‘Real listening may turn anger to good account.’ Photo: Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash
Fighting talk: How knowing ourselves can prevent conflict
‘We cannot go out into the world effectively without at least an attempt to know our inner selves.’
At least three times in the years since I became a Quaker our Local Meeting has been torn apart. Friends are still struggling with the effects of the last storm – in which I was one of the central players, and which has caused me to question my continued membership of the Society.
Though many have suffered from the crisis, only one person has been held to account for this debacle. This was a debacle not of their making but, overnight, trust and community became distrust and fragmentation. Should I, in an un-Quakerly way, ‘fall on my sword’? What do Quaker testimonies actually mean in practice? Can we go out into the world resting on, and working with, our Quaker laurels, if we fail at least to try and understand the workings of our own hearts and communities?
One of my favourite passages in Quaker faith & practice is by Samuel Bownas (19.60), in which he recalls Anne Wilson’s words: ‘A traditional Quaker; thou comest to Meeting as thou went from it, and goes from it as thou came to it but art no better for thy coming; what wilt thou do in the end?’ Though it worked for Samuel Bownas, these days it would be against our mainstream thinking to be so accusatory. But this was a turning point for Bownas, and might be a thought for us all to consider. We cannot go out into the world effectively without at least an attempt to know our inner selves. It is a lifetime’s work – yet a rewarding one. Such work can fill us with compassion for our broken selves, and, from there, to feel true compassion for others. That may, of course, be hard to bear – be great anger. Real listening may turn that anger to good account.
Experiments With Light and the Alternatives to Violence Project are effective, challenging and enjoyable ways to find out more about ourselves and our interactions within and beyond groups. Both of them increase trust and aid understanding.
Led mindfulness meditation on Zoom has been a blessing during lockdown, and shows in greater and greater depths the complexity of the interplay between and within mind and body. In practising this, one of the most useful lessons has been that the body is always in the present, whereas the mind spends much of its time in the past or future. If we are unaware of the tensions in our bodies and their origins in our minds, the effects on our relationships with others can be devastating.
More often than not, the traits in others that cause us to feel so much antipathy towards them, as well as tension in our own bodies, are attributes we find most unpalatable and therefore choose not to notice in ourselves. Turning a blind eye to this, and so closing our hearts down in this way, may prevent the very blessings that come from expressing our vulnerability. These blessings may allow the spirit to speak through us more effectively.
