Category Archives: Quaker

Wearing Labels

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The Quaker meeting I am part of is a large one and it is difficult to get to know who everyone is . Our overseers have been asking us politely for some time to wear name labels to meeting and although I know this is a sensible idea I have been very resistant to it. Perhaps it is time to ask myself why.

Part of the reason lies in my last post. I am uncomfortable when asked to narrowly define myself. On that weekend, when it became obvious that I believe in God [actually I said that I know God], I was asked whether I am a deist or a theist. I have to confess that I did not understand the distinction but it appears that a theist is the more accurate description of my position. But I really don’t want to wear that as a label.

On the other hand, as part of my work on spiritual autobiography, I always stress the equal importance of telling our own stories, our own truths as well as listening deeply to the stories and truths of others. To be consistent then perhaps I do have to wear some kind of label, or at least define how I self-identify myself. If I am comfortable with the way I identify myself then even if other people make the wrong assumptions about my label we have the beginning of a dialogue to pursue rather than continuing misunderstanding.

As I start to write my label I realise that it is going to have to be a large one in order to encompass the different ways in which I identify myself. I cannot say that I am different things at different times because all these labels are part of me. So I am Only Child, Mother, Granny, Partner, Friend, Worrier, Researcher, Historian, Writer, Quaker. Perhaps the Quaker label needs extending, although I am not entirely convinced of that. It could include Liberal, Conservative, Unprogrammed, Theist perhaps. Would that generate enough assumptions?

The process is a difficult one but I will attempt it. I may come back and extend my label further but as I start I will take the simple step of wearing a label to meeting on Sunday! 

Hebdomadal thoughts

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Yet again it has been a very long time since I wrote on this blog. Last time I was feeling the possibility that I might start writing again but then life intervened. I now have a beautiful granddaughter called Hope, born in Leeds in November, and I had a long bout of flu over Christmas and the new year, so one way and another I have been a bit distracted. I have written on my other blog but not here.

However in this new year I have decided to try to write more regularly. The word ‘hebdomadal’ leapt out at me in a question on University Challenge and then I read this post on one of the craft blogs I follow. Jane Brocket is proposing cutting back from writing daily to writing weekly while I am going the other way, stepping up from very infrequent to weekly!

In order to do this I have also decided to approach this blog differently. Perhaps I have worried too much in the past over what to write here and that may have stopped me writing. Probably I have been too conscious of my strapline and afraid of falling short. I hope that writing something every week will help me to loosen up. I am a Quaker – I write a blog – so this is a Quaker blog whatever I write.

I look forward to exploring this further in the weeks to come and I hope you will join me hebdomadally.

Blog award

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My friend Heather writes two great blogs, one Doodles about knitting and other craft and the other Still Life about her life as a Quaker, although in true Quaker fashion the subject matter often crosses over. She has kindly given me a blog award for which I am truly grateful, not just because of the glory – although of course I do feel that! – but because this is the kind of award that comes with strings attached and has managed to kick start me into writing here again when guilt and inadequacy and the need to get other writing finished had all but silenced me.

The strings are first to nominate seven other blogs for the award and then to meme seven things about myself, so here goes!

Most of the blogs I read are Quaker ones and these are only a few of the many which really inspire me and make me think and feel and sometimes write. So in no particular order I would like to give this award to wise Shawna from Ohio for her blog Mystics, Poets and Fools, Harriet from England at Jumping the brook whose pithy entries I always look forward to, Angelina from Philadelphia who is Not afraid of thunder or indeed much else, Ashley, living in Seattle, who is pursuing A passionate & determined quest for adequacy with great honesty and Sarah in Oregon whose faith and many talents shine through her daily writing at Walking the Sea.

And then there are two more blogs I would like to give the award to which have different emphases. I spent my working life in libraries and can often relate to Mike, The Surly Librarian and I am now trying to spend more time on craft and find Alissa’s words and pictures at Handmade by Alissa cheering and motivating.

And now for 7 things about myself, again in no particular order:-

1. I have a weakness for soft toys and have three teddy bears in my study.

2. I wanted to be an actress when I was a teenager and have a LAMDA gold medal for acting – the breath control is still useful for public speaking.

3. I would love to wear high heels but can’t walk in them.

4. I dream of living in a house with a turret so that I could have a round study – preferably overlooking the sea.

5. I put on eye-shadow every day unless I’m really ill.

6. My favourite occupation is research.

7. I need to stop taking responsibility for everything and everyone.

So over to you award winners! Please feel free to interpret the strings attached as loosely as you like and thanks again Heather, for getting me writing here again.

Hello all those British Quaker bloggers out there!

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I’ve been talking to Jeremiah and Robin about what other British Quaker blogs exist and Robin suggested that I do a list. So, as a kind of addendum to Martin’s list, here goes.

Martin mentions Simon’s Under the Green Hill and Jez of The Friend‘s Quaker Street. I have a few more favourites including Jeremiah’s Fire in the Bones , Heather’s Still Life and Daniel’s Sitting Down for Something.

More blogs I have just found, added to my Bloglines subscriptions [thanks for the tip Robin!] and am enjoying are A Tentative Quaker, Mister JTA’s Electric Quaker II, Ray’s Quaker-Buddhist Dharmakara’s Prayer, Laura’s Silentblog and M. Willis Monroe.

As Jeremiah notes quite a few British Quaker Meetings have blogs although most use them more as a kind of newsletter than in a personal, reflective way. Two exceptions to this rule which both have several contributors writing thoughtful and often challenging posts are Beeston Quakers and Sheffield Quakers.

So who have I missed? If you are a British Quaker and have a blog of any kind or if you would not give yourself the BQ label but still blog about British Quakerism or Quakers in general I would love to get in touch. Are there more of us out there and if not why not I wonder. Over to you!

Failing to turn inside out?

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Once upon a time, well in 1994 actually, I set out on a journey round Britain Yearly Meeting as a Joseph Rowntree Fellow with a project called ‘What canst thou say?’ I was trying to reintroduce Friends and others to the tradition of spiritual autobiography, not just as an historical exercise but as a way of sharing our different spiritual journeys with one another.

Eventually I wrote a book about the fellowship called Turning inside out, a title that expressed what for me seemed the most important part of the exercise. I was trying to encourage Friends to look inside themselves and think about their spiritual journey, then to write about it and eventually to turn the inside out and share that spiritual autobiography with others in whatever way and at whatever time seemed right for them. I also stressed that it was equally important to listen to others’ stories even if they were very different from our own.

When I started out I was reacting to what I saw as a sense of isolation among British Friends and a lack of opportunity to share our spiritual journeys with one another. More than one person told me that the only time they were given such an opportunity was when they were visited after they applied for membership!

I continued giving the workshops for nearly ten years after the fellowship ended but although what I had to say was generally well received I ended with a sense of failure. It seemed to me that people were happy with the first steps, looking at their spiritual autobiography and even writing it for themselves, but that turning inside out and sharing it with others, as well as listening to others’ different experience was much more difficult.

Certainly over the years the practice of spiritual autobiography has become much more widespread, particularly in America and through blogging, but I still feel that there is a problem with British Friends. Perhaps we really are more reserved and uncomfortable with personal disclosure. Perhaps it is tied up with our increasing individualism and the idea that anything goes. If we are not looking for a way to draw together and discern a way forward as a group, if we are only looking for other like-minded people to feel comfortable with, then we do not have to acknowledge our differences and can dismiss the ‘other’.

When I came across the convergent conversation in the blogosphere I felt an excitement and hope that I had not felt for some time. I thought that what I had tried to do before had failed but that now perhaps what I need to do is to ask the questions of British Friends again, to encourage them to make connections in love with the ‘difficult’ people and beliefs in their own yearly meeting and in the rest of the Quaker world.

Words from the past

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One of the things I am doing in my retirement is transcribing four volumes of manuscript journals written between 1825 and 1880 by the Quaker Mary Bevan Waterhouse (1805-1880), mother of eight children including the architect Alfred Waterhouse. They are mainly concerned with her spiritual life as an evangelical Quaker and recorded minister in 19th century Britain but also give insights into her family and social life.

I came upon this manuscript while working in the Special Collections of Reading University Library and was really excited to find that it still existed. I had read the extracts that had been privately published by her son Edwin in 1907 but in his preface he said that he intended to destroy the original as it was no longer needed! I am so glad he had not done that and that Mary’s handwritten exercise books, bound later into 4 volumes, had been presented to Reading in 1968.

I am working through the manuscript slowly, going to the reading room about one day a week, and transcribing in chronological order. So far I have got to 1847. I expected to find the task interesting, to find out more about 19th century Quakers and Quakerism. I expected that what I read would fit in with my long-standing interest in spiritual autobiography. What I didn’t expect was that Mary would speak to me personally.

Mary has a lot to say about being thankful for God’s mercies and often rejoices in the loving-kindness of the Lord. I know that I too have much to be thankful for and that I need to be more mindful of this loving-kindness in my life. The last time I was working on her diary Mary was anxious about the safety of her children when they were away from her and reminded herself to leave them with confidence in the care of God. My two sons, aged 29 and 25, are about to go travelling round the world for a year and I needed Mary’s words myself.

Walk on the wild side

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I have just been for my daily bit of exercise, walking round the lake near our house. It was a stormy night and there has been a lot of rain but I thought I had picked a calm moment. How wrong I was! As I reached the lake the rain began again, driven by the wind in sheets into my face. I had a waterproof coat and sturdy boots but no hat or umbrella and was soaked in minutes. I could have gone back but at that point I decided to go on and try to enjoy the walk for what it was – and I did enjoy it.

One of the things I am trying to do in retirement is be more present in the moment and I took this opportunity as a sort of spiritual exercise as well as a physical one. The lake and the trees around it always lift my spirits and they did so just as much in the rain as in the sunshine. I enjoyed the pattern of the raindrops on the water and the colour of the branches made dark by the rain. I gave thanks that I can still walk without difficulty and feel the wet and the cold.

Now I am back in my warm study I can give thanks for that too and I am remembering some lines from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet:
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

A Happy Return

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Today is my 60th birthday so I thought this was an appropriate time to get back into blogging. Obviously I haven’t said anything here for a long time but I have been reading other people’s blogs – especially via http://www.quakerquaker.org/. Thanks a lot Martin for helping me keep in touch with the Quaker conversation.

60 feels signficant to me. I’m officially an Old Age Pensioner from today with a state pension and a free bus pass – not to mention free prescriptions, eye tests and lots of other goodies! I’m determined to use all the opportunities I have and to keep thinking and learning all I can, but at the same time I am on a continuing journey to discern what I need to do, rather than what I think I should.

I retired from paid work in the middle of 2006 and I am still getting used to that. I’m doing some 19th century Quaker research which is taking me in unexpected directions. I have decided that I need to write my family history in order to understand where my parents came from as well as myself. There is a lot to write about here so I will try to do that as well as reading other blogs.

Standing next to Jesus

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I’ve been catching up with my blog reading and one of the themes that has been speaking to me is the question of whether I should call myself a Christian along with the related one of where Jesus is in my life. Big questions and I am still struggling with answers, although helped by reading about others’ struggles.

So I’ll start by trying to share some of the journey which has brought me to my present position. I was brought up a nominal Christian, in the Church of England, read the Bible stories, sang the hymns, went to church as a matter of course but with no real conviction. When I was about 11 years old, standing alone on the back step of our house, looking at the clouds racing across the sky above our steeply sloping garden, I had what I later learned to call a ‘transcendent experience’.

In one moment beyond time I knew that myself, everyone and everything was connected and valued in love. All that I felt and knew in that moment was God and God was everywhere, in past, present and future, in all religions, all people, everything.

I did not know what to do with this experience. The only person I told was my school speech and drama teacher who gently listened to my confusion and gave me books on mysticism to read which helped me to realise that I was not alone in my experience and saved me from thinking that I was special or singled out.

So I knew that God was real, but I was not at all sure where Jesus fitted in to the equation for me. I certainly did not think that I needed organised religion or any kind of church community. The Christians that I knew seemed far too narrow in their belief for me to belong with them. I carried my conviction of true religion inside me but rarely let it connect with the way I lived my life.

And then, 30 years ago, I encountered Quakers when I went to work in Friends House Library in London. I found people who were living a faith without dogma day by day and I discovered Meeting for Worship. That was the real revelation because here I found again the God that I knew and God, the Inward Teacher, was speaking to me, within myself and through the meeting. When I began to listen I knew that I had to change, to commit myself to Quakerism and to act in faith. Of course there’s a lot more to this story and I will try to write more later, but for now I’ll try and go with the questions I began with.

Having become a Quaker, did I become a Christian? Well I believe that that is the journey I am on but many of my fellow-Quakers, and certainly many others who identify themselves as Christians, would disagree and I have to engage with that.

And what about Jesus? About 6 years ago I went to a performance of ‘The Mysteries’ at the National Theatre – three plays in one day. These modern versions of medieval mystery plays told the story of the world from creation to judgment with actors and audience mixed together in one space. Somehow during the crucifixion scene I found myself standing behind the actor playing Jesus who was carrying his cross. I suddenly felt a real connexion with the real Jesus and almost reached out to touch him. I knew then that my Inward Teacher was there too. It was an intense experience and again I have told very few people until today. I am still trying to make sense of what I felt and how standing next to Jesus could affect my life.

Good intentions

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Sometimes it seems as though I blink and a month goes by – or several months or a year sometimes. Does this happen to other people?

I was so happy when I discovered blogging and I really meant to write something regularly but lately I haven’t managed it. I began just reading other people’s and I did respond a couple of times but for several weeks now I haven’t even managed that. It’s been a case of ‘Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.’ But I have just sat down and read through the Quaker blogs I’ve bookmarked with the help of Quaker Ranter and I’ve been so moved and realise what I’m missing so I’m going to try again.

Perhaps I should worry less and read and write more (or less) and see what happens. I’ll try to give myself a regular slot in the day too and try to share my life a bit more. Please bear with me and keep reading.