Thought for the week: Pat Carney-Ceccarelli watches this space
‘Today we are graced with new tools to access in each other the potential for shared healing and growth.’
Our spirituality and our mental health are equally rooted in our personal experience. During times of personal and collective upheaval, can we make space for each other in our Quaker practice? Space that might transcend ordinary conversations into truly compassionate ones? Space for humbly sharing experiences like grief, shame, anger, pettiness and irritation, as well as the supreme grace of compassion and gratitude? This matters so much when feelings of unworthiness upend us, or when great losses shake our foundations. Struggling for meaning can leave us barren and dry.
Perhaps like George Fox we feel that only Jesus can speak to our condition, and we can find comfort in our direct access to Spirit. But others may be in need, and can find connections in sharing, if we reach out. Or perhaps we affirm that we can have direct access to a transforming experience of Divine revelation. As Quakers living today we might experience a dynamic faith and practice that is moving and transformative. Our ways of accessing each other have evolved since those days in the seventeenth century when authoritarian systems were challenged by those seeking authentic spiritual experience. Today we are graced with new tools to access in each other the potential for shared healing and growth. The ‘I and Thou’ of relational willingness to share and patiently stand with each other can increase the spaces for spiritual growth as we move on.
We have tools from psychology and psychotherapy, plus the mindfulness techniques so embraced in Buddhism, as well as ways of finding our embodiment of wholeness in movement: dance, yoga, qigong and other body work. We have increasing sharing of sacred practices and knowledge of indigenous cultures that we might draw upon. Quakers are no longer excluded from creative expressions like painting, drawing, photography, poetry, and the performing arts. These are all an unfolding of the creative life force.
We grow in awareness through our work on white privilege, recognising the arrogances of the white middle class, through the challenging work of Quaker Peace & Social Witness. We understand more about our contributions to the environment, and seek together better ways to safeguard it. We are learning about trauma, and finding ways together towards healing and wholeness.
The Covid-19 pandemic and volatile political and economic eruptions have forced us into time for reflection and urged us towards solutions. Perhaps time is ripe for us to embrace more fully the opening of our tender hearts and share what love requires of us.
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