What We Can Trust

Reaping the Harvests of Our Shared Practice

Growing up in a brand-new, unprogrammed Quaker meeting, I had no experience of traditional Christianity. So when I got older and visited other churches, I was completely mystified by the recitation of belief in the Nicene Creed. I had accumulated enough biblical knowledge to recognize the trajectory of events that were being referenced—but what were the people there doing? Were they really taking in all those words and finding meaning in them?

I know from my own experience that the more I say something, the harder it is to listen to what I’m saying, and the less it means. This is a humbling realization. I treasure my early morning walks as a time of centering, and I start them now with my own version of “the words that come before all else” from the Haudenosaunee tradition of greeting the natural world with comprehensive thanks. Then I take time, as I loop around the park, to remember people in this world—known and unknown—who are struggling and whom I would choose to hold in my heart. But as my words become familiar to the ear, I can find myself saying them without attention. They may come out of my mouth while my mind is somewhere else altogether. It takes discipline to remember to listen, to connect, and to keep putting myself into the words.

So I’m skeptical about putting a lot of weight on the value of saying what we believe. In another humbling admission, I don’t know the early Quakers well enough to know for sure if they ever offered lists of things to believe in. But it doesn’t sound like them. And Jesus? With a similar caveat, it’s hard for me to picture him enthusiastic about a recital of beliefs.

I also worry about how easily an emphasis on clarity about what we believe—what we know to be true—can transmute into being smug and close-minded. We certainly have a cautionary tale here in Western ways of knowing. The trajectory of modern society, which has been built on things that people—mostly men—determined were incontrovertibly true, has brought us to this time of ever-growing and seemingly intractable crises.

While there are other ways of knowing that I want to consider more deeply, first I’d like to suggest another trap in putting too many eggs in the basket of belief. One reason we are hungry to identify common beliefs is to find ways to help pull our fractured Quaker world together. I love the impetus to challenge the schismatic tendencies that have torn our society apart over the centuries, but I doubt that a focus on beliefs will ultimately prove satisfying.

All this skepticism notwithstanding, I’m quite hopeful about a project of identifying and living into a commonly held framework that helps enliven our beloved Religious Society of Friends. I wonder if the heart of it could be as simple as changing the focus from what we “believe” to what we trust. 

What are the trusted foundations we can safely build our lives upon, and what are the tools and materials we trust to do that building? We don’t have to look far. Many of us are already standing on such foundations with all the tools and materials at hand to shape lives that are grounded, centered, and infused with Spirit.

In this process of distilling what we know experientially, there comes the beginning of a knowing that we can trust. So we listen—and then we practice. Listening, to get our practice more closely aligned with what rings true, seems so much more powerful than having a belief.

I see at least three powerful and deeply interconnected disciplines here: paying attention, listening, and practice. All three entwine to nurture the conditions that allow us to center deeply enough to feel Spirit moving in our lives. They combine to support us in reaching for that of God in everyone.

By paying attention, we immerse ourselves in a reality that we can trust. Whether it gives us pleasure or gives us pause, by knowing that it’s trustworthy, we can build on it. We may see a wondrous facet of nature that had somehow escaped our attention thus far. We may notice an interaction that renews our faith in humanity. We may truly take in the humanity of someone we had been prone to judge. We may pay close enough attention to become aware of an inconsistency in our practice: a gap between what we profess and how we act. We may come to identify a deeper root to the dangers we are facing in this world.

This willingness to be informed by close attention to life and to make the growing understanding relevant to our spiritual lives seems to be one of the great strengths of Quakerism. Being willing to see with clear eyes is part of our commitment to integrity and to continuing revelation as well.

Then there is listening, which is at the heart of our religious practice. In an unprogrammed meeting for worship, we are not just silent; we are listening. And we are not just listening; we are listening with an ear for truth—not to whatever chatter may be going on inside our heads but to something deeper. John Woolman says it best: “Dig deep. . . . Carefully cast forth the loose matter and get down to the rock, the sure foundation, and there hearken to the Divine Voice which gives a clear and certain sound.” We are listening for what rings true.

In contrast to the learning and knowing that comes through school, we’re engaged in a great ongoing experiment with truth. What parts of our family and cultural narratives no longer have the ring of truth? (I, for one, am unlearning the stories I was told that we exist on a lonely moral island, and that our worth is measured by our work.) How do we respond when what we think we know doesn’t ring true? What happens when we act on our sense that something is true, as compared to when we act on a different basis?

In this process of distilling what we know experientially, there comes the beginning of a knowing that we can trust. So we listen—and then we practice. Listening, to get our practice more closely aligned with what rings true, seems so much more powerful than having a belief.

I think of what nineteenth-century Quaker Caroline Fox said at age 21: “Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee.” The concept was popularized by educator activists Paolo Freire from Brazil and Myles Horton of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, that “we make the road by walking.” It is in the doing—in the action that grows from paying attention and listening deeply—that we grow into our full spiritual being. There are depths to claiming our practice that we have yet to fully explore.

Throughout our Quaker history we had individual ministers and prophets who were committed to traveling this road—and we are justifiably proud of them. But Caroline Fox’s advice is for all of us. We need to build up our corporate practices to support this challenge, knowing that the journey will look different for each one. I am particularly grateful for the work in Central Philadelphia (Pa.) Meeting on gifts and leadings, where we have a committee tasked to pay attention, listen, and gather support around any community member who is awarely engaged with the challenge of following through on this path. I’m sure there are many other ways that groups of Quakers are practicing here.

It is in this area of practice that we may find the key to the center of Quakerism: discovering the heart of commonality and being strengthened by Friends from other branches of our religious community. We all share a peace testimony for example, yet there are Friends in East Africa who are embodying it in ways that some of us in unprogrammed meetings may never have imagined. At our best, we are all taking our practice seriously, and we can pay attention to others who are doing the same and listen for the ring of truth, wherever it may be found and however it may be clothed.

A great strength we have in our Quaker practice is that of corporate discernment, such an anomaly in a Western culture that practically worships individualism. If we’re all paying attention, listening, and practicing together, we can benefit from the clarity that each person brings, while reducing the power of distortion by individual idiosyncrasies, fixed ideas, or blind spots, thus increasing the possibility of getting to and uniting around what rings most deeply true.

When we can gather together and reap the harvests of our shared practice—in spiritual nurturing; in faithful action in the world; in ministries of speaking, listening, and hospitality—we will find ourselves in the midst of great treasure. 

I’m deeply interested in finding opportunities to become more creative, and perhaps more deeply grounded and powerful, in our practice of arriving at a faithful corporate response to the world around us. We have tended to respond by relying on our testimonies and crafting minutes about what we hold true. Our meeting has yet to come up with a comprehensive minute on climate and environmental justice, but members have gathered several times to share faithful steps they have been taking and other steps they might try if they felt more fully held. This seems like a promising start to a potentially more powerful alternative.

Perhaps this is where we follow Myles Horton, Rosa Parks, and others. Rosa Parks left a workshop at the Highlander Folk School to head home to Birmingham and sit in the front of a bus. What if our corporate witness to the world, while inspired by our past and grounded in our testimonies, is most faithfully seen as the distillation of all the footsteps our members are taking? What if we don’t say anything that we’re not doing, that we don’t know experientially? And what if all the small steps that our members are taking add up to something worth talking about?

When we can gather together and reap the harvests of our shared practice—in spiritual nurturing; in faithful action in the world; in ministries of speaking, listening, and hospitality—we will find ourselves in the midst of great treasure. With a common foundation, shared vision, and time-tested tools, this is a bounty to be thankful for: one that we can celebrate and trust.