Thursday 20 June 2019

Encounter, Worship, Discernment and Testimony

We Quakers are a curious lot, difficult to pin down.  Ask ten Quakers what they believe and you'll get ten different answers.  But if you ask ten Anglicans, Methodists or Buddhists, wanting to get at what they personally believe, you'll probably get a similar variety.  We are all unique.

Quakers are difficult to pin down because most are tentative in our use of words.  Language developed to help us not merely survive, but thrive, developing mastery in everything we turn our mind to: the culmination of doing.  But doing is merely one of life's outcomes.  Life's nature is being.  Unless we first are, we can't do anything.  We use language tentatively because describing being is extraordinarily difficult.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) are a group who mostly realise the difference between understanding (awareness that can be expressed in words) and 'standing under' (how we are).  Quite what we are standing under, or what that even means, we are much less willing to express with any certainty.  So Quakers take a step back and agree we are united, not in what we say, but in what we do.  Especially in our doing nothing – sitting in stillness.

Open to Transformation

Britain Yearly Meeting is the national gathering of British Quakers at Friends' House in London.  Quakers don't go in for preaching or teaching, so the Swarthmore Lecture there is a really big deal.  Each year one Quaker is invited to 'address the Quaker nation'.  The selection process is very Quakerly.  

First a Nominations Committee are asked to discern a selection of suitable people from names that have been put forward. Then, at a Meeting for Worship where church affairs are considered, those present have to discern which candidate they are going to ask.  There is no voting, discussion or argument.  

In silence, each person tries to set aside their own inclinations and be open to 'the promptings of the Spirit'.  They may stand to speak as they are 'moved', make their point simply and sit again as the meeting considers what's been said in silence.  It is not usual for comments to address others' points directly – each person is striving to express 'the will of God on the matter' as best they see it.  

At some point the clerk will attempt to summarise 'the feeling of the Meeting' in a draft minute.  The Meeting then has to discern whether the clerk has expressed what they sense the Meeting is feeling or how it can be better expressed.  The process continues until either all agree or the remaining dissenters agree that the meeting hasn't gone their way.

In 2014 an academic, Ben Pink Dandelion, was asked to give the Swarthmore lecture.  He gave a challenging address and the text was later expanded and published as a book, "Open to Transformation".  

Listening to his talk five years later, I was struck how many of his rigorous and difficult questions are being worked on today.  It seemed he was addressing an audience for whom these questions were new.  But I was listening, having come into Quaker groups for whom some, at least, were live issues.  Again, very Quakerly.  

Quakers will be reticent when it comes to describing transformation and be very wary of anyone who expresses it in terms of a goal or agenda.  But everyone agrees we are here to be transformed, even if going as far as "being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Corinthians 3:18) may be a matter of debate.

Quakers by Experience

His introduction grabbed my attention.  He said Quakers are united by four processes – more what is done to us than things we do.  We have experienced an Encounter with something we cannot describe and most definitely cannot pin down, something other than ourselves we cannot deny.  For most, I think, it comes and goes.  Sometimes so much absent that we can be tempted to dismiss the experience as illusion.  It certainly doesn't sit comfortably with the way our culture comprehends things.  But we find encouragement in finding Friends who know something of the same experience.

So we meet together in Worship.  Every week we gather in silence, often distracted, sometimes anticipating an Encounter.  When it happens it is always fresh, new, alive.  Like the proverbial river, no one can step into the same experience twice.  Worship is an opportunity to lay aside our usual concerns – the content of our lives – and let our awareness expand to catch a glimpse of what Hindus call THAT, the context we live within.  People who sense this and have something to say are encouraged to speak.  Usually the 'ministry' they give brings encouragement to us all, as we too can perhaps sense the touch of God.  Sometimes the meeting 'gathers'.  Gathered Worship has a wonderful, slightly eerie stillness about it.  Without apparent co-ordination we are severally caught up, as if our hearts are beating as one, united in the same being for a spell. 

Discernment comes most easily in a Meeting for Worship.  This is the sense that what has been said comes from a place deeper than any individual human spirit, but from a Spirit we all share.  I sense discernment as authentic when it feels like, "Of course!  How obvious now you've said it.  Why couldn't I see that before?"  As we agree in our discernment, there arises a confidence that we have dis-covered something of Truth.  It is an energising feeling and historically has been a powerful force for transforming idealistic notions into something concrete, bringing a bit of Goodness into the world.

Which is Quaker Testimony.  Ben Pink Dandelion questioned the separation of Testimonies we have today.  He said we are Testimony in that it is our lives expressing themselves, much deeper than how we behave.  Inevitably it spills over into what we do.  How could it be otherwise?  Simplicity, truth, equality, peace and sustainability are what Quaker Testimony looks like in different circumstances.

Forgive the Americanism, but someone once said to me, "She's a neat energy to be around".  That's Testimony.  It testifies to transformation – being more than ordinarily human – living from a deeper well-spring.  Such people not only show Discernment but make it easy for those around them, too.  When they are sitting in silence, being with them is to share their 'open heaven'; being open to the grace of God becomes the most natural way to be.  Sporadic Encounter has become a 'walking alongside'.

Simple not Simplistic

From sitting in stillness to transforming our world – making it a good place to be – is not a path that can be traced simplistically, as a chain of cause and effect.  It is the life of a community, not the activities of a collection of individuals.  So it doesn't happen often in our secular, individualistic culture.  (And as Ben Pink Dandelion rightly pointed out, Quakers are not immune to those diseases.)  But when Encounter in Worship uses Discernment to become Testimony, the world gets changed.  That's transformation worth having.

1 comment:

  1. I like this - condensed and to the point. Will return to it.

    ReplyDelete