'Most often, the Inward Guide seems to work by showing us not the ultimate destination, but just the next step.' Photo: by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
Glimmers of hope: Craig Barnett’s Thought for the week
‘There is no standard template for a “good Quaker”.’
Quakers sometimes make a distinction between ‘activist’ Friends, who are attracted by the social action, and ‘mystics’, whose focus is the Meeting for Worship. For me, the Quaker way is not about becoming either. It is primarily a path of discernment – a way of enabling each of us to discover our own unique calling and potential, which will look very different for every person.
For some, faithfulness to the Inner Light will lead to challenging systems of injustice. For others, it may be about building up community, supporting their neighbours, caring for children, or listening to people who are lonely or struggling. And some people will be led into different kinds of commitment at different times, in response to their own circumstances and to the gradual unfolding of their own soul needs and capacities.
There is no standard template for a ‘good Quaker’, or a moral or spiritual person. Each of us has to discover our own gifts, and our own contribution to the world’s needs, according to the inward guidance that is available to us.
How to do this is not a secret. It is summarised in the first sentence of Advices & queries: ‘Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts.’ We do this in Quaker worship, when we allow our thoughts to become still, and our consciousness to ‘sink down’ to a place of inward listening. Here we may become more aware of what is going on in our hearts and souls, and more receptive to the movements of the Spirit within. But this way of discernment is not just for Meeting for Worship; it is an everyday practice of allowing the Inward Guide to talk to us, of ‘sinking down to the seed’.
Practising this receptivity means tolerating uncertainty and anxiety. Perfect clarity is very rare, and most often we have only subtle nudges of the Spirit, or ‘glimmerings’: ‘[T]he travels begin at the breakings of day, wherein are but glimmerings or little light, wherein the discovery of good and evil are not so manifest and certain; yet there must the traveller begin and travel; and in his faithful travels… the light will break in upon him more and more’ (Isaac Penington, 1665).
Most often, the Inward Guide seems to work by showing us not the ultimate destination, but just the next step. We are asked to respond in faith, trusting that, if we have the courage to follow the little guidance we have, then we will see further to the step beyond. As Caroline Fox heard in 1841, ‘Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee’ (Quaker faith & practice 26.04).
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke expresses the same insight in his Letters to a Young Poet: ‘stay patient with all that is still unresolved in your own heart, to try to love the very questions, just as if they were locked-up rooms or as if they were books in an utterly unknown language. You ought not yet to be searching for answers, for you could not yet live them. What matters is to live everything. For just now, live the questions.’
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