The Isle of Skye. Photo: Nigel Burhnham.
Quaker journeys
Nigel Burnham describes his experience of different Quaker Meetings
If pushed, I would probably describe myself as a Christian Buddhist. But recent encounters with Quakerism have already made me a big fan. Living in the middle of the North York Moors National Park, I have to get in the car to reach a Meeting and am spoilt for choice.
The Meeting in Pickering is packed with principled people whose interest in peace, social justice and the fight against fracking at nearby Kirby Misperton quickly won me over. But the Meeting at Great Ayton, boyhood home of captain James Cook, where there was a prestigious Quaker boarding school between 1841-1997, is equidistant and, especially when the skies are blue, I find myself unable to resist the pull of the spectacular moorland drive through Westerdale.
Sometimes I find myself in York on a Wednesday in silent reflection with a small group at Friargate Meeting. Earlier this year I experienced another powerful example of Quakers’ hearts being in the right place when Moazzam Begg, the British Pakistani who held in extrajudicial detention by the US government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came there to deliver a truly inspirational speech.
Another Sunday, another revelation: High Flatts Quaker Meeting is the architecturally stunning focal point of a historic South Yorkshire Quaker hamlet where, if they’re lucky, newcomers are presented with a beautiful linen tea towel! Below High Flatts bewitching woodland glades look like they have not been touched for centuries.
I have found that every Meeting’s spiritual odyssey is different and that the power of the experience has nothing to do with numbers. As well as offering an antidote to the madness of the turbulent world outside, the heartfelt welcome one receives on arrival, and the silence-ending handshakes, are always very moving.
On my way home from the Scottish Highlands last month I found myself headed for a special Meeting for Worship in the village hall at Breakish, on the Isle of Skye. There were only seven of us, including John, a folk musician in a band called Iron Midden! But they were my kind of people, as was the person who had stuck a notice on the cigarette bin outside warning that it must not be used – because a family of blue tits had recently moved in.
After an especially magical silence we discussed the decision made at Yearly Meeting to update Quaker faith & practice. One Friend opined that while most religions were based on dogma dating back over 2,000 years, Quakers were trying to create a more beautiful world that might be attainable sometime in the future.
Outside, after we had said our farewells, I reached for the Dalai Lama’s The Little Book of Buddhism. Open it at any page and you’ll find a nugget of wisdom you just can’t live without.
Quakerism has a similar gift for powerful, pithy maxims. It declares that ‘true religion leads to respect for the earth and all life upon it’, that there is ‘something sacred in all people’, and that it is ‘about the whole of life’.
Find a better way to get these messages across – especially to the young – and Quaker numbers would rocket.
