Discerning passion
Roland Carn offers his thoughts on living with integrity
Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering 2017 begins the first of its four themes ‘Heart’, ‘Head’, ‘Hands’ and ‘Feet’. George Lakey, the American Quaker activist and writer, introduces ‘Heart’. The master storyteller unfolds a tale of personal hesitancy and fear that leads on to family tragedy. I’m drawn in as he mirrors my own experience with the sudden death, in 2010, of my engaging rogue of a stepson. My unaccustomed tears begin to flow. George sits and we wait in Quakerly silence. I’m frozen, transfixed with tears streaming down my face. The clerk rising, breaks the spell. At last, I rummage in my bag for my tissues, embarrassed at what my neighbours must be thinking.
In the silence that follows a Friend, brought up as I was, not to cry, ministers of her grief that years later she was at last able to express. Until now I hadn’t cried for our Peter. Another Friend ministers on the loving support she received on her father’s death from a Meeting who didn’t know her. We had amazing support from York Meeting, Pennsylvania, who, knowing nothing about us, willingly hosted Peter’s Memorial Meeting. Peter’s twenty-four shiftmates all turned up: we saw something of his personal life.
Blinded, I completely miss George Lakey’s message. Recently, in Meeting for Worship, I ministered about interfering when cultures clash. Others ministered and I realised that they, too, missed the point – preferring to think of the violent boy in my story. We are addicted to drama: passion in films and soaps, hyper-excited sports commentators, violent crime and news reports.
Through the drama and my own tears, I discern George’s passionate commitment to people in difficult situations – in faraway countries and in his family. George was living and loving on his edge. Wracked and torn by his feelings and the loving support of those around him, he quietly made a difference to those he came to help. His emotional rollercoaster piggybacks on a deeper passion for making ‘a big difference in the fight to replace injustice with a decent world’. God-given passions drive us forward, make us vulnerable, challenge our courage, shield us from the Light – and keep us from interfering.
My tears flow again as I remember our younger son, in a group of heavy drug takers and watching his friends die one by one. He was away from home and there was nothing we could do. He needed space to find his own way. I hoped his Quaker upbringing would see him through. And, somehow, he made it. He went back to university and has just graduated with a first. His youngest child, who is almost seven years old, works industriously on his computer game as I write.
As a small child I struggled to make sense of the big, confusing people around me. After school I discovered psychology and decided to follow it, a fateful decision: first to study the brain and behaviour, and later into the real world of business people. A rollercoaster, with setbacks, distractions, mental breakdowns, career changes, marriage and parenthood followed, but I’ve never lost focus on what people do and how they do what they do: that smaller print below the small print of social life. Like George Lakey, I’d like to make a big, dramatic difference. As the life force fades gently away, any change I might have made is small, certainly not dramatic, and I’ll probably never know about it. Now I discern a deeper passion and a calling.
I’m born a Quaker, without understanding, questing discernment through my fog. I come eventually to the crunch. I believe a good life is possible, if it’s lived with integrity. Demanding I practice my beliefs, Quakerism speaks to my condition. Pointless confusion is relieved. But it’s not the comfortable homecoming others recall. Useless, overwhelming failure is always there; sometimes just out of sight. In my head I live on my edge. My ethical business forces limits others call stupid. One group trusts me, another doesn’t talk to me when I won’t sign off deceitful documents. Projects and businesses work on their edge. I’m a Quaker: being there, riding my rollercoaster, on another edge.
Discern God’s passionate purpose beyond the personal drama and emotional storms.
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