What's in a (New) Year?

In this post, I address things that are, for some, a matter of religious faith from a historical perspective. This means saying things that are based primarily on evidence outside of religious tradition. This is not to suggest that anyone is wrong to see them as matters of faith; it is rather an entirely different way of looking at something, and is in no way a challenge to the view taken by any religious tradition as a matter of faith or theology.

Here we are, at the end of 2021, the start of 2022.

It’s been quite a year for all of us, and I don’t need to talk about why. Everyone will also have had personal tribulations, sometimes related to wider events, and some not.

What I need to say isn’t about this year, or next year, but about the very idea of a ‘new year’.

The Limits of Quaker Universalism

I am, as regular readers will no doubt realise, a proponent of Quaker Universalism – the idea that a person’s underlying theology can take a wide range of forms, and still be a Quaker. This is not, however, a matter of ‘anything goes’. It can’t be.

For starters, it’s never a matter of “believe what you want”; it can only be “believe what you believe”. But while that is the most common error in talking about Quaker Universalism – often derisively – it is not the most fundamental limit. No, that most fundamental limit comes from the essence of Quaker practices.

Everything about how Quakers do things, especially in the Liberal part of our Religious Society, but not uniquely to it, is based on the idea of direct revelation – the idea that God, the Spirit, or whatever-you-call-it, can tell us things, give us guidance. Burning bushes are rare, but a still small voice is accessible to all. A personal theology, whether it involves a theistic God or not, must allow for this, or Meeting for Worship makes no sense. It is the usual centre of our spiritual life and the foundation for all other key Quaker practices and liturgy (yes, in practice we have liturgy, but that’s a matter for another day), and it is fundamentally based on the idea that we are prompted by something to speak, and that something is capable of doing something different from our ordinary, every day personal mind.

On Ministry and Clear Sight

The ministry that comes to us from the still silence within, that we share together in worship or in other ways, most often comes out as words. But the inspiration of the Divine that becomes such ministry is not given to us as words.

The gift of ministry is pure inspiration, an injection into our being of guidance, of ideas, of symbols, of images, of relationships, and we cannot comprehend it consciously in its original form. Sometimes, for some people, it finds its best expression and understanding in a form other than words, though still it is not exactly what was given. When we do express it as words, it is necessarily imperfect. The inspiration might help us find the right words, but still it is we who find the words.

I Have Never Seen a Peach Tree

I have never seen a peach tree,
At least, not to know I did.
There are many things we don’t see,
Though in plain sight they are hid.

Some things to see are plain to all.
Others seem subtle, their import easy to forgo.
It’s not a case of big or small—
We know what we see when we see what we know.

Of course I know a peach by sight,
The distinctive touch of the furry skin,
Succulent flesh in the mouth a delight,
Sweet juice running down the chin.

Status, Power, and Betrayal of the Spirit

Not every decision can be referred to the whole of a body corporate, such as a Quaker Meeting. It is impractical in some cases, for instance because of the need for a decision in a short time; it is implausible in others, for instance because of the need for those making the decision to have a clear understanding of certain facts or law; it is simply impossible in others, because it is not ripe for discernment in a large group, in the Quaker case, or for a vote or consensus decision in most other contexts, because it requires preparatory work. That preparatory work will inevitably mean making preliminary decisions, excluding some possible options.

So we have people in positions that, though we may hesitate to use the term, are positions of leadership. Elders lead our spiritual development, clerks lead the process of discernment, premises committees lead on the maintenance and use of our property, even librarians lead by making decisions on what to deliberately acquire for the library – and occasionally what to deliberately exclude when a copy is donated. They are positions of status, as respect is not unreasonably given to those whose names have been discerned to serve in certain roles – though we serve most faithfully when we deny, especially to ourselves, the status of a role in which we serve.

My Experience of Gender

A note in advance: this is categorised as both ‘writing’, the tag I use for deliberate writing, and as ‘ministry’, the tag I use for things I am led to write in the same manner as being led to speak in Meeting for Worship. This is not a typical tagging pattern on my blog, and it arises for a simple reason. I am strongly led to write about my experience of gender at this time, but there is much more leading as to what I should write – though I was still guided by the Spirit more than I am generally in deliberate writing. This has been written deliberately, not entirely with the guidance of the Spirit, but definitely at the prompting of the Spirit.

I grew up in about as much of a gender-expectation-free environment as one could get, in the time and place I grew up. This is, I think, largely a result of my mother; my father never had any objections to it, as far as I was aware, but I’m not sure he would have been as encouraging without my mother’s influence. I had ‘boy’s toys’ and ‘girl’s toys’. As a small child playing dress-up, I gleefully mixed costumes and costume elements without regard for the conceptual gender that they belonged to. I even experimented with makeup as a small child, as well as in my teens within subcultures in which such exploration was acceptable. I may have grown up in a mostly male household, but my mother was always the most dominant figure in it.

An Unpopular Truth?

I know this won’t be popular with some Friends, though I don’t know how many, but I have to say it anyway.

I know this won’t be popular with some Friends, but that’s part of why I have to say it.

I understand why there’s a debate among British Friends about trans rights. About trans inclusion. About trans affirmation. I might not agree with it. I might think it’s been driven by interest groups who have deliberately provoked fear in society at large, who have played upon particular insecurities – well-justified insecurities – among some people. I might think that some of the groups against trans rights have unlikely bedfellows supporting them, and that they will regret it soon enough. Still, I understand it about as well as I think I can.

Dispute, Difference, Division

Division is inevitable,
Dispute unavoidable.
Unanimity: a pipe dream.

Every group, large or small,
Has from time immemorial,
Faced the same inevitable wall,
A contest adversarial.

The outcomes of dispute are few,
Though each seems different, too many to name.
Either one side conquers, the other gives way,
Or terms are reached irking both sides the same.

A Choice Between ‘Are’ and ‘Aren’t’

“Trans women are women”.

That’s a statement I agree with. Also that trans men are men.

I acknowledge that it is a little simplistic, it misses nuance. There are things that differentiate trans women from those assigned female at birth, of course there are. But there’s one thing that makes me quite sure that it’s right to say that trans women are women.

Worship and Copresence

Meeting together is pleasant, to be sure. We value our Friends as friends, and we value our relationships. We value the pleasure of catching up over a cuppa, of seeing the children of the Meeting tearing around the building. Of seeing the familiar faces, and occasionally welcoming new ones.

The heart of Meeting for Worship, though, is worship. We may have different ideas about what that means, but most would agree on coming together in silence, waiting on the Spirit (or whatever we might call it), and hearing the ministry that we hope will come from its inspiration. It is not merely being together in a space and being quiet. It is a silence not of the absence of noise, but of quieting the self to be open to Light. We do it together because we have generally found it more effective than doing it alone. It is an active passivity, and a shared endeavour that usually involves no visible effort.

Generations

So your generation changed the world?
You protested war, camped at Greenham.
You fought in wars for freedom, or wars of imperialism.
You dodged the draft, you called for peace.

So your generation changed the world?
With the summer of love, you called for change.
The sexual revolution, women’s liberation.
You saw what could be, and worked to make it real.

What is Community?

Our Meetings are each a community. Each is situated in wider communities – the Area Meeting, the Yearly Meeting, and let us never forget the wider community, beyond Friends, in which our Quaker communities sit.

Community, as a word, is obviously related to commune. As a noun, a commune is a group of people that share something, usually property. As a verb, with a slightly different (but closely related) etymology, it is often used in a spiritual sense for a sort of silent communication, often with something bigger than a person – as in communing with nature, a divinity, and so on. It can also refer to other sorts of intimate communication, or taking of communion in the Christian Eucharist.

Another related word is common. A commune hold their property in common. A community is a group bound together by something in common.

The Divine and Number

Number is an interesting thing. In mathematics it is the structure that we apply to the idea of quantity, making it sit in nice neat rows. In linguistics, it’s a grammatical feature in which words mutate depending on how many (of whatever) they or another word relate to. We have our system of ‘arabic’ numerals, more properly known as hindu-arabic numerals (represented using different symbols in different scripts, but sharing the essential system of placed number and associated marks to denote decimal fractions and so on). We count things almost obsessively, at times, with national censuses (for good reason), stock takes (also good reason), or “notches on the belt” (or bedpost, both for less good reason, in my opinion).

Sex Positivity Isn't Always Positive

Asexual Pride Flag

A lot of Quaker writing on sex reads like it’s trying to be sex-positive. That’s good, in the sense that religious approaches to sex in the Christian world aren’t generally expected to be, and it’s fair to say that we have this capacity to great pleasure and it can be godly to make use of it. I think sex-positive approaches to spirituality and – more importantly – to sex education are great. We don’t need to be telling people they shouldn’t have sex, just that they should do it responsibly and in a way that is fair and kind to them and to their partner(s).

There’s one problem with such sex-positivity, though. We can end up making it sound like sex is an essential part of the human experience – in fact, sometimes we come right out and say that, in more or less similar words. The problem is that it isn’t. It is for some of us, perhaps, even most of us. But there are those for whom it is not part of their experience. People who experience little or no sexual desire, or for whom it is never directed at another person (though solo enjoyment is still a sexual experience). There are those who experience it seldom, or only in certain circumstances, such as those who are demisexual (definitions of which vary). These people are not broken (though changes in experience as a result of trauma require careful consideration), any more than those who experience sexual desire for people of the same gender are broken. To be asexual, or anywhere on the ‘ace spectrum’, is as valid a sexuality as any other.

Quaker Pharisees

Before reacting negatively to some of the language in this ministry, please see the note that follows it.

Do not doubt that there are, among Quakers today, our own Pharisees.

I do not refer to the actual historical figures, of course. The Pharisees were one of several schools of thought, or sects, among Temple Judaism, and not necessarily even the dominant one; they became dominant with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as the various other sects had been particularly targeted by Rome, were small and unpopular in the first place, or were too closely tied to the Temple itself. Much of the thought or approach depicted from Jesus in the Gospels was in fact most likely common among Pharisaic thought, or were the view of a particular sub-sect.

On Sex, and Love, and Being ‘Casual’

In the liberal wing of the Religious Society of Friends, we’re pretty liberal about sex (liberal meaning slightly different things in those two cases, so not automatically following one from the other). We aren’t down on premarital sex, we’re fine with same-sex relationships and sex, and I even perceive a growing acceptance of, if not always support for, various forms of ethical non-monogamy (polyamory and suchlike). While we might not be overly judgemental of casual sex, though, I generally sense a certain disapproval, a lack of acceptance of it. I think that is driven by the right motives, there are good reasons that flow from Love for that attitude, but still I think the conclusion is slightly wrong.

Our Ways Are Not The World's Ways

Our ways are not the World’s ways, and we should have care to keep to our traditions.

The first part of that is a common enough saying among a lot of Christian groups, nonconformists more than others. The second is my own summary of what a lot of people seem to mean when they say it, or anything like it, in certain situations. And funnily enough, I cannot help but agree with it. It’s not simple, though. Consider…

Aphorism 20

Maxim 20

Sun and Clouds

The Spirit is like the sun. It is always there, its light shining always and in every direction, as bright one moment as any other. But like the sun, it does not always seem as bright to us from day to day, or hour to hour, or moment to moment – though even to our perception, there is no night of the Spirit.

What, then, are the clouds that make the sun seem dim or obscure? Perhaps our own condition: both the things that we do that put that separation between us and the Divine, that make us blind or deaf to it until we have put our own spirit in better condition, and the things that we have less control over – our state of mind, the distractions of our daily life, tiredness or busy-ness. Perhaps also something outside ourselves that is pure chance, like the behemoths and the wisps of sparse droplets of water and ice crystals that we see in the sky.