Four and a half problems about discerning the will of God

1. Counting the problems

Quakers don’t vote.

Quakers vote in elections, like everyone else.  Indeed, Quakers are positively encouraged to take part in politics and public life, and I suspect many of us go to the polling station from a sense of duty even when we don’t really feel like it.

But when it comes to our own decision-making, Quakers don’t vote.  This is the case, whether it’s a local group deciding what colour to paint the meeting-house walls, or a national meeting of a thousand or more deciding whether to support equal marriage.  If there is strong disagreement, the likely conclusion will be that we’re not yet ready to make a decision.

What are Quakers doing?  Is this decision-making by consensus:  an attempt to find a lowest common denominator that everyone can live with, even if nobody really likes it?  I suspect that in practice it’s sometimes like that, but most Quakers would say this isn’t what we’re aiming for.     

Sometimes the aim is described as trying to find the sense of the meeting.  

A more traditional explanation is that Quaker decision-making is a process of discernment -  specifically, discerning the will of God.

I think there are four and a half problems with this way of putting it.  That is to say, there are four problems that are widely discussed among Quakers; and there’s a possible further problem, but as far as I can tell nobody seems much troubled by it, which is why I call it a half problem.

Here are the four familiar problems.

First, some Quakers don’t talk about God at all - they don’t “use God-language”.  Secondly, some Quakers who do talk about God, don’t think that God has a will:  this way of picturing God seems too human-like (or “anthropomorphic”).  Thirdly, some Quakers think the idea that you might actually know anything about what God wants is presumptuous, or fanciful - how are you supposed to find out?  And fourthly, some are simply repelled by the idea of discerning the will of God, because it reminds them of all the evil that has been done over the ages by people claiming to act in God’s name.

And here is the half problem. 

Does Quaker decision-making assume that there is always a right answer, and that our task is to find it and act on it?  At first sight, talk about the “will of God” suggests a kind of spiritual SatNav that tells us, at each junction, whether to turn left or right.  Is this what we think is happening?  Or do we think there are usually a number of good answers, or possible answers, so that our task is to pick one of them?  In which case, how do we choose?  If we’re looking for the best answer, that’s not very different from looking for the right answer.  On the other hand, if the aim is “identify all the permissible answers, and then choose one that everyone can live with”, then that’s not very different from seeking consensus, and certainly doesn’t seem to have very much to do with God.

Although I think the four familiar problems are important, I want to focus instead on the half problem, about whether Quaker decision-making assumes that we’re looking for the right answer.  It seems to me that this cuts across some very familiar Quaker debates about God and about decision-making, in quite an interesting way.  

I want to start by drawing on some ideas about theatrical improvisation.

2. Improvisation, blocking, and acceptance

Broadly, speaking, actors can do two things.  They can memorise a written script, and enact it; or they can improvise.  The vast majority of public performances are scripted, with an occasional role for improvisation (perhaps to cover up when something has gone wrong). Pure improvisation is much rarer, though it is often used as a training exercise for drama students.

Keith Johnstone’s fascinating book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre is both a defence of improvisation, and an explanation of the techniques needed to make it work.  Central to his analysis is the notion of an offer, and the possibility of either blocking an offer, or accepting it.

Two actors, A and B, are asked to improvise a scene.  One of them makes the first move:  for instance, A might say, “When do you think this bus is going to arrive?”  A is making an offer to B - which you could spell out as, “Let’s act a scene that begins from the premise that we’re waiting at a bus stop”.

B could accept the offer:  “I think it’s due in 10 minutes, but it’s often late”.  Or he could try something more inventive (but still accepting): “Good God, you’re Gerald!  I haven’t seen you in 20 years!”  Or alternatively he could try to send the scene down a completely different track of his own choosing:  “What do you mean?  This is a doctor’s surgery!”  In this last case, B is refusing to accept A’s offer:  he is blocking.

Offers run all the way through improvisation, not just at the start of a scene.  And blocking isn’t invariably a bad thing - but repeated blocking, especially at the start of a scene, prevents the action from developing, and may mean that the scene has to be abandoned altogether.  By contrast, acceptance opens up possibilities, and allows a scene to move forward.  

There will, of course, be many different ways of accepting an offer - some more interesting or imaginative than others, but none obviously “right” or “wrong”. 

For instance, an offer might be ambiguous, and the acceptance might resolve the ambiguity (in a way that itself amounts to a further offer).

A:  What are you in for?

B:  Appendicitis.  What about you?

A’s offer is consistent with a scene set in a hospital, a prison, or a sports stadium hosting a multi-event athletics competition.  B chooses the first option, and the scene can now develop from that point (unless A blocks).

Once you’ve grasped these concepts, you can see them play out in the improvised drama of everyday conversation.

A:  Have you ever been to St. Kilda?

B:  Yes, isn’t it fascinating.  A shame about the military installation, though.

A:  Have you ever been to St. Kilda?

B:  I haven’t, but the Scottish island I really love is Jura.  Do you know it?

A:  Have you ever been to St. Kilda?

B:  Why would I want to do that?  It’s just a lump of rock.

The first example is a straightforward acceptance.  The second is a a more nuanced and qualified acceptance, but still allows space for the conversation to develop.  The third is a hard block, and is likely to kill the conversation altogether. 

When we talk about discernment, it sometimes sounds as if we think that God holds the entire script, but might dictate it to us line by line if approached in the right way.

Bu what if that’s the wrong model?  What if we’re in something that’s more like an improvisation, where God and ourselves are both participants?   In which case, the questions that arise in discernment might look something like this:

- Is there an offer here?

- What is being offered?

- What would blocking look like?

-  How might we accept the offer?  

- What would be a boring way to accept?  

-    What would be an interesting way to accept?

3. Improvisation and God

The parable of the talents is in chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel.  Here it is, in the English Standard Version.  At the start of the story, a man is going on a journey, and he calls his servants and entrusts to them his property.

To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The master in the story doesn’t set any particular task.  In fact, he leaves no instructions:  he just leaves a certain number of talents with each of the servants.  It’s clear that he wants them to do something:  but what, exactly?  He has no script for them.  But he hopes to be favourably surprised by what they do.  

This is a story about improvisation, and so it begins with an offer.  Two of the servants accept the offer, and we don’t know all the details, but we know that it works out well.  The third blocks.  Worse still, he makes his blocking move at a point where it is too late for the master to change course.  If he had blocked before the master left, then the master could have made other arrangements:  for instance, he might have given the single talent to someone else instead.  But as matters stand, the part of the scene that involved the third servant is frustrated beyond hope of rescue.  No wonder the third servant is cast into outer darkness at the end.

Interesting question:  what would have happened if the third servant had accepted the offer, traded, and lost the lot?  Would he still get consigned to outer darkness? I would very much like to think that the answer is no.  Blocking often guarantees failure, but acceptance doesn’t guarantee success, and there’s always an element of risk when there isn’t a script to follow.  If the master wasn’t willing to accept that risk, then he should have left more precise instructions.  

Quaker debates about God follow a familiar pattern.  Should we use the word “God” at all (or should we talk instead about the Divine, Spirit, etc)?  Is God immanent or transcendent? Personal or non-personal? Objectively real or symbolic?  And I’m suggesting we focus on a different question, one that cuts across these debates.  Namely, is listening to God like following a script, or is it more like taking part in an improvisation? And, as will be clear from the discussion above, I think the latter answer is well worth reflecting on and exploring.  If for instance we get a strong leading that we need to do something about X, or pay attention to Y, or find out more about Z, then I don’t think the script/SatNav model fits very well with what is going on.  But if we understand these leadings as offers, and if we think our task is to decide whether or how to accept them, then that seems to make much more sense.  This way of looking at things takes the “will of God” seriously, but leaves us with a more radical and interesting kind of freedom than does the simple binary choice between obedience and disobedience.

I came across this quotation the other day (from a novel by Ron Hansen), and I think it reflects some of what I’m trying to get at:

We try to be formed and held and kept by him, but instead he offers us freedom.  And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, Surprise me.

Becoming Quaker

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;

Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

(T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”)

I read these words sometime in early 1991, and eventually they helped to change my life.

I was brought up Catholic; but in 1986 at the age of 21 I had decided that for the time being I couldn’t carry on with it, and that I didn’t really know what I believed about God.  What followed was a great deal of perplexity, confusion, and mental strain.  Four years later, at the age of 25, I started seeing a Jesuit priest in Oxford to try to to make sense of it all.

His name was Ted Yarnold.  We talked, and he suggested books for me to read, and he arranged for me to spend a few days staying at a Jesuit retreat house in Birmingham.  Ted was kind and generous with his time, and I liked him - but our interactions were very wordy.  And while all of this was going on, I stumbled across the passage I’ve set out above, and it came to me that what I really wanted to do was to find God through silence.  My first thought was that I had heard of something called Julian Meetings (named after Mother Julian of Norwich), where people met for silent contemplative prayer.  But, I thought, don’t be silly, you can’t have an entire religious practice based on Julian Meetings. And then I thought, what about the Quakers - isn’t their worship based on silence?  At the time, that was pretty much the only thing I knew about Quakers, but it was enough to make me want to explore further.

When I said this to Ted he was baffled, and not a little exasperated - he had worked hard on my case.  But I persisted, and in early 1991 I went to my first Quaker meeting, at Westminster Meeting House in London.

I stayed with the Quakers for about a year, but I wasn’t ready to make a permanent commitment.  Nevertheless, I found my experience of Quaker worship very powerful;  I experienced quite a lot of insomnia at that time, not because of anxiety, but because of a sense of being churned up inwardly.  My experience in 1991 planted a seed; many years later, it sprouted again.

In 2014 a series of small, unspectacular prompts and nudges made me start looking at Quakerism once more.  A couple of years later, I started regularly attending Meeting for Worship at Lewes.

And yesterday I was accepted into membership.

Mary Oliver's Grasshopper

 Here is a very well-known poem by the American poet Mary Oliver, called “The Summer Day”.

   

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

The final two lines are very often quoted.  Taken out of context, they sound like a challenge, a sort of existential shock therapy.  But read in context, they are more like a defensive manoeuvre.  She is saying something like this:  here is how I have been spending my day, and if you think I have been wasting my time, then what are you doing that you think is more important?

At the heart of the poem is a grasshopper - the focus of Mary Oliver's delighted attention.  There is awe, gratitude, astonishment, a sense of having been blessed, and also something that is understood as being analogous to prayer:  kneeling down in the grass, while at the same time admitting to not quite knowing what prayer is.

What is all of this about?  It’s to do with paying attention to the world, and also to your own act of paying attention:  noticing yourself noticing the world, and experiencing a sense of surprise at finding yourself as an awake, alive, breathing being on a the surface of a planet.  The Jewish writer Abraham Heschel calls this “radical amazement”:

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of man. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

This mode of experience doesn’t prove anything, show you any new facts, or put you inside some special story in relation to which other people are outsiders.  But it re-enchants the world:  the shift is rather like what you might experience on hearing a familiar piece of music played by a really exceptional musician.  The kind of attention that Mary Oliver is describing is a form of love.  This love encompasses, but goes beyond, the particular aspects of the natural world that she is describing; ultimately, it is directed towards the unknown source and ground by virtue of which she is able to experience what she experiences and perceive what she perceives.  Put more simply, Mary Oliver is not explaining, but exemplifying, what it might mean to love God.  

(This is an extract from a longer piece that I posted in 2019.  I thought it might work better as a freestanding post. Ben Wood's discussion of the same poem is well worth reading.)

Considered Happy

This is different from my earlier posts - a (very) short story.

------------------------------------------------

It's a good job, all things considered.

Not that what I do is what I would call a job, exactly. I wouldn’t even say it’s my work. It’s a way of life, this thing that I do.  It’s who I am, what I’m known for.  If you’ve heard of me at all, it’s because of what I do.  Nobody remembers what it was I did before this.  Even I can’t remember, most of the time.

How did it start?  To be honest I can’t really remember that either.  I suppose there must have been an induction process at some point, setting out the ground rules. This is when you start each day, this is how long it’s supposed to take you, this is what you do when you’ve finished.  Annual leave, sick leave, salary, benefits, management.  But I’m vague about all that.  I always assume that there’s an overall plan somewhere, and that I’m part of it; perhaps a row on someone’s spreadsheet, setting out how I fit into the overall scheme of things.  I don’t really think about all that. It’s above my pay grade.

Each day starts the same way.  There it is, waiting for me, at the bottom of the hill.  It’s always the same boulder, too - I would be really upset if they ever changed it.  There’s a particular angle I’ve learned to appreciate, the way that it fits into my shoulder, almost nestles into it, as if the two were designed for one another.  It’s like wrestling with a brother, when you’ve grown up having play fights.  

Why does it need to be moved up the hill?  I suppose because it’s in the way, where it’s lying. You can’t just leave a great boulder lying around like that. It might stop the traffic.  Imagine that there was an ambulance that wanted to get through, or a fire engine.  Even if they could get round it, it would slow them down.  No, to be honest, I’ve never actually seen that happen; but then again, I’ve always been there to make sure that it doesn’t happen.  And it’s the sort of thing that could happen, no question. All sorts of bad stuff could happen if you just leave boulders lying around at the bottom of a hill all day.  It’s not done, is it?

Always the same route, that long winding path upwards.  There are a few places where I’ve learned that you can stop for a break:  odd corners, where you couldn’t leave it for good (it would roll down hill pretty quickly), but where you can balance against it safely for a few minutes, take a break, even enjoy the view if it’s a clear day.  Smoke a cigarette (though I’m trying to give it up).  There are two or three of these regular stopping points, and they break up the day nicely.  There’s the sense at the first one that you’re well under way, that you’re getting on top of the day.  By the time I get to the second, I feel I’ve broken the back of the task.  The third one is a bit of a luxury.  If I feel I’m running late then I skip it; so you could say that it’s my reward for a day where I’ve made solid progress.  You have to do that, when you don’t really have a visible boss, as such:  give yourself these little rewards, little encouragements, to keep yourself up to the mark.  Nobody ever called me a slacker:  but my secret is in these little moments of rest and recovery.

I sometimes get a bit sentimental, when I get to the very end.  There’s a little ledge that I have to get over, before I get to the very top.  It takes an extra push to get past it.  Sometimes I imagine that I’m newly married, lifting my bride over the threshold of our new home.  You could say I’m quite imaginative, really. You get like that when you’re on your own as much as I am.  My life is really very full, very much inhabited.  

The other side of that ledge there’s a sort of shelf that marks the top of the hill.  It’s almost flat, and there’s just about enough room for me and the boulder.  I say almost flat, because - of course - you can’t quite balance there.  Anything between a few minutes and an hour or so (my personal best), and then you lose balance and it rolls back down the hill again.  I used to spend a long time looking for that sweet spot - as I thought of it - where it would just balance for good.  There were times when I thought, just another couple of attempts, and then I will master it.  After all, there didn’t seem to be any shortage of time for that:  no urgency. But now I’m past all that.  If I managed to find that point of balance, that what would be the point?  The balance of my life would have gone. I would wake up the next morning: and then?  They might make me do something else, something far less congenial, something that wasn’t mine in the same way.  Nobody would know who I was.  Even I wouldn’t know.

All that’s behind me now, and I’ve settled into regular rhythm.  Why would I want to do anything different?  

You asked me if I was happy.  I hadn’t really thought about it before you asked, but now I come to think of it, I’ve got no doubt on the matter.

Yes, you could definitely think of me as a happy man.  No question.  

Some inconclusive thoughts about Simone Weil

What has set me reading Simone Weil?

I’ve been aware of Weil for some time.  I’ve seen references to her in Iris Murdoch, and in writing about Iris Murdoch, and it’s been clear that Weil was very important for Murdoch.  I’ve seen quite a lot of references to her in writing by Quaker friends (Ben Wood, Jennifer Kavanagh). Early in lockdown I read a blog post by Anna Rowlands that referred to Weil at some length.  In particular, I’ve come across references to the importance of attention for Weil - and there is a connection for me with a question I’ve sometimes asked myself about Quaker worship, which is to what extent it’s about trying to decide what to do next, and to what extent it’s simply a matter of learning to pay attention.  A similar question arises in relation to therapy.

The result of all of this groundwork was that before I had read any Weil at all, there was a sort of charisma about her.  The baptismal service talks about the glamour of evil.  But there’s also a glamour attached to the good, or to the places where we think the good might be found.  For me, Weil had acquired some of that glamour.

I started with “The Need for Roots” (TNFR). This is the only book-length publication that we have in the form in which Weil wrote it:  otherwise, we’ve got collections of essays, and selections from Weil’s notebooks.  It was written in London in 1943, during the last year of her life, when Weil was working for the Free French.  It's - ostensibly - a report setting out proposals for the reconstruction of France after the war.  It’s much more than that.

The first section of TNFR is about a fundamental theory of politics.  Obligations are prior to rights - there is a basic obligation owed to every human being, arising from our universal dignity as God-seeking and God-capable creatures - the practical effect of that obligation, is a duty to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of everyone - and an important and much-neglected spiritual need, is the need for roots.  And what it means to have “roots” is to be part of a community with both a shared memory of the past and a shared hope for the future.  This experience of rootedness is one that has been severely disrupted, and it needs to be restored.  

Reading that opening section I found myself responding on two levels.  There was a surface level, at which I tried to understand what I was reading, and thought:  I agree with that, I don’t think that’s right, I don’t understand that.  But there was also a sense of something being communicated at a different level - a sense of someone who had seen a great light, was half-blinded by it, and was trying to convey what she had seen.

I read on, and I finished the book, and I found a lot of it was a struggle.  Some very long chapters that made few concessions to the reader in terms of structure or signposting.  A lot about French history and culture, which made me realise my own ignorance, but which I couldn’t readily assess or assimilate.  

While I was part way through TNFR, I looked at the Penguin anthology of Weil's writing, and read her draft of a statement of human obligations.  This was a distillation of the political theory behind TNFR, in about ten pages, and using slightly less overtly theistic language.  I found it a powerful and inspiring manifesto.

And now I am reading “Gravity and Grace” - a collection of Weil's remarks on religious and spiritual themes, organised in short thematic chapters.  What a strange book this is!  It was put together after Weil’s death, from her notebooks.  There were editorial choices not just about which passages to include, but also about which passages to group together into chapters, and about the order in which the individual passages appeared.  We’ve no way of tracing how her thought developed (it would have been very interesting if each passage had been accompanied by the date when it was written).  It’s like a Gospel of Sayings - say, the Gospel of Thomas - except that you are at least confident that she did say (or write) all of these things.  I read with a pencil, underlining the passages that particularly strike me.

There's a lot here about the dismantling or "decreating" of the self, and some of this is very hard to read - particularly given that it's controversial whether Weil's own death was a form of suicide.  Yet - paradoxically - one thing that comes across is the sense of an overwhelmingly strong personality, fierce and intolerant and sometimes almost intolerable.    

I'm still trying to work out what to make of all this.

Keeping a Journal

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 17^th 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).

11^th 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?

12^th 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”).