Posted: October 2, 2024   •   Posted in: Discussions, Reflections

Quakers are a bridge between old and new

Mike recently introduced a ‘Friday Discussion’ with these words:

‘My introduction is based on 27.44 in Quaker faith & practice.

I personally believe that there is a quality in the bareness of Christian Quakerism, which may act as a bridge between the past and the future, allowing space for Friends to dare to search within… To be a Quaker is by no means to say goodbye to myth, ritual and symbol, but rather to find myself set free to discover them as the very essence of the way I now experience… Quakers are bridge people. I remain on that bridge, part of my roots reaching back into the Christian past and part stretching forward into the future where new symbols are being born.

Damaris Parker-Rhodes, 1985

I hope that we can think forward into the future and discover ‘when new symbols are being born’.

I grew up in the Church of England. My Mum and Dad were confirmed, in a private ceremony, just before my father went over to France in 1944. I remember going to Sunday school and to services twice a day on Sundays. School was steeped in the Church of England. I put myself forward for the priesthood but was, quite rightly, turned down 3 times. I studied RE at teacher training college and later in my career was part of an ecumenical group of teachers looking at the subject. All this time I worshipped within the Church of England, until my early 50s.

In many ways it is impossible for me to leave all that background totally behind because it is part of who I am. The writer of the passage speaks of Friends daring to search within for new ways of thinking. One of the greatest benefits to my being a Quaker is my freedom to think outside the straight jacket of my earlier teaching. My experience now is not presented to me in a sermon but is thought through by me.

I believe I now find myself on the far side of the bridge trying to understand life. I read a large number of novels and in the one I have recently read, one of the characters says that fiction is, by its very nature untrue. But it can show us much truth about the lives we live. I have come to see much (if not all) of the Bible in a similar light, a fiction that shows us much truth about life. I accept that the view of others may be very different, but surely that is part of living a life.

But Damaris Parker-Rhodes urges us with our Christian past to stretch forward into the future where new symbols are being born.

I found this in one of my dictionaries: ‘The dove is a symbol of peace, emblem, token, sign, badge, representation, figure, image, type.’

Past religious symbols have been, among others, the fish, the cross, images of gods and above all dress, used in many religions, including Quakers. What symbols would we hope for in the future – equality of all? Climate change? And others.

If we wanted to put a symbol on the Meeting House door what would we want it to signify?

Mike (Beccles Quaker Meeting)