Justluckie

The Democratisation of Writing

There is an excellent new series on BBC 4 looking at the writing revolution of 17th century England, a time when there was an explosion of new ideas, significant social turbulence and the beginnings of what we have come to see as modernity. Adam Nicholson presents The Century That Wrote Itself and he explores the writing of a number of individuals who took up the pen to think through their ideas, express their reaction to the events of the world around them and to share their thoughts with others. In the first episode, I was particularly struck by Margaret Fell's story. This founding member of the Religious Society of Friends was imprisoned for life for her perceived treason in not swearing an oath of allegiance. Her writing campaign acheived an early release from prison after four hard years. She also made a very significant contribution to the development of a society that took equality and liberty of conscience more seriously. Here are some words by Margaret Fell, words which continue to inspire members of the Society of Friends. She spoke these words to herself as she first heard George Fox preaching:

I cried in my spirit to the Lord, 'We are all thieves, we are all thieves, we have taken the Scriptures in words and know nothing of them in ourselves'. I asaw it was the truth and I could not deny it; and I did as the apostle saith, I 'received the truth in the love of it'.

In this simple statement, she summarises much of the Quaker spirit - faith is not a matter of words on a page but of truth in the heart. Having said that, Quakers have been masters at putting words on the page over the centuries and, partly because of an early suspicion of more frivolous forms of writing, these words have often taken the form of spiritual journals. For an approach to religion that is so profoundly based on the authority of personal experience and conviction, this form is very appropriate.

I wonder what, if any, is the overlap between this form of writing and the kind of regular, contemporary reflections that find their way onto blogs and other social media. I suspect the instantly public nature of these media gives the writing a very different character. As a fairly regular blogger, I am conscious of not writing things that I might be tempted to write in a journal - thoughts that are less than half-formed (no comments on that please!), more intimate and personal reflections, things that might be of interest to me, but probably to no one else. And I occasionally find myself wondering how much someone like Thomas Merton was exercising self-censorship in his own journal writing. I suspect he had some awareness of the liklihood of later publication, but he does not always write as if that is at the front of his mind! He was someone who thought through the process of writing, so it is wonderful to see these 'first drafts' of his thoughts in his journals. It is also refreshing to see less reflected impressions of what he observes, and I am sure that he would approve of this Zen-like immediacy!

Please feel free to share any thoughts on the relationship between blogging and journaling - I'd be fascinated to hear!

 

 

John Woolman is Dead

One of the insights into the spiritual revolution that lay behind the abolitionist movement in the US can be found in the Journal of the Quaker John Woolman. This passage is a vivid piece of spiritual writing that underlines the fundamental religious insight that there can be no separation between the inner life and our outward actions, no false distinction between theology and lived ethics, between devotion and justice. This is the insight of the Hebrew Prophets as much as of Buddhist activists. Here is Woolman's testimony:

In a time of sickness with the pleurisy, a little upward of two years and a half ago, I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. Being then desirous to know who I was, I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy colour between the south and the east, and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be, and live, and that I was mixed in with them, and henceforth might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being. In this state I remained several hours. I then heard a soft, melodious voice, more pure and harmonious than any voice I had heard with my ears before; and I believed it was the voice of an angel who spake to other angels. The words were John Woolman is dead. I soon remembered that I was once John Woolman and being assured that I was alive in the body, I greatly wondered what that heavenly voice could mean. I believed beyond doubting that it was the voice of an holy angel, but as yet it was a mystery to me.

I was then carried in spirit to the mines where poor oppressed people were digging rich treasures for those called Christians, and heard them blaspheme the name of Christ, at which I was grieved for His Name to me was precious. Then I was informed that these heathens were told that those who oppressed them were the followers of Christ, and they said amongst themselves, 'If Christ directed them to use us in this sort, then Christ is a cruel tyrant'.

All this time the song of the angel remained a mystery; and in the morning my dear wife and some others coming to my bedside, I asked them if they knew who I was, and they telling me I was John Woolman, thought I was only light-headed, for I told them not what the angel said, nor was I disposed to talk much to anyone, but was very desirous to get so deep that I might understand this mystery.

My tongue was often so dry that I could not speak till I had moved it about and gathered some moisture, and as I lay still for a time, at length I felt divine power prepare my mouth that I could speak, and then said, 'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, is by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.' Then the mystery was opened, and I perceived there was joy in heaven over a sinner who had repented, and that that language, John Woolman is dead, meant no more than the death of my own will.

His insights is that 'dying to self' is not some kind of heroic and abstract act of self-destruction but is a complete identification with humanity, especially in its suffering. This vision of radical unity with all people leads inevitably to a radical social transformation. For Woolman, it meant a resistance to the evil of slavery. It makes me wonder where today we might look and conclude that 'Christ is a cruel tyrant'. If the people who bear his name are content to ignore or even justify the hunger of millions, the exclusion of the 'stranger' and the deep-seated structures of inequality, then they are in need of a major spiritual revolution.

Religion - Neat or Adulterated?

It is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the moment and this has got me thinking about the diversity of practice, style and emphasis within the Christian family. As I may have mentioned before, I enjoyed being part of the local Quaker meeting while living in Surrey and found great riches there. The focus on simplicity, interiority and the commitment to an ethical life are deeply appealing to me, as is the constant reminder of the true nature of religion as a matter of the heart, not of outward form. However, I am also, fundamentally, an Anglican in the Catholic tradition and that would seem to inhabit a very different world of sacramentality, rich tradition and symbolism. More significantly, perhaps, Catholic Christianity is Christianity of credal orthodoxy whereas Quakers adopt a non-credal approach to faith and focus instead on the Inner Light to guide each person to truth and, for those for whom this language makes sense, to God. How can these two approaches belong in the same religious family?

I suspect that the truth is that neither can exist satisfactorily without the other. Even within Catholic Christianity, there are movements that are deeply suspicious of elaboration and excess (Cistercians come to mind) and movements that focus on the inner life (Carmelites, The World Community for Christian Meditation etc). Similarly, within movements like Quakerism, there are those who are involved in the arts and see such outward expression as an integral part of the spiritual life. Protestant Christianity cannot be understood without knowing its Catholic roots and Catholic Christianity stands in need of contant reform. I think there is a similar dynamic in other religions - think of the riotous colour of a Hindu temple during a festival and of the rigorous asceticism of the Sadhu.

On a personal level, I find that I need both radical silence and rich symbolism and am constantly surprised by the way these two things meet: symbols reach their limit and only silence remains; silence feeds the spirit and blossoms into creativity. But what of that tension between credal and non-credal faith? I think the same thing is true. We say all we can about God and choose our words with care, but then find that we encounter God in mystery; we find God in silence but then are moved to articulate what we have found. This dialectic is essential. I suspect that truth is to be found in the movement between these poles and not at either end. And I think this says something important about the nature of the unity we seek within and between religions.

 

No Hunger for Anything Not Tasted

These words are from the American Quaker writer on mysticism, Rufus Jones. He was suggesting that it would be unlikely for people to go on praying if they found no satisfaction in doing so. He was too intelligent to go so far as to say that the universal urge to pray was some sort of proof of God (as if God could be proved!) but he did go so far as to say that 'this native need of the soul rose out of the divine origin of the soul, and it has steadily verified itself as a safe guide to reality.'

I like that last phrase because it reminds us that the act of praying is not some kind of escape from reality or even an escape into a 'meta-reality' but is 'as natural as breathing ... as normal an operation as the appreciation of beauty, or the pursuit of truth.' The fact that prayer or meditation is a universal activity also suggests to me that it should be the place we start when we talk to people of other faith traditions or belief systems, including non-theistic traditions. As I was suggesting the other day, I suspect that the experience of praying is much the same whether it is done in front of a statue of the Buddha, a mihrab, an icon of the Mother of God or a mountain landscape.

When people ask 'why do you pray', then, I might respond in the spirit of Rufus Jones and say; because I feel drawn to do so, because I can do no other, because I find there (sometimes) sweetness, light and peace, and because even if I don't find thse things, it would feel like something utterly vital would be missing not to do so. People have tried to persuade me that praying is a waste of time, based on a naive pre-scientific world view or deluded in any number of other ways. I don't have a smart answer to their objections and I can see where they're coming from. All I can say that I need to pray and, when I do, I find that I want to do it more.

Pray Without Ceasing

We often imagine that prayer is something we do or say at a particular time and for a particular time but the biblical invitation to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) has led spiritual inquirers over the centuries to appreciate that prayer may, in fact be something quite different. Perhaps it is the case that prayer is more of a fundamental orientation and a way of being than a discrete activity. Prayer is not so much what we say in our heads as the way we direct our being, our will, our affection. It is a posture of openness, an inner pool of deep silence, a lifewards disposition.

The eponymous pilgrim of the 19th century Russian work, The Way of a Pilgrim, sets out to discover how to live with such a constant praying and eventually finds that the constant recitation of the Jesus Prayer allows his praying to take root in his heart rather than only in his conscious mind. The repetitious use of so very few words is, paradoxically, a way of doing without words in our praying. When we begin, it gives our minds something to focus on so that our attention can be brought gently back from the constant chatter and commentary that goes on in our heads.

The pilgrim finds that the practice of this inner turning towards God leads to a transformed consciousness. In the words of the Philokalia, the compendium of spiritual writings focussed on this way of praying, he finds that 'the nature of things is judged by the inner disposition of the soul' and that 'the one who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things' but finds a profound unity in existence and an equal love for all. This is what Hindu thought calls 'non-duality'.

From a different (but, I think, related) Christian tradition, I found this lovely passage from Quaker Faith and Practice, which I will let speak for itself:

How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, towards Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. It is as simple an art as Brother Lawrence found it, but it may be long before we achieve any steadiness in the process. Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within. In secret ejaculations of praise, turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be. Keep contact with the outer world of sense and meanings. Here is no discipline in absent-mindedness. Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship. Keep it up throughout the day. Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake. And in time you will find, as did Brother Lawrence, that 'those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep'.

Thomas R Kelly, 1941

 

Nothing, Nowhere, Endlessly

Sitting in the Quaker Meeting House in Dorking yesterday morning, I looked through a high sash window at the way the fleeting autumn sun lit up a fine old tree in the garden outside. It put me in mind of Philip Larkin's poem, High Windows, in which he looks at a wild and free young couple and wonders if anyone thought of him like that when he was young:

...I wonder if 
Anyone looked at me, forty years back, 
And thought, That'll be the life; 
No God any more, or sweating in the dark 

About hell and that, or having to hide 
What you think of the priest. He 
And his lot will all go down the long slide 
Like free bloody birds. And immediately 

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: 
The sun-comprehending glass, 
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows 
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

It is this expansive, generous nothingness that catches me every time with this poem and makes me think of another poet who wrote of the 'nothing, nothing, and even on the Mountain nothing'. The 'nada' of John of the Cross is the summit of his spiritual vision - God is not a 'thing' to be observed but a powerful kind of 'absence'. In that sense, when we look at God, there is nothing to see. The experience of contemplation is that we find an exactly similar kind of 'nothing' at the core of our own being and that is the place where we encounter the divine - cor ad cor loquitur.

For Quakers, the absence of words or symbols in worship is the means by which we avoid mistaking any 'thing' for God, whether that be a symbol, a doctrine or a sacrament. God is in the silence. But for those of us who do use the rich variety of sound and symbol to express our worship, the use of these things should also be the way in which we learn that they have limits. We sing until there is no note adequate to describe the Silence we encounter, we surround ourselves with beautiful objects in order to see past them to the Nothing. Symbols are there to be broken open to reveal the grand Absence beyond them. But I am glad that Quakers remind those of us who love such things that they must never be mistaken for God.

On Pendle Hill

Jeanette Winterson's new novel, The Daylight Gate, is a retelling of the story of the Pendle Witch Trials. It is full of magic, alchemy, abuse, poverty, suspicion, love and brooding atmosphere. She captures well the tragedy of the plight of women trapped in extreme poverty, whose lives are always on the edge and whose survival can never be taken for granted. They become easy targets in a society undergoing massive cultural change and still recovering from the failed attempt to blow up king and parliament a decade before. The zeal of the law enforcers is driven by a mixture of fear, suspicion of the 'old ways', whether that be Catholicism or witchcraft, and desire to prove loyalty to a king who has taken a particular interest in 'daemonologie'. Winterson never allows the story to be depersonalised, with the relationships of Alice Nutter holding the narrative together. It is a story of power and weakness but also of love and knowledge. The magic is presented without apology or commentary and the lines between magical practice, witchcraft, technology, science and superstition are very fuzzy.

 17th Century England was an extraordinary place, experiencing the massive disruptions of rapid political, religious and intellectual change. The same century that produced Guy Fawkes and the witch trials later produced the Civil War, a new line of monarchy, Isaac Newton and John Locke. It also produced another event on Pendle Hill which contrasts powerfully with the witch trials of 1612. In May 1652, George Fox climbed the hill and experienced a vision that was to lead to a new direction for his band of religious seekers. He saw 'in what places [the Lord] had a great people to be gathered'. The society that was to become known as the Quakers formed, to some extent, around that gently apocalyptic vision. It is remarkable to me that, in a century of such utter turmoil, a religious movement should find a way based on the 'inward light', renouncing violence and power, seeking a path of simplicity and silence.

They were not, however, alone. At the same time in France, a movement known as the Quietists were similarly stressing the inner life at a time of great social agitation. Madame Guyon and her followers were strongly condemned by the church hierarchy at the time, although what was condemned was probably an extreme interpretation of her teaching. Unhelpfully, the erudite and eirenic Francois Fenelon's careful defence of Madame Guyon's position also came under attack and this resulted in a significant setback for the place of the mystical strand of Christian faith and practice for generations.

To me, these expressions of an inward faith at a time of politico-religious strife were powerfully prophetic stands against a compromised church, stands which did not come cheaply to their protagonists. It is wrong to see either the Quakers or the Quiestists as in retreat from the 'real world'. To my mind, they were doing nothing more than reminding their feverishly belligerent contemporaries of a gospel founded on love.

Musical Memory

A few Sundays ago, I found myself celebrating the Eucharist according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in a church I had helped out at a couple of times before. Forgetting that the creed came before the homily in that rite, I had left my prayer book back at my seat so had to recite the Nicene Creed from memory. I was able to do this quite easily but only by singing it in my head to the old plainsong setting by Merbecke. In a similar way, I played the part of Timothy in the musical Salad Days when I was at school. Even 28 years later, I can remember my solo songs, but almost none of my spoken lines (and that's without the benefit of ever having heard it since - believe me, I wouldn't listen to that stuff by choice! And yes, that's me in the boater...).

Most of us know many hundreds, probably many thousands of tunes and songs. There is something abuot the working of human memory that favours music over speech. If mine is anything to go by, it probably also favours faces over names, but that's another story. This works best with the musical styles we hear most often, but it is certainly possible for the memory to cross musical cultures as I discovered recently when an Indian lady, the mother of a young patient in our hospital, asked me to accompany her on the violin as she sang a Tamil religious song I had never heard before. The first time through I was completely lost, but by the third the music had taken root somewhere in my memory.

All of this underlines how vital music is to the transmission, celebration and expression of religious faith. When the Protestant Reformation first made landfall in Scotland, it was through the Lutheran songbook of the Wedderburn brothers of Dundee, the Good and Godly Ballads. When Roman Catholics gather from around the world, a good number of them will be able to join in the Missa de Angelis.  Faith does not belong only in the rational mind, does not find expression only in word or reasoning, does not depend on the most superficial dimensions of human comprehension. Like the music that is its most characteristic vehicle, faith belongs in the memory, in the heart, in the still, silent level of our deepest consciousness. And like that music, it remains incomplete until it finds expression in the physical-spiritual world of harmonic sound.

I have greatly enjoyed my sojourn with Quakers in our local meeting over the past few months and will take something of their rich silence with me for the rest of my life. But as I move back north to work in the very musical context of St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, I will be affirming the essential place of music in my life of faith. Having said all that, Quakers know that silence is well expressed in musical terms and that music itself emerges from silence.

 

An Inner Refuge

The 18th century American Quaker preacher and abolitionist, John Woolman, once described prayer in this way:

The place of prayer is a precious habitation: ... I saw this habitation to be safe, to be inwardly quiet, when there was great stirrings and commotions in the world.

One of the main purposes of prayer or meditation is to access that inner place of stillness where we recognise that we are not identified with the contingencies and buffetings that surround us. Too often, we assume that we are coterminous with our circumstances, that we are made up of the things that happen to us or, worse, that we are what others portray us to be. Prayer is the practice whereby we get beyond these 'events' and find ourselves to be the one who is aware of them. Beyond the 'events' there is a spacious place, a still but generous nothingness which is our inner self. In grammatical terms, we find ourselves to be subject rather than object. In practising meditative prayer, we learn how to see past the distractions towards the one who sees. This is an immensely practical thing.

This is rather counter-intuitive for a number of reasons. First of all, we imagine that we are the rich accumulation of our passions, achievements, memories and abilities. While all of these things are good in themselves, I think it is a mistake to see ourselves as a sum of these parts. If they were all to be taken away, would we cease to exist? If so, does a person with dementia cease to be a person? I think there is a 'more than' to us which is kin to the 'more than' that is God.

A second problem with this would seem to be the notion that outward events are of little enduring value. But I think this would be a mistake. John Woolman was an excellent example of someone who is liberated by this understanding to relate more fully to the world around him, to engage passionately and fearlessly because he has seen that no person is reducible to the stuff that happens to them. We know well that when we relate from that deeper place of grounded self-awareness, we are less likely to treat others as mere objects - they become subjects like we are, 'I' relating to 'I'.

The Cocktail Party in our Heads - thoughts on distraction

One of the greatest challenges in the life of prayer is what to do with the buzz of thoughts that always enter our consciousness when we still ourselves and enter the silence of prayer. The usual advice from the tradition is to acknowledge the thoughts but not entertain them, to let them go gently and to return to whatever technique we have adopted to focus our attention, whether it be a prayer word (mantra), a focus on breathing or a return to the text of our lectio divina.

But the tradition has more to say on this matter and this is very well summarised in the Augustinian Friar Martin Laird's book, Into The Silent Land. Laird has a knack for memorable metaphors and one of these is the title of this post. He talks of a cocktail party going on in our heads, a hum of superficial chatter which we can sometimes mistake for real life. We sometimes compound that chatter by adding our own commentary to it and so end up with a terrible cycle of thoughts about thoughts. Drawing on early Christian tradition, Laird has much wisdom to offer on this conundrum. He does repeat the advice I outlined earlier, but also goes further to suggest that the way we deal with this chatter is absolutely central to our practice of prayer. He suggests that the chatter is, fundamentally, what is separating us from our union with God which is already there within us.

He suggests that it is important to learn the skill of naming these thoughts without adding more commentary to them. In another memorable phrase, he talks about being a witness to these thoughts and not their victim. Next, he suggests that we undertake a shift from identifying ourselves with the thoughts towards an understanding of identity as the one who is conscious of them. 'Shift your attention from the distraction to the awareness itself, to the awareing.' This conscious self, a silent self, is our true self. It is the self that meets with Godself in silence.

In this, I am reminded of the teaching of the unconventional English mystic, Douglas Harding. He talked of our 'headlessness' - we are the one who does the seeing, not an object but a subject whose identity is based on this formless consciousness.

Martin Laird takes his thinking about this further to explore the nature of suffering. Our suffering is not so much the pain we feel as our thoughts about that pain. Curiously, our pain and our afflicted thoughts can become the means by which we grow deeper into that aware self. When we learn to see these afflictions without the embellishments of our commentary on them, they can become the way in which we learn to discover our silent centre, the person we really are.

I'll finish with a piece of Quaker wisdom that puts this in a slightly different way:

I know of no other way, in these deeper depths, of trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon God, than sinking into silence and nothingness before Him... So long as the enemy can keep us reasoning he can buffet us to and fro; but into the true solemn silence of the soul before God he cannot follow us. (John Bellows, 1895)