I was asked to be a stand-in for a friend two weeks ago at a neighboring meeting. They were looking for someone outside of their meeting to talk about meeting for worship during a Religious Education hour. I didn’t realize at first that they wanted me to speak about meeting for worship so when they asked me for a title, I suggested “On Being a Born-again Quaker.” Among liberal Quakers I figured that that would be a provocative title but I also thought that it would give me an opportunity to talk about this intriguing quote I found in an 18th century book by a guy named Joseph Phipps. The book has been described as the most important Quaker theological work of the 18th century. The author, Joseph Phipps, is fairly unknown today, but according to at least one Quaker historian, almost every meetinghouse in America at one time had a copy of Phipps. My shortened version of the quote goes as following:
the soul of man hath not only a faculty of cogitation, by which it ordinarily thinks, unites, divides, compares, or forms ideas, but also a latent power of internal sensation, or of perceiving spiritual objects by an inward and spiritual sense, when presented through a proper medium; which, till the beams of Divine light shine upon it, it must be as totally unacquainted with, as the child in its mother’s womb is with its faculties of sight and hearing. . . . Thus born of the spirit, into this proper medium of Divine knowledge, the soul is made acquainted with that spiritual sense it could neither discover, nor believe pertained to it, whilst in its natural state. This is no new natural faculty added, but its own mental power newly opened and brought into its due place and use. Words are inadequate to the expression of this internal sense felt in the soul under Divine influence. It cannot be ideally conveyed to the understanding of the inexperienced; for it is not an image, but a sensation, impossible to be conceived but by its own impression. Joseph Phipps, The Original and Present State of Man, I wanted to use the quote as a lead-in to talk about the strange kind of knowing that is peculiar to Quakers - a knowing that is sensed or felt, that is bodily, that is strange, and that is in some way independent of our own will. And I wanted to suggest that Focusing points to the same kind of knowing and that Focusing provides an effective way of helping people come to experience this strange kind of knowing. But the thing I find truly amazing is to find the leading Quaker of his day saying that coming to know this way of knowing is the entry to the kingdom of God. And that this way of knowing is available to everyone, but that the problem is that they just don’t realize that it exists. Which is exactly what my experience of this way of knowing was - it was always there but I didn’t know it existed; I didn’t know how to access it. And it has been a key to my life being transformed. Discovering this way of knowing is like being born again. I didn’t include this in my handouts for the talk but there is another lovely quote from Phipps that helps to illustrate the kind of affective experience we are seeking in meeting for worship and in Focusing. It has echoes of Paul from Romans 8.28: 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; 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.
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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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