The Place Of Universalism
In The Religious Society Of Friendsor
Is Coexistence Possible?
by
Daniel SeegerThe human enterprise
can be likened to a journey. The most obvious journey is an external physical
one – beginning with humankind’s origin somewhere in the Middle East or Africa
and proceeding over a period of millions of years to the north, east, south and
west, until, ultimately, our species has inhabited the far reaches of this
planet. But there are other
journeys, journeys which, although they may have an outward expression, are
essentially inner or spiritual journeys. Such journeys are chartered in Homer’s
Odyssey, or in the Biblical account of the wanderings of the people of
Israel in search of the promised land. Some of these
pilgrimages are entirely spiritual, such as that of Dante from the Inferno to
Paradise. Others are carried out in both the spiritual and physical realms. The
ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu wandered from kingdom to kingdom seeking a prince
wise enough to govern in accordance with the way of Truth. Failing to find any,
he ultimately retired to a cave hermitage, and there wrote a concise scripture
of a mere 5,000 Chinese characters which subsequently became the basis of a
great civilization. The Indian prince
Gotama, now known as the Buddha, upon reaching adulthood within an artificial
paradise fashioned by his parents so as to protect him from all knowledge of
evil, accidentally encountered victims of poverty, sickness and death. Sorely
troubled in spirit, he left his protected paradise and wandered across the face
of India in the most strenuous of spiritual searches. Finally, he was
enlightened by a great truth, and thereafter gave of himself unceasingly to yet
further travels, challenging and uplifting multitudes with the power of his
teaching. Two thousand years
ago a young, itinerant rabbi in Galilee, one who was what we could be,
miraculously transformed sinners into saints, social outcasts into public
benefactors, common fisher folk into fishers of women and men. How many
spiritual journeys were set into motion by faith in the Truth which Jesus of
Nazareth revealed to humankind! A mere handful of disciples in Galilee, Jericho
and Jerusalem spread to Egypt, to India, to Corinth, to Ephesus, to Rome and to
the entire world. One thinks of the peregrinations of St. Francis of Assisi and
his followers, who traveled the earth to spread the good news; or we remember
St. Augustine’s Confessions in which the author frequently likens the course of
his life to a journey from darkness to light. Nor must we forget the travels in
ministry under Christian inspiration of more recent times, such as those of
George Fox, John Woolman and Lucretia Mott. And yet, sadly, we
have come to a juncture in the road where it is possible for reasonable people
to wonder if all these many journeys, at long last, will be abruptly ended
together. For we see now that the good earth, in spite of its ice ages, floods,
droughts and volcanic eruptions, all of which have tried human capacity for
survival over the many millions of years of these journeys, is indeed a
paradise in comparison to the infernos we can create through our own spiritual
lapses. Thus, in this great human journey it seems to be our own destiny to
come face to face with the very worst that evil can do. One of the many things
which all people of faith have in common, no matter which it is of the world’s
great spiritual traditions which nourishes them, is their approach to this
great challenge of our own times. People of faith know that human beings can
never succeed in structuring a family, an institution, a social order, or a
world community which exceeds in wisdom and goodness the degree of wisdom and
goodness they themselves have a grasp of within their own hearts. They
understand that the first step in rendering service is spiritual preparation of
those who would serve; that social transformation depends upon spiritual
transformation. With Meister Eckhart, they understand that only if we within
ourselves are as we should be will our works give off a beautiful light. It is
thus on the inner drama of each human being’s journey in search of Truth that
the unfoldment of the outer drama of history ultimately depends. People without
faith, or with a kind of faith which is inadequate to humankind’s new
responsibilities, will not be able to build or to hold on to the new world
order without which we will all perish. Such a world order
cannot be the work of people whose only vision it is to impose their particular
scheme on everyone else, a foible which some Communists and some Christians
have in common. Rather, the problem is for us all to learn to live together
with our different traditions and to live not only without bloodshed, but in
genuine peace, which implies some sort of mutual trust and active sympathy. It is of no use to talk about loving our
neighbor while at the same time dismissing as inferior or mistaken his most
cherished possession, his religious faith. Indeed, it is the transforming power
of religious faith which offers the only hope out of our present impasse, and so
a significant aspect of the great task before us is to come increasingly to
discover how the world’s faiths can nourish each other and how we can
collaborate with all people of faith in the challenge we face together. During most of
history, humankind’s several great spiritual streams have existed more or less
in isolation from each other. True, people of the Jewish faith were scattered
within Christian and Islamic societies. True, there were encounters between
Christians and Moslems, but these were mainly on the battlefield. Overall,
until the present age, it has been quite possible for most people to live and
die without ever encountering the adherents of another major stream of
spirituality, and certainly without ever developing the most elementary understanding
of other people’s religious belief and practices. Given this great difficulty
that Christians have had in getting along even with each other, this relative
isolation from Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems was, perhaps, a blessing. Throughout all these
centuries, the traditional posture of the Christian Church with respect to
humankind’s other religious traditions has been that of proselytizing
evangelism. But today, the missionary enterprise of the Christian Church is in
crisis. After all, two millennia of Christian evangelism has left the Hinduism
of India, for example, largely intact. Except for the case of very few
Christian organizations, most evangelization has been abandoned and has been
replaced by the concept of services. Canon Max Warren, General Secretary in
London of the Church Missionary Society, has delivered a riveting three
sentence obituary on the practice of Christian evangelism: “We have marched
around alien Jerichos the requisite number of times. We have sounded the
trumpets. And the walls have not collapsed.” Having been
privileged to visit the sites of some contemporary Christian mission activity,
I can suggest that Canon Warren’s statement is perhaps overdrawn. Clearly there
remain situations in which the Christian faith can provide great nourishment
for people who long to hear of it, just as in our society the missions
of Zen Buddhists or of the
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Society can uplift people with respect to whom our
indigenous spiritual institutions have somehow failed. The main point of these
observations is that we clearly live in a world which is inevitably pluralistic
as far as religion is concerned. Moreover, with the shrinking of the world
community into a global village, we have the unprecedented experience, not
merely of hearing about Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Taoists in
tales brought back by the
occasional Marco Poles, but, at least in a place like New York City, where I come
from, we actually drink coffee and run peace demonstrations with
them every day. A universalist perspective is one outgrowth of these
encounters. There is a new world
that is waiting to be born out of the exciting interaction and religious
pluralism which the modern age makes possible. But the situation is not without
its dangers. The most obvious, of course, is that the encounter among people of
different faiths, rather than providing each with nourishment, may simply
provide another excuse for strife and conflict. One can scarcely contemplate
the recent news from the Punjab or from Lebanon, nor the trials of Judaism
throughout the Christian era, without recognizing that religious pluralism can
indeed be an explosive mixture. Even to observe a diverse group of Quakers
reacting to each other’s theology can be sobering! If strife and
conflict are avoided there is another result which is sometimes produced which
can be counterproductive. The universalist spirit can sometimes degenerate into
a sort of amiable, broad-minded relativism, wherein Truth is simply drowned in
camaraderie. It is not true universalism casually to accept the diversity of
religious cultures and religious loyalties simply because one feels that no
religious culture and no religious loyalty is ultimately valid, that nothing is
inherently worthwhile. Such modern relativism is a sophisticated kind of
cynicism. It is not a proper understanding of the diverse faiths of humankind
to develop an explanation of them which simply makes fundamental nonsense of
each. A corollary of this
is that a true universalist does not find it surprising or peculiar that people
in western civilization who earnestly hunger after Truth find great nourishment
in the teaching and example of Jesus of Nazareth, anymore than it is surprising
to find devotion to the four noble truths and to the eightfold path in cultures
influenced by Buddhism. Nor need it cause a universalist any surprise or dismay
if people come to regard the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth as so
perfectly fulfilling the leadings of Truth that this person is identical with
the highest concepts of Truth in the universe, indeed with the very creative
principle of the universe itself, and that this manifestation is so powerful
that it can reverberate through the centuries, calling people everywhere to an
awareness of their own true nature as creatures in who there is something which
corresponds to this same great and true principle. Somewhat analogous attitudes
are identifiable in other faiths regarding the manifestations of great Truth,
and to be phobic about Christian references within the religious life of the
Society of Friends, for example, while seeking to cultivate openness and
tolerance for other religious traditions, is obviously not an adequate
expression of universalism. It is useful to
remember that a religious tradition’s worst enemies are not people of a
different faith. The United States is now the object of a self-consciously
proselytic movement out of the Oriental traditions, yet it is scarcely any more
likely that the USA will someday be a Hindu or a Buddhist nation than it is
that India would have become a Christian one. What really undermines
Christianity in the United States and Hinduism in India are the degradations to
which each is brought by people claiming to be these faiths’ own adherents. A universalist
interest inevitably brings one into the field of comparative religion, about
which it is possible to write and speak much nonsense, either about how the
major world faiths are all essentially alike, or are all fundamentally
different. This question of the similarities and differences among the major
faiths is too complex to enter into here, but it is important to keep one
principle in mind in the field of comparative religion – remembering that each
religion’s worst enemies are its own adherents, it is always important, when
making comparisons, to compare the best with the best. It makes little sense to
compare Hinduism and Christianity by using Mahatma Gandhi and John Foster
Dulles as examples, even though Gandhi and Dulles were contemporaries, were both
devout and were both statesmen. Nor would it make sense to compare Judaism with
Buddhism by studying Martin Buber, on the one hand, and the quasi-superstitious
practices of a remote Himalayan village, on the other. Genuine universalism
is very demanding of its practitioners. For it is true, as has often been said,
that a religion can only be understood from the inside. One has only to read
the section of the Encyclopedia Britannica on Christianity to realize that an
objective account of a religious tradition, however accurate, will never reveal
the essential, spiritual experience enjoyed by those who
are convinced of it. We must learn to contemplate other people’s faiths not
only without a chip on our shoulder, but also in quite a different frame of
mind than that with which we are inclined to regard an oddly shaped sea shell.
Moreover, the transforming power of any religious tradition which enables its
adherent to achieve a new level of life, to be born again, and to exist in a
new and different way, is not something which is achieved by a casual visit, by
dabbling, or by Way hopping. Indeed, it is necessary to go so far as to say
that, while exceptions are always possible, the most likely path toward an
understanding of the significance of a multiplicity of religions is to
encounter the experience of one religion, preferably the one closest at hand,
which for the most of us would be Quakerism and its Judeo-Christian heritage. It is true that the
universalist sensibility tends to clash with those members of the Christian
communion who insist that people who do not recognize Jesus of Nazareth as
their Lord and Savior are ipso-facto inferior in spiritual realization. But a
genuine universalist, before becoming agitated unduly over this lapse from the
true Christian spirit among Christians, recalls that the phenomenon is not
unique to Christianity. Something akin to it is a major theme in Islamic,
Shinto and Jewish experience, with Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism being more
successful at projecting a generous and true-spirited universalism, although
there are lapses in practice among people of these faiths, too. Christian
universalism began with Jesus of Nazareth, who rebelled against the kind of
lawyer-like focus on doctrines which tends to divide people into chauvinistic
spiritual camps. Jesus was much less interested in orthodoxy, in right
doctrine, than he was in ortho-praxis, right living or right practice. With the
simple statement that the Sabbath exists for people and not people for the
Sabbath, he disposed of stacks of learned treatises on what was and was not
permissible on the holy day. Jesus repeatedly refused to be separated from
Samaritans, regarded as the spiritual outcasts, as the heathens, of his own
day, and taught that a Samaritan could surpass even a Levite in goodness and
truth. Similarly, from the
earliest times, sensitive Christians have insisted on seeing sanctity and
holiness in the pagan philosophers, a holiness which was not only entirely
consistent with Christianity, even though it occurred many centuries before
Christ’s birth, but which could even enrich and enhance Christian
understanding. Such Christian spirits often incurred the wrath of their
co-religionist over their fondness for pagans. Plato, Plotinus and some of the
Stoics were the objects of this Christian veneration during the early centuries
of Christianity, when for some reason Aristotle seems to have been lost. But
once Aristotle was recovered by way of interaction with Islamic culture, he,
too, became revered by great-souled Christians. As has been
indicated, during much of Christian history, the Greek philosophers were the
only encounter in depth that Christians could have with non-Christian
spirituality of an advanced sort. All this has changed in our own day. Jesuit
novice masters enthusiastically study Hindu practice to gain greater insight
into the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. A Christian of profound
spirituality and deep social awareness, Thomas Merton, clearly ended his life
as a universalist, without diluting his Catholicism or his commitment to his
Trappist community at all. In fact, it is
useful to reflect for a moment on the journey of Thomas Merton. He converted to Roman Catholicism while a
student at Columbia University and a few short years later entered a Trappist
monastery, one of the most rigorous spiritual communities in Christendom, and
one in which the practice of silence is central. His first major publication as
a Trappist monk was The Seven
Storey Mountain, which
became a best seller and which has been translated into scores of languages. It
is a somewhat disturbing book. On the one hand, there is evident in it a
towering spirituality, about which there can be no doubt. On the other hand,
there is also an unmistakable bitterness and condescension with respect to
anything not Roman Catholic. Even Anglican Christianity is treated witheringly
by Merton’s pen. On one occasion the author actually participated in Quaker
worship at Flushing Monthly Meeting, It was, if his account is accurate, not one
of Quakerism’s better First Days, but he took it as being typical. Alas, this
is the experience of Quakerism
which is immortalized in this
great work. In short, Merton’s attitude in The Seven Storey Mountain reflects
the intolerant enthusiasm of the newly converted. With the passage of
years in the practice of inner silence and in the disciplined rigors of
monastic life, Thomas Merton’s perspective gradually changed. He produced
volume after volume of devotional literature in which the old harshness and chauvinism
gradually disappeared and was replaced by a more genuine sort of Christian
charity. In spite of his strict isolation he wrote with stunning insight on the
great political and social issues of our time. Even more surprising, he
eventually translated the writings of Chuang Tzu, one of the scriptures of
Taoism. He developed an insightful introduction to a new translation of the
Bhavagad Gita, and he wrote a perceptive study of Gandhi and
of Gandhi’s spiritual roots in Hinduism. He came to disown The Seven Storey
Mountain and claimed to be struggling to live it down.
Finally, near the end of his life, he was granted temporary leave from the Abbey of
Gethsemane and he made a joyous pilgrimage to the great spiritual
masters of the Far East, including the Dalai Lama with whom he held loving and
brotherly dialogues. As we know, he met
an accidental death while attending a convocation on the eremitical life held
in Bangkok, Thailand, which drew together people from both eastern and western
monastic communities. Let us consider
these words which Thomas Merton
entered in his Asian Journal upon visiting the great Buddhist shrine of
Polonnaruwa: I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and
undisturbed, my feet in wet grass and wet sand. Then the silence of the
extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every
possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the
peace … that has seen through
every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything –without
refutation – without establishing some other argument, For the
doctrinaire, the mind that needs well established positions, such peace, such
silence, can be frightening.… Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost
forcibly, jerked clean out of the
habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if
exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious.…The thing about
all this is that
there is no puzzle, no problem and really no mystery. All problems are
resolved and everything is clear,
simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life is charged
with dharmakaya … everything is emptiness and
everything is compassion. I don’t
know when in my life I have ever
had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one
aesthetic illumination. Surely, with … Polonnaruwa
my Asian pilgrimage had become clear and had purified itself. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton,
page 233. We, like Thomas Merton, must disown the spiritual
chauvinism of the past. We must recognize that in the field of spirituality we
are playing a zero sum game – it is not necessary to suppose that because we
know our own faith to be true that, therefore, someone else’s faith, in an
equal and opposite measure, must be false. Our experience of
Truth is nourished through many things – a formula of Einstein’s, the music of
Beethoven, a beautiful sunset, the death of a loved one, the theology of Thomas
Aquinas. Increasingly, it is possible to see that one can be nourished as well
by other spiritual traditions. Is there any need to assume that Thomas Merton’s
Catholicism was in any measure diluted by his response to the great shrine at
Polonnaruwa? In their commitment
to rediscover and to practice the essential Christianity of Jesus and his
Apostles, our Quaker forebears also rediscovered and practice essential
Christianity’s universalist spirit. The concept of that
of God in every person obviously has profoundly universalistic implications.
Bound by no religious creeds or dogmas and exercising a tradition of
experimental revelation, silent worship, direct individual relationship to God
and openness and inclusiveness, the Religious Society of Friends incorporated a
spaciousness which can welcome into membership people who are not Christian,
and to be enriched by their contribution. There are many
examples of the universalist spirit in Quaker experience. Lucretia Mott, for
example, was a good friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other New England
Transcendentalists. She averred, admittedly to the distress of some of her
Quaker contemporaries, that since God is great and also loving, she fully
expected that He would have provided a Messiah in any age and in any culture
where one was needed. Both George Fox and
John Woolman, to their everlasting credit, recognized that the movement of
Truth could be well observed among
Native Americans, even though they were unacquainted with Jesus of Nazareth. John Woolman
journeyed far and visited Indian communities at great personal risk during a
time of warfare between them and the settlers. Yet, in spite of the polarized
attitudes which warfare commonly generates, Woolman testifies that he felt only
love for the Indians; he found them measurably acquainted with “that Divine
power which subjects the forward will of the human creature.” He sought to feel
and to understand the Spirit and the life in which the Indians lived, “hoping
to receive some instruction from them,” and to see, as well, if they might in
any way be helped by his own following of the leadings of Truth during his
visit. Woolman gave thanks that the Lord had strengthened him to make the
journey in spite of the dangers of war and that he had manifested a fatherly
care over him when, in his own eyes, he appeared to himself inferior to so many
among the Indians. Woolman further recounts how, when he took his leave of
them, an Indian who could not speak English and who had not understood any of
Woolman’s dialogue, said in his own language: “I love to feel where your words
come from.” Certainly this is
paradigmatic of the universal experience and perhaps it is one of the events
which inspired Woolman to write the beautiful lines we all know and love, and,
which so perfectly express the universalist spirit: There is a principle which is pure, placed in the
human mind, which in different places and ages had different names. It is,
however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no
forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect
sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they
become brethren in the best
sense of the expression. William Penn
expresses a similar sentiment in his Reflections and Maxims. The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout
souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death has taken off the mask
they will know one another, although diverse liveries they wear here make them
strangers. In his classic
systematic statement of the Quaker faith, the Apology, Robert Barclay
makes the following observations about The Nature of the Church Invisible: The Church.. .
is nothing other than the society, gathering, or company of those whom
God has called out of the world and the worldly spirit, to walk in his light
and life.…Aside from this
Church there can be no salvation, because this Church … comprehend(s) all,
regardless of what nation, kindred, tongue,
or people they may be, who have become obedient to the holy light and testimony
of God in their hearts. Although they
may be outwardly unknown to and distant from those who profess Christ and
Christianity in words and have the benefit of scriptures, yet they have become
sanctified by their obedience and cleansed from the evil of their ways. For this
is the universal or catholic
Spirit, by which many are called from all the four corners of the earth, and
they shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By it, the secret life is
conveyed from the head and the heart to the extremities of the physical body by
the blood running in the veins and the arteries. There may be members of this
catholic Church not only among all the several sorts of Christians, but also
among pagans, Turks, and Jews. They are men and women of integrity and
simplicity of heart. They may be blind in their understanding of some things,
and perhaps burdened with the superstitions and ceremonies of the sects in
which they have been collected. Yet they are upright in their hearts before the
Lord, aiming and endeavoring to be delivered from iniquity, and loving to
follow righteousness. (Pages 172-3). In more recent
times, the late Howard Brinton, faculty member at the Quaker Colleges of
Earlham, Guilford and Haverford, and with his wife Anna Brinton, co-director of
the Quaker center for study and contemplation, Pendle Hill, begins his book The
Religious Philosophy of Quakerism with a comparative study of the Bhagavad Gita,
the Threefold Lotus Sutra of
the Pure Dharma and the Gospel of John. He concludes that: These three writings, when they express the loftiest
conceptions in their respective religions, show a remarkable similarity to one
another. Though in many respects dissimilar, at their highest levels they are
much alike. They are like persons who climb a mountain starting from different
sides, only to find that the higher they climb the closer they get to one
another. Contemporary
Quakerism will not realize its true destiny if it retreats from its traditional
reconciliation of Christianity and universalism and resorts to a narrow,
Christian sectarianism; or if it fails to attract, to admit into membership and
to cherish non-Christians. But neither will it survive, I think, if there
develops within Quakerism a climate which permits only such theological
discourse among ourselves as might be admissible in a public school classroom. Quakerism’s
extraordinary vocation in
the common human task of structuring the new age which is struggling to come to
birth lies precisely in its traditional capacity to be both Christian and universalist,
and not merely one or the other. I feel uneasy about a tendency among some to
gnaw away at the specifically Christian content of Quakerism, as if seeking
gradually to reduce it to a form of ethical culture, as I do about Christocentric Friends
who seem to seek to import into
Quakerism the sort of dogmatism and chauvinism which has plagued so much of the
rest of Christian history. It is natural and useful for the theologies of
individual Friends to vary widely. But is it not also a particular mission of
Quakerism to embody a Christianity capable of the magnanimity and the devotion
suitable to the essential collaborative process needed among people of faith
the world over in the common task of advancing the spiritual transformations
without which we shall all perish. Clearly, Quakerism
is summoned to an astonishing destiny. If it fails to live up to the
magnificent duty, the fault will not be in Quakerism, but in ourselves. In February of 1984,
I was traveling with two other Friends on the island of Jamaica, visiting
Quaker churches there in behalf of Friends United Meeting. Although Jamaica is
a small island, perhaps the size of Connecticut, the mountainous terrain and
spectacular seacoast give it the grandeur of a continent. One of the Quaker
churches my two colleagues and I were scheduled to visit was located high in
the mountains, and to get to it required traversing a difficult, torturously
winding road which ran steeply uphill along the sides of the canyon, down the
center of which rushed the waters of a very lively mountain stream. From time
to time along the way we encountered a small settlement whose inhabitants we
would see doing laundry in the stream, or carrying water from it for some other
household purpose. Eventually, very high up, where coffee is grown on the
astonishingly steep slopes, we reached Cascade Friends Church, so named because
from it, in the distance, yet higher overhead, one could see a long slender
waterfall which fed the stream we had seen along the way. Various local
Friends had laid down their daily occupations to greet their foreign guests and
they served a wonderful lunch of curried goat, rice and peas, and a punch of
tropical fruit juices given a noticeable zap with a generous dollop of ginger
flavoring. And as we spoke over lunch delicate mists began to gather around the
jagged peaks which surrounded us. I felt certain that if a geologist had been
among us he would have confirmed that the rugged landscape which we had
traversed had been created by the wearing away of the mountains by the swift
stream, the stream in turn being fed by the condensation of these mists which
by their delicacy, seemed so striking a contrast to the rugged rocks around
which they collected. As I sat with our fellow Friends amid these steep slopes, I remembered the
wonderful Chinese paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in New York
City, paintings of mountains and mists, which depict scenes so much like those
visible to us in Jamaica that day, even though the paintings were produced
hundreds of years ago and in a place about as far away as one could get while
still remaining on this planet earth. These beautiful and delicate Chinese
paintings reflect the Taoist philosophy of the culture from which they sprang,
a philosophy which teaches us that human beings at their best are like a
mountain stream: they live close to the earth, they seek the common level of
life and they serve as they go along; when rooted in a spirit of gentleness
like the mist, they can succeed with quiet patience in wearing away all that is
brutal and hard in human nature. And I, having been brought by the mountain
setting to mindfulness of another great message given on a mountain in Galilee,
a message capable of filling every human need again and again, recognized how
often in that remote Cascade Friends Church the same truths have been affirmed
that have been sounded in my own meetinghouse amid the hubbub of New York City
and which had also been understood by those great Chinese painters and
calligraphers from worlds and cultures away: and it was possible to perceive,
at least in that instant, the great merging of ages and of nations which Truth
and faith makes possible. In New York City, at
the Quaker complex where I work, I was surprised and happy one day to
see an old friend (and a Friend) from the midwest who stopped in to do some
research in the Records Room of New York Yearly Meeting. My friend was looking
up the minutes about the disownment of her mother by Oswego Monthly Meeting.
The disownment occurred, as you can probably guess, because her mother married
a person of the wrong faith. Now it was not that she married a Hindu, or a
Roman Catholic, or a Jew, but Oswego Monthly Meeting, being a Hicksite meeting,
disowned her mother because she had married and Orthodox Friend! At first blush
this sounded mildly comical, but it quickly took on the coloration of tragedy
as my friend went on to explain that because of the rift which this situation
had caused, she had never even known her own grandparents. If we can let our
imaginations loose just for a minute, let us suppose that Lucretia Mott, St.
Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi could meet each other. Would they not
recognize a deep kinship? Certainly, they would be clear-minded about their
diverse devotional practices and doctrinal concepts and even about their very
different philosophies of social change. Yet we would hardly expect any spirit of alienation, or of disownment, to
arise among them. The unity which
universalism sees in the various religious faiths is not one of doctrine, nor
of manner of worship, even though many similarities in these areas can be
identified; rather the essential point of convergence is in the quality of the
human person, the quality of spirit, which the sincere and selfless devotion to
any of these different spiritual paths can produce. For spiritual wisdom is not
something we know, but it is something we are, it is a quality of being. Our
minds cannot contain or comprehend knowledge of God; for we cannot contain what
contains us nor comprehend what comprehends us. We can embody spiritual truth,
but we cannot adequately articulate it. Indeed, the longer the radius of our
vision, the wider the circumference of mystery. Those who have a grasp of this
never engage in debates about doctrine. They know that the Truth is to be lived,
not merely to be pronounced by mouth and they know that by their so living,
that which is unutterable will be rendered visible. Thus, the unity
among such spirits as Mott, Gandhi and Francis is beyond words and beyond
concepts. We will experience it directly, and increasingly frequently, as our
shrinking planet brings us closer to more and more people of sanctity from
other religions. In this encounter we will not be creating a new unity with
them. Rather, we will be rediscovering an old unity. We will discover that we
have always been one with them but have only imagined that we were not. We are told that in
the beginning there was but one Word, a Word which is the Mother of all things,
a Word of grace and truth. This Word abides within each and every one of us and
within every human being ever called to life. Existing in the beginning before
all other things were made, the primordial, saving Word was uttered out of
silence and to silence we must return if we hope to hear it again. People of
faith everywhere are engaged in a common journey, a pilgrimage, to discover
within themselves this Word and its revelation of the universal and eternal
things upon which all right living and true peace is based. There are many
paths possible on this journey of search and one of them always opens up to
those who selflessly seek after it. For it is one of the characteristics of
Truth that those who thirst after it eventually come to partake of it and to
express it, as if the price at which Truth is bought is the sincere and pure
longing for It itself. This is why we are promised that those who seek will
surely find. Let us, as Friends,
then, share with all other people of faith the confidence that, having already
found something that is supremely good, there is something more of
inexhaustible measure which, together with them, we have yet to achieve. |