The Way of a Ship in the Sea

The Quaker movement grew out of the chaos and confusion of the English civil war. During the 1640s, a rigidly ordered and tightly controlled society broke down under the pressure of war. The strict system of censorship and religious conformity collapsed and society splintered into a multitude of competing sects and opinions on political and religious questions.

Some of these dissidents from the established Church broke away to form groups of ‘Seekers’ who met in each others’ homes in expectant, silent gatherings, waiting for a new revelation of God’s purposes for them and their society. These were people living in a ‘world turned upside down’ by war, social and religious confusion, and political revolution. All stable and unquestioned beliefs and assumptions, from the authority of the King and Church to the roles of women and common people, had been thrown up in the air, and were landing in every possible direction.

Early Quaker leaders such as George Fox had been deeply shaken by this experience of moral and spiritual chaos. What they discovered, and what transformed the scattered groups of Seekers into the first Quaker communities, was that there was no set of beliefs, adopted on the basis of external authority, that could provide authentic meaning, purpose and direction. They discovered for themselves a source of inward guidance that they identified as the same inner Spirit of Truth that had been in Christ and the Biblical prophets. These original Quakers found that their Teacher was within, and could be encountered directly through the practice of gathered, attentive stillness that became the basis of Quaker worship.

While the western religious tradition for over a thousand years had focused on correct belief as the path to right relationship with God, these early Quaker communities discovered that beliefs were not the answer - not even a belief in the ‘Inward Teacher’. Instead, it was only the direct experience of this Inward Guide that could help them, and the way to this experience of divine encounter was not by new beliefs or opinions but a new practice, a way of worship they called ‘waiting in the Light’.

In our own times, many people are responding to the disorientating experience of radical insecurity and the absence of shared cultural stories by looking to external sources of authority. The renewed appeal of authoritarian political leaders, fundamentalist religion and dogmatic ideology grows out of legitimate unmet needs for belonging, meaning and purpose.

The Quaker way offers an alternative path of collective practices for encountering an inward source of guidance and meaning. This way of Quaker practice does not provide ‘answers’ to life’s problems and dilemmas in the form of statements of belief or reliance on authority. Sustained participation in Quaker practices of worship, discernment and testimony gradually shapes our experience so that we become able to perceive aspects of ourselves and the world that were formerly hidden from us. Instead of spurious formulas for evading the human condition of insecurity and uncertainty, the Quaker way offers a gradual process of letting go of masks, a growing recognition of of the reality of oneself and others.

Some Friends, through the maturity of long experience, have been able to let go of any need to defend an illusory identity, to pretend, to please or impress anyone. Through their years of practice, they have become familiar with their own darkness and with the seeds of life and human sympathy within themselves, and deeply perceptive of the presence and activity of those seeds in others.

This is not a learned conformity to a pattern of predictable ‘Quakerliness’. It is the cultivation of habits, choices and capacities that enables each of us to grow into an inner maturity, and to realise our own path in life, as a unique personality that does not need to model itself according to any outward convention.

From the earliest days of the Quaker movement, Friends aimed to avoid setting up outward standards of conformity. They wanted to encourage the freedom of future generations to discover the reality of the Inward Guide for themselves, through their own experience of Quaker practice. They wrote of their intention “that no footsteps may be left for those that shall come after, or to walk by example, but that all may be directed and left to the truth, in it to live and walk, and by it to be guided… that our path may be as the way of a ship in the sea, which no deceit can follow or imitate.” (Friends met together at Durham, 1659)

Have you experienced the presence of the 'Inward Guide' in your life? What practices help you to become more perceptive and response to the inward 'promptings of love and truth'?