Rise and shine: Richard Thompson’s Thought for the Week

‘I begin with the need for us all to wake up.’

An amazing number of insights are to be found in Rex Ambler’s Truth of the Heart. I have chosen a number of quotations he finds from George Fox, from around 360 years ago. But we need to put them into words of our century, from our experience of the state of our politics. The uncomfortable truth is that we are more open to radical change through shock.

I begin with the need for us all to wake up. Paragraph 82 says ‘Let the Light of Jesus Christ, that shines in everyone of your consciences, search you thoroughly, and it will let you clearly see.’ Paragraph 90 adds: ‘Stand still in that which shows and discovers; and there doth strength immediately come.’ The journey ahead is not one of fear, but one of finding strength.

Now a collection from paragraphs 61 and 63: ‘Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts… [I]t is a strange life to you to come to be silent, you must come into a new world. Now you must die in the silence, die from the wisdom, die from the knowledge, die from the reason, and die from the understanding.’ For me, this applies to the invasion of artificial intelligence.

‘We have to be open to what we see.’

Fortunately, we have the potential of a different level of consciousness. Fox put it very simply in paragraph 26 of Part 2: ‘For you have the light to see all evil, and the power to withstand it’ (and, I add, the confidence) ‘to see that nothing be lacking.’ Here is the central importance of the verb ‘to see’!

We then have to be open to what we see: our culture of individualism and materialism, which puts hardly any attention on interconnection, on the relational, on friendship, or on coping with differences. Paragraph 3 of Part 2 says: ‘Mind the light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in one.’ Paragraph 5: ‘Mind that which is eternal, which… lets you see that ye are written in one another’s hearts; meet together everywhere.’ All this, in paragraph 21, that we ‘may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the eternal being.’ This is a way of seeing the potential of human consciousness, which can reach a new depth, and is rooted in inter-connection.

The last quotation for building a new perspective is the most difficult to express in modern language. Paragraph 120: ‘He that loves the light, and walks in the light, receives the light of life.’ Wow! I would put it like this: The person who seeks their essence in our centre and feels love and gratitude for it, then who doesn’t stay locked in words but takes action in daily life, receives the energy of love and unity which is in the source of life in each of us.

But it is important for each one of us to find the words from our own Expérience et pratique, which happens to be the title of France Yearly Meeting’s book of discipline! 

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Comments

I’m sorry to say I find the illustration that goes with this article disturbingly inappropriate.
It does not in any way illustrate the thought processes that pervade the article.
The article is about finding strength in terrifying times. The illustration belittles the seriousness of the topic and makes fun of it.
In fact I would go further and say that this type of illustration is not suitable for The Friend to use in any context, unless possibly discussing misogyny/ the me too movement / sexism etc etc.
I do hope this can be taken down as a matter of urgency?

By Tina Leonard on 14th February 2025 - 9:00

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