Living out the truth
Angela Greenwood reflects on Quaker Week
I entered the Meeting house a few minutes late to find that my ‘usual’ chair was taken – so I chose to sit opposite the glass doors to the garden. I settled into the silence and after a time found myself opening my eyes to discover that I was looking at a large poster stuck to the garden door facing me. I momentarily wondered why it was there, and then remembered that it was national Quaker Week. Our simply furnished Meeting house was ‘decorated’ with a range of Quaker posters, which I hadn’t noticed when I came in.
In my slightly ‘altered state’ I looked at the large words on the poster and noticed that some letters seemed to be missing. I was puzzled, and wondered if the poster had a fold in it, which had got creased and somehow obscured the letters. As I looked at the words, however, I slowly realised that the missing letter in every case was a ‘U’!
Then I saw the small sentence at the bottom of the page – ‘There’s only one thing missing’ – and, of course, I made the connection. It was clearly a challenge. How do I live up to these commitments and testimonies?
I closed my eyes and sank back into the silence.
I don’t know if others are like me, but I usually find it takes some minutes, sometimes half an hour, to be able to let go of being ‘caught up’ with thinking and ruminating during Meeting for Worship. And sure enough, after a while I found myself going deeper and settling into an abiding underlying silence, when I could allow thoughts and sensations to just come and go.
Suddenly I saw the ‘gaps’ in the poster words as, indeed, empty spaces – spaces through which truth, love and inspired action can flow, and the ‘U’s’ – the us – or the we who are in the words, who live out the truth – in quietness and trust, committing ourselves to community and equality and justice, are like empty channels through which these qualities will inevitably flow – if we ‘just get out of the way’, and trust the quiet emptiness.
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