Alive in each other
Harvey Gillman reflects on why we need to hear other people’s stories
I have been reading the Friend since I joined the Society at Leigh-on-Sea some thirty-six years ago. I think it was there that I was surprised when one of the older members told me that the first thing she read in the Friend was the ‘hatch, match, and despatch’ column. I was perhaps the youngest member there but I am now reaching the age when I quite understand what she meant, especially when it comes to despatches.
Since I have worked for and with Friends for many years, rarely a week goes by without my noticing among the obituaries the name of someone I knew, worked with, cherished, or wanted to get to know. For me the Society is a second family, that has taught me so much not just about the spiritual path but about how to get along with people, not all of whom I would have a natural affinity, some of whom I have found difficult and who would no doubt reciprocate that compliment with me. There is a lovely phrase in early Quaker writings about ‘mothers and fathers in Israel’. Several of these have indeed been my mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, my angels, announcing the voice of life to me. They have been my elders gently guiding me when I needed guidance (and sometimes when I thought I did not).
These thoughts have been prompted by hearing of the death of Hilda Duveen recently. I knew her at Ealing Meeting. I do not think she was particularly known centrally but I found in her a warmth and a loving heart, two of the many qualities which have kept me among Friends on those grey days when I wonder what on earth I am doing among these people called Quakers! I remember her tears when we were discussing the Orthodox Jewish prayer recited by men each morning thanking God that they had not been created women. That had caused her pain as a child – and still did. It is that sharing of experience and pain, as well as of joy, that cements communities and challenges the sometimes overwhelming sense I have that Quakers are Quakers because of extreme individualism and a delight in being different.
Sometimes at funerals I hear about the early lives of people I knew towards the end of their days and wish I had known that information during their lives. There is so much I would have wanted to know, to discuss, so much I could have learned. That came to me after the death of my parents also, especially my father of whose early life I know relatively little. And then there are the testimonies written after the deaths of people I never knew and I think ‘Wow! Never mind the theology, what a lesson in faithful living’. It is not just the good things in their lives, however, that speak to me. It is also the sad things, the failures, the little (and the large) unfaithfulnesses (please let me invent that word!) that speak to me and tell me that here is a group of man and women of flesh and blood, whose lives do speak, even though I cannot always translate what they are saying.
Whatever God is, I am sure that he or she or they or it is incarnate in human beings and is made communion in community. I also believe we remain alive in each other, whatever happens after death. Perhaps each obituary notice is a prayer, a confession, a thanksgiving, a reminder of own lives, our deaths, and whatever of eternity is given to humankind.
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