Reflections from the Inner Light

A Journal of Quaker Spirituality

James R. Newby

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532686191
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In this important book of Quaker spirituality, Jim Newby writes about his spiritual journey and the ways he has sought to navigate an increasingly complex world and understand his purpose in it. A lifelong Quaker, Newby seeks to discern the primary ways in which he has grown spiritually, which are divided into the following parts: turning inward, community and relationship, pain and growth, path of a seeker, and affirmations. Each chapter within these parts concludes with queries to encourage readers to reflect upon their own spiritual journeys. Readers may find what Newby writes humorous, or his writing may provoke tears, questions, and challenges to one's beliefs. Humor and tears, questions and spiritual challenges, are all of God, for to grow in Spirit encompasses all the feelings and emotions through which we pass in this life. In the words of Newby's late friend and author, Malcolm Muggeridge, "Every happening great and small is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message." These reflections are Newby's attempt to get the message.

Part I.

Turning Inward

1.

Silence and the Inner Light

. . . an intensified pause, a vitalized hush, a creative quiet . . .

Silence has always played the central role in my spiritual development. As the son of a Quaker minister, each First Day, (Sunday to the world beyond Quakers), would begin by “going to meeting.” As we would find our regular seats in the little Friends Meetinghouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota (my home community for the first eight years of my life) my mother would turn to me and my siblings, raise her finger to her lips and politely “shhhhhhhhhhhh” us. This was followed by the familiar words which every Quaker knows by heart, “It is time to center down and mind the Light.” I knew the routine, and early in life I learned that in this experience of quiet seeking the Sacred and the human could meet. It was hallowed ground.

My family can trace its Quaker roots to the mid-seventeenth century when George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, began his ministry in northern England. The Newby name is found in several accounts of early Friends’ work. One of my relatives paid a particularly high price for her faith. In his book, The Beginnings of Quakerism, Vol. 1, William Braithwaite shares the story of Margaret Newby, a distant cousin, who dared to share her faith in public in 1655, thirty-four years before the Act of Toleration of 1689. Braithwaite explains: “The place had already earned the name of ‘the persecuting town of Evesham’ when in the middle of a cold November two women Friends in Westmoreland, Margaret Newby and Elizabeth Cowart, came to it. After a large meeting, they went to visit prisoners. The townspeople were excited against the Quakers, and when one of the women, Margaret Newby, began to address them she was arrested and put in the stocks.” Margaret Newby was left in the stocks and in the cold damp weather for seventeen hours. As a result of this exposure, she later died. Her life and her witness were a source of enduring hope and strength for many others.

The Newbys eventually migrated to America, settling on the coast of North Carolina in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties. Here they joined several Friends who had migrated earlier, and helped establish the Piney Woods Meeting, now the oldest continuous place of worship in North Carolina.

The most important contribution that Quakers have made to the world of theology is the belief that every person has within himself or herself an Inner Light of God, and that silence is the best way to connect with this Light. “Silence is a natural demand born of a need for God, felt by young and old, in all the world’s religions,” begins a statement adopted by the Friends General Conference. It continues, “In silence we may worship together, sharing our search for life, sharing our quest for peace, sharing God’s gift of love.” While recognizing that silence is just the medium used to connect with the Inner Light, silence can sometimes be a dead form or an occasion to sleep. However, and this is what my mother’s shhhhhhhhhhhh was about, it may be, to quote Rufus Jones, a Friend of an earlier generation, “an intensified pause, a vitalized hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of mutual and reciprocal correspondence with God.”

Wow! “An actual moment of mutual and reciprocal correspondence with God.” In other words, in silence, God, the Creator of the Universe, could meet with me, a small boy in Minnesota, and impart whatever Godly wisdom he or she wished to impart. The idea of such an encounter was “heady” and “heart” stuff for a seven-year-old, and I took this possibility very seriously. With eyes closed so tightly they hurt, and hands clasped so firmly I nearly cut-off the blood supply, I waited, and waited.

“Spiritual examination is the goal of Quaker silence,” J. Brent Bill has written in his book, Holy Silence. “At its most basic, it can be as simple as using the silence as a time of asking questions about ourselves. Do I see my time, talents, energy and money as gifts from God? Do I buy more stuff because I need it, or to impress my neighbors or myself?”

Silence, a time for slumber or a time to connect with the Inner Light of God and spiritually examine our lives. In our day of loud traffic and music, of yelling politicians and evangelists, silence is a rare commodity. But silence, I am convinced, is the place where spiritual growth begins. To quiet the competing voices within, and the clamor without, is to provide that time and space necessary to hear the “still small voice” of the Living God.

In the busyness of life that entraps us, may we try to find that silent chamber where we can be still and examine ourselves spiritually. May we open our hearts and minds to the Inner Light of God. Each time that we are distracted from the stillness, let us quietly return to holy silence.

What are your first memories of quiet solitude wherein you encountered the transforming possibilities of silence?

Do you find regular intervals throughout your day when you can be still and seek to connect with the Inner Light of God?

2.

Where Words Come From

I love to feel where words come from . . .

His name was Papunehang. Although I have always had difficulty pronouncing and spelling his name correctly, his words spoken over two hundred years ago have had a lasting effect on my spiritual life. As the story goes, the eighteenth century Quaker, John Woolman, best known for his efforts to abolish slavery, and of whom I write extensively in chapter 25, felt “led of God” to travel among the American Indians in western Pennsylvania. On that incredible journey, Woolman’s physical life was in constant danger. Upon arrival in a certain Native American village, Woolman invited some of the inhabitants, Chief Papunehang among them, to sit in silence and worship with him. At the close of this time that Quakers would call, “Silent waiting upon God,” Papunehang turned to Woolman, and through an interpreter said, “I love to feel where words come from.”

The story is a classic in Quaker circles. The spoken words of Chief Papunehang reach into the heart and soul of what meditative silence can do and mean. Within that feeling, words are expressed, both inwardly and outwardly, and transformation occurs. As a form of spiritual expression, words by themselves are imperfect, and feelings unexpressed repress our souls. But when feeling and word combine, we reach into the souls of one another, and spoken and unspoken words are shared. In such reflective silence, we become spiritually aware, and being spiritually aware, we become self aware and socially aware of our human interconnectedness.

I have been asked on numerous occasions, “How do you define spiritual?” Good question. For me, the word is elusive and is difficult to define fully. This mysterious quality is important, and I believe the word will always elude capture and exact definition. Our human vocabulary needs such words, words that are always just beyond our grasp, in a region where we travel more by faith (another elusive word) than by sight, more by experiential feeling than by logical reason. And so, when I use the word spiritual or spirituality, all those who are travelers and seekers in the mysterious realm of faith will understand what is meant, but not fully. All our experiences in this realm are unique to those experiencing them.

Words can provoke life stories and experiences, where, upon reflection, we can track the guidance of the Inner Light. To feel words, rather than defining them intellectually, or merely using them as a form of verbal or written communication, is to begin the process of connecting with that Divine Center that resides within each of us, and out of which we are moved into the realm of transforming spiritual growth. Words are not the experiences, but they can be one means to take us there.

When separated from the Inner Light, words can be hurtful and spiritually destructive. We all know what it is like to be the perpetrator of careless, hurtful language, or to be on the receiving end of a verbal attack. However, there are words when spiritually felt that can take us to that inner sanctuary where Chief Papunehang could feel “where words come from.” We can experience spiritual growth through the spirituality of expression: One cannot read the Beatitudes and not feel them spiritually. One cannot read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and not be moved spiritually.

An old Chinese proverb says, “Words are the keys to the heart.” This sentiment was certainly true for Papunehang. In spiritual silence, words that are “keys to the heart” are formed. And when we have learned through the discipline of silent waiting how to feel where words come from, we can experience how we are being quietly taught the ways of God.

How have words affected you spiritually?

Can you relate to Papunehang in his expression, “I love to feel where words come from?”

3.

Transforming Moments

I am not the man I was . . .

In 1981, two important books were released. Both sought to explain how one can understand spiritual experiences. One of these volumes was Jim Fowler’s Stages of Faith Development, and the other was Jim Loder’s The Transforming Moment. Each book is important in its own way, and I have used both in my teaching.

As much as I respect the work of Jim Fowler and his ground-breaking book, I have found myself more and more captivated by what Loder calls, “transforming moments.” Because of Jim Loder and his work on transformation, I decided to do my doctoral work at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he taught.

I love transformation stories. I enjoy reading or hearing about the flashes of light from heaven that transformed Saul to Paul along the Damascus road. Or there is the wonderful transformational experience of Ebenezer Scrooge following his confrontation with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Scrooge exclaims toward the end of this classic, “I am not the man I was!”

History, and specifically Christian history, is filled with stories of such transforming moments. There was St. Augustine who heard voices of children saying, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” And when he picked up his little volume of the Apostle Paul’s Letters, and read, his eyes fell on a passage in Romans (Romans 13:13-14) which changed his life, and subsequently, Western civilization. There was the moment when George Fox heard a voice that declared, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.” There was the time John Wesley, the father of Methodism, heard Luther’s Commentary on Romans being read, and his heart was “st...