the bell jar

So you all don't think all I ever think about is theology and Quakerism, I'm going to write about a book I just read for fun, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It's a semi-autobiographical novel about a college-age woman who slowly goes insane. It ends on a note of hope, but unfortunately Sylvia Plath committed suicide about 10 years after her similar experience.

The book itself was well written and held my interest. It's written in a fairly easy style, where you feel comfortable and at home with the first-person narrator and the story, being mainly about everyday life, makes sense. I can empathize with the character and understand how she, quite logically, would go through a mental breakdown, even though I have never done so myself. Her actions and the paths of thought that go on in her head make sense and I can see myself having similar reactions if I wasn't careful.

I was a psychology major in college, so I've learned a lot about mental disorders, and although I've never had a situation where I've been clinically "disordered," I think there's a continuum of each disorder and everyone has tendencies toward one or another of them. Some people have tendencies toward depression, and although they don't become clinically depressed they are on the verge of it often. Some people tend toward obesessive compulsion--we even admire this in some people in certain areas, like obsessive compulsive studying.... Or there are people who have fairly big mood swings although they wouldn't technically be diagnosed with manic-depression/borderline personality disorder. I know some of people who almost have multiple personalities because they split themselves into such different people when in various company that they find it almost impossible to bring those separate personalities together into a unified version of themselves. So I think we all struggle to keep our sanity day in and day out, whether we think about it that way or not.

To put it in a more positive way, I think it's miraculous how many of us DON'T have mental breakdowns. There are plenty of difficult and downright evil things that happen in the world, that happen to us. It's amazing to me how we learn to deal with things, and have the ability to grow from them. And it's amazing to see the human mind cope with difficult and dissonant things, and instead of letting those things destroy them, they cope by splitting their personality, controlling their routine, or shutting down many body functions until their mind can reorient. Isn't the human mind amazing? I think so...I guess that's why I was a psych major.

It's pretty weird how different people going through the same hard event will respond differently: some will grow and some will break down. Something that has helped for me is community. When I've gone through tough things I've been tempted to get depressed, or to cope by trying to control an aspect of my environment, or to split myself so that the "me" everyone sees is not the one that is hurting. But I've been fortunate that the people around me have been incredibly supportive and helped me work through everything so far without major problems, and have helped me grow.

Note, however, that I'm not trying to say that if someone in your community has had a mental breakdown that means you're doing a bad job. People can make their own choices, and sometimes they choose poorly. And sometimes it's not a poor choice, it's just that they can't see any other options. Sometimes mental breakdowns seem to be necessary in order for someone to get through to another space that is more healthy. But it's amazing how a community can help ease the pain in those situations, even if there has to be a movement through psychological problems.

In The Bell Jar, the character doesn't have that supportive community. Instead she has a community that expects perfection, especially outward perfection. I think she feels like she's in some sort of science experiment, being observed and stifled in a bell jar from which she cannot escape. There is no acceptance of her personhood apart from her achievements, and I think she has to break through this by going into a mental breakdown--showing herself and those around her that she's not going to hide inside a cage of socially acceptable parameters, and only through this process can she become who she really wants to be. I hope to be part of a community that can recognize others' strengths and encourage them to live up to that, but at the same time allow that person to be fully themself and who they feel called to be. This is a difficult balance, especially in the church. (See, I couldn't keep away from theology completely!)

more inner light

Tonight I've been reading more Calvin--this week's systematic theology topic is the doctrine of sin, and I don't think I'm ready to tackle that one yet, so I'll stick with the nice doctrine of the Inner Light. =)

Calvin is talking about how although humans were created in the image of God, they sinned and so lost their capacity for spiritual insight apart from God's grace, and although we still have the ability to be rational and to use our will, these have been perverted by the Fall (although we won't tell Calvin that the term "Fall" doesn't appear in the Bible, or even in Hebrew literature until about 200-100BCE...but that's another topic).

So Calvin's saying that we don't have the ability to recognize God apart from God's revelation to us, which I suppose is true, but I think it would be true whether we were perfect or not. Anyway, where this connects with the Inner Light is that Calvin talks about John 1:5 where the author says, "this light shines in the darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not." Of this Calvin says, "[God] shows that [hu]man's soul is so illumined by the brightness of God's light as never to be without some slight flame or at least a spark of it; but that even with this illumination it does not comprehend God" (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.II.19).

This sounds like an Inner Light to me. I think I agree with Calvin here. If the world is somehow in darkness, meaning that there is evil present in the world and we are not all in full communion with God at all times, if there is any light in the world we probably all see a flicker of it, and keep this flicker alive in ourselves if we try. At the same time, we can't fully comprehend God, of course. We can see a glimmer of light and we can walk toward it, we can cultivate it in ourselves, but we'll never understand or possess it completely--else it isn't God!

This is where I differ from Calvin, however, because he would say that there is nothing we can do to recognize or move toward the light. Only God can cause us to recognize God's self, and only God can make God's self more comprehensible to us. Calvin doesn't believe in free will to do good--everything good is from God. I agree in a sense, in that God created everything good and therefore every good thing has its root in God. But I think God has created us in such a way that we can choose good. We know what is good because of God impolanting knowledge and recognition of God's character in us, but we have the free will to choose what to do with that knowledge. If all we can do is choose evil, why wouldn't God cause all of us to choose good? Why only the "elect" few?

Instead, I think God offers the Light to the entire world, and most of the world doesn't comprehend it although God makes that recognition available to all. We can choose to move toward the Light, to fan the flame of the Light within ourselves and our communities, or choose to keep our distance, remaining in darkness and incomprehension.

P.S.
Does anyone know of a Quaker systematic theological work besides Barclay? (I know, it's kind of an oxymoroan--Quaker systematic theology--but hey, I think it's an interesting way of dialoguing with other groups.) Reformed theology is interesting and all, but it would be nice to read a Quaker perspective, but I don't know of any that are more recent than Barclay's.

inner light

Thanks everyone for your comments and thoughts. It's interesting to get others' perspectives. So here goes my take on the "Inner Light" issue.

I think this is one of Quakerism's most unique, most orthodox Christian, most unscriptural and most biblical doctrines of them all! As many of you pointed out in comments to my last post, the image of the Inner Light comes directly from the Bible, from John and I John. John 1 talks about the Word being God, Light, and Life, and says this being who is all of these things became flesh in Jesus. Later in John Jesus says, "I am the Light of the world." I John says that if a person is not in the light they are in the darkness, and many other places in the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures use the metaphor of light and darkness to describe spiritual states of awareness. Those who follow God are a city on a hill (at night) that cannot be hidden, a lamp that shouldn't be hidden but should be put on a stand to give light to all in the house (Matthew 5:14-16) or all who come in (Luke 11:33-35). There are many instances where spiritual lack of awareness is expressed as blindness, indicating that light is not being allowed to come into the person (as through the eyes).

It seems that in the New Testament, light refers to God or Jesus, and the truth of the ability of humans to know God, be aware of God, and be obedient to the call of God in their life, especially through Jesus' command to love. So this idea of the Inner Light is in many ways very biblical, if we think of the Inner Light as God, or in Quaker-speak, "that of God in every person."

But "that of God in every person" is perhaps where we get a little off track from mainstream Christianity--and I'm not saying that's a bad thing here. It is, however, difficult to see where we got this idea of that of God being in each person, except from Genesis 1:26, where God says, "Let us make humankind in our image." This is what got me thinking about the Inner Light to begin with, because last week in my systematic theology class we discussed what it means that humans are created in the image of God.

The first thing that comes into my head when I think of being created in the image of God is that we all have the Inner Light in us--a piece of God that recognizes and longs for God. Calvin criticizes this idea (although Quakers hadn't come along yet) by speaking of some who "thought the soul to be a derivative of God's substance, as if some portion of immeasurable divinity had flowed into man" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Divine Religion I.XV.5). I don't think this is the original idea of the Inner Light that Quakers had--I don't think they meant that a piece of God is possessed by each person and is somehow separate from God and only in that person. I think the original Quakers who used this term meant that God is at work in each person, and each one has the ability to know God (as opposed to the doctrine of predestination).

Today, however, I'm not sure if we always remember to make this distinction. It's all too easy to think of the Inner Light as something we own, or something that is me rather than being something of God that is communicating with me. It's hard to know where to draw that line, because if I'm created in the image of God, there is something about me that is similar to God, that connects me to God, but that doesn't mean any part of me is God.

It's nice to think of little pieces of God being spread out through all humanity--like R.W. Emerson's "over-soul." He was influenced by Quakers, and he thought of "that of God in every person" as sort of a pre-Jungian collective unconscious, the part of ourselves that connects with other people, but he didn't really believe in a God who had a consciousness separate from humanity.

But I think that takes away the whole point of the Inner Light. To me the Inner Light is that part of me that calls out to me that there is something (Someone) Other, something not-me, and this not-me affirms my humanity and my goodness, as well as calling me to let go of the parts of me that aren't good. This Light calls me to give up the security of the darkness where I can hide, and calls me out into the glorious and sometimes painful Light where everything is exposed and laid bare--but where everything is loved. In the Light I can be who I am and be challenged to step more fully into who I am created to be every day, taking baby steps away from the darkness and toward the Light.

I too like the image of Light because it can't be defined, even by science. Is it a wave, or a particle? Who knows! Both. But how can it be both? It's a paradox, but we can see what it does, we can all recognize that it's there and we know its effects. Without it there would be no life on this planet, as there would be none without the ultimate Light, who is God, with whom we can participate and commune as a tree growing by streams of water (Psalm 1) in the sunshine.

pondering the "inner light"

I've been busy lately and we had some friends over the last few days so I've been neglecting blog-dom, and I don't have time for a real post right now, but for the last few days I've been thinking about the Quaker concept of the Inner Light. Where did the phrase come from? What did it mean originally? What does it mean now? I'll work on answering these questions later.

For now, you can ponder these queries with me, or share comments about your conceptions of the "Inner Light":

What does "Inner Light" mean to you? How do you find the metaphor helpful/not helpful? How has it been personally meaningful to you?

missions

Now there's a loaded word if I ever blogged about one! I think maybe this is one of the areas that the focus of "evangelical" and "liberal" Friends differs the most. Missions creates a problem because it's incredibly difficult to distinguish between essential elements of a religion, and traditions that have become so matter-of-fact that they take on almost sacramental overtones. On the other hand, I went to the World Gathering of Young Friends last summer in England, and it was so amazing to be joined by Friends from all over the world! I think there were two Friends there from unprogrammed backgrounds who weren't from Europe, the USA or Russian states. (The ones I'm thinking of were from Costa Rica and Colombia. Feel free to correct me if there were any others.) If EFI and FUM weren't doing missions work, would Quakerism have ever spread south of the equator? And now I think a majority of Friends worldwide live in the southern hemisphere.

We've been learning in my church history class the last few weeks (or really all semester) about colonization and Christendom, and how those often went together and were seen as pretty much the same thing by native peoples of the colonized (shall we say invaded?) countries. This is truly unfortunate, and frustrating. Our church history profs talk about "Christendom" as the culture of the West that includes Christianity, but that incorporates Western cultural traditions which have nothing to do with faith, although colonizers often act as if they do. For example, wearing Western-style clothes, eating with Western utensils, becoming "civilized."

Most of those who first colonized much of the "New World" and Africa weren't really concerned about the spiritual welfare of their new "citizens," but were more focused on subduing the population and getting them to conform to an orderly and managable system, and used Christianity as an excuse--almost a crusade--to get their country to back their government in its quest for wealth and power.

At the same time, I truly believe that a lot of the early missionaries themselves went with good intentions. Sure, they didn't use politically correct terms (calling the native people "heathens" and such), and they often acted in a superior manner, but I think they meant well. They truly felt that the Western way of life was better than the native ways, and wanted to share that with others. This seems more like a cultural evangelization rather than a religious one, however.

Now missionaries are generally being more empathetica, treating others as humans rather than numbers they've baptized and that sort of thing. Now most missionaries are focusing on learning a trade that they can do as they build relationships and from that basis of friendship they share what brings them hope and joy--namely their faith. I think a lot of missionaries are even attempting to be more open about paying attention to where God is already working in people's lives and religious practices, finding those places of commonality and working from there, rather than going in with the idea that "we Westerners have all the answers and everyone else is too ignorant to understand."

But the word "missions" still makes me pretty wary. The history of Christian missions has been so bound up with war, crusades, colonialism, imperialism, racism and the destruction of so many cultures that it's hard to want to support its continuance.

And yet, if we truly we believe we have "good news," if we truly believe everyone has this Light within them that is yearning for [I'll let you fill in the blank with your favorite word but I'll use God], then why wouldn't we want to share this with people? To me the good news is a message of freedom, that we don't have to fear death or suffering, that we're not alone, that there is a meaning to life and that we have a part in that, that we are saved from our stumbling around in the darkness, that we can love and follow this amazingly loving God who wants to work with us to establish a kingdom of peace. Wow, that's so cool! We don't have to worry or be afraid. We don't have to succumb to unjust systems and let ourselves be oppressed. There's another way, a way through finding the wholeness of ourselves in God. And I want others to know that, too!

But I don't want to destroy who they are in order to make them see it. That's the beauty of God's Light in us--it looks different through every person. A lot of you are probably not evangelical enough to have heard of Keith Green, but he was a Christian singer/songwriter in the 70s and early 80s. He has a song about how God's Light shines through us like stained glass windows. Even though Quakers aren't really into stained glass windows, I still think it's a great image. If we're doing what we're meant to do (be a window to God), we'll let God's Light shine through us, and it will look different through each of us. But as we come together in community, we make a beautiful pattern of various hues.

But if we sit inside our own communities and don't let the world see us, the Light doesn't shine through us and we're purposeless, and although we still have those colors and the potential for the Light to shine through us, it can't unless we put ourselves in positions to be lit up by it.

This doesn't mean we have to go to other countries, and it doesn't mean we have to preach on every streetcorner and hit people over the head with the Bible. But what DOES it mean for us as Quakers? Is "missions" a good thing, or not?

[By the way, the picture is of one of the windows in the Lancaster Priory, right next to Lancaster Castle where many early Quakers were imprisoned, including GFox and MFell. No wonder they hated stained glass! But it's pretty anyway...]

inflation

As I was examining one of the new nickels today, it struck me that not only is our country creating new commemorative quarters, but nickels, $10, $20 and $50 bills too (maybe higher but I don't see those often...)--where will it end??? It's interesting for two reasons: first, I always think it's funny when things are created just because someday they'll be collectors itmes--like Beanie Babies (remember that fad?) or commemorative plates. It's like we're completely full of ourselves. We think that because we dig up random old stuff and think it's really amazing just because it's old and rare, that people will think the same thing about our junk in several thousand years. (I think if anyone does do archaeological digs on our stuff they'll have way too much information than they'll even care about, and everything will be preserved really well because it's made of plastic!)

Second, it got me thinking about the fact that every day our country creates more money by printing and minting it. It makes sense to make some new money--some gets lost or damaged, so we need replacements. But to make new money all the time? Why?

Why, you ask? Because our economy is based on growth. If we don't have inflation our economy fails.

Now if you ask me, this isn't a very good way to found a lifestyle that a whole culture depends upon. I'm not an economist, but it seems like at some point it has to fall apart. At some point there can't be any more. At some point there is too much excess and the system can't hold it. At some point someone has to start paying their debts.

This made me think about the way we as Westerners, or at least Americans, live our individual lives. We (as a culture--hopefully not those individuals reading this blog!) live based so much on progress, on getting better and more and faster. People work so hard so they can buy the newest thing, or spend gratuitously on food or entertainment or vacation--but do they ever have time to enjoy the food? Do they ever take a vacation? Americans spend plenty of time doing "entertainment" that is mainly sit-on-your-butt-and-be-brainwashed type entertainment like movies and TV, and they have to buy the best system to do that with and have the right snacks to go with it. (Note: movies and TV aren't inherently bad, I think, but if we do them just to "escape," what is it that we're "escaping" from?)

I'm not so bad with the entertainment issue, but I do spend a lot of my time and energy becoming "more" educated, knowing "more," learning the newest stuff in my field, getting better at languages and everything so I can progress to the next level, so academia can progress because of all the work I and my colleagues are doing in my generation to advance the field.

All this "more," all this "better," all this stuff--when do we just sit and be happy with what we have?

George W. was right [I could make a sarcastic comment here but I'll refrain] when he counseled Americans to go out and be consumers when the economy was lagging after 9/11. If no one buys anything, no one gets paid and the economy doesn't go around. But this seems to me an economy based on fear, and it breeds anxiety in everyone in a majority of people in our culture. We always need to have and be the best--but how do we know when we've gotten there?

I think this is the time when we need to sit and contemplate who we truly are, to let God inform our self-identity with love for ourselves and for God that overflows into love for those around us. In this space of freedom, in the security that comes from knowing who we are and that we are loved and are free to love others, there is no need for more or better. There is just me, and God, and the good news of that freedom that I get to share with those around me.

Doesn't that sound so much more appealing than this crazy rat race?

centering

As a centering tool in meeting I often use a simple song (Taize/contemplative style) that repeats a prayer or thought to keep me on track and focused (kind of like a word that you come back to in contemplative prayer). The one I usually use is a song that goes, "Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life," except I change "shepherd" to "center." (It's by John Michael Talbot.) It's become kind of my "mantra" when centering and helps me to come back into a centered space more quickly. It's almost like my own personal liturgy, a natural part of the way I remind myself that my purpose of focusing on God and letting all my own fears and wants fall away.

This is so helpful for me, because it brings continuity between my times of silence on my own and my times of waiting with others. Also it helps me fall into a rhythm that is natural. It pulls me more quickly into a space of depth--not that we should just be all about doing everything fast, but I think it does show something about the space I'm in spiritually when I can center more or less quickly. When I'm more centered in general, when I'm paying attention to God in everyday life and spending time with God on my own, I can center faster. But when I am more scattered and not paying attention in my "normal" life it takes longer to get centered in meeting.

So for me having a simple prayer (in this case a prayer song) helps me to continue that rhythm of centeredness in my everyday life as well as in times of intentional centering, and even in my times of intentional blogging. =)

Center me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.

(Check out my friend Nate Macy's version of this song, that my husband recorded for him a couple years ago, named "Psalm 23.")