Frans Widerberg, Livstreet 1993-1994
1.
This post is written with Quakers in mind, but perhaps others might listen in and get something out of it, too.
I recently attended a Meeting for Worship (Quaker service) in which an extract was read out concerning how Jesus conducted himself and taught, and how we, as Quakers, should conduct ourself too and ‘search’ for God (or not).
The extract came from a recent Aotearoa New Zealand collection of Quaker faith and practice called On These Islands (see below).
Perhaps it was included to show the diversity of Quaker opinion in this part of the world, or perhaps the editors of the book were making some other point - that Quakers have been far too concerned with inwardness in the search for God, and we should just get on with living life and find God in the midst of our community, social service, and relationships.
I had just attended and presented at a Quaker seminar on the topic of Who, What, Where is God? I was feeling rather full and dazed. When the extract was read out I could barely believe what I was hearing. A Quaker wrote this? Really?
My response was to feel angry and outraged. That’s not unusual for me but is tricky to handle in the context of Meeting for Worship in which we are often led into greater depth, stillness, simplicity, and a sense of love and oneness with one’s fellow worshippers.
One of my reflections from the weekend is that the Light in Quaker spirituality, and Christian mysticism more generally, often leads us into whole-making, into greater harmonization of the many and often warring parts (inner and outer) that we are. In contemporary spiritual language, the truest light shines as non-duality, as oneness.
And then there is the phenomenal world - i.e. what we usually take as (the whole of) reality.
At the start of Genesis, God says Let there be light! This light ushers in a strange sort of light and dark/day and night/ ‘morning and evening’/ oscillating rhythm. That is, this light of ‘the first day’ comes into being before the creation of sun, moon, and stars. So what sort of ‘original’ day and night/light and dark is this?
For me it is the world of duality, the ‘play of opposites’. Adam and Eve - representing the journey of consciousness - enter the world of duality when they eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They are thrown out of paradise - oneness with God, reality, and each other - and have to contend with struggle.
This is a developmental achievement and a curse: we separate from our parents and from our early oneness with ‘the dynamic ground’, as Michael Washburn put it, with God-consciousness (or unconsciousness), and with our body (in some sense), and enter the world of differentiation, struggle, otherness, discursive thinking, and encounter. We develop our ego - or ‘separate self-sense’ - as we differentiate and become the persons we are meant to become.
But then we must reunite with the Ground once more - perhaps in moments of crisis, in our search for deeper meaning and healing, or as we enter the descending arc of ‘the second half of life’ - in order to become the people we were truly meant to be and are.
And this is the point of true spirituality - to lead us back into oneness, wholeness.
The greatest light is the one that shines beyond - and through - the world of light and dark:
When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female…then you will enter the Kingdom.
- Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas
Inner and outer, feminine and masculine, mind and body, flaming sword and bubbling springs…
Joy and sorrow, brightest day and deepest night, breathing and feeling, movement and rest…
You, We, and I…make the two, the three, into one.
And yet we still live in the world of duality. This is part of our existence and oneness, too. As Richard Rohr points out, Jesus, both truly human and truly divine, lived in both worlds and speaks to us in the language of both worlds.
Jesus often used the language of duality: sheep and goats, flesh and spirit, ‘I have come to bring a sword and set the world on fire’. But ultimately, like all great spiritual teachers, his highest teaching is that of unity, wholeness, non-duality, unconditional love: I and the Father are one, may you be one with me and the Father too. May all my disciples be one, one in the Spirit, one with each other. ‘Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.’
Christian theology and scripture has many names for this ultimate oneness: incarnation, resurrection, love (when referring to Jesus), regeneration, theosis, one in Christ, love (when referring to us).
The Gospel of Thomas is Jesus’ teaching on oneness, par excellence.
So I’m burning with anger in Quaker meeting and thinking, What do I do with this? I’m pulled into the world of opposites again: inner versus outer, light and dark. O how unspiritual and disappointing! Is it ok to be angry and offer ministry from this place, knowing it will be rather partial and incomplete? I cannot say nothing! Or do I wait until I cool down and become ‘more spiritual’?
I decide to speak, that sometimes we must take up the part we have to play in the world of opposites, knowing that a fuller truth will (hopefully) emerge later on.
Anger is a part of wholeness and can be a creative part of whole-making, though initially it causes rather sharp and forceful differentiations of ‘the field’.
I give a partial, incomplete, angry ministry. It’s not very good, but perhaps others will offer a fuller, more embracing perspective - one that also holds the person who read out the extract (who I like very much!) and me and my existence as well.
Later, at home, I sit in the Light with this “concern”. I cool down, somewhat, and write a response to the extract that was read out.
Quakers have a testimony to truth (“truth”, “integrity”). An early name for the Society was “Friends of the Truth”. We have a testimony to seek and speak the truth. Yet we also know, as Isaac Pennington so crisply put it in 1653:
All Truth is a shadow except the last, except the utmost; yet every Truth is true in its kind.
2.
Here is the extract that was read out:
The last thing you should do in Meeting for Worship is to think about yourself. That way lies madness. If there is a God to be found by Quaker worship he/she is accidental to seeking. Jesus made it quite clear: “Anyone who tries to save his/her life will lose it, and “Seek the Kingdom of Heaven”.
What is this Kingdom? Watch Jesus, who lived in it, and see what he did. Not a single case of him encouraging anyone to look ‘inward’, not a single case of him searching his own soul. He ate and drank with anyone, regardless of rank, or sex, or nationality, or race, or religion or holiness and he healed when asked to, and he was faithful to his message of universal loving until he was killed for it.
So let us go on doing things together – eating, planning, acting to heal every sort of hurt we can. That way we reach towards God, who is merciful and righteous, or towards God-likeness.
- Llyn Richards, 2003, in On These Islands, 3.39.
And here is my response:
Of course Jesus was concerned with the inner! Time and again, he asks people to look within, at the quality of their heart, rather than focus on external compliance with the law.
When asked how to pray, Jesus said: go into your secret room, close the door, and pray to God in secret.
Jesus often retreated from ‘public life’ – from the crowds, from those seeking his company and presence, and even from his followers and close friends – in order to be with God and pray. He would go off into the hills, onto mountain tops, to “lonely, solitary places” to be with God and pray.
Of course, Jesus ministered to people – healing, teaching, eating and drinking – and seemed to have a direct, easy way with many of the people he encountered, especially those on the edge of, or outside, the Jewish religious system. But to renew his spirit, and especially before decisive moments in his life and ministry, he would withdraw, go within.
He taught that the kingdom of heaven was “within you” (or “in our midst”), and that we could only enter it through being born through both flesh/water and spirit – that is, born physically and re-born again through the Spirit, in an inward, invisible, vital sense. He taught that the truest, deepest form of worship was not worshipping in temples and on mountains – that is, externally – but a future in which people worshipped God “in spirit and in truth”.
If Jesus hadn’t said and taught these things, and acted in these ways - and perhaps even risen again - we probably would never have had a Quaker movement.
Fox and early Quakers were energetic, lively people who mixed with others in loving and challenging ways. But the core of the Quaker spiritual testimony is that the Spirit is to be encountered within. The Teacher is within. Christ is within. When we heal and renew ourselves through this deep encounter, then we have more peace and energy to engage with the world of others without burning out (or burning out even more).
I reacted so strongly to this extract because I care deeply about truth – the truth of what Jesus said and did, and the truth of the Quaker tradition. But more personally than that, through much of my childhood and early adulthood I heard the message that thinking of yourself is bad, is spiritual “madness” (as Llyn Richards puts it), and is contrary to the self-sacrificing way of Jesus and of the Gospel. I’ve seen and experienced how abusive this message is – in my life, in the life of family members, and with many clients I have worked with in therapy over the years.
We don’t have to trash ourselves, we don’t have to give ourselves over completely to the needs of others, we don’t have to trash our Quaker distinctiveness - the part the we are called to play in the grater whole - in order to seek God and live a balanced life.
If nothing else, paying attention to ‘the inner’, whether in Jesus’s day or in ours, is a rebalancing correction against a society and/or religious system that continually projects God’s spirit and presence outside our selves (and bodies), that encourages conformity to external rules and authorities (as a way of being safe and saved), and in which we end up being addicted, often unconsciously, to external sources of energy, guidance, and stimulation.
The Quaker tradition will always have something to offer while such conditions exist.
Mark Crozier Murphy, September 2026
