WINTER 2009Tom Etherington
Mullica Hill MMSo we are to have an art show and a carol sing at the December quarterly meeting. Friends of one or two hundred years ago would certainly have taken exception to such goings on, probably even read us out of meeting. The earliest Friends would probably not have been so hasty. True, they lived more simply than their contemporaries, but that simplicity was not a simplicity of style, but a simplicity of limiting the time and energy spent on concern with things of this world to the detriment of the spiritual. Robert Barclay wrote, “If gold and silver were as common as iron and brass, we might expect them to be used just as frequently.”
But when we look back at Quaker forbears, we tend to look back only as far as the 1700s. After the evangelical fervor of the 1600s, Friends looked to the solidification of the movement into a church with an entrenched hierarchy whose object was to keep Quakerism pure and untainted by the rest of the world. Uniformity in outward discipline was a big part of this spiritual decline. Uniformly drab clothing became required, greys, browns, and blacks being the only allowed colors. Art of any kind in their homes or meeting houses was forbidden. Margaret Fell preferred to dress in red like the flowers in the field and protested against this creeping outward uniformity. In 1698 she warned, “It is a Dangerous thing To Lead young Friends much into observation of outward things … for they can soon get into an outward garb, to be all alike outwardly.” In 1700 she wrote that Jesus always testified against “making & prescribing of things outwardly, for his Testimony is in every heart To work inwardly.”
Having left behind much of this outward ritual, Friends today welcome the expression of spiritual truth in graphic art, music, and theater. While we have given up the uniformity of dress and the lack of music and art in our outward lives, it is all the more important that we inwardly live close to the spirit of God. God still yearns for us and speaks to those who will listen, and people still need to fill empty lives by becoming what God intended them to be. The original message of Quakers that gives us power to become the children of God has not changed. Quakers may yet speak in modern idiom to a world desperately in need of spiritual revival.
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Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 09:40 PM
