Reflection on Aphorism 6: It Is Not Faith That Sustains Us

“It is not faith that sustains us; the Spirit sustains us, and the exercise of faith and discipline facilitates this process.”
–Aphorism 6

This one is a little more mystical, more metaphysical perhaps, than is usual for me. I find it quite difficult to engage with because it doesn’t fit terribly well with how I conceptualise my relationship with the Divine. And yet I wrote it down, because I was called to do so.

I do not see the Spirit as something essential without the person, but as an essential essence of each person that is connected to that in others; a series of Divine shards, if you will, that joins us together and makes up a greater whole – though ‘shards’ conjures the image of these pieces having once been an undivided whole that was broken, which isn’t how I see it.

What About When You Don't Hope So?

Sceptical Cat isn't sure you read the sense of the meeting aright.

As I discussed in some detail in an earlier post, the tradition – at least among British Friends – when a clerk offers a minute during a business session is to indicate assent/consent by saying “I hope so” (often elided to just “hope so”). But what about when you cannot do so? What do Friends do in that situation, and what should they do?

This is an interesting question to look at, because both the theory and the practice vary between communities of Friends, and have varied over time, somewhat separately from one another. I shan’t attempt to summarise everything done everywhere, nor identify when or where a practice was or is common, but I will try and give an overview of different approaches – and my opinion of them. First, however, we must consider the different sorts of disagreement.

Ego, Inner Light, and the Individual Journey

One of the allegations made about theologically pluralistic liberal Quakerism is that it feeds ego; that if we all have our own path that may look dramatically different from another Friends, we may become dominated, each individually and the Meeting and wider community of Friends collectively, by the worst sort of individualism. If we are all following our individual leadings, at least in terms of our spiritual development, it is all too easy to be led astray by our subconscious (or conscious) desires. Where a regimented, hierarchical faith community with a central authority can be a check on individual development through doctrine and review by the clerical hierarchy, a levelled faith community such as that of Friends can only apply any such check through a sort of collective supervision.

This is, frankly, obviously true in a logical sense. What is less obvious is how much of a problem it is in reality, and – related to that – what level of supervision, or even collective control, is appropriate.

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.

In Defence of Governance

In my experience, Quakers don't much like to talk about governance. As I write this, however, I am in the process of putting together written material for my Area Meeting's annual report, so governance comes to my mind.

I think Friends don't like it much because of the implications it carries in terms of authority and control, but that's not what it's used to mean in the context of organisational governance. Governance is about how decisions are made, and we have our own vital Quaker traditions in that regard. It's also about how records are kept, how we communicate, and how we take all the decisions that, for legal or practical reasons, can't be taken by the Meeting in session.

What We Do In Silence

From the outside, what happens in a Quaker Meeting for Worship is fairly simple, if unrevealing. We sit in silence, and at some point, someone may be moved to stand and speak. But there's a lot more to it than that.

As we sit in our “expectant waiting”, we are not generally entirely passive – not least because absolute passivity is not something that comes easily to people. For centuries, faith communities have developed strategies to help people learn various forms of passivity, leading their way towards it through prayers, mantras and meditation. Not only that, but not all Friends find the best way to make that contact with the Divine is through passivity at all.

In this post, I will be exploring what it is we do in the silence of worship – different ways we bring ourselves to the right state of mind, what that state of mind might be (different for different Friends), and what we do once we have reached it. That is a chronological order, and it might seem appropriate to explore things that way, but I find it most helpful to consider the state of mind first, before looking at how we reach it.