I’m always startled to hear people say they can pursue spirituality without any teacher or community. Nothing in my experience, as a yogi or a Christian, supports that. If you point to George Fox’s time of sitting “in hollow trees and lonesome places,” and his recognition that among the priests (and preachers) he consulted, “there was none among them that could speak to my condition,” and his eventual proclamation of discovering “the pure knowledge of God and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing,” the fact remains that he was stimulated by that early dialogue and, once he’d experienced Divine Revelation, did not keep it to himself but was instead drawn out to others who were having similar transformations.
I would point, too, to the spiritual support he received initially from Elizabeth Hooten – whom I consider the first Quaker and who, incidentally, came across the Atlantic in her advanced age to Dover to minister among Friends here — and later from Margaret Fell.
One reason we need community to accompany our spiritual deepening and expansion comes in the ways it can counter tendencies toward self-deception, human weakness, laziness, or distraction. In the practice of our faith, we instruct, encourage, acknowledge, embrace, correct, inspire, comfort, guide – even rebuke – one another. These are matters the New Testament calls discipleship.
Lloyd Lee Wilson has reminded us there are no Quakers apart from the meeting, which is another way of saying each Friend needs to be part of this interactive dynamic. I remember my shock in picking up a book on leaders of the Confederacy and finding three Quakers indexed; “Impossible,” I muttered, until seeing in the text that all three had been raised in Quaker households but resided far from any meeting – and its corrective discipline – when the war erupted.
Try dressing Plain and adhering to Plain speech without a circle of Plain Friends at hand, and you’ll discover just how hard it is to continue even an outward practice. Maintaining a witness is no less difficult. Moreover, I find it’s hard to keep from being overwhelmed by the negative influences around us. Maybe part of the restorative answer is right in front of us all along – Society of Friends, plural.
Or in some other, similar circle.
Jnana's Red Barn 
Thank you for sharing this Jnana. A good reminder when I start to withdraw, so easy this time of year.
I completely agree with you.
But I am concerned about the other side of the coin; why do people reject organised (however formally or informally) religion? What does that rejection have to offer us in the way of corrective critique?
I suspect that our many centuries of misuse of power are now reaping their reward, and until we are able to truly own that and respond in genuine repentance then we will continue to be rejected…
Once again, the plot thickens. Along with our very humanity.
It’s interesting that I am reading this post about the time I have been thinking about the subject of “going it alone.” I was raised Catholic, and pretty sheltered in some ways. As I grew into a young adult I eventually rejected the institution which I found, as a woman, in so many ways out of step with my real life. And once I turned away, I was never quite able to stomach turning back.
Nevertheless, I find that there are certain values in being raised the way that I was that are hard to find in people who have never had any religion in their lives. At the core there are ethics, and when you are taught about ethics with God in the scene, you can never really forget them (even when you go against them). So, although I married a Catholic and we are both non-practicing, there are certain things we learned having been brought up in that religion – the better things – that we are instilling in our children, who are not baptized.
It’s hard to know what someone’s values are until you see their actions – and if good things sunk in through religion, they tend to stick – as do the bad things. What it comes down to for me is how you behave with others every day, not what you do in front of an altar with a congregation – but to exist without others who are like you is like being in a madhouse. You need to find and keep people with a like mind close.
It’s that close circle that’s important. Sometimes it can be found within large institutions, but there’s no substitute for the face-to-face, day-to-day relationship. Now, for nurturing our children?
There is definitely no substitute for face to face and day to day interaction. And to be completely present when you are communicating, to hear what is being said to you and respond accordingly. As a child it is so difficult to be heard by adults as it is. They are the ones in our society who have the least voice, and who are the most vulnerable in so many ways. Which is why if you are bigger and more powerful than they, it is incredibly important to treat them like people – which is what they are.
I remember very much the feeling of powerlessness I had as a child, and I am aware of the even less child-centered society that my parents and grandparents experienced. I try to be a guide to mine, to protect, and to explain why sometimes I have to take the reins without question – it’s my responsibility as a parent to give them structure so that they feel secure, and have some idea of what to expect later (even if they have to test that to make sure it’s true).
Unfortunately, what has happened with children over the years in the Catholic church – thankfully not something I personally experienced – does not set a good example of walking the talk. This is the problem of the institution, and a very human one, but leaders are held to a high standard, particularly if they publicly subscribe to morals. The worst is when they do that and simultaneously persecute the most helpless, most powerless, in secret. You are handed your leaders in many institutions. You are asked to trust them, expected to. Does that even make any sense? To me, it doesn’t. I have to succumb to blind trust to earn a living, but I don’t have to have such an unknown master in any other circumstance. If nothing else, teaching my children to judge for themselves and make decisions accordingly is a priority. Without the right to have your own mind, you may as well be a vegetable. And get eaten.
I don’t know… as a leader “handed” to a community in my institution, I don’t feel that the burden is all one way (or that it deprives those in my community from having their own mind). My institution has tested me, observed me for six years, put me into different pressured situations to see how I’d respond, and so on; and only then decided to send me forward for ordination.
If there’s a problem it’s a lack of transparency; that process is hidden from the people who will eventually receive me as a priest. They don’t get to see the reports, hear the testimonies to my character of those who have supervised me.
It’s difficult; how much should be made public, and in what way, and what is fair protection for a vulnerable person going through a process of ordination preparation which they may never complete? These are not simple questions.
But it doesn’t deprive anyone of the right to their own mind. Trust me – to some extent – but check what I say. And come to me with questions, comments and discussion. I also am not perfect, and this business of spiritual maturity should be a partnership, not domination.
@paidiske I understand what you are saying. But I think myself and those I know who are around my age or older were raised with a certain concept of authority – and when it comes to religion, it was without doubt the unquestioning type. Going to Catholic school with nuns who hit and verbally abused students didn’t exactly warm any of us up to the idea that authority was anything other than to blindly obey. And if you had your own reasons for your thoughts, don’t verbalize them because you would be found as not in step and would be punished. Our parents and elders understood this from their upbringing as well. Of course, we grew up in post Vatican II with pre-Vatican II elders. Bonding over this abuse is something everyone I know who went through this does – you immediately know and sympathize when someone said that they went to school with teachers like that.
I wish I had had a different experience, but if anything growing up in America, which has not only such a fundamental emphasis on freedom of thought and speech, but the right to have it when it doesn’t confrom to that of your peers, and ostracized from society – that is so different from the conformity of the community of Catholics I grew up in. The rules there come from what is understood as being communicated by God – and that cannot be questioned. In secular society, you can openly question and live your life however you want as long as you are not harming others through that life. You can be gay, for example. But how can you be gay in an institution where it is taught that being gay is unnatural? How can you be openly natural, which for you is being attracted to the same sex, if you are in a society which has stigmatized you because to them you are not natural? Or, you cannot be a priest because you are a woman. Why? That last really doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. These examples to me are not rooted in inclusiveness, but rather, exclusiveness. Why do you have to have one faith or another to make it into whatever that institution’s idea of heaven is? Everything is, at the end, exclusive.
I have a hard time with this being raised in America. I just can’t get my head around it. And I know the Catholic church is not the only religious institution which has this trait, the “exclusive at the end” one. Probably all the major ones do. That’s very human, and comprehensible, but it doesn’t strike me as above and beyond that mindset. Limited. Not really something that would inspire trust to be led to any place – not to me.
So, I’ve never been really able to find any answers to these issues or related ones which satisfy me, put me at ease, or induce me to become part of any organized religion. I was raised Catholic. That’s pretty much it.
Certainly in the Anglican church we see many Catholic “refugees” who have left for the sorts of reasons you describe (sexuality, gender).
I recognise that culturally, I am comfortable with authority (I was born in South Africa, which is very different in many ways). I find a healthy authority a support rather than a barrier. But not everybody does, and in many places authority is abused.
I wonder, Jnana, do you think the ethos of groups like the Friends overcomes some of the problems odilonvert is describing?
For some people, yes.
I like your term “healthy authority,” which just might come closer to where we live than does a distant hierarchy. For the Mennonites and Amish, for instance, the bishop might be in your own small congregation. Or I think of a novel about a Lutheran congregation where the very young pastor found the real supporting authority in his congregation to be an older black woman, Lil, and her husband.
But we need to be fully honest and accountable to each other in this, as well as forgiving and compassionate. I feel this is the “strait and narrow way” Jesus tells us to walk — and try to live.
I would say that healthy authority is personal and relational (rather than institutional). It can exist in institutions, but it needs to be built on the basis of real relationship. So yes, I think I agree with you.
er – edit, sorry, and “but the right to have it when it doesn’t confrom to that of your peers, and not be ostracized from society”
serves me right for replying with such a long winded post… eek…
My feeling about blogging is that most of what we’re doing is more like writing letters to each other than like formal publishing. A few typos and the like add authenticity. Or, as the writing advice goes, never edit a love letter. The feeling and passion are what count.
I like that way of thinking very much, thank you, Jnana.