The Fire and the Hammer

the beginning of a series

1.

Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord? And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? (Jeremiah 23:29)

What is it that lures the flame but the house of ego we built, which now serves our unhappy spirit as a windowless prison? What rock invites the hammer but that hardness of heart we maintain in order to go on with our life of self-will?

But where is the word of the Lord that burns and shatters these things that shackle us to the world? and why do we not hear it when we go to meeting on Sunday? Have we banished it by our dread of hearing it? Have our souls laid plans together to tell the Creator to send us no sign, no prophet, no warning or rebuke? Is this why the messages that break the silence seem so bland?

2.

Everybody loves Jesus, the gentle Nazarene who spoke truth to power and died that we might have eternal life. Oh, and everybody loves the Buddha, the compassionate Awakened One who taught us to abandon grasping and live mindfully. What a pair of nice guys! And some of those statues of them look so beautiful, so inspiring!

Fortunately for the status quo, those statues usually aren’t seen and heard speaking. Because if the Buddha spoke, he might once again give his dreadful Fire Sermon: “all is burning.” And who ever came up with maddening “hard sayings” like Jesus the Messiah? “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” “The world hates me, because I testify that its works are evil.” What could He mean? And worst of all: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” What, be wiped out in a meaningless moment by the fall of a tower? We thought You represented a God of love!

The Buddha shuts his mouth and turns back into safe jade, and the crucified Christ of carved wood, eyes closed now, turns back inward. Our sanity is no longer threatened by their terrible meanings. Nonetheless we’re left wondering: if all is burning, will anything be left after the fire? Or if we take up our cross and follow Him, where will He lead us?

A Little Miracle in the Dentist’s Chair

Among the miracles that pave the road of my life I have to list the circumstances surrounding the loss of my upper right bicuspid this morning. This is the tooth that bothered me all Summer. By the time I got my student dentist at the College of Dentistry to look at it, its pulp was necrotic and called for root-canal work. Dr. A (a pseudonymous initial) had started the endodontia a couple of weeks ago and this was the first free morning she had to finish it in. But within the past two weeks I was fool enough to bite down on a hard piece of crispbread with that side of my mouth, and that seems to have cracked the tooth, though I never suspected it till I got the news.

Dr. A got me settled into the chair in the clinic, and went off to do whatever student dentists have to do to get set up. While I waited, I pulled my Bible out of my bag and opened it at random to read. It opened to the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. On the page I read the first half of verse 16: “He hath broken my teeth with gravel stones.” It didn’t seem significant until Dr. A had a faculty advisor confirm for her that I had a fracture.

I soon took an opportunity to ask Dr. A if she’d ever “had a book talk to her.” I showed her the passage. She had an associate working with her, and the two discussed it with animated interest. I mean, what are the chances that a patient with a broken tooth would open the Bible to its only applicable mention of broken teeth? (There are a small handful of other passages that speak of breaking the teeth of the ungodly, or of the young lions, but nothing else about the narrator’s teeth.)

I love to find my attention drawn to scripture that comments on my own situation. It reminds me that my Lord is watching over me, with the tenderest concern, at every moment. There was another reason why the coincidence about Lamentations 3:16 felt like a kiss from God to me, though, and that’s because, for the first time, I sensed the importance of the two sweet jewels that brighten all the bitterness and darkness of the book. The first sweet jewel is Lamentations 3:32-33 — “For though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.” A marginal gloss on the word “willingly” notes that the original Hebrew reads, “from His heart.”

The second is Lamentations 3:57: “Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not.” The importance? These two jewels remind me that God, who is Love Itself, is always saying “Fear not” to us. Dreadful though the experiences are that God allows the children of men to have, — and Lamentations speaks of just about all of them – none can destroy us.

Eventually a faculty advisor seemed to have confirmed for Dr. A that the tooth could not be restored, but would have to be pulled. Before sending me down to the Oral Surgery Clinic three floors down, Dr. A put her hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said “I’m sorry. I really feel bad about it.” I could tell that she felt bad, and my heart opened. My words just started to pour out — much like this, though perhaps not quite so clearly put:

“Please don’t be hard on yourself over my tooth! You did no wrong! I love you — your intentions are all good, and I know that, and that’s all that’s important! I can feel your goodness of heart, and God knows it too. At sixty-six years old, I can afford to lose a tooth. I could lose my whole body and it would be OK, because I know that life goes on forever, and I’m safe no matter what, so how much less should I be troubled over a tooth! Really — I’m at peace about it, and I hope you could be, too. 

“You may be beating yourself up inside, thinking ’if only I’d reduced the occlusion more,’ or ‘if only I’d warned the patient not to bite on anything hard,’ but please stop yourself if these thoughts come into your mind! Because we can’t change the past, and anyway, if you think about it, this is a blessed occasion: today God sent you a patient with a fractured tooth who not only wasn’t unhappy about it, but showed you an amazing coincidence with a mention of broken teeth in the Bible, and even wanted to share his peace about the loss of a tooth with you! If that’s not a sign of God smiling on you, and telling you that God supports your determination to be a good dentist, what is?”

I saw tears come into her eyes briefly, and she turned her gaze away. Then she turned her eyes back to meet mine, and our hands met, and she said, “Thank you very much.” And then we talked about the next steps in my treatment plan before I went downstairs to have the tooth pulled.

It was worth losing a tooth to have such an experience.

An Epistle from Friends in the Spirit of Christ

Eighth Month 30, 2009

To Friends everywhere, and to all who seek love, joy, hope, and meaning in life:

We, a group of Friends gathering at Powell House in Old Chatham, NY for a weekend entitled “Following Jesus in Community,” send our loving greetings to you. We’ve come from places ranging from Maine to Virginia and Ohio and from a variety of Quaker traditions. We have shared our personal experiences of the love of the living Jesus Christ and have been buoyed and stirred by Christ’s healing and forgiving presence among us this weekend. We want to invite you into the joy, hope and love we have known here.

We experienced a divine covering that helped to reconcile us all, dissolving many anxieties some of us felt in gathering with strangers whose theological tendencies we did not know. Knowing that language and doctrinal notions have caused unnecessary divisions among people of faith, we have no desire to add to these, but simply to stand with Jesus Christ at an open door, where He offers His light and love. We have found that these are available to everyone. We are eager to share the experiences that have liberated us from so many burdens and sorrows in hopes that you and others may know the same joy.

We intend to meet again within the year, and invite inquiries to: Friends in the Spirit of Christ, c/o Anna Obermayer, 599 Trumbulls Corners Road, Newfield, NY 14867 (anna.e.obermayer@gmail.com).

In love,

Ann Armstrong (NEYM)
Doug Armstrong (NEYM)
Jim Atwell (NYYM)
Susan Bailey (OYM)
Connie Bair-Thompson (NEYM)
Arthur Berk (NYYM, OYM)
Peter Blood-Patterson (NEYM)
Steve Chase (NEYM)
Shayla Cody
Jim Contois (NEYM, NYYM)
Ann Dodd-Collins (NEYM)
Ann Davidson (NYYM)
Roger Dreisbach-Williams (NYYM)
Elizabeth Edminster (NYYM)
John Edminster (NYYM)
Ellen Flanders (NYYM)
Dorothy Garner (NYYM)
David Herendeen (NYYM)
Seth Hinshaw (OYM)
Raye Hodgson (OYM)
Ruth Kinsey (NYYM)
Herb Lape (NYYM)
Rene Lape (Attender, NYYM)
Reb MacKenzie (NEYM, NYYM)
Barbara Meli (NYYM)
Salvatore Meli (NYYM)
Kate Moss (NYYM)
Anna Obermayer (NYYM)
Christopher Sammond (NYYM)
James Schultz (NYYM)
Stella Schultz (NYYM)
Susan Smith (OYM)
Thomas Swain (PYM)
Lillie Wilson (NEYM)

Key to Yearly Meeting Affiliation:
NEYM = New England Yearly Meeting
NYYM = New York Yearly Meeting
OYM = Ohio Yearly Meeting
PYM = Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

John and Elizabeth Marry

The Bride and Groom

On Seventh Day, 6/27/2009, John Edminster and Elizabeth Crownfield, both of Fifteenth Street Meeting, New York City, wed at the Meeting House under the care of their Meeting, after an eight-year engagement in which Elizabeth had lovingly helped John parent his two children, who are also members of the Meeting, and were present. On a sunny, seasonably cool morning, following a centuries-old Quaker tradition, the couple rose from silent worship, took each other’s right hands, and made vows “in the presence of God and these our friends … promising with divine assistance” to be a loving and faithful husband and wife to each other “so long as we both shall live.”  They then signed the traditional Quaker Marriage Certificate, which John had calligraphed with an ornamental border of true lovers’ knots. As they settled back into worship, Carol (of this blog) read the document aloud to the assembled company, and at rise of meeting, ninety-five witnesses signed it, beginning with the four Marriage Oversight Committee members appointed by the Meeting, of which Kate (of this blog) was the first signatory. These four also, in lieu of an officiating clergyperson, signed the marriage license to be returned to the City Clerk’s office. Volunteers from the meeting helped with everything from flowers and food to childcare. Several Friends reported feeling that the wedding had been strengthening and nourishing to the whole meeting community. The bride, formerly of Midcoast Meeting in Maine, has taken the name Elizabeth Edminster.

Before making his vow to Elizabeth, John asked inwardly for a sign to direct him when to stand up and take her as his wife. Then before his mind’s eye appeared a vision of Jesus Christ gesturing to the entire white-robed host of heaven to stand, and his response was without hesitation.
 

Signing the Marriage License

The accompanying photographs are copyrighted by Lorcan Otway of Fifteenth Street Meeting.

Take Up Your Cross, Daily: An Encouragement to Daily Spiritual Practice

God calls us to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23). This means that words and acts of our own choosing do not constitute acceptable worship, and do not bring us closer to God, unless God Himself is guiding us. Our innate moral sense tells us that this is as it should be, or else the unrepentant might win divine favor, with hearts still in unhealed bondage to error, merely by mouthing the right formula. Frail and ignorant as we are, we’re prone to indulge ourselves in things not good for us, assign ourselves vain penances that hope but fail to erase shame and guilt, and pray to false gods with the wrong part of our soul. It’s wisest to put ourselves in the hands of the heavenly Physician who knows what prayer, practice or correction best suits the state of our heart. “Pray without ceasing,” Paul counseled us (1 Thessalonians 5:17), but also “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) This paradox, that we ought to be in worship constantly, but don’t know how to do it without God’s guidance (which may change course from moment to moment, and be different for different worshippers) is the very basis of Friends’ waiting worship and their historical rejection of other denominations’ customary “forms without life.”

On this same principle, only God can tell us how often we should set aside time to give ourselves over to a spiritual activity He’s chosen for us. It’s one thing to float through each day’s activities in a mild, pious haze, “praying without ceasing” in a general sort of way, smiling to ourselves over how nicely we’ve lived up to the Yearly Meeting’s Advices and Queries. It is another to bring our will and attention to a sharp point at regular intervals, and put all of ourselves at the disposal of the Divine as we understand It. This bringing to a point may be a small, split-second thing, as when recovering alcoholics wake in the morning and resolve to spend the next twenty-four hours sober. It may involve short verbal utterances like “increase our faith” or “heal me, Lord” or “there is no god but God.” It might be purely nonverbal, like a sending of blessings in the six directions, or prostration, or a few minutes’ exercise in bare mindfulness. It may be a fixing of intention to speak and think about God, and our covenant with Him, “as we walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7), or to call repeatedly on His name (Psalm 91:15). But I could not guess what God would call you to do. My own daily practice, given to me at my request, is to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning, slowly and thoughtfully. For others, it may be something shorter – or longer. And, under God’s ongoing guidance, one’s daily assignment may change or expand over time.

Is God calling you to a daily spiritual practice? Ask Him – or “Her,” or “It,” if those pronouns strike you as more fitting for the One who created you; and God will answer you.

Did you formerly have a daily practice that you fell away from and never went back to? Is that because the Holy Spirit did not support your continuing with it, or because you let yourself be discouraged? Do you discern that God wishes you to resume it? Might you need the support of a group of friends?

Committees of Ministry and Worship, or Ministry and Counsel, may wish to consider whether they are called to encourage the adoption of daily spiritual practices, and the shared discussion of daily-practice experiences and problems, among members of their meetings.

I’m passionate about this. I long wished for a daily practice that I knew was right for me and that I could keep to. I’d tried other things, but they’d fallen away from me. Eventually I read an extraordinarily good book, Turning Suffering Inside Out: A Zen Approach to Living with Physical and Emotional Pain (Shambhala, 2002), by Darlene Cohen, a Zen priest, which she ends by suggesting to the reader that one be one’s own Zen master, so to speak, and pose a koan for oneself. The koan I posed was: why can’t I keep to one daily practice? And within days I knew that my daily practice was simply to say the Lord’s Prayer. I knew it was a calling, not a whim, the day I omitted it and soon felt the Lord’s gentle rebuke.
 
Daily practice makes me rich. I see spiritual poverty all around me, and I want my friends and neighbors to be rich, too. And this costs nothing.

Quakerism 1

This message was given at my meeting today:

God is One, and God calls us to be one people. God calls us together to worship not for our refreshment, but to serve God’s ends.

God permits us diversity of belief and various world-views, but God calls us to be of one mind. And God calls us to obedience. And God calls on us, in all our affairs, to seek unity.

In our gatherings for worship, no words are to be spoken but the words God puts into our mouth. All others are forbidden.

Beliefs are to Reason With, Faith is to Die For

What one’s faith is – that, verily, is he.
– Bhagavad Gita 17:3
 
And the Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.
– Luke 17:5
 
I am a Christian Friend, with many of the beliefs you might expect a Christian Friend to have. I’m also, by the grace of God, a person of faith. I’m eager to share my beliefs with anyone willing to listen, but that eagerness pales next to my intenser zeal to help kindle others’ faith, a related but altogether distinct thing. Belief is a thing of air. Faith is fire.
 
Of belief it is written, “Thou believest that there is one God, thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). The One God, all-wise and almighty, is at the very center of my belief-system, a foundation stone for my sanity in a world where fate seems so capricious, the selfish and ignorant so powerful, and my own understandings so inadequate. But bare belief in God, as the apostle James and his devils knew, is not faith in God. Belief may say with Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” but only faith says, with Abraham and Samuel, “Here I am, Lord.” Faith stands always ready to show itself through works (James 2:17-18) and to do its works through love (Galatians 5:6). No love, no works; no works, dead faith. And faith dead, right belief is truth locked in a box whose key is lost.

But faith does need a belief system to support it, as the candle flame needs wax and a wick, and in this lies the value of right belief. And so let me tell you of the beliefs I hold most important:

1. God cares what we do and experience, and is willing and able to communicate with us. One day almost twenty years ago, as I was coming home from work, I heard a Great Voice in my mind say, “I give ear.” The majesty of the voice told me that it was the Lord’s, and the language – the English of the King James Bible – was perfectly chosen to sweep away all doubt about Who was speaking. So this belief of mine is grounded in experience. It was perhaps many years before I “got” the second meaning of those words. “He who hath ears to hear, let him hear!” the Jesus of the Gospels would say. I’d been given not only the assurance of God’s concerned attention, but also an “ear” to discern meanings God wished to convey to me. But if God gave such an ear to me, then why not to you also? Are you prepared to ask for such a gift?  Are you prepared to clean the vessel that carries it, so that the mouth that declares God’s truth avoids untruth?

2. God wills the salvation of all. But there is no salvation without a radical shift in attitude, contrary to our natural inclinations, for which the traditional term is “repentance.” Unfortunately this term is sometimes confused with mere remorse for misdeeds, or disgust with the way one is, both of which one may live with for years, as I did, without undergoing the radical shift I’m speaking of. I believe that repentance comes only as a gift of grace; the Christians of Judea so spoke of it in Acts 11:18. It may happen dramatically, as with the Apostle Paul, or imperceptibly – and both to people that call themselves Christians and to those that don’t.

I believe that there is no salvation outside of Christ, the Word that was in the beginning (John 1:1-2), the Firstborn of all creatures, in Whom all things were created (Colossians 1:15-16), the but this does not mean that a Jew, a Muslim, or an agnostic has to throw away a precious existing belief system and accept Christian doctrine. God is the Savior, as Jesus’ mother prophesied so beautifully (Luke 1:47), and there is no god but God; Christ, having no will apart from God’s own, is the Great Being through Whom God saves, into Whom the saved are gathered back into one, to stand, purified, before God. Call Christ what you will, or live in Him without calling Him anything at all, as pre-verbal infants do; He will still see to your salvation, except for so long as you persist in deliberately choosing evil over good. For God respects individual choice.

Salvation implies that there is something to be saved from. And isn’t this world of impermanence, suffering and death painful enough to want salvation from? But there is also the kingdom of hell, which lies within us as the kingdom of heaven does, even as we walk this earth. If we cultivate the hellish side of our nature, fear, anger, greed – Beware! That’s what we’ll be left with when this outside world falls away at death. But Consciousness Itself is divine, cannot be destroyed in any sort of hell, and must ultimately return to its Source. And he shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. (Revelation 7:17, 21:4)

3. Everything I experience is for my spiritual education (cf. Hebrews 12:10). I’ve begun to see providence at work everywhere, for “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28), a truth more easily evident as one grows in purity (sattva), by which “one sees in all creatures a single, unchanging existence, undivided within its divisions” (Bhagavad Gita 18:20, Barbara Miller tr.). There’s nothing so small, trivial or random-seeming that God’s hand cannot be in it. But this applies to things that distress as well as things that please me. “What?” said Job to his wife (Job 2:10), “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not evil?” Do unfeeling people threaten me? I can say with Jesus: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11). Remembering this sometimes spares me fear, anger, and discontent. In The Imitation of Christ (3:46, Sherley-Price tr.) Christ tells the Disciple, “It is by My will and permission that events happen, in order that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Even when others’ hearts remain opaque to me, each event shows something about the thoughts of my own.

4. The impulse to pray is to be trusted; God will not ask us to pray for what God does not intend to grant. This becomes particularly crucial when we doubt our own worthiness to be forgiven our misdeeds and the condition of our heart. But if “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12 ff, Luke 11:4) and “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13) are held up as model prayers, our sense of unworthiness is of no relevance, unless we’re actually blocking the gift by denying others forgiveness and mercy ourselves. Jesus would never have said “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11) if the sinner had been incapable of living without sinning further; neither would He have told us to be perfect, “as our heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), if such a goal were unattainable. God can be counted on to give us whatever we need to achieve what God wants us to do: even “a mouth, and wisdom” in situations of terror (Luke 21:15); even strength to resist any temptation that might be given us (1 Corinthians 10:13).  But do we not know what we should be praying for? For this reason God has given us the Holy Spirit to intercede for us with “groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). In particular I know we would never have been given the yearning to know God, or to be united with God, if it were something we could not have.

Such are my key beliefs. But as I said, I’m more zealous to ignite faith than to preach beliefs. If souls whose faith God kindles into fire through my influence happen to have belief-systems different from mine, I care more that they cherish the flame of faith than that they think as I do about, say, the Resurrection of Christ or the authority of Christian Scripture. As the flame of faith continues to burn in them, it will bring them into right belief – the belief-system that God, knowing their cultural heritage and personal vocabulary of faith, deems right for them at this present stage of their development. It is faith that saves, and not the belief-system. It is faith that sooner or later leads all the faithful into repentance of ways with no life in them, and through repentance into the “righteousness, peace, and joy” (Romans 14:17), the sat-chit-ananda, of an eternally wakeful life, infinitely satisfying, in the bosom of God. Of the different beliefs that helped us get there, the Qur’an teaches: Whatever it be wherein ye differ, the decision thereof is with God: Such is God my Lord: in Him I trust, and to Him I turn. (Qur’an 42:10, Yusuf ‘Ali tr.)

O Friends: cherish the flame of faith you’ve been given; sweep away everything in your heart that might dim or quench it; and be thankful to the Giver. Beliefs are to reason with, and are useful helps; but faith is to die for.

Take Up Your Cross, Daily: an Encouragement to Daily Spiritual Practice

God calls us to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23). This means that words and acts of our own choosing do not constitute acceptable worship, and do not bring us closer to God, unless God Himself is guiding us. Our innate moral sense tells us that this is as it should be, or else the unrepentant might win divine favor, with hearts still in unhealed bondage to error, merely by mouthing the right formula. Frail and ignorant as we are, we’re prone to indulge ourselves in things not good for us, assign ourselves vain penances that hope but fail to erase shame and guilt, and pray to false gods with the wrong part of our soul. It’s wisest to put ourselves in the hands of the heavenly Physician who knows what prayer, practice or correction best suits the state of our heart. “Pray without ceasing,” Paul counseled us (1 Thessalonians 5:17), but also “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) This paradox, that we ought to be in worship constantly, but don’t know how to do it without God’s guidance (which may change course from moment to moment, and be different for different worshippers) is the very basis of Friends’ waiting worship and their historical rejection of other denominations’ customary “forms without life.”

On this same principle, only God can tell us how often we should set aside time to give ourselves over to a spiritual activity He’s chosen for us. It’s one thing to float through each day’s activities in a mild, pious haze, “praying without ceasing” in a general sort of way, smiling to ourselves over how nicely we’ve lived up to the Yearly Meeting’s Advices and Queries. It is another to bring our will and attention to a sharp point at regular intervals, and put all of ourselves at the disposal of the Divine as we understand It. This bringing to a point may be a small, split-second thing, as when recovering alcoholics wake in the morning and resolve to spend the next twenty-four hours sober. It may involve short verbal utterances like “increase our faith” or “heal me, Lord” or “there is no god but God.” It might be purely nonverbal, like a sending of blessings in the six directions, or prostration, or a few minutes’ exercise in bare mindfulness. It may be a fixing of intention to speak and think about God, and our covenant with Him, “as we walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7), or to call repeatedly on His name (Psalm 91:15). But I could not guess what God would call you to do. My own daily practice, given to me at my request, is to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning, slowly and thoughtfully. For others, it may be something shorter – or longer. And, under God’s ongoing guidance, one’s daily assignment may change or expand over time.

Is God calling you to a daily spiritual practice? Ask Him – or “Her,” or “It,” if those pronouns strike you as more fitting for the One who created you; and God will answer you.

Did you formerly have a daily practice that you fell away from and never went back to? Is that because the Holy Spirit did not support your continuing with it, or because you let yourself be discouraged? Do you discern that God wishes you to resume it? Might you need the support of a group of friends?

Committees of Ministry and Worship, or Ministry and Counsel, may wish to consider whether they are called to encourage the adoption of daily spiritual practices, and the shared discussion of daily-practice experiences and problems, among members of their meetings.

I’m passionate about this. I long wished for a daily practice that I knew was right for me and that I could keep to. I’d tried other things, but they’d fallen away from me. Eventually I read an extraordinarily good book, Turning Suffering Inside Out: A Zen Approach to Living with Physical and Emotional Pain (Shambhala, 2002), by Darlene Cohen, a Zen priest, which she ends by suggesting to the reader that one be one’s own Zen master, so to speak, and pose a koan for oneself. The koan I posed was: why can’t I keep to one daily practice? And within days I knew that my daily practice was simply to say the Lord’s Prayer. I knew it was a calling, not a whim, the day I omitted it and soon felt the Lord’s gentle rebuke.
 
Daily practice makes me rich. I see spiritual poverty all around me, and I want my friends and neighbors to be rich, too.  And this costs nothing.

At Last in Print: A Manual for Casting Down Imaginations

“The best help you can have from a book is to read one full of such truths, instructions and awakening informations as force you to see and know who and what and where you are; that God is your All; and that all is misery but a heart and life devoted to him. This is the best outward prayer book you can have, as it will turn you to an inward book and spirit of prayer in your heart.” So wrote William Law (1686-1761) in The Spirit of Prayer (1749; excerpted in Robert Llewellyn and Edward Moss, eds., Daily Readings with William Law, Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1987, p. 68).

I have found such a book; it’s a little 120-page book by the early English Quaker William Shewen, first published in 1683 and just now reprinted by Inner Light Books in San Francisco (Hardcover, ISBN 978-0-9797110-0-8, $25; paperback, ISBN 978-0-9797110-1-5, $15; http://www.innerlightbooks.com). Its title is Counsel to the Christian-Traveller: Also Meditations & Experiences. Among the short works in this slim volume is “A Treatise Concerning Thoughts & Imaginations,” which deserves reading by every person of faith that’s ever endured mental anguish.

Let me share a few sample passages here from Shewen’s Meditations & Experiences:

From No. XVII: This one word or sentence may try all the sects in Christendom, and others who profess themselves lovers of the law of God, yet have not peace in their dwellings; these have not the answer of a good conscience, which keeps void of offence towards God and man. They have not that peace which passes the understanding of man in the fall; they know not their hearts and minds kept by it; but are found in the evil-doing, where the tribulation and anguish is, and in that fear which brings torment. (p. 42)

From  No. XIX: This is my testimony, that none can receive the joy of God’s salvation, enter into the Sabbath of rest, or keep holy-day to the Lord, further than they know a ceasing, and a being saved from thinking their own vain thoughts, following their own wills, and obeying their own wisdom…. So it is a blessed thing for people to meet and wait together, and walk in this heavenly light and day of salvation, which discovers and judges every vain thought and foolish imagination, subdues them, and brings them down into the obedience of Christ. In this, as they walk and abide, they truly differ from all other families of the earth…. In this stands their happiness and safety: Out of this, they are as weak as other people. (pp. 44-45)

From No. XXX: It is a very blessed state, to be found true waiters for, and witnesses of the second coming of Christ, which is without sin unto salvation;  for true happiness does not consist in … being witnesses of his first appearance, wherein he convinces and reproves for sin; but in waiting for the witnessing his second coming to cleanse, save and redeem from sin: herein is the joy of God’s salvation felt and enjoyed. (p. 50)

From No. XXXV: It is a blessed thing, and a high and heavenly state, for every individual to be witnesses within themselves, that self is made of no importance. … Denying of self, and taking up the Cross, are inseparable, and must precede Discipleship; yet this state is short of being a friend of God, and co-heir with Christ, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; and short of sitting down with him at the right Hand of God in the kingdom of heaven; …short of knowing it meat and drink to do the will of God, and his fruit sweet to their taste, and to sit under his shadow with great delight, glorified with that glory which Christ had with the Father before the world began. (pp. 55-56)

In the past few days I’ve experienced both a touch of the unspeakable sweetness of God and immersion in the angry nastiness of my own offended self-importance. I’ve also been given a clear warning against the familiar detours from the right way that bring me into those patches of thorns and nettles. In the midst of all this, with his book riding with me on all my travels,  I’ve found William Shewen to be a sensitive and faithful friend who’s very familiar with all the territory I cover, and I’ve been hearing my Shepherd’s own voice in his. Higher praise to a book I don’t know how to give.

The God of All Suffering

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? – Psalm 94:9

Yesterday morning I sat to do my morning practice, which is to say the Lord’s Prayer slowly and thoughtfully. At that time I invite Him to guide my mind and spirit where He will, as I navigate my way, or let Him navigate it, through the great prayerful thoughts that make up the Our Father. I hadn’t gotten through “Hallowed be Thy name” before I found myself wondering whether God truly experienced all the suffering of all His sentient creatures, or merely inferred it. Or perhaps experienced it through some sort of filter that allowed His eternal bliss to remain unruffled. But if so – Oh, my God, I thought, I’m sitting here in the comfort of my living room couch, asking for the attention of the Experiencer of All Suffering! – and the thought, by His grace, made me start to weep. It wasn’t a deep cry, but the sobs lasted at least through “give us this day our daily bread,” because I remember imagining our daily bread coming to us wet with tears, His tears. For this first time in my memory I’d had the experience of pitying God.

I won’t talk here about the range and variety of suffering in creation. You can find reminders in every newspaper; you can contemplate the crucifixion of Jesus, the torture-deaths at Abu Ghraib and the Tower of London, the vivisections of animals, the Nazi death-camps, the cases wheeled into the Emergency Room down the street. Then there are the mental sufferings of the terrified and the mad. Read the story of Job, or read the warning descriptions of damnation in the Qur’an. Search your own memory, or tune into the ongoing pain in your own bones, the despair in your own heart. God suffers all that pain, and more. No matter that He also tastes every pleasure had by every creature. No matter that He may be in such an unimaginably high, detached state of consciousness that creaturely pleasure and pain alike dwindle to insignificance. He remains the One Tormented.

Can it be true? On the answer hangs our faith that God fully understands us. The alternative is that God is one Self and we are all separate, independent selves – bare consciousnesses, uncreated, timeless, changeless and without qualities – that experience a “world” of created nature that includes both things and processes going on within our body and mind (including the illusion of doership) and those thing-events going on outside. Such, as I understand it, is the world-view of the Indian Sankhya philosophy, whose best-known classic is the Yoga Sutras attributed to the ancient sage Patanjali. Patanjali’s God is a special self, a particular self (Y.S. 1:24) who enjoys omniscience (1:25). In Patanjali’s system, one consciousness can come to know fully the experience of another (3:19-20). But you and I will never be each other, and while we may one day experience a liberating awakening to our true, timeless nature as pure being, nowhere does Patanjali promise us union with God. We seem to be eternally separate. If this is so, then God may peep into my brain or lurk in my heart to spy on me as often as He likes, but when the going gets rough, He can parachute out of my suffering and turn His back on me forever, for He is He and I am I.

Against this Sankhya world-view stands the equally venerable Indian tradition known as Advaita-Vedanta, which asserts the essential oneness of us all. But more to the point are the words of Jesus: I and the Father are one (John 10:30).  And his prayer for His disciples, and all their converts to come (John 17:21), That they all may be one, as thou, Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Lest the reader suspect that these were not Jesus’ own sayings, but ones “planted” in the Fourth Gospel by some redactor with Advaita-Vedanta sympathies, look also in the Gospel of Matthew (25:40), where Jesus prophesies that the King shall say at the Last Judgment, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. This could, of course, be mere metaphor rather than plain truth. If it were mere metaphor, then God might not have said to Moses, I am who am (Exodus 3:14), but perhaps “I am one of those who am.” The Creation Story might not have had the Lord God breathing His own breath into Adam to give him life (Genesis 2:7), but rather pressing a button to connect the first man’s clay body to an eternally pre-existent, uncreated spirit of Adam’s own.

But if it is the plain truth that God’s experiencing Self is the very same Self as Jesus’ Self (as Jesus knew by direct experience) and also as our own Self (as we cannot know experientially unless God shows us), then it makes sense that Christ Jesus could have died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3), really taking them on Himself (Romans 5:6 ff, Hebrews 2:9 ff.). If we are not doomed, by the very nature of reality, to eternal separateness and otherness, then we might be baptized into Jesus Christ, dead with Him and risen again with Him (Romans 6, 1 Cor. 15:22, Colossians 3:1-3), and incorporated into the very body of Christ (Romans 12:5), who now lives in us (Romans 8:10, Ephesians 3:17). If the possibility of interpenetration or identity of selfhood between God and His creatures is once admitted, then it becomes possible that God the Father shall gather all things, including ourselves, into Christ and unto Himself (Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:19). It no longer has the uncertain sound of a breakable promise, but the ring of a necessary truth, when Matthew’s Gospel ends: lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. This is the voice of One who cannot parachute out of our suffering and leave us alone in it. Let us therefore bless all suffering that draws us closer to God, mindful that it is God who suffers through us, and cheerfully sit alongside Christ the Crucifixion Survivor, offering our hands and hearts to serve as adjuncts to His own as He ministers to all the suffering creatures He brings to our awareness.