Finding a distinctive Quaker voice

Elizabeth Colwell reflects on the QLRC weekend

The organisers of the Quaker Life Representative Council (QLRC) weekend are bold souls. To invite us to consider in three days the immense and globally significant theme of sustainability was a courageous step. The warmth of our fellowship allowed Friends to become receptive and facilitated the emergence of many seedlings to be tended within our Local and Area Meetings. There is a sense of this being part of a longer and deeper process of discernment and dialogue within the Society.

‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’

- Victor Frankl

Many individuals and Meetings are engaging seriously and actively with the Canterbury Commitment. Yet the scale of the global challenge has understandably brought responses of grief, despair, anger, numbness and sadness. Many of us may question what difference we can make? If we pause and reflect upon the still-beautiful face of our suffering world, if we choose to listen ‘with our ears and eyes and heart’, what might we discover? We might encounter the depth and beauty of our interconnectedness with all that is. We might come into true relationship with the rest of creation and be inspired to act out of love, not fear. Every moment, gesture, choice and action will be pregnant with significance. This is potent action.

The Seed in the fire: Some seedpods require intense heat to enable them to break open. This is part of the regenerative power of fire. It takes courage and intention to turn towards what we fear and towards what we find painful. Yet the tremendous energy generated by that internal encounter might provide the requisite heat for spiritual transformation, for our hearts to break open. Perhaps this is creation’s great gift to us now, the catalyst for an inner metanoia. When our hearts break open they become soft, fertile ground for the transforming power of the Spirit. They start to pulse and flow with dynamic energy. We start to fall in love with the whole world and hear the endless singing of the great creation mystery. When we fall in love, miracles happen.

The Seed breaking through: It is in the nature of a seed to move instinctively towards the light, finding the gaps even in apparently impenetrable surfaces. What seeds of hidden gifts and talents are dormant in the warm fertile ground of our hearts? Might these be the very gifts each of us can offer in the service of this great universal transition, this great turning? Who might we become and how might our lives thus speak? What flowers, fruits and trees might grow in the garden of our heart?

An integrated faith: We are all in this together, all of creation as parts of the whole. We are being offered an invitation to grow and deepen in maturity, in wisdom, in humility, in gratitude, in compassion, in courage. The suffering of creation is waking us up from our dream and inspiring us to expand our vision. Can we become ‘a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom taking the world into my arms’ (Mary Oliver). Can we honour the collective wisdom of the great spiritual and cultural traditions? Can we walk lightly with our bare feet on the face of Mother Earth, sensing our deep connection and the blessings which flow inexorably from that awareness?

Can we find our distinctive Quaker voice? As we have been asked before, are we open to transformation?

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment