe’s soul through which chaos could be transformed into cosmos; it was the Immanent Reason. Whereas for the Stoics this Immanent Reason was only a refuge from pain and trouble, for the Quakers it was an Inner Voice calling for reconciliation and actions moving toward reconciliation. No philosophy was better able than that of Philo, to include Greek metaphysical mysticism and Hebrew prophetism. God is transcendent beyond the reach of human knowledge and reason, but reachable by mystical revelation.
Wisdom and Logos are not necessarily equated. Perhaps we could say that wisdom is a kind of model or blueprint of the universe which the Logos uses in creative work to draw fragments into higher unity. Confusion of wisdom and Logos is unnecessary if we consider ourselves made in the image of God. We all have something with us which is transcendent and inaccessible to others. Our persona, that part we expose to the world, is known by the sensations which we cause in other persons. We do have a kind of mystic knowledge of each other quite different from the light and sound coming from another. This knowledge of the “inside” of the other person is possible only because we all share in the Logos of God.
The Light is a community-creating agent and seeks, unsuccessfully so far, in bringing all men into one community. This means that creation is not yet completed. It follows from this that the Inward Light not only unites us with God but also with one another. The Two Great Commandments are two sides of the same coin. When George Fox calls upon us to “answer that of God in every man,” he is appealing to the creative life which is at work in every part of the universe, and which seeks to bring all things into one universal community.
Evolution by Logos—If it is true that creation has occurred & is occurring, then personifying Logos is important to illustrating evolution’s final goal. We are trying to show that ethics has primitive beginnings in biology. OT myths of creation give us the conception that creation was a process. Jeremiah states Quaker position when he rejects cisterns of stagnant water & accepts instead springs of living water. Logos philosophy which formulates spiritual & psychological relationship is one of the oldest as well as the newest of philosophies. Many modern philosophers agree that the divine’s function is to bring orderly unity to diversified elements of being.
The original plan in the 1st cell in history contained God’s Logos, or plan of creation, an active creative power. God’s plan is in some way latent in all creation as it slowly evolves, sometimes going backward, but mostly forward to God’s Kingdom. If the plan for the whole is in every cell of my body then the Kingdom of Heaven is in every individual living thing. “Logos” and agape both mean that which unites and reconciles.
The Beloved Community/Quaker Perfection—Josiah Royce of Harvard’s ideal was the Absolute Community of Communities of the Kingdom of Heaven. Our main virtue must be our loyalty to our community. For Royce religion is loyalty to loyalty. The “Beloved Community” can only exist in religions which seek to be universal and to redeem all mankind. [Through it] we can check the truth or falsity of our ideas. For most orthodox Christians the community which requires their loyalty is the historically unattainable Kingdom of God.
Atonement for Royce meant not the removal of sin but the restoration of a redemptive community which had been broken by the sin of disloyalty. Royce rejects the idea that Christ’s death was an offering to appease an angry God, or that Christ suffered as an example to us. Incarnation and atonement have their roots in human experience. Barclay, Penn, and Fox believed that the Kingdom of God could be felt in mystical experience and entered in some measure by those who lived in accord with the teachings of Jesus.
Quaker perfection isn't arriving at the goal & remaining there, but the intention to live up to the highest Light revealed to each individual. Living as if you were already in the Kingdom would at least give it a start. The Quakers believed that their movement was restoration of the original structure & beliefs of early Christianity. Logos creates by exerting an upward pull through love & reconciliation. In Plato’s philosophy, the Idea of "Beautiful" draws beautiful to itself in nature, but is checked by [the resistance] of matter from being molded.
Limits of Materialism/An Alternate Theory—[The current research into genes] reduces life to a physical-chemical mechanism operating by the fixed laws of mechanical causation. The difficulty with this theory is that no one really believes it. [Every individual] has a sense of freedom so deeply felt that no theory of physics or chemistry can explain or remove it. The Eternal Christ is the only begotten son of God because God has only one Logos. The Quakers seem more orthodox than they really are because they use the same language regarding the Eternal Christ that the Puritans used regarding the historical Christ.
It is very difficult to imagine that evolution, the world around us has resulted from an almost infinitely long game of dice. Instead of [using] this inadequate view through our senses, why not [use logos to explain creation]. Our logos makes us creators as we bring an idea to reality. In the Community of Communities all creation will be reconciled. We ourselves feel, in our religious and moral experience, a pull from in front as well as a push from behind. We find that as evolution advances to higher and higher levels on each level something new has been added which was not there before. When an atom is said to “desire” to combine with another atom, “desire” is only a human symbol of something which it might only faintly resemble.
[A close examination of the relationship of matter to energy] leads to the notion of energy being fundamental, thus displacing matter from that position. The same relegation of matter to the background occurs in connection with the electromagnetic field. An intangible field does not operate by the laws of mechanics. Every one acquainted with genuine Quakerism knows that a spiritual field exists in what is sometimes called “a gathered meeting,” [generated by a combined seeking of the Light or Logos by a spiritually oriented group of people]. It is this spiritual field that is the community-creating agent and a manifestation of the Logos of God. It is not difficult to think of the primordial Logos, the Creator of John’s prologue, as generating a field of spiritual force to gradually pull our world toward itself into a single unity, the Community of Communities. One difficulty is that in our efforts to understand we use only the outer, tool-oriented cortex of the brain. The deeper parts of the brain dominated by feeling rather than thought, have a deeper insight into the nature of things.
Survival by Reconciliation—If the Logos of God is the Creator who is still creating, and if Jesus of Nazareth was the temporal personification of the Logos/Creator, then the words of Jesus tell us how the creative process works. [“Survival of the fittest” by New Testament standards] is survival of the one who best complies with the gospel of reconciliation or love, using the Sermon on the Mount as guide. Those who make violent changes in the organic structure of society are bound to fail. War creates changes, but they are generally superficial, [with serious side effects]. Arnold Toynbee has shown that militarism is a fatal disease, resulting in pride and a fall [from power]. The two countries whose cultures have lasted the longest are India and China.
We are attempting to show that in all life reconciliation is the key to survival in the long run, even though it often appears to fail in the short run. Gerald Heard considers sensitivity and awareness the principal assets in the struggle for survival. When some in a species attain to new and different areas of sensitivity and awareness it is by finding a new environment. Adjustment to environment may be so successful that there is no “change” to a higher species. The lack of success the ancestor to reptiles and land animals had in one environment enabled it to function in another. Satisfaction with the status quo may halt the process of further human evolution.
Into Higher Forms—Those forms of life which form a community either in one physical body or in many in which the whole directs the parts and the parts the whole, have the greatest survival possibility. There is an optimum size for such a community depending upon the character of the species concerned. The Greek polis, at its best was an ideal community, and Greek art and literature reached a climax in them. The modern nation-state cannot be a community because it is too large to function successfully as such; it is more like a mob than a community. Specialization is a great enemy of community living in our modern cities. If our large cities could be broken up into small communities their problems could be solved.
Police action in a city is a mechanistic procedure; the result is a mechanism too large and intricate to function as a whole. [Man’s] tools may destroy him if his brain is unable to carry forward the “ministry of reconciliation.” How can we secure the sensitivity and awareness to [evolve and] avoid catastrophe? Evolution proceeds by increasing diversification, which survives only if accompanied by increasing reconciliation and adaptation or integration. Through small religious communities and not through Roman armies the best part of the culture of the Graeco-Roman world passed into the culture of Western Europe.
The Quaker Community—If we consider Catholicism, Protestantism, & Quakerism as the 3 distinct forms of Christianity [& connect them to different types of society], then Catholicism is based on feudal society, Protestantism is based on capitalism, & Quakerism is based on Communitarianism. 17th Century capitalism, [combined with] Protestantism resulted in making religion out of carefulness in business & prudent spending. It isn't true to say that Penn’s Holy Experiment failed; it succeeded for as long as the English government let it alone.
The social order of Pennsylvania consisted of a large number of semi-independent contiguous communities, called monthly meetings. They still exist, though not so completely integrated; their members are scattered geographically, and special committees have taken over much of what was once the function of the whole meeting. The Quaker communities never reached a decision by taking a vote, and were held together only by the “unity [Logos] of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” All successful communities are held together by a religion. I found that those which had a religion lasted 10 times longer than the secular communities.
The Logos philosophy is mystical, because man’s relation to the Logos is mystical and not rational. The Quaker meeting, [with its silent waiting for divine authority to prompt vocal ministry] is a deliberate attempt to cultivate sensitivity and awareness of the Light; early Quakers used the term “tenderness” rather than sensitivity. Becoming “tender” meant acquiring the ability to grow spiritually and to increase one’s “measure” of light.
Conclusion—The logos philosophy is the simplest and most profound, the newest and the oldest of all philosophies. The philosophy of the same importance is materialism, [with its mechanistic definition of man and life]. Psychologists and philosophers who base all reasoning [on materialism] are like surveyors who can ignore the curvature of the earth because they are surveying only a small part of it.
Love permits species to survive through cooperation and mutual support; hatred destroys the possibility of cooperation which is essential to survival. If those who profess the Christian religion would take seriously the commandments of Christ, our chances of survival would be enormously increased. Man has a logos by which he creates. And he creates insofar as he cooperates with the creative Logos of the universe. I am known outwardly by what I do and say. I know myself inwardly by my hopes, despairs, my joys and pains, my love and anger.
God’s creation is not finished, and if man acts too absurdly and destructively it may never be finished. If the ethics of Christ are not followed, the human race and perhaps all life will become extinct. [Actually], all the great religions were pacifist in their beginnings except Islam. When at their best, the great world religions have taught not only that the results of war are always evil, but that war itself is an evil regardless of its results. The Supreme Being does not work in the world as one physical force among other forces, but as an invisible spiritual power which produces understanding, cooperation, and love. Real religion always makes for peace.
[The great religions I speak of] all began in Asia. When they remained faithful to the teachings of their founders they maintain that humanity is one, and that all life is based on and derived from a Supreme Life. We are all branches of the same vine, radii of the same circle, apart at the circumference, one at the center. The Incarnation of the Supreme Being, in the Bhagavad Gita, the Lotus Scripture, or the Logos of the NT can say “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
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214. Jacob Boehme: Insights into the Challenge of Evil (by Ann Liem; 1977)
About the Author: Ann Liem majored in philosophy at Berkley & explored Zen for 21 years, 2 of which she spent in Tokyo studying Buddhism. An overwhelming conversion experience led her to Christianity, Quakerism, & Boehme in 1970. She gave a brief talk on Boehme at Pendle Hill, which has developed into the present pamphlet. She writes: One of the most important tasks of our time is to reconcile East and West in order to understand how they supplement and support each other.”
Introduction—Quakerism is founded on the belief that the mystical encounter is central to religious life. Holy Scripture itself, we never forget, is the result of the mystical experience. Jacob Boehme—cobbler, mystic, visionary, illuminate, clairvoyant—was born in 1575, 49 years before George Fox, and died the year Fox was born. [All the similarities between their lives suggest a profound spiritual kinship]. Were they linked somehow by the revelation of truth, and the converting of a people to follow it?
Yet in personality and accomplishment differences were abundant. It is not likely that Boehme was an influence on Fox, as Fox put small value on the findings of other men, and was never a great reader. William Law claimed that his life was changed entirely by Boehme’s influence. Other supporters include Newton, Hegel, and Goethe. Poets inspired by him include Novalis, Milton, and Blake. The Quakers Howard Brinton and Rufus Jones sought to generate appreciation for the mystic. [Following in the spirit of this mystic] evil is neither some-thing to deny, nor something to live with comfortably, but it is also no cause for despair.
“I had long been undergoing an intense effort to find the heart of Jesus Christ and to be freed … from everything that turned me from Christ, when suddenly the gate opened. In ¼ hour, I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at university… I knew and saw in myself all 3 worlds: divine, angelical; dark world; external, visible world as outbreathing of the internal, spiritual worlds.” Jacob Boehme
The Life of Boehme—He was born to Lutheran peasants in a village near Goerlitz, a Bohemian possession. We have a picture of a serious, shy, withdrawn youth, a shepherd for his parents. His formal education was a few years of elementary school. Abraham von Frankenberg, says: “he was modest, patient, & meek of heart.” He seemed to have innate awareness of reality’s invisible dimensions & a deep sense of divinity’s presence behind physical world. A stranger came into the shop one day & foretold his future of greatness, poverty, anguish, & persecution. A short time later Boehme had an illumination that put him in a 7-day state of ecstasy.
In 1600 he had the supreme visionary experience of his life, which established all the major themes upon which his many works were based. After gazing at a pewter plate reflecting the sun, he felt himself in the presence of God and was aware of being inducted into the very heart of the universe. Boehme stated: “I had long been undergoing an intense effort to find the heart of Jesus Christ and to be freed … from everything that turned me from Christ, when suddenly the gate opened. In ¼ hour, I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at university… I knew and saw in myself all 3 worlds: divine, angelical; dark world; external, visible world as outbreathing of the internal, spiritual worlds. He waited 10 years to write it and another illumination in Aurora (Glow of Dawn); he produced 30 books and treatises during his lifetime.
The Aurora was circulated by a nobleman, and it immediately set in motion a long and bitter feud between Boehme and his Lutheran pastor, Gregorious Richter; Boehme was often unflattering to the established clergy. Richter decreed exile; [it was lessened to a gag order, which Boehme abided by for 7 years]. Boehme was encouraged by friends, and afraid that God would be disappointed [if he acted the coward]. He wrote in spite of persecution and the threat of severe punishment, and became a renowned figure throughout much of Europe.
The Nature & Manifestation of God—What was it that this gentle man saw which caused him to be despised by some & so venerated by some of the most spiritual men of his day? Boehme’s insights can be divided into [4 main] categories: Gods nature and creation; the Fall’s meaning; salvation; good & evil’s inter-relationship. The themes comprise a system; it is necessary to read most of his work to grasp it; he is repetitious.
Once pieces are put together, we possess a marvelous illumination on the age-old problem of good & evil. Reading [& understanding] him, we come to feel the plan for mankind which God unfolds is a magnificent one. The core of Boehme’s doctrine, is a masterpiece of invention, arising from the Creator’s desire to sport or play. “Of the reason why the eternal & unchangeable God has created the world, it can only be said that he did it in love. Man’s fall was inevitable, though freely chosen by him, i.e., he eagerly accepted opportunity to eat of the Tree of Good and Evil, to participate in a world of multiplicity.” From early childhood Boehme was aware of manifold invisible realms. His visions demonstrated that man was truly & literally made in God’s image. “The life of a man is a form of the divine will, and to do the will of God means to become fully godlike, realizing ones highest ideals. The abyss manifested itself through the drama of creation whereby God saw Himself in Himself."
Boehme’s 7 phases or “qualities” in God’s process are: desire; motion; anguish; conflagration [passionate fire]; light or love; sound & form; complete realization of 1st 6 in nature. The 1st mentioned here is a contracting force that brings the potential for being an individual. At the same time there is motion (2), an centrifugal, organizing force. Together they generate anguish (3). From the great tension, an explosive passionate fire bursts forth (4). Through this flash are manifested all the opposite pairs of the universe, i.e. the beginning of multiplicity.
Boehme’s 5th quality “is the love-fire which separates from painful fire; divine love appears as a substantial being… The soul in its substance is a magical gush of fire from God the Father’s nature. She is a passionate desire for light.” Boehme’s 6th quality, “sound,” symbolizes sensory awareness. The 7th quality is the complete realization of the 1st 6. Rufus Jones writes: “God’s Word, & eternal Son [is] a visible realization of God’s eternal heart.” Boehme writes, “We find everywhere 2 beings in one—1st, an eternal, divine and spiritual being, & then one that has a beginning & is natural, temporal, & corruptible… God must become man in order that man may become God.”
The Life of Boehme—He was born to Lutheran peasants in a village near Goerlitz, a Bohemian possession. We have a picture of a serious, shy, withdrawn youth, a shepherd for his parents. His formal education was a few years of elementary school. Abraham von Frankenberg, says: “he was modest, patient, & meek of heart.” He seemed to have innate awareness of reality’s invisible dimensions & a deep sense of divinity’s presence behind physical world. A stranger came into the shop one day & foretold his future of greatness, poverty, anguish, & persecution. A short time later Boehme had an illumination that put him in a 7-day state of ecstasy.
In 1600 he had the supreme visionary experience of his life, which established all the major themes upon which his many works were based. After gazing at a pewter plate reflecting the sun, he felt himself in the presence of God and was aware of being inducted into the very heart of the universe. Boehme stated: “I had long been undergoing an intense effort to find the heart of Jesus Christ and to be freed … from everything that turned me from Christ, when suddenly the gate opened. In ¼ hour, I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at university… I knew and saw in myself all 3 worlds: divine, angelical; dark world; external, visible world as outbreathing of the internal, spiritual worlds. He waited 10 years to write it and another illumination in Aurora (Glow of Dawn); he produced 30 books and treatises during his lifetime.
The Aurora was circulated by a nobleman, and it immediately set in motion a long and bitter feud between Boehme and his Lutheran pastor, Gregorious Richter; Boehme was often unflattering to the established clergy. Richter decreed exile; [it was lessened to a gag order, which Boehme abided by for 7 years]. Boehme was encouraged by friends, and afraid that God would be disappointed [if he acted the coward]. He wrote in spite of persecution and the threat of severe punishment, and became a renowned figure throughout much of Europe.
The Nature & Manifestation of God—What was it that this gentle man saw which caused him to be despised by some & so venerated by some of the most spiritual men of his day? Boehme’s insights can be divided into [4 main] categories: Gods nature and creation; the Fall’s meaning; salvation; good & evil’s inter-relationship. The themes comprise a system; it is necessary to read most of his work to grasp it; he is repetitious.
Once pieces are put together, we possess a marvelous illumination on the age-old problem of good & evil. Reading [& understanding] him, we come to feel the plan for mankind which God unfolds is a magnificent one. The core of Boehme’s doctrine, is a masterpiece of invention, arising from the Creator’s desire to sport or play. “Of the reason why the eternal & unchangeable God has created the world, it can only be said that he did it in love. Man’s fall was inevitable, though freely chosen by him, i.e., he eagerly accepted opportunity to eat of the Tree of Good and Evil, to participate in a world of multiplicity.” From early childhood Boehme was aware of manifold invisible realms. His visions demonstrated that man was truly & literally made in God’s image. “The life of a man is a form of the divine will, and to do the will of God means to become fully godlike, realizing ones highest ideals. The abyss manifested itself through the drama of creation whereby God saw Himself in Himself."
Boehme’s 7 phases or “qualities” in God’s process are: desire; motion; anguish; conflagration [passionate fire]; light or love; sound & form; complete realization of 1st 6 in nature. The 1st mentioned here is a contracting force that brings the potential for being an individual. At the same time there is motion (2), an centrifugal, organizing force. Together they generate anguish (3). From the great tension, an explosive passionate fire bursts forth (4). Through this flash are manifested all the opposite pairs of the universe, i.e. the beginning of multiplicity.
Boehme’s 5th quality “is the love-fire which separates from painful fire; divine love appears as a substantial being… The soul in its substance is a magical gush of fire from God the Father’s nature. She is a passionate desire for light.” Boehme’s 6th quality, “sound,” symbolizes sensory awareness. The 7th quality is the complete realization of the 1st 6. Rufus Jones writes: “God’s Word, & eternal Son [is] a visible realization of God’s eternal heart.” Boehme writes, “We find everywhere 2 beings in one—1st, an eternal, divine and spiritual being, & then one that has a beginning & is natural, temporal, & corruptible… God must become man in order that man may become God.”
Seen within the context of the harmonious interplay of the 7 qualities, conflict appears as an essential ingredient of an elegantly proportioned & balanced whole. The divine will is one & undivided, stemming from the purest goodness and expressing itself in a vast plan of intricate design, interwoven with threads from the “dark source.” Boehme writes, “All human beings are fundamentally but one man. This [Adam] is the trunk, the rest are branches, receiving all their power from the trunk. In Paradise, Adam was embraced by eternity. God created him in His image and only when he fell did he become subject to the limitation of time.”
Central for Boehme’s thought was the insight that Adam was originally neither male nor female, but contained the qualities of both sexes within himself. The 7 qualities of God were originally in harmonious balance in man, as they are eternally within God Himself. The development of these qualities depends upon a free choice & experienced knowledge of good & evil, which can exist only in a world of paired opposites. Preparing for the Fall of Man, God drew out the feminine qualities from Adam & formed Eve. “When Lucifer saw his own beauty & realized his high birth, he became desirous of triumphing over the divine birth, & of exalting himself above the heart of God.” He wanted to be a God & to rule in all things by the power of fire. Each individual life reflects the pattern laid down by them & described in Genesis—a dynamic pattern eternally operative with the Godhead.
Salvation & Regeneration—Reflection of the macrocosm of God, the microcosm of the individual soul contains a world of dark anger, as well as a world of sweet loving light; these 2 must always be in conflict. It is the primary intention of the Creator to reconcile these 2 impulses, as they are reconciled within Himself, & to bring the creature back to Himself. [Adam’s journey into the world & a self-centered existence of pride & materialism] carried him far from his creator; only God’s grace could rescue him.
God’s great act of redemption was taken as the Christ Spirit, working through the body & mind of a fully human individual Jesus of Nazareth. Through the incarnation, a new opportunity opened for man, a giant step forward in spiritual evolution. Jesus redeemed us by making it possible for us to realize the same quality of life he had realized, to reach the same heights of spiritual perfection he had reached. Boehme writes: “I must clothe myself in Christ by means of the desire of faith. I must myself enter into his obedience.” We become children of God in Christ through an inward resident grace which regenerates us into childlikeness. This regeneration is a lifelong struggle & growth. “While I was wrestling & battling, being aided by God, a wonderful light arose with my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the true nature of God & man & the relation between them, a thing which theretofore I had never understood.”
It follows from Boehme’s strong emphasis on free will that “election” & “predestination” were contrary to his convictions. Boehme emphasizes Jesus “came to invite sinners.” For the soul that says “yes” to God, allowing the New Man to be woven within itself through work of the resident Holy Spirit, outer life changes drastically. The soul reborn is indifferent to prestige, wealth & worldly distractions; it is meek, self-effacing, concerned for the well-being of others, detests all wars & violence & conflict with its neighbor, acts as a peacemaker among men, & in all ways shows itself a submissive servant & God’s friend. Not until man & God reach out to each other & the birth of the New Man is completed will the purpose of the universe be fulfilled. [As a concert band must be tuned] so must the true human harmony be tuned, combining all voices into a love melody.
The Problem of Free Will—[After looking at Boehme’s insights on evil], we can see that they also illuminate the problem of free will. The decision for good or evil is made as an inevitable outgrowth of the individual’s deepest nature. [Why would anyone choose evil]? Boehme’s visions revealed 2 concepts: that each soul is a combination of good & evil forces; the human soul was the precious core of an evolutionary process. “Every fiery life was brought forth in its beginning to the light.” And God has willed for us a role of surpassing nobility [with] an attitude of abject humility, coupled with a singing, rejoicing exulting faith.
Every manifestation of Being is product of 7 qualities (desire; motion; anguish; conflagration [passionate fire]; light or love; sound & form; complete realization of 1st 6 in nature), combining in long & complex blossoming beyond our comprehension. Having begun development before it enters the earth, the soul continues to evolve throughout its sojourn here, where it is offered the opportunity of articulating itself. Each decision it makes is crucial, both for its next step in life & for its ultimate quality & destiny. The soul suffers many obstacles: physical pain & deprivation; disappointment; humiliation; loss of love; egotism; & sensuality. These distract or lead it away from God. The universe to Boehme is a vast evolutionary system moving on many dimensions towards the full crystallization of the Creator through His creation… Only how courageously & wisely the soul has met the challenge of evil, how enlightened it has become concerning the journey’s purpose, to what degree it has allowed itself to be used as the divine will’s instrument determines its quality in God’s eyes.
Each soul is offered God’s love & opportunities to turn to God repeatedly. The challenge of evil is a thread woven throughout the structure of the universe; its mysterious patterns are not to be fathomed by man’s mind. If a soul becomes hardened & “darkened” by too many wrong choices, if it has become too deeply entangled in materialism, too self-centered, proud & unloving, it is in danger of losing its capacity to respond to the divine benevolence within itself, & is lost forever. For Boehme heaven & hell are not places, but states of mind & soul.
God brought the universe into existence that we might have the opportunity of understanding good & evil & creating our own destiny. Love must 1st be recognized, through a contrast with hate, understood, then laboriously & painfully struggled for through gradual relinquishing of selfish will. God dignifies [& respects] man by giving him autonomy in creating his own soul and destiny, and He respects man’s decision whatever its nature.
Practical Applications—Man [on his part] strives to achieve a middle ground between 2 dangerous possibilities; failing to develop his individuality sufficiently; or becoming self-willed & [going the way of Lucifer]. If God wants to differentiate Himself in us, His mirror, then we must develop our capacities to the utmost, discovering, imagining, creating on the intellectual level, & entering into a wide range of relationships.
[If a soul is stuck in the battle between desire & motion, & there is no ignition into a passionate fire], the soul cannot find peace. Youth’s hostility & self-centeredness isn’t a stage that can be skipped. [The soul is taking stock of itself, who it is, what it can contribute]. No soul can move forward until it makes peace with itself. The more familiar & probably more difficult source of evil [—i.e. prideful self-indulgence—plagues those who] are enchanted with themselves & their own games, & genuinely unaware of any purpose in the world beyond self-indulgence. Either of these 2 possibilities can open the soul to the spirits of evil, & result in the soul’s final “hardening & darkening.” A small amount of self-doubt [which translates into realization of one’s role as God’s servant], & arrogance [which becomes recognition of one’s power & worth], are necessary.
Boehme’s thoughts avoid the following 4 unsatisfactory ways to explain or reconcile evil with an omnipotent and benevolent Creator:
The absolute denial of evil, [explaining it away as] an error or illusion.
The despairing, resigned acceptance of evil because both God and man are partially and irrevocably evil.
Creating God’s adversary of equal power, waging an eternal war with each other.
Attributing evil to man alone, [thus creating an unbearable and unnecessary burden of guilt].
The blueprint of the divine source, [the 7 qualities], being firmly rooted within every man & demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth's life, cannot be set aside without the risk of neurosis, illness and finally spiritual death.
Jacob Boehme predicted that his works would gradually fall into obscurity, and reemerge “in the time of the lily.” Many signs point to the likelihood that that time is at hand. It is to be hoped that Quakers in particular, will re-discover in Boehme an inspiring link with the spiritual currents upon which their own faith originally rested. [This and other] mystical streams are once again bubbling to the surface throughout the world, offering nourishment, refreshment and a straight way to the Lord for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
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Central for Boehme’s thought was the insight that Adam was originally neither male nor female, but contained the qualities of both sexes within himself. The 7 qualities of God were originally in harmonious balance in man, as they are eternally within God Himself. The development of these qualities depends upon a free choice & experienced knowledge of good & evil, which can exist only in a world of paired opposites. Preparing for the Fall of Man, God drew out the feminine qualities from Adam & formed Eve. “When Lucifer saw his own beauty & realized his high birth, he became desirous of triumphing over the divine birth, & of exalting himself above the heart of God.” He wanted to be a God & to rule in all things by the power of fire. Each individual life reflects the pattern laid down by them & described in Genesis—a dynamic pattern eternally operative with the Godhead.
Salvation & Regeneration—Reflection of the macrocosm of God, the microcosm of the individual soul contains a world of dark anger, as well as a world of sweet loving light; these 2 must always be in conflict. It is the primary intention of the Creator to reconcile these 2 impulses, as they are reconciled within Himself, & to bring the creature back to Himself. [Adam’s journey into the world & a self-centered existence of pride & materialism] carried him far from his creator; only God’s grace could rescue him.
God’s great act of redemption was taken as the Christ Spirit, working through the body & mind of a fully human individual Jesus of Nazareth. Through the incarnation, a new opportunity opened for man, a giant step forward in spiritual evolution. Jesus redeemed us by making it possible for us to realize the same quality of life he had realized, to reach the same heights of spiritual perfection he had reached. Boehme writes: “I must clothe myself in Christ by means of the desire of faith. I must myself enter into his obedience.” We become children of God in Christ through an inward resident grace which regenerates us into childlikeness. This regeneration is a lifelong struggle & growth. “While I was wrestling & battling, being aided by God, a wonderful light arose with my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the true nature of God & man & the relation between them, a thing which theretofore I had never understood.”
It follows from Boehme’s strong emphasis on free will that “election” & “predestination” were contrary to his convictions. Boehme emphasizes Jesus “came to invite sinners.” For the soul that says “yes” to God, allowing the New Man to be woven within itself through work of the resident Holy Spirit, outer life changes drastically. The soul reborn is indifferent to prestige, wealth & worldly distractions; it is meek, self-effacing, concerned for the well-being of others, detests all wars & violence & conflict with its neighbor, acts as a peacemaker among men, & in all ways shows itself a submissive servant & God’s friend. Not until man & God reach out to each other & the birth of the New Man is completed will the purpose of the universe be fulfilled. [As a concert band must be tuned] so must the true human harmony be tuned, combining all voices into a love melody.
The Problem of Free Will—[After looking at Boehme’s insights on evil], we can see that they also illuminate the problem of free will. The decision for good or evil is made as an inevitable outgrowth of the individual’s deepest nature. [Why would anyone choose evil]? Boehme’s visions revealed 2 concepts: that each soul is a combination of good & evil forces; the human soul was the precious core of an evolutionary process. “Every fiery life was brought forth in its beginning to the light.” And God has willed for us a role of surpassing nobility [with] an attitude of abject humility, coupled with a singing, rejoicing exulting faith.
Every manifestation of Being is product of 7 qualities (desire; motion; anguish; conflagration [passionate fire]; light or love; sound & form; complete realization of 1st 6 in nature), combining in long & complex blossoming beyond our comprehension. Having begun development before it enters the earth, the soul continues to evolve throughout its sojourn here, where it is offered the opportunity of articulating itself. Each decision it makes is crucial, both for its next step in life & for its ultimate quality & destiny. The soul suffers many obstacles: physical pain & deprivation; disappointment; humiliation; loss of love; egotism; & sensuality. These distract or lead it away from God. The universe to Boehme is a vast evolutionary system moving on many dimensions towards the full crystallization of the Creator through His creation… Only how courageously & wisely the soul has met the challenge of evil, how enlightened it has become concerning the journey’s purpose, to what degree it has allowed itself to be used as the divine will’s instrument determines its quality in God’s eyes.
Each soul is offered God’s love & opportunities to turn to God repeatedly. The challenge of evil is a thread woven throughout the structure of the universe; its mysterious patterns are not to be fathomed by man’s mind. If a soul becomes hardened & “darkened” by too many wrong choices, if it has become too deeply entangled in materialism, too self-centered, proud & unloving, it is in danger of losing its capacity to respond to the divine benevolence within itself, & is lost forever. For Boehme heaven & hell are not places, but states of mind & soul.
God brought the universe into existence that we might have the opportunity of understanding good & evil & creating our own destiny. Love must 1st be recognized, through a contrast with hate, understood, then laboriously & painfully struggled for through gradual relinquishing of selfish will. God dignifies [& respects] man by giving him autonomy in creating his own soul and destiny, and He respects man’s decision whatever its nature.
Practical Applications—Man [on his part] strives to achieve a middle ground between 2 dangerous possibilities; failing to develop his individuality sufficiently; or becoming self-willed & [going the way of Lucifer]. If God wants to differentiate Himself in us, His mirror, then we must develop our capacities to the utmost, discovering, imagining, creating on the intellectual level, & entering into a wide range of relationships.
[If a soul is stuck in the battle between desire & motion, & there is no ignition into a passionate fire], the soul cannot find peace. Youth’s hostility & self-centeredness isn’t a stage that can be skipped. [The soul is taking stock of itself, who it is, what it can contribute]. No soul can move forward until it makes peace with itself. The more familiar & probably more difficult source of evil [—i.e. prideful self-indulgence—plagues those who] are enchanted with themselves & their own games, & genuinely unaware of any purpose in the world beyond self-indulgence. Either of these 2 possibilities can open the soul to the spirits of evil, & result in the soul’s final “hardening & darkening.” A small amount of self-doubt [which translates into realization of one’s role as God’s servant], & arrogance [which becomes recognition of one’s power & worth], are necessary.
Boehme’s thoughts avoid the following 4 unsatisfactory ways to explain or reconcile evil with an omnipotent and benevolent Creator:
The absolute denial of evil, [explaining it away as] an error or illusion.
The despairing, resigned acceptance of evil because both God and man are partially and irrevocably evil.
Creating God’s adversary of equal power, waging an eternal war with each other.
Attributing evil to man alone, [thus creating an unbearable and unnecessary burden of guilt].
The blueprint of the divine source, [the 7 qualities], being firmly rooted within every man & demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth's life, cannot be set aside without the risk of neurosis, illness and finally spiritual death.
Jacob Boehme predicted that his works would gradually fall into obscurity, and reemerge “in the time of the lily.” Many signs point to the likelihood that that time is at hand. It is to be hoped that Quakers in particular, will re-discover in Boehme an inspiring link with the spiritual currents upon which their own faith originally rested. [This and other] mystical streams are once again bubbling to the surface throughout the world, offering nourishment, refreshment and a straight way to the Lord for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
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213. THE TRIPLE WAY: purgation, illumination, union (by George Terhune Peck; 1977)
About the Author—George Peck took his doctorate in Italian history at the University of Chicago in 1942, served in the Italian section of the Office of Strategic Services in WW II, was a POW for 6 months, and received a bronze star. For the past 15 years he has been a member of the Stanford-Greenwich Meeting, CT. He has served for more than a decade on the Executive Committee of the New York region of the A.F.S.C.
[Introduction]—[Are experienced & weighty Friends bored with meeting when they go away]? Can it be that those who have left us are stuck in a pattern? Teilhard de Chardin writes: God . . . waits for us every instant in our action & in the work of each moment.” So important is this concept of growth that it is voiced again and again. 3 levels of spiritual progress are [an important part of] the thought patterns of the ancient world.
The 3 levels correspond to 3 stages of purging, illumination, & union. Teresa of Avila writes: “The beginner must think of oneself setting out to make a garden in which the Lord is to take his delight, yet in a soil unfruitful & full of weeds... The garden can be watered 4 ways: drawn up by hand from a well; drawn up by water-wheel; from a stream; from heavy rain. [The last,] when the Lord waters it with no labor of ours is incomparably better [than the other ways].” One can adopt these 3 stages or categories as a kind of map, which is needed to understand the journey. [The map lets me] explore where I have been, tell of whom I met there, & to peer ahead.
Purgation—In Jewish and Christian experience, purgation has meant the attainment of moral purity. 50 years ago I was brought up guilty. The preparatory school I went to was dedicated to Achievement through solid and largely unaided human effort. Acceptance in the community meant being popular. It is easy to feel guilty, easy to get stuck in the pattern of driving out evil and striving to be good. [Any number of social groups will try to induce guilt]. Incitements to status preservation advanced by advertisers are based on pervasive social anxiety. [George Fox’s answer was]: “Mind the Light and dwell in it . . . it will keep you atop of all the world.”
Spiritual growth comes not through the denigration of humanity but its divinization. But one cannot shed a lifelong burden of guilt in one day, especially in a world that encourages guilt. I discovered Freud, who changed the shape and terminology of Judeo-Christian moralism. The guilt was no longer mine but Dad’s and Mom’s. People were led to normality [but not blessedness]. Freud added the dimension of the unconscious, and revived the status of the dream world. Freud proclaimed that the real nature of inner man and woman was erotic.
I and many others quickly accepted Jung’s modifications of Freud; [he introduced archetypes &] cured many. In Jung’s unconscious, the sinner is likely to run into the dangerous other sex, & the soul becomes the battleground between sexual natures. But additional reflection reveals that every human consists of a natural mixture of the 2 natures, which needn't be in conflict, but only accepted. [Since] Jung didn't accept the omnipotence of God, his thought is not of much value as one progresses to the higher stages of illumination and union.
I did not realize how important asceticism was. My ascetic period was involuntary as I became a prisoner of war in October 1944. I spent 6 months in prison, 5 months in solitary confinement, and learned a lot. The 1st lesson of extreme deprivation taught independence of the things of the flesh. The 2nd lesson was realizing that I did not deserve all this, and through my dreams (Phillippe Souppault’s “theater of prisoners”), that my unconscious could be full of fun rather than dangerous and dirty. The evil that is so magnified by Freud and Jung is in reality irrelevant—a strange and aberrant accident for one who knows God. Joel Goldsmith has taught how the appearance of evil can be overcome by the inner conviction of the omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of God. The illusion of evil must be daily confronted with the reality of God. The dogmatic disbelief in spiritual reality in America is supported by the heresies of determinism and humanism.
[Economic, sociological, & psychological] determinism makes human beings slaves of external circumstance & infects all social science. I am angered by the determinist who [label] the Society of Friends as “white, middle class” & because socio-economic categories are so widely accepted. God is no respecter of status or persons; [labels inhibit God’s love]. Love can operate only if we realize what unites us and not what separates us.
Humanism denies God. One of the greatest dangers we face as Children of God is to think we are so by our own efforts and merits. The proposition that health + wealth= happiness is drummed into us daily on TV. When humanism leads one into thinking of oneself as a good person, problems arise. Perfect joy lies in the complete rejection of individual personality and the complete acceptance that all good comes from God. Identity is not defined by a name or a body or a set of habits, but by one’s relation to the eternal.
Illumination—It seems to me that during the course of life, moments of both illumination and union occur during the process of purgation. I do not think the human being has ever existed who has not experienced some form of illumination. Since illumination can come to all people, Quakers maintain that God is in fact in all people. Light comes in a completely unpredictable way, beyond human will, reason or imagination.
Anna in Mister God, This is Anna complains that thinkers are forever putting God in boxes. The imagery or box [that one puts God in] is a matter of taste, and one cannot argue about tastes. Through the experience of Quakerism and the teachings of Joel Goldsmith, I have come to see illumination is an every day commonplace affair and that one must set aside periods of each day to be open to it. [Spending time in nature reveals many of earth’s marvels]. Many companions can be found in this exploration of God in nature, such as Rousseau, Wordsworth, Goethe, Thoreau, Whitman, Muir and Jefferies.
Visions are very common in the Roman Catholic tradition [e.g. Narciso Tomé, Joan of Arc, St. Francis, Teresa of Avila]. Among Protestants visions have always been suspect. Churchmen who are more involved in doctrinal definitions, social work, moral teaching and organizational power have denigrated mysticism. For years I found God in churches on a regular basis. Among the Children of Light I came to think of God as light. The “dark night of the soul” of St John of the Cross [led me to find that] God was in the darkness, too. St. Augustine says that God is a Way beyond ways, A Good beyond goods, Power beyond powers.
Among the forms in which I find a rich God experience is that of music. Dance, as Ram Das illustrates, provides an analogous form of divine expression. The structure of the meeting for worship does not allow dance, and permits only single melody sung by one voice. Another and quite different form of illumination comes through confrontation, the overcoming of threatening danger by the power of God. God’s power comes when the individual sees the threat as an illusion. Illumination also releases us from threats other than those of violence. I have spent most of my life worrying about money and jobs and only recently have begun to receive the illumination that exposes want as illusion. On the inside I am beginning to see that it is not my efforts that produce the supply, but God’s grace. It is not my harvest, but God’s bounty.
Clare of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, and Teresa of Avila overcame the fear of illness, and Paul, Ignatius Loyala, and Fox survived incredible physical injuries through spiritual power. The fear of death is perhaps the ultimate evil overcome by illumination. Death transforms that precious little human personality that we have been coddling all our lives. To renounce that personality and see it fused in God is the ultimate illumination.
April 1945, I thought I was going to be shot. After a time of solitary, agony, and prayer, the spirit of God came to me. A great peace descended upon me as I told God that I had done all that I could as human being and that I was ready to go if that was God’s will. Suddenly I felt free and the great peace was filled with joy. God did not take me then, but he taught me a great lesson. Sometime death will come and it will be all right.
Union—Just as the processes of purgation and illumination run along at the same time, so illumination merges into the experience of union with God or ecstasy. Ecstasy is not limited to Christian and Jewish channels; philosophers from ancient Greece reported trances. Teilhard de Chardin developed a cosmological vision in The Phenomenon of Man of evolution toward a future “omega point” of union with God. Abraham Maslow studied ecstatic trances or “peak experiences.”
Joyful & invigorating as these experiences of union are, they present the danger that the individual may take to investing human notions with divine purpose. The early Quaker James Nayler so identified himself with Jesus that he allowed himself to be led in a procession aping Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Though far from infallible, the testing of an opening by the group experience can often distinguish notions from truth. In meeting the universal spirit enters in the same way into the universal consciousness of each of us. A heightened awareness of the union of the group with God comes with practice. The gathered meeting as an expression of union with God is the rock upon which the Society of Friends is built. It is a revolutionary doctrine which in Howard Brinton’s analysis transcends the bounds of both Roman Catholicism & Protestantism in 2 important respects.
The 1st is that God speaks directly to us. His revelation is continuous & not limited by the tradition of saints, or by the letter of the canon of Scripture. Fox clearly states that Friends deny tradition & Scripture only when these are dead & that both are aids to our primary goal of direct union with God.
The 2nd revolutionary element is that God’s role in our lives is a daily experience. Friends are plain people of all shapes & sizes. If revelation has come to them, it can come to anyone—not just to the heroes of Christian & Jewish history. This is so every day. If we don't “pray without ceasing,” if we don't carry the sense of the presence of God with us always, God’s grace doesn't operate in us; it is dormant unless we open ourselves to it.
We set aside an hour or even a minute during the day in which we each turn to God. Then, when 1st Day rolls around, we can come to meeting for worship rich in grace & be surrounded by God’s presence in all our friends, by the love that passes understanding.
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462. A Culture of Faithfulness (by Marcelle Martin; 2020)
About the Author—Marcelle Martin believes Quakers are called to play a crucial role in the human transformation needed in our time. Since 1996 she has been leading courses and retreats on Quaker practices, history, and spiritual journey at Pendle Hill's, the School of the Spirit's Way's, and New England YM's programs. She has written 2 books and 2 Pendle Hill Pamphlets (#366, Invitation to a Deeper Communion; 382. Holding one another in the Light). She has served as a spiritual nurturer for more than 2 decades.
[Introduction]—In order for our lives to testify to the Divine Reality, we need to root our testimony in the Spirit's divine healing power. We are called to live & model a culture of faithfulness—collectively supporting one another in attending to the Spirit's movement—to counter a Western culture obsessed with material reality, possessions, & profit. Quaker & other Spirit-filled groups have provided [& can provide] impetus for big changes in human culture in these times of big change, if we practice radical openness to the Spirit & deep faithfulness. It requires awareness of & receptivity to divine guidance, & willingness to become agents of God's loving power. Humanity is being guided toward well-being for everyone, if only we will listen & follow divine guidance.
The 1st Quakers learned practices that allowed transforming power of a fountain of Spirit to flow through them. Experiencing being immersed in God's presence within themselves, created deep spiritual bonds that empowered them to support leadings of the Spirit that rose among them & beyond them. Faithfulness requires deep inward immersion in the Spirit & courageous risk-taking action to the world. We have continued to build on practices & community 1st Friends discovered. If we take time-honored practice seriously, we can surrender more to the inward-springing fountain of Life & Love. We can be more effective at creating a culture of faithfulness in the society around us, by being a powerful spiritual force today for justice, healing, & a restored earth.
Nurturing Awareness of the Divine Presence—There is a Divine Reality that we are intimately connected to & which communicates to us within. Divine Reality guides us to particular tasks & life circumstances. The spiritually sensitive pay careful attention to Divine Reality, can sense genuine leading in others, & can nurture leadings. Faithfulness begins with noticing & attending to the Spirit's promptings, even when they differ from our ideas & preferences. Sustained action must be from the Spirit's wellspring & rooted in the divine source.
Creating a spirit-led community begins by helping people become aware of the sacred reality that permeates and sustains the world. Opening to Divine Reality requires regular spiritual practice, both alone and in community. The more often we devote our Self to prayer, meditation, devotional reading, and calming physical practices, [the more aware we can be of subtle inner experiences, & learn Spirit's language. Gathering with others "who believe God still speaks directly to them" in worship is a great aid in opening to a direct encounter with Divine Presence.
Sitting with these others helps "kindle" the worship experience of everyone. When most present feel a spiritual quickening & a sense of being joined together in sacred communion with one another & with God, the meeting is "gathered." They sense the deeper reality in which we live, interconnected with each other & united with all-pervading Divine Presence. Sometimes a unified message from God is delivered through several people who rise to speak. Spiritual nourishment is as necessary for a life of faithfulness as food is for physical life.
Religious Education—For many Quaker meetings, gathered meetings are rare. Perhaps we aren't fully submitting ourselves to [embracing] the ways God leads us in matters requiring courage & sacrifice. As a religious society, like our culture, we have been gradually drifting toward functional atheism, losing our ability to recognize & trust in Divine Light that is present & active within us & the world. To be Spirit-filled, faithful people, more is required than an hour of meeting for worship on a Sunday morning; religious education is critical.
We need to know spiritual nourishment is possible & how it's possible; inward openness of the mind, heart, & soul is necessary. Openness allows for experiencing Divine living presence. Western society teaches people to distrust & disregard the Spirit's movement, to conform to narrow patterns of belief & behavior. Conformity is unconscious & difficult to recognize & overcome. The Spirit asks people to take risks & witness to alternatives based on divine wisdom, love, & justice. Bible-based vocal ministry in early Friend's long meetings for worship provided rich education in Quaker faith & practice. Religious education today needs to provide Bible stories & accounts of faithful Quakers, which can help us consider our participation in, & response to today's evils.
Many courageously faithful today will only reveal their lives' inner dimensions & the nature of their service or witness if encouraged by community. [It is important that such people's stories are shared]. Knowing we are part of a larger story, with Divine Reality at the center, invites us to a more Spirit-filled life. It is also vital to know God gives us leadings to take actions in relation to personal circumstances & larger social ones. Our faith community needs to teach young & old how to enter into awareness of the peaceful state that is our true essence.
David Hartsough grew up in a family & community which lived faith courageously. That & participating in Quaker inner-city workcamps prompted him to seek to eliminate social injustices. These experiences led David to experience an unexpected leading. In silence & solitary worship at a meeting house, he experienced "deep clarity, as if the Great Spirit were speaking." He received guidance to enroll in historically black Howard College, even though he had been accepted at a white Quaker college, which his mother wanted him to attend. In sophomore year Hartsough transferred to Howard as its only white student. He joined fellow Howard students in the sit-in movement's launching & picketed with them in front of a D.C. Woolworth's. When arrested they sat in jail until Monday, then returned to their classes after court appearances; David continues to work for peace & justice.
Growing in Discernment— The Spirit's genuine leadings must be distinguished from inner & outer voices that crowd minds & hearts. Friends [in community] will help each other discern among different promptings & impulses. Practicing discernment is 1st applied to vocal ministry. How is this a message from Spirit? How is this something to be kept in or spoken aloud? When is it to be shared? How did you feel while speaking & afterwards? How did you add [worldly words] to the Spiritual words? How were you faithful?
When we gather to discern God's guidance for faith-community business, we are invited to let go of ideas & desires about decisions being made in order to "hear" the Spirit as it speaks through the meeting's members. In Spirit, Friends can be gathered into unity about a decision. It often comes when love for each other, its connecting one to others, becomes more important than a certain outcome. Peace might be accompanied by silence, awe, or quiet joy. In such experiences we encounter God's unseen power & grow in discernment & faithfulness.
Spiritual Companionship—Growth in the spiritual life requires others' input. Quakerism emphasizes that direct relationship exists between each person & God. Friends have found spiritual companionship helpful in opening to direct relationship & sorting the Spirit's leadings from other promptings. In spiritual friendship, 2 people take time to talk about inner life informally, or in regular meetings & a process called "spiritual nurture" or "direction." Seasoned Friends, or elders, play a role in cultivating faith & faithfulness of meeting community.
Serving on meeting committees & sharing care for our community's life can be an important spiritual practice. Communicating clearly & lovingly, forgiving, & sharing tasks are powerful ways to invite Spirit to be active. Many feel a need to be in ongoing small groups supporting attention to inner life [e.g. study of Bible, Quaker pamphlets, Faith & Practice; Experiment with Light groups. Over time, groups can be places where people reveal inner lives to one another & receive support, greater awareness of God's presence & activity among them.
Clearness Committees—Historically, clearness committees, have been used for [clarifying & verifying spiritual truth in a person's relationship] in membership, marriage, recorded ministry, or traveling in ministry. In the 1960's, it became more common for individuals to ask for a clearness committee to help discern divine guidance about a momentous decision. 3 to 7 people gather to help the focus person look at the issue from different perspectives, while seeking the Spirit's leading. Committee members ask questions, [not necessarily looking for immediate answers]; everyone listens prayerfully & [newly revealed truths are spoken]. Awareness of inner voices speaking out of fear, ego, "family or cultural tapes" rather than out of the "still, small voice of God," may arise.
Spiritual leadings often require things that differ from the status quo; resistance is normal at first. Clarity coming from clearness committee is sometimes surprising; its truth is affirmed in the heart. [Affirmations we receive from committee aren't always those we expect; they may reveal a soul's desire different from our original understanding]. When a person's soul reveals its truth, clearness committees sense they are on holy ground.
Supporting Calls, Leadings, & Ministry—[If a leading to service becomes several along the same line], it might be seen as a call [to ministry]. Quakers testify that all are called to ministry. Outside the meetinghouse, each person is called to participate in Spirit-led ministry of truth-telling & service, depending on their spiritual gifts. If we act faithfully, thoughts, words, & actions can be full of divine grace. Individual leadings to ministry include: religious education; spiritual nurture; or witness for [environmental], racial & economic justice. A meeting may be called to support or participate in the ministry; this is taking the ministry "under its care." Yearly meetings of Friends differ in their procedures for discerning, recognizing, naming, & supporting leadings or calls. The practice of recognizing calls to ministry had fallen into disuse during the 20th century. Since 1996, [several] meetings have recognized and now support the calls, leadings and ministries of their members, beginning the process with a clearness committee for the person called.
I was in my 30's and new to Quakerism when I began to feel I needed to ask my meeting to recognize my call to a ministry of spiritual nurture; I was afraid to do so for months. My appointed clearness committee, with one member specifically chosen for the doubts he had, researched how other monthly meetings responded to requests similar to mine. I met privately with the skeptic, who said I was neither a polished speaker nor "enlightened." In the next meeting, I admitted to having no academic training in ministry, and no continuous sense of connection or communion with God. I still felt called by the Spirit to this service. By our 3rd meeting, the committee was in unity about the genuineness of this call. [Once the person has clarity that they are being led], the meeting must discern if it is led, in turn, to take this ministry under its care. What forms of recognition or support are needed from a meeting supporting someone who has reached clarity on their call to service?
Supporting Faithful Action—Faithfulness is more than being clear about a leading; it moves us into action. Once a ministry is taken under the care of the meeting, a committee is often appointed to meet regularly with the person following the leading to provide support, oversight, & ongoing discernment. Meetings with several ministries under its care may have a committee set up to serve 2 or more Friends. Oversight is listening to those following a leading or carrying a ministry, helping them discern when to say yes to a next step & how to prepare for service. Their questions reveal what is needed, what is resisted, what is running ahead of the Guide. Serving on an Oversight Committee is a profound spiritual learning process, a witness to another's deep encounter with God, and an active role in God's ministry. It helps clarify committee members' own calls and leadings.
Overcoming Impediments to Faithfulness—Members of an intimate spiritual community serve as mirrors, helping each other to see both shadow & brightness within, & to distinguish one from the other. The 1st Quakers were shocked by the pervasive influence of greed & fear on society, & how their own conformity to many of those norms was a kind of resistance to God. Today many use psychological terms for the self-deception, the many obstacles formed in or created by our Self. Whatever we call these deviations from love, truth, & justice, we are all in need of healing & transformation. Most experience deep conflict between our yearnings for truth & faithfulness & our cravings for acceptance, status, comfort, & control. We need help noticing what's going on inside, & a communal space where we feel safe to uncover, look at, & explore the ways fear controls so much of our thinking & behavior. We need help recognizing the presence and activity of God in our lives. We need to be vulnerable, open to God's healing & to expression of God's love through us in humble, courageous ways.
Meeting Support for Individual Action—Falmouth Preparative Meeting has supported the climate change ministry & witness of Jay O'Hara for years. He says, "[Committee members] make me drill down into [my leadings] in a way that's really loving." He appreciates his committee saying no to things they sense aren't Spirit-led. They supported O'Hara and a friend as they staged a protest of carbon emission, by blocking a coal delivery to Brayton Point Power Station, which was one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in the Northeast.
They made a "necessity defense" using the testimony of climate scientists. Criminal charges were dropped and O'Hara and Ward, made restitution to local and state police for the expense of dealing with their boat. 400 people protested the coal-burning power plant; 44 were arrested. When asked if he considered himself an "environmentalist" or a "climate activist," O'Hara answered, "I am a Quaker ... I believe there are still powerful forces of history to be unleashed ... for the revealing of new ways of being in the world, of our relation to the earth and to one another. We need people's whole hearts and full commitment."
[Meeting Support for Individual Action: A Call to Bosnia]—Lyndon Back needed to understand the collapse of a 400 year-old bridge connecting Christians & Muslims. She experienced a concern, a need to pay attention to the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Back felt led to sponsor a Muslim girl & host her & a Serb on weekends away from Quaker boarding school. Back was invited by the students' families to visit. A clearness committee helped her discern she was being led to go, learn, & listen; her meeting approved her travel letter.
Her committee members prayed for her while she was in the former Yugoslavia. In morning meditation & prayer, Back connected again & again with her leading's spiritual source. She visited families of many different ethnic groups; she helped a mixed marriage family. Back home, a dream-voice told her to return to Bosnia. Her clearness committee felt led to become an oversight committee. She quit her job & volunteered with the Balkan Peace Teams. She was part of a small team that supported young peace activists working all sides of the conflict. After US & NATO crushed local peace efforts in bombing Kosovo, Back traveled the world to describe what she had witnessed. She still speaks to Quakers about following leadings, peace work & the complexities of war.
Faithfulness Groups—Those Friends desiring to be faithful to the call or leading they have received can form "faithfulness groups," peer groups, or accountability groups, which are all a sort of mutual clearness committee. They devote 1 hour each to 2 people when they meet. The focus person talks for 15 minutes. Then the group, as moved by the Spirit, asks questions that clarify for the focus person their leading. Most get to be focus person 4 times a year. A faithfulness group, with growing, intimate knowledge of each other, reminds members of their leadings, draws attention to recurring stumbling blocks, distractions, and missteps, and helps people find the path again. It is possible for people of different faiths to form such a group. If any groups veers into problem-solving, advice-giving, or story-telling, a convener gently reminds them of the [spiritual, clarifying-question aspect] of the group. Participants receive prayer attention and companionship to remind them of God's presence.
In my group, something in my heart relaxes and opens wider when people talk about God-experiences or listen lovingly when I speak. Revealing fears, hurts, and resistance helps us allow God to heal us. Monthly gatherings are a profound spiritual practice. We have supported each in a variety of settings, from meeting business to parenting to activism to presenting workshops. Oversight or faithfulness groups, through questions & listening, prayer & encouragement, & especially through love, provide holy accompaniment & help us learn to allow God to be active within us. Gradually, we give over more control of our Self and our lives to the Spirit, and we abide more constantly in the Eternal Being, becoming more surrendered and more alive to the ways God calls us.
Support for Faithfulness beyond the Meeting—Meetings desiring spiritual vitality can be transformed by supporting members taking part in workshops & long-term spiritual & faith-nurturing programs. Meetings hold themselves accountable for a leadings by sending members to take part in gatherings or groups with that focus. US Quakers, divided by theology but united in leading, joined in 1917 to form American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). During & after WWI & WWII, AFSC joined with British Friends Service Council in war reconstruction & in feeding children. The 2 groups shared vision, experience, & spiritual guidance in action.
In recent years, Friends of African Descent in Philadelphia had a leading to create a peace center in the inner-city. They created the Ujima Peace Center in North Philadelphia. The Center reduced violence, provided a safe place for people in the community, peace training for children, classes on tenants rights, & a monthly food give-away. On Sundays, several local meetings came together at Ujima for a community meeting for worship.
In 2019, AFSC organized an interfaith witness to protest the border wall being built by the US government. Together they publicly witnessed to their conviction that strangers are to be welcomed & treated with dignity. Lucy Duncan said: "[We need] to be the courageous many ... We won't get home to a transformed world unless we can [go] together ... Now is the time for all of us to ... take risks of faith to make real the society we envision & know is possible." Many Friends took part in the People's March on Washington (1963), the Poor People's March (2018), & the protest for clean water & preserving sacred land at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
A Community Formed for Faithfulness—We need to know our Self better & become deeply intimate with God. We need quiet receptivity to divine love & guidance, & to hear stories of faith & transformation [as calls to faithfulness]. We need spiritual friendships or groups to support spiritual growth, [& to help strengthen resolve] when God's way differs from cultural norms. Those not called to demonstrate in the streets or travel in the ministry are called to support those who are, & those led in other ways. We may be called to live more simply.
Faithfulness begins with willingness to shift motivation to the divine perspective, not the human urges of isolated selves. When we testify to & embody sacred Divine Reality within us & creation, our faith can offer powerfully transforming healing. Collective faithfulness to divine leadings can unlock unused healing potential to address current global crises. Let us participate more wholeheartedly in God's loving, healing work in the world.
Queries—What does faithfulness mean to you? How can we nurture faithfulness in our Self and our communities? What faithfulness story do you have to share? What spiritual practices help you become aware of Divine Presence and Calling? How can we help each other distinguish Spirit-leadings from wishes, ego, and social pressure? What ministry have you been called to? How does your meeting recognize and support members' leadings and ministries? How have you struggled to be aware of self-deception, fears, or resisting God?
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32. Our Hearts are Restless (by Gilbert Kilpack; 1946)
About the Author—Gilbert Kilpack (1914-99) was born & raised in Portland, Oregon. He did undergraduate work at the University of Oregon & received an M.A. degree from Oberlin College in Christian Philosophy. He spent 5 years as Stony Run Friends Meeting's (Baltimore) executive secretary. He joined Pendle Hill's staff in '48, becoming Director of Studies in '54. He gave Philadelphia Young Friends Movement’s Wm. Penn Lecture in '46, The City of God & City of Man, which addressed issues raised by the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings.
[Introduction]—The outcome of human living & thinking depends on interpretation of Genesis' 1st 3 chapters. They tell a story of the agonizing discovery of human freedom to daily choose good or to always fall into evil. Freedom is the source of dismal failure [& separation from God] & the means of our vision of growth into goodness. We are separated from God, but secretly united to God. Human corruption & nobility say that we are a half-being. Nothing is so important as completion of our ½-lives, the God-filling of our void, the divine 2nd birth which is the real solution to, rather than the [temporary submersion of] human problems. [The Quakers'] "that of God in every man" is [a testimony], & points to something infinitely more than the good in every one. Sensitivity to our hearts' restless questioning, the endless questing [for completeness], for something greater is needed. [Augustine, Rousseau, Jesus, Plato, Ben Jonson, & George Herbert, through vision, pronouncement, parables, interpretation of myths, & metaphors, say that God is our goal, destiny, & source of meaning.
[Burning Questions]—Incompleteness of life forms itself into a burning question. [Throughout the centuries this question's prominence waxes & wanes, from wildfire to tiny glow]; we regularly turn away from it. [Commuter, housewife, student, soldier, CO/ mental health worker, preacher, rich man, philanthropist, voluptuary, & Quaker, before they are pulled back into the mundane, worldly tasks set before them], are brought low in an instant, see themselves in eternity's light & ask: Why am I here? What is the point to my life, human life, any life? Every one has their favorite "out," their favorite blinkers to keep the eternal issue at a safe distance.
These questions are more of a spirit, an attitude of soul which looks upon the world and creation with great expectancy. It is the everlasting thirst expressed by Thoreau. Honest people ask themselves whether life is worth living, whether there is anything worth getting ready for. The settled "religious" person feels certain that all is well with ones soul and does not care to be disturbed; doubters and seekers and sinners despising their sin are nearer the Kingdom than those contented "religious" folk. Our salvation lies in giving way daily to the seekings, promptings, and questionings which assail us from within.
The average soul of our day is a blank check & simply has no spiritual heritage. If one is human at all, one inwardly, secretly hungers for a life of faith. [The italicized questions above] are a hint that life must hold something great, that it should open upon exalted vistas & potentialities. These questions are a divine hint, a seed of divine truth. Jesus wrestled with every possible evasion of the essential questions & with every false & easy answer ever used. Why am I here? What is the point to my life, human life, any life? is simply "that of God in every one" seeking fulfillment. We should always [be struck & awed by] the strange, terrible, & wonderful implications of "that of God ..." How are we [becoming] ready to give way daily to God's unitive healing, both the cauterizing & the anointing? We Friends belong among those people who search [unreservedly] for the Kingdom of Christ, & who believe that by turning our hearts, minds, & wills to God persistently we will begin to live now in the Kingdom. How can the nightmare epoch in which we live [help] arouse us to [this] our condition? How are we ready to be discovered by the love and truth which has been seeking us everlastingly?
[We are Not Ready/ Simple Gospel]—As individuals we are willing to be ready & reformed as long as we are spared the labor of getting ready & the unsettling reforming process. We want to: be spiritually alive & always comfortable; be prayerful without earlier mornings to allow for it; possess power to lead without undergoing the discipline that comes with controlling power. Ours is a complex age, but to the single hearted, the complexity of our times is of little consequence. The pure in heart know that when the Spirit's Kingdom is seen in its beauty & desired with a single will, order is brought out of confusion.
Within the complex framework of religion there is a simple Gospel, a simple way of life. To be reborn as a movement, we have to live, think, pray, and teach the simple gospel of Christianity. Our [current] religion is a muddle in our minds. There is a true complexity that comes from [creation's] infinite variety and a false complexity from our squirming and maneuvering to avoid the dying-to-the-world element of our faith. Jesus said, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," but he didn't excuse himself thereby. We shall have life in the Light when we have prayed [wholeheartedly] that our selfish wills might no longer cover the Light.
Setting Aside Ancient Testimonies: We Stand for Peace—Let's see how fondness for contraries has caused us to set aside ancient testimonies; our failure's origin lies deep & inward. Examining [contrary desires] may lead to regeneration's inward source. We stand for peace but as Thomas à Kempis said: "All desire peace, few ... desire those things that make for peace." We want peace; we also want dominion, & [a lifestyle currently] dependent on war industries. We have been seduced by a false, very human peace without suffering. We only know how to beat our enemy; until we learn how to [love &] win them we are doomed to fight endless wars.
[Setting Aside Ancient Testimonies: We Stand for Community/ ... Equality/ ... Simplicity]—Realization of community means lavishing on others the concern that God lavished on us. It is a heresy of life that large-scale philanthropy & state-directed economic & social responsibility can take the place of the small community unit. It isn't just being clothed & fed; it's doing it with the attitude of aiding [fellow] divine-human beings. Christ is divisible into millions of small communities if they are truly brotherhoods of forthright personal relationships. Without these small communities, this nation may become mighty, but be sterile & dead at heart.
Our failure to live in the spirit of equality is part and parcel of with our failure to live in community and at peace. [As we boast of the powerful culture we helped build] we forget that another people of another color and continent stood where we stand and laid the foundation, and will perhaps stand on top again. Our failure to expel racial pride is another symbol of un-readiness to be in God-intended community with all earth's people.
We don't want simplicity's [building blocks]: frugality; austerity; giving up most possessions; plain, honest thinking; and joy in religion. To attain simplicity is 1st to have a single purpose; then to pursue that purpose single-mindedly. When we pause, and God overtakes and overcomes us, we shall then prize a life of simplicity. We can no more possess our souls without simplicity than the world can move forward without Jesus' blessed poor. There is a simplicity which is laxity, but those who would live in the Kingdom now need a simplicity which cleaves good from evil like a sharp knife, and goes straight to the source of the trouble; we are now all content with the wide gray stretch between white good and black evil.
[A Modern George Fox Journal/ Empty Faith/ Inward Light & Darkness]—How would a journal of the times, written in 1945-46 by George Fox read: "I talked with ... persons of diverse [vocations &] religious sects. I was [belittled] ... & taken before the FBI ... I bore it in good faith. Among Friends ... Many would hear none of the perfection teachings ... [much like] priests of old ... They were all for following the world's way ... & said Jesus taught for this world ... [Some were silenced when I asked about] fighting pagan wars ... getting monies ... & refusing to worship with men of another color ... Some were all for one more war ... & slow reform ... "
"Christ came to call people to begin living in the Kingdom at once, & if they didn't heed his inner promptings ... it were better they never heard [of] Christian or Quaker ... When they had made straight & plain their own lives they would find [Christ, his guidance and] means to reform the world ... Make thy people plain of thought and habit ... [even-handed in their treatment of others] ... and restore them to that community of holy charity where ... this world's meanness is removed."
Too often our flutterings of activity have no more reality than bathing in an empty birdbath. I dread the accusation that we have come to our faith easily and without much seeking. Each generation must seek out its own salvation in fear and trembling ... [and yet] be fearless of the consequences ... [Then] we shall again become a movement with the power of sharing the love of God with all.
How does the light grow in ascendancy over the dark & lead us to become the Light's Children? We often take it for granted that great men always have been great & saints have always been saints. Becoming marks the saint's greatness & not the achievement, nor the world's approbation. Any human life's greatness is the [depth] to which it takes on the Divine light's likeness which shines through it. How does "the secret shining of God's seed" become a living flame, that we may be filled with light? Each must seek ones own salvation.
[The Possibilities of a Mystic's Prayer]—To become Children of the Light we must 1st of all learn to pray. [One must] not impose a human limitation on the possibilities of prayer, which is an openness, an attentiveness to God's revelation of goodness and truth. We are all of us born with some capacity for prayer, and with all of us that capacity is greater than we think. The mystic is any ordinary person who puts down ones human pride, that the Divine may invade one. There are 2 kinds of people in this world: those who pray; those who do not. [That is not to say that those who pray are good, that those who don't are bad].
Charles Peguy writes: "One is Christian because of belonging to a certain ascending race, a certain mystic race, temporal & eternal, belonging to a certain kindred. This cardinal classification ... [must] be made vertically. Today's church is largely made up of good people turned in the wrong direction; they have formal goodness, but without attentiveness to God, they remove themselves from God's presence & seeing God's ongoing Truth. Praying or not praying is [a trait] that goes to the source of all human failure. Jesus didn't in his awful hour pray for special graces, miraculous powers, or future sight; he sought only to make God's will his; we can pray no better.
Too often we try to know God through the reconciliation of self with self. We cannot do without an object of worship, and nothing separates us from the awareness of the Source of all light but our own self-sufficiency. The test of prayer is the agility with which we will God's will, and the confidence we place in God. François Fénelon writes: "All our happiness consists in thirsting for eternal goodness [here with us] on earth ... Ever [thirst], desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray ... [simply] 'Let thy will be done.' The best of all prayers is to act with pure intention and with a continual reference to the will of God ... Love God with a headlong love ... and live a robust, outdoors kind of religious existence." One cannot think of many saints who attained a high degree of attentiveness without devising some method of daily recalling themselves to the presence of God in those days and moments of interior apathy which hit us all. We are the inheritors of a Kingdom, but we receive our inheritance only as we have the will to practice receiving it daily.
[Preparation for Prayer]—1st, there is recollection, a calling to mind those experiences & facts of God which are most apt to lead us into God's presence. With those who practice the recollection art, a breath of fresh air is more wonderful than the inventions of man, for the [wonders of nature] are referred to the Source of all, & life is then seen in its true proportions. God is what life is. But true spiritual life isn't made up of continuous, pleasurable feelings, [or a constant, strong sense of] God's presence. We are inflated when the infinite source of goodness bends down & touches our poor lives [with refreshing newness]. We must be deflated, brought low and made to look into the abyss of human aloneness and weakness, before we can rise again to bear God's love a little longer. Practicing recollection in the [abyss] is not inferior or less profitable than times of great certainty.
This is the way of growth and the only certain thing is that it will be slow. Our bodies may be broken and scarred, but our souls clean and erect. Every muscle is learning to respond to God's truth and every tissue is being disciplined to proclaim God's glory. The battle to make our will God's will must take its toll. [God's] peace is of a life so conditioned by God that inevitable disturbances of life no longer come as a disruptive force. Seek God we must, with a headlong love, with enthusiasm and romantic ardor, lowliness, patience, [and with little or no complaint]; that is a hard combination. How tempting it is to use God as a miserable little secret halo for self will, [rather than an opportunity to allow] God to look down into our souls.
True prayer lifts us above our problems, but it doesn't cover over our sins. We may succeed in pushing evil out of sight and even forgetting it, but it is bound to "smell up" our prayer lives. The only point of prayer systems and meditation times is to lead us to that prayer which is an everlasting spontaneous inward confidence in God. What matters most is the life in which prayer has become as central as the marrow in our bones; such a life is the hand of God in the world. Not all the kingdoms of our world can stand against our small Society of Friends if we are grounded in the confidence, wisdom, and love of prayer.
[Principle of the Cross]—The principle of the Cross is simply the faith that evil forces in ourselves and in others must be met with love, patience, and humility, in spite of contrary instincts, social customs, and governmental orders. What can God do with strong bodies, proud churches, and great cities from which the heart of love has departed? St. Marthe of Port Royal says, "Recollect, it is the sickness of the soul, not the heaviness of the cross, which makes it hard to bear." Mère Angelique of Port Royal says, "Souls which seem to belong to God, have almost a back door, through which to escape when trials press upon them."
[Suffering is not outmoded spiritually], for there can be no easing into the Kingdom of Christ. The Cross' principle is not a dramatic stand, but the secret, daily dying to self. Elias Hicks writes that "True Christianity is ... a real and complete mortification of all self-exaltation ... Christians ... experience the self-denial, meekness, humility, and gentleness of Christ reigning in them, so as to become their real life." The Cross stands squarely in the midst of each day's activities and we make no progress in ourselves or the world except through that cross. [Joy] and blessedness is God 's gift to those who take up the cross of daily dying to self-will. God's will for the world is only advanced as we bear our own cross first.
People of all ages have borne the cross of self-denial in their hearts to bring this art into being; they have forged out their eternality through the stuff of this world. Through human suffering of Christ we are brought to eternality. As a Society of Friends we will have to die to our pride of lineage, forfeit our respectability, embrace the shame of the cross if we would participate in the Incarnation. The Imitation of Christ says, "They who love Jesus for himself, and not for their own comfort, will bless him in the depths of distress." We shall never find God's will in our social, political, and economic plans until we come to God for no reason but God's self. Our human restlessness can never be assuaged until we begin to seek God [just for being God]. All other goals, no matter how idealistic, are halfway goals and can never fulfill our divine human destiny.
[Conclusion]—The most awful calamity which can befall our Religious Society is the subtle, unseen, slow, everyday weakening of our testimony and practice of absolute devotion. When Jesus admonished [us] to be perfect, he was not thinking of a perfection of endless minutiae of outward conduct; he revolted against such things. [He was for striving] for an inward perfection of the will. Perfection is that Kingdom of God which never is in its fullness on earth, yet is always becoming.
[Tolerance is good], but a tolerance born of laxity is as bad as cold rigidity. Friends of a century ago sought to preserve a strict discipline by withdrawing their scouting parties and built up fortifications in an attempt to hold their gains. The Christian Church's history reveals that movements and organizations have been reborn when they coupled a strict discipline with a fresh, open-hearted devotion. It is a matter of whether our Religious Society is just another church, or whether we are to be a peculiar people, putting prayer and devotion before the profits of business, living the absolute life of love, [sometimes in spite of consequences]. Christian civilization cannot long continue without there dwelling at its heart communities of inward people who persist in making God the measure of all things. That new and living way is the Divine Imperative. Somewhere the absolute voice of God will be heard and our everlasting spiritual lineage will be reborn. God never expects of us more than God is able to do through us. God must, to make progress in this world [and in us], wring both joy and sorrow from our hearts; this is one of the great mysteries of faith.
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466. Cultivating Sanctuary: Hallowed Places and Inner States (by Gunilla Norris; 2020)
About the Author—Gunilla Norris is the author of 11 books, including: Being Home; Inviting Silence; Companions on the Way; & Touched by Blessing. Her poetry books include Joy is the Thinnest Layer. She has felt privileged to to accompany people on their journeys to growth, healing & spiritual connectedness.
Editor's Foreword—We know from experience that we hold apart a space where we regularly meet the Spirit. In the age of Coronavirus, we miss the spaces where we were able to worship in person with others. As meaningful as they are, meeting houses are not the point; real, lasting sanctuary in the Divine is.
A Place of Grace—Sanctuary may be a place, a structure for worship, or a special place in nature. Everyone needs sanctuary, where vigilance can be relaxed, where rest is possible & recovery happens. I'll begin by considering the meeting house and some of its contents. In meeting there is a willingness to come together. Meeting is being created every 1st day, & every day in between. It is a dance that consecrates the places, & gives dignity to those who come [each time we gather]. What makes a sanctuary alive & thriving? There's thoughtful care of the place. It can be felt in the air as it animates the meeting house. Whatever our visible or subtle contribution, we come together with constancy that puts energy into the meeting house. We bring & leave something of our Self there in the [predominant] silence.
Even alone we can sense there-ness of those in the distant & recent past, who entered inner places of worship. Each of us is making a sanctuary within our Self, nurturing into being a safe place to be offered to others. Children know they are at home & welcome, & make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Holding one another in the Light illumines dark corners of the soul that need compassion, time & release. We all take refuge in someone's heart. "Make of us a sacred space,/ our lives the home of loving. Our hearts so long to be your dwelling place." I will bring up physical aspects of Westerly Friends Meeting house and the more invisible aspects of sanctuary.
Reflections on Meeting & the Sacredness of Place—Meeting houses wait unadorned, a sanctuary and refuge for body, mind and soul. Sacred places have a constancy in them, as we imbue them with our lives, hopes & concerns. The Covenant was, is, & will be there wherever there is for those seeking God as center. Meeting house is a relationship house. Many have favorite places to sit, a place for an ongoing relationship with God, a haven within a bigger haven, our confessional, comfort, thanksgiving. It holds our distractions and vulnerable humanness. The physical worship place speaks to us, reminding us what is important. We sit in the prayers of those who have sat where we sit; others will sit in our prayers. Our souls are remembered in presence & service.
Staircase/ Doorknob/ Quilts—We climb a steep set of stairs when we enter sanctuary. There are aids for both able and disabled to climb the stairs. Climbing stairs is an age old image of spiritual ascent & consent, of reaching a new level. When we find our Self on a landing between levels, it is a place of integration and rest. Once in the meeting room, it is by listening and cooperating that we are folded in the way Spirit wants to work with us and in us. When we leave our sanctuary we go down the same stairs & take up our life in the world. Some Native American spiritualities have ladders to go down into the kiva, the earth; we must go down to sacred earthiness of the everyday. As we take steps to act in the world, it is important to be aware of limits. There's an end to each step [& a landing which] lets us see how to correct our course both as a community & as individuals; take note before going on. We climb to participate in silent worship; we descend into the world & its needs.
We all need inner doorknobs to open doors into new behavior, understanding, love, & willingness to live in mystery. The doorknob on our sanctuary is knee-high. When we enter our sanctuary by turning that knob, we can ask our so-called grown-up self to step down, to be more open, less layered & simply be with others, absorbing the hidden beauty in everything; being is sacred. Entering our sanctuary alone, silence meets us & wraps around us like a comforter. Faithfulness is like a quilt's batting, unseen but felt as it warms us. Patchwork quilts hang on the back of meeting benches; any community is a patchwork, created by the work of many. World spiritual traditions tell us we are one though many; Christianity has the Body of Christ; quilts signal diversity & oneness.
Shutters/ View from a Bench—Our wooden shutters are tall and fragile; they must be opened and closed carefully; they help with the cost of heating. Each of us has inner shutters, to keep others and the world at bay. How to discern the openings & closing of inner shutters takes careful conscience & consideration. We all have hidden shutters; we need the help of others who will know with us to have integrity, to be too open or too closed less often. Nothing about conscience can be hurried; we need to be open to what we may not want to know. Discernment is a deep, holy, tender thing Friends do together.
We all enter our sanctuary down the middle, most of us walking through an empty middle space to our chosen seats. Middle ground is gracious, spacious place we can tend in silence, where differences stand side by side, intuitions & invitation float up, & we can be our real Self. Wherever we sit, we are facing into the possibilities of middle ground; this shared sacred space asks us to be open, to live with gusto, expressing that of God within.
Waiting/ Breath—How is waiting both physical & metaphysical sanctuary? We could think of our Self as a wait staff to divine visitation, always on call, ready to be of use as Spirit moves us; such openness is tough & constant work. Sometimes we want to flee sanctuary because our inner temples are a furious, overflowing mess. Stillness exists as a gift we wait to discover in us. In profound waiting, we may escape inner predators, & demons, becoming sanctuaries where Spirit comes & dwells. Spirit loves weakness & comes to us when we are truly honest about our condition. We serve by holding the planet's & people's common pain. Conscious breathing has always been a spiritual practice; it can be sanctuary. Receive gifts of being in a profound & very necessary rhythm of letting go & taking in. The extended pause between inhaling & exhaling is the blessed, nothing place. Cultivating awareness of this nothing, we will slowly transform urgent feelings to those of refuge & peace.
Listening/ Limitation—Listening, which is with our whole Self; we become centers of care. Henri Nouwen wrote: "Their presence is a healing presence because they accept you, your life, your vocation, on your terms." Really listening and being heard is soul work; something opens up for both. Instead of limiting our minds into easy answers, we open space for what can emerge. If we can say anything to each other, we probably don't need to say anything. A truly listening heart becomes a beacon of light. In meeting, Spirit is listening to us as a whole.
No one can excel in their field without great concentration, limiting their activities to the needs of their purpose; limitations are accepted, even embraced. The restriction on spending in becoming debt-free becomes a sanctuary. Any discipline we choose will give us a place to inwardly nurture our values, our purposes, what we will, & will not do. How can involuntary limitation have a positive effect on our lives? A door to a desired part of life, or even just a normal life may be slammed shut, but one may open to more community, love, care, and transformation. In aging, our bodies slow down, we become more vulnerable; others get to help us, & our souls have a chance to expand & grow. We can grow strong within boundaries. Wendell Berry wrote: "The impeded stream is the one that sings."
Discernment/ Questioning/ Afterthoughts—Discernment is a place where multiplicity exists, until a sense of direction, conviction, or chosen action constellates. We automatically judge & objectify the world, isolating us from its creative flow. We are making strangers & objects of people that belong in our world. We can't make anything permanent. To know & feel the connection to things will make a space for kindness inside us. We belong to the family of humankind, other living beings, & the earth itself. We want to stop the subtle killing that judgment is. Why not find 100 ways that we belong & can serve? Finding ways may help us discover that we truly belong & are at home & vulnerable, in connection with everything, creating community.
I attended a Zen monastery with its narrow 4-by-4 cushion & silence. That exposure led me to sit in silence & stillness in the Quaker meetings. To be in place, to empty the mind of questions, to experience the truth of the moment itself isn't easy. It's sitting in a question without an answer, except the experience of being fully where I am; then, experiences of Spirit can be felt. There's need to be where we are without canned answers, in the sanctity of not knowing. Perhaps then we feel the Spirit's invitation & question, to which we will be the answer. Living vibrant, unanswerable questions is a form of deep prayer. May we respond to Spirit's invitation to us to be living answers to others' needs. To have a sanctuary is a blessed thing; it is making a space for the Spirit's work to grow in us. Where is a place of steadiness & peace? What is sanctuary for us & home for our souls? The answer to that is the essence of sanctuary.
Queries—Which words describing sanctuary resonate most for you & your experience of sanctuary? Where do you find & experience sanctuary? What methods or practices do you use to create sanctuary within yourself? How have you found limitation to be sanctuary or transformation? What is the role of community in cultivating sanctuary? How have you found that providing sanctuary for others provides it for yourself? How might you provide sanctuary for a person, place or cause?
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459. The Workings of the Spirit of God Within: The Offices of Christ (by David Johnson; 2019)
About the Author—David is a convinced Conservative Friend, a member of Queensland Regional Meeting of Australia YM, & is affiliated with Marlborough MM, OH YM (Conservative). He helped set up Silver Wattle Quaker Centre in Australia. He & his wife led Year-End Retreats (2018) in California & Australia. David led Becoming a Fuller Quaker study session in Australia, & John's Gospel: Refreshment & Challenge at Pendle Hill.
Introduction—As child & teenager I learn Bible narratives, & about Jesus as part of God within the box of Anglican creeds & liturgies. Liberal unprogrammed Quaker tradition avoided Jesus & God words. The Inner Guide's voice came to me in a Sri Lankan, Buddhist monastery. I witnessed holiness of many from other faiths. I began to know Australian Aboriginal people' spirituality. I experienced the Spirit through trees, plants, & earth.
The 1st Quakers' written experiences have united my childhood learning about Jesus & a universal Spirit of God in an inward contemplative spiritual practice. The essence of the 1st Quakers' spiritual teachings is:
a divine presence, a Spirit of God, born into and manifested in every person; the Spirit shows us Truth, what is right and enables us to do it; this Spirit was perfectly manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, did not cease at his crucifixion, and is with us at every moment; in following this Spirit, however it manifests itself, we find we experience more of that Light; our measure of light is increased.
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462. A Culture of Faithfulness (by Marcelle Martin; 2020)
About the Author—Marcelle Martin believes Quakers are called to play a crucial role in the human transformation needed in our time. Since 1996 she has been leading courses and retreats on Quaker practices, history, and spiritual journey at Pendle Hill's, the School of the Spirit's Way's, and New England YM's programs. She has written 2 books and 2 Pendle Hill Pamphlets (#366, Invitation to a Deeper Communion; 382. Holding one another in the Light). She has served as a spiritual nurturer for more than 2 decades.
[Introduction]—In order for our lives to testify to the Divine Reality, we need to root our testimony in the Spirit's divine healing power. We are called to live & model a culture of faithfulness—collectively supporting one another in attending to the Spirit's movement—to counter a Western culture obsessed with material reality, possessions, & profit. Quaker & other Spirit-filled groups have provided [& can provide] impetus for big changes in human culture in these times of big change, if we practice radical openness to the Spirit & deep faithfulness. It requires awareness of & receptivity to divine guidance, & willingness to become agents of God's loving power. Humanity is being guided toward well-being for everyone, if only we will listen & follow divine guidance.
The 1st Quakers learned practices that allowed transforming power of a fountain of Spirit to flow through them. Experiencing being immersed in God's presence within themselves, created deep spiritual bonds that empowered them to support leadings of the Spirit that rose among them & beyond them. Faithfulness requires deep inward immersion in the Spirit & courageous risk-taking action to the world. We have continued to build on practices & community 1st Friends discovered. If we take time-honored practice seriously, we can surrender more to the inward-springing fountain of Life & Love. We can be more effective at creating a culture of faithfulness in the society around us, by being a powerful spiritual force today for justice, healing, & a restored earth.
Nurturing Awareness of the Divine Presence—There is a Divine Reality that we are intimately connected to & which communicates to us within. Divine Reality guides us to particular tasks & life circumstances. The spiritually sensitive pay careful attention to Divine Reality, can sense genuine leading in others, & can nurture leadings. Faithfulness begins with noticing & attending to the Spirit's promptings, even when they differ from our ideas & preferences. Sustained action must be from the Spirit's wellspring & rooted in the divine source.
Creating a spirit-led community begins by helping people become aware of the sacred reality that permeates and sustains the world. Opening to Divine Reality requires regular spiritual practice, both alone and in community. The more often we devote our Self to prayer, meditation, devotional reading, and calming physical practices, [the more aware we can be of subtle inner experiences, & learn Spirit's language. Gathering with others "who believe God still speaks directly to them" in worship is a great aid in opening to a direct encounter with Divine Presence.
Sitting with these others helps "kindle" the worship experience of everyone. When most present feel a spiritual quickening & a sense of being joined together in sacred communion with one another & with God, the meeting is "gathered." They sense the deeper reality in which we live, interconnected with each other & united with all-pervading Divine Presence. Sometimes a unified message from God is delivered through several people who rise to speak. Spiritual nourishment is as necessary for a life of faithfulness as food is for physical life.
Religious Education—For many Quaker meetings, gathered meetings are rare. Perhaps we aren't fully submitting ourselves to [embracing] the ways God leads us in matters requiring courage & sacrifice. As a religious society, like our culture, we have been gradually drifting toward functional atheism, losing our ability to recognize & trust in Divine Light that is present & active within us & the world. To be Spirit-filled, faithful people, more is required than an hour of meeting for worship on a Sunday morning; religious education is critical.
We need to know spiritual nourishment is possible & how it's possible; inward openness of the mind, heart, & soul is necessary. Openness allows for experiencing Divine living presence. Western society teaches people to distrust & disregard the Spirit's movement, to conform to narrow patterns of belief & behavior. Conformity is unconscious & difficult to recognize & overcome. The Spirit asks people to take risks & witness to alternatives based on divine wisdom, love, & justice. Bible-based vocal ministry in early Friend's long meetings for worship provided rich education in Quaker faith & practice. Religious education today needs to provide Bible stories & accounts of faithful Quakers, which can help us consider our participation in, & response to today's evils.
Many courageously faithful today will only reveal their lives' inner dimensions & the nature of their service or witness if encouraged by community. [It is important that such people's stories are shared]. Knowing we are part of a larger story, with Divine Reality at the center, invites us to a more Spirit-filled life. It is also vital to know God gives us leadings to take actions in relation to personal circumstances & larger social ones. Our faith community needs to teach young & old how to enter into awareness of the peaceful state that is our true essence.
David Hartsough grew up in a family & community which lived faith courageously. That & participating in Quaker inner-city workcamps prompted him to seek to eliminate social injustices. These experiences led David to experience an unexpected leading. In silence & solitary worship at a meeting house, he experienced "deep clarity, as if the Great Spirit were speaking." He received guidance to enroll in historically black Howard College, even though he had been accepted at a white Quaker college, which his mother wanted him to attend. In sophomore year Hartsough transferred to Howard as its only white student. He joined fellow Howard students in the sit-in movement's launching & picketed with them in front of a D.C. Woolworth's. When arrested they sat in jail until Monday, then returned to their classes after court appearances; David continues to work for peace & justice.
Growing in Discernment— The Spirit's genuine leadings must be distinguished from inner & outer voices that crowd minds & hearts. Friends [in community] will help each other discern among different promptings & impulses. Practicing discernment is 1st applied to vocal ministry. How is this a message from Spirit? How is this something to be kept in or spoken aloud? When is it to be shared? How did you feel while speaking & afterwards? How did you add [worldly words] to the Spiritual words? How were you faithful?
When we gather to discern God's guidance for faith-community business, we are invited to let go of ideas & desires about decisions being made in order to "hear" the Spirit as it speaks through the meeting's members. In Spirit, Friends can be gathered into unity about a decision. It often comes when love for each other, its connecting one to others, becomes more important than a certain outcome. Peace might be accompanied by silence, awe, or quiet joy. In such experiences we encounter God's unseen power & grow in discernment & faithfulness.
Spiritual Companionship—Growth in the spiritual life requires others' input. Quakerism emphasizes that direct relationship exists between each person & God. Friends have found spiritual companionship helpful in opening to direct relationship & sorting the Spirit's leadings from other promptings. In spiritual friendship, 2 people take time to talk about inner life informally, or in regular meetings & a process called "spiritual nurture" or "direction." Seasoned Friends, or elders, play a role in cultivating faith & faithfulness of meeting community.
Serving on meeting committees & sharing care for our community's life can be an important spiritual practice. Communicating clearly & lovingly, forgiving, & sharing tasks are powerful ways to invite Spirit to be active. Many feel a need to be in ongoing small groups supporting attention to inner life [e.g. study of Bible, Quaker pamphlets, Faith & Practice; Experiment with Light groups. Over time, groups can be places where people reveal inner lives to one another & receive support, greater awareness of God's presence & activity among them.
Clearness Committees—Historically, clearness committees, have been used for [clarifying & verifying spiritual truth in a person's relationship] in membership, marriage, recorded ministry, or traveling in ministry. In the 1960's, it became more common for individuals to ask for a clearness committee to help discern divine guidance about a momentous decision. 3 to 7 people gather to help the focus person look at the issue from different perspectives, while seeking the Spirit's leading. Committee members ask questions, [not necessarily looking for immediate answers]; everyone listens prayerfully & [newly revealed truths are spoken]. Awareness of inner voices speaking out of fear, ego, "family or cultural tapes" rather than out of the "still, small voice of God," may arise.
Spiritual leadings often require things that differ from the status quo; resistance is normal at first. Clarity coming from clearness committee is sometimes surprising; its truth is affirmed in the heart. [Affirmations we receive from committee aren't always those we expect; they may reveal a soul's desire different from our original understanding]. When a person's soul reveals its truth, clearness committees sense they are on holy ground.
Supporting Calls, Leadings, & Ministry—[If a leading to service becomes several along the same line], it might be seen as a call [to ministry]. Quakers testify that all are called to ministry. Outside the meetinghouse, each person is called to participate in Spirit-led ministry of truth-telling & service, depending on their spiritual gifts. If we act faithfully, thoughts, words, & actions can be full of divine grace. Individual leadings to ministry include: religious education; spiritual nurture; or witness for [environmental], racial & economic justice. A meeting may be called to support or participate in the ministry; this is taking the ministry "under its care." Yearly meetings of Friends differ in their procedures for discerning, recognizing, naming, & supporting leadings or calls. The practice of recognizing calls to ministry had fallen into disuse during the 20th century. Since 1996, [several] meetings have recognized and now support the calls, leadings and ministries of their members, beginning the process with a clearness committee for the person called.
I was in my 30's and new to Quakerism when I began to feel I needed to ask my meeting to recognize my call to a ministry of spiritual nurture; I was afraid to do so for months. My appointed clearness committee, with one member specifically chosen for the doubts he had, researched how other monthly meetings responded to requests similar to mine. I met privately with the skeptic, who said I was neither a polished speaker nor "enlightened." In the next meeting, I admitted to having no academic training in ministry, and no continuous sense of connection or communion with God. I still felt called by the Spirit to this service. By our 3rd meeting, the committee was in unity about the genuineness of this call. [Once the person has clarity that they are being led], the meeting must discern if it is led, in turn, to take this ministry under its care. What forms of recognition or support are needed from a meeting supporting someone who has reached clarity on their call to service?
Supporting Faithful Action—Faithfulness is more than being clear about a leading; it moves us into action. Once a ministry is taken under the care of the meeting, a committee is often appointed to meet regularly with the person following the leading to provide support, oversight, & ongoing discernment. Meetings with several ministries under its care may have a committee set up to serve 2 or more Friends. Oversight is listening to those following a leading or carrying a ministry, helping them discern when to say yes to a next step & how to prepare for service. Their questions reveal what is needed, what is resisted, what is running ahead of the Guide. Serving on an Oversight Committee is a profound spiritual learning process, a witness to another's deep encounter with God, and an active role in God's ministry. It helps clarify committee members' own calls and leadings.
Overcoming Impediments to Faithfulness—Members of an intimate spiritual community serve as mirrors, helping each other to see both shadow & brightness within, & to distinguish one from the other. The 1st Quakers were shocked by the pervasive influence of greed & fear on society, & how their own conformity to many of those norms was a kind of resistance to God. Today many use psychological terms for the self-deception, the many obstacles formed in or created by our Self. Whatever we call these deviations from love, truth, & justice, we are all in need of healing & transformation. Most experience deep conflict between our yearnings for truth & faithfulness & our cravings for acceptance, status, comfort, & control. We need help noticing what's going on inside, & a communal space where we feel safe to uncover, look at, & explore the ways fear controls so much of our thinking & behavior. We need help recognizing the presence and activity of God in our lives. We need to be vulnerable, open to God's healing & to expression of God's love through us in humble, courageous ways.
Meeting Support for Individual Action—Falmouth Preparative Meeting has supported the climate change ministry & witness of Jay O'Hara for years. He says, "[Committee members] make me drill down into [my leadings] in a way that's really loving." He appreciates his committee saying no to things they sense aren't Spirit-led. They supported O'Hara and a friend as they staged a protest of carbon emission, by blocking a coal delivery to Brayton Point Power Station, which was one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in the Northeast.
They made a "necessity defense" using the testimony of climate scientists. Criminal charges were dropped and O'Hara and Ward, made restitution to local and state police for the expense of dealing with their boat. 400 people protested the coal-burning power plant; 44 were arrested. When asked if he considered himself an "environmentalist" or a "climate activist," O'Hara answered, "I am a Quaker ... I believe there are still powerful forces of history to be unleashed ... for the revealing of new ways of being in the world, of our relation to the earth and to one another. We need people's whole hearts and full commitment."
[Meeting Support for Individual Action: A Call to Bosnia]—Lyndon Back needed to understand the collapse of a 400 year-old bridge connecting Christians & Muslims. She experienced a concern, a need to pay attention to the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Back felt led to sponsor a Muslim girl & host her & a Serb on weekends away from Quaker boarding school. Back was invited by the students' families to visit. A clearness committee helped her discern she was being led to go, learn, & listen; her meeting approved her travel letter.
Her committee members prayed for her while she was in the former Yugoslavia. In morning meditation & prayer, Back connected again & again with her leading's spiritual source. She visited families of many different ethnic groups; she helped a mixed marriage family. Back home, a dream-voice told her to return to Bosnia. Her clearness committee felt led to become an oversight committee. She quit her job & volunteered with the Balkan Peace Teams. She was part of a small team that supported young peace activists working all sides of the conflict. After US & NATO crushed local peace efforts in bombing Kosovo, Back traveled the world to describe what she had witnessed. She still speaks to Quakers about following leadings, peace work & the complexities of war.
Faithfulness Groups—Those Friends desiring to be faithful to the call or leading they have received can form "faithfulness groups," peer groups, or accountability groups, which are all a sort of mutual clearness committee. They devote 1 hour each to 2 people when they meet. The focus person talks for 15 minutes. Then the group, as moved by the Spirit, asks questions that clarify for the focus person their leading. Most get to be focus person 4 times a year. A faithfulness group, with growing, intimate knowledge of each other, reminds members of their leadings, draws attention to recurring stumbling blocks, distractions, and missteps, and helps people find the path again. It is possible for people of different faiths to form such a group. If any groups veers into problem-solving, advice-giving, or story-telling, a convener gently reminds them of the [spiritual, clarifying-question aspect] of the group. Participants receive prayer attention and companionship to remind them of God's presence.
In my group, something in my heart relaxes and opens wider when people talk about God-experiences or listen lovingly when I speak. Revealing fears, hurts, and resistance helps us allow God to heal us. Monthly gatherings are a profound spiritual practice. We have supported each in a variety of settings, from meeting business to parenting to activism to presenting workshops. Oversight or faithfulness groups, through questions & listening, prayer & encouragement, & especially through love, provide holy accompaniment & help us learn to allow God to be active within us. Gradually, we give over more control of our Self and our lives to the Spirit, and we abide more constantly in the Eternal Being, becoming more surrendered and more alive to the ways God calls us.
Support for Faithfulness beyond the Meeting—Meetings desiring spiritual vitality can be transformed by supporting members taking part in workshops & long-term spiritual & faith-nurturing programs. Meetings hold themselves accountable for a leadings by sending members to take part in gatherings or groups with that focus. US Quakers, divided by theology but united in leading, joined in 1917 to form American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). During & after WWI & WWII, AFSC joined with British Friends Service Council in war reconstruction & in feeding children. The 2 groups shared vision, experience, & spiritual guidance in action.
In recent years, Friends of African Descent in Philadelphia had a leading to create a peace center in the inner-city. They created the Ujima Peace Center in North Philadelphia. The Center reduced violence, provided a safe place for people in the community, peace training for children, classes on tenants rights, & a monthly food give-away. On Sundays, several local meetings came together at Ujima for a community meeting for worship.
In 2019, AFSC organized an interfaith witness to protest the border wall being built by the US government. Together they publicly witnessed to their conviction that strangers are to be welcomed & treated with dignity. Lucy Duncan said: "[We need] to be the courageous many ... We won't get home to a transformed world unless we can [go] together ... Now is the time for all of us to ... take risks of faith to make real the society we envision & know is possible." Many Friends took part in the People's March on Washington (1963), the Poor People's March (2018), & the protest for clean water & preserving sacred land at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
A Community Formed for Faithfulness—We need to know our Self better & become deeply intimate with God. We need quiet receptivity to divine love & guidance, & to hear stories of faith & transformation [as calls to faithfulness]. We need spiritual friendships or groups to support spiritual growth, [& to help strengthen resolve] when God's way differs from cultural norms. Those not called to demonstrate in the streets or travel in the ministry are called to support those who are, & those led in other ways. We may be called to live more simply.
Faithfulness begins with willingness to shift motivation to the divine perspective, not the human urges of isolated selves. When we testify to & embody sacred Divine Reality within us & creation, our faith can offer powerfully transforming healing. Collective faithfulness to divine leadings can unlock unused healing potential to address current global crises. Let us participate more wholeheartedly in God's loving, healing work in the world.
Queries—What does faithfulness mean to you? How can we nurture faithfulness in our Self and our communities? What faithfulness story do you have to share? What spiritual practices help you become aware of Divine Presence and Calling? How can we help each other distinguish Spirit-leadings from wishes, ego, and social pressure? What ministry have you been called to? How does your meeting recognize and support members' leadings and ministries? How have you struggled to be aware of self-deception, fears, or resisting God?
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32. Our Hearts are Restless (by Gilbert Kilpack; 1946)
About the Author—Gilbert Kilpack (1914-99) was born & raised in Portland, Oregon. He did undergraduate work at the University of Oregon & received an M.A. degree from Oberlin College in Christian Philosophy. He spent 5 years as Stony Run Friends Meeting's (Baltimore) executive secretary. He joined Pendle Hill's staff in '48, becoming Director of Studies in '54. He gave Philadelphia Young Friends Movement’s Wm. Penn Lecture in '46, The City of God & City of Man, which addressed issues raised by the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings.
[Introduction]—The outcome of human living & thinking depends on interpretation of Genesis' 1st 3 chapters. They tell a story of the agonizing discovery of human freedom to daily choose good or to always fall into evil. Freedom is the source of dismal failure [& separation from God] & the means of our vision of growth into goodness. We are separated from God, but secretly united to God. Human corruption & nobility say that we are a half-being. Nothing is so important as completion of our ½-lives, the God-filling of our void, the divine 2nd birth which is the real solution to, rather than the [temporary submersion of] human problems. [The Quakers'] "that of God in every man" is [a testimony], & points to something infinitely more than the good in every one. Sensitivity to our hearts' restless questioning, the endless questing [for completeness], for something greater is needed. [Augustine, Rousseau, Jesus, Plato, Ben Jonson, & George Herbert, through vision, pronouncement, parables, interpretation of myths, & metaphors, say that God is our goal, destiny, & source of meaning.
[Burning Questions]—Incompleteness of life forms itself into a burning question. [Throughout the centuries this question's prominence waxes & wanes, from wildfire to tiny glow]; we regularly turn away from it. [Commuter, housewife, student, soldier, CO/ mental health worker, preacher, rich man, philanthropist, voluptuary, & Quaker, before they are pulled back into the mundane, worldly tasks set before them], are brought low in an instant, see themselves in eternity's light & ask: Why am I here? What is the point to my life, human life, any life? Every one has their favorite "out," their favorite blinkers to keep the eternal issue at a safe distance.
These questions are more of a spirit, an attitude of soul which looks upon the world and creation with great expectancy. It is the everlasting thirst expressed by Thoreau. Honest people ask themselves whether life is worth living, whether there is anything worth getting ready for. The settled "religious" person feels certain that all is well with ones soul and does not care to be disturbed; doubters and seekers and sinners despising their sin are nearer the Kingdom than those contented "religious" folk. Our salvation lies in giving way daily to the seekings, promptings, and questionings which assail us from within.
The average soul of our day is a blank check & simply has no spiritual heritage. If one is human at all, one inwardly, secretly hungers for a life of faith. [The italicized questions above] are a hint that life must hold something great, that it should open upon exalted vistas & potentialities. These questions are a divine hint, a seed of divine truth. Jesus wrestled with every possible evasion of the essential questions & with every false & easy answer ever used. Why am I here? What is the point to my life, human life, any life? is simply "that of God in every one" seeking fulfillment. We should always [be struck & awed by] the strange, terrible, & wonderful implications of "that of God ..." How are we [becoming] ready to give way daily to God's unitive healing, both the cauterizing & the anointing? We Friends belong among those people who search [unreservedly] for the Kingdom of Christ, & who believe that by turning our hearts, minds, & wills to God persistently we will begin to live now in the Kingdom. How can the nightmare epoch in which we live [help] arouse us to [this] our condition? How are we ready to be discovered by the love and truth which has been seeking us everlastingly?
[We are Not Ready/ Simple Gospel]—As individuals we are willing to be ready & reformed as long as we are spared the labor of getting ready & the unsettling reforming process. We want to: be spiritually alive & always comfortable; be prayerful without earlier mornings to allow for it; possess power to lead without undergoing the discipline that comes with controlling power. Ours is a complex age, but to the single hearted, the complexity of our times is of little consequence. The pure in heart know that when the Spirit's Kingdom is seen in its beauty & desired with a single will, order is brought out of confusion.
Within the complex framework of religion there is a simple Gospel, a simple way of life. To be reborn as a movement, we have to live, think, pray, and teach the simple gospel of Christianity. Our [current] religion is a muddle in our minds. There is a true complexity that comes from [creation's] infinite variety and a false complexity from our squirming and maneuvering to avoid the dying-to-the-world element of our faith. Jesus said, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," but he didn't excuse himself thereby. We shall have life in the Light when we have prayed [wholeheartedly] that our selfish wills might no longer cover the Light.
Setting Aside Ancient Testimonies: We Stand for Peace—Let's see how fondness for contraries has caused us to set aside ancient testimonies; our failure's origin lies deep & inward. Examining [contrary desires] may lead to regeneration's inward source. We stand for peace but as Thomas à Kempis said: "All desire peace, few ... desire those things that make for peace." We want peace; we also want dominion, & [a lifestyle currently] dependent on war industries. We have been seduced by a false, very human peace without suffering. We only know how to beat our enemy; until we learn how to [love &] win them we are doomed to fight endless wars.
[Setting Aside Ancient Testimonies: We Stand for Community/ ... Equality/ ... Simplicity]—Realization of community means lavishing on others the concern that God lavished on us. It is a heresy of life that large-scale philanthropy & state-directed economic & social responsibility can take the place of the small community unit. It isn't just being clothed & fed; it's doing it with the attitude of aiding [fellow] divine-human beings. Christ is divisible into millions of small communities if they are truly brotherhoods of forthright personal relationships. Without these small communities, this nation may become mighty, but be sterile & dead at heart.
Our failure to live in the spirit of equality is part and parcel of with our failure to live in community and at peace. [As we boast of the powerful culture we helped build] we forget that another people of another color and continent stood where we stand and laid the foundation, and will perhaps stand on top again. Our failure to expel racial pride is another symbol of un-readiness to be in God-intended community with all earth's people.
We don't want simplicity's [building blocks]: frugality; austerity; giving up most possessions; plain, honest thinking; and joy in religion. To attain simplicity is 1st to have a single purpose; then to pursue that purpose single-mindedly. When we pause, and God overtakes and overcomes us, we shall then prize a life of simplicity. We can no more possess our souls without simplicity than the world can move forward without Jesus' blessed poor. There is a simplicity which is laxity, but those who would live in the Kingdom now need a simplicity which cleaves good from evil like a sharp knife, and goes straight to the source of the trouble; we are now all content with the wide gray stretch between white good and black evil.
[A Modern George Fox Journal/ Empty Faith/ Inward Light & Darkness]—How would a journal of the times, written in 1945-46 by George Fox read: "I talked with ... persons of diverse [vocations &] religious sects. I was [belittled] ... & taken before the FBI ... I bore it in good faith. Among Friends ... Many would hear none of the perfection teachings ... [much like] priests of old ... They were all for following the world's way ... & said Jesus taught for this world ... [Some were silenced when I asked about] fighting pagan wars ... getting monies ... & refusing to worship with men of another color ... Some were all for one more war ... & slow reform ... "
"Christ came to call people to begin living in the Kingdom at once, & if they didn't heed his inner promptings ... it were better they never heard [of] Christian or Quaker ... When they had made straight & plain their own lives they would find [Christ, his guidance and] means to reform the world ... Make thy people plain of thought and habit ... [even-handed in their treatment of others] ... and restore them to that community of holy charity where ... this world's meanness is removed."
Too often our flutterings of activity have no more reality than bathing in an empty birdbath. I dread the accusation that we have come to our faith easily and without much seeking. Each generation must seek out its own salvation in fear and trembling ... [and yet] be fearless of the consequences ... [Then] we shall again become a movement with the power of sharing the love of God with all.
How does the light grow in ascendancy over the dark & lead us to become the Light's Children? We often take it for granted that great men always have been great & saints have always been saints. Becoming marks the saint's greatness & not the achievement, nor the world's approbation. Any human life's greatness is the [depth] to which it takes on the Divine light's likeness which shines through it. How does "the secret shining of God's seed" become a living flame, that we may be filled with light? Each must seek ones own salvation.
[The Possibilities of a Mystic's Prayer]—To become Children of the Light we must 1st of all learn to pray. [One must] not impose a human limitation on the possibilities of prayer, which is an openness, an attentiveness to God's revelation of goodness and truth. We are all of us born with some capacity for prayer, and with all of us that capacity is greater than we think. The mystic is any ordinary person who puts down ones human pride, that the Divine may invade one. There are 2 kinds of people in this world: those who pray; those who do not. [That is not to say that those who pray are good, that those who don't are bad].
Charles Peguy writes: "One is Christian because of belonging to a certain ascending race, a certain mystic race, temporal & eternal, belonging to a certain kindred. This cardinal classification ... [must] be made vertically. Today's church is largely made up of good people turned in the wrong direction; they have formal goodness, but without attentiveness to God, they remove themselves from God's presence & seeing God's ongoing Truth. Praying or not praying is [a trait] that goes to the source of all human failure. Jesus didn't in his awful hour pray for special graces, miraculous powers, or future sight; he sought only to make God's will his; we can pray no better.
Too often we try to know God through the reconciliation of self with self. We cannot do without an object of worship, and nothing separates us from the awareness of the Source of all light but our own self-sufficiency. The test of prayer is the agility with which we will God's will, and the confidence we place in God. François Fénelon writes: "All our happiness consists in thirsting for eternal goodness [here with us] on earth ... Ever [thirst], desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray ... [simply] 'Let thy will be done.' The best of all prayers is to act with pure intention and with a continual reference to the will of God ... Love God with a headlong love ... and live a robust, outdoors kind of religious existence." One cannot think of many saints who attained a high degree of attentiveness without devising some method of daily recalling themselves to the presence of God in those days and moments of interior apathy which hit us all. We are the inheritors of a Kingdom, but we receive our inheritance only as we have the will to practice receiving it daily.
[Preparation for Prayer]—1st, there is recollection, a calling to mind those experiences & facts of God which are most apt to lead us into God's presence. With those who practice the recollection art, a breath of fresh air is more wonderful than the inventions of man, for the [wonders of nature] are referred to the Source of all, & life is then seen in its true proportions. God is what life is. But true spiritual life isn't made up of continuous, pleasurable feelings, [or a constant, strong sense of] God's presence. We are inflated when the infinite source of goodness bends down & touches our poor lives [with refreshing newness]. We must be deflated, brought low and made to look into the abyss of human aloneness and weakness, before we can rise again to bear God's love a little longer. Practicing recollection in the [abyss] is not inferior or less profitable than times of great certainty.
This is the way of growth and the only certain thing is that it will be slow. Our bodies may be broken and scarred, but our souls clean and erect. Every muscle is learning to respond to God's truth and every tissue is being disciplined to proclaim God's glory. The battle to make our will God's will must take its toll. [God's] peace is of a life so conditioned by God that inevitable disturbances of life no longer come as a disruptive force. Seek God we must, with a headlong love, with enthusiasm and romantic ardor, lowliness, patience, [and with little or no complaint]; that is a hard combination. How tempting it is to use God as a miserable little secret halo for self will, [rather than an opportunity to allow] God to look down into our souls.
True prayer lifts us above our problems, but it doesn't cover over our sins. We may succeed in pushing evil out of sight and even forgetting it, but it is bound to "smell up" our prayer lives. The only point of prayer systems and meditation times is to lead us to that prayer which is an everlasting spontaneous inward confidence in God. What matters most is the life in which prayer has become as central as the marrow in our bones; such a life is the hand of God in the world. Not all the kingdoms of our world can stand against our small Society of Friends if we are grounded in the confidence, wisdom, and love of prayer.
[Principle of the Cross]—The principle of the Cross is simply the faith that evil forces in ourselves and in others must be met with love, patience, and humility, in spite of contrary instincts, social customs, and governmental orders. What can God do with strong bodies, proud churches, and great cities from which the heart of love has departed? St. Marthe of Port Royal says, "Recollect, it is the sickness of the soul, not the heaviness of the cross, which makes it hard to bear." Mère Angelique of Port Royal says, "Souls which seem to belong to God, have almost a back door, through which to escape when trials press upon them."
[Suffering is not outmoded spiritually], for there can be no easing into the Kingdom of Christ. The Cross' principle is not a dramatic stand, but the secret, daily dying to self. Elias Hicks writes that "True Christianity is ... a real and complete mortification of all self-exaltation ... Christians ... experience the self-denial, meekness, humility, and gentleness of Christ reigning in them, so as to become their real life." The Cross stands squarely in the midst of each day's activities and we make no progress in ourselves or the world except through that cross. [Joy] and blessedness is God 's gift to those who take up the cross of daily dying to self-will. God's will for the world is only advanced as we bear our own cross first.
People of all ages have borne the cross of self-denial in their hearts to bring this art into being; they have forged out their eternality through the stuff of this world. Through human suffering of Christ we are brought to eternality. As a Society of Friends we will have to die to our pride of lineage, forfeit our respectability, embrace the shame of the cross if we would participate in the Incarnation. The Imitation of Christ says, "They who love Jesus for himself, and not for their own comfort, will bless him in the depths of distress." We shall never find God's will in our social, political, and economic plans until we come to God for no reason but God's self. Our human restlessness can never be assuaged until we begin to seek God [just for being God]. All other goals, no matter how idealistic, are halfway goals and can never fulfill our divine human destiny.
[Conclusion]—The most awful calamity which can befall our Religious Society is the subtle, unseen, slow, everyday weakening of our testimony and practice of absolute devotion. When Jesus admonished [us] to be perfect, he was not thinking of a perfection of endless minutiae of outward conduct; he revolted against such things. [He was for striving] for an inward perfection of the will. Perfection is that Kingdom of God which never is in its fullness on earth, yet is always becoming.
[Tolerance is good], but a tolerance born of laxity is as bad as cold rigidity. Friends of a century ago sought to preserve a strict discipline by withdrawing their scouting parties and built up fortifications in an attempt to hold their gains. The Christian Church's history reveals that movements and organizations have been reborn when they coupled a strict discipline with a fresh, open-hearted devotion. It is a matter of whether our Religious Society is just another church, or whether we are to be a peculiar people, putting prayer and devotion before the profits of business, living the absolute life of love, [sometimes in spite of consequences]. Christian civilization cannot long continue without there dwelling at its heart communities of inward people who persist in making God the measure of all things. That new and living way is the Divine Imperative. Somewhere the absolute voice of God will be heard and our everlasting spiritual lineage will be reborn. God never expects of us more than God is able to do through us. God must, to make progress in this world [and in us], wring both joy and sorrow from our hearts; this is one of the great mysteries of faith.
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466. Cultivating Sanctuary: Hallowed Places and Inner States (by Gunilla Norris; 2020)
About the Author—Gunilla Norris is the author of 11 books, including: Being Home; Inviting Silence; Companions on the Way; & Touched by Blessing. Her poetry books include Joy is the Thinnest Layer. She has felt privileged to to accompany people on their journeys to growth, healing & spiritual connectedness.
Editor's Foreword—We know from experience that we hold apart a space where we regularly meet the Spirit. In the age of Coronavirus, we miss the spaces where we were able to worship in person with others. As meaningful as they are, meeting houses are not the point; real, lasting sanctuary in the Divine is.
A Place of Grace—Sanctuary may be a place, a structure for worship, or a special place in nature. Everyone needs sanctuary, where vigilance can be relaxed, where rest is possible & recovery happens. I'll begin by considering the meeting house and some of its contents. In meeting there is a willingness to come together. Meeting is being created every 1st day, & every day in between. It is a dance that consecrates the places, & gives dignity to those who come [each time we gather]. What makes a sanctuary alive & thriving? There's thoughtful care of the place. It can be felt in the air as it animates the meeting house. Whatever our visible or subtle contribution, we come together with constancy that puts energy into the meeting house. We bring & leave something of our Self there in the [predominant] silence.
Even alone we can sense there-ness of those in the distant & recent past, who entered inner places of worship. Each of us is making a sanctuary within our Self, nurturing into being a safe place to be offered to others. Children know they are at home & welcome, & make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Holding one another in the Light illumines dark corners of the soul that need compassion, time & release. We all take refuge in someone's heart. "Make of us a sacred space,/ our lives the home of loving. Our hearts so long to be your dwelling place." I will bring up physical aspects of Westerly Friends Meeting house and the more invisible aspects of sanctuary.
Reflections on Meeting & the Sacredness of Place—Meeting houses wait unadorned, a sanctuary and refuge for body, mind and soul. Sacred places have a constancy in them, as we imbue them with our lives, hopes & concerns. The Covenant was, is, & will be there wherever there is for those seeking God as center. Meeting house is a relationship house. Many have favorite places to sit, a place for an ongoing relationship with God, a haven within a bigger haven, our confessional, comfort, thanksgiving. It holds our distractions and vulnerable humanness. The physical worship place speaks to us, reminding us what is important. We sit in the prayers of those who have sat where we sit; others will sit in our prayers. Our souls are remembered in presence & service.
Staircase/ Doorknob/ Quilts—We climb a steep set of stairs when we enter sanctuary. There are aids for both able and disabled to climb the stairs. Climbing stairs is an age old image of spiritual ascent & consent, of reaching a new level. When we find our Self on a landing between levels, it is a place of integration and rest. Once in the meeting room, it is by listening and cooperating that we are folded in the way Spirit wants to work with us and in us. When we leave our sanctuary we go down the same stairs & take up our life in the world. Some Native American spiritualities have ladders to go down into the kiva, the earth; we must go down to sacred earthiness of the everyday. As we take steps to act in the world, it is important to be aware of limits. There's an end to each step [& a landing which] lets us see how to correct our course both as a community & as individuals; take note before going on. We climb to participate in silent worship; we descend into the world & its needs.
We all need inner doorknobs to open doors into new behavior, understanding, love, & willingness to live in mystery. The doorknob on our sanctuary is knee-high. When we enter our sanctuary by turning that knob, we can ask our so-called grown-up self to step down, to be more open, less layered & simply be with others, absorbing the hidden beauty in everything; being is sacred. Entering our sanctuary alone, silence meets us & wraps around us like a comforter. Faithfulness is like a quilt's batting, unseen but felt as it warms us. Patchwork quilts hang on the back of meeting benches; any community is a patchwork, created by the work of many. World spiritual traditions tell us we are one though many; Christianity has the Body of Christ; quilts signal diversity & oneness.
Shutters/ View from a Bench—Our wooden shutters are tall and fragile; they must be opened and closed carefully; they help with the cost of heating. Each of us has inner shutters, to keep others and the world at bay. How to discern the openings & closing of inner shutters takes careful conscience & consideration. We all have hidden shutters; we need the help of others who will know with us to have integrity, to be too open or too closed less often. Nothing about conscience can be hurried; we need to be open to what we may not want to know. Discernment is a deep, holy, tender thing Friends do together.
We all enter our sanctuary down the middle, most of us walking through an empty middle space to our chosen seats. Middle ground is gracious, spacious place we can tend in silence, where differences stand side by side, intuitions & invitation float up, & we can be our real Self. Wherever we sit, we are facing into the possibilities of middle ground; this shared sacred space asks us to be open, to live with gusto, expressing that of God within.
Waiting/ Breath—How is waiting both physical & metaphysical sanctuary? We could think of our Self as a wait staff to divine visitation, always on call, ready to be of use as Spirit moves us; such openness is tough & constant work. Sometimes we want to flee sanctuary because our inner temples are a furious, overflowing mess. Stillness exists as a gift we wait to discover in us. In profound waiting, we may escape inner predators, & demons, becoming sanctuaries where Spirit comes & dwells. Spirit loves weakness & comes to us when we are truly honest about our condition. We serve by holding the planet's & people's common pain. Conscious breathing has always been a spiritual practice; it can be sanctuary. Receive gifts of being in a profound & very necessary rhythm of letting go & taking in. The extended pause between inhaling & exhaling is the blessed, nothing place. Cultivating awareness of this nothing, we will slowly transform urgent feelings to those of refuge & peace.
Listening/ Limitation—Listening, which is with our whole Self; we become centers of care. Henri Nouwen wrote: "Their presence is a healing presence because they accept you, your life, your vocation, on your terms." Really listening and being heard is soul work; something opens up for both. Instead of limiting our minds into easy answers, we open space for what can emerge. If we can say anything to each other, we probably don't need to say anything. A truly listening heart becomes a beacon of light. In meeting, Spirit is listening to us as a whole.
No one can excel in their field without great concentration, limiting their activities to the needs of their purpose; limitations are accepted, even embraced. The restriction on spending in becoming debt-free becomes a sanctuary. Any discipline we choose will give us a place to inwardly nurture our values, our purposes, what we will, & will not do. How can involuntary limitation have a positive effect on our lives? A door to a desired part of life, or even just a normal life may be slammed shut, but one may open to more community, love, care, and transformation. In aging, our bodies slow down, we become more vulnerable; others get to help us, & our souls have a chance to expand & grow. We can grow strong within boundaries. Wendell Berry wrote: "The impeded stream is the one that sings."
Discernment/ Questioning/ Afterthoughts—Discernment is a place where multiplicity exists, until a sense of direction, conviction, or chosen action constellates. We automatically judge & objectify the world, isolating us from its creative flow. We are making strangers & objects of people that belong in our world. We can't make anything permanent. To know & feel the connection to things will make a space for kindness inside us. We belong to the family of humankind, other living beings, & the earth itself. We want to stop the subtle killing that judgment is. Why not find 100 ways that we belong & can serve? Finding ways may help us discover that we truly belong & are at home & vulnerable, in connection with everything, creating community.
I attended a Zen monastery with its narrow 4-by-4 cushion & silence. That exposure led me to sit in silence & stillness in the Quaker meetings. To be in place, to empty the mind of questions, to experience the truth of the moment itself isn't easy. It's sitting in a question without an answer, except the experience of being fully where I am; then, experiences of Spirit can be felt. There's need to be where we are without canned answers, in the sanctity of not knowing. Perhaps then we feel the Spirit's invitation & question, to which we will be the answer. Living vibrant, unanswerable questions is a form of deep prayer. May we respond to Spirit's invitation to us to be living answers to others' needs. To have a sanctuary is a blessed thing; it is making a space for the Spirit's work to grow in us. Where is a place of steadiness & peace? What is sanctuary for us & home for our souls? The answer to that is the essence of sanctuary.
Queries—Which words describing sanctuary resonate most for you & your experience of sanctuary? Where do you find & experience sanctuary? What methods or practices do you use to create sanctuary within yourself? How have you found limitation to be sanctuary or transformation? What is the role of community in cultivating sanctuary? How have you found that providing sanctuary for others provides it for yourself? How might you provide sanctuary for a person, place or cause?
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459. The Workings of the Spirit of God Within: The Offices of Christ (by David Johnson; 2019)
About the Author—David is a convinced Conservative Friend, a member of Queensland Regional Meeting of Australia YM, & is affiliated with Marlborough MM, OH YM (Conservative). He helped set up Silver Wattle Quaker Centre in Australia. He & his wife led Year-End Retreats (2018) in California & Australia. David led Becoming a Fuller Quaker study session in Australia, & John's Gospel: Refreshment & Challenge at Pendle Hill.
Introduction—As child & teenager I learn Bible narratives, & about Jesus as part of God within the box of Anglican creeds & liturgies. Liberal unprogrammed Quaker tradition avoided Jesus & God words. The Inner Guide's voice came to me in a Sri Lankan, Buddhist monastery. I witnessed holiness of many from other faiths. I began to know Australian Aboriginal people' spirituality. I experienced the Spirit through trees, plants, & earth.
The 1st Quakers' written experiences have united my childhood learning about Jesus & a universal Spirit of God in an inward contemplative spiritual practice. The essence of the 1st Quakers' spiritual teachings is:
a divine presence, a Spirit of God, born into and manifested in every person; the Spirit shows us Truth, what is right and enables us to do it; this Spirit was perfectly manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, did not cease at his crucifixion, and is with us at every moment; in following this Spirit, however it manifests itself, we find we experience more of that Light; our measure of light is increased.
As Fox and early Friends followed this Light inwardly, it changed them completely. They became acutely aware of their own spiritual condition, as individual and community. Their writings has enabled me to name some of my own experience. In his writings Fox uses 18 different terms for what he calls the "offices of Christ."
Offices of Christ: Role, Function and Fruit
And might all come to know Christ to be their ... shepherd to feed them, their bishop to oversee them, and their prophet to open divine mysteries to them ... and be fit temples for God and Christ to dwell in. Fox (1652)
Being that the Lord is king, Lord and lawgiver to all that are under his government and is supreme head and judge in the consciences ... all people that come to be guided by this law ... they by so doing come into God's covenant and promise ... and all people meet here together ... in the unity of the [Christ] spirit. Fell (1660)
Offices of Christ: Role, Function and Fruit
And might all come to know Christ to be their ... shepherd to feed them, their bishop to oversee them, and their prophet to open divine mysteries to them ... and be fit temples for God and Christ to dwell in. Fox (1652)
Being that the Lord is king, Lord and lawgiver to all that are under his government and is supreme head and judge in the consciences ... all people that come to be guided by this law ... they by so doing come into God's covenant and promise ... and all people meet here together ... in the unity of the [Christ] spirit. Fell (1660)
These are the true meetings and gatherings, who feel Christ in the midst of them ... [as] your priest that offered himself up for you, and sacrifices for, and makes you holy and clean, that he may present you blameless up to the holy and pure God. Fox (1675)
"[The Savior is that in which], without visions or the sound of speech or human mediation ... all weight, agony ... unreality fall away. [We] perceive living goodness, joy, light ...clear irradiating, uplifting ... unequivocal reality from deep inside. Fogelklou (1985)
Fox draws our attention to different ways [& roles] in which Light works. This essay explores 6 of these roles, their functions and fruits:
Role Function Fruit
Bishop watch over and stabilize hope
Shepherd lead into spiritual pastures gratitude
Prophet teach righteousness peace
Ruler give clear directions courage & unity
Priest sanctify words and actions compassion
Savior restore life and innocency humility & trust
2 words—"comforter" and "counselor"—refer to the Spirit of God [and qualities found in several of the above roles] rather than individual offices [and are used sparingly] in George Fox's Journal.
What Does the Word "Christ" Mean?—The Greek word "Christ" was 1st used to name the Spirit of God inspiring prophets and being manifested in Jesus around 40CE; it means "anointed," and was used as an equivalent of "Messiah." [In the millennia that this concept has been around, it has been] overlaid with all manner of doctrines, theologies, and painful memories; Jesus as Christ is my guide and ruler.
Bishop—Sometimes there is a feeling, as if someone is holding on to secure us, despite all the disturbing turbulence of the surrounding world and the conflicts in our thoughts and emotions. Fox as a young man, saw that: "people who professed and admitted to the Christian religion were whole and at ease [with that] which was my misery; they loved that which I would have been rid of ... the Lord [stayed] my desires upon the Lord ... Christ it was who enlightened me, that gave me his light to believe in, and gave me hope ... revealed himself in me, gave me spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness ... the Lord in his mercy did keep me ... hope underneath held me, as an anchor at the bottom of the sea, and anchored my soul to its Bishop."
Fox understood "bishop" as someone mature, holy, temperate, & faithful; he isn't mentioning a human being as bishop. He is putting words around a spiritual experience. This Spirit oversees spiritual lives, & has a function that leads to good; it steadies us in times of trouble. The internal bishop can provide that guidance & support far more reliably than an external one. It said to me, "I am always with you whether or not you are aware of me."
Shepherd—How have you felt the Spirit of God move within you to pick up a book & quickly be drawn to a passage that speaks instantly to your condition? [By "speaks" I mean] a spiritual understanding, opening, morsel of food, an immediate awareness of a truth I need to know. In the sense I feel led to this book, the Spirit of God acted like a shepherd, leading me to a pasture of spiritual sustenance. It might also be following a forest path to be given a message by a vista, animal or tree. We feel heartened, replenished, spiritually fed. The Spirit of God is so carefully attuned to our spiritual journey that: "Christ your shepherd directs you to [heavenly & spiritual things], according to your capacity, age, & growth; & so to know him that God has sent to feed you."
Prophet/ Ruler—The office prophet isn't primarily to predict, but to teach us by opening divine mysteries & bringing understanding of the spirit, & to make clear clear when we are straying from the path & what to do about it. The prophetic inward voice & Light is a teacher, instructing individuals "in things that belong to ever-lasting peace." The inner voice, [when ignored], doesn't leave entirely, but returns many times to sound a quiet warning. [This calls for] paying attention to the Spirit of God within me & learning in small things to obey the guidance. The prophet voice seeks to turn us away from worldly preoccupation & acquisitiveness, & to follow the ways of God. Fox wrote: "Your teacher is within you; look not forth: it will teach you, both lying in bed & going abroad, to shun all occasion of sin & evil." We aren't here for praise, but to bring a different consciousness.
Fox and early Friends uses several words to convey the role of ruler: king; lord; governor; lawgiver; master; director. The spiritual connotation of Christ as Ruler is very different, despite the worldly terms being used to convey the role. Christ calls us to an inward holy obedience and discipline. The testimony of Margaret Fell [quoted in the Roles of Christ section] is that as we each resign our own will and learn to be ruled by the Spirit of God we become a community, and the more courage God provides to do ["fearful task]. This path of living requires a level of yielding to which we may not be accustomed, [and less compromising then we are prone to].
Stephen Crisp writes: "When your minds are taken hold of, by any of the corruptible things of this world ... a lusting is kindled after ... those things ... Then the reasoner & consulter gets up in thee & starts a question: ... [How] may I keep in the way of Truth of the Lord & yet do this ... thing that my heart desireth? ... I will have my will, my lust ... satisfied this one time, & that isn't much ... this is but a small matter ... others [will satisfy] greater [lustful] things than this. Such reasonings enter the mind, & this grieves ... that good & righteous tender spirit ...brings weight & oppression upon it ... [It] withdraws again from thee ... & a night comes upon thee."
The 1st Quakers experienced "divine protection," analogous to a world ruler's promised worldly protection. Under Praemunire, people could be required to swear an oath of allegiance to the king; refusing meant their profit was forfeited & they were "out of the king's protection." Many Quakers died in jail after refusing to swear the oath; Margaret was convicted of refusing, & declared, "I am not out of Almighty God's protection."
Priest—The priestly role is broadly to draw attention to sacredness that is before us, not just in communion rites, but always & in all places. There are people whose presence, words & actions draw the best of us, & tends to encourage awareness of the sacred, drawing us to daily holiness. While some may observe we have no priests, the truth of the matter is the reverse: we have no laity. "Chosen" means called into total commitment to follow what God asks, to surrender to a holy, obedient life, being guided by the Spirit, and in, not of the world.
The Spirit of God as priest sanctifies those around us with our words and actions by listening to and following what the Spirit of God within is asking us to do to bring the presence of God into the world around us. George Fox wrote: "Be patterns, be examples ... that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people and to them." Fox was saying live up to the priestly role within you, then you will speak to the sacred in those around you, be a blessing to them, and judge less. We tend to become more compassionate and more charitable.
Priest: Redeemer, Savior, Physician, Healer, and Giver of Life—As we consent to doing what God asks of us, regretting past errors but not indulging in guilt and begin, of our own free will, to follow the Light in small things we find ourselves being charged. The early Quakers experienced a sense of coming into a just or right relationship with God, a sense that God forgave sins and welcomed the soul into a new life and relationship with God. Jesus is doing the work of a physician and healer, on both physical and spiritual levels. The Spirit of God, known as Christ, continues to do such such mysterious work. In Jesus' Aramaic, there is no word for "salvation," [but rather] a bestowal of life, or "to be made alive."
The Spirit of God, Christ was and continues to be the power through which all things are made, and without which nothing is made that is made, and in which is there is life. Jesus said, "I came that may have life and have it abundantly. The old person dies and a new person is born; life begins again on a new foundation. Sandra Cronk wrote: "A profound re-patterning begins in us, [perhaps] because our lives' old structure has broken up ... Creaturely pillars will no longer serve as our lives' center ... a new center can emerge: God ... The dark night journey has re-shaped our activity patterns, our values & whole being so that God is ... center." The 1st Quakers experienced that their tendency to fall into error had been mysteriously diminished within them. As saving grace takes hold we know we cannot do it of ourselves. [For all the change], we do not lose who we are. The Spirit of God is striving within every one of us to effect this change, in most cases very gradually, though occasionally with astounding energy and experience. We are given more humility and trust to follow the Light.
Summary—This Christ, God's Spiritual presence, is given to us to lead us individually to live more fully in God's presence, and to exercise Christ"s offices for the uplifting of Quaker community. Early Quakers had assurance that God's Spirit would see them through. George Fox preached in 1653: "If they came to walk in this light, [all] might therein see Christ to be the author of their faith, & the finisher thereof; their shepherd to feed them; their priest to teach them, their great prophet to open divine mysteries, [their constant companion]."
We experience the role of shepherd when we allow ourselves to be led and guided, and we can then guide others. When the voice is heard calling us back or deeper into relationship with God, calling for change in life-style, that is Christ's prophetic office. The inward voice calling us to speak up or act to call our community back into line or calling country back, that is Christ working as a prophet. We need to pray for humility and courage to go forward in our work. What God asks begets an increase in the courage and ability to do it.
When we speak and act from God's Spirit to the hearts of those we meet, the priestly role of Christ is at work; we accept our sanctifying role in the world. We depend on God's inward spiritual guidance, daily meditation and prayer, communal worship and personal reading. We are to work from a well overflowing so that the superabundant water is available continuously for our ministry. Fox and early Quakers declared that inward spiritual presence, Christ, had a greater, more perfect, more truthful power to teach and save than any worldly person or book. Identifying Christ's offices can sensitize us deeply to God's Spirit moving within each of us and our community. The inward Christ becomes better known to us as each of the offices are exercised within individually and outwardly in our communities.
We learn to trust & are given more faith, & Christ's attributes are more apparent. I invite you to be more open to these offices & be willing to name them within yourself. Take the time to note in which office the Light is working & leading you to even deeper levels than you have reached thus far in your spiritual journey toward God.
Queries—What role does Christ, or the Spirit of God within, play in your spiritual life? In what ways does divine presence, every one, Spirit showing Truth, Spirit manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, Spirit increasing our measure of light, resonate with your own experience? Which of Christ's offices do feel drawn or recognize from you spiritual experiences? What responsibility do we bare to be faithful to the Spirit in us? How does God/Christ and the Inward Light fulfill all the offices described? How have you been changed by following the leadings of the Spirit? How might all Christ's offices shape our collective worship, our Quaker community, and our outward ministry in the world?
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Fox draws our attention to different ways [& roles] in which Light works. This essay explores 6 of these roles, their functions and fruits:
Role Function Fruit
Bishop watch over and stabilize hope
Shepherd lead into spiritual pastures gratitude
Prophet teach righteousness peace
Ruler give clear directions courage & unity
Priest sanctify words and actions compassion
Savior restore life and innocency humility & trust
2 words—"comforter" and "counselor"—refer to the Spirit of God [and qualities found in several of the above roles] rather than individual offices [and are used sparingly] in George Fox's Journal.
What Does the Word "Christ" Mean?—The Greek word "Christ" was 1st used to name the Spirit of God inspiring prophets and being manifested in Jesus around 40CE; it means "anointed," and was used as an equivalent of "Messiah." [In the millennia that this concept has been around, it has been] overlaid with all manner of doctrines, theologies, and painful memories; Jesus as Christ is my guide and ruler.
Bishop—Sometimes there is a feeling, as if someone is holding on to secure us, despite all the disturbing turbulence of the surrounding world and the conflicts in our thoughts and emotions. Fox as a young man, saw that: "people who professed and admitted to the Christian religion were whole and at ease [with that] which was my misery; they loved that which I would have been rid of ... the Lord [stayed] my desires upon the Lord ... Christ it was who enlightened me, that gave me his light to believe in, and gave me hope ... revealed himself in me, gave me spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness ... the Lord in his mercy did keep me ... hope underneath held me, as an anchor at the bottom of the sea, and anchored my soul to its Bishop."
Fox understood "bishop" as someone mature, holy, temperate, & faithful; he isn't mentioning a human being as bishop. He is putting words around a spiritual experience. This Spirit oversees spiritual lives, & has a function that leads to good; it steadies us in times of trouble. The internal bishop can provide that guidance & support far more reliably than an external one. It said to me, "I am always with you whether or not you are aware of me."
Shepherd—How have you felt the Spirit of God move within you to pick up a book & quickly be drawn to a passage that speaks instantly to your condition? [By "speaks" I mean] a spiritual understanding, opening, morsel of food, an immediate awareness of a truth I need to know. In the sense I feel led to this book, the Spirit of God acted like a shepherd, leading me to a pasture of spiritual sustenance. It might also be following a forest path to be given a message by a vista, animal or tree. We feel heartened, replenished, spiritually fed. The Spirit of God is so carefully attuned to our spiritual journey that: "Christ your shepherd directs you to [heavenly & spiritual things], according to your capacity, age, & growth; & so to know him that God has sent to feed you."
Prophet/ Ruler—The office prophet isn't primarily to predict, but to teach us by opening divine mysteries & bringing understanding of the spirit, & to make clear clear when we are straying from the path & what to do about it. The prophetic inward voice & Light is a teacher, instructing individuals "in things that belong to ever-lasting peace." The inner voice, [when ignored], doesn't leave entirely, but returns many times to sound a quiet warning. [This calls for] paying attention to the Spirit of God within me & learning in small things to obey the guidance. The prophet voice seeks to turn us away from worldly preoccupation & acquisitiveness, & to follow the ways of God. Fox wrote: "Your teacher is within you; look not forth: it will teach you, both lying in bed & going abroad, to shun all occasion of sin & evil." We aren't here for praise, but to bring a different consciousness.
Fox and early Friends uses several words to convey the role of ruler: king; lord; governor; lawgiver; master; director. The spiritual connotation of Christ as Ruler is very different, despite the worldly terms being used to convey the role. Christ calls us to an inward holy obedience and discipline. The testimony of Margaret Fell [quoted in the Roles of Christ section] is that as we each resign our own will and learn to be ruled by the Spirit of God we become a community, and the more courage God provides to do ["fearful task]. This path of living requires a level of yielding to which we may not be accustomed, [and less compromising then we are prone to].
Stephen Crisp writes: "When your minds are taken hold of, by any of the corruptible things of this world ... a lusting is kindled after ... those things ... Then the reasoner & consulter gets up in thee & starts a question: ... [How] may I keep in the way of Truth of the Lord & yet do this ... thing that my heart desireth? ... I will have my will, my lust ... satisfied this one time, & that isn't much ... this is but a small matter ... others [will satisfy] greater [lustful] things than this. Such reasonings enter the mind, & this grieves ... that good & righteous tender spirit ...brings weight & oppression upon it ... [It] withdraws again from thee ... & a night comes upon thee."
The 1st Quakers experienced "divine protection," analogous to a world ruler's promised worldly protection. Under Praemunire, people could be required to swear an oath of allegiance to the king; refusing meant their profit was forfeited & they were "out of the king's protection." Many Quakers died in jail after refusing to swear the oath; Margaret was convicted of refusing, & declared, "I am not out of Almighty God's protection."
Priest—The priestly role is broadly to draw attention to sacredness that is before us, not just in communion rites, but always & in all places. There are people whose presence, words & actions draw the best of us, & tends to encourage awareness of the sacred, drawing us to daily holiness. While some may observe we have no priests, the truth of the matter is the reverse: we have no laity. "Chosen" means called into total commitment to follow what God asks, to surrender to a holy, obedient life, being guided by the Spirit, and in, not of the world.
The Spirit of God as priest sanctifies those around us with our words and actions by listening to and following what the Spirit of God within is asking us to do to bring the presence of God into the world around us. George Fox wrote: "Be patterns, be examples ... that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people and to them." Fox was saying live up to the priestly role within you, then you will speak to the sacred in those around you, be a blessing to them, and judge less. We tend to become more compassionate and more charitable.
Priest: Redeemer, Savior, Physician, Healer, and Giver of Life—As we consent to doing what God asks of us, regretting past errors but not indulging in guilt and begin, of our own free will, to follow the Light in small things we find ourselves being charged. The early Quakers experienced a sense of coming into a just or right relationship with God, a sense that God forgave sins and welcomed the soul into a new life and relationship with God. Jesus is doing the work of a physician and healer, on both physical and spiritual levels. The Spirit of God, known as Christ, continues to do such such mysterious work. In Jesus' Aramaic, there is no word for "salvation," [but rather] a bestowal of life, or "to be made alive."
The Spirit of God, Christ was and continues to be the power through which all things are made, and without which nothing is made that is made, and in which is there is life. Jesus said, "I came that may have life and have it abundantly. The old person dies and a new person is born; life begins again on a new foundation. Sandra Cronk wrote: "A profound re-patterning begins in us, [perhaps] because our lives' old structure has broken up ... Creaturely pillars will no longer serve as our lives' center ... a new center can emerge: God ... The dark night journey has re-shaped our activity patterns, our values & whole being so that God is ... center." The 1st Quakers experienced that their tendency to fall into error had been mysteriously diminished within them. As saving grace takes hold we know we cannot do it of ourselves. [For all the change], we do not lose who we are. The Spirit of God is striving within every one of us to effect this change, in most cases very gradually, though occasionally with astounding energy and experience. We are given more humility and trust to follow the Light.
Summary—This Christ, God's Spiritual presence, is given to us to lead us individually to live more fully in God's presence, and to exercise Christ"s offices for the uplifting of Quaker community. Early Quakers had assurance that God's Spirit would see them through. George Fox preached in 1653: "If they came to walk in this light, [all] might therein see Christ to be the author of their faith, & the finisher thereof; their shepherd to feed them; their priest to teach them, their great prophet to open divine mysteries, [their constant companion]."
We experience the role of shepherd when we allow ourselves to be led and guided, and we can then guide others. When the voice is heard calling us back or deeper into relationship with God, calling for change in life-style, that is Christ's prophetic office. The inward voice calling us to speak up or act to call our community back into line or calling country back, that is Christ working as a prophet. We need to pray for humility and courage to go forward in our work. What God asks begets an increase in the courage and ability to do it.
When we speak and act from God's Spirit to the hearts of those we meet, the priestly role of Christ is at work; we accept our sanctifying role in the world. We depend on God's inward spiritual guidance, daily meditation and prayer, communal worship and personal reading. We are to work from a well overflowing so that the superabundant water is available continuously for our ministry. Fox and early Quakers declared that inward spiritual presence, Christ, had a greater, more perfect, more truthful power to teach and save than any worldly person or book. Identifying Christ's offices can sensitize us deeply to God's Spirit moving within each of us and our community. The inward Christ becomes better known to us as each of the offices are exercised within individually and outwardly in our communities.
We learn to trust & are given more faith, & Christ's attributes are more apparent. I invite you to be more open to these offices & be willing to name them within yourself. Take the time to note in which office the Light is working & leading you to even deeper levels than you have reached thus far in your spiritual journey toward God.
Queries—What role does Christ, or the Spirit of God within, play in your spiritual life? In what ways does divine presence, every one, Spirit showing Truth, Spirit manifested in Jesus of Nazareth, Spirit increasing our measure of light, resonate with your own experience? Which of Christ's offices do feel drawn or recognize from you spiritual experiences? What responsibility do we bare to be faithful to the Spirit in us? How does God/Christ and the Inward Light fulfill all the offices described? How have you been changed by following the leadings of the Spirit? How might all Christ's offices shape our collective worship, our Quaker community, and our outward ministry in the world?
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