Opening myself to Scripture

A strange thing is happening ever so slowly in my Quaker life these days: I am looking up passages in Scripture.

I wouldn't say that the Scriptures are being opened to me as they were opened to George Fox. Fox, after all, had read the Bible and knew it, supposedly, backwards and forwards. As I understand it, at some point what Fox was reading took on new meaning for him as he came in touch with the Spirit that gave forth those words.

In my case, however, it's new for me even to read a passage from the Bible, let alone get in touch with any Life or Power that gave forth The Word.

It so happens that I started being more curious about certain parts of Scripture because of my encounters with Friends--either in print or through conversation. For example, while reading a number of pamphlets, texts, and online essays, I began to see how references to the Bible were adding weight and dimension to the points the authors were wanting to make, whether about Quaker practice or as a metaphor to make a concept clearer.

I saw how Quaker bloggers were linking to a Bible search engine when they quoted Scripture. I began to see that the writing of Scripture was not all about who begat whom, or what sinister army was destroyed by what God-anointed one.

And most important of all, no one was forcing me to read and quote Scripture. I was discovering it for myself.

It's been like drops in a bucket. At first, I could hardly tell that anything was accumulating from the few references I had come across in my reading. But since I've kept on reading, and since I've kept on having conversations with Friends who are familiar with Scripture, well, I've kept on coming across and hearing about references to Scripture.

It was this most recent First Day, though, when I looked in my bucket... and saw that yes indeed, water was collecting there.

Over the two-and-a-half years or so of worshiping in the worship group, a few Friends there have been sharing parts of Scripture as it relates to their own spiritual journey and daily struggles. I have never felt threatened by these comments; it has always been clear to me that within the worship group, the Bible holds power, meaning, and Life for some of these Friends.

It's also probably no coincidence--it's actually probably God's doing--that the worship group has been meeting in a church's fellowship room, where there are a number of Bibles on a bookshelf. On a couple of occasions of late, one Friend or another has pulled a Bible off the shelf, looking for something in particular to share with the rest of us.

And then for some reason, this past First Day, when one Friend spoke about how twice in two weeks he has reflected on the parable of the sower, I found myself wanting to understand why that parable spoke to this Friend in the way that it did.

I cared about the Friend too much to not read what was speaking to him, and so after worship, I approached the Friend and asked where I might find that parable in the Bible. He pulled a Bible off the now-familiar shelf, quickly found the passage for me, and then excused himself to tend to his family's needs.

When I got home, I looked up the passage again, this time online, and read beyond the specific parable to which the Friend had referred. It was an added bonus, then, to come across the admonition against putting a lamp under a bowl, and the importance of "using our measure" (Mark 4:21-25). Here in one short section of the Bible were two essential "advices" of Quakerism:

1. that we not hide our light under a bushel; and

2. that we live up to the measure of Light we have been given... and even more will be granted us.

As a result of this emerging curiosity about Scripture, now I'm going to have to consider whether or not to get the booklet that has the Bible studies from the 2005 Gathering, since they are written by Thomas Gates, whose pamphlet on the functions of meeting had spoken so deeply to my condition...

Blessings,
Liz

AFSC's Eyes Wide Open in music video

Although another Quaker blogger has already posted about this music video, I decided to go ahead and do the same. To find out more about the involvement of the American Friends Service Committee in this video, take a look at this page from the AFSC website.

Blessings,
Liz

Queries from Contemplative Scholar

Over at Embracing Complexity, Contemplative Scholar has posted important queries about Quaker disillusionment.

Here is an excerpt of the comment I had left in response:

...I have been searching for words and experiences that point to the spiritual void I have been experiencing among some Friends. But how do we see something that is not there? What is it that we are pointing to when we are pointing to a gap, to an absence, to something that is missing?

This morning I am reviewing my dog-eared, uber-underlined copy of Thomas Gates' pamphlet Members One of Another, and have found a couple things there that speak to my condition and help me see the invisible void:

p. 14 "Is being accepted by others all there is to being a Friend?"

My answer to that is, No. And Gates goes on to explain about the place of shared values, the expectation to be transformed by the Light, the discipline of supporting others to be obedient to the Spirit, etc.

p. 24 "Mature meetings recognize that some of their members may at times require more than a sense of belonging and shared values, and that the community's responsibility has now moved beyond hospitality and acceptance..."

But what about meetings that are not mature?!

Here is what I am weighing:

Meetings that are not mature may not have the capacity to be able to say, "We do not know how to help you, Friends, with your questions. But let us seek together, worship together, and perhaps we will find others who can help with your questions and with your spiritual hunger...."

I sense I am now left with the questions:

What makes a meeting mature?

and

Who gets to decide if a meeting is mature or not?

Oh dear.

Blessings,
Liz

Jade and the gestalt of Quakerism

Over on Consider the Lilies, Rob has a post about a crisis of faith tradition. In that post, he refers to Lloyd Lee Wilson's comment about how Quakerism is a gestalt, a whole of a thing that is bigger than the sum of its parts and that cannot be explained completely merely by studying its segments.

In the last week or so, prior to reading that post, I had been wondering myself about the Quaker gestalt and how to make sense of it. What makes a gestalt a gestalt? Why is Quakerism so hard to talk about, so hard to teach? Since we understand that Quakerism has its subtleties, why can't we just explain what those subtleties are and how to look for and listen for them...?

Over the same past few days, for seemingly no specific reason, I began to recall a story--perhaps it is Buddhist?--that I had read about a year or so ago, about a student wishing to seek some Answer from the student's wise teacher. The question was probably something like, How can I tell Truth from false truths?

In the story, which I admittedly only loosely recall, the student is first given the task to learn how to distinguish jade from other stones, and then the Answer will be given. Learning such a skill takes a very long time, of course.

The teacher places the student in a room, and each day, for many days, day after day, the teacher gives the student a piece of jade to study. The teacher says nothing, just leaves the student with the stone and returns at the end of the day to retrieve the stone, perhaps also to hear the observations made by the student.

Each morning, the teacher returns and gives the student another piece of jade to study. Each evening, the student shares what was noticed and observed of the stone with the teacher.

Day after day, the teacher returns and the routine is repeated. The student receives another stone, studies it. At night, the teacher returns, listens to the student's observations. And so it goes.

One morning, many days, or days after days, or months later, the teacher again returns to the student and gives the student yet another stone.

But before the teacher can turn and leave the room, the student calls out sternly to the teacher:

Teacher, why have you given me this stone? It is not jade!

And the teacher replies, "And so you have your Answer."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the same way, I believe, it is hard to speak of what Quakerism is or isn't; it is difficult to convey our faith to others through words. And yet it is important to find a way. Maybe talking about the difficulty in doing so is part of the answer.

As a faith tradition, Quakerism is perhaps best passed onto others through an immersion experience, like learning to live in another culture or learning a second language. The gestalt of Quakerism might best be learned through keen observation and through sharing Quakerism in a variety of contexts with a variety of seasoned Friends, day after day, month after month, year after year. In that way, the faith may be acquired in addition to being learned.

Bill Taber talks about Quakerism as being "caught" rather than "taught."

It is unlikely that Quakerism can be learned only by sitting in worship, or only by attending religious education classes, or only be reading of it in books, blogs, and journals. It is unlikely that Quakerism can be learned only by interacting with Friends within one's own meeting or by reading only one Quaker author. It is unlikely that Quakerism can be taught by exclusively applying the Testimonies to hypothetical situations, by only discussing the branches of the Quaker tree, or by only reading the epistles of George Fox.

To do any of these in isolation and declare we know Quakerism would be like eating a walnut and proclaiming we know the ins and outs of the walnut tree.

Quakerism is a culture of a particular faith tradition; Quakerism is a gestalt of multigenerational experiences, beliefs, and witness. We must therefore have a variety of experiences within Quakerism to know it intimately and to know the Living Presence intimately through one another.

Hungry to know what a deep Quakerism is, perhaps we must each sit with a teacher, be handed a simple stone of our faith, study it, observe it, and share what we notice at the end of the day, only to be given another stone to study.

At the end of our long, contemplative study, perhaps we will have our Answer.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. If someone has a resource for the jade story, I would appreciate knowing about it.

UPDATE: Another Quaker blogger touches on the related concepts of Quaker identity and being connected to a particular gestalt. In her own post, Anna writes about the Maori concept of whakapapa as it relates to her Quaker heritage and to her sense of Who She Is.