Family matters: James Marshall gives thanks for welcoming Friends

‘A person’s spiritual journey can often start with an unexpected meeting.’

A person’s spiritual journey can often start with an unexpected meeting, or a new relationship with an inspirational person. This was the case for me. It was when my partner of thirty-nine years, Kageha, introduced me to Quakerism and her welcoming Quaker relatives.

Perhaps the most influential of all these new Friends were her uncle and aunt, Tom and Isabel Greeves. Tom and Isabel were both that rare type of person, described in Quaker faith & practice so eloquently, who acted ‘as a bridge between the past and the future, allowing space for Friends to dare to search within… To be a Quaker is by no means to say goodbye to myth, ritual and symbol, but rather to find myself set free to discover them as the very essence of the way I now experience’ (Damaris Parker-Rhodes, 27.44). Not only had they provided Kageha with emotional and spiritual support, at the time when she lived round the corner from them at Woodbrooke College, but they also organised our wedding at Cotteridge Meeting in 1984.

In a wholly unselfconscious way they inadvertently modelled the kind of person perhaps all Quakers should aspire to be. Generous, kind and never judgemental; they certainly helped us try to be better people. ‘For a Quaker, religion is not an external activity, concerning a special “holy” part of the self. It is an openness to the world in the here and now with the whole of the self’ (Harvey Gillman, Quaker faith & practice 20.20).

Indeed, it was in the spirit of ‘openness to the world’ that Kageha and I undertook our journey to her country of birth, Kenya, in 1995. For Kageha it was an opportunity to be reunited with her birth father, after separation of more than thirty years; for me it was the chance to worship with Quakers in Kenya and to learn of the similarities and differences in our mutual faith. Throughout this journey it was hugely comforting to know that Tom and Isabel were holding us in the light.

Our visit led to a chance meeting with Musalia Mudovadi, the then finance minister for Kenya. He was a Quaker and a member of Kageha’s birth mother’s tribe, the Luhya. He told me that every Kenyan Quaker I met, I should ask the question, ‘Who is your leader?’ When I did this, most people I spoke with said, ‘God is my leader.’

I have to say that when God has been ‘busy elsewhere’, or I find myself not easily finding a way to sit in the light, then the memory of how Tom and Isabel held us in the light, of how they lived simply – that is our path. Remembering them, and their loving kindness helps Kageha and myself every day as we try to emulate their ways.

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