PYM – Faith and Practice

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Historical Introduction
• Friends Beliefs and Practices
• Our Meeting Community
• Applications of Friends Testimonies
• Extracts from the Writings of Friends
  • Advices
  • Belief
  • Worship
  • Experience
  • Concerns, Leadings, Testimonies
• Structures in our Yearly Meeting
• Queries
• Glossary
• Sources of Extracts
• Biographical Notes of Authors
• Index

151

[F]or some time I took no notice of any religion, but minded recreation, as it is called; and went after it into many excesses and vanities—as foolish mirth, carding, dancing, and singing. I frequented music assemblies, and made vain visits where there were jovial feastings. But in the midst of all this my heart was often sad and pained beyond expression. I was not hurried into those follies by being captivated by them, but from not having found in religion what I had sought and longed after. I would often say within myself, what are they all to me? I could easily leave all this; for it hath not my heart, it is not my delight, it hath not power over me. I had rather serve the Lord, if I could indeed feel and know that which would be acceptable to Him.

O Lord, suffer me no more to fall in with any false way, but show me the Truth.

Mary Proude Springett Penington, c. 1650

152

In the condition I have mentioned, of weary seeking and not finding, I married my dear husband Isaac Penington. My love was drawn to him because I found he saw the deceit of all mere notions about religion; he lay as one that refused to be comforted until he came to His temple, who is truth and no lie. All things that had only the appearance of religion were very manifest to him, so that he was sick and weary of show, and in this my heart united with him, and a desire was in me to be serviceable to him. I gave up much to be a companion to him.

I resolved never to go back into those formal things I had left, having found death and darkness in them; but would rather be without a religion, until the Lord manifestly taught me one....

Whilst I was in this state, I heard of a new people called Quakers, but I resolved not to inquire after them, nor their principles. I heard nothing of their ways except that they used thee and thou to every one; and I saw a book written about plain language by George Fox.

Mary Proude Springett Penington, c. 1655

153

[I]n consequence of my decided resolution to attend the meetings of Friends, my dear father (no doubt in faithfulness to his own religious views, and from the desire to rescue a poor child from apprehended error) requested me not to return to the paternal roof, unless I could be satisfied to conform to the religious education which he had conscientiously given me. This, with a tender, heart-piercing remonstrance from my dear, dear mother, was far more deeply felt than I can describe; and marvelous in my view, even to this day, was the settled, firm belief that I must follow on, to know the soul's salvation for myself; truly in a way that I knew not!

Mary Capper, c.1830

154

Today I have felt all my old irreligious feelings. My object shall be to search, try to do right, and if I am mistaken, it is not my fault; but the state I am now in makes it difficult to act. What little religion I have felt has been owing to my giving way quietly and humbly to my feelings; but the more I reason upon it, the more I get into a labyrinth of uncertainty, and my mind is so much inclined to both scepticism and enthusiasm, that if I argue and doubt, I shall be a total sceptic; if, on the contrary, I give way to my feeling, and as it were, wait for religion, I may be led away.

But I hope that will not be the case; at all events, religion, true and uncorrupted, is all that comforts the greatest; it is the first stimulus to virtue; it is a support under every aZiction. I am sure it is better to be so in an enthusiastic degree than not to be so at all, for it is a delightful enthusiasm.

Elizabeth Gurney Fry, 1798

155

The first gleam of light, "the first cold light of morning" which gave promise of day with its noontide glories, dawned on me one day at meeting, when I had been meditating on my state in great depression. I seemed to hear the words articulated in my spirit, "Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee." Then I believed that God speaks...by His spirit. I strove to lead a more Christian life, in unison with what I knew to be right, and looked for brighter days, not forgetting the blessings that are granted to prayer.

Caroline Fox, 1841

156

I have been tried with the applause of the world, and none know how great a trial that has been, and the deep humiliations of it; and yet I fully believe it is not nearly so dangerous as being made much of in religious society. There is a snare even in religious unity, if we are not on the watch. I have sometimes felt that it was not so dangerous to be made much of in the world, as by those whom we think highly of in our own Society: the more I have been made much of by the world, the more I have been inwardly humbled. I could often adopt the words of Sir Francis Bacon—"When I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before God."

Elizabeth Gurney Fry, 1844

157

Hope, peace, and encouragement is not enough to depict my religion. When my spirit is animated by my religion and is aware of the inviolable Truth prevailing, my heart dances for joy and gratitude and sings the praise of God! Every moment is a mystery. Even this body of mine, what a mystery it is, whose heart is beating incessantly without my knowing, and whose lungs breathe ceaselessly without my knowing! This air is God's, the light is God's, we are his. I am living with all the universe, and all the universe is living with me, in God.

Yukio Irie, 1957

158

Some time ago I was in Germany, visiting isolated Friends throughout that country. One man I met was a factory worker. He spoke ungrammatical German. His teeth were discoloured, his shoulders were stooped. He spoke the Swabian dialect. But he was a radiant soul, a quiet, reticent saint of God. He knew the inner secrets of the life that is clothed in God. We were drawn together by invisible currents. We knew each other immediately, more deeply than if we had been neighbours for twenty years. I called at his simple home near Stuttgart. He motioned me to escape from the rest of the visitors and come into the bedroom. There, leaning on the window sills, we talked together. Immediately we gravitated to the wonders of prayer and of God's dealing with the soul. I told him of some new insights that had recently come to me. He listened and nodded confirmation, for he already knew those secrets. He understood and could tell me of things of the Spirit of which I had only begun to guess. I feel sure that I knew more history and mathematics and literature and philosophy than did he. And the social gulf in Germany between a professor and a factory man is infinitely wide. But that afternoon I was taught by him, and nourished by him, and we looked at each other eye to eye and knew a common love of Christ. Then as the afternoon shadows fell and dissolved with twilight, our words became less frequent, until they ceased altogether. And we mingled our lives in the silence, for we needed no words to convey our thoughts. I have only had one letter from him in the year, but we are as near to each other now, every day, as we were that afternoon.

Thomas Kelly, 1942

159

I have sometimes been asked what were my reasons for deciding on that refusal to register for war duties that sent me to Holloway Jail twenty-two years ago. I can only answer that my reason told me that I was a fool, that I was risking my job and my career, that an isolated example could do no good, that it was a futile gesture since even if I did register my three small children would exempt me. But reason was fighting a losing battle. I had wrestled in prayer and I knew beyond all doubt that I must refuse to register, that those who believed that war was the wrong way to fight evil must stand out against it however much they stood alone, and that I and mine must take the consequences. The "and mine" made it more difficult, but I question whether children ever really suffer loss in the long run through having parents who are willing to stand by principles; many a soldier had to leave his family and thought it his duty to do so. When you have to make a vital decision about behaviour, you cannot sit on the fence. To decide to do nothing is still a decision, and it means that you remain on the station platform or the airstrip when the train or plane has left.

Kathleen Lonsdale, 1964

160

The field of my religious training presupposed a clear definite call to a particular kind of service. I must confess that this has never happened to me.... I have never aspired to a particular job or asked for one; nor have I been "stricken on the road to Damascus" as was Paul and had my way clearly dictated to me from the heavens. The entire course has been a maturing of family and personal decisions. In perspective I should say in all humility that my life has been characterized by an inadequate, persistent effort to try to find a workable harmony between religious profession and daily practice.

Clarence E. Pickett, 1966

161

By day I sat in the Gandhi library reading the writings that had poured from Gandhi's pen in his life. As I read his passionate words about sarvodaya (welfare) I knew that these [people] were my brothers and sisters too, and that I also could not want what they could not have. I wrote long letters home about stripping ourselves of what we did not need....

I saw how we all had chained ourselves to daily rhythms that were bound to defeat us. Day after day we recapitulated the old cycle of effort, irritation, impatience and anger-softened by small epiphanies of love and remorse. The spirit had to break through from time to time, because spirit is our very nature, but...how heavy-handed our daily behavior. For how many millennia had this gone on? Was the human race never to discover its self-forged chains?

The snapping of my chains was my signal that the human race was indeed to be freed—in theological language—from the bondage of sin and death. My experience is one of the simplest and oldest religious experiences that come to humans.... Was the leap an act of the will or an invasion of grace?

Elise Boulding, 1975

162

For me the certain realisation of God came at the time of the breakdown of my marriage. The unthinkable had happened and I seemed to be at my lowest state physically and mentally. There seemed to be no present and no future but only a nightmare of dark uncertainty. One distinct message reached me: to "go under" was out of the question, I could only start again, learn from my mistakes and take this second chance at life that I had been given. I found a strength within I did not know I had and I believe now that it came from the prayers and loving support of so many people round me.

This rebirth was for me a peak experience, the memory of which is a constant reassurance in times of emptiness and doubt. Facing the future, even with a sure faith, is not easy. I am cautious at every step forward, taking time and believing I shall be told where to go and what to do. Waiting patiently and creatively is at times unbearably difficult, but I know it must be so.

Jennifer Morris, 1980

163

About a dozen years ago I became critically ill and I have a vivid memory of looking down on my self on the bed; doctors and nurses worked on that body, and I felt held in such secureness, joy, and contentment, a sense of the utter rightness of things.... The crisis passed and I was Wlled with wonder at the newness of life....

Soon after, I had radical surgery followed by many months of slow recovery with repeated setbacks and further operations. There were times when truly out of the depths I cried; I had no reserves of strength left, either physical, emotional, or spiritual, but I never completely lost the memory of being held and the wonder at being alive. Gradually the wounds healed: old griefs as well as disease and operations.

Jenifer Faulkner, 1982

164

When I was a child, the man who lived next door and who was our landlord, tried to rape me. He then frightened me into silence, threatening to make us homeless again if I were to tell. My mother used to say, "I can't think why you have changed so much." Well of course I knew, but I couldn't tell, so I withdrew into a shell. People used to say how serious I had become. Where was all my former sparkle?

Thirty years later, his wife visited my father after my mother's death. I happened to be there at the time. She told me that her husband whom we had called Uncle Sid, was dying. I knew at once from the sudden lurch of my stomach what I had to do. I had to go and see him. I was terrified.

The next day I drove to the hospital. I parked outside, and then I became paralysed with fear. I simply could not get out of the car. "God," I prayed urgently, "you'll have to take over. I can't do this myself." I was able to get out of the car and go and find Uncle Sid. He was very shocked to see me and looked frightened. But God had taken over, and I was given just the right gentle words to say, and Uncle Sid said to me, "I can't thank you enough for coming. Now I can die at peace."

Diana Lampen, 1991

165

God's love is ministered to most people through the love of our fellow human beings. Sometimes that love is expressed physically or sexually. For me and my lover, John, God's love is given through our homosexual relationship. In common with other people who do not have children to raise, we are free from those demands to nurture other vital things. This includes our meeting and the wider Society of Friends.

We both draw on our love a great deal to give us the strength and courage to do the things to which God calls us.... Our spiritual journey is a shared one. Sometimes the pitcher needs to be taken back to the fountain. In order to grow, I need my church to bless and uphold not just me as an individual, but also our relationship.

Gordon Macphail, c.1985

166

Several years ago I had the experience of feeling called to go speak in love and friendship to an old friend who had shunned me. I was very nervous. He might reject my friendship. I might make a fool of myself. But as I walked to his house, I felt that I was carried by something bigger than myself. Afterwards, I felt elated. I had answered the call. Clearly God had been with me, directing and supporting.

Patience Schenck, 1988

167

About 50 years ago, the Second World War began and I was sent away from London, the city of my birth, into the country to avoid the bombing. My father was in the war in North Africa, and my mother was a cook for the Royal Air Force. I lived in a small cottage with my grandparents. Food was scarce and strictly rationed. The house was lit by oil lamps and heated with wood and coal, and my jobs included gathering wood in the nearby forest, and fetching water from the spring in a pail every morning.

When the war was over, we went back to London, and the only place we could find to live in was a converted warehouse that was wet and unsanitary, where in due course I caught a disease and became completely paralysed.

Happily, I recovered the use of most of my limbs, but I never recovered my health. To this day, I cannot lift, or run, ride a bicycle or dance, and I have never been able to romp with my children in the way other people take for granted.

That might sound a fairly unhappy story of deprivation, illness, and disability, but in fact it is not. As time has gone by, I have seen with increasing clarity that these things are a blessing, and were the gifts of God to me. I know this to be the truth, and I know it through the Spirit.

John Punshon, 1991

168

Following the operation all sense of God disappeared, and anyone who came to my bedside (and the love and visiting I received was one of the great treasures of my life) I asked to take my hand and mediate God's love to me. In fact healing and prayer surrounded me on every hand, although I myself felt cut off in complete inner aridity except when actually held in the inner place by someone taking my hand and praying.

Damaris Parker-Rhodes, 1985

169

We all know about the traditional antagonism between Quakerism and the Arts. At Swarthmore College, when I was there in the forties, there was no studio art offered. The Quaker emphasis was definitely on the social sciences, and the feeling was strong that one would be expected to contribute to society in a social-activist kind of way. Nevertheless, I aspired to be an artist; I also joined the Quaker meeting there. That these two avenues were incompatible was obvious by the clich/s that were then available concerning Art and Quakerism. The artist was a proverbially selfish person, bound to do his or her own thing at the expense, if necessary, of society. He or she was given to exhibitionist promotion and passionate emotional extremes, and offered a product that was suspiciously commercial or superfluously decorative.

The Quaker, on the other hand, was geared to the needs of society and ready to offer his or her own life for the good of others; was not going to waste time in trivial pursuits, and was solidly grounded, with an emotional and productive life very much under control.

Well, my ideas have come a long way since then. This was all a very exterior view of the outside from the outside. What I missed at that stage of my life was that the artist and the Quaker are on the same internal journey. Each is seeking a relationship with the Divine, and each is seeking a way to express that relationship. There are just many different ways of expressing it. For many, the path to the Self has to be entered by way of the arts, whether or not we are gifted in that field. That doesn't seem to matter. As St. Paul says: If we have not love, we are as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And for many of us, the pathway to love is through the arts.... The process of working with and forming material things can lead beyond them to the spiritual, and shape of clay or colors of paint can be a window into another world.

Janet Mustin, 1992

170

My first experience of healing came when I was very ill for many weeks with lung and respiratory problems and in an extremely physically weak condition. Whilst fighting for each very painful breath I began to think I might not recover and lay in a twilight world of sleep, pain, and exhaustion but yet knowing "Thy will be done." It would have been so easy to let life slip at this point, but it was exactly then that I felt a surge of energy go through my body and I knew that it was right for me to be given more time on earth and that I would recover. It felt as if I was being "ticked off" for lacking faith. As that energy passed through me I remembered clearly and strongly a very dear member of my Meeting and wondered if she was praying for my recovery. I continued to hold on to her image in my mind and began to feel the strength returning to my body. She later told me she had indeed prayed for me daily and had sometimes been joined by other Friends for intercession. I knew experientially I had been upheld in God's healing light and power, and it is this experience which has made me so convinced of the healing ministry. I know there may be more mundane, matter-of-fact explanations for my recovery but in extremis and in great need I was reaching for far more than the mundane.

Joolz Saunders, 1994

171

[An] unforgettable experience occurred while I was a student nurse in a city hospital. I was on night duty in the infants ward. When the doctor made his rounds I went with him. As we came to Peter's cot, the doctor said:

"He will not live through the night. Don't even call me for him. I can write out his death certificate tomorrow morning. But if you find spare time, carry him around." That night I carried Peter around for several hours, and mine was an unforeseen reward: a glance into a human soul. Here I was, a young student nurse, an agnostic who did not believe in the existence of a soul, in the value of religion. That night I saw a human life unfolding in front of my eyes. It covered the whole cycle of life—from beginning to end.

When I picked him up, Peter was an infant with the face and expression of an infant. While I held him he passed through all stages of life. His face and expression changed from a young child to an adult and then to an old wise man. There was no pain in his face—no doubt—no fear. He did not fight death. He seemed to know his way. He was very serene. He looked straight at me. It seemed that he wanted me to know what he knew. He understood, and he wanted me to understand, too. Peter died in my arms. I closed his eyes and put him in his cot. "Yes", I thought, "This is not a broken-off life, nipped off in the beginning. It is a fulfilled life. Peter has lived his whole life."

Ilse Karger, 1995

172

I was by now high up on the moraine. The lazy clouds, that had hung all day as a light veiling about the snow-powdered rock peaks were just breaking up in the clear splendour of sunset. The dazzling mantles of Combin and Courbassiere caught the last rays. It was no moment for reasoning. Too often my spiritual life runs shamefully shallow, lamentably in need of more living water from the eternal springs. May I be pardoned—I was utterly unworthy—but at that moment there swept over me unbidden, the experience of Christ. No more tiresome ratiocination, interpretations or mis-interpretations, dogmas and differences. Just the fact that, in Christ, God was and is sharing the tragedy and sorrow, and the joy of the world. And—most glorious assurance—in his death and resurrection he faced the worst the world can do, faced these same problems and perplexities with all their mental anguish, which so often beat us till we cry inwardly for quarter—Christ faced them and triumphed over them and through them, with and for man in his struggle after righteousness, for all time.

Corder Catchpool, 1956

173

My sunrise meditation means more to me now than ever. At dawn it is easier to feel the universe is one organic whole, held together by that Radiating Power of Love which flows through everything—including thee and me....

By using the power of mature, redemptive love we can show each individual that we need his or her uniqueness to make us whole. We will then see that we have something to give others and that others have something to give us.

Rachel Davis DuBois, c. 1978

174

(5 a.m.) Something is happening around me: the dark is less dark, the silence is less deep. Even the air is changing. It is damper, sweeter. Morning is at hand. Light will soon come flowing over the edge of the world, bringing with it the day. What a gift! Whether wrapped in streamers of color or folded in tissues of mist, it will be mine to use in ways that I can foresee and in those that are unexpected. The day will make its own revelation, bring its own challenge; my part will be to respond with joy and gladness.

Elizabeth Yates, 1976

175

It may seem paradoxical for me to say that I would not have missed the experiences of those two years of my life in a Nazi prison for anything. But it is so. When one's existence, which has seemed quite secure, suddenly melts away, when one is cut off...from the circle of one's family and friends, and must rely entirely on one's self in an indifferent, hostile world; when the ground is taken from under one's feet and the air one breathes is taken away, when every security fails and every support gives way—then one stands face to face with the Eternal, and confronts Him without protection and with fearful directness.

Eva Hermann, c. 1947

176

At home when I was a small child there had been little to suggest to me the restriction placed upon women in the outside world. Our family sitting room was presided over by a large steel engraving of Elizabeth Fry in Quaker cap and flowing Quaker dress. When I joined the family group around the fire after supper there she hung, an imposing figure on the wall above me. We all honored her because she had visited the cruel British prisons of her day and reformed them. According to Quaker theory women were the equals of men, the two sexes facing each other "with level-fronting eyelids," a phrase I often heard. And in practice twice a week at the Sunday and Thursday morning meetings for worship I saw my mother sit opposite, even though a little below, my father in the raised gallery for ministers and elders. On the one occasion when I attended a joint business session of the Men's and Women's Monthly Meeting, as I pushed open the door at the far end of the room I saw my mother and my father seated side by side in solitary state before a long table littered with papers. They performed respectively the duties of the clerk of the Men's and clerk of the Women's meeting. I remember the sharp stab of pride I felt as I stood in the doorway to look at my parents.

Helen Thomas Flexner, 1940

177

It happened in the night. I was at a very low point. I was sleeping out of doors on the porch close to the hill. A light breeze rustled through the overhanging branches of a great walnut tree. I was very tired. I looked up at the stars edging over the hill in my mood of great despondency. I said to God, "It's no use. I've tried all I can. I can't do anything more." All of a sudden I seemed to be swept bodily out of my bed, carried above the trees and held poised in mid-air, surrounded by light—a light so bright that I could hardly look at it. Even when I closed my eyes I could feel it. A fragrance as of innumerable orange blossoms inundated my senses. And there was an echo of far-off music. All was ecstasy. I have no idea whether it lasted a minute or several hours. But for the rest of the night I lay in a state of peace and indescribable joy. How impossible it is to explain such a phenomenon in everyday language, but whatever it was changed my life. It was not a passing illusion. I never was the same again. For days I was terribly happy. The whole world seemed to be illumined, the flower colors were brighter, bird songs gayer, and people were kind, friendly and loving. This exaggerated brilliance faded somewhat with time and the intense sense of communion fluctuated. Later on there were, of course, low moments amidst the high peaks, and there were failures, dry seasons, and the recurring need for patience and perseverance. But I never lost the clarification of mind and spirit that was revealed to me on that night.

Josephine Duvenek, 1978

178

In my younger days I felt unsure and afraid of life, but the experience of God through Quakerism has created an inner ground of harmony and deep security, something not originating from my own power, not grasped by my intellect, yet with roots within myself. God is in life itself, in silence, in fellowship, in nature, in absorption in service for others.

I experience God unexpectedly, without premeditated device or plan; I "happen" to meet those who just then and there need help or contact, and I experience God in action. Something guides me without my knowing. Praying for others is to me a kind of telepathy with God geared in.

Elsa Cedergren, 20th Century

Living and Dying

179

Now is where we live, now is where the past must be overcome, now is where we meet others, now is where we must find the presence of God.

Carol Murphy, c.1993

180

To many people throughout history, God has been intensely real because they have found that they can experience communion with God. But such experience is not gained without persistence. We must listen; we must make time to step aside, even from good works, in order to talk with God. Sometimes a physical withdrawal is not possible, but when communion has become a constant attitude of mind it is deeply satisfying because it fulfills our need for the companionship of someone who loves us in spite of our failings.

Kathleen Lonsdale, 1962

181

This relatedness of all life, as it binds us to all that has passed, surely binds us to the future as well. So the divine spark kindled in us can never really be extinguished, for it is part of a universal flame.

Once we have squarely faced the inescapable fact of our own death, we need never fear it, but turn and live life to the hilt, as we have seen that it should be lived. Then, whether that life be long or short, it will have been a full one.

Life is a gift so precious that we would accept it on any terms rather than never to have had it. Even among the poorest and most deprived—and especially among them, as I often thought in India—you see this zest for, this clinging to life. But we get more than the gift itself. We get life with the guarantee that it does conform to universal laws which affect and control every scrap of living matter. How much this gives us!—minds that can work in harmony with others, skills we can learn and transmit, health, zest for food and love, the absolute assurance that the laws are fixed, and not things that alter with a flippant changefulness from day to day.

Bradford Smith, 1965

182

There are clearly-marked signposts which, if followed, lead the way to recovery. First there has to be the wish, however transient, to find the way to better things. It is the beginning of hope, that basic ingredient for all life. From there, confidence and belief develop, and the certainty that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, good is in us and around us offering support. In such a situation of positive thinking we cease to be dreamers and accept fully our present lot. It is the material from which we are to build our future, whether long or short in time.... The remarkable discovery we can make is that love has not deserted us, and that it is available to us now in a new way. Our own willingness to love and to give in the world about us is the secret of recovery and the new beginning.

Margaret Torrie, 1975

183

I am convinced it is a great art to know how to grow old gracefully, and I am determined to practice it.... I always thought I should love to grow old, and I find it is even more delightful than I thought. It is so delicious to be done with things and to feel no need any longer to concern myself much about earthly affairs... . I am tremendously content to let one activity after another go, and to wait quietly and happily the opening of the door at the end of the passageway that will let me into my real abiding place.

Hannah Whitall Smith, 1903

184

I have been learning... that when we accept our finiteness realistically and without bitterness, each day is a gift to be cherished and savored. Each day becomes a miracle. I am learning to offer to God my days and my nights, my joy, my work, my pain, and my grief. I am striving to keep my house in order, and my relationships intact. I am learning to use the time I have more wisely.... And I am learning to forget at times my puritan conscience which prods me to work without ceasing, and instead, to take time for joy.

Elizabeth Watson, 1979

185

One of life's hardest lessons is that there is no justification for expecting that our neighbour is to traverse precisely the same path as that which we ourselves have followed.... The difficulty a man has in grasping this truth is increased in proportion as his own experience has been vivid and clearly defined. One who has been lifted out of the horrible pit, has had his feet set upon a rock, and a new song put into his mouth, finds it hard to believe that another who has arrived quietly and without crisis, with no strong consciousness of guilt and no corresponding ecstasy of deliverance, can really be a disciple at all.

William Littleboy, 1916

186

Those of us known as "activists" have sometimes been hurt by the written or spoken implication that we must be spending too little time on our spiritual contemplative lives. I do know many atheists who are active in improving the lot of humankind; but, for those of us who are Friends, our attendance at meeting for worship and our silent prayerful times are what make our outer activity viable and effective—if it is effective.

I have similarly seen quieter Friends hurt by the implication that they do not care enough, because they are not seen to be "politically active". Some worry unnecessarily that they may be doing things of a "less important" nature, as if to be seen doing things by the eyes of the world is the same thing as to be seen doing things by the eyes of God.... I suggest that we refrain from judging each other, or belittling what each is doing; and that we should not feel belittled. We cannot know the prayers that others make or do not make in their own times of silent aloneness. We cannot know the letters others may be writing to governments.... We were made differently, in order to perform different tasks. Let us rejoice in our differences.

Margaret Glover, 1989

187

The practice of journal keeping is ... a way of becoming aware of the patterns of our inner life, of growing in self-knowledge and discovering our own gifts and possibilities.... Keeping a journal is just one way ... of beginning to re-create your life. At its most basic it is a decision that your life has value and meaning and deserves the effort of recollection and reflection. It is also a decision that what you are living and learning is worth recording. That decision has its roots in a very deep layer of gospel truth.

Jo Farrow, 1986

188

The secret of finding joy after sorrow, or through sorrow, lies, I think, in the way we meet sorrow itself. We cannot fight against it and overcome it, though often we try and may seem at first successful. We try to be stoical, to suppress our memories...to kill [the pain] with strenuous activity so that we may be too tired to think. But that is just the time when it returns to us in overwhelming power. Or we try to escape from it.... But when the trip is over, the book closed...the research accomplished, there is our sorrow waiting for us, disguised, perhaps, but determined....

What we must do,...with God's help, is to accept sorrow as a friend, if possible. If not, as a companion with whom we will live for an indeterminate period, for whom we have to make room as one makes room for a guest in one's house, a companion of whom we shall always be aware, from whom we can learn and whose strength will become our strength. Together we can create beauty from ashes and find ourselves in the process.

Elizabeth Gray Vining, 1952

189

Sometimes religion appears to be presented as offering easy cures for pain: have faith and God will mend your hurts; reach out to God and your woundedness will be healed. The Beatitude "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted" can be interpreted this way too, but the Latin root of the word "comfort" means "with strength" rather than "at ease." The Beatitude is not promising to take away our pain; indeed the inference is that the pain will remain with us. It does promise that God will cherish us and our wound, and help us draw a blessing from our distressed state.

S. Jocelyn Burnell, 1989

190

I've gone to many kinds of schools, but of all the courses in the university of life, the course in old age is the hardest; the one with the most lessons to learn. Your own generation is gone. You can no longer count on your intellect or your memory. Your hearing lets you down. You can't keep track of things and you're constantly misplacing them. But you learn so much. You learn to accept help and to remember with your heart. To live always with the generations that went before, with those alive now, and with the generations to come—all that we must surely learn. In one way life is like a mountain climb, and we keep going steadily upward toward our death. And when we meet it, when Brother Death comes and gives us permission to go on across the frontier, then we must meet him with thankfulness, only with thankfulness.

Emilia Fogelklou, 1985

191

Friends do not take readily to being cared for. "Caring matters most" has been quoted to us when seeking direction during our active years. But many of us will find that we ourselves are in need of full care in our old age. This will not be easy. It calls for "a different kind of living", as one Friend commented when answering questions about experience in a home for the elderly. Uprooted from familiar well-loved things, of house and neighbours, released from stabilising responsibilities (however small), there will be adjustments to be made.

But there are compensations and opportunities. Loss of physical well-being can bring a new experience of the strength of the Spirit which can overcome pain and suffering. A new and fuller understanding of prayer can come, given the time to study and practise how to pray. And in the experience of living in a Home with others, a deep sense of sharing the darkness and the light can lead to a sense of community not known before. Finally, living close to physical death (our own and that of others), we come to recognise death as a natural and often welcome event. Yet another movement of growth into the fullness of the knowledge of God.

Margaret McNeill, 1990

192

A moral code, even when accepted for the best of reasons, necessarily tends to be negative rather than positive, to be concerned with "Thou shalt not" rather than with what an individual should give to his fellows. We are much concerned about the whole content of human relationship, about the meaning of "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" in the full range and depth of its implications. Loving does not merely mean doing good works; it goes further than feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. It means warmth and intimacy, open-heartedness and overwhelming generosity of hand and spirit. It means a desire to know and a courageous willingness to be known. Loving implies commitment to the other person, involvement in that person's life, whatever it may cost in suffering, whether that suffering comes through being repudiated or through identification and sharing.

The life of society desperately needs this warmth of giving and receiving. Everywhere we see sociabiltiy without commitment or intimacy and, especially in our towns, intense isolation and loneliness. We see human energy that should be creative and loving deflected into activities that are coldly power-seeking; we see love inhibited, frustrated, or denied, turning into its opposite—into ruthlessness and aggression.

A Group of Friends, London Yearly Meeting, 1963

193

People so often talk of someone "getting over" a death. How could you ever fully get over a deep loss? Life has been changed profoundly and irrevocably. You don't get over sorrow; you work your way right to the centre of it.

Diana Lampen, 1979

194

As I grow older, I seem to need more time for inner stillness.... This can happen in the midst of daily chores or when walking in a crowd or riding in a train. It means being still, open, reflective, holding within myself the crucible of joy and pain of all the world, and lifting it up to God. Praise comes into it, and thankfulness for all the love I have known and shared, the realization of how much of the time I am carried, supported, upheld by others and the love of God. [During this process] comes the deep sense of the unity of all being, the intermeshing of the animate and inanimate, the secular and the sacred, the tangible and the intangible....it means just waiting, or just lifting the heart.

Dorothy Steere, 1995