It takes two: Jan Shimmin’s Thought for the Week

‘Where is our contemporary Quaker inspiration?’

‘In worship we enter with reverence into communion with God’ (Advices & queries 9). Great! But then what?

Quakerism is the only deliberate practice of group mysticism that I have found. Mystics seeking union with the divine traditionally do so individually, whether in monasteries or on mountain tops. For some, the Sanskrit sense of Samadhi (awakening to that of God within) comes unsought while we’re at the office, surfing a wave, or doing the washing up. 

Once we have found this route to the Inward Light, the ‘I am’, the Beingness, we may want more. Why wouldn’t we?  One precious hour each week of group communion with the divine in Meeting for Worship is not enough. How can we develop and deepen this? My experience is that when Quakers want to grow their spirituality, they lack an obvious route. I see Friends who are most actively seeking God moving to Christian mysticism within the steeplehouses, or to Buddhism, or shamanism. 

‘Christ has come to teach his people himself,’ said early Friends. Only through ministry and revelation during Meeting for Worship? Have I missed our present-day inspirational teachers, our modern equivalents of Elizabeth Hooton, George Fox, James Nayler, Mary Fisher? I follow the Advaita spiritual teacher Mooji. For some seekers I have recommended Eckhart Tolle’s books. These explore communion with God in a present-day vernacular idiom, though not as a shared experience. Rufus Jones and Thomas Kelly are great; ‘Experiment with Light’ points a way, but where is our contemporary Quaker inspiration? 

Two extensions of collective Quaker spirituality that I have experienced include the rare and beautiful two-hour Meeting for Worship, when there is time for gatheredness to deepen, and ministry follows ministry into revelation. At Brighton, where we had two-hour Meetings for a while, someone said it was ‘like getting into a warm bath’. Swarthmoor Hall continues to have a two-hour Meeting for Worship every month, and it was there that I experienced the deepening of group mysticism.

The second opportunity for deepening Quaker spirituality that I’ve found is Healing Meetings, where a group will ‘Hold in the Light’ those seeking wholeness. ‘Like having a group hug with God’ I told a children’s group, ‘and inviting someone else in too’.

When I managed a Buddhist retreat, my lovely job included sitting in meditation with retreatants three times a day. I never experienced a gathered Meeting there, though I have met Buddhists who say (when I’ve asked) that this has happened to them. In an Advaita group, people once shared after a meditation that ‘I sensed you all there with me!’, and as the discussion ended I said a little smugly, ‘That’s what Quakers call a gathered Meeting.’ ‘Just the name for it!’ they cried. 

The kernel of Quakerism that I wish we could nurture more of is this deliberate reaching for group communion with God, that shared experience of the numinous, where we come to know one other in those things which are eternal. 

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