Focusing points to, describes, and facilitates the kind of experience/epistemology that is the basis of Quaker faith and practice. This epistemology is strange, counter to the way that we normally operate. Focusing highlights that it is indeed strange, provides a clear explication of it, and provides a way of teaching it.
The testimonies and declarations which are given forth in obedience to the Lord's requirings, are to bring everyone of you to a sense and feeling of the inward testimony of truth in your own bosoms, to the feeling of the work and operation of the Lord's Spirit upon your hearts, to give to everyone a clear sight and understanding of those things that tend to their souls profit, and to their spiritual advantage and divine growth in grace. Richard Ashby, sermon 1693, from a book published in 1694 meant to show the unity and basic agreement among Friends
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(1.) Read Gendlin’s book Focusing. Available used for $4 or less. This is written for a popular audience
(2.) While there are a lot of different flavors of focusing and it’s worthwhile exploring them for their different emphases, most of what I know, outside of Gendlin, I’ve gotten from Ann Weiser. I’d especially recommend her The Radical Acceptance of Everything. (3.) Visit websites - Focusing Institute and Focusing Resources. http://www.focusing.org/ http://focusingresources.com/ http://carlislefocusingfriends.weebly.com/ (4.) View numerous videos on YouTube. E.g. http://www.nadalou.com/Nada_new/DVD_YouTube_links.html (5.) Do a workshop over the phone or in person. (6.) Use me or Carlisle Friends Focusing group as a resource. We can provide training or answer any questions you might have. Why do focusing with a partner?
(1.) It’s easier with a partner! (2.) Model for friendship because it’s the best gift someone can give you. What does a partner do? (1.) Primarily monitors how you are in relation to your experience (different way of listening). They don’t need to know the content of what you are focusing on.
Focusing is a practice. To make it work as a practice, you need a partner. Finding and keeping partners is the hardest part of focusing. How do you listen in a focusing partnership? What is primary is the person’s relationship to their “experience.” (1.) Caring, feeling, presence - focusing is hard; what comes up are things that are difficult to be with and difficult to share (2.) Start by noticing the “feeling” word, the word(s) that carries the meaning, that is most alive and then saying that back. [or, the focuser is in charge, and say back what the focuser asks for.] (3.) Identify when other issues come up, especially a feeling about a feeling, a wanting to fix something, or the “critic” - at least acknowledge that. Or the not being okay to be with that. (4.) Helping them to relax and find the right distance - “I’m sensing something in me that feels …” (5.) Keeping them connected to the “body” or “experience” - Is that the best word for all that? What kind of angry are you feeling? Where do you feel that in your body?” (6.) Silence is generally good - need time to investigate like in Quaker meeting (7.) Keeping them on task - when they get distracted, what came up right now, that got you going in this completely different direction? Is it okay to be with that? (8.) Not your problem. Focuser is ultimately responsible and in charge. Rex Ambler has done more than anyone I know to popularize focusing among Friends. While he doesn't purport to be teaching people focusing, I think that there are some things about focusing that work better than what he teaches in his light groups. Let me say upfront though that I only know Ambler's work from his books.
(1.) In the light groups, you come up with one image and stop - focusing is about getting in the zone where images as well as felt senses arise and then going through multiple steps. Where you end up is often quite different than where you started. You normally wouldn't stop with the first image that came up. (2.) You need to know about the “critic’ or else you will get stuck and probably give up on the practice. Ambler doesn't teach this. (3.) This process is best best done with the attention of one other person. That ongoing presence and attention allows the focuser to go deeper. (4.) The results of this process don't need to be interpreted by the “head”. With Ambler, it seems as if he is still reverting to an intellectual way of operating. The point in all this is to learn to operate at the felt sense level, beneath the intellect. (5.) Ambler puts an emphasis on images. The problem with images is if they are not connected with a felt sense, they can be easily manipulated. There is always a temptation in this process to try to create your own preordained outcome. This is much harder to do at the felt sense level. So we have a focusing group at Carlisle and people are into it. That said, my original intention was for the group to be a springboard for regular focusing partnerships. That hasn't happened and here's what I think are a couple of the reasons:
(1.) Hard to be transparent with people you know (2.) People worry that they will hurt someone’s feelings if they single out someone to focus with them outside of the group setting. Thus, it is a deterrent to ongoing regular focusing partnerships. (1.) Explore your relationship to how you feel. This assumes that you can feel more than one thing and have more than one focus, if not concurrently, then quickly in succession. Some questions you might want to ask yourself:
(a.) Am I okay to be with this feeling? If not, you might want to shift your focus to the “not okay” feeling. (b.) How do you feel about the feeling/affect? (c.) Try acknowledging the feeling - “I’m acknowledging that I feel x about y.” (d.) Say hello to it - Ann Weiser calls these last two distancing strategies when a feeling is “too much” in some way. (e.) Rephrase the feeling in a way that allows you to disidentify with it - “I’m sensing something in me that feels x”. I’m bigger than the feeling. (f.) You might want to take some time to find space by mentally distancing yourself from the situation, as in what Gendlin calls clearing a space. Or by taking some time to relax. Or by taking an inventory/clearing a space if a lot of things come all at once. (g.) You might want to take some time to just let go into it, especially if it is new. Just take some time to actually feel what you are feeling. (2.) Match the word or image to the felt sense. Gendlin calls this resonating. See if they match just right or if it’s close and maybe there’s a better word/image. If the word seems too general, for example, anger, you might ask yourself what kind of anger do you feel? Or if the word has a special sense for you, you might ask yourself, “What do I mean by anger?” (3.) Just sit with it for awhile. You have a situation, you have an affect/felt sense, you have a description or word/image match. Just sit with it for awhile and see what pops up. When something does, see how that affects you. Does it reinforce the original felt sense, intensify it, relaxes it, changes it or add to it in some way? Or give it a completely different focus? Or maybe the feeling changes on its own in one of the aforementioned patterns? Or as you think about the situation some more, the feeling may change in some way? (4.) Match the felt sense against the situation. You might ask yourself, “What is it about this situation that makes me feel x?” Or “what is the crux”? Or “What is the worst of this?” Or “What is the best of all this?” (5.) Ask forward looking questions. What would feel better? What needs to happen for this to feel better? What might this become? How would feel if this were all resolved? And then ask yourself - “And I can feel that way now?” and see if anything pops up that says “No.” And then how does that affect the felt sense? (6.) If the felt sense is some variation on fear, worry or anxiety, or if anger which often has an underlying basis in fear, you might take a two pronged approach - start with what you don’t want and when it feels right, explore what you do want. So for example, what don’t you want to have happen, experience or feel? What don’t you want have happen, experience, or feel if that happens or you experience or feel that (this is an iterative process)? As stuff comes up, how does that affect the felt sense? When you have exhaused the iterations, then try the oppositie - what do I want to have happen, experience or feel? What do I want to have happen, experience or feel if that happens or I feel or experience that? Again take some time to see how it affects the felt sense. (7.) Try the opposite. For example, instead of What’s the worst of all this, try “What’s the best of all this?” Or if you have a felt sense, what would the opposite be and then ask yourself what is it about all this that doesn’t allow me to feel x? Or what is it about all this that does make me feel the opposite as both feelings could be “true”. (8.) In all this, what you are after is a change in how you feel. Sometimes, it is helpful to just insist on not changing, protecting and acknowledging this current feeling and not pressuring it to change in some way. This has to do with the relationship - caring, non-violent, accepting, curious How can a companion help someone focusing?
Let me start out by saying that most of what I know about focusing can be found in Gendlin’s book Focusing and Ann Weiser’s The Radical Acceptance of Everything. This is my shorthand for what they say based on my own experience. I would highly recommend both books to anyone who seriously wants to learn focusing. That said, here’s my compressed notes for the people that I work with: (1.) Stay out of their way - First it’s important to have the mindset that you are not responsible for the other person’s focusing. Ideally, you stay out of their way as in a meeting for worship, if the meeting is too busy, Friends don’t have a chance to hear themselves think. And the fallback as a companion is to stay silent, just like meeting for worship. And trust the process, just like meeting for worship. And remember that the focuser is always in charge. And avoid eye contact. You want them looking inward, just like meeting for worship. If the person is experienced, they will mostly guide themselves. (2.) A different kind of listening - While you want to be empathetic, kind, patient and in general a caring supportive presence, there is a different kind of listening in this process. What you are listening for here is primarily how the person is in their process and in their relationship to their experience. It’s why you don’t need to know the content. And when you do practice a variation of active listening, saying back the words that seem to carry the life, the point isn’t for you to understand, it’s for the focuser to hear themselves. Again the focus is on the focuser’s process, what’s going on inside the focuser.. (3.) With newbies, you will want to explicitly guide them through the process. You want to give them the kind of instructions you use for yourself as a guide for how to guide them. You just want to remind them that they are in charge, to feel free to guide your guiding by asking for what they want or don’t want, and to feel free to ignore your suggestions (guiding should always be done with the attitude of a suggestion). And mirror the focusing attitude, which is essentially non-violence. Welcome what comes. Don’t try to fix or make it go away. Trust the process. (4.) Help with difficulties - generally people may need help when something comes up that is difficult for them. If as a companion, you sense this, there are a number of suggestions you might offer:
I did a short presentation on focusing Saturday at the Warrington Quarterly retreat. I hope that people got something out of it. It was helpful to me in that I think I will have a sharper focus the next time I do something like this for Friends. The next time I would start out by stating that it was normative at one time to describe how we participate in the operation of the inward light in terms of feeling and sensing. I would then use quotes from Melvin Keiser, Richard Ashby and Hannah Whitall Smith to make the point. I would then state that how we participate in the operation of the inward light is strange, counter to the way that we normally operate. I would then use quotes from Jesse Kersey, Joseph Phipps and Howard Brinton. I would then say that Focusing is one way to learn and practice the kind of activities that facilitate the inward light. I would then point out that other Friends like Ambler and Gwynn are also turning to Focusing to teach Friends about the Inward Light. And Friends are already familiar from meeting for worship with some of the same requirements that make Focusing work - turning inward, silence, time.
Here are the quotes I would use: First, that it was normative to describe our esperience of the inward light in terms of sensing and feeling. Here is the quote from Keiser who was head of the Quaker studies program at Guilford:: Only now as major efforts are being made to get beyond the modern mindset does Friends’ experiential basis of knowing look important, and perhaps even useful. What is this different direction? While Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, grounds true knowing in reason, Penington grounds it in feeling and sense. For modernity, “feeling” is merely subjective emotions, and “sense” means physical sensations, stimuli received from the outer world through the receptors of our five senses. In recent Anglo-American modern philosophy “sense” is used along with “reference” to mean “meaning” – what sense does it make – along with how does it relate to the empirical world. For Penington, however, sensing is an intuitive, non-rational, feel for something. And feeling is a way of relating to something that affects us, moves us emotionally. “Feeling” and “sensing” are, therefore, synonymous. Both are ways of relating to a reality that involve an emotional awareness. They are a conscious awareness that does not use ideas, although we can get an idea about what we are feeling or sensing. But the idea is not the feeling, though it be filled with the feeling. Idea is erected upon sense and feeling as their clarification through intellectual content. Different from modern philosophers, then, Penington affirms that we know realities through conscious awareness that is not conceptual. Feeling and sensing make it clear that knowing is experiential and not merely having an idea. This would be nonsense to many modern thinkers but it is startling in its relevance today as some philosophers (existential, phenomenological, feminist, postcritical) turn to experience as their starting point and way of knowing. R. Melvin Keiser, Knowing the Mystery of Life Within, p. 179. And then Ashby from a 17th century book meant to show the unity of Friends: The testimonies and declarations which are given forth in obedience to the Lord's requirings, are to bring everyone of you to a sense and feeling of the inward testimony of truth in your own bosoms, to the feeling of the work and operation of the Lord's Spirit upon your hearts, to give to everyone a clear sight and understanding of those things that tend to their souls profit, and to their spiritual advantage and divine growth in grace. Richard Ashby, sermon 1693, from The Concurrence and Unanimity of the People Called Quakers published in 1694. And then Hannah Whitall Smith, perhaps the most famous evangelical Friend of the latter part of the 19th centuy, in her autobiography wrote: “The natural result of this teaching was to turn our minds inward, upon our feelings and our emotions, and to make us judge of our relations with God entirely by what we found within ourselves. What God had said in the Bible seemed to us of not nearly so much authority as what He might say to us in our own hearts, and I have no recollection of ever for a moment going to the Scriptures for instruction. The ‘inward voice’ was to be our sole teacher. And for me at that time the inward voice meant only my own feelings and my own emotions. As there is absolutely nothing more unreliable and unmanageable than one’s inward feelings, it is no wonder that I was plunged into a hopeless struggle. In vain I tried to work myself up into what I supposed would be the sort of feelings acceptable to God. No dream of salvation in any other way ever came to me.” From The Unselfishness of God, 1903, p. 152. Smith is referring to time growing up in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting just before the Civil War. While she rejects this path to God, she does suggest that it was normative for Friends to look to their feelings to discern how God was speaking to them. For about the first 150 years of Friends this way of knowing, as articulated by Penington was the norm for Friends. In the early part of the 19th century, what was for Friends a new interest in the Bible challenged the authority of the inner light. More liberal evangelical Friends wanted to base Quaker practice on an educated reading of the Bible. The conservative Friends wanted to preserve the inner light as the primary authority. In the context of the 1827 separations, you find Jesse Kersey from York Meeting trying to bridge the differences between Friends by returning Friends to what was essential: “But there is a rule above all rules, which renders us accountable: and that is the quickening and powerful word of God, by which a consciousness in man is kept alive . . . I consider this consciousness in relation to the mind, as feelings in relation to the body; the mind has feelings, capacities, and sensibility, as well as the body; and in this situation it is the consciousness through which the divine power acts, and it is always felt and perceived. And those who become devoted to its government, are instructed in feeling a sensibility of its presence, and when furnished with this, they mistake not its testimony for that of another.” Jesse Kersey, Sermon at Green Street Meeting, 4/19/1827. Being born again, Quaker style: 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, (This was the most important Quaker theological work of the 18th century, originally published in 1767) This is not much different than my experience in learning focusing. Here was something that was always there but I never knew to look for it because nobody ever pointed it out to me. Howard Brinton was a key figure in the effort to rediscover the original message of Friends. He was looking back to people like Penington. He wanted to base Friends’ spirituality on feeling much like Penington. (Gendlin spent some time at Pendle Hill in 1944 when Brinton was in charge. So it would be no wonder that Gendlin would have seen people at Pendle Hill doing something that seemed similar to what became Focusing.) Here is a quote from Brinton: "In seeking guidance regarding a proposed course of action, we find ourselves using four main tests: authority, reason, results, and intuitive feeling... But it can be shown that ultimately in the field of religion and morality the test of feeling must be trusted. By feeling in this field is meant our intuitive apprehension of the Light of Truth. By feeling we accept some authorities and reject others. By feeling we accept certain premises as a basis for our reasoning and reject others. By feeling we accept certain results as good and reject others as bad. When early Friends placed the Light above Scriptures, Church, Reason, and shortrange experience of results, they assumed a tenable position." Howard Brinton, Friends for 300 Years. Note for our purposes though how both ordinary and strange this way of knowing is. Brinton calls it the “intuitive apprehension of the Light of Truth.” Not very helpful if you want to “get” this. And yet we use it all the time, kind of like someone asking you how are you feeling. Quakers and Jesus, Part 1
There's a game that I like to play called the Ungame. It looks like a board game but it is really just a way for people to ask and answer questions so that the participants get to know each other better. There are 3 levels of questions in the game - Light-hearted, Deep Understanding, and Christian. Light-hearted would be something like - what did you want to become as an adult when you were in high school? Deep understanding - what's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you? Christian would be something like, say something about the Holy Spirit. Invariably, even among Christians, the Christian cards are the hardest and strangely the most intimate. So as we speak here tonight, have some sympathy for us as this is not an easy task. The topic Jesus and Quakerism implies that you can separate Jesus from Christianity, that you can deplore the excesses of Christianity but still appreciate and admire Jesus in the same way you might admire Gandhi or Nelson Mandela. And certainly there's a wealth of material coming from people who try to reconstruct the historical Jesus. While I find that information interesting, I'm not particularly interested in information. I'm much more interested in the Jesus of faith. Growing up I went to church every week and said my prayers every night. I had a picture of Jesus in my room and a cross that shone in the dark. When I was 16, I gave up on Christianity after pondering the part in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says that if you lust after a woman in your heart, you have committed adultery. I wanted to lust. Later I went to a University where Christianity and religion were non-subjects. It came as a shock when, as a junior in a History of Western Civ class, I first heard the gospel. Nobody was evangelizing. We were simply studying Christianity as an historical phenomenon. For me there were three parts to the gospel that I first heard in that class. The first and perhaps most important part was the concept of grace. By grace I mean the idea that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves right with God, that God's favor comes to us as a free gift. The second part had to do with Jesus's death on the cross. It was explained to us that it was a sign of how much Jesus loved us that he was willing to take on the worst that life had to offer, the abandonment signaled in the "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me", to show that there was nowhere where we would be separated from God. And the third part was that grace is more than a concept, that grace is something that people experience. That part was illustrated by reading St. Augustine's Confessions, particularly the part where he wants to be a Christian but can't get there because he wants to hang onto his girlfriends and he knows that as a Christian he will have to give them up. If you know St. Augustine, I'm referring to the part where he hears a voice that says, "Take and read," at which point his Bible falls open to a passage that speaks to where he was at in his life. I filed all these ideas away thinking that I would come back to them when I had my life more together and then I could coolly assess the arguments for and against Christianity. So several years later I did start to do some serious study on Christianity but when I despaired of ever getting a sufficient mental grasp in order to make a cooly rational decision, through God's grace I was, after the model of St. Augustine, converted to Christianity. When I say converted after the model of St. Augustine, I mean two things: (1.) I didn't do it; it came to me as a gift; (2.) being a Christian wasn't an in-between thing for me; it was much more of a Yes or No even though I didn't fully understand what I was saying Yes to. The metaphor that comes to mind is going on a journey by plane. You either go or you don't. You can buy maps and itineraries, talk to people who have gone, but ultimately you still need to venture forth. Like Abraham leaving Chaldea. Strangely once I had faith I started to understand things about Christianity that had seemed opaque previously. I also started getting some benefit from reading the Bible which before had left me cold. Ralph Slotten, a member of this meeting now deceased used to say that Faith precedeth Understanding and it was true in my case. I also realized that going "Christian" was not something you could do by yourself so I went looking for a church. I ended up hanging out with Evangelicals because they were the group that seemed to be living out the idea that if the gospel means anything, it means everything. Sometime after that I had a second major epiphany. I went to hear the Catholic priest Andrew Greeley speak about the religious imagination. He said that if you want to change people religiously, you need to connect at the level of the imagination. To me that felt like the answer to a question that I had been carrying around but hadn't been able to articulate. I wanted to be a better Christian, to be transformed. I had gone about it the only ways I knew how which was to study more and to try harder and I had a sense that that wasn't working. So I gave up theology and started exploring different imaginative ways of transformation. I particularly got interested in something called focusing which is how I came to Friends. Focusing is a practice that involves sitting with a situation that has some meaning for you, intuitively feeling all that goes with that situation, and then receiving whatever images and/or shifts in feeling that might arise spontaneously, as if by grace, and that might give you a new and better way to be in the situation. You can get a sense of what I am talking about if you imagine running into an old friend and they ask you how you are, and you say fine, and then they say, no, really, how are you, and this is someone you trust and care about and you know they want to know and you both have time - what you do then in order to figure out how you are, that's pretty close to focusing, if you can then imagine taking the time to get it just right, and realizing that in sensing how you are and articulating it is also going to change how you are. It's a process that requires a lot of silent waiting in order to do this strange internal process that is sometimes called intuitive feeling or felt sensing. Somewhere I had come across writings from Friends that seemed to suggest that they were doing something similar, not just the silent waiting but the intuitive feeling as well. Focusing was a way of "attending" in my body in a funny kind of way that I never would have conceived of on my own. A part of the focusing process involves a shift, a change that you know is real because you feel it and is confirmed by what I can only describe as a sense of grace. It comes as a surprise and as a gift and with a sense that I didn't make this up. When I learned focusing, it felt like being born again into a whole new realm of possibilities. I wasn't familiar with it at the time but have since discovered something in an 18th century Quaker writer that describes a Quaker experience of being born again that seems to be pointing to the same thing I experienced: 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 . . .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 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. Part2 I want to start with a quote from an early Friend: Now whereas many are offended at us because we do not more preach doctrinal points, or the history of Christ, as touching his death, resurrection, ascension, &c., but our declaration and testimony is chiefly concerning a principle, to direct and guide men's minds thereto . . . I think that statement is still true about Friends. We don't talk about Jesus very much and many Friends in our branch would not identify themselves as Christian. In fact we have a lot of people who would call themselves refugees from places where there was too much Jesus talk. What we do talk about still is this principle although Friends don't use that term any more. Now they talk about the inner light or the light within or that of God in all people. I mentioned that I was attracted to Quakers through something called focusing. Some Quakers now use focusing to teach people about this inner light. It's not accidental that there would be a connection as the guy who came up with focusing spent some time as a young man with Quakers. He teaches his focusing almost entirely in secular language except for a passing reference to grace. I learned focusing from a couple of Jesuits who teach focusing in overtly religious language. Quakers use language peculiar to Friends. I mention this to try to explain Quaker universalism. For Quakers what matters is a particular kind of experience, not necessarily the terms in which it is described. That explains how Friends could have found kindred spirits in non-Christian religions and yet be highly critical of other Christians. To quote what was an amazingly radical statement in the 17th century: Then by this, a man may be saved, though he should not know the literal name Jesus or the literal name Christ, etc.? Answ. The names are but the signification of the thing spoken of, for it is the life, the power (the being transformed by that) that saves, not the knowledge of a name." The Quaker principle is an experience of grace, a self-confirming bodily experience. You know it's true in the same way that if you tell someone things are fine, and they aren't, you know it. You know it's grace because it comes with a sense of surprise, a sense of discovery, a sense of newness, a sense of life, and a sense of gift. The paradigm for salvation in the Bible is the experience of the Israelites fleeing Egypt and faced with the uncrossable Red Sea and the Egyptians closing in on them. And then the sea parted - they were saved, and saved through God's gracious action. The Quakers have a lovely phrase for this - way opens. Well, an experience of grace is like this; one is stuck, not knowing how to proceed, and way opens. It can seem like an in-break of the kingdom of God. It may not be a final, absolute in-break but it throws light on the idea that the kingdom of God is upon us even though the final fulfillment has not arrived. It's both here and yet not complete. Grace in my understanding is what Jesus was about. He embodied grace, he understood God to be gracious; his mission was to extend God's grace to the whole world. You can see grace at work in the healing stories and the parables, even in the Sermon on the Mount. What a surprise it must have been to hear, Blessed are they who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit. But it's not always easy to accept grace. Grace changes us. There's something in us that doesn't want to let go of control. When I was a kid, probably like a lot of other kids, I was afraid that if I followed Jesus, I could end up as a missionary in some God-forsaken part of the world, maybe even end up a martyr. I suppose that there might be people who thrill at that prospect, but I wasn't one of them. I don't pretend to understand the resurrection but it does make sense to me to say that God raised Jesus from the dead, if by raising you understand moral height. Jesus made a definitive breakthru in our relationship to grace - he trusted it all the way to the cross. And Friends, in following Jesus, have trusted in God's grace in the face of prison and execution. That kind of sacrifice makes sense if you add to the experience of grace a sense of covenant. Covenant is something I learned about from Friends. To explain what I mean, I need you to do a thought experiment: We're all sitting in this room. Suppose a woman walks through the door, and she's crying. We would all be affected by the woman. And what's important for my thought experiment is that we would be affected before we had a chance to choose. In some way this person makes a claim on us whether we like it or not. And that claim occurs at the level of feeling, again prior to choosing. At the level of feeling we aren't autonomous individuals but we are connected to other people, whether we like it or not. We may then separate ourselves but that comes later, is a reaction to the primordial situation. [As separate individuals, we might begin to analyze her, "Oh, her dog died recently. That must be what's going on." Or we might compare ourselves and think, "I'm glad I don't cry in meeting." Or we might do a quick cost/benefit analysis. "I've only got x amount of time to do good and I'm maxed out. I just can't deal with this right now." Or we might choose to ignore her. "We've spent a lot of time planning this Quaker Quest and we can deal with it later." These are all legitimate responses. And they all restore order to our inner world which has gotten disrupted momentarily. The sovereign self is in command again. But I want to say that the light operates at the level of feeling, at the level of the primordial chaos and connection prior to rationalization, where we aren't in control, where we're connected to other people and from which something new can come, something that feels like grace. Covenant is an affirmation of this inarticulate bond we have with one another, and through that, with what is sacred. There's a Quaker term that is connected to covenant. Quakers say that there is that of God in all people. In the thought experiment, that of God would have been the woman's tears. That of God is our neediness, our vulnerability, our frailty, our suffering. The ultimate examples of that in the Bible are the baby Jesus and Jesus crucified. Jesus talks about that of God in Matthew, chapter 25. For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me." Then the righteous will reply, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and gave you drink, a stranger and took you home, or naked and clothed you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and come to visit you?" And the king will answer, "I tell you this: anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me." I think it is that of God that elicits and enables us to love one another. You can't love someone who's got everything under control. And you will miss love if you don't allow people to affect you. But it's also why we say that the greatest gift we can give to another person is our vulnerability, our suffering, as again that is what enables them to love us; although it does mean we need to let go of control, to be vulnerable. And I think it's why we worship together, we need each other's faces. Steve Davidson liked to quote early Friends, that if all of the world's Bibles disappeared, Friends could recreate it from their experience with the light. You can sort of see how you might come up with stories like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son with this understanding of the light and covenant. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in the gospel of John, when Jesus talks to Peter on the beach after his crucifixion. Right after the part where Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" three times, there are the lines, "And further, I tell you this in very truth: when you were young you fastened your belt about you and walked where you chose; but when you are old you will stretch out your arms, and a stranger will bind you fast, and carry you where you have no wish to go." There is a wonderful (might one say grace-filled) irony in this passage around the idea of freedom. When Peter was young and thought himself the master of his own life, he denied Jesus. When Peter is old and carried away to be crucified, when he appears to be least in control of his life, he is most free to be himself. The first meeting I attended regularly was in York. The people there were still under the influence of a charismatic Quaker minister who had vanished the week before I showed up. These Friends were overtly Christian, which to be frank was a major reason I continued to attend at that time. They were also in the process of leaving our branch of Friends because they felt our Friends were not Christian. They were in the process of forming an intentional community with other disaffected Christian Friends. I often joined them in their gatherings and at the time felt I needed to decide whether to join them, stick with our branch of Friends, or do something else. While still not sure quite what to do, I and those who remained in York signed on to a Statement of Faith largely written by a retired Lutheran seminary professor. We were invited by Steve Davidson of Carlisle to talk about it at this meeting. In the gathering for worship immediately preceding our presentation at Carlisle, someone, I think it was Steve, got up and gave a message, quoting the German poet Schiller. He said, "My faith is to believe in nothing." At first I took that statement as an act of inhospitality, a rebuke of our Statement of Faith. But as I sat there in meeting for worship, I came to see it as a more profound statement than ours, a Quaker version of the way of the cross, a trust in nothing that you can control, predict, or define; a trust in grace alone. I also came to see it as a concise statement of what Friends do in worship. We forego all of our preconceptions and start from scratch. (The word principle translates the Greek word arche, which most people know from the gospel of John, "In the beginning." It is out of anarchy that we find our arche, and not one time but over and over.) Our Statement of Faith went no further, but "My faith is to believe in nothing" has been a kind of mantra that has stayed with me. You see something similar in a quote from Isaac Penington: "If any knowledge concerning the things of God be held out of the freshness of the Spirit, it presently proves dead and unprofitable." I'd like to close by returning to grace with another quote from Penington: "Indeed, all our religion lies in receiving a gift, without which we are nothing, and can do nothing, and in which nothing is too hard for us." 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 |
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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