Thought for the Week: Completed Quakers
Charles Stevenson reflects on 'completed Quakers'
Wilfrid Meynell, on forsaking the Religious Society of Friends of his upbringing for the Catholic church, described himself as a ‘completed Quaker’. He meant that he had absorbed all there was of Quakerism for him and, so, could move on. Fortunately for posterity, he did move on, for it was he who discovered and brought to the world the powerful religious poetry of Francis Thompson.
I have known a number of ‘completed Quakers’ since my Young Friends’ days – men and women whose friendship and wisdom I value. For many reasons these former Young Friends resigned their membership, and have had years to reflect calmly and grow. Those who are still my friends have particular insights to offer about the Society. All have positive memories of wonderful Friends who have influenced their lives. All have shrewd observations.
Disappointment, perhaps, is the foremost of these observations: disappointment that Friends have overindulged in self-satisfaction, charging on, without looking at themselves impartially. Who among us has not met the determined individual whose zeal sees any other point of view as ignorance! These former Friends’ appreciation of the Society has been marred by this human frailty, and also by incompetent clerkship that has swept away an unwonted perspective on an issue. But the observation that hit me the most was that we take ourselves too seriously. We go confidently into new areas of concern, reinvent ourselves with new committees, or form new Meetings, believing that great things will now happen, forgetting that we take ourselves with us always. Isaac Pennington’s ‘heap of fresh and living coals, warming one another’ (his description of a Friends’ Meeting) would be incomplete without the wider perspective seen from sympathetic bystanders tending and stoking those coals!
Historically, lapsed Friends bonded among themselves, particularly in business. I am referring to the days of disownment for ‘marrying out’. Even today, close on 200 years later, there is interaction, even marriage, among former Friends. It is a phenomenon that has never achieved articulation.
Seasoned Friends who have weathered the occasional sadness of the Society at its worst have nevertheless remained faithful, perhaps because they see the larger picture. They have learned to hold their tongues – when it is appropriate – not in complete unity, yet realising that they are not going to change the situation without hurt or without dampening enthusiasm. To trust the wisdom of others when we are in doubt, to stand back, is not easy. On such occasions to speak one’s insight in a positive manner requires detachment. Does one’s input ultimately matter? I am not referring to great issues, but domestic matters, perhaps to do with the children, the garden or the library.
How often it is that the Meeting for Worship upholds us, shows us a more authentic, dispassionate position, larger than the current issue. I find myself, like very many others, revelling in being an ‘incomplete Quaker’ in the sense that more is to be learned, and more is to be revealed.
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