Greetings, Friends, and happy World Quaker Day! Today in meetinghouses around the world, Friends are reflecting on and feeling grateful to be part of an international community, a worldwide family of Friends. In our own unique cultures and in our own authentic ways, we are each drawn together from our individual lives to seek and celebrate in community the one spirit of life and love in which we live and move and have our being.
The World Quaker Day theme this year is ubuntu. It was selected by the Friends World Committee for Consultation in partnership with the planning committees for the World Plenary Sessions in South Africa in 2024. Ubuntu means, I am because we are, shining the light on the idea that our connections give us life, that none of us exists, experiences, flourishes alone. Each one of us—no matter how independent we may think we are—is truly interdependent, relying on others for our food, support, material goods, transportation, health care, well-being, and peace and safety. We are able to enjoy the lives we live thanks to the work and support and blessing and gifts of others. And when we as many join our hearts and minds around a common purpose, when we seek a sense of unity, harmony, in pursuit of the greater good, we discover something important that gives us life: out of many, one.
I realize that looking at headlines and following the news on social media, it's easy to believe that unity is not a possibility in our world today. There are too many fractures. Too much distrust. Lack of civility. Ugliness and aggressiveness. People believing outlandish things, and refusing to open their minds to anything else. How can any kind of harmony be found when we can't even agree on the most basic of obvious things?
And it is tempting to believe all the bad we see in the world, all the reasons for worry and alarm, and to think perhaps it's possible that the ocean of light won't be able to flow over that ocean of darkness George Fox saw so long ago. But look around this room. We're unified, aren't we, in this moment? You are listening to me and I'm speaking to you. It's a whole action, a moment we're spending with each other as an act of love and service and we attempt together to learn more about God. Your listening is a gift to me. My sharing hopefully offers you a new idea or two. We are unified in our purpose in this moment, at peace with each other, sharing a moment of mutual giving and receiving.
And here's an even more obvious idea. We are here in this meeting room right now because we come together to worship. Without that we—the group that our Quaker meeting represents—none of us would be here this morning. You are here because we are. If there were no Noblesville Friends, you and I would not be sharing this moment together. Each of us is because we are.
When I trained at the Gestalt institute years ago, I learned many fascinating things about the way we flourish when we let ourselves be free enough to be ourselves, individuals with open hearts who can make authentic contact with one another. When we're real, and we feel free, and we're not hiding behind defenses or other unhelpful patterns that block our energy and hide our light, we are creative, hopeful, even joyful beings. We connect naturally with one another. We recognize how unhelpful it is to judge one another or create groups that include some people and exclude others.
One particularly interesting idea in Gestalt is the way relationships are understood. Without relationships, we would never understand about ourselves—in fact, our identities form in part due to the relationship that unfolds in the spaces between us. Each relationship is a new and shared creation, emerging as two individuals make contact, combining ideas, beliefs, experiences, energies, and more. In the space between us, a totally new creation emerges, and that uniqueness helps us learn more about ourselves and our capacity to love (or our tendency to hide). The book Beyond Empathy puts it this way:
"Relationship is nurturing, stimulating, and restorative. Responding to another, and being responded to in turn, allows us to discover who we are, what we want, how we feel, and what we think." (p. 6)
Because we are, I am. I can be because we are. That's ubuntu.
The idea of ubuntu was brought into popular culture by Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Desmond Tutu. In his essay, 'Ubuntu: On the Nature of Human Community', Tutu wrote:
"In our African worldview, we have something called ubuntu… This expression is very difficult to render in English, but we could translate it by saying, 'A person is a person through other persons.' We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.
Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. It says, not as Descartes did, 'I think, therefore I am' but rather, 'I am because I belong.' I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for we are made for togetherness, for family. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.
I have gifts that you don't have, and you have gifts that I don't have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent."
You can hear how close this description of ubuntu is to the passage of Paul's letter to the Corinthians we heard in our New Testament reading. Paul is trying to accomplish something specific with this young church. They are passionate, excited, eager to put the new ideas of the gospel into practice, but they are also head-strong, willful, and wanting to put their own stamps on this early generation church. In other words, they were thinking like a bunch of individuals—with their own goals, wants, preferences, and ideas—and not working in unity, as a beloved community with a common goal. Paul—who was not short on ego himself—was trying to urge them toward a spirit of unity, mutual encouragement, and love. He hoped they would grasp the idea that all their gifts were needed. One was not more important or valued than another. The group needed what each individual had to offer. And each individual needed the group to make their giving worthwhile. I am because we are. Out of many, one.
Paul pointed out that there are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit that distributes them. There are different ways to serve, but the same Lord that inspires the service. Different ways of working, but no matter who is doing the job or what the job is, God is the force at work in the action. We look, sound, think, and behave as the individuals we are, but we share one life and fit together in love to form the whole of humanity. As our best, we are mutually supportive, reliant on one another, working together for a common good.
Following on Paul's metaphor of the body, consider how everything within us and around us is interdependent. In our bodies, cells and enzymes, muscles and organs communicate seamlessly with one another as we act, move, think, and react. In our families, we connect and comfort, respond to wants and needs, and adapt with flexibility and grace to challenges and change. In our organizations—like this meeting—we serve one another, help each other, pray for the best, plan for the future, act in ways that support the long-term life of our meeting. No matter how large or small we look, we will find interdependence in every stage of life.
Our Old Testament reading today is Psalm 133, which is a short psalm with the title, 'The Blessedness of Unity":
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.
Although the language here may be a puzzle to us—and it sounds awful, doesn't it, to think of having oil poured on your head, running all over?—this psalm describes a great moment of blessing. The precious oil is not common ceremonial oil but sacred oil used only for the anointing of the high priest, Aaron. As the sacred oil, the blessing, runs through Aaron's beard it flows over his collar and onto his robe, on which was inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.
The Cambridge commentary says that this psalm expresses how the harmonious unity established by the anointed soul blesses the entire community, sharing God's goodness with all. The goodness was never meant for Aaron alone: God's intention is for the blessing of all God's children, the whole world over. When we live together in unity, the blessing is for all, God's "kin-dom" (notice I didn't say "kingdom") come.
Our Friends tradition rests naturally on the idea at the center of ubuntu. We find spirit in community. We experience leadings in a group. We seek and value silence as a way to yield our hearts and minds so we'll hear truth speak into our lives. We seek consensus together as we explore how God might be leading us in community. We know it works; we've done it for centuries.
Scottish Quaker Robert Barclay and more recently, Thomas Kelly, both wrote about what it felt like to be in a "gathered meeting" where we can feel the unity of the spirit at work. There is a palpable sense when God is guiding the group, and we all recognize it. Barclay wrote,
"…when I came into the silent assemblies of God's people I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart, and as I gave away unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good lifted up, and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this Power and Life whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed."
And Kelly described a "gathered meeting" like this:
"In the Quaker practice of group worship on the basis of silence come special times when an electric hush and solemnity and depth of power steals over the worshippers. A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, and a quickening Presence pervades us…"
That electric hush, the blanket of divine covering feels like such a relief when it happens. There is a feeling of deep peace, a rightness, an ease, a harmony. Things flow easily. Decisions seem effortless. Right ideas emerge. That's what we're reaching for and hoping for in our monthly meetings for business. That's what we experienced together as a meeting when we made the difficult decision about whether to sell the parsonage. We approached that decision with the intention of listening to what God wanted for us, and that's what we discovered together.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's 2018 Faith and Practice includes this statement:
"Recognition that God's Light is in every person helps us to overcome our apparent separation and differences from others; it leads to a sympathetic awareness of their needs and a sense of responsibility towards them. Friends believe that the more widely and clearly the Light is recognized and followed, the more the human family will come into harmony and peace. 'Therefore,' wrote George Fox, 'in the Light wait, where unity is.'
On this World Quaker Day, we can celebrate the fact that unity—ubuntu—is not only possible but something that occurs quite often as spirit leads loving hearts toward a greater harmony. Our work is in making sure our hearts are willing and our meeting is moving continually toward more openness, more understanding, nurturing a spirit of unity, mutual encouragement, and love.
In closing, here is a lovely poem from Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier:
God should be most where man is least:
So, where is neither church nor priest,
And never rag nor form of creed
To clothe the nakedness of need,–
Where farmer folk in silence meet,–
I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;
I lay the critic's glass aside,
I tread upon my lettered pride,
And, lowest-seated, testify
To the oneness of humanity;
Confess the universal want,
And share whatever Heaven may grant.
He findeth not who seeks his own,
The soul is lost that's saved alone.
RESOURCES:
No comments:
Post a Comment