“Live adventurously,” as one woman at Quaker Meeting recalled reading. Another was upset that our “silence” can cover too many “barren spots,” as snow does. Had I replied, it would have been in anger, praising the silence. [Fifty years later, I would confirm the occasions when silence ignores an elephant in the room, a tension or injury that needs to be addressed: an opportunity for Truth to work.]
Another in Friends worship quoted Montaigne: “Respect the man who seeks Truth; be wary of him who has it.”
So many people reading spiritual and religious books do not comprehend them. Recognizing this makes me understand why Tibetan masters, among others, were so careful to keep their teachings “secret” or “hidden,” lest others ruthlessly exploited the words.
Why Jesus talked in puzzles – parables – rather than open logic.
I notice that Paul is more important to Christianity than is Jesus.
In this journals review, I’ve been struck by how much identity – first as a yogi and then as a Quaker – shaped my decisions and action, morally, especially.
A visitor to Meeting told how Quakers and other Protestants in her community were caring for a dying Zen monk. She didn’t know why.
Meeting, for me, became a community of Light, upholding the essence of yamas and niyamas, something that is often lost in the pageantry or theater of various schools of Asian practice, at least in the New World. The ethical constraints and actions, that is.
In worship-sharing, an “important event age 5 to ten” … one Friend observing her grandfather’s suicide as the first death in the family
For me, the natural museum classes.
Millard, after Mtg, mentioned how Jesus’ time was the most beneficial period for spreading a new faith. The Roman armies had subdued rivalrous tribes/nations, persecuted highway bandits, and built roads throughout the empire.
Paul, as a Roman citizen, could travel anywhere without a passport (or its equivalent).
Alice, quoting “an old white-haired woman in a Pennsylvania Meeting,” reminded another worshiper, “But if the vocal ministry doth not speak to thy condition, thou canst pull down thy body over thine ears and thus continue thy meditation.”
All the Quakers I came to know were intense people, and thus as instruments they moved toward fulfillment, however humbly or stubbornly.
At Gulli’s Brahms last night, Dennis remarked that one woman has put a number of people off. Not me. Perhaps I’ve simply grown to ignore that side of her.
Sitting is silent worship with the meetinghouse window open to a world of birds and breathing, children’s laughter, an electric saw, the wind even a neighbor’s radio with the smoky voice of an indistinct church organ, not that any of them matter
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 