Wanted: An answer to Clara's question

Recently I was reading to Clara, my three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. The book was a colorful little title from our Quaker meetinghouse’s nursery room. Clara was sitting on my lap engrossed.

I was unfamiliar with book about a mean and greedy king, and the more I got into its story the more I realized I was stepping into a theological thicket.

As the story came to its happy conclusion, the once selfish king became “kind and good.” The book has him becoming a “Christian.”

Where upon Clara turned to me and posed the obvious question: “What’s a Christian?"

I was literally struck dumb. I turned to a friend who was with me and suggested that she answer the question.

She too passed on answering.

And so the question was left hanging for us, for Clara and I hope, dear reader, for you.

A few days later, I shared this experience with my Bible Study class, an eclectic, unpredictable and collegial group. Most, but not all, consider themselves Christians.

One member, who happens to be a retired pastor, said I should have advised Clara, “You’ll know a Christian when you see one.”

I responded that with Clara that would simply invite more questions such as “What do I look for?”

Again, I would feel unqualified to answer.

What if she sees “Christian evidence” but the person turns out to be Jew or a Buddhist or a Muslim or, (heaven forbid!) an atheist or a secular humanist…

What if the person is deeply, profoundly NOT a Christian? Or perhaps only a “part-Christian.”

Oh, and by the way, what’s a Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist and secular humanist?

And so forth….

Believe me, these questions are not beyond Clara’s asking.

There’s another question: Can you identify Christians by simply asking them if they are Christians?

If they say “Yes” can you be sure? Are they? If so, why? What if they do “un-Christian things”?

Which takes us back to square one: What is a Christian?

Your turn….

Listening to Being

Recently I’ve played with the idea that I live in a spiritual bubble. Perhaps we all do. The contents are a swirling mess. Kind of like this study of mine. Bits and pieces everywhere. I keep moving ideas around.

Shuffling books and their partially tapped wisdom.

I also have in the mess notes to myself. Journal entries. To do lists.

Also, artifacts. A hand-warmer in a velvet pouch, a quill pen housed in a glazed jar, a magnifying glass, a typewriter (no, two typewriters with more, many more, in the basement), a teal ‘60s-vintage Hermes crank adding machine, slide rules.

Someday stuff. Saved for someday when I can let go.

My spiritual bubble is not “someday.” It is now. Recently I’ve been full of questions.

Being a Quaker invites them.

Quakers turn life’s (and death’s) largest questions back on the individual. No shortcuts here. At least among “unprogramed” Friends. No priests or prophets, no dogma or sacred texts. Oh sure, you can refer to whatever you like, but the questions are yours to answer in your own way.

Quakers must find their own truths. And once found, we work to live by them.

So here I am with my messy, joyous spiritual Quaker bubble.

These days my questions spin around whether I’m a Quaker atheist, a Quaker non-theist (is there a difference?), a Quaker Christian (I think not), a Quaker follower of Christ’s teachings (before the spinmeisters got to them) or a Buddhist Quaker (we Friends have more than a few of those.)

Or maybe I’m all of them. Or none. Maybe the whole “label thing” keeps us from our truth.

I’m a firm believer that putting names on things, whether tangible or intangible, makes them “other.” Sucks the spirit right out of them. Keeps us from absorbing them, and them from absorbing us.

We could use some mutual absorption these days. Not more self-absorption, but self-less absorption. The label-less kind. I find it in the silence of Quaker worship when I banish words from my being — and just be.

Some Friends say they “let go and let God.” I stop with “let go.”

That’s when the bubble bursts and the membrane between “my” spirit and Spirit dissolves. My being flows into Being. Timeless, spaceless Being. And I realize, it has always been this way. The bubble was just another label.

The bubble-label needs to burst with those around us too. How about regularly scheduled spiritual perception checks? Every 3,000 miles or every week or every day. As the operating manual says: “Whichever comes first.”

Share the messy joy of it all. Perhaps that’s why Quaker Friends worship together. Why we worship in silence, without words, without labels.

We listen in stillness to Being.

We can, and should, talk later.