Posted: July 13, 2023   •   Posted in: Journey to Quakers

Stepping stones – David’s journey to Quakers

I have been asked to write something of the way along which I have arrived at joining the Religious Society of Friends. A detailed account would amount to a comprehensive autobiography, so I must be selective and perhaps not describe a road, but rather some stepping stones. The key stepping stones are those which have been part of who I have become as a person – but it would be wrong to speak as if I was simply moulded or shaped by events, I played a part in this complicated process – I made choices and not always good ones. Also the process wasn’t linear – the stepping stones weren’t in a straight line, they veered and the gaps between them varied significantly. Since the events have been personal, I should perhaps focus on key persons, key persons within communities.

I wish you had known my grandfather. He it was who showed me, taught me, and made it possible for me to understand what it is to be loved. I experienced it most when I had misbehaved in some way. You might think that such action merits punishment. Not by my grandfather, not punishment; more an admonishment – an admonishment which came by way of explanation, and an explanation by way of questioning: Did you have no options? Would you have behaved differently if…?

In my grandfather’s company I came to feel most fully myself.

There is a strange honesty in love, one wants to be known for who one is, warts and all, perhaps better than one knows oneself. My grandfather listened, waited, replied, sometimes approving, often questioning and laughing as we worked and played together. The words were being filled with associations as we did so. My grandfather died when I was twelve.

In adulthood, early on, there was Brian Mahood the vicar of the parish in which I lived with my first wife. Brian introduced me to John Macmurray’s Gifford Lectures, The Self as Agent and  Persons in Relation. On his retirement, Macmurray moved to Jordans and joined the Quakers.

Many years later, long after I had ceased to be a parish priest, I met John Challenor, a former Roman Catholic priest and member of the Birmingham Oratory, who had resigned his orders in protest at the way that the Vatican was sabotaging the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. John was one of the members of the Sea of Faith (SoF) Birmingham group which I hosted. (The Sea of Faith Network is a charity whose formal aim is ‘… to advance the education of the public in religious studies with particular reference to religious faith seen as a human creation.’). John helped the group to recognize the strength of its functioning, declaring that the group was his chosen congregation. John helped the group to understand the bonding that made our questioning and other actions possible.

Later, and past retiring age, I wrote to the then archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, technically the bishop in whose charge I continued to be. The letter was an informal one outlining my history and its strained relationship with the Anglican church and asking for any suggestions that he might like to make. His reply was a generous one which, after a number of thoughts, commented that several clergy who had told a similar story ‘had found a home among the Quakers’. I thanked him, but did not immediately follow up the suggestion. Shortly afterwards, I received an invitation from some members of the Quaker Non-theist Friends group who were also Sea of Faith members, to attend their annual conference at Woodbrooke – on the strength of being the membership secretary of the Sea of Faith Network. I attended three such conferences and was impressed by what I experienced. But still I took no action to follow it up.

Meanwhile, at the annual conferences of the Sea of Faith I met a Friend among the hundred or so other members of conferences. Then, about four years ago, there was an incident centering around the fact that a young man had relieved himself in a neighbouring street. The reaction of some my neighbours was such that I realized that I did not want to continue living among them and wanted to be out of Birmingham quickly – perhaps it sparked a kind of breakdown. Within a very few days, I decided that I would move to Cambridgeshire or Norfolk where I thought I that I could afford to establish a home and start afresh. I wrote to that Friend asking for help and she offered to put adverts around in Beccles and Bungay. She also offered to put me up while I found somewhere and then invited me join her at Beccles Meeting – which I did.

Need I say more? My experience of Friends here in Beccles has combined all the experiences I have already pointed to and has, as Rowan Williams suggested, become the kind of home where one may work and play, explore and experiment, make mistakes and even fall briefly asleep during worship! One more thing, that Friend and I have since married each other!