Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rudy Zalesak on 5th mo. 6, 2012 at 8:07am

Forrest, I understand a little better where you are coming from, now. To share my personal story, I was an atheist as a young man (rebelling against my upbringing, not continuing it), but I was attracted to Friends anyway because of the whole pacifism thing (common in my generation, I think). But I felt strongly that somehow the Universe, something outside *me*, wanted us to seek peace.

It took me a long time to decide that this was really theism, and to eventually shape my personal spiritual language around that (and then make the commitment to join Friends). But I think that my atheism was really not absent a sense of Source. While one can't read the minds and hearts of other people, you should consider that nontheists who share our campfire feel the warmth of the Source. And even if they just need the warmth that comes from huddling together with other people, that is coming from the Source also; God acts through all of us, whether we use Her name or not.

Nontheists are seeking something outside themselves; if they had just a "blank place", as you felt, would they seek Friends? Or perhaps that is why they are seeking? How did you find a way to fill that blank place? (If that story is not too personal to share on such a public blog.) Your atoms found a way to swerve, I guess!

We may have to agree to disagree about you and your friend's remark. It looks like an accusation of spiritual laziness, and I don't see that in my meeting, or the other liberal meetings I've worshiped with.

Olivia, you may be interested to know that one of the children saved at Le Chambon, Alexander Grothendieck, went on to become (by the general consensus of mathematicians) the greatest mathematician of the 20th century.

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.

Thank you for ending on an optimistic note! I hope all the Friends and seekers with burdens, afraid, wounded from their old religion, complacent with the one they have, will find their burdens lifted as they are warmed by the Light. 

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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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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 7, 2012 at 11:54am

I'll want to re-read, as I'd been trying to do. It's important stuff.

We may have been missing your point, but not necessarily the point. A live organization with dead members won't fly.

Allistar, yesterday my LiberalFriendish Meeting fell into a worship, as my wife described it, "like a real Quaker Meeting." The merciful, uncondemning love of God-- in the face of some genuine human evil in the form of Christianity-- was a prominent thread of a series of powerful messages that had several of us weeping. It may be the doctrines where you yourself see the life-- but that life comes directly from the Living God, to be bestowed wherever it can be. Many of us, I fear, were too afraid of and unused to such intensity... which has, I believe, much to do with some people's revulsion towards any doctrinal notions whatsoever.

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Permalink Reply by Allistair Lomax on 5th mo. 8, 2012 at 5:13am

Dear Stephen,

I'm afraid I can offer little advice about the possibility of  'outside'  BYM. Unfortunately, there is little opportunity to follow a Quaker faith outside BYM in the UK. I and a few others have connections to Ohio YM, which is an avowedly christian body. My counsel to you would be to seek out other Friends or even non-Friends, who are in unity with your faith and seek worship and fellowship with them. If you persist in trying to change BYM, you will merely break yourself on the rock of their unbelief.

Stephen Petter said:

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 Rudy Zalesak on 5th mo. 8, 2012 at 8:25am

Olivia, being the person we *should* is indeed the best way to evangelize. And we don't have to think that we are evangelizing for a movement, or a label. If we are kind, we are evangelizing for kindness (and therefore for God.)

Forrest, thank you for telling us about your experience in meeting. 

Stephen, I hope you can get your documents back. Maybe you can start a blog here and post them.

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