A response to  a post by Jess Easter on Quak­erQuaker, “My Quaker Rela­tion­ship with Jesus”:

It’s not anti-Christian to say you have doubts about your rela­tion­ship with Jesus. It’s per­fectly human. Most of us would get bogged down in the intel­lec­tu­al­ism if we tried to map out a pre­cise God/Christ rela­tion­ship. One thing I’ve always liked about Friends is our rad­i­cal hon­esty in this regards. A priest in a strictly ortho­dox litur­gi­cal tra­di­tion is expected to preach on top­ics on which they have no direct divine expe­ri­ence and to base their words on church teach­ings. When a Friend rises in min­istry they are expected to be speak from a moment of direct revelation.

We also have church teach­ings of course. Robert Bar­clay is our go-to guy on many the­o­log­i­cal mat­ters, and cer­tain jour­nals have become all-but-canonized on the way we under­stand our­selves and our tra­di­tion. It’s just that this second-hand knowl­edge needs to be pre­sented as such and kept out of the actual wor­ship time. As my Quaker jour­ney has pro­gressed, I’ve directly expe­ri­enced more and more open­ings that con­firm the tenets of tra­di­tional Quaker Chris­tian­ity. That’s built my trust.

I’m now will­ing to give the ben­e­fit of the doubt to beliefs that I haven’t myself expe­ri­enced. If some­one like William Penn says he’s had a direct rev­e­la­tion about a par­tic­u­lar issue, I’ll trust his account. I know that in those cases where we had sim­i­lar open­ings, our spir­i­tual expe­ri­ences have matched. I won’t min­is­ter about what he’s said. I won’t get defen­sive about a point of doc­trine. I’ll just let myself open to the pos­si­bil­ity that even the more intel­lec­tu­ally out­landish parts of ortho­dox Chris­t­ian doc­trine just might be true.

It’s tempt­ing to go to “holy” sites to expect some spe­cial rev­e­la­tion. In her post, Jess reports feel­ing a sense of feel­ing “bored and indif­fer­ent” when vis­it­ing the West­ern Wall and the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane. I think this is per­fectly nor­mal. There’s the story of the Quaker min­is­ter trav­el­ing through the Amer­i­can colonies with a local Friend as guide. They come to a cross­roads and the local Friend points to tree stump and proudly pro­claims that George Fox him­self tied his horse to that tree when it was alive. The trav­el­ing min­is­ter dis­mounts his horse and walks to the stump. He stands there silently for awhile and walks back to his trav­el­ing com­pan­ion with a sober look. The local is excited and asks him what he saw. The trav­el­ing min­is­ter replied: I looked into the face of idolatry.

The Holy Spirit is not con­fined or enshrined in any place–be it the West­ern Wall, the gilded steepled church or the tree George Fox sat under. Jesus’ death tore the Tem­ple shroud in two and His spirit is with us always, even when it’s hard to feel or see. I think the bore­dom we expe­ri­ence in “holy” sites or with “holy” peo­ple is often  a teach­ing gift–a guid­ance to look else­where for Spir­i­tual truth.