What does many paths to the divine really mean?

Just in from work and catching up with the World Wide Quaker Community when The Friend(A British Quaker weekly newsletter) feed flashed that a new post had arrived. It was a comment from a Friend who was a member of Mensa describing why and the issues this throws up of being a Quaker. Many Friends found the elitism of the organisation a challenge.

A view that I share because I feel the organisation is based on a false premise. of what being intelligent is. I prefer to use the ideas first developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. His theory of multiple intelligences suggests that traditional notions of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults.These are


Groups like Mensa, and Education in general, see intelligence as word and number/reasoning smart. Hence, they tend to value these individual attributes or skills. I worked in Further Education and used these ideas linked to NLP methods. Part of this was helping the students assess their own learning style. Many of them were amazed to discover that they were not 'thick' but learned best by doing or by self-reflection.

Now what does this mean for Quakers? How do our practices meet the needs of these diverse ways of engaging with the world? Do we in practice value and attract a high percentage of individuals who have

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart" +
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")

and so favour spoken ministry based on deep reflection and repel many who have

Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")+
Musical intelligence ("music smart")+
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

who would prefer dancing in the woods under the full moon?


Is this a bad thing or what the many paths to the divine really mean? In Friends we may have 57 variety of opinion but from afar are we more similar in the path we tread then we think?

If not prepared for dying...how can we live?

I decided that the deafening silence last week to my personal journey was down to poor presentation and confused titles (well my life may just be ordinary but not got to that level of humility yet!) So let’s hope this post's title makes more sense and has less technical problems. Also as will be shown I have not rejected all God or Theistic language.

This train of thought was started by Ministry in today's Meeting. The announcement of allowing stem cell research based on mixing animal and human cells was discussed in an early morning religious BBC radio programme. What caught the speaker's imagination was the fact that the cells could be linked so demonstrating the unity of life. (I have read that most living creatures share a common pool of genes but how they get switched on and off is what creates the complexity of apparent differences). Towards the end of the Meeting, more Ministry explored the hidden exploitation of animals in the process as well as the plain fact that if we tackled world poverty then this would increase the well-being of the many rather then the few.

The meeting closed and in the after words session, a whoosh of conversations opened up exploring the notions of when human life is said to begin or what the benefits of research would be for relatives that are in the living death of senile dementia.

I remained silent as my thoughts had gone off in two different directions. One was that the whole issues under discussion call into question traditional Theistic notions of God. In that the idea of man being in the image of God is a key Christian notion as well as having dominion over all that fly and crawl. Both link to the image of the Emperor God creator. If humans are not unique and part of a continuum of life as has been traditional in many Eastern religions then the light is in all creation and not just in humanity. What does this mean for our relationship to the planet and life? To be fair what I have just written applies to the notion of a Transcendent God but it is compatible with Panentheism (not pantheism which is God as nature but everything in God, and God in everything). As illustrated by this old Welsh poem.

I am the wind that breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave on the ocean,
I am the murmur of leaves rustling,
I am the rays of the sun,
I am the beam of the moon and stars,
I am the power of trees growing, I am the bud breaking into blossom,
I am the movement of the salmon swimming,
I am the courage of the wild boar fighting,
I am the speed of the stag running,
I am the strength of the ox pulling the plough,
I am the size of the mighty oak tree,
I am the thoughts of all the people
Who praise my beauty and grace.

My other train of thought, lead me to a concern that the research is driven by a medical profession and public demand that refuses to engage with ageing, dying and death. We urge bodies on to live as that are tired and weary of life. In part this had been set off by reading The year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion where she discusses the gradual change from where grief had a clear public timetable and ritual stretching over years to one now where grief is seen as an embarrassing private affair.

But it also been set into motion by a contradictory approach to the first set of thoughts. This are the ideas of Don Cupitt. In his writings, Cupitt sometimes describes himself an Christian non-realist This means that he follows certain spiritual practices and attempts to live by ethical standards traditionally associated with Christianity, without believing the actual existence of the underlying metaphysical entities. One of his arguments, explores the experiences of early Christian who believed in the second coming and end times. He and many other commentators argue that this what shaped and opened the cult to pagans and took a more equal view of women etc. He extends this today and asks how you would live your life if each day was your last. Dr. Bernie Siegel is a physician who has cared for and counselled innumerable patients echoes this notion as this quote shows.

In many cases people who've become aware of their mortality fine that they've gain the freedom to live. they are sized with an appreciation for the present: every day is my best day; this is my life; I am not going to have this moment again. They spend more time with the people they love and less time on people and pastimes that don't offer love or joy. this seems like such a simple thought-shouldn't we all spend our lives that way? But we tend not to make those kind of choices until someone says, " you have 12 months to live."

They can be reconciled as they both ask me to value life and to live positively but we can chose to express that as helping God's love of the world or seeking to live in a just way. Who cares as long as we

show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world

Part 2: Expressing our faith: Response to Marshal Massay and Peter Bishop

Outside is dark, grey and very wet even though its lunchtime. Friends who get to the core of things will want to know if I got to Meeting and if I had the cup of tea. Sadly no in regards to the tea but yes for attending Meeting. But I have been to the shops, got my ribosh tea bags (ordinary tea is full of caffeine so bad blah, blah) and so a hot, steaming pint mug by my side.

To explain why I have written a part two I need to share with you part of my personal journey and my experience with Friends. Last night, I was watching a programme about problem eaters. these case studies are about individuals who will only eat chips, or processed food but who still look healthy. The series explores the emotional basis for that behaviour and the struggles of the individual to change 20-30 years of learned behaviour over a 4 week period. The man whose life we observed has not eaten or prepared any fresh food or vegetables since he was 5. The root of this behaviour was him associating an image of a slop bucket of waste at school with him being bad inside as the reason why his father abandoned him.

One of the things that helped him finally helped him change his behaviour, was creating an effigy of his father and taking this to his old school. Then in the school hall, throwing handfuls of waste food from a slop bucket at his " father" saying each time what he felt and what he had been angry and upset about. It made for powerful viewing and it was liberating for him.

I have never had a eating disorder but I was abandoned by my father at birth and so never knew him. My mother had six other children mostly by different men and we are all bastards. Illiterate, she lived in complete fantasy world so she like my grandmother were never clear who my father was. The stories ranged from a USA soldier on the way to Korea to a local electrician who could not stand your mother's lies . My mother abandoned me but not the other children. Excusable behaviour perhaps because when I was born, people like my mother could be sectioned permanently under the Mental Health Acts as a moral degenerative.

I lived with my Grandmother who pretended to be my Mother. I discovered the deception when I was five and the anger was with me for a long time. She was grossly overweight, her legs had weeping sores and she was depressed as her husband had deserted her around the time I was born. She also carried a deep sorrow at the loss of various children that had died unbaptised and so in hell according to her view of Catholicism which she had abandoned soon after. I was physically abused and neglected while in the family, often having books ripped away from me as I escaped into them. Beaten and locked in rooms, turning up to school unwashed and cloths covered in dirt and worse.

We lived in a small village where the family had moved to during the war and we were of Irish origins. In the 40's and 50's the Irish were treated in the same ways as Black people would have been treated if moving into a white neighbourhood. No one bothered to deal with my neglect as what can you expect they are Irish. No one bothered if my performance at school was bad(it was discovered at 11 that I was so short-sighted I couldn't see the board, and so deaf that I needed various operations) as what can you expect they are Irish.

We left the village when I was 11, to a slum house with no bathroom or inside toilet and went to one of the worse schools in the town. It had a Grammar by selection school system so the failures went to Secondary Modern schools and mine was at the end of the line. Eventually for a year I moved to one of the poorest pubic housing estates in the town which is still one of the most deprived areas in the UK. Bullying in the community and in the family continued.

At 18, I abandoned them and started my life. I left with a passionate belief in the importance of social justice and a complete lack of trust in God and Christian language and practices. Where was He and them for me when I was crying in the dark covered in filth.

Throughout my 20's I was a confused and angry young man. Part of my change in direction was my suicide attempt. Up to that point, I was living a defensive lie that my family had kidnapped me and if I was ill then my real family would rescue me. I was ill and they didn't but the rush that I had to be responsible for myself got me kick started. By the time of my mid 30's I was educated up to Masters level, a qualified lecturer in social policy as well as being an ex social worker and in the process of getting married in a Quaker Meeting House. This kick also made me sceptical of anything from drugs to a Christianity and God talk that acted as crutches and a limit on self responsibility.

I got involved with Friends in my confused 20's and was drawn to them because of their democratic and radical roots. I joined and then abandoned my membership yet remained involved with them for the rest of my life in ways perhaps more attached then many regular Friends. Why am I still in the Quaker Community? Part of the reason was that I struggled with the God language, but today this less of a problem for me. I have read more and have faith in my experience so open to affirm and look at what I deny. Part of the reason was that Quakers was the only community that allowed me room to grow.

I also many years ago started to forgive my family understanding that if I remained angry then I was still a victim. But in seeing the food being flung at the effigy I wonder if still have a few more miles on that Journey. It did also make me revisit why I had thrown my membership out. At the time I was finding it difficult to be in Friends, those of my age were from older Quaker families or from public schools. I found it difficult to connect my life with many Friends who were liberal comfortable middle class. It was the ignorance of youth who saw the experience of poverty more important then poverty of experience. I wanted to be held but wasn't. My overseer was caught up in the drama of his wife leaving him for another woman so understandingly now but not then he didn't have the time to pick up my unspoken pleas. I got angry of being abandoned again so rejected them but choose to stay on my terms. Yet I can see I need to move on and reflect on rejoining and face the anger of 30 years as being old history and not the fault of Friends.

When I raised the issues of part 1 in the Meeting this morning, it opened up the floodgates of my involvement with Friends. It prompted a Ministry from the meeting that illustrated the way to look at the issues raised by Marshal Massay and Peter Bishop and the experience behind my Theology and religious practices. This was a reading of what William Penn wrote in 1693.

The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here makes them strangers. This world is a form; our bodies are forms; and no visible acts of devotion can be without forms. But yet the less form in religion the better, since God is a Spirit; for the more mental our worship, the more adequate to the nature of God; the more silent, the more suitable to the language of a Spirit.

So I need to face what I deny and affirm. Or in Biblical language own up to what Matthew says in 7.3 (NRSV).

Why do you look at the speck that is in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Expressing our faith: Response to Marshal Massay and Peter Bishop

Its Sundry morning, and last night as my wife and family are away, I could indulge in reading late into the night listening to the rain beating on the window as I was safe under the lamp-light in a world of shadows. In reading the Blogs last week from Britain Yearly Meeting, I was curious about reading Beth Allen's Swarthmore lecture, Ground and Spring: Foundations of Quaker discipleship. Then by chance I was working opposite Friends House in London and so could buy it. It's this that I was reading as I fall asleep last night.

When I wake up, the first thing I do is to check my emails and RSS feeds, in truth to check if I have any books and book-chat(ardent book swapper and reader- see my other blog if curious) but also to see if anything new comes up from the Quaker community. This is what caught my eye. This is a correspondence on different views of what it is to be Quaker. Links to the discussion can be found by clicking on http://quakerpagan.blogspot.com/2007/05/
following-is-reply-by-marshall-massey.html. The core of the debate for me is captured for me in this extract.

Traditional Quakerism takes its practitioners to a specific face of the divine that is (in my personal opinion) either identical or virtually identical to the face that the historic Jesus Christ showed his followers. But (still just speaking personally) I do not believe that the face of the divine experienced by modern Pagans who "draw down the God" is the same face or even anything near the same face. I do not deny that there is something one may validly call "divine" about it, but I do not, personally, believe that what is divine in it is what Christ wanted us to practice and approach.

A community that defines itself by relationship to the divine, without looking carefully at what it means by that word, is, in my personal opinion, a community that is quite capable of going profoundly wrong. I think it was this sort of inattention to changing understandings of the divine that led the humble, meek early Christian religion to evolve over the course of a thousand years into something that hosted the Inquisition and the Crusades.

This spoke directly to the pages I was reading as I fall asleep. Beth Allen on page 61 talks about British Friends that hurt others by their ministries and are then hurt by the responses back. One group is those that have a close and personal relationship with Jesus, God and the Spirit and see the answer as turning to the Christian God for all of us to be flooded with the experience of God's Love. The other group she mentions are those that go beyond all traditional Christian and Theistic God language and want Friends to move away from historical and dated forms, Both remain baffled and even angry when they are eldered that this is not speaking to the condition of all.

Friends practice rests on experience and asking what does it mean to you rather the authority of others. So when faced with these conflicts, one way forward is not to argue with the words but to explore why Friends experiences lead them to express the Divine in the way they do. As at the heart of our lives is often an attempt to answer the Francis of Assisi prayer, God, who are you? God, who am I?

Beth Allen also puts forward a key principle she has discovered over the years based on an approach first put forward by J.S.Mills. This is

People are mostly right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny.

By this she means, I like to read contemporary literature so those that read mass paper book romances are wrong. In doing that I am denying the richness of their experiences. So lets ask instead,

What are the people whom we find so difficult denying, what are they affirming-and why? What am I denying and what am I affirming and why?

To end as Beth does, as I have not had a morning cup of tea and I have to leave to attend Meeting in five minutes,

What is forbidden to me?...to despise another's wisdom, to blaspheme another's God ( Quaker Faith and practice 26.41)

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

Is religious faith a journey of discovery for you rather then a destination? Does your religious experience feel like home rather then a prison so all are welcome? Is the following joke funny or in bad taste?

A man falls over the edge of a cliff. Hurtling down he manages to grasp a tree branch and whilst not religious, he shouts for God to give a helping hand. To his shock a voice from the heavens says ' I shall put out My hand to help thee. I shall hold thee securely. Just let go and trust in me' The man is silent, overwhelmed by the Voice and its message. Looking down, and then up, he whispers, 'Is there anyone else up there?

If your answers are along the lines of ...Satin get behind me... then best not to read either this review or the book. Because you are about to deal with a detailed argument that the New Testament for example is not the inerrant word of God but a human document created by people trying to live and practice conflicting views of what Christianity meant over 350 years. Christianity in becoming the state religion leads to an Orthodoxy in the form of the Nicene creed and the final victory of one of the many Christian sects. The others are suppressed and their books burned, the Pagan temples are destroyed and anti-Semitism becomes part of popular culture. The diversity of the Christian voices lost is explored by Bart D. Ehrman in his book, Lost Christianities. Charles Freeman explores the impact of the Constantine Christian church in The Closing of the Western Mind.

Misquoting Jesus explores a more simple issue of Textual criticism and the attempt to find the original or more realistically the oldest copy. The challenge is that the written document gets changed as it is transmitted over time given changing medium and tools as much as these wider political and theological struggles. Bart D. Ehrman reveals why these issues shaped his personal journey from being a Christian that saw Billy Graham as a dangerous liberal. He was at university struggling to explain why the Mark reference of 1 SAM.21:2-6 was not wrong. Having written a very complex argument to show it was not a mistake, he gave the paper in and it was given back with the comment, 'maybe Mark just made a mistake'. This opened the floodgates for him to look at explaining the other mistakes and so re-framing what the Bible and his faith was.

The book explores the simple oddity that Christianity with the exception of Judaism was the only book based faith of the period yet 97% or more of early Christians were illiterate. Any books and writings were copied from church to church by amateur scribes barely literature themselves. It took most of the 350 years for an agreed cannon to emerge so again hit and miss what versions survived. Virtually most of the complete documents only go back to the 4th century with fragments going back to the 2nd century. These complete older copies themselves did not get rediscovered until 200 odd years after the Bible and the King James version was printed based on incomplete and inaccurate manuscripts.

What got copied over the medieval period was more accurate because of professional scribes but textual critics can trace whole families of texts where the same mistakes are transmitted. Bart D. Ehrman explores the tricks of the trade of how texts get judged as accurate. The primary rule appears to be the harder the reading the more likely to be accurate. By this he means that scribes tended to simplify and harmonise texts that appear to be at odds to "common sense" or with what ever theology was dominate at the time.

The issue of textural accuracy began to become a serious political and theological issue as the Bible was translated into local languages as part of the growth of Protestantism. John Mill in 1707 brought the issue out in to the open by revealing 30, 000 variant readings(to day this is known to be 200,000 mostly spelling mistakes, slip of the pen , missed words etc) Buts its the theological editing and missed/added key sections that Bart D. Ehrman concentrates in in the book. This caused, and in some way still causes, a major problem for Protestants. If your faith is based in the authority of the Bible as the word of God then it not being accurate undermines that authority as the Catholics were eager to point out. They preferred the justification for authority being based on the church and Pope. Protestants reacted by either denying the existence of mistakes or accepted that the Bible was substantially accurate but seeking for originals or older more accurate versions would not do any harm.

Another reaction older then the textual criticism discussed is associated with Christian groups such as Quakers. Here the issue is that the Bible is not a closed revelation but a living and dynamic one based on a personal relationship's with God and that experience leading to convincement and changes in the world. John Wolman for example, guided Quakers to oppose slavery although the Bible accepts slavery as normal, the issue in the Bible being how to treat slaves fairly not abolition.

After discussing the mechanics of how the text get altered Bart D. Ehrman explores the complex theological battles of the early days that affected the text. For example those Christians who saw Jesus as Human only, those that saw him as Human but adopted by God, those that saw him as divine only etc. The other battle was with the role of woman who had a powerful presence in the early church and the texts reflected the battle to suppress them. A third battle was with Pagans and Jews

In these chapters, he also explores the wider issues of who wrote what for what theological purpose. Mark written for the early more Jewish Christians who favoured Jesus as human whist John written with the more sophisticated pagan criticism in mind that Jesus as God would not show human emotions. These ideas and that the New Testament is not a literal history but a series of meditations in line with a liturgical timetable is explored further in Rescuing the bible from Fundamentalism by John Shelby Spong.

As you can see lots of big issues but the book is simple and clear and you can come to it fresh or experienced and still learn. I strongly recommend it. Your faith may be changed or challenged but

recognise and accept that there is another dimension to life than that what is obvious to us. Live with obstacles, doubt and paradox, knowing, that God is always present in the world.

Britain Yearly Meeting Reminisces

I woke up this morning and as usual, first thing I did was to check my emails and feeds. This gives me the buzz that I used to get when waiting for the letter post. Who gets real letters now? The only mail I get are Bank statements and Insurance forms. Neither really get the heart beating except when burgled and then discovering that we have forgot to renew the home insurance cover. It was time for us to remember that ...simplicity is shunning superfluities of...possessions which...obscure us from our vision of reality. Not sure if it has the same ethical and moral kick if the possessions are taken rather then given away.

Anyway, I have been mulling over a couple of blogsphere posts. One was about pluralism and Friends and the other was about are Quakers Christian? I was all fired up to get into an intellectual rant. You name the doctrine and the practice I am the one saying well... To give you a hint, I question most post Nicene Christian doctrines and have a deep fascination with the history and social struggle of the early Church and how its emergence was based on the suppression of a whole host of very different voices. This includes how the Christian canon came into existence. Read Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman or The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman if you want to know where I am coming from.

One reading of George Fox and the early Friends and indeed many of the Radical Christian groups of the day was that they intuitively grasped many of these lost visions and practices hidden away in Biblical descriptions. They moved authority away from the Bible and the Church to the spirit or experiential practice(the source of continual Revelation!) This is why John Wolman could challenge slavery, a practice that very few of early Friends questioned as its in the Bible. They would have, if asked , looked to the treatment of slaves rather then the existence of slavery. See http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl.htm for more background.(Now what has all this to do with Britain Yearly Meeting? Patience Friend I am getting there)

You may be surprised to know that I am not an advocate of the pick and mix from the Supermarket of Religious Traditions. I am rooted in Christianity but as my home not my prison as Lionel Blue (a well known British Rabbi) would say. So I am open to explore and value other faiths. And like any home, its the relatives that you tend to have the most arguments with rather then the neighbours. Read Honest to Jesus by Robert W.Funk to get a feel of the Jesus and Christianity I feel at home with. Or Jesus through the centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan.

As you can imagine, in many Meetings I am not exactly mainstream. Yet in one Meeting a Friend who was well into her 90's and was a very conservative Christian in her theology and language embraced me in the fellowship of Friends. I saw in her the nearest to a "Saint" or someone that burnt with the Light that I have ever seen and experienced. And she saw in me some one that wasn't blowing out the candle but was trying to kindle it brighter. Yet both of us were Friends that you the reader may want to exclude from the Society of Friends.

The BYM blog reminded me of when I went to Yearly meeting(yes got there at last) . I sat in the Gallery of the main hall at the back for one session. The Meeting of several hundred people waiting in silence was one of the most profound I sat in.The minute records what the experience was

Minute 13: A prayerful life: experiencing the inward teacher

‘You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of light and hast walked in the light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’

Within the gathered stillness of an extended period of worship we have shared our experience of living, or trying to live, a prayerful life, a life in which we collaborate with God’s love and can experience the presence of God at any time and place. Prayer is the way we face the world. Prayer is how we are with other human beings, an act of love which can turn the world upside down.

My experience of this was several speakers that gave polished intellectual ministry but which washed over me or to be frank felt smug. Then a old man with painful effort got to his feet, and dragged words out of himself to ask those who were struggling with feeling God's love not to be downcast. He spoke of his own struggles from the heart and not from the head, and it was clearly painful. I burst into tears, and as I type this tears drip down my face. He is the reason that I know Friends are my home. John Punshon who I met at Woodbrooke in the 1970s makes my point for me.

Getting on with those I love is often a business demanding patience, discretion, tact and understanding. It gets complicated sometimes. It also gets strained, occasionally to the breaking point. But without expression it is barren. I show my love in the things I do...

In Britain Yearly meeting today what will make you know that you are at home and enjoying the company of neighbours and relatives?

Took the first step...

Well did it. I attended my local meeting(picture on left) for the first time in 2 years, which sounds like I have been moonlighting somewhere else. The truth is that this is the first time I have attended anywhere for 2 years. I was impressed by the warmth of the hospitality of a small meeting of some 10-12 people, many of whom clearly had the independence of mind and spirit that I love about Quakers. The odd little peculiarities of Friends, the door greeter, the flowers on the table picked fresh from the garden, Bible and other faith material on the table near the centre, the handshake, afterthoughts circle, notices felt as comfortable as an old pair of shoes.

The ministry mainly focused on Peace. It here that mixed feelings arose. The first person’s ministry was clearly a heart felt poem, which washed over me but may well have spoken to another’s condition. The second gave me a key into the condition of the speaker as he admitted not knowing what prayer was or who to pray to but did see that attending peace demonstrations was a prayer-in action. It was the third Ministry that got me. She made the point that aggression and war arose out of fear and animal instinct. Well, deep breath... for me a fundamental cause of aggression is the lack of social justice which is a social and political rather then psychological struggle.

But I am a Friend of long standing enough to know that when Ministry engages you like this, then this is the worse time to Minister( Receive the vocal ministry of others in a tender and creative spirit). You need to get below the surface and try and see beyond the words. A sharp tap to the ego raises the point that I may have a range of counterarguments but which of the two of us does more for Peace? So tongue bitten, legs firmly crossed I let it wash over and through me.

In the afterthoughts circle (once meeting is over, people are asked if they have any thoughts to share about that day’s Ministry). Again I rejected the urge to start a debate. But then…but then…A current court case in England is two mothers that filmed their toddlers being made to fight in order to toughen them up. The parents are being prosecuted for child cruelty. Many in the Meeting tutted over the behaviour of the women, which does need challenging but I come from the type of estates these women live in. My own sister treated her son 20 years ago in a similar way. I know that these parents are making realistic assessments of what their children will experience.

One of the other roots of aggression for me is when certainty of knowledge and righteous authority leads to seeing the other person as less then human. For me, to condemn these parents is start down this route. Just to be clear, I condemn the sin but not the sinner. In the day job I advise on the setting up of programmes to work in poor and abandoned communities so that parents can see and learn alternatives to these bleak and negative child-rearing practices. Again, I resisted the urge to get into a debate. Was this me crossing the road as the refusenik Samaritan? Or was I being polite and waiting for a more appropriate time rise the issues?

Pondering what to do, I was greeted by the Clerk, who rushed me off for a tour of the nature reserve that he was building in the waste ground at the back of the Meeting House. Suddenly I was seeing dark woods, a wild meadow, bridges, a natural spring and pools all created and shaped out of a waste acre of land. Truly, a fantastic peaceful natural landscape in a large troubled public housing estate: a real metaphor for what Friends at their best represent for the world. I left walking cheerfully over the world answering that of God in every one...