My Experience

I'm reading a Pendle Hill pamphlet called Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One, by Robert Griswold. This speaks to the condition of many Friends in my Meeting, who are ready to go deeper on this journey, and a large group of us are studying this booklet together this year.

Griswold uses seven key words that come to us from our Quaker history, that were developed to help us sense where we are on the Quaker path, and where we are going. He says these words will help us all to see how the Quaker path unfolds - but only if we "bring them into our experience so they are sealed in our hearts ... Friends from George Fox on have sought to avoid a faith that is notional, that is, just based on imagined or abstract thinking. So it is vital that we come to own these words through experiencing them in our lives".

We should consider these words more as growth markers than as concepts, as part of a sequence. I wrote about My Condition last month.

1. Word #2 - Experience

2. My Earth-Quaker path

3. Next steps

1. Word #2 - Experience:

Griswold says that an experience of Divine Reality changes one into a courageous, compassionate person, healed of wounds, and on a meaningful path. "It isn't good enough to think ... believe  ... or hope we have found the path. We have to find the path and stay on it. And to have this experience, we have to stop and wait and be silent, inside as well as outside".

He quotes George Fox's powerful words, "Your strength is to stand still," about submitting to the Light of God, and then temptation and trouble will fly away.

Griswold goes on to talk about the obstacle of proof: The inner experience is secret and ineffable, and we can't prove we have it, so does it really exist? I'm not concerned about proving anything to anyone else, but I do feel this obstacle to my own faith. Did I really have the experience I think I did, and is it what others would call a Divine experience? But I do have the experience of a Divine Reality (probably, maybe), so what do I need to prove to myself?

Even the word "faith" causes me to cringe, because it's so connected in my mind with being asked to believe without experience - the blind faith of my youth.

Griswold says, "We have forgotten that we did not create ourselves ... The mystery of our existence is not explained by any plans or projects ... We are part of a reality that includes ourselves but is greater than we. As a part we can never comprehend the whole."

Griswold says if I let go of thinking, and just open and be, I will find I have a Guide, and I need not fear. Those could be comforting words, if I wasn't such a cynic.

The second obstacle to an experience of Divine Reality is the notion that spiritual experience can be taught ... it cannot be. It needs to be uncovered and discovered under the load of self-deception I've piled on it; recovered from where I left it as a child.

"Early Friends spoke of being 'convinced' ... first that they were in a condition that needed to change, and second by their experience of the Inward Light." 

I need to be convinced, for certain. The advice Griswold gives is to put my faith (that word again) and trust in the Inward Light over and over again to strengthen my "life of the Spirit"; make this knowledge of who I really am (Love and Light) my daily companion; and let my life be my proof to myself. 

"We can't afford to stop short of this experience of the Spirit. If we have not had such experience, or have had only vague intimations of it, we must be patient and wait in openness until it comes. We have nothing better to do."

2. My Earth-Quaker path:

This past year I've been giving attention to my leadings as an Earth-Quaker, a marriage of my Quaker spirituality with my nature religion leanings. The Light of Truth is leading me to remember the earth and all of Creation in everything I do. I've been discerning and defining what that means to me: 

• 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.
• If I live each day with attention to the earth and Nature in everything I do (greeting the day, eating my lunch, shopping,  transporting myself places, playing with my grandson) all these things become a way to re-connect to my own Nature part.

3. Next steps:

Griswold's advice is to "be patient and wait in openness," trust in the Inward Light, and let my life be proof to myself. With Advent approaching, I find I'm in the perfect place.