Triple Success for Sea Yun Pius Joung who Receives Gibbs Prize and Two Harvard Scholarships | Oriel College

Triple Success for Sea Yun Pius Joung who Receives Gibbs Prize and Two Harvard Scholarships | Oriel College



Triple Success for Sea Yun Pius Joung who Receives Gibbs Prize and Two Harvard Scholarships



19 August, 2022


An exceptional triple success for recent graduate Sea Yun Pius Joung who has received the Gibbs Essay Prize in Theology and Religion for highest mark awarded in an FHS dissertation, the prestigious Harvard Presidential Scholarship and Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship.


Sea Yun Pius Joung, a recent graduate in Theology and Religion, has been awarded the Gibbs Prize from the Faculty of Theology and Religion. His mark of 85 for his dissertation on ‘St Cyprian of Carthage’s Ecclesiological Interpretation of the Canticle of Canticles’ was the highest mark awarded in an FHS dissertation in the faculty. Sea Yun’s thesis “involved reading the entire corpus of St Cyprian and translating select passages from the original Latin, then reading the text closely to make an original argument.”

During his time at Oriel, Sea Yun was the JCR International Officer (involved in both the Equalities Subcommittee and JCR Committee), Bible Clerk for the Chapel (working closely with the Rev’d Dr Robert Wainwright), manager of the Oriel Chapel social media pages (@Oriel_chapel) and Editor-In-Chief of The Oxford Scientist for two full terms.

Having graduated and moved to the USA, Sea Yun has since been awarded both the prestigious Harvard Presidential Scholarship (awarded in the name of the President of the University to the top student(s) in each of the Harvard Schools), and the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship - a travelling fellowship awarding full tuition and a generous living stipend to support his continuing scholarly research.

Sea Yun’s studies at Harvard will focus on the ‘Mediterranean of Late Antiquity’.

He explains:

“I hope to study from 100BCE to 787ACE, especially a vibrant period of Neoplatonism, Christianity, and Second Temple Judaism, all of which I am interested in. My work with Dr Brendan Harris, Professor William Wood, and Professor Hindy Najman among others really raised my interest in this field, and I hope to continue further at Harvard.”

Recently, Sea Yun has been in Pittsburgh writing a paper for the National Institute for Newman Studies and continuing Oriel’s legacy in the USA. When asked about his aims for the future, Sea Yun says:

“I am still discerning my future, and may very well decide to take Holy Orders – at any rate though, I would really like to be able to stay in academia if possible, and will seek to return to Oxford (hopefully Oriel) for a DPhil.”

We wish Sea Yun the best with his career and his time at Harvard.

You can read a more in-depth explanation of Sea Yun’s dissertation topic below in his own words.

The Prize-winning Dissertation

“My dissertation was on the Ecclesiological Interpretation of the Canticle of Canticles by St Cyprian of Carthage. The Canticle of Canticles (Song of Songs) is a book of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, which is essentially love poetry with verses alternating between the man and his beloved. The question that concerns both Jews and Christians is that it is Scriptural, yet mentions hardly anything of religious value. Hence, both the Rabbis and the Early Church begin to allegorise the text as being about God’s love for Israel, or about His love for the Church, or even of the individual soul.

My dissertation was about how St Cyprian of Carthage (Bishop of Carthage in North Africa from 248 until his martyrdom in 258) ecclesiological traditions surrounding the Canticle of Canticles to contest the rival “Novatian” and “laxist” communions – rival bishops of Carthage that contested his authority. A Cyprian scholar, Karl Shuve, argues that Cyprian used the Canticle of Canticles to only exclude those of rival communions. I wanted to show that Cyprian’s ecclesiology is a little more nuanced than portrayed by previous scholars. In short, Cyprian used the Song ingeniously to fulfill the crucial task: including lapsi whilst excluding schismatici – he wanted to say to the Novatians that the Christians that had lapsed during the Decian persecution should be readmitted, but that the schismatics should be firmly excluded from the Communion of the Church.

Revisiting Cyprian’s ecclesiology is important for modern day ecumenical dialogue, in which definitions of Church boundaries matter. Cyprian’s legacy in particular has significance because debates in the Reformation by figures such as Cardinal Pole and Archbishop Cranmer rely often on readings of Cyprian and the Church Fathers.

It is this loving relationship between God and His Church that would endure in significance through Augustine, Leo, and Gregory, to even the modern ecclesiological, sacramental context, to the Dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, which declares that “God gathered together as one all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation and the source of unity and peace, and established them as the Church that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving unity (singulis sacramentum visibile huius salutiferae unitatis).”

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Prophetic Voices: John Henry Newman the Saint, Sage, and Scholar | CCJ

Prophetic Voices: John Henry Newman the Saint, Sage, and Scholar | CCJ

Prophetic Voices: John Henry Newman the Saint, Sage, and ScholarPosted Fri, 11/26/2021 - 09:55 by Avigail
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This Advent, our blog posts will reflect on ‘prophetic voices’; people who, in the spirit of the prophets, may inspire us to action, challenge our preconceptions, refocus our religious practices, or forge a new path forward for our communities.

Sea Yun Pius Joung begins this series with ‘A Prophet Heralding Moderning: John Henry Newman the Saint, Sage and Scholar’.


A Prophet Heralding Modernity: John Henry Newman the Saint, Sage, and Scholar
Sea Yun Pius Joung

The prophet is frequently characterized as a voice crying out in the wilderness, and in the history of Israel, as an antithesis to the monarchical and priestly authority centred around the hierarchy of Jerusalem and the Temple. The prophets are those that are not necessarily heard, but often make accurate predictions, and in the Christian tradition, prophets are regarded as heralding the hope that comes in the form of Christ. The advent message, that Christ should be born anew in our hearts every day, and that we must be mindful of the final judgement, is reflected in a prophet that is unafraid to challenge even the greatest of our worldly institutions.

The greatest hero for many of the young people is St John Henry Cardinal Newman – the saint that explains the meaning of prophecy in our modern age through championing the conscience. Through his sensitivity and kindness, he sought an holistic, liberal education within a Catholic framework. He was a sage that did not let his academic work slip into the oblivion of abstractness and theory, but followed it to its logical conclusion and taught us that the love of God seeketh not its own. Finally, his legacy, on the development of doctrine, on the conscience, and the logical consequences of these for the interfaith and ecumenical movement, would be enshrined almost a century after his death at the Second Vatican Council, showing that he was a prophet well ahead of his times.

Newman was born in 1801 and matriculated into Trinity College, Oxford in 1816, reading for Classics and Mathematics. It was at this point that he began to be acquainted with the Church Fathers. In 1822, he was elected as a fellow of Oriel College, where he took residence and taught for twenty years. It was here that he led the Oxford Movement with Edward Pusey and John Keble, who were also fellows of the College. 

During his time at Oriel, Newman studied the Church Fathers closely and began to realise the value of tradition, both in interpreting and elucidating the Scriptures. For Newman at this time, the Church of England was one of the three branches of the Church following the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. After an extensive study on the Arian controversy, Newman writes, “should the hand of Satan press us sore, our Athanasius and Basil will be given us in their destined season, to break the bonds of the Oppressor, and let the captives go free”. In other words, Newman had confidence that the Anglican communion would return to a more Catholic direction, the acceptance of tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers being crucial in such an enterprise. 

At this point, Newman was a prophet because he realised that, as the great Hebrew Bible scholar, Hindy Najman would put it, the work of prophecy had not ceased, despite declarations of closure. Despite the canon of Scripture being declared closed, for Newman, doctrine could develop, precisely because the work of inspiration did not necessarily cease with apostolic times, but rather matured. 

At this time, Newman preached at the University Church, on the famous image from the Gospel of Luke: “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (2:19) to argue that Mary, as a type for the Church is consistently pondering the meaning of that initial revelation and much like Ezra and the Levites, the Church continues the activity of interpreting, and therefore, perhaps, I might add, the institution of Prophecy.

Yet further, Newman would follow this initial academic spark to its logical conclusion, which for him, was Catholicism. The conscience was a key theme in Newman’s life, such that famously, after having written An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman resolved to become a Catholic.

 Newman is a prophet because he allows for prophecy to be possible and accessible, as the divinity is directly accessible. In his intellectual thought, he termed the conscience the Aboriginal Vicar of Christ, perhaps following St Paul’s notion of following the law of God inscribed within our hearts. However, this notion of conscience was not a mere intellectual exercise for Newman, but a fundamental aspect for his own life, which is why despite the manifold sacrifices he had to make because of the anti-Catholic sentiment present at the time, he followed his conscience to its logical conclusion.

However, for the Council of Christians and Jews, a more relevant aspect of Newman’s life might lay in his influence upon the Second Vatican Council, as Newman’s thought has been instrumental in fostering interfaith and ecumenical dialogue. At one level, the emphasis on conscience was taken directly from Bishop Butler, from the Anglican tradition – and the many treasures that Newman brought into the Catholic tradition from the Anglican should never be underplayed. I would argue that Newman also pivotally influenced Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, the two documents for Catholics most significant for the possibility of interfaith and ecumenical dialogue in a way perhaps unimaginable before Vatican II.

Parts of Nostra Aetate merit extensive quotation, and display how prophetic Newman indeed was:

Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going? (1)

And again:

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself. (4)

Newman precedes all of this in a special way because the notion of the conscience is the reason that the Church can declare this. Newman, when read faithfully, is the greatest advocate of interfaith and ecumenical dialogue possible in his generation. He cannot say what is untrue for the Catholic Church or for the wider notion of Christian orthodoxy: the Church can hardly make everyone happy as it were through following the trends of the time – but Newman shows a way for meaningful interfaith dialogue because the conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ.

This advent, Newman’s legacy should shine as brightly as ever. His cry in the wilderness was met by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council – and through dialogue with other traditions in a respectful way that does not merely diminish or belittle differences, but acknowledges them and even discusses them – we can remember Newman the prophet this Advent. We must, like Newman, allow our conscience to guide our will – and refuse the temptation of lawyers to twist the inner, primaeval call of the conscience. Perhaps it is time to recover this beautiful interior call: to contemplate in silence to listen to this primeval call, and God’s cry deep within our souls, exhorting us to be prophets in our age.

Sea Yun Pius Joung is a CCJ Student Leader at the University of Oxford where he is the Christian Chair of the Interfaith Scriptural Reasoning Society and a student at Oriel College.

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Where Do I Belong? | Sea-Yun Pius Joung | TEDxYouth@TCIS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFJ0Vmng3Q

Where Do I Belong? | Sea-Yun Pius Joung | TEDxYouth@TCIS

1,745 viewsJun 6, 2017

TEDx Talks

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"They've developed their own little rituals – their own way of thinking – and their own accents." Through his experience of having lived in multiple countries, Mr. Sea-Yun Pius Joung relays the importance of our journey in our life.

Having spent most of his life abroad, from Australia, through to Norway, Sea-Yun has been able to learn several life tools. The first is the ability to adapt to a given culture. At the most fundamental level, Sea-Yun has learned how different cultures have different histories (history being derived from “historia”, being also the root word of “history”). The shared memory of the ups and downs of history seems to be what defines a country and its culture. So, you ask, which culture he is from? Well, he loves to eat Kimchi at his meals, but he also enjoys watching AFL (Aussie Rules Footy), while he also loves to admire the beautiful Nidaros Cathedral.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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MATHS AND MORALITY - by The Oxford Scientist - Aditya Ghosh and Sea-Yun Pius Joung explore an unlikely source for ethical guidance.

MATHS AND MORALITY - Issuu

MATHS AND MORALITY
from The Oxford Scientist: Frontiers Of Science (#8)
by The Oxford Scientist

Aditya Ghosh and Sea-Yun Pius Joung explore an unlikely source for ethical guidance.

In Ethics, a central problem is what Nietzsche coined as 

the death of God. ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’. 

Unlike the triumphalist tone that New Atheists have framed this in, the original formulation was one of fear and angst. It was as though the one source of truth, God, had ceased to exist.

The problem is, ‘In a post-God, secular age, what should a consistent ethical system look like?’. 

It seems impossible to guarantee a natural set of rules from which to hang our system of ethics without an absolute starting point like God. 

It is not readily apparent from reason alone, why we should value human rights to begin with.

Could Mathematics help?

Mathematics may not be everyone’s cup of tea but all of us have mathematical intuitions. We understand what “three” means and what straight lines or parallel lines are. Before the 19th century, mathematics was developed mostly from intuitive understandings like these.

As early as 300 BCE, the Greek mathematician Euclid laid down the foundations of geometry. He provided five “axioms”, which were common notions of space, from which all geometry could be derived. Axioms were considered self-evident statements that seemed too intuitive to be questioned. Try and see if the following axioms make sense:

1. A straight line segment may be drawn from any given point to any other.
2. A straight line may be extended to any finite length.
3. A circle may be described with any given point as its centre and any distance as its radius.
4. All right angles are congruent.
5. Given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point.

Geometry, as formulated by Euclid, was held in very high regard among mathematicians. To them, it represented an ideal form of the physical universe. Later, other mathematical concepts like Calculus emerged from it.

The use of axioms suffered a blow in the 19th century when Russian Mathematician, Nikolai Lobachevsky ditched Euclid’s Fifth Axiom and developed “Hyperbolic Geometry”, an equally sound alternative to Euclidean Geometry. As Richard Wells writes, ‘The “disaster” to mathematics was the loss of its long-held conviction that mathematical truths were certain and that through them mankind could know the world solely by the raw power of logic and reason’.

A new school of thought emerged among mathematicians called Formalism: that any mathematical system comprises its own set of “axioms” or rules which have no intrinsic truth value just like rules in chess or ludo. As Alan Weir put it, ‘Mathematics is not a body of propositions representing an abstract sector of reality’. Any statement that can be derived by reasoning with axioms is called a theorem.

This was a paradigm shift in the philosophy of maths. The question had become not one of “intuitive absolute truths” but of “truths in context”. Much like the popular belief in morality, absolute truths, which once underpinned Mathematics have been questioned to the point that the relevant question has become whether the Mathematics is useful in a given context, rather than whether it is “true”.

In the 20th century, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity proved that space is not Euclidean, contrary to our intuitions. Although we no longer have the comfort or the certainty of absolute truths, the systems we create allow us much more freedom to explore the physical and mathematical world.

The problem of choice

Let’s look at an even more controversial example, the Axiom of Choice. What it essentially says is: suppose you have an infinite number of cricket teams, you can make a new team by choosing one player from each of the original teams, thus you have the power to make an infinite number of choices. It is so innate that it forms the key component of many mathematical proofs.

Assuming the Axiom of Choice, however, leads to paradoxes such as the Banach-Tarski paradox which says that it is possible to cut up a ball into a finite number of pieces and reassemble them into two copies of the original. This paradox would have been enough to put off those relying on intuition to establish mathematical axioms. Even the concept of √2 was dubbed “irrational” by Greeks because it had an infinite sequence of digits after the decimal, without any pattern.

After the transition to Formalism, mathematicians like David Hilbert wanted to axiomatize all of mathematics: to find the perfect axioms to explain everything. However, by 1931, Kurt Gödel showed that an axiomatic formal system cannot prove its own completeness or consistency via his Incompleteness Theorem.

Similarly, the vessels that once carried “ethical axioms” have now been shown gears that seem to run modern, popular morality is the right to liberty balanced by the axiom of reciprocity. But these gears run at their own pace and if we press the analogy too far, they may break. This is perhaps why we emphasise tolerance over moral consistency - because if we press the axioms too hard, we start noticing the cracks in our ethical gears.

In mathematics, the Axiom of Choice gives some “contradictions”, but we keep it regardless, as it forms the bedrock of many essential results. One can put this poetically and say we should value choice in a society despite the apparent paradoxes that might arise from it. One such commonly-cited example is the “Paradox of Tolerance”—that tolerant societies must be intolerant to intolerance. 

Similarly, a free society must restrain absolute freedom to prevent basic liberties from degeneration. 

The key to a sound system, whether Ethical or Mathematical, is to minimise, rather than eliminate contradictions.

Back to Ethics: What have we learnt?

In Ethics, although it may seem we are traying too far from familiar notions of morality and order into primeval chaos, there is no need for alarm. Mathematicians have opted for more rigorous treatment of mathematics, but they haven’t diminished the role of intuition. They are guided by it yet resort to Formalism to make arguments more concrete.

In our secular age, there might be lessons from Mathematics, and perhaps it is time for Ethics to become more rigorous in our everyday lives—to use reason to minimise contradictions. 

But rather than dismissing intuition, we should acknowledge the heritage of traditional morality, and rather than base our intuition on reason, base our reason on intuition. We have to venture into the dark chaotic world of relative truths but keep the flickering lamp of intuition for context. 

For millennia, we confided in absolute truth, but 'as the world changeth, so must the Truth'.

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Aditya Ghosh and Sea-Yun Pius Joung are both Undergraduates at Oriel College, studying Mathematics and Theology and Religion respectively.

Image: All M.C. Escher works © 2020 The M.C. Escher Company - the Netherlands. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.mcescher.com

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Center | Practicing Resurrection Together

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Center | Practicing Resurrection Together

November 25, 2015

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Center

By jtower11

*Note this series begins with “Quakers and Jesus: First Things

I will conclude this series with the last, especially unique Quaker conception of Jesus, that of Christ as the Center. Thomas Kelly, a 20^th century Quaker mystic and philosopher, was perhaps best known for his writings later entitled A Testament of Devotion after his death. As Quakerism’s most famous leaders of that time, such as Rufus Jones, Douglas Steere, Thomas Kelly, and D. Elton Trueblood pursued philosophy rather than theology, a subtle shift in language about Jesus began to emerge, most noticeably the now ubiquitous terminology of Christ as the Center. Quaker sacramentology began a slow shift[1] toward one of a “Pan sacramental sense of holiness of every life; relationship is intimately connected to an inward sense of communion.”[2] Thomas Kelly began to build in new ways upon a theology of Christ as the Inner Light.[3] In the first chapter of A Testament of Devotion he writes:

“Deep within us all there is an inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts pressing upon our time-worn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home into Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life.

It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories on the face of humans. It is a seed stirring to life, if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action, and He is within us all.”

Kelly links his conception of the Center to that of the Inner Light. While “Center” may at first be seen as a related term to “within,” Kelly seems to give it much more nuanced and philosophical significance. He writes of this Light as the flaming center of religion,[4] and the Center of Creation.[5] Kelly echoes Barclay and others in speaking of an unceasing orientation of the depths of our being toward the Light, Christ at the Center;[6] where life is to be lived from the Center of our being.[7] For Kelly, living this kind of life stemmed from what he called “Holy Obedience,” which he understood as a continual submission of the will to the work of God in a person. Kelly saw this continual submission through a kind of Christian existentialism, with some similarities to what Jean Pierre De Caussade referred to as the sacrament of the present moment. Kelly referred to the present moment as the Eternal Now, a conception in which the finiteness of humanity encountered the infiniteness of God placed in the human heart. The submission Kelly speaks of is a form of self-oblation, as the Light illumines within it is both filled with glory and wonder, yet also pain. He speaks of this as the “X-ray light of eternity,” a guidance of the Light that he describes as “critical, acid, sharper than a two edged sword.”[8]

Conclusion

Quakers are not especially known for their Christology, yet their Christological assumptions, experiences, and orientation have, and continue, to greatly influence Christian spiritual formation. Their Christology attempted to navigate their experiences and the misunderstandings and arguments of their critics, forged a unique answer to the paradox of divine sovereignty and human freedom as it pertains to soteriology, and continues to make an impact far beyond the small size of Quakerism’s many adherents. Yet one could argue that all of this was a byproduct of their discovery of a mystical, Logos Christology, one that emphasized the immediacy of God not only in a personal relationship, but a corporate one as well. Quakerism has sought to follow Jesus more than explain him, to let him be the head of the church in ways that lead to practical action, dynamic and rich contemplative reflections, and humble and honest self-examination. Rooted in Christian orthodoxy and mystical experience, they aim at a Christology that is more than a doctrine, it is an invitation to “a life filled with God.”[9]

Query: There is a real danger in our Society to view faith more as intellectual assent than dynamic connection with Christ. How do we—as Friends of Jesus—make room at the center of our lives for a Jesus who is more than a doctrine, but an inward reality bursting outward that ripples through every corner of our lives?

Other Posts in this series:

Quakers and Jesus: First Things

Quakers and Jesus: Toward a Quaker Christology

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Present Teacher and Lord

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Seed and Inner Light 

Quakers and Jesus: Christ as Center

References

[1] Elton, Trueblood, The People Called Quakers. New York: Harper & Row, 1966, 128.

[2] Douglas V. Steere, Quaker Spirituality, 18.

[3] Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, eds, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups., rev. and expanded. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, 175.

[4] Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise, 60.

[5] Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 4.

[6] Ibid, 5.

[7] Ibid, 92.

[8] Ibid. 22.

[9] Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise, 73.

 

Contemplative Prayer (The Visions of Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton)

Contemplative Prayer (The Visions of Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton)

Contemplativ Contemplative Prayer (The Visions of Thomas K er (The Visions of Thomas Kelly and Thomas elly and Thomas Merton)

Keith R. Maddock 

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1-1-1999 

Contemplative Prayer (The Visions of Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton) 

Keith R. Maddock 

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt 

 

Recommended Citation 

Maddock, Keith R. (1999) "Contemplative Prayer (The Visions of Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton)," Quaker Religious Thought: Vol. 92 , Article 3. 

Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt/vol92/iss1/3 

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quaker Religious Thought by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact arolfe@georgefox.edu. 

 

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER 

(THE VISIONS OF THOMAS KELLY AND

THOMAS MERTON)

KEITH R. MADDOCK

The tension between action and contemplation is one of the oldest and most divisive issues in religious life. We are faced with familiar complaints about complacency in conventional religion on the one hand, and social activism motived by secular or political rather than spiritual values on the other. Yet spiritual leaders and reformers have wrestled with this tension for centuries, and have sought to integrate contemplation and action into a holistic view of life centered in God.

Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton were visionaries for a renewal of spiritual life in their own times of transition. Kelly spoke out of the period between two world wars, including economic depression, when traditional religious values were subjected to assault on all fronts. It took great courage for him to advocate a spirituality of relevance and personal transformation at that time. In the years following the second world war, another wave of spirituality swept over the western hemisphere, this time in response to excessive optimism based on economic prosperity. Thomas Merton, a popular writer in both Catholic and non-Catholic communities, warned his contemporaries not to ignore the dark side of progress. The experience of grace demands an embrace of suffering, and continuing engagement with oppressive powers. 

In our present time of transition, we may appreciate the ecumenical outlooks of Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton. There is some affinity between them as middle-class American men trying to define a religious base for their personal lives in a secular world. But their most lasting achievements are their recipes for spiritual integrity in a busy North American context, adaptations of one of the most ancient disciplines in the Judeo-Christian tradition—a life ordered and inspired through contemplative prayer. Douglas Steere, another American Quaker, focused on their common ground when he wrote, “Would it be going too far to suggest that what we are after in the nurture of prayer is a continual condition of prayerfulness, a constant sensitivity to what is really going on?”1

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Kelly and Merton both believed that the seed of faith requires a measure of solitude, or renunciation of the world, to germinate. Faith nurtured in solitude enables the contemplative to return into the world with a deeper commitment to its transformation. Prayer then becomes a holistic discipline that prepares the ground for love to mature into service. Furthermore, their understanding of contemplative prayer suggested a way of spiritual fulfillment that is potentially available to everyone.

Although Merton was writing for a specific community, he stressed the contemplative orientation of the whole life of prayer. “Certainly in the pressures of modern urban life,” he wrote, “many will face the need for a certain interior silence and discipline simply to keep themselves together, to maintain their human and Christian identity and their spiritual freedom.”2 While Merton was coming from a tradition accustomed to formal religious disciplines, Quakers have often been ambivalent about the need for outward signs of inward experience. Nevertheless, the objective in silent worship is to bring one’s mind to a stillness that is the measure of discernment for the whole of one’s life. 

Kelly goes further when he suggests, “The practice of inward orientation is the heart of religion.”3 In A Testament of Devotion, he referred specifically to the need for inner discipline to redirect our experience of worship into the whole of our lives. “What is here urged are secret habits of unceasing orientation of the deeps of our being about the Inward Light, ways of conducting our inward life so that we are perpetually bowed in worship, while we are also very busy in the world of daily affairs.”4

But how is a state of continuous prayer to be interpreted for an uncloistered and reformed religious community, where complacency or ambivalence in outward observance is often the norm? Kelly recognized that many of us long for something more than the moderate, halfhearted religiosity we so often experience. He challenged Quakers to recover the passion of their own tradition.

Many of us have become as mildly and conventionally religious as were the church folk of three centuries ago, against whose mildness and mediocrity and passionlessness George Fox and his followers flung themselves with all the energy of dedicated lives. In some, says William James, religion exists as a dull habit.

Religion as a dull habit is not that for which Christ lived and died.5

DRYNESS, DEPRESSION, AND THE DARK NIGHT OF

THE SOUL

Complacency involves an avoidance of contemplation, because contemplation is often associated with images of darkness, absence, and emptiness—conditions that emerge when things are not going well, when lives seem to be going to pieces, when all that carried meaning for us is broken and there is nothing we can think of or envision to improve matters. 

Yet this state may be the most fertile ground for moral and spiritual growth. Learning how to embrace rather than flee darkness often results in a creative restructuring of our patterns of thought and behaviour. Stripped of familiar ideas and illusions about ourselves, our world, and God, we may be able to let go of narrow or false understandings of human existence manufactured by our personal and social anxieties. According to Merton, “It means the renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacities, in order to obey God’s will as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth.”6

After a visit to pre-war Germany in 1938, Thomas Kelly drew attention to the fatalism he observed in American religious life. With characteristic eloquence, he wrote, “if you will accept as normal life only what you can understand, then you will try only to expel the dull, dead weight of Destiny, of inevitable suffering which is a part of normal life, and never come to terms with it or fit your soul to the collar and bear the burden of your suffering which must be borne by you, or enter into the divine education and drastic discipline of sorrow, or rise radiant in the sacrament of pain.”7

Surrender to the darkness is also the end of self-sufficiency. One is freed from autonomous self-images toward a deeper, more relational sense of personhood. There comes an awareness that we cannot ultimately be defined by our strengths and weaknesses. Merton adds that the deep night “is a great gift of God, for it is the precise point of our encounter with his fullness.”8 The fruit of self-surrender is a wholly new way of perceiving and relating to others. 

44 • 

For Thomas Merton, contemplative prayer is not an external discipline, but something that happens within the depths of our inmost selves. Through it we come to recognize God as the deepest centre of our being, an intuition grounded and ending in love. Kelly uses the expression “holy blindness” for that love-infused, relational perception of the world. He writes that this blindness is like that of a person who looks steadily at the sun and then sees only the afterimage of the sun whenever he turns his eyes back toward the earth. He continues, “The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and power.”9

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER AND SOCIAL CONCERN

Contemplative prayer turns one toward the neighbour. This insight means that while we may learn to experience the whole of life more fully, we are also called to enable others to do so. In The Contemplative Life: Its Meaning and Necessity, Merton writes, “Contemplation, at its highest intensity, becomes a reservoir of spiritual vitality, that pours itself out in the most telling social action.”10

Kelly envisioned prayer as an intimate relationship with God, through which we may become mediums for God’s will to be known. We become receptive rather than passive, and motivated to action by a will that is not our own.

Prayer becomes not hysterical cries to a distant God, but gentle upliftings and faint whispers, in which it is not easy to say who is speaking, we, or an Other through us. Perhaps we can only say: Praying is taking place. Power flows through us, from the Eternal into the rivulets of Time.11

As the practice of contemplative prayer, religion is not a complement to other aspects of life, but that which underlies and infuses all we do. Merton writes about the necessity for inner solitude in the midst of the busy-ness of modern life in order to strengthen our resolve for service in the world. Similarly, Kelly sought a spiritual resource to nurture and empower all of life’s endless round of activity.

Religion isn’t something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives yet more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives the singleness of eye…We can get so fearfully busy trying to carry out the second great commandment…that we are under-developed in our devoted love to God. But we must love God as well as neighbor.12

Contemplation involves entering into the core of our being and then passing through that core and out of ourselves into God and into God’s world with a renewed sense of vocation. Awareness of this incarnated intimacy is meant to be shared with others. Kelly draws inspiration from the biblical metaphor of Christ’s transfiguration, a sign in his restless search for direction. “There are a few,” he writes, “who, like those on the Mount of Transfiguration, want to linger there forever and never return to the valleys of men, where there are demons to be cast out.” There is more to the experience of God than being plucked out of the world. He continues, “The fuller experience is of a Love which sends us out into the world.”13

Although each person will find intimacy with God in his or her own way, we can say that the life of prayer for all leads to both the unitive knowledge of God in contemplation and selfless good will and charity toward others. This is what Merton means when he asserts that every Christian is potentially a contemplative. He wrote, “Serious and humble prayer, united with mature love, will unconsciously and spontaneously manifest itself in a habitual spirit of sacrifice and concern for others that is unfailingly generous, though perhaps we may not be aware of the fact.”14

Both Merton and Kelly see a great need for being in the world more fully, rather than an urgency to build the new order through religious or political action. To choose to live in the realm of God now is to choose to live in God’s new order, which overcomes the structures of injustice as well as the experience of alienation. Kelly makes a similar observation in succinct terms when he writes, “Social concern is the dynamic Life of God at work in the world, made special and emphatic and unique, particularized in each individual or group who is sensitive and tender in the leading-strings of love.”15

CONCLUSION

Merton felt nothing could restore modern humanity, caught up in technology, depersonalizing societies, and fierce activism, except a new contemplative vision. Seeking isolation, he embarked on a 46 • 

life-transforming journey. As that journey led him further from the temptations of the world, he found himself plunged more deeply into the spiritual malaise of the world. 

In his introduction to Merton’s Contemplative Prayer, Douglas Steere reveals a surprising insight (for a Quaker) into the monastic vocation Merton followed. He points out that we live in an age of crisis, revolution, and struggle—a time that calls for the special searching and questioning that is characteristic of the monk in meditation and prayer. Continuing from that observation, he writes that “the monk searches not only his own heart: he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have ‘left’ it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.”16

In his own way Kelly was cloistered in an academic career that was often as frustrating as it was necessary to his personal fulfillment. For all of his intellectual achievements, his uniquely contemplative style of writing suggests that his interior journey was deeper than the outward circumstances of his life would suggest, and the personal tensions it entailed were as life-changing and emotionally draining as any Merton later experienced. 

Kelly’s first-hand observation of the growing crisis in Europe marked a significant turning point in his life. Recoiling from the intensity of both fascist and communist ideologies, and from the number of people actually suffering under Hitler, he experienced deep depression. While visiting Cologne Cathedral in 1938, he felt the evil pressing him down into the very stones on the floor where he was kneeling. But then, through prayer, he felt relieved by a mystical presence that enabled him to return home—where his original sense of helplessness gave way to an outcry of passionate concern.17

Solitude is the essential condition for contemplative prayer. Yet isolation from the world, whether supported by institutional discipline or by a strong vocational drive, is only a beginning. The obstacles to being alone with God are the constant attributes of our busy and crowded existence in the modern world. Craving a deeper experience of solitude, Kelly and Merton reoriented their religious lives to resist the ambitious activism of American life and the complacency of conventional religion. They experienced the long dryness that both frustrates and nourishes longing before coming to terms with their disillusionment about the world and submitting themselves to the dark night journey of coming into intimacy with God. 

The ultimate dread of living today is to find ourselves alone, cut off from human society and its ambitions for security and progress. The religious vocation, true to its quest for spiritual integrity, is all the more pressed to transcend the ways of the world and to make a fresh commitment to the discipline of contemplative prayer. In the last article he was writing before his death, Kelly expressed the new vision vividly.

With trembling awe at the wonder that is ever wrought within us, we must humbly bear the message of the Light. Many see it from afar and long for it with all their being. Amidst all the darkness of this time the day star can arise in astounding power and overcome the darkness within and without.18

NOTES

1. Douglas Van Steere, Together in Solitude (=TS) (NY: Crossroad, 1982), p. 14.

2. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (=CP) (NY: Image Books, 1971), p. 19.

3. Kelly, “The Light Within,” A Testament of Devotion (London: Quaker Home Service, 1989), p. 30.

4. Kelly, Testament, p. 27.

5. Kelly, “Holy Obedience,” Testament, p. 49.

6. Merton, CP, p. 68.

7. Kelly, Testament, p. 64.

8. Merton, CP, p. 100.

9. Kelly, “The Quaker Discovery,” Testament, p. 58.

10. Merton, “The Contemplative Life,” quoted in John J. Higgins, Thomas Merton on Prayer (NY: Image Books, 1975), p. 93.

11. Kelly, “Excerpts from the Richard Cary Lecture,” in The Eternal Promise (=EP) (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1991), p. 34.

12. Kelly, “The Simplification of Life,” in Testament, p. 112.

13. Kelly, “The Eternal Now and Social Concern,” in Testament, p. 97.

14. Merton, CP, p. 74.

15. Kelly, “The Simplification of Life,” in Testament, p. 102.

16. Steere, “Intro.,” to Merton, CP, p. 23.

17. Steere, TS, p. 101.

18. Kelly, “Children of the Light,” EP, p. 162.

Revolutionary Explosiveness | to tell the truth - thomas kelly

Revolutionary Explosiveness | to tell the truth

Revolutionary Explosiveness

25

Monday

May 2009

Posted by Michael DeFazio in Uncategorized≈ Leave a comment

Tagschurch, dallas willard, discipleship, ministry, obedience, patience, quakers, thomas kelly

testament of devotion

More from Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion . . . about what Kelly calls the “revolutionary explosiveness” of full obedience to Jesus. After quoting Meister Eckhart’s comment about how many will follow Jesus halfway but few will continue with the other half (btw, Eckhart places giving up all our possessions in the first half!), Kelly summons us, “It is just this astonishing life which is willing to follow Him the other half, sincerely to disown itself, this life which intends complete obedience, without any reservations, that I would propose to you in all humility, in all boldness, in all seriousness. I mean this literally, utterly, completely, and I mean it for you and for me – commit your lives in unreserved obedience to Him.” And then he says, in case we’ve missed that he’s not playing around, “If you don’t realize the revolutionary explosiveness of this proposal, you don’t understand what I mean.” I’m reminded of something Dallas Willard once suggested churches should put on their outdoor signs: “We are committed to training all those interested in actually obeying the things Jesus said to do” (or something like that). And I believe part of his point was that if this isn’t a true statement about what the church is doing, then we aren’t really paying attention to the Great Commission. Easier said than done, of course. The reality is that we find ourselves in a situation where most of the people we would “reach” have no idea who Jesus really is, and many of them don’t care. That’s not to say the essence of our task changes, but it does mean that we’ve got to find new virtues – patience more than any other, as well as new tactics (catechism, perhaps?). I’m happy to be part of a church that meets people “where they’re at,” since that’s the only place we can meet them; the question is how to move forward…

Quaker service in China: Evolution amidst revolution - The Australian Friend

Quaker service in China: Evolution amidst revolution - The Australian Friend







Wuna Reilly and James Reilly, New South Wales Regional Meeting


Jamie, Wuna and Reina

The history of Quakers’ engagement in China begins, appropriately, with opposition to war. During the Second Opium War in China (1856-1860), Adam Davidson was a 24-year-old Methodist from Ireland, and a Corporal in the 12th Brigade of Britain’s Royal Artillery. Deeply disturbed by the notorious sacking of the Imperial Summer Palace in 1860, as he took sentry duty on the walls of Beijing, the ruins of the Palace still smoking in the distance, he began to wonder how he could reconcile such actions with his Christianity. This led him to pacifism, and after his return to Ireland his pacifism drew him to join the Society of Friends in 1865.

Although Davidson never returned to China, in 1886 he sent his son Robert to serve as the first Quaker missionary to China, telling him: “Go to China and as you meet the Chinese tell them you come with the Bible and not with a gun as I mistakenly did.”

Over the next few decades, a number of British and US Quakers followed Davidson’s example. They went primarily to Sichuan province in western China – laying the foundation for the first Yearly Meeting in China – Sichuan Yearly Meeting, established in 1904.

Quaker missionaries soon took up prominent roles promoting higher education in China. Robert Simkin, supported by the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, became the principal of Union Middle School in Chengdu in 1912, and then Acting Vice-President of West China Union University in 1919. William Cadbury, supported by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Cadbury Fund, eventually became Superintendent of Canton (Guangzhou) Hospital, Vice-President of the Chinese Medical Association, and then Chairman of the Canton International Red Cross.

The legacy of Quaker missionaries endures in the institutions they helped establish. Chongqing Boys’ School, founded by Quakers, in 1991 reverted to its original name – Friends High School. West China Union University, co-founded by Quaker missionaries in 1910 in Chengdu, endures as the West China University of Medical Sciences.

As China descended into war following Japan’s invasion of central China in 1937, Quaker missionaries established relief programs. In 1938, Quakers established the Friends Centre in Shanghai with support from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The missionary legacy and relief programs laid the foundation for the most ambitious of all Quaker service programs in China – the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU).

From the Nameless to the Nameless: Friends Ambulance Unit

The Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) was originally established during World War I to provide a channel of service for Conscientious Objectors (COs), mainly Quakers. It was resurrected in 1939 to again provide opportunities for COs to offer service in relief of suffering brought on by war. One of FAU’s most important programs was the China Convoy.

As Japanese armies seized control of most of China, by 1940 the only available land route into “Free China”, the part controlled by the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek, was via Burma and the new Burma Road. With the support of the British Fund for the Relief of Distress in China, the FAU began transporting medical supplies from Rangoon and, after the fall of Burma, from Kunming.

Despite daunting conditions, by 1942, the FAU had established a functioning transport system. Without access to petrol, FAU trucks had been converted to run on charcoal-fuelled gas, rapeseed oil, tung oil, and even alcohol. Medical and mobile surgical teams formed to work alongside the Chinese Red Cross.

Although China’s wartime resistance to Japan included both the Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), most Christian relief organisations refused to engage with the CCP. One of the few Western organisations prepared to work with the CCP, the FAU sent a team to serve in the Communist base area of Yan’an, facilitated by future Premier Zhou Enlai.

One estimate suggests that up to 90 per cent of the medical supplies reaching China for civilian use during the war were brought in by the FAU. After the war’s end, the FAU shifted its focus to rural rehabilitation in Henan province. By the time FAU’s China Convoy was formally disbanded in 1950, it had included 170 individuals from five countries over nine years.

When Friends Service Council and the AFSC jointly accepted the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Quakers worldwide, they were honored for their service “from the nameless to the nameless”—an ideal embodied by the FAU in China.

After the Communist Revolution in 1949, most Westerners soon left the country, including Quaker missionaries. However, Friends continued to play an active role in Hong Kong, which remained under British rule. From the late 1940s, Hong Kong Quakers founded “rooftop schools” for children of migrants from mainland China, and later also provided relief services for refugees from Vietnam. In 1979 Hong Kong Friends Meeting founded Oxfam Hong Kong to gather relief for Cambodia. Now independent of Quakers, Oxfam Hong Kong has grown into one of the largest Oxfams in the world.

Recognising China: AFSC’s Cold War Engagement

Following the Communist Party’s 1949 victory over the Nationalists, the United States government refused to recognise the new Communist government—instead insisting to recognise only the Nationalist government on Taiwan as the government of China.


A contemporary cartoonist’s opinion of Ping Pong Diplomacy

Drawing from its history of involvement in China, AFSC urged US recognition of China and lobbied for China’s inclusion in the United Nations. At the height of the McCarthy “Red Scare” in the 1950s, AFSC published a book titled “A New China Policy,” and sponsored a series of conferences in the US calling for diplomatic recognition of China. These efforts led to the founding of the National Committee on US-China Relations, which later organised the famous Ping Pong Diplomacy delegation.

AFSC also held influential conferences with UN diplomats in Geneva and New York to discuss the PRC assumption of the China seat at the UN. After its success in 1971, AFSC led two high-level delegations to China and published a series of books aimed at broadening dialogue and facilitating exchanges between the US and China, laying the foundation for the renewal of diplomatic relations in 1979.

Renewed Engagement: AFSC Returns to China

From the 1970s, AFSC’s work in Asia shifted toward the aftermath of US-led wars in Southeast Asia, democratisation in South Korea, and protesting US military bases maintained throughout the region. It was not until 2001, when we were hired as the Quaker International Affairs Representatives (QIARs) in East Asia, that AFSC established its first office in China since 1949.


China Summer camp: Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean university students teaching local Chinese middle-school students about environmental protection.

The first program we established in China on behalf of AFSC was the “China Summer” workcamp. Since 2001, China Summer has brought young people from the US, China, and around Asia together to teach English, Chinese, environmental protection and other subjects to local children in rural Hunan province. Now in its thirteen year, China Summer has hosted hundreds of volunteers from around the world, and thousands of local Chinese children. Although it is no longer formally affiliated with AFSC or Quaker institutions, individual Quakers remain involved with the project in various ways, including as participants, administrators, and supporters. Indeed, China Summer continues to epitomise Quaker values in action through its workcamp and affiliated service programs in southern China. AFSC continues to maintain an office in Beijing and administers its North Korea program out of China. This unassuming approach of building dialogue and understanding across boundaries exemplifies the rich history of Quaker service in China.

2 Comments

Andrew Hicks on 01/12/2014 at 11:20 pm


Thanks for your great article on “Quaker Service in China”. It’s good to be in touch as I have been writing a book on the work of the Friends Ambulance Unit ‘China Convoy’, to be called A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA. I am finalising the proofs and it will be really good to be in touch with the Quaker community in China when it comes out. On the cover will be a group photo including David Thawley whose son was much later Australia’s ambassador to the USA (or do I mean the UN). So there are connections to be made. I can be contacted on arhicks56@hotmail.com. Best wishes.Reply


Wei Li on 26/06/2020 at 1:42 am


My father graduated from the Friends High School and the Pacifism values from the school took roots, which caused him a lot of political troubles along with the other values from the school, contradicted the values pitched by the government after 1949…
it is great to find some info on the school founder here
thanks for the contributionReply

Embodying the Words of Thomas Kelly | Western Friend

Embodying the Words of Thomas Kelly | Western Friend

Embodying the Words of Thomas Kelly

Author(s): 

Barbara Birch

Department: 

Inward Light

Some wannabe disciples of Brother Lawrence (like me) are baffled by quotes like this from a book of his teachings, The Practice of the Presence of God:

Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone.

What does that mean? How? I tried praying his prayer:

O my God, since thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech thee to grant me the grace to continue in thy presence; and to this end do thou prosper me with thy assistance, receive all my works, and possess all my affections.

I tried, but the prayer did not work for me. I was pretty sure I needed more specific instructions.

In January 2019, I made several random resolutions that, when put together, led me to a better understanding of how to “practice the presence” of the Divine in my life. 

First, I decided to read something short and spiritual, so I got out my old copy of A Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly. 

Second, I decided to stop using disposable pens, so I got out an old fountain pen that my Dad made for me, and I bought a bottle of ink. 

Third, I decided to use the pen; instead of doing all my writing with a keyboard, I would do some by hand. Then, just about that same time, in meeting for worship, my inner guide told me to use my “gifts” to deepen my spiritual life.

I am a reader and writer by profession, and these are my gifts. I have honed those skills and technologies throughout my life, so I assimilate and internalize ideas best by reading and writing about them. I decided to practice lectio divina and scriptio divina – sacred reading and writing – because they are devotional practices that build on my gifts.

I confess that I don’t understand it because the words are descriptive and lyrical.I started reading “The Light Within,” the first section of Thomas Kelly’s book. I like that part the best, but I confess that I don’t understand it because the words are descriptive and lyrical. After reading each paragraph, I copied it out word for word into a pretty journal I had found at a thrift store. I am a compulsive buyer of unwanted journals; it felt good to open one and write in it with a fountain pen. I wrote each paragraph on a page as nicely as I could, telling myself that mistakes and smudges didn’t matter.

Reading the paragraphs occupied my eyes and brain; writing them involved my eyes, brain, arm, hands, and fingers. Somehow, the extra mind/body processing helped me understand Kelly’s lyrical words better. Inadvertently, by the end of March, 2020 – when the Covid pandemic struck with force – I had established a routine that would get me though a longer isolation than I had imagined.

I read at first for meaning, then again for a sense of the paragraph and sentence structure, and then once more for the structure and etymology of the words.During the weeks and months that I was alone in my office, lectio and scriptio divina grew more embodied as I explored ways to sink into words and meanings. To slow down, I read silently, but I “heard” the phrases and words in my head with intonation. I read at first for meaning, then again for a sense of the paragraph and sentence structure, and then once more for the structure and etymology of the words.

Soon I was also reading aloud, listening to the sounds in the syllables and words. When I was alone, I made a lot of noise by my sacred reading and listening. I read with exaggerated intonation and hand gestures, and sometimes rhythmically in chant. I didn’t exactly memorize the passages, but I got to know them very well. While I was walking aimlessly around my neighborhood, I reconstructed the meanings of the passages in my head. At times, I tried to match my steps to the
words I recollected.

At the same time, my experiences of sacred writing evolved. The fountain pen made my scrawled letters, smudges and all, look expressive on the page. I wrote the reconstructed phrases as I remembered them after my neighborhood walks. Sometimes I wrote what a sentence or paragraph meant in my own words. Sometimes I wrote what I was reminded of, or associations I had from the past. Reading and writing this way is called meditatio.

Often I imagined that I could ask Thomas Kelly a question about a passage or have a conversation with him. I wondered how a particular passage might affect my life journey going forward. If these imagined conversations led to an insight, I put that into words on the page. Ancient monks and nuns called this contemplatio, the contemplative stage of lectio divina.

I found that the words on those pages flooded my unconscious while at worship.Ultimately, I got to pages 38-39 in “The Light Within.” They are Kelly’s specific instructions to practice the presence of the Divine. After lectio, scriptio, meditatio, and contemplatio, I found that the words on those pages flooded my unconscious while at worship. Not quickly, but eventually, I experienced a glimmer of a felt sense that prayer was part of my body in my lifeworld. That was the start.

Now, when I become quiet in my mind and body, I welcome Kelly’s words into my body in what the ancient Christians called oratio. I choose one phrase as a sacred mantra to use as a focus. I center down to the quiet place beneath the words and let them sink into me. When intrusive thoughts distract my attention, my sacred words lead me back to center. As Kelly describes, “turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be.”

I sometimes feel like I am living on two levels, as Kelly suggested, carrying embodied prayer with me wherever I go, whatever I do. My practice is far from perfect, but Brother Lawrence’s words make sense to me now. “There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.” ~~~

Barbara Birch is a member of Strawberry Creek Meeting in Berkeley, CA (PacYM). Besides lectio divina, her interests include the embodied spirituality of early Friends, its relevance to Quakers today, and Friendly Twelve-Step recovery.

=====

The Words of Thomas Kelly

The following paragraphs are drawn from “The Light Within,” found in Testament of Devotion, (New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 1941), 38-39, used by permission.

“How, then shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning all of our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months, and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns.

“Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is Within. “In secret ejaculations of praise, turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be. Keep contact with the outer world of sense and meanings. Here is no discipline in absent-mindedness. Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship.

“Keep it up throughout the day. Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake. The first days and weeks and months are awkward and painful, but enormously rewarding. Awkward, because it takes constant vigilance and effort and reassertions of the will, at the first level. Painful, because our lapses are so frequent, the intervals when we forget Him so long. Rewarding, because we have begun to live.

“Lapses and forgettings are so frequent. Our surroundings grow so exciting. Our occupations are so exacting. But when you catch yourself again, lose no time in self-recriminations, but breathe a silent prayer for forgiveness and begin again, just where you are. Offer this broken worship to Him and say: ‘This is what I am except Thou aid me.’ Admit no discouragement, but ever return quietly to Him and wait in his presence.”

The Serenity Prayer and Twelve Step Recovery | Hazelden Betty Ford

The Serenity Prayer and Twelve Step Recovery | Hazelden Betty Ford



OCTOBER 15, 2018 | BY: Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation
The Serenity Prayer and Twelve Step Recovery


Finding the Balance between Acceptance and Change

The AA Serenity Prayer

These simple words ring clear through the hearts and minds of Alcoholics Anonymous members across the world:

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.

This often used AA prayer is an excerpt from a longer prayer commonly attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. Although its origins are a bit unclear, its impacts are not. The Serenity Prayer serves as a focal point for the very spirit of AA, anchoring its members to its quintessential teachings about surrender and acceptance. Below, we provide the full Serenity Prayer along with an examination of its history, meaning and importance so that we all might carry its lessons closely and transform common hardships into a calming surrender.

The Full Serenity Prayer

• God grant me the serenity
• To accept the things I cannot change;
• Courage to change the things I can;
• And wisdom to know the difference.
• Living one day at a time;
• Enjoying one moment at a time;
• Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
• Taking, as He did, this sinful world
• As it is, not as I would have it;
• Trusting that He will make things right
• If I surrender to His Will;
• So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
• And supremely happy with Him
• Forever and ever in the next.
• Amen

.
AA, the Twelve Steps and the Serenity Prayer

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous have enthusiastically embraced this prayer—known as the Serenity Prayer—almost from the moment they discovered it. In fact, these 25 words are heard in most every AA meeting and widely taken as a succinct statement of a path to sanity and sobriety.

The Serenity Prayer meshes perfectly with the spirituality of AA's Twelve Steps. And, although the origin is thought to be Christian, the Serenity Prayer is applicable to your daily life regardless of religion or spiritual belief system. There are several versions of the Serenity Prayer, each with slightly different wording that support groups have adopted. The full Serenity Prayer text has stronger religious overtones.

Also there are conflicting accounts of the prayer's origin. The Serenity Prayer has been variously attributed to an ancient Sanskrit text, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi and others. Many AA members were first exposed to the prayer in 1948, when it was quoted in the Grapevine, an AA periodical. There it was credited to American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). The Serenity Prayer spread both through Niebuhr’s sermons and church groups in the 1930s and 1940s, and was later adopted and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs.
Living the Serenity Prayer in Recovery from Alcohol or Drug Addiction

For many, the first verse of the Serenity Prayer serves as a daily touchstone, reminding us that to achieve serenity, we must approach each moment with wisdom and courage. The Serenity Prayer accurately expresses a central problem of addiction and prescribes a timeless solution.

The prayer’s message about acceptance echoes insights from Bill W., cofounder of AA. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous (published by AA World Services), Bill described the core trait of alcoholics as self-centeredness—something he called "self-will run riot." He further described the alcoholic as "an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way." Bill's solution: "First of all, we had to quit playing God."

What blocks some alcoholics and addicts from achieving serenity is their intense desire to achieve a sense of absolute control—one that is simply not possible for human beings. This need for control has two aspects. First is an attempt to control the behavior of others, a strategy that addicts cling to despite its repeated failure. Second is the attempt to control feelings by medicating them with mood-altering chemicals. This strategy, too, is doomed to failure.

An alcoholic’s quest for absolute control can lead to misery, which may contribute to substance abuse problems. Ironically, the need to control may also be a response to the unmanageability caused by their out-of-control use of drugs. And the vicious cycle continues until the addict accepts that there will always be external circumstances that we cannot change. The prayer instead points us to examine our inner life: We cannot directly control our feelings. However, we can influence our feelings through what we can control—our thinking and our actions. By focusing on those two factors, we can attain the final quality promised by the Serenity Prayer: courage.

The Serenity Prayer is a wide door, one that's open to people of all faiths and backgrounds. It speaks wisdom to addicts and non-addicts alike. People who live this prayer discover how to strike a dynamic balance between acceptance and change. This gift is precious, and it's one that we can enjoy for a lifetime of serenity.
The prayer perfectly expresses the central problem of addiction and prescribes a timeless solution


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