What matters is to ‘personally experience God’ and His ‘ocean of love’. Photo: Photo: wavebreaker / flickr CC.
Filled by the Spirit
Allan Holmes reflects on the heart of the Quaker message
‘The Quaker position is really summed up in the words “John indeed baptised with water, but ye shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit.” It is the inward change, the inward purification, the spiritual fact and not the outward symbol that belongs in truth to the Kingdom of God.’ John Wilhelm Rowntree, 1902, Quaker faith & practice 27.37 ‘…While respecting the experiences and opinions of others, do not be afraid to say what you have found and what you value.’ Advices & queries 5 ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and then all else, including Healing and other Spiritual Gifts, will become clear. Spiritual Healing is one of the fruits of our worship, meditation and prayer life, not merely the physical. Seen from the outside, release from pain and suffering can often border on the miraculous, but even more amazing is the inner fruitage, as lives are changed, and peace and harmony take the place of inner turmoil. The key to it all is meditation and prayer. Jim Pym What Kind of God, What Kind of Healing? Friends Fellowship of Healing publication
A report from the 2012 World Conference of Friends in Kenya tells of talk of the Baptism in the Spirit and of remarkable healings happening.
I believe, these days, it can be called being ‘Filled with the Spirit.’ The name does not matter. How it happens doesn’t matter. Whether it happens without help from others, or with help, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is to ‘personally experience God’ and His ‘ocean of love’. It turns uncertainty into inner conviction that there is a God and He is at work in the world. This is the heart of the Quaker message.
Baptism in the Spirit
In 1964, as a trained scientist, I was a seeker after scientific truth and also, since a young lad, a seeker after spiritual truth. On 29 June of that year, at a thatched cottage near Oxford, through Fred Smith, the sergeant of police where I lived, and Joan Steele, a housewife, as hands were laid on me I was gripped by a strange and benevolent power that filled me with an unspeakable sense of happiness. They called it a Baptism in the Spirit. I know this is hard to believe but also out of my mouth came very loud language. Although I couldn’t understand it, I knew it was a language of praise and love that turned into intercession as images of people I knew flashed into my mind. It lasted for well over half an hour. Most days since then I have used it in my prayers and healing ministry. It is a marvellous gift as it frees me from my own words. I call it my ‘God language.’
Spiritual gift of healing
It was several years later that I realised that I had also been given the spiritual gift of healing and have used it for nearly fifty years. I have seen lives change and have kept testimonies and records in ‘My Spiritual Healing Journal.’ Since coming to Quakers twenty years ago the gift of discernment during ministry has become important. I became a Quaker spiritual healer in 2005. These are not my gifts. I didn’t even ask for them, they were given to be used (parable of the talents).
Around the same time as my experience at least twelve folk had similar experiences. As far as I know all were given the gift of tongues. I am still in touch with five of them who can testify to these happenings. I am still in touch with Dawson Price who was close to me at that time. In 1984 I saw my first ‘apparent’ miracle at a conference on ‘Healing in the Church’ by John Wimber. I have never seen such joy on anyone’s face when Marie, a Dutch girl, came back to her seat and could hear in a deaf ear for the first time ever. Twenty years later the hearing for Marie was still valid. I was with a group of Roman Catholics led by their priest Leo Target.
Spiritual people
In my spiritual journey of over sixty years it has not been labels nor ‘isms’, but spiritual people who have been important to me. As well as those mentioned above I include the following:
When my wife, Jane, and I became an item, in 1990, we decided to worship together at Cockermouth Meeting. Once a month I continued to worship at St Catherine’s in Eskdale. Anne Marie Wake was one of a small group who had been baptised in the Spirit with tongues and had a gift of healing. In 1990 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which developed into bone cancer. The local doctor gave her a short time to live. She lived another twelve years and during that time started a cancer support group, with hands on healing, at the Complementary Care Centre in Eskdale. This brought healing, comfort and relief to many. Towards the end of her life a small healing group was set up to help Anne Marie and another lady dying of cancer.
Workshops
Although I liked the silence and ministry at Quakers I could not enthuse until 2005 when we ran a ‘Hearts and Minds’ course at our house. Worship sharing was new to me and enabled me to share my journey without criticism. Also, I was able to read from the book box and discovered Rex Ambler’s Light to Live By and Truth of the Heart. These lit up for me the early Quakers and made sense of how they found something that changed their lives and enabled them to spread what they had found, despite persecution and hardship. I have been in an Experiment with Light Group now for more than three years and have found it very useful in my spiritual growth. It was Rex’s wife, Catherine, who encouraged me to offer spiritual healing at Experiment with Light workshops and also at a spiritual healing retreat at Glenthorne.
I have attended two workshops, ‘Spiritual Gifts’ and ‘The Power and Authority of the Gifts of the Spirit’ at Woodbrooke – both in the Equipping for Ministry course. These were led by Thomas Swain, clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Last November he also led ‘A Gentle Exploration of Spiritual Gifts’ at our Keswick Meeting House. These workshops have been very important to me.
‘Allowing Forgiveness through the Spirit’ was a residential weekend at Glenthorne led by Marian Partington. I have struggled all my life with the problem of forgiveness. These are from wrongs that I have done and from hurts that have I have been bitter about. Marian’s problem was being able to forgive Fred and Rosemary West for the murder and sexual abuse done to her sister Lucy. Marian was enabled to forgive, not by her own efforts, but by spiritual dreams, and a dramatic experience when she knew she was capable of committing murder. This came both through Buddhists and Quakers. She had to decide to forgive or destroy herself. In the end she was able to write to Rosemary West in prison hoping she could find peace. It was not a quick fix. Marian is now going into prisons helping prisoners to also find forgiveness and peace.
Her story can be found in her books, Salvaging the Sacred and If You Sit Very Still, available at the Quaker Centre Bookshop.
‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ (Matt 7:20).
