Letters - 17 January 2025
From a Christmas narrative to donations and staff
Christmas narrative
Rebecca Hardy’s article, ‘Behind every man’, published in the Christmas edition, provided me with a wonderful challenge when she asked the question: what does Christmas celebrate? For some, it might indeed be a celebration of ‘motherhood’, a ‘babyfest’, or even a ‘midwifery for pensioners’ narrative – but both Mary and Jesus are silent about their presence in this rich narrative.
While they are both ‘stage centre’, they remain as passive figures. But without them, I would suggest that there would be no Christmas narrative. For me they are absolutely essential to any understanding of this narrative.
I wonder if they are there to provide us with a glimpse of the mystery and wonder of creation/incarnation – thereby allowing us, too, to experience, and then embody, that ‘inn-sight’, as we leave the stable, knowing that everything has changed?
As I have pondered further, I find myself drawn to two thoughts:
Is the Christmas narrative a timely reminder that we all need, in the words of Eckhart of Tolle, ‘to tend to the birth in us’?
Is the Christmas narrative a timely reminder that we all need to prepare, respond and be changed by something very new, and to embrace and embody it in our lives?
As a spiritual director/companion, I often have the privilege to come alongside those seeking answers to spiritual questions/hunger, which cannot easily be named or even owned – and find myself acting as a ‘midwife’ as we journey together. In that role, I find myself asking questions of the Christmas narrative:
How do you know that you are spiritually hungry/pregnant?
Who is the angel who brought you to a flash of awareness of this state?
How have you responded?
Do you have/need an ‘Elizabeth’ in your life to turn to as you take the first steps on your new journey? Where might you find ‘Elizabeth’?
And on a corporate level, I would be asking our Local and Area Meetings, British Yearly Meeting and related committees and trustees:
As Quakers, are we being called to be midwives of the new order as we consider the future of Quakerism?
How best can we discern, and then safely deliver, this new order and thereby co-operate with the mystery of creation and incarnation?
Heather Kent
Changing family law
May I suggest to your readers that the Quakers are well-placed to lead the charge on changing
family law for the better so as to comply with the Quaker Testimonies?
It is generally agreed that current family law is the primary mechanism for breaking them.
I suggest that an arrangement that is equal over time between both parents is the way forward.
WF Summers
