"Do Quakers believe in the Trinity?"  comes the question.  This time it is the Trinity.  It has been, and might just as well have been, this time, "Do Quakers take communion?"  "Do Quaker's believe in the Bible?"

As I have written before, there is no single answer for that.  There are some Quakers who very much believe in the Trinity, and take communion.  And there are very many who "believe in" the Bible--in some sense of that phrase.

My particular brand of  Quakerism is not centered on what one believes, except insofar as that is a part of what one has become as the result of being a Quaker.  Quakerism is not a set of beliefs, but it is, rather, a discipline, a practice.  It is not about accepting something as true or not true, but about doing things that bring one into unmediated contact with God/The Spirit/the Transcendent Reality and being changed by that contact.

I pray every day, often during the day.  I also read the Bible very often as well as writings from the Quaker tradition(s) and from other spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhism.  I "sit" in the Buddhist sense of that word for one or more periods a day, such periods of varying length.  I also sit quiety in waiting worship daily, alone, listening for that "small still voice" and do so as part of an unprogrammed meeting for worship 49 or 50 sundays per year.  I also participate in the life of my meeting; I have been clerk of the meeting, served on various committees, attended un-numbered pot lucks, intergenerational meetings, Quarterly and Annual Meetings and so on.  I journal erratically. I am part of Bible studies, book discussion groups. 

These things make up my discipline and I view them very much as that--things I need to do in order to bring about the change in myself that I want to bring about. 

I didn't adopt these practices after reading about them in a book, and no one told me that they would change me.  I developed them over a ten year period and they have changed me.  Most of these practices, I have discovered since adopting them, have been pretty standard for Quakers through history, although I doubt that George Fox ever sat and concentrated on his breathing.

What has become clear to me, as this has developed in my life, is how much like mystical practice in other traditions this is.  Spiritual practice that is mystical--that is predicated on direct experience with the divine--is very similar whether it is found in a Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic or Catholic tradition. 

More striking to me than the similarities among the practices of the mystical strains in each of these traditions is the similaritiy of the outcomes in these traditions.  Mystics tend to end up described by the Quaker testimonies:  harmony, equality, community, integrity and simplicity.  Or maybe a better way to say that would be that Quaker mystics end up in the same condition as mystics from other spiritual traditions.

Now there is a scary thought.

Many Quakers are mystics. The original Quaker "thing" was very much about removing the layers of spiritual bureaucracy between the believer and God.  There are very many Quakers, today, who have reinstated those levels of human officers and ritual practices between the individual believer and God.  They have re-instituted ministers and pastors, programmed services, communion and have placed the scriptures above all other authority.  , But for those of us who have not (and we are not all of one mind) the descriptor of "mystical" fits.  We all attempt to live in an unmediated relationship with the divine, led by it, shaped by it, serving it.

What is of great interest to me is that Quaker mystics and Buddhist mystics and Hindu mystics and Catholic mystics and all other mystics with whom I am familiar tend to share practices and, in the end, outcomes.  All who participate in unmediated contact with God/The Spirit/the Transcendent Reality are changed, and changed in the same ways, by that experience.

A step beyond this--it seems empirical, to me.  It seems to me that those who do these things are changed in this way.  These practices lead to this result. 

So, Quakerism, mystical Quakerism, transforms people's lives in such a way that they are more in harmony with themselves, with God, their fellow humans and the creation.  It tends to cause them to simplify their lives so that they can concentrate on that which is important.  It causes them to see that they are the equal of all others in God's sight and scheme.  It causes them to walk their talk.  And it makes them a part of a community the members of which rely on one another in many ways and on many occasions.  Harmony, simplicity, equality, integrity and community.

These are the Quaker testimonies but they are not a set of beliefs that one adopts--they are not something for which we can strive successfully.  They are something into which we can be changed by the spiritual force that we tap into though our practice.  We cannot just "decide" we are going to be those things, anymore than we can decide we will run a marathon.   But we can decide to do the things that will cause us to become those things, as we can decide to do the things that will condition us to run 26+ miles.

 

8:54:25 PM