Posted: September 20, 2023   •   Posted in: Reflections

Experiencing spirituality

How do we experience spirituality, the divine, God?

How ready and open are we to accept those experiences when they happen? Can we recognise them at the time or only later?

Are there times when we don’t believe we can experience spirituality because the circumstances are against it?

I firmly believe that I am a seeker as well as a finder. In exploring this I would like to draw on the theme of Quaker Week 2023 –  Simple! Radical! Spiritual!

It is because the learning process is continued throughout life that Friends are seekers as well as finders – not one or the other.

Ruth Fawell  (From Quaker faith & practice 26.18)

Simple

I was brought up in the Church of England and remained in it until I reached my 50s. Worship was far from simple. There was no time to think or find one’s own spiritual understanding.  To me it was more ‘believe what we are teaching’.

Here in this Meeting I come into silence, no rituals, no one telling me what to believe. It is a simple, quiet way to grow in my own spiritual understanding and way of life.

Radical

When thinking of radical I am aware of those spiritual radical men (sorry, they are all men – a sign of my age) who influenced me when I was young.

Mahatma Gandhi whose love for his people, both Moslem and Hindu, lead him to fasting for days at a time to try to stop the killing brought about by partition. I remember the sorrow and sadness I felt when he was shot.

Trevor Huddleston, a priest in Soweto at the height of apartheid when families were being forcibly removed to new homes in the middle of nowhere. These were people who owned the land and their home were being taken from them. Trevor, because these were the people he loved and served, protested so much that he was removed from South Africa.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, both spiritual and radical men who because of their love for their people, avoided civil war and bloodshed as South Africa changed to an African state.

I suspect that you know loving people who have influenced your life. I believe Quakers try to allow their spirituality to change the part of the world in which they live through love in action.

Spiritual

Quakers are seekers and finders of a depth of life that I hope enables them to recognise spiritual experience when it happens. We need to be open to that understanding when it is there in front of us. It was only when I was thinking about this talk that I have come to realise that the deep grief I felt 20 years ago, when my dearest and closest friend died in a motor accident, was a deep spiritual experience, the like of which I have never experienced since.

My experience when I joined the worship of a Hindu congregation in their temple was deep spirituality. They expressed a deep love for each other, for their community, and for this group, an RE teacher in their midst.

I believe there are times when deep spiritual experience stares us in the face and we don’t recognise it for what it is. We need to be open to that experience that can come from anywhere at anytime. I have experienced it, for example:

• While reading a novel
• Listening to music
• Walking in the countryside
• In meeting
• Sitting quietly with someone

Anywhere, anytime. So try to be aware. Are you able to experience the spiritual?

There are no right answers. What you experience as spirituality may not be my experience but that doesn’t make it wrong. Be kind to yourself and to others and accept others are on a different path.

Mike (Beccles Quakers)