Month: May 2014

In this week’s Quaker video: What is “the Light,” and why are Quakers so excited about it?

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Transcript

A.J. Mendoza (Quaker Voluntary Service, Atlanta GA)
My first couple times in trying to center down to unprogrammed worship was a struggle. Not being raised in it at all, being raised in the Pentecostal tradition, I came into this like, “Well, I’m supposed to be listening to the light… hmmm! And this isn’t working!”

What Do Quakers Mean By the Inner Light?

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
Well, the Inner Light is also called by many different names by Quakers: the Inward Light, the Light of Christ, that of God within.

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
Early Friends got the expression from the first chapter of the gospel of John, where we find in verse 9 the phrase, “the true light, which enlightens everyone coming into the world.”

Max Carter (Guilford College, Greensboro NC)
Early Friends understood that to be the Light of Jesus Christ. It was not a metaphor, but it was the real presence of Christ within.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
It was also called “the seed” because it represented something very small of God planted inside. The phrase “the seed” suggests that that small thing might not grow if you block it up, if you ignore it, if you have all these distractions.

Naomi Madaras (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Chambersburg Friends Meeting)
So it’s very much an energetic, alive thing. It’s not just this sort of light switch that flips on or off depending on whether you see it. It’s this force and a Spirit that we all get to share and get to experience together, hopefully, if we’re aware that it’s there. So it’s a process of being observant.

The Light That Guides Us

Keenan Lorenzato (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Dover Friends Meeting)
I guess the way for me to speak about the Light that guides us is to think about what happens when we don’t have light to guide us. So we’re fumbling around in the dark, we’re humans, we don’t have night vision. We can’t see where we’re going.

Noah Baker Merrill (Quaker Voluntary Service, Putney Friends Meeting)
One of the quotations that has always spoken to me is the instructions of an early Quaker named James Naylor who talks about those times in our lives where we feel surrounded by confusion and darkness, by a spiritual sense of being lost or being in danger.

And he says, “Art thou in the darkness? Well mind it not, for if you mind it, it will feed thee more. [It will grow in you.] But stand still and act not and wait in patience until Light arises out of darkness to lead thee.”

And that has been my experience. That there is a power and a life that rises in those places of darkness in our lives if we can wait and open to it.

The Light That Illuminates

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
And so the Light is that presence of God that illuminates for us. It might show us a way forward. It might embrace us and welcome us into the inward life.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
It’s experienced as an inward kind of illumination that shows you things. It shows you—oftentimes first of all—what is not of the Light or what is blocking the Light.

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
The Light was not simply a cozy fire to warm ourselves with on a wintry day. The Light was a beacon and this beacon spread its light over all those aspects of ourselves that we might prefer to admit weren’t there. The Light reveals to us—among other things—our own capacity to do terrible things, to do great harm in this world. And so the Light was powerful but it was also terrifying.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
And then it shows you God’s truth or God’s way. What the Light is in its fullness, which is love and truth and peace and unity, justice, mercy, all of those wonderful attributes that we know come from God and then it shows you how God wants you to live, according to the Light, so that those qualities of God can be manifest in society.

Holding Someone in the Light

Charlotte Cloyd (Guilford College, Future Quaker Voluntary Service Volunteer)
Holding someone in the Light, for me, means that I’m directing my positive energy towards the person that is in need of support and love.

Trenor Colby (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Dover Friends Meeting)
Last year my friend passed away and it was kind of difficult for me to share that with everybody here but I did and I received just a wonderful warm feeling from everybody. There was a lot less sense of pity than there was just, “I’m here for you.” Just kind of giving your energy towards somebody and being present. I think that’s when I was held in the Light the most, because I asked for that help from the community here.

A.J. Mendoza (Quaker Voluntary Service, Atlanta GA)
And that is so freeing! There’s not an authority that I need to appeal to or try to seek from somebody else. It’s here and it’s there and it’s in all of us, together. Seeking my piece of that is incredible. But being in a community that is seeking that same thing: amazing. What a thing to sit down and do every week. It gets me so excited. The Light, goodness gracious….

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Why don’t Quakers take communion? Why don’t they baptize? Early Quakers believed that the church was full of empty forms, and they sought the real substance of being filled by the Holy Spirit. Quaker professor Michael Birkel of Earlham College explains.

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There’s a phrase that goes through both the gospel of Luke and its sequel, the Book of the Acts, and that phrase is, “being filled with the Spirit.” “Filled with the Holy Spirit.”

There are moments in stories in that book where they say, “and so-and-so, being filled with the Spirit, goes off and does something wonderful.” And Early Quakers I think felt that they themselves were filled with that same Spirit. So it was really that experience. Some of it was structure and so forth – or lack thereof – but I think the fundamental thing was that experience of being filled and led by the Holy Spirit.

Early Quakers yearned for a revival of primitive Christianity because – in their experience – the life of the established church around them was one of form without substance. You could have a ritual, you could have a program, you could have a structure, but it could be there with no electricity running through the wires.

So imagine going to a church service. Ok, you’re supposed to say some prayers whether those prayers speak what you’re feeling at that moment or not. You’re supposed to recite a creed that contains someone else’s theological reflections that you may or may not agree with. You’re supposed to sing some hymns. You know, there’s the old joke, “why aren’t Quaker good at singing hymns?” “Because they’re always looking ahead to see whether or not they agree with the words.” Well that’s where that comes from.

You know, you can force someone in a sense – in that circumstance – to sing something that is dishonest for them. And then you listen to a sermon and a good puritan sermon has been crafted for days by the preacher who has given a lot of thought to it. But if it’s all up in your head but not in your heart – if it’s all in your book but it’s not led by an immediate sense of Divine presence, it’s form without substance.

The same thing for the sacraments – there was a lot of debate going on about communion and about baptism – what they ought to look like, how such rituals should be performed, what the theological and spiritual meaning of these experiences ought to be. If communion meant union with God, you can have the formal elements of communion but no real unity, no sense of union with God happening.

And so form without substance was their experience of the organized churches and they said, “we’re going to get together and let the Spirit guide us, and that may lead us in radical directions.” Like, even women ministering, which was shocking. Perhaps one of the most shocking parts of their message to those around them.
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Quakers believe that the real way that you understand what the Bible has to say to you is to let the words be illuminated. Paul Buckley explains.

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How Do Quakers Read the Bible?
Paul Buckley

A lot of Quakers don’t. I actually asked this question of a dozen/fifteen different Quakers from across the spectrum: from evangelical Quaker pastors to a woman who describes herself as a lesbian-feminist bible believing Christian, activists and people who are more theologically based. I asked them exactly that question: how do Quakers read the Bible?

The result is a book. Gotta plug the book.

–The Quaker Bible Reader– http://www.quakerbooks.org/the_quaker…

Each one of them gave a very different answer to the question on some level, but if you looked at all the essays that they produced — as a whole — you find that there is really an answer to that question, how do Quakers read the bible, and that is: Quakers read the Bible under the immediate direction of the holy Spirit.
We may be scholars. We may know a lot about exegesis and the history of biblical criticism or we may not. But in each of the answers that I got — from Evangelical to Liberal — it was very clear that the real way that you understand what the Bible has to say to you as a Quaker, as an individual, is to let the words be illuminated. Let that inward Light light up the text that you’re looking at. Let the holy Spirit speak to you, and to listen for that voice of God underneath the words.

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