‘Community is not just a matter of geography.’ Photo: by Shoeib Abolhassanon Unsplash
Being faithful to the vision: Harvey Gillman responds to some recent pieces in the Friend
‘My vision of the sacred oneness must embrace the oppressed and the oppressor.’
I joined Friends almost fifty years ago, after a mystical experience of being in communion with the world around me. This experience gave me a sense of belonging and of place, to which I have tried to remain faithful even in moments of great doubt. I needed to explore the consequences of this with a group of people with whom I could be open, and who could be open with me. As an extrovert I need the energy of others to stimulate the energy within. Pilgrimage can be a lonely enterprise. On the whole I enjoy and learn from the company of Friends. I have also had to discover just what being in community entails.
I read in the Friend of 3 May of the establishment in Wales of the first online Local Meeting. When, before Covid, I first read of Meetings on Zoom, I was really against the idea. Communal worship has meant for me the actual physical presence, in a shared space, of other worshippers. When we are truly gathered in a single room it can be an act of communion for me. But necessity generates knowledge and tolerance, and I discovered there was indeed a value in Meeting for Worship online. It was not just a replica of traditional Meeting. It was really different, but a community nevertheless.
We have had to learn new ways of Meeting. Online Meeting can be more inclusive of people who cannot get to a Meeting house, but at the same time it can exclude others who find Zoom difficult. All communities exclude as well as include, in spite of the best intentions.
Community is not just a matter of geography, it is historical also. We don’t hear much theology in vocal ministry, but we hear many inspiring stories of our Quaker saints. We may have different worldviews to those held by Fox, Nayler, Penn, Woolman, Fry, Jones, et al, but they are part of the community of our family. We have inherited their spiritual genes. The written word is also a sharing of community. It is significant that we as a family recreate every now and again our book of community, our book of discipline, remembering that discipline derives from the Latin word to learn. We are creative disciples. We learn as we recreate. We are a community of artists as well as of pilgrims.
For most of my fifty years of membership, I have been a reader of the Friend. It is a sort-of family magazine, inspiring, irritating, stimulating, as many families are. We joke sometimes about the letter pages – strong views, discordant sometimes, with bees in bonnets and hobby horses – but for me they can be sources of reflection that stay with me for years. Over the last few months, if not more, I have needed to hear voices which lift my spirit from the general sadness, even anger, caused by too much world news. I need my Friends in a world that often seems so hostile to my hopes and dreams. Some of the letters and articles speak to me as ministry. The written word has power also.
I should like to refer to four letters in particular which have challenged and stimulated me. I have read and reread several times the letters of Matt Rosen and Abby Press Adorney of 12 April. Matt Rosen wrote: ‘I wonder if we feel we have good news to offer those who are not comfortable. When I need help from a power greater than myself, and from others attending to that power, “come to Meeting and we will question all your convictions” does not provide much solace.’
I do not know if I share all of Matt’s theology, but that comment really struck a bell within me. I am long past the need to deconstruct everything. I may have come to one community in exile from another, but I have stayed not to demolish as an intellectual but to build up as a human being, in solidarity with others, who know their need of something greater than themselves. This is what I call the divine within and between. Years ago in the columns of this magazine, I wrote of being tired of hearing what Friends don’t do, or don’t believe. What, I challenged, did we actually affirm? No negatives were allowed in the first paragraph of replies. I was inundated with marvellous contributions. They formed the basis for an anthology: This I Affirm.
The second letter was written by Abby Press Adorney, rephrasing Fox: ‘You will say the Peace Testimony saith this, and the interpreters say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light, and has thou walked in the Light…’
Both these lessons were warnings against formalism, but in the name of a positive experience of spiritual depth. They were not afraid of using words like ‘Light’ and ‘power’, words which took me back to the formative experience which led me to Friends in the first place.
Then in the Friend of 3 May, Heather Kent wrote a brilliant letter on the Book of Jonah, speaking of the fierce certainty of judgement and the ambiguous demands of mercy. I had never considered Jonah in this way before. It was a real revelation. This led straight to a very moving letter by Clive Gordon on forgiveness in the present Israel/Palestine war. It spoke to my condition, to my heart and my soul. My original mystical experience has not provided me with answers to the many ethical and political circumstances that I have had to face, but has given me the courage to face them. Clive Gordon managed in his letter to embody both judgement and mercy, prayer, darkness and light. Too often we are asked as Friends to come out with statements that will sort everything out. John Lampen in a recent article talked of the seeming contradictions of two Quaker approaches to peacemaking: that of the prophet and that of the reconciler. Judgement and mercy. And yet we are called both to condemn actions of destruction and to listen to the trauma on all sides. How do we remain quietly loving in a world of strident hatred? How do we answer that of God in all in a world which craves the righteous certainty of judgement? Can judgement, which is sometimes necessary, be transcended by mercy, which is always vital?
In words perhaps erroneously attributed to Augustine of Hippo, ‘Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are’. My understanding of testimony arises out of the overwhelming vision I had as a young man of the sacred oneness of things. When, even for the best reasons I am angry, and I often am, that vision feels betrayed, the oneness is fragmented. The angry daughter of judgement needs to embrace the daughter of courage, and give her the energy in the long dark days when the light is clouded over. The merciful sister must show her sibling how to be creative and transformational. My vision of the sacred oneness must embrace the oppressed and the oppressor, even when I find it almost impossible to do so, for the whole of creation is part of the oneness. Peace, truth, simplicity, equality, and all the other values which flow from universal love, are what our lives are to show. This is what makes us a spiritual movement, not simply a progressive political one.
When it comes to the Israel/Palestine war, my vision of oneness is challenged. I must condemn the Netanyahu government and its works of destruction, as I must condemn the ideology of Hamas which talks of destruction. My deep compassion for the Palestinian people must also include sorrow for what has brought them and Israel to the state in which they find themselves. Hatred and fear have their own genealogies. They breed angry descendants. Clive Gordon expresses this well.
My original vision was of the community of all creation. This vision entails a recognition also of the trauma suffered by so many peoples, indeed of much of nature itself. If judgement and anger there must be, they must embrace courage and mercy if the deeper awareness of the interrelationship of things is not be destroyed. The key insight of the Quaker vision, the basis of our understanding of community, is the need to respond to the divine in all life, in our own brokenness and in that of the world.
