An author I have come to like is the Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. She writes about religion in a way that makes it seem reasonable and "real". She wrote a book about her time with Vineyard Ministries, one of the most important evangelical movements in America. Vineyard Ministries was founded by John Wimber who had a Quaker background. When people complain that there's no life in Quakerism, that we seem moribund, I like to point them to Wimber. But to return to Luhrmann, she places Christian spirituality that could be described as experiential into a broader category of "absorption" practices that pertain to Wikka and far-eastern religions, as well as Christian groups. By absorption she means that the initiates learn to block out external experience and learn to pay attention to certain kinds of internal experience. That description applies to Focusing. And Quakers would be amused to find themselves lumped together with Pentecostal Christians and adherents of Wikka and far-eastern religions. And in truth you do find Quakers who identify with all of those groups. Here is a quote from Luhrmann's article. It reminds me of a quote from Joseph Phipps, who wrote the most important Quaker theological work of the 18th century.
Luhrmann is quoting from an Evangelical book called Dialogue With God: "God’s voice, the book explains, has an unusual content. You will recognize it as different from your ordinary thoughts. You feel different when you hear God. 'There is often a sense of excitement, conviction, faith, vibrant life, awe or peace that accompanies receiving God’s word.'” Here is the quote from Phipps. I often use Phipps to make the case that Quaker epistemology, like Focusing, is based on feeling or felt sensing. "Our Lord shewed his Disciples, that the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, should not only bring to their Remembrance what he had told them, shew them Things to come, and lead them into all Truth (John xv and xvi); but it should likewise, reprove the World of Sin, of Righteousness, and of Judgment. Whether this Divine Visitor appears to the Mind of Man, in Words, or without Words, by the Sensations of Compunction and Remorse; whether in the Sharpness of Reproof, or the healing Touches of Consolation; whether it manifests itself as Light, or sheds its Life and Love into the Heart; whether it darts upon it as Lightning, or settles it in a Holy Serenity; fills it with Faith, or inflames it with Zeal; in all these Ways, seeing it proceeds not by Messenger, but by its own immediate Communication to the rational Soul of Man, it is properly stiled internal immediate Revelation. This Divine Principle is a living Source of Truth and Virtue in Man, without which Laws and Precepts would little avail, and when, through Faithfulness thereunto, it is enlarged and advanced over all in the Soul, it is found to be a sure Foundation, which neither the Wisdom of the Wise, the Reasonings of the Confident, the Jugglings of the Crafty, the Derision of the Reviler, the Rage of the Persecutor, nor even the Gates of Hell can prevail against." Here is a link to Luhrmann's article: https://www.academia.edu/22028084/The_Art_of_Hearing_God_Absorption_Dissociation_and_Contemporary_American_Spirituality
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AuthorI am Andy Hoover. I was first exposed to what would later become focusing as a college freshman in 1972. I can't say that I understood then what it was about. About a decade later, when I came across the Focusing book, I was researching "right-brain" practices as the key to religious experience. Focusing was a perfect fit. I became a Quaker because I came across Quaker writings that sounded a lot like Focusing. Archives
May 2019
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