A way with words: Kate McNally’s Thought for the Week

‘No description of our experience is perfect.’

Friends have many words for the divine. Describing what we feel connected to in worship is not easy – in my case it doesn’t fit any of the descriptions I heard as a child, nor many that I have heard as an adult. Nonetheless, I use the word ‘God’. I understand the spirit behind all of the words, but they do not define the experience we have, only point to it.

Many years ago, as a professor of psychology, I used to teach my students about Maslow, Freud, Skinner, Tinbergen, Pavlov, Erikson, Jung, and others. Each of these theorists brought a unique point of view to their understanding of human behaviour. My students used to ask which of these theories was correct. The answer is that they are all correct, but incomplete. They all result from the discipline and thought of the formulator, who was looking at human behaviour through their own unique lens. Each brought a part of the truth. The more views we have, the better we understand. 

‘I love the fact that Quakerism is large enough to hold all our diverse experiences.’

I think it’s like that with Quakers. We none of us have words that can absolutely, correctly and completely capture the power of the connection that unifies us as Quakers. For me, the closest words are those I was taught as a child – the God words. But others have other lenses through which to view and describe this experience. Sometimes the words others use may trigger old memories or feelings in us – but that’s for us to manage. I believe we can give the person using those words the grace of letting them feel comfortable, and ask for that same grace for ourselves. 

I love the fact that Quakerism is large enough to hold all our diverse experiences. I love that Quakerism is large enough to encapsulate all the ways in which we worship. Large enough for the conservative Friends who embrace plain dress and plain speech, for those Friends whose pastors program their worship sessions, for those of us in the calm stillness of unprogrammed worship, and even for the joyous, lively singing and dancing in worship among our Evangelical Friends. 

I hope that this can extend to embracing the many and wonderful ways in which we describe whatever it is that we engage with in worship. Words automatically limit what we describe, and these words can only point to something bigger than all of them. No description of our experience is perfect. It is at best an approximation, incomplete. 

Until we have new words, we are limited to the old ones in trying to describe the indescribable. All of these words are correct, but they are incomplete.

‘Each of us has a particular experience of God and each must find the way to be true to it. When words are strange or disturbing to you, try to sense where they come from and what has nourished the lives of others’ (Advices & queries 17).

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