In a billion years, our sun will destroy our planet. Or so they say. Our species has lived here for half a million years, so we seem to have two thousand more species-lifespans ahead of us before the oceans boil away.
Thoughts of infinite time and space don’t hold my attention well. So I file them away in my head under “infinite mystery.” Right next to “God.” Such a little word, “God.” So insistent. So promising.
About 2500 years ago, the prophet Abraham – in myth or in fact – marched his people northwest along the Euphrates, southwest along the coast of the Mediterranean, and into Egypt. Then they doubled back to the Promised Land, Canaan, and settled down. That was the land God had promised to Abraham in exchange for unwavering faithfulness. In one of God’s extreme loyalty tests, he required Abraham to kill his own son. Depending on which holy book you read, that son was either Israel or Ishmael, but in either case, the son was spared. In time, each boy fathered twelve sons, which ultimately did make Abraham the Father of Nations, patriarch to the Twelve Tribes of Israel (which fostered Judaism and, by extension, Christianity) and the Twelve Tribes of Ishmael (which fostered Islam). Then all those tribes marched into the welter of kingdoms, empires, and nation-states whose wars of conquest have plagued the Earth ever since.
As millions of victims would attest, if only they hadn’t been (tortured and) killed in holy wars, religious communities routinely fail to demonstrate mercy or kindness. Even Quakers, whose core identity hinges on respecting every person’s authentic, individual connection with the Divine; even Quakers, whose self-scrutiny for signs of self-deception have produced an entire query-based approach to faith and practice; even Quakers have succumbed to the appeals of petty cravings and willful ignorance as we have stepped onto the public stage and decided what was good.
Certainly not all Quakers have failed our faith as tragically as some, but all have been complicit, and all today are feeling the pain of the public airing of our corporate hypocrisies, and many are feeling responsible for them – our history of prominent founders who enslaved people of color, our history of enlightened educators who indoctrinated Indigenous children with European beliefs, and our history as an egalitarian society of “publishers of truth” which for centuries published chiefly the words of men and rarely of women.
By nature, people derive a sense of well-being from offering care towards others. Little doses of endorphins reward us when we perform random acts of kindness. Also by nature, our sense of well-being is strengthened from receiving assurances that we matter, as is demonstrated by scores of successful suicide-prevention programs. Through infinitely mysterious means, we have been created to care and to matter.
At their best, religions hold people together so they can care for each other and become known to each other. But religions are full of people, and people are full of petty cravings and willful ignorance. Foundational teachings and traditional practices usually manage to hold some members tight to the benevolent core of any religion, but the raw power of a mass of people seems more interesting to many. A person might take hold of such power and use it – to get things, or to get things done. And many persons have indeed taken charge of religions in this way.
The Religious Society of Friends set itself in motion in the 1650s. Our founders determined to spread their Truth throughout the land “with a tender, meek spirit” and to see that their general outreach meetings would “be kept in order and sweet in the Life of God.” The Elders at Balby gave this advice in their epistle of 1656, which they labored together to create as a gift to Friends they knew well and to strangers they might never know. But this was no random act of kindness, there was nothing random about it. The Epistle from the Elders at Balby, 1656, enumerates point-by-point instructions for a faith community that plans to take its directions straight from God.
Friends like to say that we are in the world, but not of the world. Then let us listen now for the sound of forever. Let us not move until we are moved in kindness towards any creature, no matter what their role. ~~~