The big top Photo: Trish Carn
Prophetic voices
Ian Kirk-Smith went to the big top and listened to the voices of ‘prophets among us’
‘We have always had prophets among us. This is how we grow. They see what the rest of us don’t see. They disturb our peace and they challenge us.’ Marion McNaughton was the first of four invited speakers to address the opening session of YMG on Sunday morning: ‘Prophetic Voices’. In a powerful address she told Friends that prophets remind us who we are and what we stand for. They also ask us: ‘And what does the Lord require of you?’
The enormous challenges and dilemmas facing the world – social, environmental and economic – dominated the two-and-a-half-hour session as four invited speakers were followed by contributions from the floor. There was little talk of practical policies and solutions. It was a time for laying out the disturbing facts and highlighting the challenges that needed to be faced.
Marion drew on the experience of early Friends. They were, she said, ‘not to be conformed to the world’ and this radical position demanded renunciation. So it is today. She said: ‘They opened themselves to the light and they saw how their lives needed to change and to change drastically.’ We are also faced, Marion added, with ‘painful changes to our lifestyle’. Maybe, she argued, ‘this is our testing time. Maybe this is our challenge: to protect and preserve the earth and its creatures.’
Alan Allport spoke of our need to remember that ‘we live on a planet of incomparable wonder and majesty which we share with an astounding diversity of life forms.’ He tied the past to the present with a brilliant example: by inviting Friends before him to reach behind their necks and feel the small bones of their vertebrae at the top of their spine. These bones, he said, ‘are the gift of our ancestors the fishes, from hundreds of millions of years ago. It has taken a long, long, journey to bring us here.’
Alan said that when he looked to the future he was compelled to ask: ‘What kind of world will we bequeath to our future generations?’ As he looked around the hundreds of faces seated in front of him, it was a question that was clearly shared. ‘What will our children’s children inherit?’ he added, ‘A garden or a desert? It’s up to us. It’s a titanic challenge.’
‘In the face of this challenge I am overwhelmed by a crushing dread. At other times, like now, I feel inspired by the knowledge that around the world millions of people – Quakers among them – are working to bring about the Great Turning – to transform our society, our economic system; to build resilient communities; to end our fossil-fuelled over-consumption. Over and above all our other concerns, this is what is needed, and with the utmost urgency. This is what the spirit is calling us to.’
Tom Rouse challenged Friends to confront some uncomfortable truths. Decisions need to be made now. Some of them are very difficult. He prompted a ripple of concern with a bold statement: ‘There persists in the world a terrible fear of anything in any way connected to the word nuclear’. He clearly troubled many others as he went on to describe nuclear power as a ‘clean technology’. But Tom was set on his course. Quakers, he believed, who dismissed the nuclear option ‘cannot afford to be so narrow-minded.’
Tom, referring to some of the benefits of the nuclear option, such as less CO2 emissions, said that he simply wished to ‘show that nuclear power is not the enemy that so many Quakers seem to think it is; it is rather an ally of sustainable living, if a temporary and occasionally volatile one.’
The dilemmas involved in living our testimonies were highlighted by the final speaker, Maud Grainger, when she described her personal experience. She had become very closely involved in, and committed to, a project in Madagascar that concerned children. She had flown there every two years. But, she said, ‘Do they realise that every minute I am in the air I am adding my own personal contribution to an unsustainable planet, where they, some of the poorest in the world, will suffer the most?’
‘So what do we do with the challenges we face?’ she said. ‘Do we hide from the decision because it is hard to make? Do we seek guidance in silent worship? Do we look to our community to help us? Can we live the reality of our decisions with our communities and with those who love us?’ Contributions from the floor varied from appeals to ‘individual transformation’ and the problems of getting people to change their habits to the need for ‘population control’ and the value of encouraging open debate ‘from all viewpoints’.
An important theme was the recognition that it is impossible to separate individual actions from political change. A Friend, who admired and encouraged individual transformation and action, believed that this was not enough. He argued that ‘we save the world through political actions. We save the world through collective action.’ Later, a Friend argued that Quakers could only make a real difference if they embraced radical action and radical ideas.
Another Friend, dismayed by an underlying sense of despair in the debates on climate change, said that the ‘currency of guilt and misery’ needed to be challenged. It was a time to ‘be joyful and to embrace a spirit of adventure, love and hope’ and to affirm that ‘we know we can do this!’ Prompted by this optimism, the next speaker declared that we should imagine what we wish for. ‘Unless we imagine it,’ she argued, ‘we certainly cannot bring it about.’
A Friend compared contemporary lifestyles to a kind of ‘addiction.’ The first step in recovery was to accept that ‘we are not in control’ and that we must ‘turn to a power greater than ourselves.’ Another Friend argued that we were ‘hooked on materialism’ and an ‘urge to reproduce.’ Was there anything, he thought, greater than these? ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is. Love.’
Comments
Complaining of the urge to reproduce” seems very odd: think about it, Friend.”
By unsure on 4th August 2011 - 13:14
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