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For reasons too tedious to go into, I have recently found myself living in ‘sheltered accommodation’. Some time last month my sleep was disturbed by a fellow resident, who, for reasons best known to himself, took to wandering the hallways in the early hours, trying door handles, resulting in the occasional expletive and shouts of ‘What do you want? Go away!’
Fred is a transgender man; Emma is a lesbian with gender-critical beliefs. We have some experiences in common around gender non-conformity and dysphoria but, in a very polarised topic, we find ourselves on different sides of a big divide. Last year, following discussion in a Quaker Facebook group, we exchanged some messages and agreed to meet in a video call. Our intention was (and is) to talk about the sex and gender issues that concern us in a loving and trusting space.
Sitting at the dinner table of a Buddhist sangha last year, I was not entirely surprised to be surrounded by folks who had once been Quakers. They spoke of the golden thread that runs through all meditative practice; perhaps it runs through all seeking.
‘Nothing is so beautiful as a child who falls asleep while
saying its prayers, God says.
I tell you there is nothing so beautiful in the world.’
Whenever I read this poem by the French poet Charles Péguy (1873-1914), it arouses powerful memories for me of that precious experience long ago, when we sat at the bedside of our small children as they made ready for sleep. In my reveries I find myself back once more with our children’s wide-eyed attention to the details of a bedtime story, and the lengthy, ritual preparation which had to be completed beforehand – all those things to be tidied away out of sight and mind, or gathered up as cherished companions for the night; that beloved doll with a missing arm or the inseparable cuddly toy. I have a cherished image, too, of one small daughter carefully closing her bedroom cupboards each evening before climbing into bed, her sure protection against all those mysterious things which lurk by day in the shadowy recesses of our busy world, but which can emerge at night to haunt our sleep. Undoubtedly, a message there for us parents, too!
Contemporary Quakers tend to put early Quakers on pedestals. This has been important as a way of separating Quakerism from evangelical Christianity of the Victorian era. Evangelicals and early Quakers did after all use the same biblical language, even if they made very different uses of it.
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