Tag Archives: ‘God words and us’

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

Spirituality, mysticism, non-duality, and non-theism

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First a quick NFN news roundup.
On Thursday (2nd November) we had a most interesting presentation by Al Palmer of Saline, Michigan USA at our monthly Quaker Meeting and Creative Conversation. This has prompted this longer than usual post. About a dozen Friends from the USA were present (out of 64 in total) and a number of these attend or organise the NTF meetings in America which a few of us from the UK attend occasionally.

Nontheist Friends in North America (NTF) continue to meet regularly and details can be found through the google group; https://groups.google.com/g/nontheist-friends/
I believe the next meeting of NTF (after the Contemplative Sharing meeting at 4pm tomorrow 11 November) will be on Sunday 19th November at 7pm EDT so rather late for us at I think midnight GMT when Robin Alpern will present on ‘Do you consider yourself a pacifist?
Does nontheism have anything to do with your views on the peace testimony?’

The NTF meeting after that is December 5 which is the first Tuesday in December.
When it is hoped to talk about the the first four writings in ‘Godless for God’s Sake’.
This will be at 4pm Eastern Time so a little more convenient 9pm (please check!) in the UK.
I understand Robin Alpern, whose piece was the first of the four, and David Boulton as editor of ‘Godless for God’s Sake’, will likely be in attendance.

Our next NFN meeting will be on Thursday 7th December at 7pm (2pm USA Eastern) on ‘FOX AND US: What does the life and ministry of George Fox mean for a nontheist Friend?’
January’s (4th January) is still being finalised but may be a conversation about meditation and the practice of silence or stillness.

Reflecting on the State of Your Spirituality
Al Palmer’s presentation gave us much to reflect on.  David Boulton raised the question of ‘two types of nontheist Quaker’: those who are content to stick with poetic, metaphorical and non-literal interpretations of ‘old or traditional’ language (God and all the rest as metaphor and so on) and those who need ‘new language’ to say what they mean. (In the plenary session, it was Andrea Henley Heyn from the US who raised this question of old and new language and sensitivity around this and David later put it in terms of different kinds of non-theists.) I think we will have to refer again to ‘God, words and us’ to which David, Michael Wright and others contributed.
I think there is quite a broad range of nontheist views which does not just depend on language used. We can perhaps see a continuum from ‘no nonsense’ materialists or convinced atheists at one end (there ain’t no God’) to agnostics, universalists, ’I may be mistakens’, ‘still seekings’ and nontheist cuckoos ( not your usual conceptions of God) at the other.
At most, we all agree (I think) that there is no ‘old man in the sky with a long white beard’ as portrayed by William Blake (who didn’t believe in that kind of God either).
What to make though of other language and concepts like the divine, spirit, spirituality, mysticism, worship, prayer and so on.
In what follows, I’m going to include a number of links to articles in Wikipedia as an easy way to start looking at what others think or hold.
Some nontheists are uncomfortable with the word ‘divine’ for example, thinking that it implies a divinity (God) in which they do not believe. Others (non-theists) like myself are quite comfortable with that word as a loose term (perhaps thinking of chocolate) and even with the ‘divine presence’ – something like a ‘gathered meeting’ or ‘the sense of the meeting’ perhaps. When Georgina and I got married at our meeting in London, in our declaration (QF&P 16.52 – https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/16-52/) we chose promising, ‘through divine assistance,’ rather than ‘with God’s help’.

Mysticism is another word uncomfortable for some nontheists, perhaps associating it with magic or something ‘supernatural’. For other nontheists it is simply an acceptance some things are a mystery (consciousness for example?), that we don’t (yet) know everything and that in any case there is more to life and our psychology or mind than the purely rational.
Wikipedia writes: “The term “mystical experience” has become synonymous with the terms “religious experience”, spiritual experience and sacred experience” in an article entitled ’Scholarly approaches to mysticism’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_approaches_to_mysticism#Mystical_experience

‘Worship’ as a word to describe Meeting has its difficulties, not fully resolved perhaps by Advices and Queries 8&9 for example, which rely heavily on ‘God’. See what Michael Wright (our former clerk, who died a couple of years ago) said towards the end (p17 handout 2) of his talk on ‘Prayer beyond belief’ ten years ago; https://nontheistquakers.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/prayer-beyond-belief.pdf (or under Articles on the website). See also what he had to say about Gretta Vosper and her approach to prayer further down the Articles page.

Spirit and spirituality seem to raise fewer problems for nontheists although some (incorrectly I think) tend to associate them with ‘spiritualism’, genies and the many spirits of older religions. Intriguing NT passages for me are when Jesus says, in effect, you may ‘blaspheme against the Son’ (and in one case ‘the Father’) but not against the Spirit; Mark 3:28-30  “28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: 29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.” (KJV); Luke 12:10 “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.”; and non-canonical Thomas logion 44 “Jesus said, “Whoever blasphemes the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes the Son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, neither on earth nor in heaven.”  I’ve always taken these to mean that there is some ‘spirit’ behind everything which might be ‘the light of pure reason’ (Winstanley) or the life-force found in everything which is alive.
Non-duality, related to meditation or contemplation ( see the talk on 4th January) was the subject of two talks by John Tissandier to the Quaker Universalist Group in April and May. But see the article in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

AGM, Conferences, General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

Upcoming events

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I mentioned at the AGM on Thursday (17th February) that some nontheist Friends might be interested in the Quaker Universalists’ Conference at Woodbrooke and online from 1-3April.
Details can be found here: https://qug.org.uk/conference-2020-health-and-healing/

Friends might also be interested to look at the newly formed Quaker Truth and Integrity Group (next meeting for QTIG members on 23rd February and Zoom Conference from 25 April): https://quakertruth.org/calendar/

Courses at Woodbrooke which should certainly be of interest to nontheist Friends have already been mentioned here.

Trevor

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

Update and Courses at Woodbrooke

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The audio file for John Richter’s talk has now been added to the homepage. There’s a minute or two missing at the beginning and unfortunately the recording quality is only fair. If we are able to add a text or transcript later we may do so.

Woodbrooke has some upcoming (online) courses which may be of particular interest to nontheist Friends – they might make a nice follow-up to John’s talk!

Nontheist Approaches to Religious Language
28 February 2022 – 27 March 2022
Tutor: Rhiannon Grant
£45.00

Why Attend Meeting for Worship if you Don’t Believe in God?
12 April 2022 – 12 April 2022
19:30 – 21:00
Tutor: Rhiannon Grant
Pay as you are led ( £ )

Are Quakers Christian?
26 April 2022 – 26 April 2022
19:30 – 21:00
Tutor: Rhiannon Grant
Pay as you are led ( £ )

Details of all these and a few other courses can be found here:
https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/product-category/exploring-quakerism

I put the following in the comments this morning:
Whilst we’re talking about spirituality, here’s an interesting article (terrifying?) on Xi Jinping thought and the politicisation of spirituality in China:
https://unherd.com/thepost/chinas-new-plan-to-fill-the-religion-shaped-hole/

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

John Richter’s talk – some thoughts on the challenge

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John Richter’s talk on Thursday evening did not feature his work as an artist but proved to be a provoking challenge to Quakers today, non-theist or not, to perhaps change the way we approach things if we are not (in terms of membership) to continue in terminal decline.
John’s ideas might have been unconventional after 60 years a Quaker, perhaps still feeling ‘On the Edge of Quakers’, but drew out a lively conversation of different or opposing views amongst those present (about 82 for the talk).
Our own William P(urser) closed the conversation at the very end with this from a somewhat earlier William P(enn):

“True godliness don’t turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it… Christians should keep the helm and guide the vessel to its port; not meanly steal out at the stern of the world and leave those that are in it without a pilot to be driven by the fury of evil times upon the rock or sand of ruin”. (QF&P 23.02) William Penn 1682.

One of John’s suggestions (in relation to his own somewhat declining meeting at Wells-next-the-Sea (Norfolk, England)) was, weather permitting, to leave the doors open so anyone might wander in during the meeting and for people to join or leave the meeting at times to suit themselves – a practice also followed by Friends 340 years ago and indeed in the Sikh Gurudwara today. (In both cases much longer ‘meetings for worship’ – perhaps 3-4 hours amongst 17th century Quakers and sunrise to sunset amongst Sikhs).

Meetings often have a copy of the Bible, Quaker Faith and Practice (The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain – the ‘big red book’), Advices and Queries (the ‘little red book’ being Chapter 1 of QF&P) and sometimes other books or leaflets on the table, with a vase of flowers, in the centre of the meeting. Piers thought that visitors or newcomers to a meeting find this off-putting if the Bible and ‘Christian discipline’ have negative associations for them. But, we are the Religious Society of Friends and there were contributions from those who disliked the associations of ‘Spiritual’ whilst others might want to emphasise ’the Society’ (of which you can be a member – ’socio’ in Spanish) at the expense of ‘Religious’. Tom Shakespeare the 2020 Swarthmore Lecturer (https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/research/swarthmore-lectures/) expressed a preference for ‘Religious not Spiritual’, doubtful about those who say they are ’Spiritual not religious’ and the associations of ’Spiritual’ with ‘New Age’ spirituality and perhaps ’Spiritualism’.

However, Jesus said: Mark 3.28-9 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (New Revised Standard Version).
And as the Nontheist Friends Network, our online conference in 2021 was entitled ’That’s the Spirit – Dimensions of Spirituality’
(https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/events/thats-the-spirit-dimensions-of-spirituality-nfn-conference-2021/ ) which included an impassioned talk on Humanist (or secular) Spirituality.by Andrew Copson of Humanists UK. See also https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/articles/the-faith-of-a-quaker-humanist/#Spirituality

John posed two questions at the end of his talk for the group to consider:
1 What is the purpose of Quakers?
a John’s 4-word answer was “to explore religion together” and
b He asked us to respond with our four-word answers.
2 To flourish as a society we need to make ourselves meaningful to ourselves and to people who might join. What do we need to change?

Howard answered the first with (5 words perhaps) “to have our answers questioned”. Whilst this was drawn from some Quaker pamphlet or notice and makes a nice ‘sound-bite’, I strongly suspect that many would like their questions answered too – I know I would.

John especially wanted to emphasise the open-ness of Quakers and the open ended search for truth which has evolved from the 17th century when Friends felt they had the ‘Truth’ and while this latter claim might still be true in terms of ‘the spirit within’, the ‘inner light’, the ‘Christ within’ and so on, nonetheless we recognise that there are different kinds of truth (for example scientific truth, historical truth, spiritual truth, ‘the facts’, your truth and my truth – what is true for you is not necessarily true for me, and so on) and Friends ask ‘Are you open to new light , from whatever source it may come?’ (Advices and Queries no. 7) (Some Friends question ‘from whatever source’?).

So we see that your answers may indeed be questioned but our ‘queries’ often constitute implicit ‘advice’. We can question and seek but we can also find, or perhaps that’s ‘discern’ in ‘quakerspeak’. We no longer (as Quakers did in the 17th century) go out of our way to attack or challenge ‘Puritans’ (Evangelicals?) or Papists and indeed many of us now find wisdom from the (Western) Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions too, even if we rather specialise in being unorthodox or heretical. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy for a good overview of heresy). The great majority of Quakers in the world, in the Americas and Africa in particular, are members of evangelical or programmed meetings with quite different worship practices and beliefs from most ‘unprogrammed’ Quakers in meetings like BYM. Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC – https://fwcc.world/about-us/) by and large succeeds in uniting all the different sorts of Quakers into one ‘family’ with a common heritage and willingness to see beyond differences and work together to ‘mend the world’.

John had himself suggested some ideas for change in his talk and these included the above-mentioned openness (even open doors) and focussing on being a society of Friends rather than a church (building or meeting) and not making silence our creed – that is to say emphasising the importance of spoken ministry and attentive ‘listening’ to what might come to us during the silence. Other Friends present emphasised the importance of friendship and being meetings of friends – doing things together, socialising together as well as to ‘live better in the world, and be excited in their endeavours to mend it’. Whilst there were disagreements and differences of emphasis, many of these came down to different language: spiritual not religious or v.v, society v. church and meeting v. church. The development of language about ‘God’ – or ‘whatever you call it’ is particularly demanding: God is real or a metaphor, ‘theist’ or ’nontheist’ might be a continuum rather than either/or – see, for example, ‘God, words and us’ – https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/?s=God%2C+words+and+us

Whether you were present at John’s talk or not, please let us have your comments and thoughts below!

 

Conferences, General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism, Publications

Dinah Livingstone – On Dover Beach

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Dinah delivered our third and final talk of the NFN 2021 Conference on 21st July and ’rounded off’ the series very fittingly.

(The many links below generally open in a new window or tab).

Our three speakers spoke quite independently, guided only to deliver their talks based on their idea of spirituality – ‘That’s the spirit! – dimensions of spirituality.’

Nonetheless, the notion (one of George Fox’s ‘windy notions’?) of Spirituality resulted in three talks which, very different as expected, hung together to satisfy and inspire different members of our ‘Quaker Kaleidoscope’.

Dinah is the editor of the Sea of Faith’s magazine ‘Sofia‘ in which role she succeeded the previous editor, NFN’s ‘own’ David Boulton (one of the key founders of the Nontheist Friends Network) in 2004 and changed its name to ‘Sofia‘.  Gill Pennington mentioned David’s ‘The Faith of a Quaker Humanist‘ (1997) which I understand is still the most often downloaded booklet from the Quaker Universalist Group’s website. We can see and perhaps ‘feel’ the threads linking Humanism, the Sea of Faith Network and the Nontheist Friends Network.

The Sea of Faith Network takes its name from Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’, one stanza of which reads:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

You can find the full poem (4 stanzas, 37 lines I think) here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach

Was it surprising to many of us that Dinah’s talk from a ‘sea of faith perspective’ was so biblical? Both Andrew Copson and Gill Pennington had mentioned biblical stories but Dinah wove an account of what I might call the ‘sea of faith version of religion, humanism and nontheism’ drawn substantially from the bible as if it might be considered the source of these ideas. This is consistent with Dinah’s re-naming of the SoF Journal to ‘Sofia’ – a serendipitous extension of the acronym SoF. (An alternative spelling for ‘Holy Wisdom‘ being Sophia). The wisdom literature of the bible provides this potential biblical basis for Don Cupitt‘s ideas and Dinah’s talk. (SEA OF FAITH NETWORK started in 1984 as a response to Don Cupitt’s book and TV series of the same name.)

At the very top of the Sea of Faith website homepage it states:

“The Network…
Explores the implications of accepting religion as a human creation;
Promotes the validity of creative, human-centred religion;
Affirms the continuing importance of religious thought
and practice as expressions of awe and wonder and
celebrations of spiritual and social values.”

Only slightly less prominently on our NFN website (You have to look under ‘About’ and then ‘Aims of the network’ here: https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/about/aims-of-the-network/), we state:

“The Network’s aim is to provide a forum and supportive framework for Friends who regard religion as a human creation. We want to ensure that our Religious Society of Friends is an inclusive rather than an exclusive Society. We seek to explore theological and spiritual diversity and their practical implications, in respectful acceptance of different views, experiences and journeys.” (clause 2. of our constitution added the words ‘and attenders’ at our last AGM).

It’s almost as if the Sea of Faith is the Christian branch of the nontheist humanists and the nontheist Friends network is the Quaker branch of the Sea of Faith. (and I’d always thought of us as the nontheist branch of the Quaker Universalist Group). Perhaps we should convene next on Dover Beach?

Joking apart, we can surely feel those threads referred to above linking Humanism, Christian origins, Quaker Universalism, Sea of Faith and the NFN.

Dinah drew from the bible, and Christ’s teaching, its essential humanism or human facing concerns. This is perhaps not so surprising given that ‘Humanism’ has arisen, in the last two centuries, from within the Western Christian tradition. As one wit reported in a recent Quaker meeting ‘God created man in his own image – and man returned the compliment’ (or was it the other way round?). I had better at least mention at this point the Goddess to contrast with God the Father.

This ‘pre-conference reading’ bibliography prepared for the 2020 conference provides links to David Boulton’s and other NFN books: https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/2020/03/01/a-2020-nfn-conference-bibliography/

(Some of the links above are repeated):
https://sofn.org.uk/pages/dinah_livingstone.html
https://www.sofn.org.uk/links/don-cupitt.html
https://sofn.org.uk/sofia/index.html – Sofia magazine
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach
https://www.sofn.org.uk/links/index.html – useful links
https://www.sofn.org.uk/links/spirituality.html – SoF links for Spirituality

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

Feedback and reflections on NFN MfW&CC 6 May 2021

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This was our third such meeting (6 May: Philip Gross, The language of poetry, and creative uses of the word ‘God’) and I understand we may now have further speakers lined up for summer and autumn but if you would like to offer a ‘creative conversation’, please contact clerk@nontheist-quakers.org.uk

Again, I believe, about 90 Friends attended the meeting and there was a lot of sharing in the smaller groups of about 7 or 8 and many novel ideas prompted by Philip’s 3 poems and his thoughts on metaphor and his own creative uses of the word ‘God’ and ‘God language’ in those three poems: ‘Mattins’, ‘Psalm: You’, and ‘And whatever’.

This draws to mind our Quaker book ‘God, words and us’,
published in 2017 which deals with different concepts and beliefs relating to God and the use of the word and other ‘God language’.
Friends present asked if they could read the poems again and Philip has now sent us these together with a (‘slightly tweaked’) written version of his presentation. Please have a look and share any further thoughts you may have in the Comments or ‘Leave a reply’ box below. (Your email address will not be shared but will be seen by me as part of the ‘moderation’ process for comments on this website.)

Conferences, General Quaker interest, NFN Events, NFN website, Non-theism

The End of words …

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… is to bring men to the knowledge of things beyond what words can utter. Isaac Pennington QF&P 27.27 so, perhaps that should be the end of the post?

Whilst I am sorry that we have not prompted yet more words here in response to our last ‘MfW + creative conversation’ and post, a very interesting discussion has broken out in the last week  or two on the Nontheist Quaker Facebook page especially prompted by some posts by a newcomer to Quakers (and would be attender) in Belgium, Jean-Christophe Ducin – see his posts for 10 and 16 April. I do hope he responds to the invitation from ‘Quakers of all sorts from non-theist, to universalist to various degrees of Christian outlook.’ in Brussels.

Our next ‘MfW + creative conversation’ is on 6th May with Philip Gross and details of how to register for the NFN conference in July will be on the website soon.  In the meantime, Friends may also be interested in the Quaker Universalist (UK) conference on ‘Life, Time and Eternity‘ online from 7th-15th May if they are quick to register!

I might have had more to add but unfortunately the new wordpress block editor makes writing these posts take about five times as long as before, so it’s over to you.

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

Feedback and reflections on NFN MfW&CC 4 March 2021

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As mentioned elsewhere in Comments, and as one of over 85 participants, I thought for a first attempt on zoom it went rather well tonight.  This seems like an excellent place for some ‘fizz’ (or is it ‘phys’, snap, crackle and pop?) on the website.

I would like to invite all present at the meeting tonight to offer their feedback, reflections, queries, suggestions and comments here on the website. (Please comment or ‘Leave a reply’ below – comments will appear within 24 hours or so after moderation).

I would like to set the ball rolling by congratulating John Senior on what I thought was an excellent presentation drawn from mainly familiar sources, for provoking much thought, comment and reflection and for being delightfully short, leaving more time for those contributions from many.

Your comments here might include further reflection, references OR comments and suggestions on technical matters and organisation.

We have already had 3 comments (ahead of the meeting) on timing (answered in the comments). One attendee tonight would have liked to start a little earlier whereas I thought a little later (after the children have gone to bed? – see those comments).

There will never be a perfect timing – always inconvenient for somebody and I’m sure the working group will want to leave that as it is at least for the next 3 months tho’ perhaps that can be looked at in the future.

Some people struggled a bit with zoom but that gets easier with practice and I’d suggest people who want to speak, unmute themselves first, whilst keeping quiet and then be ready to speak when invited.  Not quite in the spirit of ‘worship sharing’ but some people obviously felt confident to say or answer something very briefly by interjecting. (Please don’t do that to hold the floor!).  Otherwise as Mackenzie (University Friends Meeting, USA) advised: For anyone looking for the “Raise Hand” button, you might find it under “Reactions” (new zoom) or under Participants (old zoom). (And once raised an option changes to remove raised hand).

For the same Mackenzie, the website I was referring to for Michael Wright’s article on prayer was of course THIS Website! See under ‘Articles’ and scroll down for several articles by Michael which include ‘Prayer beyond belief‘ where Michael deals with ‘The Bible; God; Jesus; Doctrine; and Prayer’ and the section on prayer is a substantial part of the article although he mentions other points relevant to our conversations tonight.

Another suggestion made in the meeting was to have breakout meetings next time for smaller groups (and giving more people time to say something – 8 supporters) whereas others preferred to keep it as one whole group. In some ways, though it might be a bit of a technical burden on the hosts, it might be possible to combine both, with those who want smaller groups to be allocated to say upto half a dozen breakout rooms at random leaving those who prefer ‘a big session’ together in the main room for the others to rejoin at will.  That would certainly be an experiment but it might work.

I will finish with a few quotes from the chat transcription, including references and John’s texts and then it’s over to YOU to continue the conversation if you will.

John Senior Llanidloes to Everyone : Texts quoted:
A&Q 1 & 3
F&P 19.04, George Fox, 1648
F&P 19.07, George Fox, 1652
*George Fox’s letter to Lady Elizabeth Claypole, 1658
F&P 21.65, James Nayler
*William Penn in ‘No Cross, no Crown’, 1682
F&P 26.12, Geoffrey Hubbard, 1974
F&P 20.06 Philip Rack, 1979
*These items should be available online
*Here is the extract from Fox’s letter to Lady Elizabeth Catchpole (Oliver Cromwell’s second daughter) in 1658 quoted in part by John: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/fox_g/autobio.xvii.html#fnf_xvii-p17.1
Elizabeth died later the same year aged 29 and her father died later the same year.
*Here is William Penn’s ‘No Cross, no Crown’:
https://www.gospeltruth.net/Penn/nocrossnocrownIndex.htm
I don’t know if John might provide the quote he used?
John has now provided the text of his presentation and it is available here: https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/news/john-senior/

From Mackenzie (she/her) University Friends Meeting, USA to Everyone : From North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s F&P (3rd Ed, p.19 – p32 of pdf a 303 page 6Mb document) on nontheist Friends: A number of Friends in NPYM do not believe in the existence of a deity. This perspective cannot be described fully in a few words. Many nontheist Friends live in awe and wonder of the world, feel deep and mysterious connection to people and nature, and are convinced of the infinite sanctity of life. Nontheist Friends share strong callings to service, to the mystery and power of the gathered meeting, and to the importance of community in spiritual growth. Nontheists are warmly welcomed and valued as members of our Friends meetings. (see also http://www.nontheistfriends.org/ our Friends in the USA)

From Michael Boulton in BC Canada to Everyone : For me Quaker Worship is an act of Listening, being open to promptings wherever it comes. It is not noise of profession, but is of active listening, silencing all noise from inside and the external world.

From Enna to Everyone : Can I ask, do you feel comfortable using the phrase: “holding you in the light” instead of “praying for you”
And if so, how does what was said earlier about the light being a luminosity experienced during our stillness, relate to this phrase? or is it a different meaning.

From Gisela Creed to Everyone : I just say: thinking of you with all my heart.

From Pat Blackheath SELAM to Everyone : A good question. Are we humanists? or ?  (David Boulton a principal founder of NFN who was with us tonight wrote for the Quaker Universalist Group in 1997 ‘The Faith of a Quaker Humanist‘)

From Helen to Everyone : I hope we have not let go of the possibility of mystical experiences in the silence from whatever the source or attribution it is given either internal or external, for me listening in the silence is the experience that matters, but even though I identify as non-theist I have felt great feeling so love and joy in the silence that felt mystical. I do not know how to pray or hold others in the light except to feel love for them or send love to them in my thoughts so I hope that suffices!

From Paul to Everyone : Jesus lived 2000 years ago and the Buddha lived 2,500 years ago or so and we find their ideas helpful so George Fox is fairly recent in comparison.

I have included above a selection of chat comments with names and hope that is acceptable. I could put the whole transcript (as I got it) on the website for those who didn’t save it but that would involve having everyone (who contributed)’s names there so it might be better to email the clerk if you didn’t and would like a copy.

Now it’s my bedtime too and it really is over to you to continue with any appropriate comments below. (If there are a lot, I won’t respond to all, but you too can help by responding too – Creative Conversations!)

General Quaker interest, NFN Events, Non-theism

NFN Monthly Meeting reminder

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Don’t forget the first of these monthly meetings with Creative conversations is tomorrow night Thursday 4th March 2021 at 7.30pm UK time (UTC). You can see all the details in the previous post and on the relevant (new) page, which is currently set as our home (landing) page under ‘Events’.

We have now added two further confirmed dates/speakers, so John Senior and William Purser will be followed by Philip Gross on Thursday 6th May and Kiera Faber on Thur. 3rd June.

We look forward to seeing you there and if you haven’t registered yet, please email as shown to do so.

General Quaker interest, NFN website, Non-theism

History of the NFN – 2

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Here’s a second instalment of early NFN history.

This also serves as a bit of a tour around the site: visit our articles page and hit the link to newsletters ‘at bottom of page’ https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/articles/  where you will see newsletters from 2013-14 and onwards (direct link: https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/articles/#newsletters ). If you then scroll up a little, you will find our many articles starting from 2013 – 6 articles or talks from 2013 by Sarah Richards, Michael Wright, Jean Wardrop and Paul Bates on Discernment, Gretta Vosper, Continuing Revelation, Prayer, God and Quaker Diversity – well worth reading from those ‘early days’ even 7 years later – do have a look and continue exploring!

On our American Friends site, there is an article by Miriam Yagud – one of the founders of NFN in the UK – on a gathering in Canterbury in 2011: http://www.nontheistfriends.org/article/getting-beyond-the-words-nontheist-friends-network-at-britain-yearly-meeting-gathering-canterbury-2011
You can also explore that site further and have a look at their list of Contributors articles: http://www.nontheistfriends.org/contributors

Now, we need a similar list of contributors here and you can sign up to be a contributor (with a free wordpress.com account) OR submit an article by writing to me and pasting it into the Comment box on our Contacts page here: https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/contact/
I think that should keep you all busy for a bit, and I look forward to hearing further from you (or just leave a comment below).
Trevor Bending