Posted: March 4, 2024   •   Posted in: Community, Reflections

What do I value most about my Quaker Meeting? (Pt 3)

David is part of Beccles Quaker Meeting. Here he speaks of how his experiences depend on the lens he’s using. You can hear what other Friends value about our meeting in Part 1 and Part 2.

‘How I describe my experience of my Quaker Meeting will vary – depending on which ‘lens’ I use to do the reflection. Seen through the lens of my interests in the New Testament and the life of the early church, the Society has recovered much of that.

A second lens is derived from Ian Suttie, a Scottish psychiatrist. His book, The Origins of Love and Hate, was published in 1936. There were two items which especially interested me when I read the book in 1960. In among some robust criticism of Freud, Suttie wrote of hatred as arising from the frustrations of the aspiration to love. He agreed with Freud that the early experience of the child was formative of the adult but, unlike Freud, he regarded the child’s relationship with the mother as more significant than that with the father. Linked with this, Suttie lamented what he saw as the taboo on expressing tenderness – especially in families.

Seen through yet another lens which I owe to the historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin, that human ‘goods’ – those values which we rate highly – are not readily compatible with each other, and therefore we always have to make choices between them when deciding how to act. As that will for ever be the case, the Quaker notion of discernment lends support, making it possible to act without detriment to the community – rather the reverse. I can hold views contrary to many and yet remain a valued member of the meeting – and as one influenced by the processes of discernment.

My relation to the Meeting is not that of obedience as to a father, it is rather that of the child co-caring with the mother. At meeting, it is possible to express tenderness, and I am at home.’

David L (Beccles Quaker Meeting)