Quakers and ‘Paksworld’

Continuing the theme of my previous post, about the fictional setting of Valdemar in the context of Quakerism, I’m going to look at another fictional setting and see what parallels there might be. Today, you get to read my thoughts on Quakers and the setting of the ‘Paksenarrion’ books. This was introduced to the world through the three-volume fantasy novel The Deed of Paksenarrion (the volumes being Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold), a Tolkienesque fantasy epic with a female protagonist, Paksenarrion (shortened to ‘Paks’), an asexual soldier (and yes, the asexuality is plot relevant, which is pretty good going for the late eighties), who goes on to bigger and better things (while still being a fighter) and saves, well, not the world exactly (at least not directly – that comes with other people in the sequels) but at least the way of life of people of her own culture. That’s a familiar line for those who would take people to war in the modern world, but she is not fighting against people of another culture, but for good against evil.

Quakers and Valdemar

There are, obviously, no photographs of companions, so here's
a white horse.

We can draw inspiration from many places. The natural world, scripture and other sacred texts, spiritual writing by great thinkers (or humble bloggers), philosophy, political and economic writings, art, all sorts of things. Many of these things, we can, as Quakers, consider potentially inspired by the Divine, perhaps in just a small way, perhaps in a great way. I’m very fond of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, personally, and though I don’t know for sure how spiritual he intended it to be, I find it a very spiritual book and think it likely to be inspired.

But it’s not just these very conventionally spiritually inspired and/or inspiring works that can give us that sort of spiritual fillip. Sometimes it’s fiction. For me, especially, I find some works of fantasy and science fiction particularly likely to stimulate my thought on spiritual matters – seeing parallels, intended by the author or not, with matters in our own world. This is one of the great strengths of some of the best science fiction and fantasy, showing us things about our own world in a fresh form to help us see them. Whether any of this is divinely inspired, I can’t see, but reflecting on it, or even just reading it, I feel the Light working in me.