The Eternal Now

Quakers are mystics. Mystical experience is direct experience of God; our Quaker silent worship is an invitation to experience that of God within ourselves, and within the entire perceivable universe. 

One dictionary definition: "a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy."

We mostly don't exhibit ecstasy anymore, but the early Friends did quake and shake, which is where our name comes from.

Agenda:

1. Read "Testament of Devotion"

2. Worship with the Earth

1. Read "Testament of Devotion":

I've been reading Thomas R. Kelly's book "Testament of Devotion" (1941). I've taken a couple week's break (again), but now I'm plowing onward; I'm starting Chapter 4, The Eternal Now and Social Concern.

"There is an experience of the eternal breaking into time, which transforms all life into a miracle of faith and action. ... This inward Life and the outward Concern are truly one whole, and, were it possible, ought to be described simultaneously."

The first section of this chapter is the Eternal Now and the Temporal Now... (say what?) I had to look up temporal: Relating to time, and worldly rather than spiritual affairs.

"There is a tendency today, in this generation (he's talking about the 40's, my parents generation), to suppose that religious life must prove its worth because it changes the social order." We no longer expect people to live with their suffering and wait for their reward in heaven. "We are in an era of This-sidedness," here and now, as contrasted to the Other-sidedness of Beyond. The church (and Quakers) have shifted to being "predominantly concerned with this world, with time, and with the temporal order".

"And the test of the worthiness of any experience of Eternity has become: 'Does it change things in time?' If so, let us keep it, if not let us discard it. I submit that this is a lamentable reversal of the true order of dependence. Time is no judge of Eternity. It is the Eternal who is the judge and tester of time."

I think what he's getting at is that time is an illusion; no matter how many good works we do, or how self-righteous we feel, we won't change reality. But I'm fully invested in the concepts of Temporal Now; it's what my parent's generation taught me. I want to agitate, argue, fight the good fight, and make the world better (As Eckhart Toll facetiously puts it: "You are morally superior to reality".)

But here Kelly makes himself clear: He doesn't propose that we scorn the Here of our "maimed and bleeding world" for an equally one-sided preoccupation with the Yonder - "the sunny shores of the Eternal". He wants us to embrace both, with our Quaker experience of the Divine. As George Fox put it: "I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over..."

He says the central message of Friends is the possibility of this experience of Divine Presence and its transforming effect upon all life; that we can live in time, and in the second reality of the Eternal at the same time, which "hovers, quickens, stirs, energizes us, breaks in upon us and in love embraces us...".

2. Worship with the Earth:

Today a few of us are again leading a worship outdoors with a circle of Quakers, for unity with the earth. This is how I connect the Here with the Yonder: 

• First, I hold that the Earth and every part of Creation is a living, spiritual being, and has "that of God" within it.
• We (humans) are a part of nature, not separate.
• We must give the earth and nature a voice in our circle, and listen as best we can to what they are saying, so that we will be better able to discern God's will. We can do this as individuals and as a community.
• Our testimonies of simplicity, integrity, equality, and stewardship all require us to take action for the earth and for nature - to restore, protect, and heal our connection.