A lot changed for me in 2014. It was the year I turned 50. It was also the year when I started to explore Quakerism. More accurately, I started to explore it for a second time: there had been a year or so in the early 1990s when I used to attend a Quaker meeting in London, but it didn’t last. Also in 2014, I started to keep a sort of journal - a collection of short pieces of writing. Journal writing is a traditional Quaker practice, going right back to the 17th century, though I didn’t know this at the time.
By way of an example, here (slightly modified) is something I wrote on two successive September days in 2017. I was thinking about a Quaker text called the “Advices and Queries” (A&Q for short). A&Q is a series of brief passages for reflection - 42 passages in all - it’s perhaps the closest thing to a Quaker creed. In particular, I was thinking about the first passage (or A&Q1).
11th September
A&Q1 says this:
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God, whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.
The first question for me this morning is, can I think about these words while sitting in a crowded commuter train to London? There is a lot of conversation going on around me - including between the two men opposite me. I am finding this a distraction and irritating - so I am feeling resentful, and hostile to the people around me. Quaker worship needs special conditions, because it needs silence. Or at least that’s how I tend to think of it. But if the Quaker way - taken as a whole - requires special conditions and can’t be brought into ordinary life, then what use is it?
The first sentence of A&Q1 tells us to to focus our attention in a particular direction.
Is it a call to introspection? Look inwards - look into your own heart - don’t look outwards.
In which case, are other people a distraction? The people on this train are talking, and I overhear their conversations, and they catch my attention, and then I resent them for catching my attention. So is this the message? Ignore other people, and look inwards?
If this is the Quaker way then it would best be lived by being a hermit - leaving other people and living alone.
But if I lived in isolation, what scope would there be for any or these “promptings”? And how would I take heed of them? Because taking heed can’t just mean, becoming aware. It must also mean, acting in some way. Pay attention to what I say, but don’t act on it. How would that make sense?
So is this it? The advice is to pay attention to something within me, that is directing me towards something outside me?
12th September
How do I tell the difference between “promptings of love and truth” and the other things that fill my mind?
I’m aware of a crowd of thoughts, feelings, desires, memories, sense impressions: and many of them are clamouring for my attention.
Look at this! (The scene outside the window - early autumn, sun, blue sky)
Do this! (Go to the fridge and find a snack - now).
Think about this! (Think, right now, about how someone offended you many years ago - think about how badly they behaved).
How should you deal with this noisy crowd of thoughts and feelings? Should you approach them with discrimination, judging which ones are based on reality and which ones are not? Should you treat them all with friendly curiosity, as objects of enquiry in their own right? Should you simply watch them rise and fall, come and go? Or are these options best seen as different items in a tool-kit: sometimes you want a hammer, sometimes you want a spanner …
But perhaps A&Q1 takes me in a different direction from all of this.
Reading A&Q1 this morning I was struck first of all by how warm these words seem. The first sentence, especially, feels warm - feels warming.
Then I was struck by a challenge. What are the promptings of love and truth that are operating for you now, right now? And at that point I fell silent. A&Q1 tells me that these things are here, in my heart. It assumes there are “promptings” - and it tells me to pay attention to them. But where are they? What if I can’t find any?
But then, gradually, various fragments started to emerge.
For instance, a prompting to reflect on my own birth - to picture myself as a new-born, wholly dependent on others - to think of all of the different needs that I had, all of the different ways they were met, all of the different people who were involved in this. Religion often tells us to meditate on our own death, but never - or almost never - to meditate on our own birth. Why is this?
We cannot pay attention to the promptings that A&Q1 refers to, unless we first become aware of them.
The mental picture I have, at this point, is of someone panning for gold in a stream.
Of course, there is also a lot in our mental life that is dark, unpleasant, unwelcome: evil, the shadow.
A&Q1 recognises that these things are there too (“shows us our darkness”) - but the darkness isn’t where we start (“promptings”), and isn’t where we end (“new life”).
