We’re well into the back-to-school swirl. Considering how many Friends teach for a living, it’s a wonder we don’t talk more about what Quakers used to call Sound Doctrine.
Not dogma, creed, doctrinaire, or even indoctrination, mind you. Doctrine, meaning teaching. The essentials for practicing our faith, just as certain skills are needed in mathematics or foreign language. Or, for that matter, for good cooking or carpentry or sewing.
It’s not just the children, either. Some messages arising in worship are basically teaching, and some are admittedly sounder than others, the latter including those that George Fox derided as mere “notions.” (Consider the Quaker who preached that Friends should not disturb the ground to obtain well water, until another spoke out during worship, “And Abraham digged a well,” citing Genesis 21:30 and apparently settling the matter.) Our own reading and inquiry, meanwhile, can be pretty much hit or miss. Who knows about other sources? Film, television, radio? And, as with all teaching, how strict should one be – and how flexible?
If we were passing a hat to collect slips of paper suggesting what should be included in our own “sound doctrine,” what would you write on yours? For that matter, how much would be a matter of content – and how much, process?
Sometime, perhaps, we’ll even have a session to hear our teachers talk a bit about their teaching – both content and method – and a continuing awareness of learning. Or maybe another, to consider all the ways we have learned from each other – and not just matters of faith, either. The progress of my compost bins, after all, is guided in part by eavesdropping on a few after-meeting conversations and their lessons of patience, humility, and renewal.
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This has me wondering, as well, how we might extend a pursuit of “sound doctrine” into our secular circles. Economics, politics, education, even entertainment could all use a dose of what Friends used to call “close labor” – the effort of living with ever greater integrity. Any ideas?
Jnana's Red Barn 
I like your mention of content vs process. I feel we tend to define things as we perceive them (or how they’re presented to us) rather than according to the process that brought them to be in the first place. The former requires less effort on our part but the latter ensures a deeper understanding and ensuing relationship therewith.
I’m fascinated that you’ve written this at the same time as I’m re-reading the Didache, the first-century Christian “teaching” which travelled alongside Scripture but never became part of the Bible. It’s a remarkably pragmatic work; perhaps it would be helpful to your reflections?