Beyond fences

Many of our institutions are struggling to seem relevant these days, that includes the church in its various forms. There are many reasons for this.

One reason is that for a long time religious institutions, such as the church, have tried to maintain a monopoly on access to the spiritual. ‘Come here’ they say, ‘do this’ or ‘read that’ and you can access the divine; the spiritual realm. Institutions as gatekeepers.

One of the great shifts in recent years has been the growing realisation that spirituality is not confined by a set of walls or dogmas, increasing proportions of society have come to see that they can perceive or experience the spiritual beyond the confines that the institutions have appeared to present. Beyond the fences that they were told were unclimbable. This loss of monopoly has added to the difficulties experienced by other institutions, making some of the religious institutions that rely upon it appear as if they have no relevance beyond that of cultural belonging. Gatekeepers are pointless if fences are illusions.

Simon J Cross – Weekday meditation 2/7/2021

For far too long I have tended to believe in the gatekeepers and their narratives of the borderlines. For far too long I felt, albeit unconsciously, that access to the spiritual, or at least to meaningful spiritual practice, depended upon making the right choice of gateway; at least on finding the gateway that was right for me, a gate for whose lock I had the key

Sufficient introspection would have told me I was wrong, but there never seemed to be a gap for sufficient introspection. Being part of a religious institution put constraints on that kind of introspection, kept me thinking in the well-worn tracks of the (in my case Christian) doctrine and praxis I knew so well, effectively limiting my conclusions to those that would fit within the fences they defined.

The past 18 months or so, with churches and the places where people meet so often closed, or reduced to meeting online, have proved those fences to be illusory. The barriers between the selves I have seemed to be have proved illusory also: there is no longer any unavoidable incompatibility between thought and experience, between hope and grace.

In an article on the Secular Buddhist Network Robert M Ellis writes, “I do not describe myself as a Buddhist, because that process of practical examination of what works is far more important to me than loyalty to any tradition. Instead, I describe myself as a ‘Middle Way practitioner’ – where the Middle Way is understood as a universal principle that can be found both in Buddhism and in many other places.”

I am not sure that I would even describe myself as a middle way practitioner (with or without capitals), or a Quaker – still less a Buddhist – these days. (I rather like the way Sam Harris, in Waking Up, avoids handing his key to that gatekeeper.) There must be many of us Einzelgänger und Einzelgängerinnen out here now, beyond the fences, and I’m coming to suspect that we don’t need to form communities, adopt labels, and things like that. We will find each other if we need each other, and just as the current pandemic that has given so many of us space to breathe is a fact of our time, so too is the technology that enables the publication of things like this at the click of a button.

It seems to me that the dark and anxious times in which we live can so easily draw us into taking sides, feeling we must “join the fight” against this or that injustice, or “struggle” against forces beyond our control or understanding which threaten the very existence of humanity. These military metaphors contribute to an atmosphere of anxiety and guilt, where nothing we can do is ever enough, and any rest or stillness is a betrayal of our comrades-in-arms. But grace is not mediated by aggression, and peace may not be found by way of war.

It is only by unknowing, by knowing one’s own unknowing with a passionate thoroughness, that the gift of experience, of direct knowing, can be received. And it is gift. All I have done or ever will do amounts to getting my self out of the way of that channel of wordless gift. The hiddenness to which I am increasingly drawn is a way of getting out of the way – of standing still enough perhaps to act as a kind of beacon or antenna for the signals of stillness.

[An earlier version of this post was published elsewhere earlier this year.]

Is that all?

It seems that we are all too prone to underestimate the treasures of the mind and spirit that are available quite freely and openly to anyone at all. Mindfulness, and associated contemplative practices can be seen as merely techniques for “stress-reduction”, and hence increased workplace effectiveness; Friends’ meeting for worship can be reduced to a means merely to recharge the batteries for activism. But there really is more than this.

Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary. And the conventional opposition between humility and hubris has no place here. Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound. In subjective terms, each of us is identical to the very principle that brings value to the universe. Experiencing this directly—not merely thinking about it—is the true beginning of spiritual life.

Sam Harris, Waking Up, Transworld Digital, p.206

We sit by the pool where the nine hazels drop their nuts, and we skim stones. The salmon of wisdom nibbles our toes, and we giggle and take a selfie. May our hearts open, instead, to the wonders at our feet.

[Note: for the hazels and the salmon, see the story of Fionn MacCumhaill]

Listening for the Light in the silence

The Quaker way of making decisions, through a listening process often described as looking for the will of God for the group, gives a basis for a shared understanding of what kind of God might be involved. That isn’t automatically anything which is named ‘God’ or would be recognised as the God of another tradition. The Nontheist Friends Network use Quaker business method for their decision making and they are clear that they see the ‘will of God’ as metaphorical language to explain a complex, but not supernatural, phenomenon. There are still things we can say about the Spirit which guides a Quaker meeting for worship for business, though. It can be sensed in a room. It can have a direction and make distinctions: yes this, not that. It is worth trusting.

Rhiannon Grant, Telling the Truth About God: Quaker Approaches to Theology, Quaker Quicks, p.14

During meeting for worship, and even more in our own practice of prayer or contemplation, we can enter a condition analogous to that known in Sōtō Zen as Shikantaza, derived from a Chinese term in Caodong Buddhism, usually translated into English as “Silent Illumination”, or “Serene Reflection”. Merv Fowler, however (in a now out of print book) translates it as “open awareness”, which seems to me a much better, less other-worldly translation. It is this condition which, in my understanding, allows us to listen for the Light in the silence. Meister Eckhart, to put it in a Christian contemplative context, calls it gelassenheit. It is from this place of open awareness that true ministry comes, and in the Quaker decision-making process, is – at least ideally – the source of our discernment.

This practice of quiet listening, together and individually, is what lies at the heart of Quakerism, and is the source of our faith and the root of our practice. We lose sight of it at our peril: without it, an aggressive, politically polarised activism based on “send[ing] our passions on God’s errands” (William Penn) misses the real source of our strength, and loses track of the sure wisdom that rests in silence.

Quiet…

“. . . concerning the manner of this Seed or Light’s operation in the hearts of all men, which will show yet more manifestly how we differ vastly from all those that exalt a natural power or light in man; and how our principle leads, above all others, to attribute our whole salvation to the mere power, spirit, and grace of God. . . I say . . . that as the Grace and Light in all is sufficient to save all, and of its own nature would save all; so, it strives and wrestles with all, for to save them; he that resists its striving, is the cause of his own condemnation; he that resists it not, it becomes his salvation: so that in him, that is saved, the working is of the grace, and not of the man; and it is a passiveness, rather than an act . . . So that the first step is not by man’s working, but by his not contrary working.”

Robert Barclay, Apology, Proposition V and VI, section 17, with thanks to QuakerQuaker

The heart open to grace and light in stillness; this is as close as one can get to the spirit of shikantaza, “just sitting”, in the Sōtō zen tradition. Thomas Keating writes:

The contemplative dimension of the Gospel is Christ’s program for getting acquainted with the Ultimate Reality as it really is, which is “no thing.” “No thing” means no particular thing, whether concept, feeling or bodily experience. God just is—without any limitation. And the way to connect with this “Is-ness” is to just be, too.

Thomas Keating, On Prayer, Lantern Books, p.7

We are back to “no thing“, the phrase which has haunted me for so many years, along with Meister Eckhart’s Istigkeit, isness. The surrender to stillness, the quiet place in the heart (Matthew 6:6), is all that is needed. The complexities of metaphysical thought, of elaborated technique, are no more than Barclay’s “contrary working” to the one in the hidden room of prayer.

Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.

Isaac Penington, 1661 – Quaker faith & practice 26.70