Prophetic Community
Sunderland P Gardner Lecture
Oral version
Canada Yearly Meeting, 18th Eighth Month, 2009
Chers Amies
Merci de m'avoir invite. Je suis ravie d'etre chez vous et de vous offrir ce cadeau de l'Esprit. Ici j'ai remarque des quakeurs francophones qui se sentent tres confortables a parler en anglais. Je vous felicite humblement de votre facilite. Brievement voici mon marque de respect de votre belle langue et de votre culture.
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De meme, comme je ferais chez moi par respect des traditions aborigenes, je remercie les Premieres Nations d'ici de nous avoir accueillis sur leur terre, et d'avoir partage avec nous, leur profonde connexion avec cette terre, leur sens de l'integrite de la creation, dans un cercle d'amitie et d'echange. Nous avons des choses a apprendre de vous.
Dear Friends,
I am so grateful to you for what you have asked me to do. It has been a very special gift to me to prepare this gift for you, to share with you my faith, how I experience the Spirit working in us all.
And just as I would thank the Australian Aboriginal people, I thank the First Nations of this land for sharing with us their deep spiritual connection with the land, its Creator, and the circle of all creatures. We have much to learn from you.
I must explain to you the beautiful image by Haida artist , Bill Reid, of a raven watching over us. This is telling the story of the creator Raven who dispelled the darkness, spread life and discovered humankind. We will hear of ravens again tonight.
I was asked to do this lecture about 15 months ago and with a mounting clearness that it felt in right order, I said yes. It changed the focus of my religious life over these 15 months, and in recent months it shaped my days, as I followed what I am being required by God to say to you. I have been led through these months to bring to you a story and a message which is for you and I, all.
This message is shaped by the vessel that I am. So it will help if I begin by introducing myself.
I grew up in a Quaker family in northern England towards the end of the Second World War. I was not a birthright Friend because my parents wanted me to make my own choice but I loved going to meeting every week and had many friends there. I applied for and received membership when I was 16.
I have learned from young Friends' camps, encounter groups, feminist discussions, folk festivals, anti-war demonstrations, personal counselling, some amateur singing, dancing, meditation and yoga, a lot of traveling, and religious ceremonies of many kinds in many places. I see now that I have an adventurous streak but otherwise I am an utterly ordinary, 20th century, privileged, anglo-european woman.
And here I am - your visitor and I do not know you. Yet I know you are my Friends and I pray that what I have to say will serve some of God's purposes for you now, or as time passes. I hope that each of you will receive something from the Spirit's work in me that changes you and brings you to the closer, deeper Love for each other, for the whole of creation, and for God.
I am conscious that some of you in the audience will find my use of the word God, uncomfortable or distracting ... But I have to ask you to go inward and feel where this word is coming from in me, because it is the only word that works for me when I need to name the ultimate source of my religious life.
So what are we going to do together this evening? We are going to look first at Quakerism today at its best because that's what we aspire to, the vision we can see. Then I am going to take you through an old story that sheds much light on our needs.
Our tradition teaches that, each one of us, wherever we come from, is in a unique, personal relationship with the divine Presence. Much of this is private and inexpressible. We each live in God's creative activity and we can feel God working through us personally and inwardly, as long as we are open to it. This is the reliable, tested foundation of Quaker community practices. We feel ourselves inwardly to be a tiny part of a wonderful mystery in which there is eternal Law, here and now. And we are called to uphold it.
Individually we do a great deal of work to become self-aware, to understand our inner lives and our present age and there is a huge variety of ways to do just that.
As we look inward, we are drawn into small groups where we listen and respond to each other, intensely, openly, personally. We learn deep courtesies for living in spirit-led community. We learn to express and then lay aside our own opinion. In one sense, we can claim time to speak our own view, and in another, we are willing to let go of our own opinion. We offer what we feel led to do and also what our community asks of us. We are willing to step aside to give space for other's gifts to grow.
The daily challenge of the Quaker way is to do all that good inner work and, at the same time, live as if you are just at the beginning, ready for new experiences, ears and eyes wide open, dependent on others, seeking the discovery of new, solid ground. It brings us to a sense of our purpose in the world. This 'sense' is not the whole divine purpose of course and it is significantly shaped by our past experience and wider culture, but it is nevertheless new to us, real and insistent. It requires us to hold the tension, swim in the turbulence of Spirit-led community.
We are at the beginning again; we are seeds for a new season. So let us look at where we have come from. At the beginning of the 20th Century there was great Spiritual turbulence among Friends and it took them into a hundred years of radical social witness. It was a century of new inescapable questions about truth, faith, and religion. The questioning was helped along by two terrible wars, a great depression as well as huge expansion of science and ways to control the natural processes on which we depend. It bred a terrible skepticism.
Growing up as a Quaker child in England after the Second World War, I went to meeting with my parents every week, but I was not taught any spiritual discipline at home. I was expected to find it myself. At children's meeting, I was taught about Quaker heroes and non-Quaker heroes too, (eg Elizabeth Fry one week and Florence Nightingale the next) and as a Young Friend I heard many visiting Quakers describe their work-for refugees, poverty, education, race relations, peace. The value of this work was self-evident to me, but its spirit-led origins remained hidden. And it impressed me that those adventurous Quakers who worked in exotic places had no wish to spread Quakerism.
Many Quakers were establishing service organisations to heal our war-torn world. Others worked for freedom of conscience, international relations, disarmament, education and human rights. They developed YM and FWCC structures to advance this work. This was the way they lived the testimonies, used Quaker processes and gave service.
And the worship gradually changed too. Spoken ministry became less a declaration of faith and more about thoughtful opinion on topical concerns. Silence was a good time to think about one's priorities. Friends who gave religious teaching in meeting were loved but 'old-fashioned.' The Quaker testimonies were seen increasingly as secular ethics. The spiritual life was a private matter or simply not relevant.
This was the Quakerism I stayed away from for 16 years - because I thought I didn't need it. As a public servant, I worked for good causes but had a weak personal position on my priorities and was personally too unclear to discuss my faith. I too had been silenced by the C20th demand for proof and rationality in belief and practice.
When I began to attend a Quaker meeting again in the early 1980s, I was looking not for personal faith but for a safe and welcoming community for my two children. What I found was a richer community life than I had ever found in neighbourhood or workplace. My ethical awareness expanded rapidly. My own life seemed pretty poor by comparison with so many Friends. I was drawn to work for the rights of indigenous people, and of children.1
Yet I did not have a strong sense of God's loving presence at that time. It was action to heal the world that I focused on. Looking back, I see myself as still blind to the deeper sources of Quaker ways. I described Quakers as 'not this, not that', and hid my Quaker identity from colleagues and neighbours. My Quakerism was ethical level, though occasionally I experienced transforming moments of inner healing and movement. Gradually however there came an increasing desire to examine my inner life and pursue spiritual learning. I found my religious roots while studying 2 over two three month spells at Woodbrooke.The transforming moment - the tipping point - came when I was reading the writings of the 18 year-old James Parnell, who died in Colchester Jail, because of the deliberate cruelty of his jailers. As I entered into his ministry, I changed and began to walk the spiritual path.
In the same year I experienced the blessing of FWCC. My first Triennial 3 was as an observer in 2000, in New Hampshire. I found it utterly disorientating. I encountered attractive alternatives to liberal, universalist Quakerism. I was touched by the personal warmth, joy and bible-based ministry of African and South American Friends, moved by the spiritual hunger of Friends from tiny isolated Meetings, and amazed by the ways that familiar clerking processes still held all this together.
Since then I have participated in two more triennials, two separate Asia West-Pacific Gatherings and served on two FWCC Committees. No longer disorientated by the variety, I now feel deeply enriched by worship with Friends around the world. It seems profoundly important to me for the future. The most recent 22nd FWCC Triennial in Dublin was given the theme "Finding the Prophetic Voice for our time".3 It was a theme that evangelically-minded, conservative and universalist Friends could devote their Spirits and attention to, while interpreting it differently.4
'It is our hope', said the Dublin Epistle, 'that we can recognize and encourage the prophets among us. Can we be open to the possibility of ourselves being called to such service?' It planted a curiosity in me about the prophetic tradition for reasons will become clear as we go.
I am now going to taking us back nearly 3000 years to look closely at a great Hebrew prophet, an archetype of prophecy. Then I'll touch briefly, on early Christian and early Quaker teachings about prophecy. And this will flow into an exploration of what is required of us to be a 'prophetic community' today - and tomorrow.
Now I have to ask you to put aside any dislike you have of the Hebrew Bible: the unbelievable events and violent stories. I too rejected biblical teaching for decades, with doubt and revulsion. I now take it seriously, and see it as the story of an ancient people's relationship with God. The stories are lessons in how to lose God, find God, stay in close relationship with God. These stories are deep streams of wisdom in our western religious heritage.
Of course another problem is the words 'prophecy' and 'prophet' are much misused today. They have become debased and disliked in common useage. It is originally about interpreting the will of gods, many or one. The Hebrew prophets received God's word and conveyed it to the people and, importantly, to those with the power to lead change, including their government.
Working on this lecture, I was drawn to the story of Elijah. It just came to me out of the blue. Elijah was with Jesus at his transfiguration, which led him to overturn the tables at the Temple. I was faced with big questions: Why was Elijah such an important prophet to Jesus? What was Elijah's story? For the very first time, I went to the Hebrew text, and read the story. It is full of utterly puzzling events, but it gripped me.
As I wrestled with it - with empathy, and with my own values activated, as me a seeker meeting with him also a seeker, I found a profound story of spiritual obedience, crisis and radical enlightenment. I got over his hero status and he became an example to me.
You may remember that Elijah, predicted a terrible drought and famine. He brought fire and rain on Mount Carmel, and slaughtered the Ba'al prophets. He was carried to Heaven in a chariot of fire - a familiar longing expressed in many Gospel songs. But the thing you are most likely to recognise, but perhaps not be aware it was Elijah, was his hearing of the still small voice.
Elijah's spirit-led life was one of deep trust. He knew the old law and was committed to upholding it. His first action was to urge the King to lead the people away from idolatry and back to the God who loved them. King Ahab was furious, and Elijah fled to a distant creek where he was fed by ravens.
When I was wrestling with this story some moths ago, it was hot summer. The grass and the plants were very dry. I put water out in a small bird bath everyday for the birds to drink. One day as I was watching, an Australian Raven brought a whole sandwich, put it in the water, stood on it and tore off bits with its beak. They have a complex language with many words to communicate with each other. They are not friendly to humans but they certainly know what's going on.
Elijah's next action was to repair a broken altar on Mount Carmel and to demonstrate God's power of fire and rain. Then he led a massacre of 450 Ba'al prophets to cleanse the nation of false belief and practice. It was a horrifying religious bloodbath, done in obedience to old Hebrew law 5.
This brought the religious conflict between the Hebrews and the Baal worshippers to a head. Queen Jezebel, who was funding the spread of Ba'al worship, issued a death sentence on Elijah and he fled again. But as he fled into the desert, Elijah realized the massacre had been a terrible mistake against God. Exhausted and alone, and feeling an utter failure, he prayed, "Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." But death was not granted. Instead angels brought him food and gave him encouragement for the long journey ahead of him. He walked through the desert to Mount Sinai, and climbed up to the cave where Moses received the Law. There, God said to him, "Why are you here, Elijah?"
He poured out his grief - for the deceived and suffering people, for his failure to bring about change, for his confusion about the Law. Then he went out of the cave to look for God in the wind, the fire and the earthquake. And Elijah discovered that He was not in those external physical forces, but came to him in a still small voice. It is a story so beautifully reflected in the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. This was Elijah's profound religious breakthrough. It laid the foundation for later prophetic messages of peace, justice and compassion.
Elijah spent the rest of his life teaching ordinary receptive people and the prophet Elisha. His spiritual authority was so great that legions of soldiers scattered at his word, and he finally succeeded in humbling the King. In the end, he was taken up to heaven by chariots of fire, and in Jewish tradition, he did not die and will return.
So when Elijah appeared at the transfiguration, he was giving his wisdom and encouragement to Jesus. Jesus brought the whole prophetic message of peace, compassion and inclusivity to all people, and called his disciples to carry the prophetic message forward. They discovered the gift of prophecy in themselves 6 and the early Christians became a prophetic community 7 whom Paul urged, 'strive eagerly for spiritual gifts, above all that you may prophesy'.8
Now let us leap forward over the next 1650 years to the emergence of the Quakers. George Fox knew the whole Bible intimately. He found continuity of the still small voice. He understood himself as a prophet, and tested his gift in various ways, based on actions of the Hebrew prophets. Some thought him to be a returned Elijah and early Quaker meetings were believed to bring rain to the locality.
Many early Friends drew eagerly on the prophetic message and on stories of prophesying. They in turn saw themselves as prophets " publishers of Truth. "God has spoken and therefore I will prophesy," declared Dorothy White.9
Indeed, the prophetic tradition is evident in many Quaker writings. We refer to John Woolman as a prophet - and there are many others. For Howard Brinton, "the term prophetic indicates in a single word the basic theory of Quaker ministry." 10 And for William Taber, " a truly gathered meeting is a band of - silent prophets resting quietly on the prophetic stream."11
So now we come to today. I hope you are beginning to sense what all this means to me, and for our meetings and processes today.
Many Friends in Australia, and I suspect here in Canada too, are troubled by the weakness of our voices on many serious concerns. Some, including me, see our present-day efforts as bland friendliness and moderate views, mixed with uncertainty and fear of sounding dogmatic. But many of us, also including me, yearn for deeper Quaker community that speaks courageously about our transformed lives and deep convictions. Where does our weakness come from? Why are we so full of questions and have so few answers?
In mid 2006, my Friend Katherine Purnell and I were feeling an urgent need for Friends to share more deeply with each other about our spiritual lives. Under the heading "Quaker Voices in the 21st Century (QVC21)" we traveled to every Regional Meeting in Australia, facilitating workshops and hearing about the issues for Australian Friends today. This was ministry which each could not have given on our own. We created safe listening spaces for Friends to share their inward promptings and quiet convictions. We aimed at encouraging individual discovery through sharing, and local discernment of action. We were very clear that the strengthening needed to be at the local level.
We acted on the view that strong voices come from the Spirit at the very centre of our lives. When we speak and listen deeply to each other, we find the words to tell our true experience. If we do not do that we do not know what to say, to each other or the wider world. At the Quaker Voices session at Yearly Meeting 2008, the phrase -the Spirit is bubbling up- was used time and time again. It was as if our traveling ministry had released some blocks, reduced some fears, and shown the profound value of offering one's own idea or expressing one's own vision.
At the same time, a different initiative emerged - for an Australian Quaker Centre to offer study, rest and renewal to Friends. It was as if our work had laid the groundwork for local community building and for a very substantial national initiative.
Friends, all this is in stark contrast to our wider culture which is mostly about self, is competitive, materialistic, unequal and relies on force. Ordinary lives become overwhelmed by insecurity, uncertainty, greed, anger and violence. Our message must be presented straight and clearly to those who can bring about change, and renew hope.
I grieve, I feel God's grief, and I long to share how doing things differently does work. Our meetings are patterns for peaceable, inclusive community that worships together and cares for each other. That itself is prophetic work.
But it is not enough.
Our meetings receive an inflow of newcomers who carry their spiritual woundedness embedded in their bodies, emotions and thinking. Many come as refugees from churches where they have struggled with spiritually-destructive hierarchy, unsustainable dogma and narrow-minded teaching. We must reach out and welcome these wounded seekers into our meetings. We can offer the healing and enrichment of inward religious experience. They can get to know us as communities which are gentle, respectful, patient, inclusive, honest. But how to reach out to them? We have a deep fear of compounding the harm. It is the C20th fear produced even in us, by a distrust of our own faith, a desire for quick and complete solutions and a willingness to be satisfied with very little. Do you hear God calling us to face all this squarely, corporately, prophetically, with our full attention on God's presence and guidance?
So this is what I see in the archetypal story of Elijah.
His courage was deeply rooted in his religious tradition, which had brought him to complete trust in God. God needed him and guided him to safety and rest. He needed long periods of solitude with God, to be clear about the step he was to take. His faithfulness and obedience brought a deepening relationship with God. But he did not do all this on his own.
He had learned the tradition and discovered faith in his home community. When he made mistakes, he was kept safe in community. When he was exhausted and full of despair he was fed and encouraged by community. When his prophetic work was done, he devoted himself to ministry among communities that would listen.
A prophetic life is a solitary one but it is also upheld by community for it is dangerous, exhausting work. There is real danger to life, the possibility of being wrong, of seeming to fail. It involves long journeys through the desert, alone and confused.
A bruised prophet retreats from the world, including the Meeting, to give back to God her or his frustration, hopelessness, sadness, self-blame, self-doubt, exhaustion. She or he needs to become empty again, to know endless time, to encounter God's vast creative energy, as if for the first time; to see life as flames burning and not consuming.
The wilderness, real or symbolic, is the place to encounter again God's creative power in its most evident and basic forms. An hour of Meeting for Worship is but a taste, a sip, of what the bruised prophet needs. What is needed is the spiritual refreshment, at least metaphorically, of a wild ravine on the far side of the Jordan River, a campfire in the desert, or a hut on the icy wastes, to reconnect with the grandeur and creativity of God - and simply being alive. |
Nevertheless a prophet in retreat needs quiet and unobtrusive help. Remember - Elijah was fed by ravens and encouraged by angels. They came to him because they recognised his gifts and need. It is a service to feed, guard and encourage God's messenger while he/she rests.
Many activist Quakers are independent loners, who really need their meeting. A spiritually-attuned meeting, which worships together often, is the nursery of the prophetic voice. It recognises giftedness and offers guidance. It provides a refuge for those who speak or act prophetically. And those who offer to hide, safeguard, and nurture a prophet will be rewarded by catching the prophet's power. 12
We do not all have the full gift of prophecy. But some of us do. And all of us have prophetic moments as we centre our lives in the Spirit and come deeper into the Love. Yes - you may be a scientist or a social worker or an artist or an administrator. You may be serving tea, or disposing of the rubbish or clerking or typing, but you can pay attention and embody the prophetic message in the task.
As meetings, we are called to trust and value the prophetic flow among us, to uphold and enable the mystery of it. We are not to be skeptical and hold back. 'Here I am, send me', is an answer, not a request.13 As we liberate the prophetic voices among us, it draws our whole community into the prophetic stream - a life of worship, holy simplicity, humility, joy, clarity and speaking truth.14
The Quaker story is about keeping open the wild underground springs of prophecy. It is prophetic for us to be a faith community that is inclusive, loves our creative differences, holds tension with patience, and worships together. To really grasp how to do this we need to know our tradition intimately, study its roots, and that Friends, means the Bible.
Thomas Kelly, giving a speech in 1940, called Friends to rekindle their spiritual fire in response to that dark time of holocaust and war. Our planet is still threatened by terrible war, genocide and oppression. Kelly concluded: "Let us try, tonight, with terrible earnestness, to face the depth and glimpse some of the heights of religion in ourselves- for the meek and mild mediocrity of most of us, stands in sharp contrast to that volcanic, upheaving, shaggy power of the prophets, whose descendants we were meant to be."15
Writing this lecture has been an intense journey for me. The journey together is not finished. In response to the darkness of our time, I am saying with all my heart, "Let us try, with terrible earnestness to be a prophetic community: volcanic, upheaving, and shaggy, as we are meant to be."
Helen Bayes 19/8/09
- Bayes, Helen, Respecting the Rights of Children and Young People:
the story of a Leading, James Backhouse Lecture, AYM, 2002 - Bayes, Helen, Proud, Stubborn and Free,
the Earliest Quakers and their Children,
Woodbrooke Journal no 13, 2003. - 22nd Triennial was held in Dublin, Ireland, 11-19 August 2007
- I thank David Blamires for this explanation.
- as in Numbers
- Acts 2:4, 33
- 1 Corinthians 12:10
- 1 Corinthians 14:1, 3
- ibid, p199
- Brinton, Howard PHP 54
- Taber, W, The Prophetic Stream PHP 256, p 27
- Taber, op cit p22
- Isaiah 6:8
- Taber, William, The Prophetic Stream, PHP 256
- ibid, p 110