Last month, Falmouth Quarterly Meeting co-clerks invited meetings to send a reflection with a query on “what is left when we no longer gather.” I offer what has been rising for me in our Ministry and Counsel work at Portland Friends Meeting.
I have found myself returning lately to Elton Trueblood’s thought that faith is not belief without proof but trust without reservation. I had noticed that a focus on proof pulls me away from one of the greatest gifts of Spirit, imagination. One opportunity of these times is to stretch our imagination to more fully experience the spaciousness of the Divine.
Our lives separate us into our houses, into small groups of people who are safe to hug, into little boxes on the computer screen.
I remember years ago, Vivian Newlin, an elderly Friend from my childhood meeting, who was peacefully protesting to end the Vietnam war. She was verbally attacked by a local preacher with a loud voice and a big sign which said “Stay in and Win. God is on our side.” “My God,” she declared, “is too big to fit on one side of anything!”
We believe that. We don’t need proof that the visible disconnected pieces are connected by a God too big to fit inside the little boxes.
When we used to meet in the meetinghouse, sometimes, I would try to expand my imagination to simultaneously hold the whole community and the One who gathers us to her. I would look at my beloved community in rows of chairs arranged around the empty center and I would imagine that our community was a giant wheel spinning gently. As a science person, I know that the edge of the wheel on one side is moving in the opposite direction of the edge on the other side. Can you picture that? So, if you select pairs of points on opposite sides approaching the center, it remains true— they are moving in opposite directions. That means that the center is moving in opposite directions at once so is it motionless or, perhaps, motion-full. The center is the One who holds us all.
Now I find myself in worship with a screen full of little glimpses of the people in my community in their separate spaces. Though it has always been true, I am more aware than ever that we are not all present, not all visible in the circle. I stretch my imagination to a shape less like a wheel on my rarely used car and more like the eddy where the water spirals in the creek. I try to simultaneously reach to imagine the scattered community and the fathomless center. I am not seeking proof. I am seeking to lean into trust without reservation.
Queries:
- Can you imagine how to hold community as a whole when the whole isn’t visible?
- Can you imagine simultaneously connecting to the wheel of your community in its new shape and the unmoving center?