In the beginning was a vibration. That vibration was aware. That vibration was fully intelligent, benevolent, creative and without boundaries.
It still is.
Call it God if your want – some do, some don’t. whatever you choose to call it, we can all acces it if /stackwe want to, and we humans have found many different ways to do that.
God, or no God?
It is sixty years since UK Quakers dropped the rule that members had to believe in the Christian God, and thirty years since they adopted the phrase ‘We welcome those of all faiths and none’.
These days we have Buddhist Quakers, Non-theist Quakers, Universalists, agnostics, and so on. We all connect with the same energy, whatever label we use.
Why do we behave almost like a closed community, a secret society where newcomers have to learn the special meanings of code words and mannerisms before they are accepted as fully part of the community?
What happened to living adventurously?
What happened to having the courage of our convictions?
One of the dangers I observe and read about is Quakers defending traditions beyond the original purpose and usefulness of those traditions. The real art of survival seems to me to be that we need to be true to the essence of Quakerism while moving on from the bits that are part of history but not original – “add-ons” that were useful, but outlive their usefulness when circumstances change. Once we become unwilling or unable to adapt, we risk becoming fossils.
When Quaker meetings have any type of problem, they seem less resilient than many other small communities. One reason for this is that one person that is subject to fears can easily outweigh the positive mood created by ten that are confident and optimistic. That is normal in many social groups. What makes Quaker groups specially vulnerable to this is that the ten optimists go out of their way not to make the fearful person feel awkward – the ten skirt the issue, rather than addressing it.
Quakerism seems to me to be thriving in pockets in Britain, but overall there are more Quaker meetings with an ageing demographic, where the next generation hardly exists, or is missing entirely
Where there are active, vibrant groups that are growing, with a balance of ages ejoying their experiences, one common factor is that meetings that don’t have meeting houses are generally more likely to be growing.
Why is our ‘Book of Discipline’ (another code) 688 pages long with the first sign of a page number on page 628, and why is the heart of the Quaker Business Model, the Busines Meeting, almost impossible to track down through the index?
The revised ‘Book’ will be released soon – massive updates, some still in book form, some as web-based media. It will all describe Quakerism today and tomorrow, not as it was many years ago.