‘I wanted to be free to choose my Teacher when I was ready, but did not think about how to recognise readiness.’ Photo: Agnieszka Kowalczyk on Unsplash
Companion planting: Anne Watson contemplates the mystics
‘The rose and the cabbage unfold together within Quaker life.’
During the recent curtailments of daily life I have been grappling with a difficulty that has been nagging at me for some time. In early life I realised that I could be swept along by a tsunami of religious awareness, and that this could affect my life choices. I was unconvinced that being swept along in this way would bring me happiness. So, while I half-admired those who allowed themselves to be swept, I stubbornly refused to go with them. I wanted to experience the fullness of life, some of which would be denied me, or made difficult, if religious discipline – holiness – was to dominate my life. I was not a bad person, I merely followed my own hunches while trying to live in a way that allowed human love to grow. I did my best, in the world as it is, not to harm others. I felt that commitment to a totally spirit-led life would be like falling over a waterfall and losing aspects of myself. I thought I could probably work out what love required of me intellectually, without submitting to an unknown. I wanted to be free to choose my Teacher when I was ready, but did not think about how to recognise readiness. That is why my analogy for spiritual development is not a journey but an unfolding – sometimes like a cabbage, worthy and dutiful; sometimes like a rose, fragrant and beautiful. Ready or not.
I cannot recall now why I started to read Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain but when I did I was not impressed. How could I learn anything from this story of a misbehaving man making a mess of life and then becoming a monk and advising other people how to redeem themselves? There are several mystics who have gone through this kind of life change and then tell us, in their writings, what Christianity should be, or can be. But one passage grabbed me. Merton had attended a Quaker Meeting and been unimpressed by some ministry about someone’s holiday in Switzerland. He wrote: ‘I went out of the meeting house saying to myself “They are like all the rest. In other churches it is the minister who hands out the commonplaces, and here it is liable to be just anybody”… If I had run across something by Evelyn Underhill it might have been different.’
So I began to read The Mystic Way by Evelyn Underhill. She wrote more specifically about Quakers in other books, but it was good discipline for me to read her generalities about mystics in this one. These weren’t just people who had behaved badly and ‘come to good’ as contemplatives, but also other variants, such as Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi and George Fox.
Underhill takes the reported life of Jesus as an example of many people called ‘mystics’. They espouse a mysterious unity with divine guidance and a wholeness of perception that permeates their mind and behaviour. This starts with illumination beyond words. Fox wrote that ‘all creation gave another smell beyond what words can utter’. Many report similar experiences, but that is only the start of a process. What am I supposed to do with such an experience? Is doing what I can for the environment its sole use? For Jesus, the next move after illumination was to go into solitude for a while and, while there, face temptation. He began preaching and behaving in ways that broke the strictures of his society, acting with love rather than in the law. Of course this attracted opposition, and he explained his actions to the disciples in terms of a higher law of love and equality and redemption. This teaching led to his crucifixion, and to confusion among the disciples about what they could do next.
For many people, this pathway – of illumination, solitude, temptation, teaching, being with others, facing opposition, undergoing self-doubt and frustration, and then a dramatic destruction of their sense of self followed by ‘resurrection’ – is a way of achieving unity and wholeness. In the writings of the mystics there are two different ways to complete this path. We can become contemplative – individually or separately from the world – or we can live life as it is in the world but become more loving, more giving, more communal, less judgmental, more generous of heart, and more joyful and creative. So I need not hold back from that tsunami. Instead I could push aside my unwillingness to submit and make room for the Spirit.
This is what Evelyn Underhill saw in Quakers. Rather than put faith in a liturgy that mimics the life of Jesus, Friends try to follow his actions: sharing food (real and metaphoric), loving all, appreciating creation, being humble, acting with courage, charity, and not attaching ourselves to possessions or to aspects of self that can be beneficially abandoned. She also saw the Quaker understanding of God as inward, the battery that makes such a life possible, as well as outwardly manifested through actions. Of course you don’t have to use the word ‘God’ here, but I do. There seems to me to be more than this analysis, because contemplation arises in silent worship, thus combining the natures of these two ‘ends’ of the mystic pathway. They are not separate. This is what prevents me from getting lost in the tsunami. The rose and the cabbage unfold together within Quaker life. George Fox and other Friends saw this, and Quakers have institutionalised the connection.
Friends worship together. The disciplines of worship and of discernment are how I decide whether what I say and do is spirit-led. They help me listen to ministry with an open heart and mind, sustaining the connection. Meetings for Clearness also sustain the connection. In our traditional writings and practices Friends are assured that discernment tests words, decisions and actions. I am invited to wonder whether I am mistaken; I might ask whether I am swept along in truth or in fashion; others’ experience and testimony can teach me; I also learn from my own experience; I strive to discern what love, evidenced through peace, justice, truth, sustainability, simplicity and equality, requires of me. What is more, I can share all this with others, support them in sufferings, frustrations and uncertainties and can celebrate the illuminations and resurrections that provide the Light. No one need be alone.
It is a delightful relief and joy to realise that, while wondering about what I was missing, I had not been paying full attention to the background unfoldings that have always been going on among and alongside Friends, and which sustain the spirit-led life.
I look forward to the time when we can once again share tea and biscuits, and rejoice that many have found creative ways to share the metaphorical bread and wine.
