Losing weight: Kate McNally’s Thought for the Week
‘The Quaker way is more complicated, and more subtle.’
When I was new to Quakers, I thought a ‘weighty Quaker’ was something to aspire to. It seemed to convey the idea of someone who witnessed to Truth – someone who practiced our values thoroughly.
Having spent more time with Friends as human beings, however, I know the term can imply that someone is ‘more equal’ than the others, and that their voice should be heard more loudly. It’s an attempt to give more authority to a speaker, as if they held a Truth that could only be accessed through them. But the Quaker way tells us that we can all access Truth; our testimony to Equality tells us that none of us has special access to it.
Similarly, I often hear that something or someone is ‘unquakerly’. As a new Quaker, I wanted to avoid this at all costs. I used to ask what it meant, but could not find a satisfying or consistent answer. As my experience with this phrase has grown, I have come to understand that it often just means that the speaker doesn’t like something but has no other argument against it.
I have recently heard another phrase along these same lines: ‘a Quaker’s Quaker’, a person who is perfectly Quaker, and should not be doubted. What they say must be accepted as Truth, and other views ignored – almost a Quaker version of a pope. It suggests a Quaker career path: seeker, attender, member, weighty Quaker, Quaker’s Quaker. This makes my heart hurt. We do not have ‘degrees’ of Quakerliness. We are not Freemasons.
The Quaker way is more complicated, and more subtle. We are all sometimes speakers of Truth, and we are all sometimes caught up in the pride, ego, fear and willfulness that block our access to the divine. Some Friends do seem to avoid this block more often than others, but labelling them ‘weighty’ is almost a guarantee that the path will be blocked for them, too.
As with all pedestals, it’s often others who place us there. When we place one Friend above another, we give them false value, and become disillusioned when they cannot live up to our unrealistic expectations. Our testimony to Equality is also about humility, and when we judge others as unquakerly, we put ourselves above them. The fall from such a pedestal is a long one.
We do not have to be Quaker to work for peace, truth, equality, simplicity, community or stewardship. We do not own these values, nor do we have a monopoly on them. Sometimes the lives of non-Quakers speak these values louder than ‘weighty’ Quakers.
What if we end this separation of Friends into degrees of worthiness and try to treat each other as equal? Let’s drop the labels, stop judging each other, and listen for Truth in the voices of all Friends and friends
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