Keep Low: Reminders for the daily work
by Lu Harper
Rochester Meeting
Keep low. When I am feeling outraged or upset, I am not able to clearly hear Spirit. I need to re-ground myself in love, in being low and humble.
Think it possible you may be mistaken. Britain Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice, Advice and Queries 1.02.17, advises us in listening to and responding to ministry from others that “when words are strange or disturbing to you, try to sense where they come from and what has nourished the lives of others. Listen patiently and seek the truth which other people’s opinions may contain for you. Avoid hurtful criticism and provocative language. Do not allow the strength of your convictions to betray you into making statements or allegations that are unfair or untrue. Think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Think it possible that you may be mistaken. I need this reminder whenever I get on my high horse.
Was thee faithful? Did thee yield? Spirit speaks to us directly in the immediacy and uniqueness of our condition in the moment. Spirit’s messages may be tiny nudges, calls to action, experiences of oneness and anything in between, differing by individual and from moment to moment. Spirit sees us in our wholeness, and calls us into the individual and collective process of becoming more whole, more wholly and integrally ourselves. When we receive an opening from the Spirit, our job is to accept it, to yield to it, to sit with it and see how it resonates within, what actions it moves us to. We are invited to be mindful, asking ourselves and others: Were you faithful to the promptings of love and Spirit in your heart? Did you yield?
Daily manna—“Give us this day our daily bread...” Don’t hold on to the teachings of one day past the day it was given. But open thyself to the message of the new day, the new moment.
What canst thou say? Sometimes a message is not for ourselves, but we are not the judge of that. We can only hold it up to others to see whether and how it resonates in their hearts, when they experiment with it and test it. We can rightly say, this has been my experience, but cannot with integrity say this is another’s experience or our collective experience, without inviting others into the experiment of testing to see if it is their experience also. Testimonies are formed when we turn “What canst thou say” to “What can we say” by that testing.
Do not mistake union for unity. Mystical union is a consolation given to us in the moment when we need it. Unity is the tangible experience when in our diversity we can yet agree on a sense of the condition of the meeting in the moment. Do not mistake difference for disunity. We are wonderfully different, our experiences are different, our understandings are different. Yes, we are united by the Spirit in our experience of Love, and yes, suffering and harm are real and exist. Both are true—and focusing on the first to the exclusion of the second can be a balm to some of us and simultaneously be experienced by others as a rejection of their suffering and identity. What are we called into when we try to hold both of these?
Being Gathered. Just as light is phased simultaneously as wave and particle, we are simultaneously scattered and gathered, simultaneously unique individuals and the body of Friends, wonderfully diverse and capable of experiencing unity. There is no division or opposition between being gathered or scattered —it is a both/and.
Seeds of War. At the same time, we live in an ocean of interlocking systems of oppression whose purpose is to reward and maintain power. These “seeds of war” are in the very air we breathe, the water we drink, the planet that is warming, in our institutions, in our personal and social relationships, and in how we think. Some of us are rewarded by these systems and others are oppressed by them; many of us are both. Naming this reality is not divisive; the systems are inherently divisive; that’s one way they maintain power. John Woolman advises us to look for the seeds of war in our lives and possessions and reminds us that: “Oppression in the extreme appears terrible: but oppression in more refined appearances remains to be oppression; and where the smallest degree of it is cherished it grows stronger and more extensive. To labour for a perfect redemption from this spirit of oppression is the great business of the whole family of Christ Jesus in this world.”—John Woolman, 1763.
Quench not the spirit [1 Thess. 5:19] in self or others. In Epistle 275, George Fox warns us to “quench not the motions of [Spirit] in yourselves, nor the movings of it in others; though many have run out, and gone beyond their measures [2 Cor 10:14], yet many more have quenched the measure of the spirit of God, and after became dead and dull, and questioned through a false fear: and so there hath been hurt both ways.” Keep the fountain clear.