QuakerSpeak interviews Quaker translator Sarah Ruden!
If you think of the Bible as a rulebook, then you’re going to fight about it, because it’s about allocation of power, and the interpreter is always claiming power by saying, “the Bible says you can do this, and you must not do that.” Well, Quakers do not like to think that way.
Thomas Hamm is one of the most literary QuakerSpeak interviewees — you could probably take his raw transcript and publish it as a Friends Journal article. But it’s good to have a YouTube-accessible explanation of one of the only formal compendiums of belief and practices that we creed-adverse Friends produce. It’s also fascinating to learn how the purpose and structure of Faith and Practice has differed over time, geography, and theology.
What do Quakers believe? How do we practice our faith? The best place to look for the answers might be in a book of faith and practice. Here’s what they are and how they evolved over time.
Every once in awhile a QuakerSpeak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quakers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she worshiped with Friends:
I thought I had wandered into a group of people who actually believed that God was able to speak directly to them. I remember saying, “Oh my God, this is Pentecost!” I couldn’t believe that these people think God is actually glllllloing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong.
Most of the Quakers reading this can probably guess where this is going – she pretty quickly got a lesson in the unwritten norms against exuberance at many Quaker meetings, the rules that prevent many expressions of worship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the strictures on behavior are pretty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t really about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quaker meetings and feeling incredibly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the radical spontenaeity of our worship (anyone can minister anytime!) and the life it called us to but in practice we often are creatures of habit, to our detriment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “experimenting with freedom” and the “liberty of the spirit.” I realize my stories of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that liberty again.
The longtime peace activist is interviewed on QuakerSpeak:
I’ve chosen nonviolence and nonviolent action as a means of social change partly because I believe that we’re all God’s children. We’re all brothers and sisters, and an injury to any person is an injury to me. We’re all related. So it’s morally right and it’s trying to walk our talk that love is not just something to talk about with your little family — the world is our family.
David’s all over the Friends Journal websites right week. Last week the magazine published his account of needing emergency heart surgery while on a friendship visit in Iran. True to form, he made it a teachable moment by using it to explain how American sanctions hurt everyday Iranians (I’m happy to report everything turned out okay). His most recent book is Waging Peace; FJ’s former senior editor Bob Dockhorn reviewed it in 2015.
Six seasons of the awesomest video series about Friends. There’s also a newly reenergized podcast version so subscribe to that if audio is your favorite medium!
What’s your favorite QuakerSpeak? To celebrate the QuakerSpeak video series’ fifth anniversary, project director Jon Watts asked the Friends Journal staff to pick their favorite videos. What would be your favorite QuakerSpeak?
A sweet interview this week over on QuakerSpeak, an interview with Carter Nash:
I believe that people will respond to love, because I believe people respond to God. And if God is love, that is what people will respond to, is love. I think that’s the key to a lot of things and to a lot of problems in the world, because if we truly believe in God and we truly believe that God is love as we were taught, and we act on that – and I believe that we are God’s hands here – then everything we do needs to be rooted in love.
Catching up with last week’s QuakerSpeak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wilson explaining how Quaker silence is different from individual meditation:
From the exterior, there may not appear to be very much different between a group of individuals doing individual meditation or individual contemplation in the same room and a group of Quaker worshiping together. But there are a number of things that are, as we experience them, different. One is that these practices that have as their goal achieving stillness of mind or perfect quiet or single-pointed awareness, as a goal, are actually quite different from what we are attempting and achieving in meeting for worship. For Friends, this point of stillness is only a way station, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.