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Reverence is prior to God!



Quakers have recently published a little book called God, Words and Us. This is because someone anticipates difficulty in producing the next version of Quaker Faith and Practice arising out of the fact that some Quakers think a personal God is out of the question, and others think a personal God is de rigueur.

Actually Live and Let Live is normally the adequate Quaker watchword; but one thing follows from the lack of unanimity about God-- which is that some other notion has to be in the foundation of our faith. I'd say it's Reverence that is basic: the experience of something Much Much Bigger. Provided the Much Much Bigger thing does not cause one to behave badly in its pursuit, we can uphold one another as regards what it is.

Comments

  1. Margot Lunnon19 March 2018 at 06:44

    A fair number of people have a bad reaction to almost any religious talk. Here I'm trying to talk about worship without using religious language.

    I sit down at the beginning of my hour. I am not trying to be disciplined. There are experiences in my head and I turn them over. Some seem insignificant and I let them go. Others seem troubling and I try to get to the bottom of why they are troubling. Have I been grudging or high handed? I try to apologise inwardly.

    The sifting is a matter of assessing what matters and what doesn't. Little things can be let go of. Bigger things can be clarified in the light of the Biggest Thing-- whatever the Biggest Thing is.

    I also know that I need not tackle difficulties alone, and that things will go better if I don't rely wholly on my own strength or my own judgment. (This applies whether the difficulties are individual or shared .) So another bit of letting go is accepting that I am not by myself up to this challenge. Just the avowal of inadequacy loosens things up.

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  2. Margot Lunnon20 March 2018 at 01:00

    The avowal of inadequacy makes one less afraid of losing face, more willing to experiment. I do think there may be a fund of shared awareness that one can draw on-- but this could be tested scientifically.

    But there's also the sense of scale. There are issues that will be history in days (though they may be remembered history). There are issues with consequences and ramifications; these are bigger than the first category. And there are things that would matter even if my own stake in them were tiny. "We re all in this together" is an over-used phrase but it stands for something real-- and the net may be cast very widely. "No man is an island" etc. And it seems to me as though that huge net is not just an accounting system! but a source of support.

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