Letters - 10 February 2023
From Getting real to ‘The growing good’
Getting real
Warm thanks to Abigail Maxwell for her letter (27 January). She demonstrates both the necessity and the daunting nature of the task of confronting one’s ‘real self’.
It is so easy to be content with a shallow and flattering version of who we are and to fail to give our lives that unblinking examination without which, said Socrates, they are not worth living. Meeting for Worship is an ideal opportunity for conducting this examination; and the Experiment with Light can for some of us be an additional means to discovering the truth about ourselves.
As Abigail also makes clear, once we have begun to discover this true self we must try to live from that central point in all our dealings in the world outside the meeting. I have found words in the New Testament epistle from James (perhaps not a favourite reference point for Quakers nowadays) useful in confirming this insight: ‘If any are hearers of the word, not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers in who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.’ (James 1:23-25) The ‘word’, the ‘perfect law’, the ‘law of liberty’, is, as George Fox taught, to be found within: to discover our true self is to discover the law of God.
Joanna Dales
Equal marriage
Many Anglicans are grieved because their synod has not agreed to permit equal marriages in church. Same-sex Anglicans can only marry in a civil ceremony but they can now seek a blessing in church afterwards.
We are able to celebrate same-sex marriages, but we are not without problems. Nontheist Friends cannot marry in a Meeting house if they cannot say the prescribed words which refer to ‘divine assistance’ or to ‘the Lord’ or ‘God’. The only option for them is to marry in a civil ceremony but they can follow this with a Quaker Meeting. We have not achieved equal marriage until it is open even to nontheists.
David Hitchin
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