Gratitude

Although we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Britain, I like the idea of sitting down and thinking about what we're thankful for. So:

I am thankful for the NHS and all my medication; plumbing and sanitation; a comfy bed and a warm duvet; and a secure roof over my head.

I'm thankful that, when my beloved cat Tigger died earlier this month, it was quick and relatively painless, and that we were there with him. (This is why I haven't blogged for a while.) I'm also thankful that our remaining cat, Chloe, has not been too griefstricken.

I'm thankful for my wonderful son who, while not being perfect, and driving me to distraction on occasion, is pretty amazing most of the time.

I'm thankful for my close and loving family, even though my sister and I cannot live together for longer than three days without arguing, and talking to my mother gives me a sore throat because she won't wear her hearing aid.

I'm thankful that I still have the ability to use my hands to create lovely, useful, colourful things with a ball of yarn and a couple of needles (or a crochet hook).

I'm thankful that my Meeting doesn't forget me, although I can no longer attend; and I'm especially grateful that we are holding a small Meeting for Worship in my living room this month.

I am thankful for organic high-cocoa chocolate; brown rice and ratatouille; pasta; a good cup of tea; porridge with honey and cinnamon; pomegranates, peaches, plums, crisp Braeburn apples, and just-ripe bananas.

I am thankful for the works of Jessamyn West, Jane Austen, Doreen Tovey, Deric Longden, Dorothy L Sayers, Betty MacDonald, Liz Jensen, Patrick Gale, E J Oxenham, Roger McGough, Alexander McCall Smith, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Elizabeth Zimmermann, Adrian Plass, Mary Thomas.... and for every book which has given me pleasure and food for thought.

I am thankful for blue skies, starry nights, fresh snow, and the two oak trees outside our home as they show us the changing of the seasons.

I am thankful for the Internet, and all the people I have encountered through it. It gives me a social life I would otherwise never have been able to have.

I am thankful that I listened and obeyed, and found myself in a Meeting for the first time; like so many others, I felt I had come home.

Happy Thanksgiving, to those who celebrate it; and to those of us who do not - happy Thursday!

That of God

The accidental death was announced today of a right-wing Austrian politician. My immediate reaction to news of this type is relief - another one gone. That lasts for a micro-second before I remember that I am supposed to see that of God in everyone.

It is very easy to demonise the far right, and to think of them as monsters - especially that famous Austrian/German of the 1930s and 40s, whose name I still feel uneasy about writing here in case I get swamped by messages from people who believe he was right. It is so much easier to think of them as inhuman than to accept that they were ordinary people like us.

If we put tyrants and architects of genocide into a special category, we risk seeing them as two-dimensional figures, simple ciphers of evil. This is a very dangerous thing to do, as we then ignore the truth that anyone has the possibility of evil within them - they don't have to conform to some special stereotype, with blazing eyes, or funny moustaches. By turning these figures into the bogeyman, we may run the risk of not understanding how they, as ordinary human beings, achieved power and began to put their ideas into practice.

It is an unpalatable truth that we all have prejudices, and that these can be played upon. None of these people achieved power without the support of other people, whether it was their own cadre of cronies, or a majority national vote. None of them operated alone.

So, having accepted that they were as human as the rest of us, how do we see that of God in them?

I'm still working on that one. Let me know if you have any flashes of inspiration....

In the mean time, for anyone who thinks him- or herself free of prejudice, I offer one of my older poems (yes, I write poems too - not as many as I used to, and not as many as I would like). It's a performance piece - in other words, not all the views are mine! - and is called:

Racist

no one could call me racist
but I really don't like Americans
they're everywhere you go
with foghorn shirts and corny voices
though I like my friend Linda from Boulder
and Anne from Antioch U
so no one could call me racist

I don't like the Welsh much either
burning cottages, whingeing at tourists
and let's face it: we're their bread and butter
I like Penn, but he's living in England
so perhaps he doesn't count
no, no one could call me racist

I'm also not keen on the French
I don't know any French people
but I don't like the ones that I've met
in shops on holiday: the cheek,
they pretend not to understand me
and I got an A for French
but no one could call me racist

I get on well with everyone
except the Americans
the Welsh
the French
people who call me honey
people who are cruel to children
people who let their children run riot
people who tell mother-in-law jokes
people like my mother-in-law
people with ginger hair
people who are not like me

me racist?
never

(Copyright Heather Cawte 1987)

12 Quakers and....

No, it's not the start of a joke :) As I mentioned in an earlier post: when I was accepted as a member, and because I already had a copy of Quaker Faith and Practice, I was offered a set of Quaker Quest booklets called "12 Quakers and...".

These were written to be used not only in Quaker Quest, but also by attenders and new members. They are written very simply, by members of the Quaker Quest team in London, and each booklet has a different topic: God, Jesus, Worship, Equality, Pacifism, Simplicity and Evil.

(On a somewhat trivial note - my set has a lovely purple box cover, made by a local bookbinder, and, as each pamphlet is a different colour of the rainbow, they look extremely inviting!)

As the title suggests, there are 12 sections in each booklet, covering a wide spectrum of views. These are not simplistic, bland 'This is what Quakers believe...' booklets, but come from the deeply-held beliefs of individual members. They are all written anonymously.

I am thoroughly enjoying them. They are a perfect example of the aspect of Quaker literature that I appreciate most: that, rather than just offering abstruse theology, or prescriptions of how to think, we value and disseminate individual members' honest thoughts and beliefs. These in turn find readers who can relate to them.

Each section is quite short - anything from one paragraph to three or four pages - and so I can read and think about a new one every day. I also re-read the one I read the previous day, just to help fix it in my mind. Several passages have gone into my Commonplace Book already, not just entire paragraphs, but also simple sentences, like this from section 2 of '12 Quakers and Equality':

Equality does not mean I am not special. It means we all are.

If you would like to purchase any for yourself, or for your Meeting Library, they are all available at the Friends' Bookshop (scroll down, and go onto the next page also) in Friends' House, London. I can really recommend them, and I am very grateful to Judith, the Elder who suggested them to me.

Serendipity

Elizabeth Sherrill, in All The Way To Heaven, writes:

Moments...when the small routines of living seem to flow without effort - when I experience what our friend David Manuel calls a 'graced day'. The news item I wanted to hear is on the radio as I tune in. The person I've been trying to contact phones me. A car pulls out of the parking place as I drive up. It's a day when the timing of many schedules seems to mesh like notes in a symphony. When in the humblest event I 'catch the universe in the act of rhyming'.

I have had two examples of serendipity lately that have made me laugh aloud. One involved tracking down a Bible verse, to find, when I eventually got to a Bible look-up site, that it was the example given for ways to look things up; and the other was the coming to light of a book I've been looking for.

I first read Ruth Barton's Invitation to Solitude and Silence when I was just beginning to investigate the idea of silent worship, well before I considered becoming a Quaker. It struck me then as an eminently down-to-earth, practical and sensible book that didn't assume (unlike some I have read) that you are Super-Christian. I gave up on that one a long time ago - and anyway, the cape would get tangled in my wheels :)

I lent it to a dear friend who was moving along a similar path to me, and she loved it too. She tried to find a copy for herself and failed, so when she gave it back to me, she suggested I keep it safe. A few months later I moved to my hew house, and purged my bookshelves - but I was sure I did not get rid of it.

That being said, I couldn't actually see it there either. The waist-height bookcases are behind the sofa, with about 18 inches of space between them and it, and it's pretty difficult for me to get all the way along them. I'd concluded it must be on a bottom shelf, out of my sight.

On a whim I asked Jacky, my regular carer, to look for it today. I described it to her - thin paperback, pale spine, called something about silence and solitude - and she started looking. 'Is it about this size?' she said, pulling a book out.

'Exactly that size,' I said. 'That's the book.'

It was on a top shelf, and yet I had never spotted it. We both just burst out laughing at the coincidence, and I heard Elizabeth Sherrill's words in my head again :)

I am no longer so arrogant as to believe that God micromanages my life. Why would She find a book I needed, but not give water and food to the inhabitants of Darfur? But, like Elizabeth Sherrill, I always enjoy hearing the rhyming.

The meme of fives

Thanks to Gil S, who revealed her answers to this in her blog, because I was nosy and asked her to! (Do go and read her blog. It's excellent.)

Fair's fair - here are my answers:

What was I doing 5 years ago?
Changing my surname back to the one I started with, having just endured a messy divorce and wanting to draw a firm line under it.

What 5 things are on my to-do list?
Catch up on my emails, finish the stocking fillers I'm knitting for Christmas, read some more of the Jessamyn West book I'm enjoying, see the diabetes nurse for the first time, phone my sister.

What are 5 snacks you enjoy?
Grapes, olives, cashew nuts, crisp apples, peanut butter on wholegrain toast.

What 5 things would you do as a billionaire?
Clean water, for free, for the whole world; fund ME research; free healthcare for all; solve the RSoF's financial problems at a stroke; travel, by wheelchair-friendly ship, with a carer and my son.

What are 5 jobs you've had?
Organ tuner's assistant; working in a bookshop; knitwear designer; published poet; freelance copy editor.


If you are reading this, you have a blog, and you haven't done this one already - consider yourself tagged!

Long Way Home - Part 2

First of all - thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post, and welcomed me or congratulated me. I love hearing from other bloggers, and I try to leave comments myself where I can, but I'm not always up to anything but reading.

I want to complete my account of my way home to the RSoF, which I left off on May 29 (where have the days gone?). I had got to the point of moving in with my fiance and declaring myself an atheist. As I finished that post, I wrote that I had nothing to do with religion for the next 19 years, which was my recollection at the time. Since then, however, different memories have been surfacing, snippets here and there of events and people that I had forgotten along the way.

I did avoid ordinary church services for quite a while. I even tried to persuade myself that God didn't exist, but that didn't last. My faith was too deeply seated in me to be uprooted so easily. We were married in my home church, and our son was baptised in the local church across the road from our new home. Yes, across the road - I wasn't avoiding churches too successfully :)

In 1988, I divorced my husband. I moved out with my son, and met someone who was to become one of my dearest friends. He ran a Scout troop and Cub pack, and I was soon helping out, which included going to church parade in a beautiful, traditional Anglican church which reminded me powerfully of St James'. We also attended services at the Methodist church in the area where we lived; I remember one Good Friday service very well. It involved writing on slips of paper the things that you thought made you unlovable by God, and then these were collected up and burnt in a dish on the altar. A very simple act, but psychologically very effective!

We also took our Scouts to other services, such as an Ascension Day service in a beautiful ruined abbey on the outskirts of the city. That was truly memorable, worshipping under the darkening skies, with little bats beginning to fly by the time it ended.

After he was promoted at work and moved away, I decided to try an evangelical church again. Traditional services weren't fulfilling me, and I had begun to feel nostalgic about the 'good old days' of of simple choruses, clear-cut Biblical teaching, and absolute certainty that I was a 'proper' Christian. I conveniently forgot how screwed up it had made me, and how guilty I had felt, all the time...

I have to stress that I have no criticism of anyone who attends this or any other evangelical church, and that I was warmly welcomed. The service was bright and cheerful, with a large and enthusiastic congregation. It just wasn't for me. This was underlined for me when an acquaintance I had not seen for some time approached me after the service, hugged me, and said, 'Oh, I'm so glad to see you! I always knew you were one of the elect!'

My eyebrows went up with my hackles, and it was all I could do to smile, and explain that I had to go because I had another appointment. I didn't want to be part of anything that set itself apart as The Only Way. It was as alien to me as the statement by my old headmistress that only Roman Catholics go to Heaven. I couldn't go back to the evangelical churches and I wasn't happy in traditional ones. It was at this point that I really did stop going anywhere near a church, and kept my ideas on faith to myself.

Eight years later, in early 1999, I found myself spending the night in the bridal suite of a local hotel - not because I was remarrying (I had done that six months previously), but because I had had to escape from my second husband. The whole city was full up because it was graduation week at the university, and this was the only room available. The irony was not lost on me....

My second husband was an alcoholic, a fact he had managed to hide from me for quite some time. I knew nothing about alcoholism, and had gone ahead with the wedding because he had promised me he would control it. As it turned out, it was too much for him to control and, after I had been the subject of several of his violent outbursts (he threatened me with an air rifle, a sword, and a hammer), I had had to get out. I had had M.E. for about eighteen months at this point, but I was still able to drive the car.

I lay in bed that night utterly exhausted and drained. I felt as though I had no mental, emotional or spiritual resources left, and I certainly didn't have many physical ones. Deep down I knew that I needed my faith more than ever, and I was sick of pretending it wasn't important. I didn't know where to start, though - I had denied God, shoved my faith into a dark corner and done nothing a 'proper Christian' should do for so long. I was sure God would have no reason to take me back.

I closed my eyes. In my mind's eye, I could see the prodigal son trudging home to his father, wretched and embarrassed, sure that his father would deny him. And then I saw the father, racing down the road, robes flying, swinging his son into the air and hugging him. It was so vivid, and, as I realised later, just as David Goddard had retold it at one Family Service when I was a teenager. I threw myself mentally into God's arms, and cried tears of relief until I fell asleep.

I had to go back to my husband the next day (bridal suites are expensive), and we worked out a new set of rules for the relationship, which worked for another eighteen months until I finally divorced him in 2001. He never again threatened me with violence - I think he had been so shocked by my running away that he didn't want to risk my doing that again.

I became a member of the Methodist church, because I was drawn to its ideas on social justice. Although the services were much less structured than Anglican ones, I still felt every week that I was just settling into prayer when the next hymn would be announced. I met another influential friend at the village chapel; she had a similar church background to mine, and, like me, was searching for somewhere to fit in.

We began to meet up, pray together, and share our opinions and ideas. We were both interested in silent prayer, and found out that there was a Julian group in the city which we started to attend. These interdenominational groups are based around the teachings of Julian of Norwich, and silent prayer is the main focus of the meeting. (If you do not know anything about Julian, please click the link and read the Wikipedia article - she was amazingly ahead of her time!)

So - a deep desire for social justice, a love of silent worship, pacifist ideas that I had had since I was a child (and heard my father's stories of World War II ), and a belief that no one branch of Christianity, or any other religion, is the sole way to God. The next step seemed blindingly obvious.

My sister had been a senior teacher at a Quaker school, so I knew a little about the Society. Google brought me to the BYM website, and I applied for an information pack. I was so excited when it came; the more I read, the more I found myself in agreement. All sorts of things that I had always thought, but been told were wrong, were OK for Quakers - affirming in court instead of swearing an oath, the complete non-necessity of clergy acting as middlemen, the validity of ongoing revelation. I contacted the clerk at my nearest Meeting, and he came out to see me. Shortly after that, I went to my first Meeting.

I was on a high for days afterwards. I knew absolutely that this was where I was meant to be. At the next Meeting, I was prompted to speak. At the Meeting after that, I stayed on for a Meeting for Business, and was fascinated to see how it worked.

Shortly after that my health took another downturn, and I was unable to attend Meetings for Worship any more. I had plenty of visitors to keep me in touch with the Meeting, and eventually we began to have small MfW in my home, something which has now been extended to other housebound members.

I know now that I am home, and I have never been happier.

Celebrations!

Rejoice with me, Friends and readers - my application for membership was considered at last weekend's Area Meeting, and I am now a member instead of an attender! :D

The main thing that was stopping me from applying is that, being more or less bedridden, I couldn't fulfil the recommendation that I attend other Meetings to see how other places did things. However, the two Friends allocated to visit me, to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into (!), pointed out that reading a range of blogs, and investigating online worship, gives me as much of an idea of the spectrum of Friends as I would get from physically visiting other Meetings - and probably more!

I certainly feel I have gained a little knowledge of how things stand internationally, which I don't think I would have got outside of the online community. This is the positive side of the cyber revolution, and one I wish got more coverage. It's time the media realised that not all websites are porn sites :)

As I already have a copy of Quaker Faith and Practice, the elder asked me to think about another book I could be given from the Meeting. After discussion, we agreed that I will be getting the set of seven '12 Quakers and...' booklets, bound into one volume by a bookbinder Friend. Each contains twelve Quakers' writings on a different testimony. I am really looking forward to reading them!