'No more Mr Nice Guy.' Photo: Created using Kasyanov-creation / iStock.com.
‘I am concerned that modern Quakers have lost some of this inner direction.’
Nicely put? Tony D’Souza says we should be putting more effort into being authentic
A young attender once told me what he thought of Quakers. He said that most people thought Quakers were ‘nice people’. I was very disappointed at this, and I then tried to explain to him that trying to be nice was a complete waste of time. I had tried it myself for many years and it had never worked for me. The whole point of the spiritual quest is not to be a nice person but to be authentic – which is far more difficult.
This quest for authenticity is also the Quaker ideal, as I understand it, because by listening intently to the still, small voice within, we somehow become more authentic by becoming more authentically ourselves. We are changed from within, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, the truth from within changes us. In this sense, the spiritual life is always an inside job.
Trying to be nice is not part of it. I believe that kind of goodness is entirely false because it comes from the conscious will or from the rational part of the mind. Because of this, it always has an equal and opposite reaction in the personality. Being consciously nice is always a down payment on a reaction from the dark part of the same nature that gave rise to it. It is like the waiter who meekly takes orders all day from his customers (probably in order to get tips) only to go home at night to tyrannise his wife and family. The personality self (the conscious, rational sense of self) wants you to believe that trying to be good or nice is the true goal of the spiritual life because then it can remain in control. It makes the seesaw swing from good to bad, from happy to sad, and appear to be completely normal. This accounts for the ‘angry doormat’ syndrome that affects so many so-called spiritual people.
In contrast, listening to the spirit and following it is anything but predictable. It is the inner life that allows us to live adventurously. By being attentive in the living moment, we open ourselves up to it. This does not mean we have to give everything up and go and live on a desert island, but it does mean listening to, heeding and following the inner voice as best as we can – and this is never predictable. For example, a lot of people have difficulties with the picture of Christ, angry and out of control, tying his belt into a cord and whipping the moneylenders out of the temple. At the time, he appeared to be extremely angry. Whatever he was doing, he was certainly not being nice. But, perhaps he was being authentic, being true to his own inner being.
I am concerned that modern Quakers have lost some of this inner direction. This has not always been so. In contrast to ourselves, the early Quakers were brutally repressed. Some were executed for their beliefs and many were incarcerated in the foulest prisons imaginable. This repression, which continued for over a hundred years, did not, however, seem to do the Quakers any harm – on the contrary, it did them a lot of good. Barred by government from entering political life or the professions, they flourished. They gained a reputation for fair dealing in business and founded several banks, including Barclays and Lloyds. Barred from studying at university, they discovered chocolate making and founded the great companies of Cadbury’s, Fry’s and Rowntree’s.
The early Quakers were regarded by their contemporaries as a dangerous, heretical sect and were widely thought of by the establishment to be mad, bad and dangerous to know. This is not so today. We are no longer considered dangerous, and this may have done us a great deal of harm. We have become part of the establishment, which now thinks of us as mild, middle class, and absolutely harmless. And this is not to be wondered at. It is the common fate of every charismatic religious movement throughout history. Once it has become popular, it accrues followers. When it accrues followers, it has to be organised – and that is when the rot sets in. Eight hundred years ago, this happened to the Franciscans. In my opinion the dead hand of organisation effectively killed off the most important charism of its founder even while he was still alive.
Quakerism is no different and, in many respects, we have suffered the same fate. We lost our mojo when we became respectable. Instead of looking outward, we have become a little too inward looking and spend much of our time and energy forming committees and writing long-winded reports that hardly anyone outside the Society bothers to read. We even devote our yearly gatherings to navel-gazing exercises. We have become like a group of teenagers on holiday, taking selfies of ourselves, sometimes pausing to take selfies of ourselves with other people who happen to be just like us.
This is not the whole truth, of course. Many Quakers have joined the Extinction Rebellion movement and vocally say enough is enough to the greed that has destroyed our planet. We still have the ability to ‘speak truth to power’ as in the old days. Many of us are brave enough to bear the contempt and insults of the world. Many of us care enough about something to be arrested for it.
The ancient truth remains intact within us, if we but listen carefully enough. There is enough truth in any single one of us to set the whole world turning on its axis, because if we are led by the spirit, we can do anything and endure anything. Our brave predecessors happily went to prison because conscience led them there, and conscience sustained them while they were there. William Dewsbury said of prison: ‘For this I can say, I… joyfully entered prisons as palaces, telling mine enemies to hold me there as long as they could: and in the prisonhouse I sung praises to my God, and esteemed the bolts and locks put upon me as jewels, and in the Name of the eternal God I always got the victory, for they could keep me there no longer than the determined time of my God.’
I ask myself the question: Would I go to prison for my faith? I answer honestly and humbly that I would – if I were led there by the spirit and through my own inner conviction. For then I would do so in the knowledge that I would be comforted there by the same spirit that took me there in the first place.
I am a senior now, no longer a youth, and as middle class as you can get. I eat quiche and have a loyalty card at Waitrose. Would anybody think I was mad, bad and dangerous to know? I doubt it. The world sees only the outward appearance – and to the world I am mild-mannered, balding and in the bus queue with a concessionary pass.
