Letters - 23 January 2015
From silence to vision
Silence
Gwen Jones (9 January) asks what I meant by ‘quiet undistracted worship’ (5 December 2014). I used the word ‘quiet’ not silent because I have rarely, if ever, attended a Meeting for Worship that is absolutely silent.
Quietness, for me, betokens a state of inner receptivity, an openness to what is and to being challenged by what is – the sounds of other worshippers, the noises from the world around, the promptings of the Spirit, the voice from within – the voice of life itself. These are part of worship; they enrich it and do not impede it. By ‘undistracted’ I mean the attempt to get away from the noisy demands of the ego and those things which cut us off from ‘the other’.
At its best the architecture of Meeting houses, with its visual quietness, facilitates this process. I think that Gwen and I are saying the same thing.
Harvey Gillman
Assisted dying
Further to the report of Quaker Life Central Committee to Meeting for Sufferings (12 December 2014), I suspect that if you are not at or near the front line on this issue, it is rather easy to detach yourself with a statement like ‘a leading by God has not shone through’.
I suffer from severe chronic heart failure and have a sixteen-year-old kidney transplant, now failing, plus half a dozen lesser ailments. I am seventy-five. Earlier this year I went into decompensated heart failure, not for the first time. I was housebound for over three months, barely able to move in bed, in considerable pain for some time and on morphine for three weeks. Eventually, they had to prescribe a drug for me that further damaged my kidney transplant. Nobody presented the choice formally – but did I wish to die of heart failure or kidney failure?
I was on the terminally ill list for some months. Eventually, with a change of drug doses, everything levelled out and my kidney function improved somewhat, to my surprise and, indeed, that of my GP – but I am still left hobbling around with a stick. I never reached the stage where I wanted assisted dying but (at the worst) I should have liked the possibility to be there if things had worsened.
The Religious Society of Friends has already discussed this issue at length over many years; for example, through the Quaker Concern Around Dying and Death and the Leeds Area Meeting End of Life Care Working Party. It seems likely that legislation will go through parliament after the next election – in the wake of overwhelming public support. One might have hoped for a more constructive contribution from the Society of Friends as a whole.
Michael Woolliscroft
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