‘With forced inactivity, one’s devotional life becomes more important.’ Photo: by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash.
Friends in Europe know a lot about isolation. Tracey Martin and George Thurley enquire
‘It is an opportunity to put more time into meditative prayer and develop one’s inner life.’
You have been part of a busy Quaker community. You meet for worship every week and are busy on committees, as a role holder, in the local community. Suddenly, that stops. You have to find new ways to connect, to continue your spiritual journey, to bear witness in the world. Sound familiar? We reached out to Friends in Europe who had had this experience long before lockdown. These Friends, because of work or family or personal reasons, found themselves without a local Meeting. What did they do? What can we learn from them?
We spoke to three Friends: Sheree Burgess in Spain thought she was the only Quaker where she lived, but an accidental meeting with another Quaker led to them starting a meeting, initially just the two of them then increasing to four. David Hay-Edie in France retired to Grenoble. It is a three-hour trip one-way to Geneva where he was most recently a member. Peter Dyson is in St Petersburg, 800km away from the nearest Quaker Meeting in Moscow. He writes: ‘I have been there only twenty times in twenty years (okay maybe forty or sixty times). It is not a living relationship out of Advices & queries. I am a failure as an active member of this group of Friends.’
What is your experience of being isolated?
All three Friends had been active in Quaker communities before they became isolated. Sheree had been in Spain for about three years before she met another Quaker. She really missed going to Meeting and tried to stay in touch with Quakers in Britain by going to Yearly Meeting Gathering, having Friends to visit and joining Facebook pages. But it wasn’t the same and she didn’t feel able to have a Meeting alone.
David also misses Meeting for Worship but has found solace in his own spiritual practice. He remains a member of the Friends Fellowship for Healing and is part of a prayer group. He receives a list of people who ask for prayer and prays for them regularly. He also receives the quarterly Reaching Out from Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies. He reads the Friend regularly and has found it a great support.
Peter on the other hand found a release from the tensions of having to attend Meeting for Worship at a certain time and place. He wonders if perhaps the hardest place to be a Friend is in your own Quaker Meeting?
How do you nurture your spiritual life?
Peter’s wife belongs to the Orthodox Church. ‘[We] have our own daily evening prayer time together which ends with us reciting the prayer together her mother taught her in the Soviet period. I would say preparing for sleep takes an hour! It is a good end to a day.’
David says ‘I miss Meeting for Worship and Quaker Friends. But the compensation is now every morning I have private meditative prayer time and read something from a booklet called Daily Word by the Unity Church. It is sent to me every two months. This was recommended to me by the then clerk of Guildford Meeting, Alan Pearce.’
Sheree was initially sceptical about Meeting for Worship with only two people but ‘just got behind it without great expectations’. They stuck with it and have now expanded to four regular attenders, all non-Spanish. She has also learnt from other faiths in her community, including the Sufis.
How has the pandemic affected you?
Sheree found being locked down unsettling but it made her ‘sit up and take notice’: ‘I suddenly realised that I had neglected the spiritual side of my life, wasn’t sure where I was with it. I’d gone down that road a long way without actually taking stock. So it kind of jolted me a little and made me kind of go back and look at myself and say, actually, I really perhaps ought to be doing a bit more reading, perhaps more mediation, just to kind of get myself back into the swing of things.’
The community Meeting for Worship moved online and this has meant more people have joined. A new community is emerging, mainly Spanish and new to Quakers, which is bringing challenges in terms of language and practice but also opportunities.
David found that the general stress and anxiety can work its way into his mind so he avoids going online. Peter, however, reaches out to Friends elsewhere on Zoom and feels that this way of communicating offers opportunities for the future – though it may need us to rethink many aspects of Quakerism such as eldership.
What advice do you have for those isolated from Meeting?
Peter: ‘I do not feel dispossessed from a Quaker community. On the contrary, the spider’s web within which I sit is extensive and there, whether I choose to make it vibrate or not. But it is there. Access to Quaker material is easy. I would recommend anyone to signing up to all the Quaker newsletters. One gets a flavour of the many positives in Quaker lives. I don’t think Quakers isolated from their community for the first time need much advice. They will find the support they need.’
Sheree: ‘It’s not easy to exist outside of a faith community if that’s what you’re used to, and I think you have to look inside yourself, re-evaluate what you believe, what your actual thinking is. And I think you have to think outside the box a bit, and start thinking of different ways to do things, trying not to cling onto the way you did things before because that’s not going to work anymore. It means perhaps going to a Zoom Meeting even if you don’t feel comfortable with it; it means trying to keep in touch in other ways, perhaps over the internet.’
David: ‘With forced inactivity, one’s devotional life becomes more important. It is an opportunity to put more time into meditative prayer and develop one’s inner life. Avoid media. Go walking in nature. A lot depends on age. When one is younger, one’s personality is very different from when one is older. You are not so engaged in life. You are already moving out, moving towards the other dimension which is a good thing. You are accepting death and this is no cause for despondency.’
David believes that our Quaker faith can uphold us whatever our circumstances. ‘It is a door to a spiritual openness with so many different facets. It is so positive and non-judgemental and enriching and enables us to live as happy a life as possible.’
Peter is concerned for those who come to Quakerism at this time and are isolated from other Quakers. ‘The challenge is to support those pilgrims making the first steps to understand that they are a Quaker… and what on earth should they do to live with this realisation. You will see that I understand this word Quaker as a condition…not a choice or a belief… So if we can agree that being a Quaker is a condition and not a belief; what difference does that make to our approach to support these individuals in their discoveries of the eternal.’
Tracey & George sit on Quaker World Relations Committee.
