{"id":301,"date":"2013-08-28T18:07:17","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T18:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=301"},"modified":"2013-08-28T18:07:17","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T18:07:17","slug":"q-is-for-quaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Q is for Quaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\n@page { margin: 2cm }\n\t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm }\n--><\/style>\n<p><a name=\".reactRoot[94].[\"><\/a><strong>Why am I a Quaker?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>because it&#8217;s where God wants me to be,<\/p>\n<p>because it&#8217;s a place I can work out how to follow the teachings of Jesus without the rituals and creeds that troubled me in other churches,<\/p>\n<p>because I feel it&#8217;s where I belong,<\/p>\n<p>because it gives me a safe spiritual home from where I can engage with different traditions,<\/p>\n<p>because I feel accepted and challenged,<\/p>\n<p>because together we seek the will of God for us, here and now, and try to follow it,<\/p>\n<p>because Quakers understand that words are inadequate for expressing deep spiritual truths (which is why this is such a hard question to answer!),<\/p>\n<p>because I go to Meeting for Worship and am aware of the Presence.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I discovered I was a Quaker in my late teens\/early twenties when searching for an understanding of God, what God wanted of me and what my Guide promise to &#8216;do my duty to God&#8217; really meant. I&#8217;ve realised that it doesn&#8217;t matter to me whether God is &#8216;real&#8217; or a human construct, but that it does matter to me that I believe. Within Quakerism, I have been able to explore my beliefs and deepen my understanding, and experiment with different ways of expressing those beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>How am I a Quaker?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>by remembering that there is &#8216;that of God&#8217; in everyone I meet, be that face to face, by telephone, by email, in online forums, or otherwise,<\/p>\n<p>by acting from love, not from anger,<\/p>\n<p>by finding frequent opportunities (alone or with others) to be quiet and reconnect with the Presence,<\/p>\n<p>by pausing to give thanks for food, friends, health, doubts, difficulties, sunshine, rain, everything life offers me,<\/p>\n<p>by heeding the &#8216;promptings of love and truth&#8217; in my heart,<\/p>\n<p>by expressing gratitude,<\/p>\n<p>by giving time to listen,<\/p>\n<p>by being aware of the present moment, where I am, and who I&#8217;m with,<\/p>\n<p>by loving my neighbour as myself,<\/p>\n<p>by questioning why I&#8217;m doing what I&#8217;m doing, how I&#8217;m doing it, how I could do things differently,<\/p>\n<p>by asking &#8216;is this the way it would be in the Kingdom of God \/ Republic of Heaven \/ Paradise ?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>by continuing to make changes (however small) to the way I live to make my lifestyle simpler, more peaceful, more honest, better aligned with the will of the Divine.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In practical terms, I do a lot of Quaker stuff: attending Meeting for Worship, facilitating study groups, supporting the &#8216;Becoming Friends&#8217; scheme, convening children&#8217;s committee. I do a small amount of Buddhist stuff: walking mindfully, trying to follow the five mindfulness trainings, occasionally going to sangha meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Outside Quaker structures I do a very ordinary, part-time office job for the NHS, run a Guide unit, serve on the committee of the local interfaith association, grow some fruit and vegetables on my allotment, try to keep up with the housework and support family members. I am blessed with a supportive family and local meeting, good colleagues and friends.<\/p>\n<p>I have a vision that the Kingdom of God is right here, right now, in Watford, as elsewhere, and a desire to help other people to perceive that. The way to that end is by many small steps, and mostly not by talking &#8216;God language&#8217;. It is by what I do and how I do it, not by what I say.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i>This was originally written for and published on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nayler.org\/?p=652\">Nayler &#8211; the Living Spirit<\/a>, but it seems to fit in this blog too, so I&#8217;m republishing it, slightly updated. The other entries in the How? Why? strand on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nayler.org\/?p=164\">Jez&#8217;s online magazine<\/a> are all well worth reading.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why am I a Quaker? because it&#8217;s where God wants me to be, because it&#8217;s a place I can work out how to follow the teachings of Jesus without the rituals and creeds that troubled me in other churches, because &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=301\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}