Thought for the week: Noël Staples’ prompt copy
‘You are all part of me; I am part of all of you. We are all part of everything.’
A search of Quaker faith & practice for the word ‘belonging’ finds only forty-five matches, and none of them is linked to the 500 references to ‘love’ or ‘loving’. All the references are either to Quakers or to community.
At one of our recent Meetings for Worship we heard the introduction to Advices & queries (‘Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life’) and A&q number 1: ‘Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts’.
‘Promptings’, naturally, involves being prompted to do, or to say, something, but it led me to consider my own experience of the promptings of love. My sense of the presence of the spirit doesn’t evoke a feeling of being loved so much as a very strong sense of belonging – not only to the spirit but to everyone and everything. You are all part of me; I am part of all of you. We are all part of everything. It is remarkably close to feeling loved but, additionally, promotes the desire to care for everything and everyone. What I do, or am, affects everyone and everything. If I do harm, then I harm myself too. In Matthew 25:40 the king says: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ – though there is nothing particularly kingly about me!
This sense of belonging is more powerful than just being loved (I know, ‘just’ does rather diminish ‘being loved’) because belonging adds the stimulus to speak or act at the very least in such a way as to do no harm. But if everyone is part of me then people like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot are part of me and of all of us (and Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela). This belonging is not entirely without its dark side!
Another Friend ministered on her promptings of the spirit to want to help others in their time of need, and that could mean the compassionate response of holding someone in the light if nothing else was possible. Maybe, she wondered, if we are all part of each other, prayer and compassion really do have a beneficial effect.
It is not usual to minister twice but, my son having died just before Christmas after a long fight with cancer, I felt I had to give support to this ministry by saying how grateful I was and how upheld I had felt by the many messages of condolence and sympathy. Holding someone in the light really does work!
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