‘Whatever journey lies before us, we can never predict its outcome.’
On track: Peter D Leeming commends ‘journeying in the faith’
‘To travel in faith can be a journey towards joy.’
It was still dark when we arrived at the station, and my neighbour was eager to get back home. But before walking over to his car he paused and said quietly, ‘Remember, my friend, you travel in faith!’ He knew that I was worried. Prior to reunification, travel from West Germany into the communist East meant obtaining an entry visa in advance. Friends in Berlin had applied on my behalf, but nothing had arrived. An urgent phone call to the Quaker office in Berlin eventually produced a promise from the authorities that the visa would be issued to me in the train at the border checkpoint. But I remained nervous because my local train had a tight connection with the infrequent express across the border. What if I missed it? Could the promised visa be issued at a later crossing? That was not at all certain.
My train arrived late due to heavy snow, and I was now assailed by serious doubt. Was it sensible to undertake such a journey in late December? I had, however, set my heart on this visit and I boarded, hoping the delay could be made up. But just as I feared, an hour later, at only ten in the morning, I found myself on an unknown station platform, forced to wait until late evening for another connection. In heavy rain and sleet, I walked despondently into town.
Decades later, I have little recollection of that day –memory is merciful to our common human miseries. I remember only my gratitude to strangers, of finding shelter, being cared for, and eventually, anxiously waiting in a dimly lit station wondering what lay ahead. By then, other misgivings had crowded my mind. The reason for my presence in West Germany was work with refugees from the East, something that would require discretion at the border checkpoint, as well as later when I had to formally register my arrival.
I seldom hear British Friends use the word ‘faith’ in the sense that my neighbour, a stout Lutheran churchman, used it. But I often hear it said in casual conversation: ‘we’ll just have to have faith’. In my conversation with my neighbour, the word held a particular meaning, relating both to the journey and its purpose: a Quaker gathering over New Year, and the rare chance to meet friends from my student days. I looked forward to warm hospitality and that special feeling I get of being at home among Friends. But my neighbour was clearly thinking of something more precise, something which truly justified my journey. When discussing his own Lutheran faith, quoting Paul the apostle, he would speak of ‘justification by faith’, the faith which rests upon, and unites us to, Christ through his resurrection; thereby, he would say, we are made good, put right, enabled. For my neighbour, this was the bedrock on which his whole life was based. It implied a personal relationship with Christ. In response, I explained that Friends desired the same outcome, though we seek a different ‘way’. But inevitably this invited the question, ‘What then is this “way”, your Quaker faith?’ My neighbour was challenging me to consider this journey as a journey in that Quaker faith. Was it simply about being together with people I felt comfortable with, people of a similar outlook? Just another opportunity to share our concerns about the state of the world, and discern what joint initiatives we might take? Wasn’t there a deeper reason, quite fundamental to my faith?
Attending our Local Meeting as a teenager, I loved the deep stillness which comes when Friends wait in faithful expectation. I experienced a profound sense of communion, gathered into unity with those around me, in relationship with something indefinable yet real – perhaps the One spoken of by George Fox at the end of his desperate search. I understood then, and still understand, a Quaker Meeting as a place of encounter with the Light, the Seed. Isaac Penington writes: ‘I have met with the Seed. I have met with my God.’ Later in life, working abroad, I contacted local Quaker groups whenever possible, and I met again the centrality of worship at the heart of caring community. Those small groups often met only once a month, but I came to know inspiring men and women who made long journeys to be present. They had found and remained with Friends because they experienced in the stillness something that spoke to their condition. And did not Yearly Meeting once declare: ‘in silence, without rite or symbol, we have known the Spirit of Christ so convincingly present in our quiet meetings that his grace dispels our faithlessness, our unwillingness, our fears…. This is our Eucharist and our Communion’? For those small European worship groups, Friends who travelled to London in 1928, and myself visiting Friends in a communist land, the justification for our travel, and the primary reason for our gathering, my Lutheran Friend reminded me, was to Meet in worship. Did we not constantly claim in our literature to be grounded in worship? My good neighbour understood the nature of our Quaker faith, though his was a quite different path. He needed the narrative of Scripture, the beliefs and litany of his church, to bring him to what Friends call the Light, but which he called Christ. In contrast, our Quaker faith affirms that the divine can be experienced directly without mediation; for us dogma and creeds imprison the mystery which cannot be contained.
Waiting that evening for my connection, I thought again of those words ‘travel in faith’, and how relevant they were to my situation. Whatever journey lies before us, we can never predict its outcome. To travel in faith means to accept this and remain in the present, putting our trust in unseen hands. Our hopes and dreams of what awaits us at our journey’s end are not abandoned. On the contrary, they burn more brightly when we accept that the image in our mind is too limited and over-drawn. Hope goes side by side with faith; it sees an unlimited future in which the desired outcome is just one of many that are possible, each with its particular consequences. The course of our journey depends on a flow of events and coincidences beyond control. Sometimes our planning nearly coincides, sometimes not. Sometimes we are brought to a place where we would not have gone. To our dismay, we find ourselves in a foreign land, groping our way across the contours of a landscape, strange and new. Understanding and acceptance come but slowly. We struggle. Disappointment and grief are not lessened by this, but gradually our gaze turns to the future and what now lies ahead. The love of what we have missed, or lost, is not diminished. Faith and hope abide.
What actually happened to me at the border post that December night is unimportant. To travel in faith can be a journey towards joy.
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