Every day can be Christmas day for a Quaker
Willem Furnée, a Dutch Quaker, last December published an article in its monthly magazine, De Vriendenkring. Marieke Faber Clarke, a member of Oxford and Swindon Area Meeting, has translated the piece so it is available to Anglophone Quakers.
Luke is the only evangelist who tells us how the shepherds in the field were urged by angels to search for the child in the stable. The angels set out and find Jesus in a manger at Bethlehem (meaning the Bread House). Is this a romantic story of two thousand years ago, or is it the description of a mystical experience? Mystical experience Nowadays we can seldom experience the majesty of a clear night sky because an excess of artificial light obscures the nocturnal darkness. But if I have the opportunity to look at this wonder, I am overwhelmed by the magnificence of the stars. Then I am filled with awe and sometimes I feel at one with the cosmos and all human beings, those alive now or those beyond.
When I discovered the interior way and began to follow it, I discovered the starry sky in myself. For, in me, the darkness of my unconscious (or subconscious) reigns, with a multitude of stars, points of light that together form my clear, but very limited, consciousness.
The shepherds in the field
The appearance of the angels led to the shepherds’ visit to the stable. You can imagine how the shepherds gazed at the majestic, ink-black sky in which the stars twinkled brightly. In a wonderful manner, the stars became luminous forms that declared God’s glory and that filled the shepherds with awe. It sounds like the description of a mystical experience. This experience comes to me because the darkness within me turns into light; in me, the shepherd, which is the part of me that wants to nurture and love, is addressed, just as the angels spoke to the shepherds. After this experience, when the angels once more became stars and the darkness once more reigned, the shepherds could find the way to Bethlehem (the bread house). This is the place where real bread of life can be found.
The bread of life: the Ten Commandments and the baby in the manger
For Jews, the Ten Commandments are the foundation of creation. They were engraved on stone and kept in the Ark of the Covenant. This was in the Holy of Holies, the holiest place in the Temple, where only the high priest, the highest servant of God, might come once a year, on the Day of Atonement. But, on Christmas night, the Ten Commandments were revealed to the shepherds. This happened not by means of a text, but in the form of a newborn baby, with the name ‘The Lord saves’.
This child is the personification of the hidden innocent core in me and in every human being, the pearl in the field. This core is ‘that of God’, as George Fox calls it. In other religions, people talk of the Neshemah (among Jews), Christ (among Christians), the Buddha nature (among Buddhists), Atman (for Hindus). I believe that these are simply different expressions for the insight that Fox had. Moses formulated the Ten Commandments from ‘that of God’ within himself. Later Jesus lived on earth to remind us that the Ten Commandments are not only engraved on stone, but in everyone’s heart.
My first Christmas Day
My first Christmas experience started about thirty years ago, when an angel, in the form of a colleague, set me on the track of the Inner Way. Then my journey to Bethlehem started so that I could find that child. I descended into myself and encountered the stable. Before I discovered the child in the manger, my attention was drawn to all the animals in the stable. Did that live in me? Was I that? George Fox writes about it: ‘The nature of (these) animals I saw in every human being, though everyone looks for them in the outer world.’ (Fox: Journal, c. 1647). I discovered that my behaviour in this world is largely determined by these animals (my instinctive character traits) and the resulting egoism, and not by ‘that of God’ in me.
Then my ‘spiritual eye’ fell on the baby in the manger and I became aware of ‘that of God’ in me. That was the moment at which for me Jesus was born. The Ten Commandments were no longer words engraved on stone, but a being living in me that would give a new meaning to my life. I discovered that it was this child that illuminated my stable, so that I gained insight into the primitive urges and character traits that determined (and to a large extent, alas, still determine) my life. The more I pay attention to this child, the sharper I perceive the way I should follow, because I am enabled to distinguish through his light the motives with which I act. I am in reality not always inclined to follow this path and then I feel pain. The sharper I perceive, the more pain I feel. I feel pain not only for myself, but more for those who, as a result of my impure motives, are weighed down. But I also experience peace because I know that the Way is in me and that I am always welcome there.
Repression and fear of ‘unmasking’
On my life path I have discovered, and I still discover, that wrong dominates, not only in the world, but in myself. This presents me with a confrontation. This truth is hard for me to bear, particularly since I do not wish to follow the way of wrong. But I often fall back into this trap. To soften the pain of my damaged self-image, I have the tendency to repress it and to minimise the wrong that I do, or to project it on to others, in the world outside me.
This repression gives rise to anxiety, anxiety for the ‘unmasking’ of my true motives. If I can muster the courage to face the truth about myself, I must bear the pain of the confrontation. This is, I believe, the only way to be liberated from the deeply rooted anxiety, which is so easily repressed into the subconscious, and takes on the form of big words in my mouth.
The child in the manger
‘Pay attention to the pure light of God within you. This is what makes you aware of what you have done wrong, that you have misspent time, and that you have projected things on to the outer world.’ (Fox, Journal, c. 1665)
Indeed, that is what the child in the manger tries to teach me. Sometimes I allow this, often I do not. I have constantly to try to find the way to the inner stable, the inner Holy of Holies, in which innocence dwells, the Christ, to show me the way.
At moments when I dare to follow this way and succeed in finding the Christ child within me, for me it is indeed Christmas Day.
The quotations from George Fox are taken from Truth of the heart, an anthology of George Fox (1624-1691) collected, edited and annotated by Rex Ambler, with a translation into modern English. Published by Quaker Books, 2001.
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