Advices and queries, 1
May. 5th, 2019 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
notreallystarsI've started going to Quaker Meetings again. I love Meeting, and I love Quakers, and I value the fact that I went to a Quaker school. I'm also pagan. Fundamentally I believe in the plurality of divinity, and that in most circumstances the either/or dichotomy could be usefully replaced with both/and. So, both pagan and Quaker? Does it work?
Quaker faith and practice is the Book of Discipline issued by Britain's Yearly Meeting, and contains a section called Advices and Queries. I thought I might usefully reflect on them, one at a time, as they relate to me and my beliefs and practices, while I figure out what I'm doing with this.
It is prefaced with this quote from a document composed by Quakers in the 17th Century:
Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
I value the emphatic reminder that this is not a faith of musts and must-nots.
1. 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.
It's a good start, right? To trust, as a leading from God, what love and truth speak in your heart. Who or what is God? Can I square with my polytheism a belief in the kind of God Quakers speak of? Well, kind of. I'm more comfortable with the Quakers who speak about the Light than the Quakers who speak about God. You can't really interact with the Light, it doesn't wear a face or have a voice. It is within and beyond everything; it is, as Julian of Norwich said of God, the ground of our beseeching. 'God' has a lot of cultural connotations for anyone who grew up in a Christian society. I'm not down with 'God'. An omnipotent, omnipresent being who has a personal interest in every person and yet allows horrific things to happen to them every day? Count me out. A Light, without and within, constant and impersonal yet underlying everything? That concept speaks to me. It is also, in my opinion, compatible with my polytheistic beliefs. It is a fundamentally different type of thing than the gods I worship and interact with. They do different things. 'God' wants to be raised above all others; the Light is ultimately different from all others.
So, trust what is spoken in your heart by love and truth. Trust these things as leadings from the Light. It is well.
Quaker faith and practice is the Book of Discipline issued by Britain's Yearly Meeting, and contains a section called Advices and Queries. I thought I might usefully reflect on them, one at a time, as they relate to me and my beliefs and practices, while I figure out what I'm doing with this.
It is prefaced with this quote from a document composed by Quakers in the 17th Century:
Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
I value the emphatic reminder that this is not a faith of musts and must-nots.
1. 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.
It's a good start, right? To trust, as a leading from God, what love and truth speak in your heart. Who or what is God? Can I square with my polytheism a belief in the kind of God Quakers speak of? Well, kind of. I'm more comfortable with the Quakers who speak about the Light than the Quakers who speak about God. You can't really interact with the Light, it doesn't wear a face or have a voice. It is within and beyond everything; it is, as Julian of Norwich said of God, the ground of our beseeching. 'God' has a lot of cultural connotations for anyone who grew up in a Christian society. I'm not down with 'God'. An omnipotent, omnipresent being who has a personal interest in every person and yet allows horrific things to happen to them every day? Count me out. A Light, without and within, constant and impersonal yet underlying everything? That concept speaks to me. It is also, in my opinion, compatible with my polytheistic beliefs. It is a fundamentally different type of thing than the gods I worship and interact with. They do different things. 'God' wants to be raised above all others; the Light is ultimately different from all others.
So, trust what is spoken in your heart by love and truth. Trust these things as leadings from the Light. It is well.
