ATTEND TO WHAT LOVE REQUIRES OF YOU

"'Do you believe in God?' is a fatuous question"

Though some Quakers are non-theists, many speak about ‘the Spirit’, ‘the Light’, ‘the divine’, ‘the Truth’, or even ‘the Christ within’.  The emphasis is on experience rather than belief – and on deeds, not words – and there is certainly no creed, no doctrine or dogma.

Geoffrey Durham, once better known as ‘the great Soprendo’ and watched on TV by millions, told us in Wychwood Library that he was here to talk about his experience of … ‘God’ (as good a shorthand as any, he said) and how he came to adopt Quakerism as a result of getting stuck in a traffic jam in front of the same poster day after day.  After a period of attending Quaker meetings (which any of us can do, by the way) and experiencing that hour of broken silence, he eventually became a member of what is also called the Religious Society of Friends. He said that it was something he had been looking for, that it gave him meaning and purpose. And he didn’t want to convert us (‘Quakers don’t evangelise’) but he did want to tell us what Quakers are and ‘leave the rest to you’. 

Answering that of God in everyone

Born actor and raconteur that he is, Geoffrey Durham could entertain an audience for hours.  His tale of the original Quaker, George Fox, was graphic enough for us to be able to picture the event readily.  Back in 1652, Fox interrupted a church sermon by standing on a pew and, now at eye-level with the preacher in his pulpit, saying loudly: “You will say Christ saith this and the apostles say this: but what canst thou say?”  Fox wanted to know what the preacher could say from his own experience, “inwardly from God”.  From there was born the Quaker belief that there should be no such thing as clergy and laity (“we abolished the laity!”) and that everyone and anyone is equal.  George Fox wanted every Quaker to ‘answer that of God in every one’.  So all can listen to the Spirit, all can have equally valid spiritual experiences (both at formal Quaker ‘meetings for worship’, and elsewhere) and all are also deserving of equal respect – which includes the social and political, indeed the geo-political, sphere.  It is then no surprise that Quakers are active politically, pursuing such concepts as the “Good Society”, and, famously, being wheeled on to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day – ‘whenever there’s a war on!’ said Geoffrey - to talk about pacifism.

When Geoffrey first picked up the little Quaker booklet Advices and Queries, it opened in the centre and he read these two words:  Live Adventurously.  He has obviously been doing so ever since.  And in his book Being a Quaker he also quotes paragraph 28 of the same booklet:  Attend to what love requires of you.  It’s what he calls ‘the starting point of an adventure in the spirit which has changed millions of lives’.  

The next Wychwood Circle event is on May 3rd in the run-up to the General Election.  Quakers and others would no doubt welcome our discussion of what guides our voting intentions - the Good Society, the Common Good, or, as implied by the Bishops' Letter to the People and Parishes of the Church of England earlier this good ("Who is my neighbour?"), simply voting for your 'neighbour' - as opposed to your own self-interest.  The irony will not be lost on those in the Chadlington and Spelsbury area who live close to the village of Dean and whose need for the Bishops' advice may be greater than anyone's...

Anyone is welcome to join us at Wychwood Library at 7pm.  Some reading suggestions can be found in the previous post on this page. 

MAY 2015 GENERAL ELECTION: WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

“If you care about your neighbour, you care about politics”

(headline in Christian Today, 16 ii 25)

With our long-anticipated General Election imminent (and though the date was entirely predictable, one cannot say the same for the outcome) the first quarter of this year saw an unprecedented outpouring of books, reports, letters and commentaries from faith communities such as the Church of England.  We don’t shrink from discussing any topic at Wychwood Circle and our May discussion must surely be about politics and how our beliefs/faith/worldview might affect our political views.

Given that we have an established church in the UK and that all of us inhabit a ‘parish’ of the Church of England it would seem churlish not to take up the offerings made by the Bishops and others in terms of setting out the Church’s stall.  The title above was the headline to an article in Christian Today and seems to refute any nonsense from politicians (but only if they don’t like your view) about the church staying out of politics, let alone keeping to ‘spiritual matters’.  What is it to be spiritual if it is not about people (yes, and bodies!) and their well-being, to a Christian whose very name is based on an incarnational theology? Symon Hill takes this up in his commentary, as well as anticipating typical tabloid reactions!

Join our discussion on May 3rd as we take as our starting point any one or more of the following recent publications, listed in decreasing numbers of pages :

• The book of essays by experts in their field (258 pages) ON ROCK OR SAND? Ed John Sentamu (SPCK 2015) – under the headings of hope, the common good, the UK economy, poverty, education, work, health and well-being, and ageing.
• The Letter ‘to the People and Parishes of the Church of England’ (58 pages) Who is my neighbour?  – which is downloadable  from the C of E website 
• The ‘guide to the pastoral letter’ (11 pages) – a useful set of quotations under 23 different headings (our political culture, the role of the state, poverty and inequality, immigration, defence and war, etc). This can be found as a Word document on the same website
• The Guardian editorial welcoming it the day after the Letter was published. 
• A blog on the Letter and reactions to it, by Symon Hill at the thinktank Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21446 

Sunday, May 3rd at 7.00pm (ending not later than 8.30) at Wychwood Library in Milton under Wychwood High Street 

GEOFFREY DURHAM: Everybody can have an experience of the divine

Two quotations from Geoffrey Durham’s book The Spirit of the Quakers:

 “The active life takes many forms, among them work, creativity and caring. …

Work is action driven by external necessity or demand. …

Creativity, in contrast, is driven more by inner choice than by outer demand. An act cannot be creative if it is not born of freedom.  In creative action, our desire is not to solve, or succeed, or survive, but to give birth to something new.  …

 … In caring we aim not in giving birth to something new; we aim at nurturing, protecting, guiding, healing or empowering something that already has life. “

(Parker J Palmer, 1990, from the section Faith in Action)

  

And from the section, God, the Spirit and the Light Within:

'Quakers in the twenty-first century are often reluctant to talk about the Divine.  Many use the word ‘God’, but others prefer ‘the Light’, ‘ the Truth’, ‘the Seed’ or ‘the Spirit’. …

The early Quakers discovered that everybody can have an experience of the divine. … 

Some Quakers today reject traditional notions of God and use the word ‘nontheist’. … Their view should not be confused with an atheist one.'

A HUNGER TO BE MORE SERIOUS?

An evening with Richard Coles at Milton under Wychwood Village Hall 

Lucid, well-grounded, comfortable and confident in his faith, an articulate and entertaining raconteur, fascinating, happy to respond to challenging questions, liked him more than I expected: these are just a few of the comments which followed Richard Coles’ visit to Milton Village Hall on March 8^th.  Invited by Wychwood Circle to address the topic “Christianity for grown-ups”, Richard spoke of his own rejection of his father’s and grandfather’s Anglicanism and of conversations with people who did not appear to have developed their ideas of God beyond what they picked up in childhood. 

He touched on his wild (and godless) career in pop music and the glory and celebrity which he enjoyed as a young man: life in the Communards, he said, was bound to ‘feed the bonfire of your ego’.  And he was frank about the emptiness and the need he found in himself subsequently. In Edinburgh for the Festival one year he felt drawn to St Mary’s Cathedral and experienced what he called a hunger which he later identified as being met only by the church’s sacraments (such as the bread and wine within the eucharisitic liturgy).  He went from psychologist to counsellor to the colour and drama of  St Alban’s in Holborn where he was greatly inspired by the priest there and by participation in the worship and rituals of high-church Anglicanism.

Though not naturally inclined to do so, he felt he should enrol at King’s College, London, to study theology and later went to theological college and spent time in an Eastern monastery.  For such an urbane and public person, broadcaster and inveterate user of social media, it was intriguing to find him talking about the prayer discipline he learned at Mirfield, about the wonder and mystery which he experiences in the traditional liturgy, devised in previous generations to try and clarify or express that mystery.

Whatever his past and present celebrity, he comes across as  natural and down-to-earth, open and humble, quietly confident and comfortable in himself and with others.  Speaking to him individually before or afterwards, you felt that he was looking straight at you and giving you his full attention.  You find yourself envying his parishioners. “He exemplifies religion as something one does, more than a set of propositions one believes”, commented one member of the audience, “with his emphasis on living a life of prayer and service to the community”. 

The community he serves is a vast one.  Vicar of an ordinary parish in Northamptonshire which he shares with his partner and 4 dachshunds, he says he likes to go out and enjoy day-to-day contact with the people of his parish. But he also has 70,000 followers on Twitter and posts daily on Facebook: he sees himself as a ‘mission priest’ and his virtual parish must extend all over the world.  The only moment in his talk when he seemed to be trying to convert anyone was in his enthusiasm for social media and its potential to communicate and explore ideas widely.

As someone who is a church-goer said afterwards, ‘Perhaps he needs to come again so we can consider further just how we might grow into grown-up Christians!’ Others, whatever their worldview and however sceptical, will nevertheless remember his sincerity and his professed  ‘hunger’ for the sacraments.  Richard quoted Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going, which includes these lines:

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself  to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in

… 

       

WHY I AM A QUAKER

On April 12th Wychwood Circle will host former professional magician and entertainer GEOFFREY DURHAM.  To people of a certain generation he evokes the word 'Suprendo'.  He is now better known for writing and speaking about Quakerism. He was on Radio 4's Thought for the Day at the time of the commemorations for the start of World War One.

As usual we welcome everyone and anyone to Wychwood Library at 7pm, whether they just want to listen or whether they want to enter into the lively discussion which normally follows the talk.  


WYCHWOOD LIBRARY, APRIL 12th, 7pm

THE ATHEIST'S FAVOURITE VICAR?

CHRISTIANITY FOR GROWN-UPS

On March 8th we welcome a national figure, well-known to some Radio 4 listeners, a hero for others who have watched him go from pop star to pulpit, and - if one national paper is to be believed - 'the atheist's favourite vicar'. Some will have read Richard Coles' recent memoir which tells his very human story of surviving sex, drugs and rock'n'roll before going on to a 'classic Protestant conversion' (as he calls it) in the unlikely setting of a solemn high mass (so anything but Protestant) at St Alban's, Holborn. 

One reviewer compares his 'astonishingly honest' autobiography to Francis Spufford's Unapologetic - another startling but moving book about an adult and very contemporary engagement with faith and one which Wychwood Circle discussed just over a year ago.  You should, the reviewer suggested, hesitate to give either book to your elderly church-going aunt even if she is a fan of Saturday Live. 

The Reverend Richard Coles was on a panel at the 2013 Cheltenham Festival of Science alongside Robin Ince, the Bishop of Swindon and Timandra Harkness. When asked to explain their faith, the Bishop based his - rather dull - answer on the key elements of the Christian creed while Richard talked intriguingly about the 'topsy-turvy gospel', where 

The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. If you want to have anything worth having, you've got to give it all away. And you've got to die to live. 

He also complained that most people haven't given much thought to any sort of faith since they were eight years old and so no wonder they have rejected their childish view of religion - an experience which may be common to many of us. 

It is hard to gauge how many of his 70,000 Twitter followers will beat a path to Milton Village Hall on March 8th; maybe most of them are more interested in the activities of his four dachshunds or his updates on life at Finedon Vicarage. Those of us who are there may well find that, scandalous past or gentle banter aside, Richard Coles gives us something to think about in terms of how we live our lives and what on earth we base them on. 

'I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE GOD THAT STEPHEN FRY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN'

MARCUS BORG AND THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN WORDS

  

Marcus Borg died last month and will be missed, not least by those who had only recently begun to discover just how much he did for a modern understanding of what it is to be a Christian.  We recently read some quite dense theological chapters in his measured debate with his fellow biblical scholar N T Wright:  this was not a book for the casual reader!  But Borg can be very accessible.  Only a few years ago he wrote Speaking Christian (2011) which is almost a phrase-book, if not a dictionary, for those of us in 2015 who don’t live and think within church structures or traditions but might still want to know what Christians are on about.  

The words we use are vital, and none so much as the word God! Giles Fraser, priest and Guardian columnist, tweeted memorably this week:  I do not believe in the God that Stephen Fry does not believe in.  Marcus Borg, in Speaking Christian, takes aim at two phenomena which can do untold damage to an intelligent teenager’s understanding of ‘what Christians believe’. One is the relatively recent literalisation of language, ‘affecting Christians and non-Christians alike’. The second is what he calls ‘the heaven-and-hell framework’. 

Doing away with unhelpful language

Language is of course crucial in any philosophical debate and few of us would sensibly try to understand the thought of another culture or tradition, let alone another era, without first making sure we knew what language they were speaking and how they used it and understood key words in the context of their own community.  In order to communicate that community’s thoughts to a modern audience with a very different cultural background, we might feel the need to use very different language.  

What Borg calls the ‘heaven-and-hell framework’ has been and continues to be seen, he says, as

the core of Christianity for millions, within and outside the church.  It is the framework within which many understand Christian language.

The heaven and hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing. They are all there in my childhood memory and present in the minds of many Christians. What is already in our minds shapes what we experience, including how we hear words.

Of course, as he emphasizes in his first chapter, this framework, while ‘narrowing and distorting the meaning of much of Christian language’, has also ‘worked and still works for millions’.  

Which is fine, but Borg’s concern, shared by some of us at Wychwood Circle, is that Christian language used in this way has also become a problem for many.  It may obscure the truth, the richness, the contemporary relevance of Christianity, it may indeed be ‘an obstacle, an intellectual stumbling-block’.  Borg therefore proceeds to take, chapter by chapter, a whole range of typically Christian words, from ‘salvation’ to ‘heaven’ and the language of Bible and creeds, and to teach us to read and to hear such language ‘without preconceived understandings getting in the way’. 

Communicating an adult faith

Richard Coles told an audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival that, if they last thought about religion or faith when they were about 8 years old (as is so often the case), the chances are that, when they think about it now, they are thinking in childish terms because that is all they remember or ever knew. No wonder so many reject faith if what they are rejecting is a version of Christianity formulated for children. And how good a job do the churches do now, or the priests and theologians in the public sphere, in communicating the depth and relevance of a modern faith?

The next Wychwood Circle live event will be at the Village Hall on the main road through Milton under Wychwood on March 8th at 7pm.  The Reverend Richard Coles, broadcaster and former pop singer, will speak about "CHRISTIANITY FOR GROWN-UPS".