9.13.2006

An Introduction of Sorts

I have spent a lot of time pondering this blog, my meanderings and half formed ideas, and what would I say? Finally a little push from the Light: speak truthfully, speak from the heart, speak with love, and here I am.

I am an attender at a tiny meeting in rural Ontario. When I first arrived I thought of myself as an exile from the Catholic Church, a church I loved, and left with real regret and sadness; now I am thinking myself more as a landed immigrant* working his way towards full citizenship. I also thought, when facing the silence the first time, that this is easy. I was wrong. The silence is profound, yes, but trying, difficult, testing, complicated. "Be silent," said someone or other,"so that the God who gave you speech may speak." Listening for the Light, sifting through the self-delusions and rationalizations is hard work, and I sometimes come from meeting happy, if exhausted. I haven't had any earth-shattering revelations, no insights except for the commonplace (as if these aren't hard enough!), no leadings, save perhaps, for this blog. Yet I have witnessed in a meaningful way Quaker mysticism at work, and a gathering of four Friends huddled around a wood stove on a cold January morning has moved me beyond the expression of mere words.

I hope to write a little about my journey and about my reflections on Quaker thought and practice, listening all the time for the Divine. I am amazed, franky, at the diversity of opinion and thought in Quaker blogdom. I offer this in the same spirit.

* Canadianism, i.e. legal alien

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the conversation, Michael

Peggy Senger Parsons