Beth Allen's Swartmore Lecture yesterday, and the discussion this lunchtime in the "meet the Swarthmore Lecturer" event, spoke to me in many ways.
Her lecture forced me to face the questions about the foundations of our Quaker faith, which have been latently simmering away for a while now. The lecture "Ground and Spring: Foundations of Quaker discipleship", was an exploration of the 2 questions posed by St Francis of Assissi:
"God who are you,
and who am I?"
And these questions were answered through what can be described as an affirmative Quakerism. Beth suggested that it is through experience that leads us to affirmative statements such as "all of life is sacramental", rather than describing our faith through what Friends don't do: "we don't have creeds". That our experience of creation and re-creation reveals God as "the Ground of our Being", Beth interpets as pointing:
"towards God as the basic energy which makes up and flows through every particle of the universe, the lively stuff of which it is all formed, the tension and buzz which holds it all together but which also is a solid foundation for stillness and rest"
In this way God is a hidden God, but crucially not an absent God, and Beth uses this to say that the answer to "What is God doing?" has to be preceded by "What are we actually looking for?", and that the answer can be mediated through silence:
"The God to whom we turn in quiet is waiting for us, as we wait for God; and we can reach out in our hearts and simply meet God in stillness. This simple, one-sentence discovery is the energy and dynamic, the pause and hush within our whole organisation and structure"
And this basis enabled Beth to creatively tackle the difficult Quaker questions concerning wrong-doing, forgiveness and mercy. The lecture for me helped to join together our ideas of Quaker faith and Quaker practice as being implicitly bound up together. The afternoon main session: "A world transformed: Quaker ways of working" which considered the embodied practical expression of Quakerism through many rich examples of Quaker work across the world, was brought back home to the source, the root, the seed in the Swarthmore Lecture. I often find the most inspirational things are staring right at me; and I recently picked up my copy of Advices & Queries. The first sentence in the introduction says:
"As Friends we commit ourselves to a way of worship which allows God to teach and transform us. We have found corporately that the Spirit, if rightly followed, will lead us into truth, unity and love: all our testimonies grow from this leading"
I felt that Beth's Lecture helped to lead me into a deeper sense of truth, unity and love that is possible, even during difficult times. It was what emerged from the experience of the difficult times during the life of the early Quaker James Nayler that inspired the title of the Swarthmore Lecture, where:
"He lived close to God during [his] time of anguish and recovery ... and as he later lay dying ... he dictated his final testament, saying, "There is a spirit which I feel, that delights to do no evil, nor revenge any wrong" His experience of God does not just underlie these words, it blazes from them ... He writes of this Spirit, which was in him and yet not only him: "its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God." James Nayler discovered not only a solid foundation - the "ground" of this spirit - but also the fountain of new life, the "spring" which flows from the ground. Both the ground and the spring, he testified - both the foundation and the fountain - are the mercies and forgiveness of God"
Her lecture forced me to face the questions about the foundations of our Quaker faith, which have been latently simmering away for a while now. The lecture "Ground and Spring: Foundations of Quaker discipleship", was an exploration of the 2 questions posed by St Francis of Assissi:
"God who are you,
and who am I?"
And these questions were answered through what can be described as an affirmative Quakerism. Beth suggested that it is through experience that leads us to affirmative statements such as "all of life is sacramental", rather than describing our faith through what Friends don't do: "we don't have creeds". That our experience of creation and re-creation reveals God as "the Ground of our Being", Beth interpets as pointing:
"towards God as the basic energy which makes up and flows through every particle of the universe, the lively stuff of which it is all formed, the tension and buzz which holds it all together but which also is a solid foundation for stillness and rest"
In this way God is a hidden God, but crucially not an absent God, and Beth uses this to say that the answer to "What is God doing?" has to be preceded by "What are we actually looking for?", and that the answer can be mediated through silence:
"The God to whom we turn in quiet is waiting for us, as we wait for God; and we can reach out in our hearts and simply meet God in stillness. This simple, one-sentence discovery is the energy and dynamic, the pause and hush within our whole organisation and structure"
And this basis enabled Beth to creatively tackle the difficult Quaker questions concerning wrong-doing, forgiveness and mercy. The lecture for me helped to join together our ideas of Quaker faith and Quaker practice as being implicitly bound up together. The afternoon main session: "A world transformed: Quaker ways of working" which considered the embodied practical expression of Quakerism through many rich examples of Quaker work across the world, was brought back home to the source, the root, the seed in the Swarthmore Lecture. I often find the most inspirational things are staring right at me; and I recently picked up my copy of Advices & Queries. The first sentence in the introduction says:
"As Friends we commit ourselves to a way of worship which allows God to teach and transform us. We have found corporately that the Spirit, if rightly followed, will lead us into truth, unity and love: all our testimonies grow from this leading"
I felt that Beth's Lecture helped to lead me into a deeper sense of truth, unity and love that is possible, even during difficult times. It was what emerged from the experience of the difficult times during the life of the early Quaker James Nayler that inspired the title of the Swarthmore Lecture, where:
"He lived close to God during [his] time of anguish and recovery ... and as he later lay dying ... he dictated his final testament, saying, "There is a spirit which I feel, that delights to do no evil, nor revenge any wrong" His experience of God does not just underlie these words, it blazes from them ... He writes of this Spirit, which was in him and yet not only him: "its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God." James Nayler discovered not only a solid foundation - the "ground" of this spirit - but also the fountain of new life, the "spring" which flows from the ground. Both the ground and the spring, he testified - both the foundation and the fountain - are the mercies and forgiveness of God"
1 comments:
Beautifully written, Simon. Thank you for informing me about the blog.
Barbara in NCYM-C
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