The burial ground at Winchmore Hill Meeting House. Photo: Photo courtesy of Stephen Cox.
Patterns and examples
Jane Pearn wonders about our testimony to equality when Friends die
I have a difficulty with our ‘testimonies to the grace of God as shown in the lives of deceased Friends’. Many Friends enjoy reading them, and so do I. And yet… I have a stop in my mind, both with the practice and with the words.
I appreciate my Area Meeting’s memorial minutes for each and every Friend we lose. Their service, contribution and character are briefly but lovingly recorded. But to then ‘elevate’ a few to a different status feels to me as though we are creating a kind of spiritual honours list: appearing to give more worth to some lives than to others. What value the simple uniformity of grave markers, if we raise some of them higher? To what purpose the ‘gentle discipline’ of the notices in the Friend, if we later publish what amounts to a eulogy? And, dare I say it, do we sometimes agree with the suggestion to develop a memorial minute into a testimony to avoid causing hurt?
I respect that the wording we use reflects the understanding of early Friends, and our own, that a good life is not to the credit of human endeavour alone. But we are making a great claim, indeed, that we recognise ‘the grace of God’ apparent in some lives – and, by implication, not in others. Our faith is an inclusive faith: God – the grace of God – is present in every life, however hard it may be for us to discern. And who are we to say where true holiness lies? What inner struggles, temptations overcome, may there have been in lives that look unremarkable, even uninspiring, from the outside?
On the other hand, we have an understandable desire to hold up models of how we might live as Quakers, to celebrate lives that show humanity at its best and to share loving memories. It’s probably impractical to publish all memorial minutes. But perhaps, since ‘testimonies’ will continue to be written, we might re-name them ‘Patterns and Examples’?
