Introduction to Quaker Basics
Posted on April 5, 2013 by admin
Quaker Basics (QB) is a course of study focussing on various aspects of Quaker life and practice. The basic materials for the course consist of a manual which is available online or as a hard copy publication. QB can be undertaken individually, with another Friend, or as a small group and will probably take several months to complete.
Experience suggests that the experience is richer when done as a pair or a group; the momentum is hard to maintain on your own.
There are readings and discussion questions associated with each topic, and many of these readings are reprinted in the manual. Other cores texts are:
British Yearly Meeting Quaker faith & practice and this we can say for (Advices & queries)
Silence: our eye on eternity by Dan Seeger, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #318, 1994
A light that is shining by Harvey Gilman, Quaker Home Service 1997
Four doors to meeting for worship by William Taber, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #306, 1992.
Testament of devotion by Thomas Kelly, Harper & Row, 1941.
Spiritual discernment by Patricia Loring, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #305, 199
These texts may be available from your Meeting library. QLA also has sets of them available for loan. To obtain these and/or purchase printed copies of the manual, contact qla@quakers.org.au.
An online version of the Quaker basics manual (pdf 1458kb) is also available for downloading.
http://www.qlau.quakers.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/QuakerBasics0.52.pdf
The QB course is made up of the following topics:
Session one Individual practiceCentring and meditation
The experience of silence
Session two Corporate practiceMeeting for worship
Vocal ministry
Session three Testimonies and concerns• Simplicity
• Peace
• Equality
• Ecological responsibility
• Integrity
• Community
Session four Reflections paper
Session five Taking action: a Quaker view of ministry
Organisational structures among Friends
International Quaker organisations
Session six Individual discernment / leadingsClearness process
Session seven Corporate discernment Friends business meetings
Session eight Membership
Quaker Basics reflections
Quaker Basics reflections
Posted on October 30, 2011 by admin
One of the activities in Quaker Basics invites participants to reflect on their experience of engaging with the QB course. Here are links to some of those reflections. If you have completed your reflections on QB and are willing to share them here, please forward them to qla@quakers.org.au.
Quaker Basics reflection: Kerry O’Regan
Posted on July 1, 2011 by admin
My experience of personal spiritual practice, Meeting for Worship & the testimonies – the influence of Quaker Basics
It is not easy to separate out the influence of one set of experiences during what has been a time of great change in my life. The best I can do is to reflect on experiences I have had over the past three months and assume that something of that relates to what I have experienced in Quaker Basics.
The Meeting for Learning retreat had a profound influence on me and I see my Quaker Basics (and my support group and other personal and interpersonal stuff) as being a continuation of that.
I went to the retreat with my prime goal being to clarify what I wanted to do with the next phase of my life – when I wanted to move on from paid employment, where I wanted to live, how being me and being a Quaker and being somehow part of a community would fit into that. And I left the retreat not having considered these things. How surprising. It seemed as though there were more immediate things that needed to be dealt with first; the spirituality of my life as it is rather than a consideration of life as it might become.
Entering deeply into the stillness, into the innerness, I encountered a way of being that I sensed could continue to be part of my life whatever the external circumstances of that life might be. A realisation of the sacredness of it all – of the trivial little experiences, of the heavy-duty people in my life as well as those that bring me immediate joy and wonder, of those things which cause me to sigh in exasperation as well as those which make me shriek with delight.
Then there is the God business. Both at the retreat and in QB, there have been ongoing references to God and I have come again to confront what that word means for me. Often as I settle into M for W I will recite over to myself, as a mantra, Be still and know that I am God. Be still, fair enough, but who is the I and what does it mean to be God – and for me to know that? I don’t know. I can’t imagine or experience a person with that name. But it did lead me back to Paul Tillich’s suggestion of ‘the ground and depth of our being’. Perhaps that is a nothing definition, but I can live with it; in fact it suits me very well.
There is the whole question of what it means for me to be a Quaker. I have the sticker about the Quaker web site on my car and I am conscious when driving of the fact that I am constantly saying this is how Quakers drive. But it’s occurred to me recently that I carry a similar (if somewhat less obtrusive) sticker on myself which constantly says this is how Quakers live. Whether we want to or not, we are always letting our lives speak.
The Advices and Queries give us plenty of ideas about that and they have recurred fairly constantly throughout QB. I thought there’s no way I can remember all of them and some of them speak to me more insistently than others, so I made myself a special selection. Kerry’s advices and queries:
Think to know an inner stillness amid the activities of daily life.
Think it possible that you may be mistaken.
Seek to know one another in the things that are eternal.
Live adventurously.
Let your life speak.
Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.
Search out whatever in your own way of life may contain the seeds of war.
Bear witness to the humanity of all people.
Try to live simply.
My increased awareness of the sacredness of things has led to a more respectful acceptance of people I have found difficult, of ministries I might have found off-putting. And I don’t think this is fairy-floss stuff. It doesn’t feel like that.
And without trying or struggling with it, I suddenly saw a way to proceed towards the next bit of my life, including the unlikely resolve to walk the Camino. However illusory it may turn out to be, that doesn’t matter, for now it means clarity and acceptance. And who could ask for more than that?
It bothers me sometimes that I’m not into changing the world. That’s part of our Quaker heritage and perhaps I should be. There’s stuff in QB about the inside and the outside. Though maybe it’s ok for us not all to be outside doing people. I do think, though, that our QB group are Marys rather than Marthas, so perhaps we don’t challenge each other in that regard. But the world mightn’t be such a bad place for us to be like that – living our lives as peaceably as we are able, supporting each other and respecting the earth and its inhabitants. I think that’s ok.
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Quaker Basics reflection: David Barry
Posted on July 1, 2011 by admin
The Missing Piece
I have been struck twice recently by a jig-saw puzzle metaphor, I fear in any case that it is not original. Once when we were on retreat, and I am very content to use the collective pronoun here, then more recently at meeting for worship in North Adelaide. In both cases people have reported nearly completing a jig-saw puzzle but being unable to finish for the want of a missing piece.
One of the many attractive aspects of Quakerism for me is the acceptance of failures and the gentle focus on the positive aspects of trying to improve the next attempt. I feel that this is allowing me to be more content in the company of my own deficits. I know it would be wrong of me to look for perfection in another, and so I am coming to an understanding that expecting the same of myself is just as wrong. I have come to the possibly misguided opinion that things that are flawed are more interesting and more valuable as a consequence. The Japanese have beaten me to the concept with their term ‘awabe’ – that refers to the uniqueness conferred by a flaw in a mass-produced object.
Gerard Manly Hopkins I think is referring to the same concept when he coined the term ‘inscape’. Hopkins asserted that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” I am certain it is a very conscious use of language on his part, but ‘charged’ has multiple meanings, many of which encapsulate my understanding of Quakerism.
Charged with a responsibility for the glory of God
Charged in the judicial sense – guilty of expressing the glory…
Charged in the artillery sense – ie ready to explode with the glory…
Charged in the sense of a battery, ie, the world is a reservoir of the glory…
And most powerfully, charged in the sense of being electrified with the glory…
All of this ties in, in some unclear way with the idea we examined in Chinese art that much of the interest of a picture is in what is not depicted – in the absences, in the spaces between.
I found my way to meeting while on a search to create some sense of sacred in my life. Now I find myself being challenged by the idea that every aspect of my life is sacred. That the sacredness in my life is like the chocolate in a chocolate cake – it colours and flavours everything, but it is not the whole cake.
When I first came among Quakers, I was daunted by these ‘…good Quaker folk…”. Now I very much treasure a place where I can engage in gentle humour about Jesus seeming to grow younger day by day. A place where a well a respected member of the community has it in her heart to welcome a stray dog to the meeting. She further honoured the dog by suggesting that the meeting might find some lesson from the dog’s presence, and that he might gain some benefit from being amongst us. If these people have the generosity of spirit to welcome and honour a disregarded dog amongst them, then I can feel confident in my welcome too. Now it is a place too where my absence is felt.
Spice up your life
Simplicity Not wishing to sound complacently ‘saved’ but simplicity is not a challenging testimony for me. Although the concept of a testimony is – but I will leave that to another time. I have always had plain tastes – strong flavours and colours but in simple arrangements. In the past I have wondered whether this was an attempt to hide myself, now I am of the opinion that it is simply my aesthetic.
Living simply – I have moved beyond the stage in life where I need to have things – life has been quite generous in delivering that particular lesson. In some ways for me it is much simpler to appreciate the beauty in an object without having to worry about its preservation. There is something too about ephemerality that intensifies worth – perhaps because it puts a value on time. Maybe I have just found a workable justification for parsimoniousness. If anything I need to be aware of denying myself too much. I am trying to work with the concept that if I am prepared to do something for someone else, then I should be prepared to do no less for myself.
The first time I thought that I might have the makings of a Quaker, was during a conversation while on retreat when I drew a distinction between simplicity and ease. Tessa was kind enough to comment “That is a profound thought Friend.” It gave me a sense that I was in a right place for me.
Peace Tick. At the start of Quaker Basics I thought this will be a meaty topic for me – it is the one by which I feel most challenged. In my life I think I manage pretty well to hold the peace, and while it has not happened for a very long time that I have been directly threatened, I am fairly certain that I could hold the peace line for longer than most. However, if a third party was threatened I would feel the burden much more keenly and am much less certain of my resolve. I look forward to a conversation about the extent to which I have a responsibility to protect myself from harm and how that balances against the testimony of peace.
More acutely, I am now actively looking for an alternate job here in Adelaide. While South Australia may be “The Festival State’ and ‘The Wine State’ it is also ‘The Defence State’. It is not that long ago that the British Ministry of Defence was more accurately known as the Ministry of War. Does a peace testimony preclude me working in one of the few technically advanced industries in the state? How deep is my conviction?
Having said that, the issue has arisen previously in my career, and I have always rejected any suggestion of working on defence projects. The local pool is much smaller now though.
Integrity Tick. I have long been of the mind that there is only one (albeit subjective) truth, and that my word is my bond. My signature conveys not a whit of additional protection. The only grey area I am aware of is that of lying by omission. I tend to apply the rule of thumb, who would benefit by the disclosure of information I might hold? If there is no benefit, and a real possibility of a detriment then I am inclined to hold my own counsel. Claiming integrity seems to be tempting providence, prideful even.
Community I am acutely aware of my need for and my responsibilities to community. I try to weave the threads where I can, and I do go out of my way to assist others. I think the most important lesson for me was being obliged to ask for assistance from others. My requests for help have always been met with kindness. On reflection there have been many people who offered help spontaneously in the gentlest and kindest way they could. I try to do the same.
Equality When I first read that ‘good’ scions of industry could be recognized because they know the name of the person who cleans the office floor and empties the waste, and that for a regular period they will take on one of the ‘menial’ roles, I was shocked. I had apparently naively assumed that everyone knew Anna, and was prepared to pick up litter. I am wiser now. I suffer from my own ‘isms’ but they are not many and are reducing. But I am also aware that this is an area that is pregnant with the possibility for multiple blind-spots.
Language is leaving me
If I have a creative gift then it is with language, written rather than spoken. The first time I bumped my head on a philosophical conundrum – not that I knew it as such at the time – was when someone posed the following question. Is it possible to have a thought prior to a language concept to express it? I thought not, and so designated all non-verbal life as non-thinking as well.
Later I stumbled into those little anomalies in English, that we all step over without really noticing. As far as I know there is no verb to describe the action of providing a drink to a human. With food, I can say, that I feed you. With drink if I say I drink you, that conveys a very different meaning to my intended one. The best I can muster is ‘I give you a drink’.
Then as my confidence with language grew I became aware of important concepts that exist in other languages that simply don’t get a look-in in English; enuii, jejeune and zeitgeist as examples. While I can approximate a translation of these, it is not possible to really capture their essential meaning in English. That came as rather a shock. Perhaps dogs had found the whole notion of language as jejune and rejected it early in evolution?
Eventually I came across someone with whom I could not meaningfully communicate particular feelings. I wanted to use words and they wanted to use colours, shapes and textures. At the time I thought they were just being perverse – now I am less certain.
More recently I was privy to a conversation about music – while I deeply appreciate music – I am musically ‘illiterate’ – is there a more correct term? The conversation progressed around me using words that were well known to me, but the concepts they were addressing were alien. I knew the words but not the sense. I have sometimes experienced the same phenomenon with weighty academic texts.
Now I have been introduced to the Quaker concept of silence. A silence that is not simply the absence of speech or words, but has an eloquence, a communication of its own. All those great certainties of life seem to be dropping away from under my feet much like the cartoon character Wylee Coyote when in pursuit of the frankly irritating roadrunner.
It does seem that less is more.
