Quakers and Close Relationships

“Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.”

“[We need to] rediscover the possibilities of a friendship in which the deepest areas of experience may be shared. Certainly that kind of openness seems to have existed in earlier generations among a group who were very significant in the life of the Society. Until this century it was not uncommon for Friends to travel in the ministry, following a real sense of leading in this direction. Often they went out in pairs, one older, one younger.”

“I asked a friend if they’d be willing to try a spiritual friendship practice with me. We met roughly once a month to talk about what was going on in our spiritual lives and to listen to each other. This brought home to me how powerful it is to be really listened to. Here was a space where I could talk about spirituality without fear of ridicule.”

“I asked a friend if they’d be willing to try a spiritual friendship practice with me. We met roughly once a month to talk about what was going on in our spiritual lives and to listen to each other. This brought home to me how powerful it is to be really listened to. Here was a space where I could talk about spirituality without fear of ridicule.”

“We are born into families in order to be able to transcend them and become members of a spiritual family in Christ. Our new spiritual families, our families of choice, do not necessarily exclude our relatives, but, on the other hand, do not automatically include them either. It is important to clarify that this is an internal struggle that an individual faces and is not something to be imposed by some outside authority as has happened in some churches. Also this is not a matter of taking stock of what theological or political tenets or lifestyles our family members hold and then deciding to exclude those who do not believe or live the way we do. We are really talking about what happens to family members who are in abusive relationships…”

“Our sexuality is ultimately tied to who we are as spiritual persons. The spiritual life enhances our sexuality and gives it direction. Our sexuality gives an earthy wholeness to our spirituality. Our spirituality and our sexuality come into a working harmony in the life of the kingdom of God.”

“When I became a therapist I thought it was the ethical thing to do to keep my religion off the couch. And in the beginning, that’s what I believed I was doing. But as I reflect, I see that my Quakerism has been a central part of my work from the very beginning, even though I rarely mention it out loud.”

“I honor you / You honor me / Let this rhythm continue on / Eternally”

“Friends do not take readily to being cared for. ‘Caring matters most’ has been quoted to us when seeking direction during our active years. But many of us will find that we ourselves are in need of full care in our old age. This will not be easy. It calls for ‘a different kind of living,’ as one Friend commented when answering questions about experience in a home for the elderly. Uprooted from familiar well-loved things, of house and neighbours, released from stabilising responsibilities (however small), there will be adjustments to be made.”

“Singleness is a state in which many of us find ourselves… Some of us choose, for various reasons to remain single – an absorbing career perhaps or the care of others which we feel demands all we have to give and in which we find fulfilment. We all need to love and be loved and for some of us this need is met, and can be met, in all sorts of nourishing ways. We need to look for these ways and then recognise them with joy when they come to us.”

“In the true marriage relationship the independence of the husband and wife is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.”

“What we must do…with God’s help, is to accept sorrow as a friend, if possible. If not, as a companion with whom we will live for an indeterminate period, for whom we have to make room as one makes room for a guest in one’s house, a companion of whom we shall always be aware, from whom we can learn and whose strength will become our strength. Together we can create beauty from the ashes and find ourselves in the process.”

“Art thou in darkness? Mind it not, for if thou do it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till light arises out of darkness to lead thee. Art thou wounded in conscience? Feed not there, but abide in the light, which leads to the grace and truth, which teaches to deny and put off the weight, and removes the cause, and brings saving health to light.”

“Return to the most human, / nothing less will nourish the torn spirit, / the bewildered heart, / the angry mind: / and from the ultimate duress, / pierced with the breath of anguish, / speak of love.”

“I have been inspired by what Jesus says about friendship, particularly how we can have an intimate relationship with the Divine. Quakers have adopted this ideal friendship as the basis for their name, the Religious Society of Friends. In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples that there is only one commandment that really matters. Love. He then defines love as the willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. This is a high bar for friendship, yet it is important to remember that real friendship usually entails some self-sacrifice.”

“Have you ever sat with a friend when in the course of an easy and pleasant conversation the talk took a new turn and you both listened avidly to the other and to something that was emerging in your visit? You found yourselves saying things that astonished you and finally you stopped talking and there was an immense naturalness about the long silent pause that followed. In that silent interval you were possessed by what you had discovered together. If this has happened to you, you know that when you come up out of such an experience, there is a memory of rapture and a feeling in the heart of having touched holy ground.”

“In meeting for worship, God is inviting us to come deeper, ‘Come drop down, come down to meet me, that I may offer you this gift.’ And I think that’s what I [listen] for as people are speaking, because I actually do believe in each and every situation, God is attempting to have a conversation. God is wanting to be met.”

“If, in loving our children, we want them to respond to personal leadings in life, we will need to teach them that sometimes it’s hard work… As a parent, I am tempted to take away difficult experiences from my children, deliver them miraculously from their hurts so that they can arrive at understanding without having had to struggle to earn it. We have been taught to think of negative emotions and pain as bad things, rather than growth producers. As parents, we can climb alongside our children as they struggle, but we cannot lift them to the mountaintop… [We must] respect the integrity of the child’s struggle.”

“It is striking that so much of our imagery regarding religious experience is couched in terms of the family: God, loving and forgiving Mother and Father of us all; Jesus, our Teacher and Elder Brother; we, the wayward children united through God in the sisterhood of humankind.”

“The amount of solitude which is attainable or would be wholesome in the case of any individual life is a matter in which each of us must judge for himself. I would not, if I might, attempt to prescribe in this matter for any human being but myself – and I feel that it needs much wisdom to minister even to oneself in regard to it. But I also feel sure that a due proportion – whether it be little or much – a due proportion of solitude is one of the most important conditions of mental health. Therefore (to return to our original problem) if it be our lot to stand apart from those close natural ties by which life is for most people shaped and filled, let us not be in haste to fill the gap; let us not carelessly or rashly throw away the opportunity of entering

“In the autumn of 1658, just after the death of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, two Westcountry women set sail for the shores of the Mediterranean, leaving the shores of their fractured homeland for a mission of religious friendship. Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers were both married with children, but such was the strength of their bond, and their commitment to the Quaker faith, that the demands of family and neighborhood were set aside.”

“There are some individuals who by constitution are born lovers, who have what a friend of mine calls “the gift of intimacy.” To be near them is to find yourself warmed by their fire. Their presence in the midst seems to activate in others a contagion of good feeling towards the world in general. But for most of us, it is a thing that has to be worked at, cultivated as a kind of inner development. We have all experienced this warmth in some degree. You know what a difference it makes when you feel that another person is truly aware of you, of your presence, or even of your existence.”

“The practise of discernment helps us to realise that we do have choices about the kind of family life we cultivate. We do not simply have to accept whatever the consumer culture dictates, including the deliberate targeting of children by the advertising industry. Neither do we have to reject modern culture wholesale in the attempt to protect our children from everything potentially harmful.” 

“…There is for some of us beyond the sexual experience a further one, in which there comes a spiritual blessing of the body. While this is not in the least pious it is intensely held and when it happened to me I found myself murmuring, ‘I praise thee, Lord, with my breasts, I praise thee with my womb, I praise thee with my whole body and all my love…’ I had been in some suffering and was determined, if I could, to remain faithful to my marriage and to those I had such affection for.”

“Every man knows in his heart that there is no greater thing in the world than pure unselfish love. Death cannot conquer, nay, he teaches ever that love is supreme. Good men do not die. Their lives are as the tearing of the veil, they show us something of that which is eternal, for if here love is greatest in the heart of man, must it not be greatest in God himself? And if greatest in himself, then let the mystery of his will be never so dark, we may gird ourselves each to his life’s work with something more than courage.

“For me the certain realisation of God came at the time of the breakdown of my marriage. The unthinkable had happened and I seemed to be at my lowest state physically and mentally. There seemed to be no present and no future but only a nightmare of dark uncertainty. One distinct message reached me: to ‘go under’ was out of the question, I could only start again, learn from my mistakes and take this second chance at life that I had been given. I found a strength within I did not know I had, and I believe now that it came from the prayers and loving support of so many people round me.”

“I came to realise that the best way to deepen my love of God was to use my experience of the love in my everyday life in all its variety, subtlety and uncertainty. Getting on with those I love is often a business demanding patience, discretion, tact and understanding. It gets complicated sometimes. It also gets strained, occasionally to the breaking point. But without expression it is barren. I show my love in the things I do, and I also show it by words of endearment. These things are all part and parcel of one another. This is what worship should be like. This is the idiom in which we should speak to God.”

“In my selections this month I tried to capture the holiness and messiness that closeness brings. We read about the power of spiritual friendships, and how friendship can become spiritual. That sexuality is a gift from God, which we are tasked with using with integrity. That marriage is a divine leading built on reciprocity. That we are our children’s first spiritual teachers. And that when we experience loss or loneliness, we are presented with the opportunity to enter into ‘deeper and more continual acquaintance with the unseen and eternal things.'”