The Simple Good News of Friends

There is, in each of us, a part of the Divine.

Through this, each of us can know first-hand the guidance of God, whatever you might call it and however you might think of it.

By what it shows us, we might call it Love or Light.

We do not need special places or people to have access to it, no special rituals or forms of words.

In silent waiting we learn to recognise the promptings of this Spirit.

In waiting together we gain clarity and confidence in our discernment of how it is leading us.

Flashes of Clarity

It is inescapably true that we see, as the quote goes, “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) or, in more modern translations, “in a mirror, dimly” – assuming glass to be in the old sense, as in “looking glass”, though there is debate as to which sense was meant by the author of the epistle. This is clearly true, from the evidence of modern neuroscience, of our perception of the mundane, everyday world. We see the reflection of the world that our senses and our complex neural circuitry manage to produce, and it fills in the blanks with reasonable assumptions all over the place. It finds patterns anywhere it can, so we see dogs and sofas in clouds. We miss far more of the world around us than we see.

On Titles

One of the little details of Quaker practice that is not completely unheard of outside of Quaker circles – though that does not mean it is well-known – is our rejection of titles. That is to say, we traditionally do not use such things as “Mr”, “Mrs”, “Miss” etc., preferring to simply use names.

There are several reasons behind this. One is our view of equality; especially in the society in which the Quaker movement developed, a huge range of titles existed and reinforced the expected structure of society, of social interactions, and of status. Nobility was still considered important by many, and the titles of right or of courtesy that went with them were often insisted on. Titles and styles related to offices under the crown, such as “judge” or “doctor” (usually for those who have achieved a certain degree of study – academic doctors or doctors of divinity – rather than physicians) were important, and people of standing who could claim neither noble nor official title often sought a knighthood. Those entitled to the style of “esquire”, not a general formal term as it is now in the UK, nor a term conventionally restricted to certain professions as it is now in the US, would often insist upon its use. As such, the rejection of titles stands for a rejection of the formal and conventional delineations of standing and status, as well as of the forms that derive from them (such as the giving of hat-honour, one of the most noted rejections of convention among early Friends).

Repentance and Forgiveness

Like much of our spiritual experience, the Quaker
confessional is inward.

Once upon a time, I habitually listened to Radio 4. For the Americans, this is broadly similar to NPR – I don't know a good point of comparison for any other countries. Basically, it's one of the nine “mainstream” national radio stations from the BBC (there's also a tenth specifically focused on British Asian communities, and local stations for the nations and regions), and it's focussed on talk content. Comedy, drama, in-depth current affairs, that sort of thing. It's very popular with Quakers. If your Quaker community has a trope about ministry coming from a radio station, we have the same thing with Radio 4.

In the last few years, I've listened to Radio 4 less and less. While it has some wonderful content that isn't related to current affairs, there's a huge amount that is – and current affairs has gotten rather depressing lately. It would be quite bothersome to put it on just for the programmes we want and change station every time a news bulletin comes on. Not that we avoid all news; we follow a lot of news online, consuming it when we want to, on our terms. Managing mental health is very important.

Following Light, Purely?

I have heard it suggested that the most true and pure form of Quakerism would be to follow the Light “purely”, directly, with neither story, nor symbolism, nor any form of tradition. It certainly follows logically from the idea of our direct experience of the Divine (or God, Light, whatever you want to call it). In a sense, it might be the Platonic ideal of Quakerism.

The problem is, it isn’t really possible.

We do not live in a world of Platonic ideals. The ideal triangle, the ideal sphere, the ideal rock – all are beyond our grasp. The ideals of purely conceptual things are similarly beyond us (indeed, some would argue that all Platonic ideals are conceptual). We shall never attain ideal democracy, ideal equality, nor even ideal faith or ideal love.

So far, so general and dismissive, you might think. It is only fair to ask that I give more specific, concrete, practical reasons to object to such a theoretically laudable objective – for we would surely follow the Divine most faithfully if we were not impeded by preconceived ideas of its nature or how it might direct us. Of course, as the matters involved include cognition, my points will still be somewhat abstract, or at least not tangible, but they ought to be more concrete than “ideals are unattainable, therefore it can’t be done, quod erat demonstrandum” – which is, after all, not just snobbily dismissive, but also somewhat begging the question.

Goodbye, Grandma

Next week, I will be at my grandmother's funeral.

She is the last of my grandparents to die, and the one that I was closest to in my youth. This was not a result of any particular compatibility of personality or interests; rather, she lived nearby and looked after me a lot when I was little and my parents both worked. My other grandparents lived further afield; her ex-husband not too far away, in a neighbouring borough, though he was frail and largely housebound, while the other set of grandparents lived in Spain when I was born, then County Durham a few years later – both a long way from London.

My London grandfather I barely knew, which became a regret once he died. His long illness made it no surprise that he was the first to go, when I was about 14. My other grandparents I spent time with intensively, when I saw them, and I suppose I had most in common with my other grandfather – curiosity, an interest in technology, that sort of thing. I didn't see them that often, though.