Reflections on the ‘Red Book’: Beyond words
Alison Leonard concludes her two part-series
In the article last week I outlined the problem: that we are followers of early Friends, who heard the voice of God, opened their hearts to it, accepted it and followed it; yet we live in a secular and scientific age where the ‘voice of God’ is cited by criminals, terrorists, and people we deem in need of psychiatric treatment. Despite the difficulties, we know that the writings of early Friends contain essential truths. But we also know that these truths must, in our age, be either expressed in other ways or be approached from a different angle.
A personal angle
First, my personal angle. I have had experiences – not many, not often, but enough, and vital – which have come from beyond the physical or seem to have come from beyond the physical: I don’t mind, one way or the other. There can be no proof, and none is necessary, because ‘this I knew experimentally’. None of these experiences came to me in a Quaker context; they came either in a personal way, or in the pagan, shamanic context that I have followed during parts of my life.
In one incident, in the middle of the night, I heard the voice of my long-dead mother: she was asking for my forgiveness. On another occasion, in a trance-like state, I felt as if I were a wild animal being pursued by a predator, then being mourned by my herd after my killing. And I have felt, a number of times, those moments of utter communion with the whole world that will be familiar to many Friends. The most memorable of these happened in the company of pagan women in a worshipful dawn circle on Glastonbury Tor.
I can talk about these things with other Friends, if the atmosphere is trusting enough, and have them respected. No one seems to mind that my experiences happened outside the Quaker world; no one asks for proof or validation; they simply listen, nod, and sometimes add comparable experiences of their own.
During some Quaker gatherings – I remember in particular a weekend at Charney Manor – Friends have shared, in a group setting, experiences of spiritual things. One instance involved a Friend being visited by someone shortly after that person’s death and being told by them that ‘it’s OK to die’.
Guidance from God?
Did those experiences constitute guidance from God? Or, in the setting of somewhere like Glastonbury, from the Goddess? I cannot judge. I only know that my spiritual experiences have been gifts for my life’s journey, and they have extended my consciousness and deepened my understanding.
But, however essential they are to my way of being, I would not call these experiences ‘the voice of the Divine’. I don’t feel led by them. They are part of my life’s processes, but I wouldn’t change my whole life as a result of them, still less ask my family and friends to change theirs.
When making life-changing decisions I want something more evidence-based. I need answers to questions like: does this plan sound sensible to those whose opinions I respect? Have I got the strength or skills to do what I propose? Is this course of action sustainable, or might it actually exacerbate the problem it aims to solve? In fact, I need the elements of a Quaker business method to sort my head out before acting on any big decision, especially if it involves others as well as myself.
We have today, within our Yearly Meeting, many ways of opening to the Spirit as part of our individual and group decision-making. First, of course, there are our regular Meetings for Worship and Meetings for Worship for Business. Many are the Friends who say: ‘I didn’t know what to do, but the answer came to me during worship.’ A Meeting for Clearness, originally set up to test clearness for marriage, has now become a common way for a Friend or Friends to discern the right way forward in particular difficulties.
Then there are retreats at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre and Swarthmoor Hall. Some of these are themed around a certain question, while others are for those who simply need space for quiet and reflection, to deepen their relationship with the Spirit or the Unknown, to focus on a particular spiritual practice, or to step back from day-to-day life and consider who they are and where they are going.
Experiment with Light
Another is ‘Experiment with Light’, devised by Quaker and theologian Rex Ambler. Rex asked what it was that made early Friends so sure, so centred, so willing to suffer privations to keep their faith alive; then he researched the process by which it happened, and adapted it for modern needs into a method of stillness, opening, waiting, and welcoming what has been discovered.
The time-honoured tradition of forming and testing a Concern is a more active version of this kind of dedicated opening to truth. During this process an issue of faith and witness makes its way through layers of Meetings for Worship for Business, being ‘tested’ at each level, until it reaches (if that seems right) its adoption by the whole of the Religious Society of Friends.
A simpler way of exploration is to gather some Friends together to ponder a pressing theme. This can happen by forming a group in a Local or Area Meeting, or by writing a letter to the Friend. I have experienced two such groups. One was tiny: the Quaker Goddess Group, set up to find the links between Quaker and pagan spiritual practices, which had a brief but for its members significant life. The other was the Quaker Concern around Dying and Death, which began with my letter to the Friend asking if anyone was interested in facing end-of-life issues and resulted in an ongoing group of about a hundred Friends.
So, there are a range of contemporary possibilities for being ‘led’, for having those leadings ‘tested’, and for exploring ways of deepening our spiritual life and extending, or even revolutionising, our work and our witness.
There is a saying, from I don’t know where or when: ‘Remember who you are.’ We are the children of George Fox and Margaret Fell, of Isaac and Mary Penington, of Francis Howgill and other early Friends. We are also children of a secular, scientific and often chaotic age. In the words of the twentieth century Irish poet Louis MacNeice, from his poem ‘Snow’:
‘World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.’
‘Do I contradict myself?’ asked Walt Whitman, the nineteenth century poet of wild America. ‘Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes).’
Yet, we are also simple enough to follow Alexander Parker, who wrote in 1660:
‘The first that enters into the place of your meeting turn in thy mind to the light… Then the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in to the same light, and wait in the spirit.’
(Quaker faith & practice 2.41)
This is who we are. This is what we do. We wait, in the silence, beyond words.
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