'I have discovered yet another way of coming to know the promptings of love and truth in my heart. This is to combine walking in nature with writing.' Photo: Photo: Walt Stoneburner / flickr CC.
Spiritual practices
Judy Clinton reflects on silence, walking and writing
I have loved this opening advice in our little book of Advices & queries since I came to my first Quaker Meeting some twenty years ago. I knew, from my first hearing of it, that it was a deeply significant advice, but I took a long time to begin to access those promptings because I didn’t have the tools to enable me to do so. In my experience, it wasn’t something that ‘just happened’. How did I discern what were promptings from God – as opposed to the creations of my own mind?
Sitting in silence in Meetings for Worship was certainly a beginning. In that palpable silence, shared with others in waiting expectation and sometimes hearing some deep ministry from those in the room, I experienced a sense of there being something ‘other’: something that was bigger than me, something that was felt within my being to be wiser, more insightful and more containing than I had ever experienced. As I came week after week to Meeting a sense that some resource exists, greater than my little self, grew stronger.
The spiritual life
I began to read books about George Fox and early Friends and to talk to others with greater experience within the Meeting about the Quaker approach to the spiritual life. Here I found out about the reasons behind the non-creedal and non-ritualistic ways of Quakers and the importance of listening to the Inner Teacher. Then came my encounter with two profound practices: Writing the Spirit and Experiment with Light. Here I had tools to access and express my inner world and to share it with others.
Writing the Spirit, a method devised by Gillie Bolton, was a way of bringing Friends together to explore, through silence and spontaneous writing and worshipful sharing, the matters that concerned us both as individuals and as a spiritual community. It was through this that I learnt to write out of silence. I discovered that, in this way, I could access not only my deepest personal feelings about a whole range of matters, but revelations about myself that came from a deeper wisdom. This was the Light at work.
Experiment with Light is a meditation devised by Rex Ambler. It is based on his understanding of the process through which early Friends were shown themselves in the Light, individually and together. It was another method that I found, and still find, to be of profound value.
Walking in nature
I have always benefited greatly from walking in nature, especially at times of stress and grief. I have also written journals for years on a regular basis. It has only been in the past year that I have discovered yet another way of coming to know the promptings of love and truth in my heart. This is to combine walking in nature with writing.
I set off – maybe on foot, maybe in my car – with a rucksack packed with a writing book and pencils, a hot drink, something to eat and a plastic bag to sit on when the ground is wet. I go to a beautiful place, ideally with high views, and walk a little. Then I sit and write in response to what is around me. I walk again, and write again and so it goes on. As I proceed I notice how I am becoming calmer, more present to my surroundings and my inner world. The words flow onto the paper, sometimes revealing me to myself through metaphors.
The leadings of God
It is here that insights come. They give me guidance for what I need to be doing next, or simply a steadying that later shows me another way forward in my life. These things I now understand to be the promptings of love and truth in my heart, and I feel it is the Light that is at work within me at these times.
These understandings possess a quality that is quite different from the thoughts of my intellectual mind and my strongly felt emotions. They come with a quiet knowing and are without the usual conflicting ruminations of the mind. They have clarity about them and, even if that clarity is painful to face, it feels right and the way forward becomes clear. This is, I believe, what is meant by: ‘Take them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life’.
I think it is significant that this is our first advice as it seems to me to be the bedrock of all that follows. It is a great blessing that we have this little book to guide us.
