Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 5, 2012 at 4:42pm

Something I've read about traditional Chinese society was that most people would soak up a personal mixture of Taoism, Confucionism, and/or Buddhism. A person who most readily saw things in Taoist or Buddhist terms, say, wouldn't call himself a "non-Confucionist." He'd simply use what he could use.

"Quaker" should be able to include any true map of the world. One map for the gas stations, another for elevations, another for average temperature.... no problem!

There is nothing to prevent a person locating himself via Christian, Buddhist, Taoist maps of life, finding different landmarks on different maps-- but no necessary contradiction.

Atheism essentially denies the landscape of this metaphor. I was an atheist, like my father before me, and  quite aside from whatever "respect" we might have deserved, we happened to be mistaken. There was a big blank space, right in the middle of the life people know-- and it didn't even read, "Dragons." Nothing. Atoms and the void.

So far as "non-theist" is euphemism for that, "atheist" is plain speech.

So far as it means: "I don't understand about the Christian Thing..." that's not something to be ashamed of, or proud of. But rather more important than having missed learning to add fractions.

I suppose that if we had "non-fractional" mathematicians we could just let them study Abstract Algebra the rest of their lives. But I'd think they could try wrapping their minds around fractions, and that would be more reasonable.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 5, 2012 at 5:49pm

My friend is happy to worship at my Meeting whenever she gets time off from choir at her Methodist church. I don't know how things be in your Meeting, but I felt she was stating a more accurate observation of us than I'd been able to.

I don't like it when things I say are heard unkindly, because it gets in the way-- almost as much as trying to avoid saying them would have.

"Waking up is hard to do," as the (reworded) song has it.

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 5th mo. 5, 2012 at 6:38pm

Hello All,

I wanted to speak to a couple comments made here by Rudy and Forrest:

1) Rudy, you said "Then an atheist sees the man, and says to himself "There is no God

to help this man; only I am here; I must help him myself".  That is one answer anyway.

Our struggle is against the powers that threw that poor man down on the ground, not against

the views people have of the universe.  God wants us to pick people up."

THANK YOU for sharing this.  I find such grace in it.  I love about God these occasional insights we have when we discover a new perspective -- suddenly aware that we are judging someone, really judging them, and that we were wrong not only to judge, but have the sudden awareness that WE were completely limited in our perception of them.  We now see the grace in them, already in them, just as they are! 

Then there's a big step onward from that when we learn to approach others that way in the first place -- not just after we've judged gthem.  The greatest example I think of   of this kind of submitting to the higher authority is about that beautiful small town in France in WWII who saved so many Jews. These were a bunch of Christians who literally put their lives on the line and not because they were going to straighten out those Jews and reform them to good Christian lives!   They were so humble that they said "These are God's chosen people!    NOBODY gets to pick on God's Chosen people on our watch.  This is the least we can do!"

What mercy.   And can you imagine how well that speaks of Christianity to any who are needing that Spirit?   I don't know why we ever tried to evangelize.  When we are coming from the right place, the evangelizing happens by itself.

Anyway, I digress I think.  Thank you Rudy for this example of the kind of change of heart one can have toward treating others with unconditional grace.

Forrest, you wrote "We still have the basic problem that Petter was bringing up: Can we, should we, survive as (what a friend of mine calls) a religious society for people who don't want to be very religious?"

I say of course not!    ....but we may need to rediscover for ourselves Fox's original spark because we do seem, as a society, to have sorely lost our clarity about what is the Divine....or the Ultimate or whatever you call it.  What is our Source?  We all have different sources now and it's questionable whether it's all the same Light and to what degree.  There is a powerful lot of good Light being sought but I'm speaking here to what MAY have missed the mark.

For many this Light is called "Christianity" but is a faith that prides it's big fat ego on saying "Christian" because it's more comfortable, but is less interested in laying its own life on the line for others -- certainly not athiests!  Or for many now, the Light is found in the safety and comfort of not having to suffer with the wounds received in the past from traditional Christianity, or as a means of being able to allow one's self to still be Religious without having to call it God or see a Source of some kind. 

Some are interested in being a "real Quaker" all about the testimonies. Some are interested in being a "real Quaker" all about what George Fox was doing.  Correct me if I'm wrong but I think these are actually two different forms of "real Quakers" right??   

I think GF didn't work with the testimonies and that they came later. Personally I am inclined to see both, now, as real Quakers.  

What to do?   We have become a much more diverse society, haven't we?  We are not in unison in which Light we are seeking or to what degree.  I think that as we seek and to the degree that it is real Light we are seeking it will triumph....whatever that turns out to be is yet to be seen...but I bet it's an enlightening change of heart for the bulk of us, not further splintering.

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Permalink Reply by Allistair Lomax on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 7:57am

Hi Stephen,

I mostly resist the temptation to get involved in discussions on these kinds of issues, but I saw your posting and felt I needed to respond.

I hope you won't be offended, if I offer you the following advice. To be frank, I would advise that you give up Britain Yearly Meeting as a lost cause. It is too late to reverse the decline and the loss of the spiritual basis of that group of Friends.

The way was opened up to allow any kind of spiritual belief , (even 'stuff' that was diametrically opposed to the basic principles of the Quaker faith), at the last major revision of their book of discipline in the 1980's. I saw then,  that any restraint in what people could be believe in to become a member had been removed, and that all manner of unbelief would follow. Time has vindicated my view. The Quaker Universalist Group is largely responsible for this state of affairs, but the 'establishment' in BYM allowed this. You are reaping what has been sown.

You don't have to be a prophet to see the writing on the wall. BYM will just descend even further down into self-contradictory confusion and moral relativism. Prophetic Quakerism in BYM has been effectively silenced. My advice to you, Stephen, would be to pursue your spiritual  aims outside of Britain Yearly Meeting.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 11:12am

Friends have always had a wide range of terms for that Big What-It-Be... covering, no doubt, a wide range of concepts. The 'none-of-the-above' character of a group calling itself 'NON'-theistic disturbs me, because it rejects so much nourishment I find essential-- whether or not the people involved are 'snacking in the silence' as you say.

My own Meeting has had multiple atheist clerks, who've been extremely conscientious, competent people. & they've been quite appropriate in terms of representing the dominant tone and belief-system of the Meeting, which I do not. It's not, to my mind, a matter of being able to put a particular name, or any name, to the Life in us-- but of having no useful way to talk about it at all.

I'm used to disagreeing, may I not be too disagreeable about it!

The "blank space" is not in the people themselves, but in the world they imagine they inhabit. It shouldn't have to seem so cold and empty.

A better question: How much wild-and-crazy Truth are people willing to accept?

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 1:52pm

I'm enjoying this discussion!

Rudy --

     Thank you for sharing about Alexander Grothendieck.   It is humbling to see how life goes on and fulfills its purpose.  

You went on to say "You are right, our actions should be our evangelizing. As someone who spends most of his time reading and not doing, I am guilty of not being a very good advertisement for Friends, I'm afraid; my light peeks out from under the bushel only occasionally."

I would like to clarify what I meant since it appears that you may have misunderstood.   I think I feel more in solidarity with your resting at home, reading a book, in the scenario you mentioned.    The spirit of what I'm saying is that when we "just be" -- I don't mean be lazy, take advantage of others by being served and doing nothing, or live fearful of taking a stand, but a deeper form of "just be."    When we just be aware of what is within us (sit with it, acknowledge it, let it guide, let any shame or fear or anger be felt fully and released, or whatever it takes to do that "just be".... when we let out our fears and limitations and find out what is within us, who we really are and what we are really called to -- and then joyfully only be that! -- there is no way that this life will not evangelize to others.   They can't help but want what I've got when I'm like that (I say abstractly, not sure I've ever achieved this even for a moment).  

"Shoulds" are a real problem and not helpful.   So I am not speaking of what you feel you should do (get out and take action) in order to be a good Quaker, etc.       Instead my thought is that when you live your authentic-YOU life...maybe it's as a deeply centered, peaceful reader (in your scenario)...or maybe it's USUALLY as a reader but when you are ready to act out of what has grown and grown within you over days or years in retreat and ripening, then the action is coming from a deep and Holy place within you, absolutely convinced of itself... Something incapable of fear and filled with something that looks powerless to us but has the impact of Holiness on others touched by it. 

I have a vision... :-)      This is what I'm saying evangelizes, naturally.  Being you.  That's all.  Repressed conservatives (not referring to anyone here, but to whomever it applies to) can thump Bibles all day long and get all the converts they can.  That's not the evangelizing I'm talking about.   Finding that after all, ones SE:LF, as oneself, is Holy.    That's what I'm talking about. When one finds that attitude underneath all the garbage life has thrown at you, then whomever is naturally impacted by it is impacted without any effort on your part.   It is the Holy Spirit -- and we were mistaken to think the Holy Spirit was anything else.

Hopefully this is not too immense -- this is what my impression is of what evangelizes for God.  Just wanted to share this "hope that is in me."

peace!

Olivia

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Permalink Reply by Howard Brod on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 11:20pm

I have no concern for the state of our Quakerism as long as we retain two distinctives that, for me, leads to all things Quaker. Those are unprogrammed worship based on silence, where no human directs the worship; and decisions via the sense of the meeting; i.e., Quaker process. Everything else for me is simply labels and notions that have no value. Whether you call what is revealed during these two distinctive practices "Christ", "Spirit", "Love", "Meditation", "Enlightenment", "God"' or just a "group of nice people sitting in silence" - doesn't really matter. Isn't it the experience that really matters rather than our conceptual notions? Have we forgotten that it is the power of that experience that first drew our early Friends to it? Are we overly intellectualizing here, resulting in worry about nothing of real consequence?

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 11:57pm

No, it isn't "the experience that really matters."

The fact that we experience at all-- That is prime evidence of what lives in us.

But the point of our experience (I had friends who got into the belladonna one night and came home in the midst of 3-d wrap-around hallucinations, but had no reason to believe whatever appeared in them)-- is the correspondence between our experience and whatever truth it points to.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Petter on 5th mo. 7, 2012 at 4:36am

Dear Allistair, I am deeply moved and troubled almost to tears by your Reply. Tears because what you say is so near to what I struggle not to accept. My current partner has moved to another church for this reason, and I as clerk to AM Overseers have been involved with other Friends who have left us for the same reason. They like our 'niceness' but seek real religion.

I continue to fight. I have hopes that my most recent essay (edited for brevity) will appear in The Friend before YM. (See the essay on www.sp37.info).

Most of those commenting in this thread have missed my point, that I am *currently* not discussing individual Friends' beliefs etc but the position adopted by Britain YM as a corporate body in its own right. I particularly dread real religion being excised from the editorial sections of the next edition of QF&P.

P.S. What 'outside'? Xtian meditation? Anglicanism? We had a chap go to the Orthodox church! Or shall I just stick to Green Party activism?

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 5th mo. 7, 2012 at 8:20am

Stephen,

Your website is currently offline.  Forrest had also discovered this several days ago when trying to read your ideas.

peace,

Olivia

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 5th mo. 7, 2012 at 11:01am

Stephen and Allistair (and any others who need this invitation!),

You are invited to be this Light that the Religious Society of Friends sorely needs.  

If God has given you this to shine on the rest of us, nothing will stop it.    Nothing can.  Shine!

This is certainly what happened with our eldest Friend George Fox and I have faith that it will happen again and again over the centuries whenever needed...because God has not left this Society and the Light DOES speak.    I suspect even that when it speaks like that, it tears through "a people" like a tidal wave and the Light of God within all is awakened and It prophecies about these same matters from within them.   People ARE moved when God within them moves them.

If you have been given this, please live into it.....        

Since you have not been expressing that so far though, perhaps what is happening is that no one has yet been called to any such Divine shake-up and we must trust that God knows what God is doing here.

[Both these comments said with mercy intended, not as pointing any finger or presuming any one option over the other.  This is not for me to know.]

This is the natural evangelizing I was speaking of.  Whatever is within you, whatever you have been created to be, is enough and is everything.   That's what God wants and needs in the world.   Let it speak.   Let it breathe.  Rather than cynicism, give it your idealism.   God will do what God will do here.

This society is more available to that inflow of new action from God than most religious groups, who have a tendency to not even seek the direct experience of God within them as methodically as Quakers. Are you trying to get to something else that meets your personal needs for ministry?  (very valid)    Or are you afraid to accept what God has done and is doing here AS IS (in this Society, and in you about this Society)?   

Am I asking this clearly?     I believe my warm and open-hearted question is:   are you given the Light that we need?    and otherwise, are you in need of it and in need of recognizing that God has not chosen to meet your need in the way you want / maybe has other plans?   Either way I am presuming that you will agree that God is in charge, so thus these open-ended questions...

Deeply and sincerely interested in knowing the truth of this....

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Petter on 5th mo. 7, 2012 at 11:26am

Having been told by you that my web-site was off-line I checked and found my ISP had closed it (and has no back-up!). They had sent me subscription reminders but they had been routed to my Spam folder. I'll try to restore from my own backup asap.

Steve

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