Letters - 15 July 2016

From Quakerism to Yearly Meetings

From here to where

In her heartfelt article (8 July) Diana Sandy asks if spirituality is a delusion because, she is told, ‘everything happens in the human brain’. This resonated with me, because a friend recently discounted one of my peak experiences as ‘just electrical activity in your brain’. It felt as if she was saying it didn’t mean anything.

This seems to me as if survivors and relief workers after an earthquake were told: ‘It was only a geological disturbance.’ Their experience was so much bigger than a scientific comment could sum up.

If I am angry or fall in love, I’m sure that the right instruments could measure electrical and chemical changes in my brain, but it’s absurd to say that is all that is happening.

Diana Lampen

In answer to the question in Diana Sandy’s article in the Friend, I would like to say what, for me, Quakerism is all about.

I believe that it is about collectively and individually recognising, acknowledging and responding to that of God (others may call it the Light or the Spirit) in every human being no matter what. This is what convinced Margaret Fell when she heard George Fox say ‘what cans’t thou say?’ She knew then that Christ was within her and that she had no need of priests.

This leads to our core testimonies to peace, equality, simplicity and truth. That we value people enough to actively work for peace and resist war, that we answer people in a straightforward way, with no discrimination on any grounds and that we speak truth to everyone, including speaking truth to power.

I came to Quakers because of the testimony to equality, which I see as absolutely fundamental. Each of us may speak, each of us may minister and be heard, not brushed aside.

Isobel Lane

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