It is always a subject close to my heart and concience, and several conversations and incidents recently have brought it right up to the forefront of my thought.
Right now, since I am so new to these ideas of Quakerism, and also because I have an intense history with religion, and also because it's my nature, I have so many thoughts, ideas, and questions. This is what has lead to my blog, and to the fact that I am constantly having long conversations, and long correspondances about subjects relating to Quakerism and spirituality.
I worry about this.
I have read, and accept, that one of the fundamentals of being a Quaker is that each of us are responsible for our own statements and affirmations of faith. As I discover mine, my thoughts, beliefs, and ideas are all necessarily moveable, mutable, and changable. Part of being a Friend, to me, is continually challenging the truth of my convictions. Ched Myers, in Who Will Roll Away the Stone calls this the "critical and careful chaacter of theology. He writes...
"Theology is careful...in testing its own internal coherency and its relation to competing discourses and claims."
There are certain issues that can happen with all of this. In the course of a conversation, or an e-mail, or a blog entry, you're necessarily confined to a certain scope of subject. This concentration on just one aspect of an issue. Whatever is most in my ADD-riddled mind at any given moment is certainly the thing I am going to be discussing, and it's immediacy may be very temporary. I worry that by talking too much about a yet unformed idea, I may give it undue prominence and permanence. I can talk myself into nearly anything. I can talk myself out of nearly anything. I can talk myself into circles until I am so disoriented I just have to sit back and blink.
And I wonder, should I just "Ponder all these things in my heart" as Mary did? Wouldn't that be safer? I wonder if all my wonderings out loud and into cyberspace are an error in simplicity and plainness. Shouldn't my words be few and savoury?
I'm not sure about this. I have recieved so much from the Lord through my writing and especially in my communications with others. Through my e-mails and conversations, and blog entries, I learn a lot, gain clearness on things, hash out difficult ideas, am given feedback which elders my process and uplifts my heart.
I am someone who is torn between wanting a church to guide and help me and lift me up, and an inability to artificially distort what little I am certain of to fit a prewritten creed. I am trying to be careful to find in Friends not a church, not an identity, not a false sense of permanence, but....a Society. It seems to me that as a Society we are joined by our Questions, more than by our Answers. We're asking the same questions, and we are asking them together.
So it seems to me that I may speak and write as much as I am lead about my Questions, and the ways I am trying to answer them. It is something that is vital to my growth and Light. These long conversations, endless e-mails, and blog entries are about these questions, about discovering new questions, deeper questions, and finding the fellowship and mentorship to guide our communal search for Answers.
In like measure, I feel that I must be very, very, very cautious and particular about the way I talk about my Answers, if I think I may have seized on some. I’m so excited, and so caught up, and so inspired by what I have seen, that I am in danger (to quote Friend Jeff, again!!!) of not only outrunning my measure, but lapping it on the track a few times. When I receive Light on a subject I’ve been waiting on, I am liable to snatch it up and greedily declare it Truth, and run away with it, when my understanding may still be clouded, or my expression imperfect and incomplete. That way lies error and hastiness, with the dread chance of leading others wrong, too.
I feel this will be an important distinction and discipline in the time to come.
3 comments:
Hi Amanda,
Well, all I can say is that idea that the idea that each Quaker is responsible for their own statements and affirmations is a bunch of hooey--very entrenched hooey in our branch of Friends, but hooey nonetheless. There is something real in Quakerism, it's bigger and more defined than our individual understandings of it. Just because we don't lock in up in creeds doesn't mean it has an identity. We shouldn't all have to figure it out on our own and it's okay to want "a church to guide and help me and lift me up."
For what it's worth, I haven't seen you making any doctrinaire creedal statements. These blogs let us have the kind of conversationst that (sadly) we're often not getting in most of our monthly meetings. Keeping ourselves disciplined against "outrunning the guide" is totally important and you do seem to have your share of impulsiveness (grin, I mean this in a kind way, as I trust you know!). But as long as you stay open to the Spirit and open to backtracking when necessary, you should be good to go.
Well, hooey is a strong word. When I said "responsible for their own affirmations and statments of faith", I didn't mean, "responsible for making up their own affirmations and they go along and formulating their own statements of faith out of thin air."
I meant something more along the lines of, there's no "the creed made me do it" excuses. The fact that no one is going to walk up to me and say, "Welcome to Being a Quaker. Here's what's True." (because that wouldn't make any sense at all) means that I have an extra responsiblity to be open and sensitive and responsible. I do agree there's something real in Quakerism...I meant to write more about that. The few Answers we have nailed down get passed on as testimonies, but even those may vary so widely in wording and intent, that when and if I choose one for my own, (or come across one in my own contemplation of the Light) I'll be responsible for it.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for the reassurance. It's also good to make the distinction between wanting a church to help me, guide me, and lift me up, and wanting a church to tell me the Truth so I don't have to "know it experimentally".
As I said to a Friend today "Just because I haven't got a Pope doesn't mean I'm orphaned..." you're right that it's okay to want some guidance...heck, even some "eldering." Sometimes I am dying for some good eldering, even though many people seem to think of it as something bad that happens to you when you misbehave.
In the meantime, you're right, I get some good eldering online, from several people, including thee, though I doubt thee'd admit to it. :)
In the love of the Light,
Amanda
About running much into words:
In the early days (long long ago) of my exposure to Quakerism I visited the office of the Quaker Project On Community Conflict, then located on 2nd Avenue around East 13th Street. They had a mimeograph machine there (you may actually be too young to remember what that is: it was used to duplicate written material for newsletters, fliers, tracts, and propaganda of all descriptions). On it or next to it they had affixed a sign with a quote allegedly from George Fox: "Take heed lest ye print more than is required of thee by the Lord God."
That's an interesting piece of advice, given that Fox's printed Works run to 5 fat volumes.
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