Letters - 30 August 2019
From Jiminy Cricket to gifts and discoveries
Jiminy Cricketist and all
There’s a light that is shining in the heart of a man,
It’s the light that was shining when the world began.
There’s a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew
And a light that is shining, friend, in me and in you.
(Sydney Carter in ‘George Fox’, a variant on his lyrics to ‘Lord of the Dance’, dedicated to Fox.)
Yes, there is a light shining in you and me, and it does not matter a jot whether we call that light God or Spirit, the Sacred or Jiminy Cricket.
I was delighted by the article by Piers Maddox (9 August) telling us not to be tribal, not to be spiritual police.
Equally, I was saddened by the letter from Glenn Hull (16 August) talking of receiving negative comment for not attributing his mystical experience to God – as if God cares! God is glad that anyone comes to the well that is Meeting for Worship and drinks from that well.
‘Who are we to deny access to the well?’ Piers asks. Who indeed? And who are we to deny people the ‘bread of heaven’ because they don’t want to share our particular tribal language?
So let us cheerfully greet anyone who wishes to join us in Meeting for Worship, whether they are Turk or Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, theist, nontheist, universalist, humanist, atheist, Pagan or Jiminy Cricketist.
David Brown
Nicely put?
I do so agree with Tony D’Souza’s article (9 August). We need to be authentic alongside our middle-classness and our Waitrose loyalty cards. ‘Nice’ is not enough. I read the article in Meeting this morning and then read it again, and then again.
I am trying hard to be authentic and brave enough to ‘bear the contempt and insults of the world’ (as Tony D’Souza says).
Roots of Resistance in September and the Extinction Rebellion uprising in London in October will test this.
Kim Hope
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