The Devoted Path

Holding Fast to the Promise of New Creation

By temperament, I am naturally optimistic about what humanity can ultimately achieve, and yet ever watchful, I tilt toward the heavily pessimistic when I consider where we are heading. This native combination has given me the energy to work for change, usually without being overwhelmed by what looms ahead. This feels a lighter burden than if I dared to fully grasp the destruction that manifests around us now: for example, in our climate. I can’t dally too long to imagine what the next years of heat and fire and flood will be like; nor consider too many details of a “limited” nuclear war leading to a global catastrophe; nor contemplate the meaninglessness that artificial intelligence may scramble out of our human capacity to create. These threats are real and generally destructive, but they cannot occupy and decimate my inner compassion or willingness to engage. I keep these threats outside the inner calm, or they will burn away my capacity to love and to act.

Not everyone is naturally disposed this way. They may feel the pain more fully when they watch the news or see where things are heading. We need people with such a range of compassion and empathy. But sometimes grasping the fuller realities of the planet’s existential threats can lead to despondency or to a protective withdrawal from harsh realities.

We can consider other spiritually empowering alternatives, finding ways intrinsic to being a Quaker. We can hold fast to the new creation, without being mesmerized by the ocean of darkness. We can discern to avoid having either optimism or pessimism pull us away from our true calling. We can be strengthened by gratitude, especially when we consider others in our Quaker community and the way the Spirit has held us in the past. And we can come to understand the power of devotion when it settles in us and gives us the strength to persevere.

The Promise of the New Creation

A good starting point is to inhabit the vision of the world we want. The term “new creation” flourished when radical religious thinkers emerged victorious out of the decade-long English Civil War (1642–1651). Many of the first English Quakers experienced this new creation in their lives and felt it in their meetings for worship. They no longer felt their humanity to be entangled in the ways of the world. When they opened their New Testament, they could find this experience described; how humanity’s fallen nature had passed away in Christ, so that the risen could now walk “in newness of life.” Quakers embraced the profoundly optimistic promise of the new creation: human perfectibility.

The English Civil War was supposed to secure religious liberty, so that this new creation could flourish. But Oliver Cromwell’s status as Lord Protector demonstrated that new kings could be borne out of the old. His Protectorate, and the Restoration of the king that followed him after 1660, taught painful lessons to Friends. Religious persecution—state-condoned as well as mob induced—showed not everyone was convinced or inspired by the message of this new creation. Members of the Religious Society of Friends were carted off to prison, sometimes for years, and even died from harsh conditions. Quakers were excluded from many forms of employment. They were dragged out of meetings, leaving their children to fend for themselves. Yet these challenges did not completely overwhelm the movement. Friends who remained faithful kept to the ways that brought them closer to the Divine. Between excess optimism and excess pessimism was simple grit and a practical way of organizing among Friends that upheld core Quaker practices and spiritual insights when other religious radicals fell away.

Friends continued to hope for a better world, but they had learned the world’s harsh ways. Nevertheless their new creation, however expressed, remained an intrinsically optimistic belief and way to engage with others that has stayed with Friends and strengthened us ever since. In the support given to numerous causes over many years—abolition of slavery, women’s equal rights, post-war and famine relief, prison reform, peace, environmental concerns, and integrity in public life—Quakers have imagined a better future for the world, and however dark the surrounding portents, kept their eyes on the prize.

When we heed the promptings of love and truth in our hearts, we seek a useful passage between hope and despair, and we know that often enough it leads to transforming results. 

Managing Hope

Experience tells us that getting too close to an atrocity can engulf the psyche. Humans have, after all, primitive biological fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses that can render us prisoners to our own reactions, unless we step back. As it happens, Quakers step back a lot. We call it listening. We listen to each other, our own selves, and to the deeper wisdom within and beyond us. As we listen, we come to places and are pointed to directions in ways that might surprise us. Many Friends have learned to trust these invitations that nudge us into transforming action. This inner compass seems to know more than we do, and if we are able to trust it, we only need to know what we are being asked to do now; the future will come to us soon enough.

So listening and choosing a path of holy obedience carry us through the times when we do not know. Our worship is borne by expectant waiting, an intrinsically optimistic approach to the Divine. Our work is sustained by honoring Friends’ testimonies and practices, reflecting what we have learned about a more skillful, Spirit-centered way to live. We have each other to keep ourselves accountable and foster understanding. When we heed the promptings of love and truth in our hearts, we seek a useful passage between hope and despair, and we know that often enough this leads to transforming results. We don’t have to know how it all ends; we just listen to what we need to do now and have the courage to act accordingly. Giving support to each other as we go, the work gets done.

Managing Excessive Optimism or Pessimism

Still, we might wish too much, be too hopeful. Excessive optimism can be a problem. There is no sense in conjuring up a vague hope of new technological fixes that will stop climate change or for charismatic leaders who will save us from calamity. Fancifulness is no plan. Yes, something may turn up, but perhaps only where conditions have been prepared in ordinary ways. The responsibility best falls with those who dare to labor daily to build this new creation.

Excessive pessimism can be even more of a problem. In the last years of the Cold War, I happened to hear a radio interview about a dissident poet from Yugoslavia. I heard her voice distinctly, but did not catch her name. Thinking Communism would last a thousand years, this poet took her own life in 1987. Two years later the Soviet system collapsed in eastern Europe. By 1991, it had ended in Yugoslavia. When a system seems its strongest, it sometimes is most likely to crumble.

In 1942, the world was at war, and totalitarianism and brutality seemed ascendant. And yet by 1945, the world was preparing to establish the United Nations and give birth to the UN Charter; a new world suddenly became possible.

All we need to know is that we must listen for our task today and, perhaps, tomorrow. History will look after itself. New creation breakthroughs come unexpectedly, even during times when the oppressed are told that change will only come slowly or within regimes that seem unassailable. We saw this with the rapid formal end to segregation in the United States, the end of apartheid in South Africa, movements for peace in times of war, the freeing of political prisoners and the ending of juntas, and steps toward the equality of women and others who have been denied rights because of perceived differences. If there is a new creation, there is no detailed road map to it, except returning to our weekly meetings and daily spiritual reflections to see how each small part reveals itself.

The Grace that Comes with Letting Go

In the 1980s, people seeking this new creation were burdened by the threat of nuclear war. We marched, not knowing how we could persuade U.S. President Ronald Reagan or Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to stand back from the nuclear trigger. The more we learned, the more alarming the situation seemed to be. And there were times, like military exercise Able Archer 83, that brought us closer to nuclear annihilation than anyone then knew.

The weight of knowing could lead to despair and exhaustion. One day, in March 1988, I was in Australia’s center, standing beside what I was told is the world’s oldest river, which the Indigenous Arrernte call Larapinta (what White people have briefly called the Finke River), a watercourse that has apparently existed for three and a half billion years. As I looked at this dusty riverbed—it is a river that does not always obviously flow—it came to me unbidden that no matter what humans might do, life will always come back. We may write ourselves out of the picture, but the beauty, glory, creativity, and generosity of life will always be prepared to be on this planet. I found grace and relief in that surrender. Letting go has a way of making space for new hope.

Gratitude as an Antidote to Despair

Gratitude can also sweep away despair and help us see the world as it really is. Early Friends might have been astonished or inspired by aspects of our modern age. While not solving the crises of our time, we can connect with humanity’s achievements and remind ourselves of the nobility and dignity that comes with humanity’s progress. There is multilateralism that outlaws certain sorts of war and slavery, and there are agencies that provide food and aid globally to those in need. There is an increasing sensitivity to the needs of people with disabilities and those managing mental health issues. We can see the smiling faces and hear the chanted vision of young climate strikers. We hear of quiet diplomacy addressing tyrants’ excesses. Neighborhoods are being transformed. Sustainable development goals are becoming a shared language. Connective technologies help distant Friends come closer to each other.

If we are looking for mental calm between spiritual optimism and pessimism, then recounting points of gratitude, not calculating and depending on certain results, helps restore inner balance.

Gratitude for My Community and My Place in It

When I am overwhelmed, it’s also helpful to remember to give thanks for our life as a community of Friends. It turns out that I don’t need to do everything. I can be grateful for the people in our larger collective who are answering many of the calls for action in so many places, attending to the many crises. The load on my shoulders can be lifted off and shared.

The gratitude, too, can be directed to Friends who have come before us, across 370 years. They provide us with wisdom that can be found in the writings and stories that inspire us.

In recognizing other Friends’ efforts, queries can arise: Am I recognizing and encouraging other Friends’ callings? What support can I offer others to further their work? And what am I myself called to do? Yes. What are you being called to do? What am I being called to do?

Accepting the Call

Friends’ processes come from more than the seen material world, and begin by setting aside our default assumptions to seek the source of divine guidance and find spiritual refreshment. If and when this call comes, we have to choose whether to accept the spiritual invitation. It is a gift we are always free to decline to receive. But coming to conviction and accepting the call can allow us to grow spiritually in ways that otherwise would be unfeasible. If we can accept the call, we switch from incapacity to empowerment. We move from deflating despair to active hope. The pathway is likely to point you toward working for a better world and a greener planet. Interestingly, we can sometimes sense an accompanying spiritual presence that reassures us.

Active hope is nothing more than heart and mind prepared and applied. But be warned: If you are not a little scared, you aren’t paying enough attention!

If we can accept the call, we switch from incapacity to empowerment. We move from deflating despair to active hope. The pathway is likely to point you toward working for a better world and a greener planet.

Rising Devotion

What follows takes effort: a lot of it. And yet key doors open with surprisingly little effort. Events defy realistic probability or the laws of causation. Between excesses of hope and despair is a discerned path that opens the way. At other times, it’s a slog. Be prepared to work hard, without your work being seen or understood.

In Buddhism, the practice of the bodhisattva is to stay engaged in this life, to bring compassion and attention to the task at hand, and to help people become relieved of suffering. Friends may travel a similar way, for we encourage each other to recall that our witness calls us to be faithful, not successful. Our commitment is to God—the Divine, the best that can be found in us—and the best we can hope for is the general dignity of following the call.

As the way is traveled, it gradually integrates itself into you; then one comes to the place where others might speak of your devotion. Devotion comes when a personal obligation to follow the call is fully accepted and guides the work. Devotion provides us with a quiet conviction to press on and not feel burdened, despite the load being weighty.

Some may rightly warn us that “devotion” has been misused elsewhere against the faithful. But considering devotion in its most emancipated form, one can see it in Friends’ everyday work. We are freed of pessimism or expectation. Devotion reminds us that the most optimistic act is to breathe in life deeply and exhale all that the world does not need. Devotion is to follow the path knowing we do not need to carry the world but only this day’s task. We have become incorporated into the daily prayer: “Thy will be done.”

Conclusion

Each Friend contributes to the making of this promised new creation. There is spiritual community to be grateful for, the gossamer thread that links us to our Quaker past and our present, listening for the deepest wisdom within and among us.

By heeding the promptings of love and truth in our hearts, we can curb any excess of optimism or pessimism. Friends’ spiritual engagement inevitably joins inward reflection with outward concern. Quakers witness because integrity, justice, the environment, community, and peace matter. We speak truth to power and mean it, but we do so with a compassion that knows that improvement is possible and that the powerful can be won over. We spiritually labor knowing that we are never alone, and the eventual outcome is never knowable.

Between despair and hope lies a simple devotion. All a Friend needs to ask today is a simple question: What does love require of me? And all a Friends meeting need ask might be: what does love require of us together?