Play it by ear: Anne M Jones’ Thought for the week
‘The onus is no longer on me to perceive God in someone else.’
A starting point for many Quakers is ‘finding that of God in everyone’ (I know nontheists who interpret it as ‘seeing Good in everyone’). It served me well for a long time, but there came a point where I needed to look further into our theology and I went on a non-Quaker retreat to better understand.
So much depends upon words and how they are used; ‘seeing God in everyone’ uses ‘see’ as an active verb. When I entered the retreat, the first phrase I heard was ‘You are loved by God.’ One can hear those words screamed from many high street soap boxes, and in that manner they are meaningless to me. But in the quiet of a retreat they hit me hard. These words are in the passive: God does the loving, and that puts me in a more vulnerable position, which feels embracing. The onus is no longer on me to perceive God in someone else – I myself could be loved.
The phrase also took away some of the smugness which I have observed in many Quakers (including myself).
I know there are many non-theists who will argue that loving bonds between human beings can be the source of this embracing love, but humans are humans, and capable of unkind, thoughtless words. They can let one down. This can be a barren and deflating experience. Where does one turn to then?
At most Meetings, one can find a wealth of theological literature. Some of it is scary, but much of it throws a deeper light upon one’s notion of ‘religion’ and where Quakerism sits. It is a lifetime quest. I recently discovered more on how Christian beliefs came to be tenaciously held, then stuck in aspic, only to be moulded over centuries into forms more in keeping with contemporaneous changes. Daniel C MacGuire points out the abundance of notions like virgin birth, or reincarnation, in the time of the historical Jesus. He asserts that it is the moral core of the Old Testament, as strengthened by the preachings of Jesus, that matters.
The Christmas story is a wonderful example of this mix of thinking: millions take it literally, millions do not. But at its heart is a variation on the theme of love, about which no human can dissent. Equally, the resurrection is not believed literally by many practicing Christians.
One of the joys of Quakerism is that our dogma means that we can hold a Meeting for Worship wherever a few of us are gathered. We do not have to wait for a man to officiate. I have a Catholic friend who resents having to wait for a male priest to perform mass, and she is confident that, in time, this will alter. Each of us, however, is united in believing that ultimately love is the way forward.
Quakerism also is about listening, and accepting all types and conditions of men and women (though this is not always so evident beneath our own dogmas – what we might call ‘the way things are done here’). Bridge building between theists and nontheists is important. Sometimes, after attempting to understand a different perspective, it may be necessary to part company in a spirit of friendliness. But let’s listen first.
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