Thought for the Week: Be the message
'Be the message' by Ian Kirk-Smith
‘Living out our faith in the world’ is the theme of this year’s Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). It follows three years in which BYM addressed the question: ‘What it means to be a Quaker today’. The themes represent two sides of the same coin. It is impossible to imagine one without the other.
William Penn urged Friends to be ‘possessors as well as professors of the truth…’ It is instructive to consider what it means to ‘profess’ today. George Fox travelled the length and breadth of England preaching – professing – a message with enormous personal conviction. This Yearly Meeting will celebrate a different kind of preaching: one that Quakers value and cherish.
Early Friends lived out their faith in the late 1660s by acting on principle. They endured, in doing so, the most grievous persecution. Joseph Besse has meticulously recorded it in A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers. Later, released from this persecution and able to act with openness and generosity, Friends chose to live out their faith in the world through an active witness. This witness, grounded in a deep personal transformation, was rooted in their experience of an Inward Light and nurtured in the gathered stillness of Meeting of Worship. The professing became putting faith into action.
Quakers have always put their shoulder to the wheel in addressing injustice and inequality. In the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Fry was appalled by what she saw in prisons and was convinced that ‘there is a sphere of usefulness open to all.’ Paul Parker and Helen Drewery cite other examples in their article in this issue. ‘Living out’ requires action on issues of concern. It demands focused and organised activity. The local Quaker initiatives, described in this issue, which address housing need today, are a wonderful example of this kind of service. As William Penn, in 1682, said: ‘True godliness don’t turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavours to mend it…’
There are, of course, many ways of ‘living out’ or ‘professing’. Living out our faith also requires an attention to the everyday, to ordinary encounters, to how we treat people at work, at home, at Meeting, at leisure.
Quaker faith & practice is a treasure trove of inspiration – an endless well to dip into for wisdom and guidance. Many quotes celebrate Friends who lived their lives, at an everyday level, in a spirit of love and tenderness: ‘Our beloved Friend was a man of few talents… he grew up in piety and virtue, and became an encouraging example of true Christian simplicity, humility, meekness, self-denial and universal charity’ (Quaker faith & practice 18.01).
These ‘ordinary’ lives, transformed by the Inward Light, can be extraordinary in their gentle impact and tender influence. They are inspiring. We need to remember that the most enduring way to profess the Quaker message is to ‘be the message’ in the way we live our lives and treat people.
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