The very simple heart of the early Quaker message is needed as much to-day as it ever was… The really universal thing is a living experience. It is reached in various ways, and expressed in very different language… The common bond is in the thing itself, the actual inner knowledge of the grace of God. Quakerism can only have a universal message if it brings men and women into this transforming knowledge. The early Friends certainly had this knowledge, and were the means of bringing many thousands of seekers into the way of discovery. In virtue of this central experience, the Quaker movement can only be true to itself by being a missionary movement.
Henry T Hodgkin, 1916 – Quaker faith & practice 28.01
In his recent post ‘Spiritual Generosity‘, Craig Barnett writes of British Friends’ “culture of hiddenness”, and of how “[i]n recent years initiatives such as Quaker Quest and national Quaker Week have challenged Friends to overcome this…”
Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that the “actual inner knowledge of the grace of God” is in itself a hidden thing. Its effects may not be hidden – as for instance where Friends have worked in so many practical ways for peace and justice – but the root of all we do as Friends is deep in our hearts, where “that of God” in each of us meets the Spirit in silence.
It can be hard for us to make the leap from the inwardness of meeting for worship to the outwardness of Quaker Week, and yet we manage it happily enough, in our active work for peace, economic justice, sustainability and nonviolence. But we have so much more to give. We are not, as I wrote in another post here some time ago, “[merely] a kind of portal for any number of political, peace, environmental and other concerns that share a broadly pacifist, left-wing, climate-sensitive stance.” As Craig Barnett goes on to say:
The Religious Society of Friends is not an end in itself, but a vehicle for nurturing the spiritual practices that can sustain a more fully human life – one that is guided by and surrendered to the Principle of Life within. What Quakers in Britain have to share with others is a tradition of spiritual practice that enables us to encounter a source of healing, guidance, meaning and purpose within ourselves, and the quality of the community life that emerges from sharing these practices together. The motivation for our outreach is spiritual generosity towards all of those people who are experiencing the confusion, meaninglessness and disconnection that are so characteristic of our times.
Authentic spiritual practices are remedies for the soul-sickness of a culture that suppresses and distorts our inner lives in order to keep selling us distraction. The Quaker way offers a path through the modern condition of meaninglessness and isolation by drawing us into the purposes of God, by which our own healing and growth into maturity are brought to participate in the healing of the world.
As Hodgkin said above (and remember he was writing during the First World War), “Quakerism can only have a universal message if it brings men and women into this transforming knowledge [of grace].” Our work of outreach is one of opening our arms, our hearts, even just the doors of our meeting houses, to those who have perhaps not encountered such a thing before, among the disconnected contradictions of the world we have been born into. This is very simply an act of love:
Many of the people who come to us are both refugees and seekers. They are looking for a space to find their authenticity, a space in a spiritual context. It is a process of liberation. Some discover what they need among Friends, others go elsewhere. This gift of the sacred space that Friends have to offer is a two-edged sword. It is not easy administratively to quantify; it leads to ambiguity. It demands patient listening; it can be enriching and challenging to our complacency. It is outreach in the most general sense and it is a profound service. It may not lead to membership and it may cause difficulties in local meetings. But if someone comes asking for bread, we cannot say, sorry we are too busy discovering our own riches; when we have found them, we’ll offer you a few. Our riches are precisely our sharing. And the world is very, very hungry.
Harvey Gillman, 1993 – Quaker faith & practice 28.10