Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - U for Uncomfortable

I'm running late according to my timetable for writing this blog and that makes me both uncomfortable and uneasy. The pressure to write comes only from within so you might say that I have only myself to blame, but that doesn't help to dispel the uncomfortable feeling.

Perhaps in Quaker terms it is good to feel uncomfortable, not to be complacent and content with things as they are. For myself feeling uncomfortable is often what pushes me into writing and also from time to time into spoken ministry. I know the feeling of sitting in meeting resisting the urge to speak until I feel so uncomfortable that I have to rise to my feet and say something. That is why the accounts of similar experiences of Friends in earlier times ring so true to me and are so helpful in my own spiritual journey. So many journals and spiritual autobiographies tell of struggles to remain comfortable and to ignore the nagging feelings of uncomfortableness, but faithfulness to the guidance of the Inward Teacher, the 'promptings of love and truth' in our hearts, brings ease and comfort - at least until the next time!

When early Friends spoke of having a comfortable time with others they were not talking of sitting in a warm room among people of like mind. They meant that they had been given comfort for their ills. The foundation of Quakerism for me is that if we are open to the Light we will be shown our darkness, those uncomfortable truths about ourselves that we find it hard to acknowledge, but that we will not be left there but brought to new life - challenged but also given comfort.

So eventually I became so uncomfortable that I sat down and wrote this and now I feel better - for a while at least.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - G for Guidance

Sitting in meeting, considering what my next alphabetic blog post might be, it became clear to me that I should write about guidance.

There have been many times in my life when I have needed help with finding what to do or where to go next. I have often brought my perplexity into the silence of worship (sometimes with others and sometimes by myself) and waited for guidance. Help has often come, not always immediately or in the form in which I have expected it. I may be guided to speak to someone, to undertake a new project, to read something or just to continue waiting.

Where does this guidance come from? In the third of our Advices and Queries we are asked to encourage in ourselves a habit of dependence on God's guidance for each day. I'm not sure that I manage the everyday part but I know that I am asking for and receiving guidance from God, my Inward Guide as well as my Inward Teacher. The guidance I receive is gentle but insistent. I am free to ignore it and I often do, but if I follow, however hesitantly, then it is my experience that 'way will open.'

Although I live in quite different times, when I seek for guidance I feel at one with the travelling Friends in past centuries waiting to be guided to the right ship in which to embark on the dangerous ocean and ignoring many others that appear quite suitable to the outward eye. I know that I am waiting for guidance in the same way and from the same source, however foolish and deluded I may seem to some.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - A for Living Adventurously

Ron Waddams. Living adventurously

'Live adventurously' is a very popular Quaker slogan, one of those phrases which we often repeat without always thinking much about what they mean. The words are usually attributed to George Fox although I have not been able to track down a reference. Perhaps readers of this blog may be able to help me with this?

What is certain is that 'Live adventurously' are the first two words, in fact the first sentence, of paragraph 27 in Britain Yearly Meeting's Advices and Queries as approved in 1994. The whole paragraph reads,
 Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community? Let your life speak. When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God's guidance and offering counsel to one another?

Looked at in context we can see that the paragraph is about making choices and taking decisions and the best way to do that as Quakers. We are not necessarily asked to go out and have adventures but to live our daily lives with a sense of adventure, of being willing to go somewhere or do something new if that will help us make the fullest use of our gifts. The advice also stresses the need to live adventurously not just as individuals but in community, seeking clearness together. For me perhaps the  most important part of this advice is its insistence that this adventurous living is part of our response to the guidance of God, as this has been my experience.

Expressing this phrase in art Ron Waddams's 1994 painting Living Adventurously is full of colour, life and people.We do not have to set out on our adventure, whether it be spiritual, mental or physical, alone. We have our Quaker community and we also always have our Inward Teacher and Guide.

The Ministry-Life Balancing Act

Reading Robin's post the other day got me thinking about the struggles I have had with recognising and finding ways to follow my own ministry.

It took me a long time to feel that my interest in spiritual autobiography could be seen as a kind of ministry. It was only when I moved from an academic and personal view of the subject to the development of a workshop that aimed to tell others about the form and tradition of this kind of writing and to encourage them to attempt to write their own that the thought that what I was doing was ministry entered my head.

I was 'released' to follow this ministry more intensively by a combination of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust awarding me a fellowship and my employer promising that I would have a job to return to after a year. At the time, having gone through the experience of being made redundant twice, I would not have been brave enough to proceed without that safety net.

Afterwards I went back to work but also continued giving workshops and wrote an account of the fellowship. This brought me into writing and publishing both of which I now see as part of the same ministry. I know that I have been led along the path I have taken and sometimes I have been gently but firmly pushed into taking the next step. Looking back I realise that it is always when I have turned outwards, shared my experience and the experience and words of Quaker foremothers and forefathers with others, that what I have done has become ministry.

Along the way I have sometimes taken false steps. There was a time when I really wanted to find a job in the Quaker world. I thought that this would free me from having to balance my Quaker calling with other paid work. Failure and rejection were hard lessons but in time I learned from them. I remained independent and gained much from the work that did come my way. All the time I know that my Inward Teacher has been providing me with lessons that I needed to learn and has been patient with my slowness to understand.

Many years ago in meeting I was given three phrases which I understood were messages for me and not to be shared at that time. I wrote them down and they have travelled with me as lessons and encouragement in my ministry and my life. They are - 'Count your blessings' , 'A way will open' and 'My time is not your time'.

I understand more about what my ministry is and how I should express it as time goes on. Now that I have retired from paid work my view of it is slowly changing again. I am trying to be open to new possibilities but I am also continuing to write and publish, if only infrequently, here and elsewhere. God knows where I will be led next but I am still waiting to find out.