A Quaker Easter Part 2: Meaning

In yesterday's post, I looked at the role the celebrating or otherwise marking Easter might have within Quaker communities, and in terms of a Quaker community's relationship with the community in which it is situated. Today, I will continue the exploration of Easter, but on a more spiritual note. I will look at the story/stories behind Easter, its history, and what meaning we might take from it.

As I have explained previously, I think this is important for Quakers. This is because, where we observe the traditional testimony concerning times and seasons at all, we tend to only remember half of it. No day is more holy, or more significant than another, which is important. However, the early Friends did not reject the lessons and meaning of holy days, just their fastening to a particular day. The same argument applies to liturgical seasons. Thus, it would be taught that we do not observe Easter, or other holidays, but that we should remember the lessons and meaning of Easter all through the year.

Now, of course, with the cultural pervasiveness of many holidays, it is (in my experience) a rare Quaker that refuses any observance of the holidays at all, yet I see little deep engagement with the meanings of these festivals, whether at that time of the year or otherwise.

A Quaker Easter Part 1: Communities

In the western liturgical calendar, this weekend is Easter. Orthodox (eastern) Easter is next weekend, in case you were curious. As such, this is a good time to continue my series of posts on “times and seasons”.

Quakers traditionally reject liturgical calendars, but increasingly, Friends observe the various holidays and festivals, whether sacred or secular, at least on a cultural basis. As I have observed before, however, the rejection of times and seasons is not a rejection of the idea of the holidays themselves, not a rejection of the stories and ideas behind them, but a rejection of the basic idea of “holy days”. No day is more sacred than any other; for Christian Friends, or for any who draw inspiration from Christian stories, no day is more appropriate than another for the remembrance of the story of Holy Week, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion on Resurrection, just the same as no day is more appropriate than any other for the remembrance of the Nativity, nor indeed for the remembrance of those lost in war or the struggle to achieve rights and equality for women.

Today I Wed

Today, I wed.

My marriage will not bring love,
It is brought by it.

My love does not change the world,
It changes me.

It does not cure my ills,
But it enables my living with them.

Love is the font and source of life.
It is the power the underlies all powers.
It is the strength that falters last.
When dedication and principle and reason fail,
Love remains.

What Do We Seek?

What do we seek, we Friends of Truth, we Friends of the Light, we Quakers?

We were Seekers first, before we were Quakers, after all, in the genetic origins of our Religious Society. But then, we were also Ranters, in part. Both strands of thought in that chaotic time of the mid-seventeenth century are seen in us, today. There is even a soupçon of the Levellers and Diggers about our origins, I am quite sure.

If we were Seekers, did we find, and stop Seeking? To suppose that search is over strikes me as the most profound religious hubris. So it is that we continue, as a group, to seek.

Quaker Business Method and Secular Contexts

The Quaker Business Method, at least as practised in my experience in Britain, is – when done right – an inherently religious method with religious beliefs underpinning it. There can be some variety in the precise nature of those beliefs, as I explored in my Quaker Business Method and Theological Diversity series, but they have fundamental compatibilities in their implication for the practice of business method.

Yet Friends have, from time to time, wondered about the applicability of our methods, with suitable adjustments, in secular contexts. Small borrowings have been used successfully, but the method as a whole is difficult to square with secular expectations or to maintain without that religious underpinning. Indeed, there are many Friends who utterly reject any possibility that it could ever work. This is, perhaps, related to the rejection by some Friends – in my experience the same ones, but I do not know if that can be generalised – of non-theistic understandings of business method, even those of “mystical” non-theists.

Plain Speaking and "Academic" Language

Liberal Quaker communities aren't usually terribly representative of the communities in which they are situated. Here in Britain, we tend to be white, culturally middle class, English-speaking (particularly noted in Wales), and educated. There's lots of theories about why this is; I tend to subscribe to the idea that a non-representative community is more forbidding and less welcoming to those who do not already fit into it than those who immediately “fit in”. A black, Asian or other minority ethnic (the currently most acceptable term in this country, abbreviated to BAME) person, in a town that is ethnically diverse, will react the first time they go to a group based on what they see – just as a white person would, but with very different dynamics of social history behind it. If they see 40 people in a room, all white, they will feel that this group is not for them. It may be subconscious, and it may be counterbalanced by other factors (and we'd better hope it will be), but it will be there; none of us is “colour-blind”, however much we might have a misguided aspiration to be so. Similarly, when a person who is culturally working class finds themselves in a room full of middle class accents, when they come to a shared meal and find half the contributions based on couscous and quinoa, they feel that this is a group that is not for people like them.

I emphasise “educated” in this list because it is, in one important way, not like the others. It is something that each of us can potentially change about ourselves, and it is seen as a positive by even the most enlightened social egalitarian. It is not hard to argue that that is it is a good thing that we are mostly quite educated, provided that we include those who are educated by less formal means. We might believe that we are mostly educated because those who join our community who are less educated become more educated in part because of their exposure to Quakers and their living out of Quaker values.

For International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day, so let's talk about women.

Let's talk about the fact that mainstream history has a tendency to treat women's contributions in one of two ways. Generally speaking, it's either minimised, or mythologised.

Boudica led a revolt of several native tribes against the Romans in Britain. It was a big thing in its day, and Camulodunum (among others) certainly noticed, but in the grand scheme of things it was another provincial rebellion that was put down by the Roman Empire. The long-term strategy against such events was romanisation, which continued and succeeded across southern Britannia, and to variable extents as you went north.

Memento Mori

If Pascal were a (liberal) Quaker?

Remember you must die, life cries;
Your days shall end and then,
What shall you say you've done with life?
What account shall you keep?

What then shall come beyond this life?
It's clear that none can say.
Rewards may come for good deeds done,
Chastisement for your wrongs.

Maybe reward shall just depend,
On where you've placed your faith.
How then to choose among the range,
Of paths you see arrayed?

If there shall be a judge anon,
Selecting the elect,
There is little that can be done,
But hope that they are fair.

Why Write?

It's an interesting question to consider, why anyone would write for others to read. Writing to make a living requires not only talent and dedication, but also a fair dose of luck – the better you are, the less luck you need, but you will always need luck. So writing with the express intention to make money from it is either foolish, or optimistic (or perhaps better to say “hopeful”).

I felt moved to write about why I write when, as I do from time to time, I was re-reading a collection of essays by Isaac Asimov. Most of these collections are compilations of his regular science fact feature from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (often referred to simply as F&SF, though that is subject to confusion with a description of a literary genre), which might be billed as science fact, but often contained things that took a certain departure from that brief. Each essay begins, almost invariably, with some anecdote from Asimov's own experience.