Beyond toleration: Abigail Maxwell reflects on two light-filled events

‘LGBT+ Pride is about being wholly ourselves.’

Let me begin in 1688, when it ceased to be criminal to evade the Church of England, or worship elsewhere. In the following decade, Quakers in Finedon built a tiny Meeting house, and as they walked to it, local people stoned them. They refused to retaliate, but built a high wall around the Meeting house to mitigate the attacks. We became a peculiar people, with peculiar clothes and ways. That Meeting was laid down in 1912. By 1931, in our church government documents, we wrote, ‘Should… another religious body appear to meet [the membership applicant’s] spiritual needs, it is unlikely that his right place is among us’. Some of that spirit of holding ourselves apart remains.

By then, some Quakers had become wealthy – famously through chocolate, banking and shoemaking, but also in Caribbean sugar plantations or gun manufacture.

Cut to Pride Week in London, 2022. On 1 July I joined the Gay Liberation Front for the fiftieth anniversary march, a more anarchic affair than the official event. A woman led chants of ‘Our bodies, our choice’ and ‘This is what community looks like’. She loaned me her loudhailer to lead ‘We’re not free till everyone’s free’, ‘Trans women are women! Trans men are men!’ and ‘Nonbinary people are valid!’ People there campaign against deportation flights.

One man had a t-shirt reading ‘Lose religion, find divinity’ and a group talked of speaking from their inner light. A man told of seeing the face of Christ in an Indian guru. After, I joined a vigil around a police van processing an arrestee, and met big, capable dykes and dapper trans men. I wish they thought their right place was among us. LGBT+ Pride is about being wholly ourselves, however the cishet* see us: expressing our own Light.

Today’s Quakers, on the other hand, imperfectly cherish what diversity we have. Yearly Meeting offered more than one example of how black Friends have experienced racism in the Society, and how they have felt unsupported when they have tried to expose it.

Also in July I attended the Gathering of Friends General Conference (FG), by Zoom. FGC is the main grouping of unprogrammed Yearly Meetings in the US. I love the slight differences of US practice, and want to cross-pollinate. In early lockdown, Zoom Worship at Pendle Hill helped me sustain a regular spiritual practice. There, singing in ministry is far more common. As Meeting draws to a close, worshippers are invited to share their joys and sorrows. From there I joined a deep listening group. We meet God in each other, addressing queries such as ‘What is the Light?’
If there is that of God in me, what else is there? Part of it is my habitual sense of propriety. As a Quaker, I am a Serious Person, and the worship sharing had a serious question. John Woolman felt tension between his guidance and his actions: where do you sense that tension now? Instead of saying, I ought to become vegetarian, I spoke of how my beauty and value is celebrated by others. A woman had direct messaged me in Zoom chat: ‘Your poignant words brought chills… And YES.’ I expressed my delight, and my Friend threw back his head and laughed.

I am wonderful and beautiful. If I can express God in me, I will shine. If I can be pure in heart, that is, be that God, naked and unashamed, then I will see God, who is everywhere to be seen.

Then a Friend asked, ‘What can each of us do to let go of our defences and come to community?’ At one of Yearly Meeting’s sessions a woman will offer animal face-painting to adults as well as children, and I hope fun will break people open. How can we oppose climate change, inequality and cruelty unless we dance?

Wisdom is everywhere to be found. Another Friend said, ‘I love to dance, and I love to follow, but I can follow well only when I have no clue what the next move is going to be.’ The dance with Spirit does not go well when I try to lead. If we speak from Spirit it might seem to onlookers that there were flames dancing round our heads, and that we spoke in their own language.

What we said could not be predicted, because we cannot know a situation until we are in it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, with subconscious perception to show us what is needed, and a love-filled heart to speak it.

‘O’, who is black, led the workshop on ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’, where they repeated, emphatically, to a white man, ‘I am here for your liberation’. They asked us, ‘What support do you need to see God/Love when you look in the mirror?’ Now, seeing that as through a glass, dimly, I need to be loved. I need to see that others love me. I need to know that I am seen.

‘O’ said that we are surrounded by vibrations, some of which will support us in our true nature as sacred and divine. When someone racially abuses her, she recognises that as an ancient vibration rooted in their trauma, because hurting people hurt people. Pain that has not been transformed will be transferred. It is an opportunity to see their pain, and exercise compassion.

We learned self-negation as toddlers, and this year I learned that when I totally lose it, the world does not end. We need not be satisfied with toleration and separation. 1 Corinthians 3:16: ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you?’ This vulnerable God ceaselessly invites us to dance.

Can I pray without ceasing? Can I speak and act from my inner Light, all the time?

Footnote: 
*A contraction of ‘cisgender heterosexual’ – a person who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, and chooses sexual/romantic partners of the opposite sex.

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