Thought for the Week: All life is sacred
John Myhill reflects on the sacred and the secular
For me a foundation of Quaker faith is the idea that there is no division between the sacred (spiritual, meditative, religious, sacramental) and the secular (material, busy, atheistic, mundane). Quakers aspire to live and have their being within the sacred.
Thus we are all priests. We abolished the laity, not because priests thought they were more important than the rest of us, but because lay people were failing to accept the significance of the Light within and live up to their priestly calling. Thus we make every action sacramental, not because we object to eucharistic symbols, marriage ceremonies or other rituals; but because every sharing of food is a chance to remember the sacrificial life, our duty to feed the hungry and care for those in trouble. Thus we seek to be peacemakers, not because we are cowards willing to watch others die in our defence or allow evil dictators to rule the world; but because we know experientially that the seeds of war lie within each of us. Only when we have overcome our own demons, and learned to absorb the prejudice and hatred of others, can we move towards a peaceful world, based on selfless service and love.
All this has to start with our Meetings for Worship, where we allow the Light within, the presence in the midst, to teach us to listen to each other. We do not worship in silence because silence is sacred and speech secular. We worship in silence because it enables us to listen to one another and to speak what seems most important to us, to get to know each other in the things that are eternal. The Meeting for Worship is thus a practice run, a training ground, a preparation for the rest of our sacred living, so that we may listen for that of God in everything that is said to us (amongst Quakers and in the world) and answer that of God, with our own depth of understanding, not distracted by lightweight secular chatter.
The most common problem in Quaker Meetings today is that we are not practising spiritual speaking and listening in our Meetings for Worship so that when it comes to our Meetings for Worship for Business, or when we meet with non-Quakers, we fall into secular ways. Therefore, our words become trivial and mundane, driven by material preoccupations. People are too willing to speak and speak too often, as if they were in the House of Commons rather than the presence of God. In contrast our Meetings for Worship are increasingly silent, so that the opportunity to share the joy of Light, the beauty of language, the inspiration of the moment, the delight of apparent telepathy, empathy and shared consciousness are all lost, by the idolatry of worshipping silence itself.
Most Friends today need to speak more and listen harder in Meetings for Worship, and speak less and hold others in the Light at all other times.
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