| The Canadian Friend
November-December 1997
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On Identity
Harvey Gillman - Britain Yearly Meeting Who exactly are you? What is the most important thing about you? How do you fit in here? All of these questions, which I am constantly putting to myself, depend on the context and the questioner for an answer. I am Jewish by birth and culture. I am Quaker by religious conviction. I am gay by sexual orientation. But I wonder whether any of these actually defines who I am, essentially. There are Jews who would maintain that you cannot be Jewish if you also define yourself as Quaker (and a Christian one at that!). There are Quakers who would maintain that if you do not describe Jesus Christ as your Lord and Redeemer (which I do not - at least not without wanting to go beyond the slogan to define what that phrase might mean for me) you cannot be a Quaker, never mind a Christian. And how many heterosexuals give heterosexuality as their defining characteristic? Yet obviously all of these elements make up who I am. I am a northerner in English terms, of working class Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) immigrant stock. I probably owe as much to Manchester and my social origins as I do to the fact that I was socialized into English middle-class life at Oxford where I studied foreign languages - which has added yet another layer to this world of paradoxes. Yet I am aware of the danger of labels. If you took all the above ingredients and put them in the oven, I bet (and I not a betting Quaker) you still would not get the resultant cake. Because fundamentally we are all human beings on a spiritual journey. We are who we are because of all the events in our lives, the people we have met, and our encounters with the Spirit. If I meet you bearing the weight of my badges and labels, and see only your badges and labels, then I do not really see you at all. What has my diverse experience taught me? Well, first of all that there is a possibility, a potential in all human beings, a seed of the divine. In many people that potential is embryonic; it has not been nurtured, it has not found an environment which will help it to grow. On the other hand, I have met too many people of a number of religious traditions where this seed has grown and blossomed to accept that you must only be a Christian for this process to occur. That said, I personally find the Christian Quaker story the most useful one in my life to show me the way to growth to and in the Spirit. If that seems to be a paradox, so be it. I am a Christian universalist. (Another label!) I recently came across a passage by Elias Hicks that spoke to my condition: Christ means nothing but the anointing spirit of God. Jesus, the anointed, was called Christ in the outward manifestation, but it was only the spirit - the light, as the apostle said - that was in Him. There is nothing else by which the soul can ever be saved, but by an obedience to the manifestation of the will of God by his (sic) own spirit in the soul. That passage rang bells for me. I have in the past been described as a Hicksite (yet another label), but I realize that many modern Hicksites have never read Hicks, and possibly would not agree with him - even if they understood him. When this passage is translated into modern thought, I unite with Hicks. I have found the anointing spirit of God in Jews, gays and lesbians, and in Quakers. I have also found a shriveled seed in all these places. It is as we turn within, under the badges and labels, that we hear the true voice. Not that we always understand what that voice is saying to us, but that we turn outwardly to our F/friends around to test what we have heard, and we try to discern possible leadings in the light of our tradition of leadings, concerns, and testimonies. For me Hicks' reference to salvation is not a matter of 'belief in', or even 'faith in'. It is more a matter of being in a right relationship with the divine, which also means being in a right relationship with self, friend, neighbour (and who is my neighbour if not all the inhabitants of the house of the earth?), and the cosmos itself. This, of course, is a process of a lifetime - and perhaps even beyond. Hence for me, the old Quaker idea of conviction and slow conversion is very meaningful. It is this process I call salvation, not a one-off experience which divides me from the rest of the planet. When asked if I have been saved, my reply is, "Continuously - and I leave the rest to God." The leadings of the Spirit have come to me through the very givens of my being. I have learned so much about God through the Jewish tradition, that my Christianity will always be tinged by that - but then Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. I have learned so much about God and love as a gay man, that I have learned that rightness of relationship has nothing to do with sexual orientation. And however much I fail in my everyday life, I am grateful to Friends for giving me a home where I may learn obedience to the manifestation of the will of God through the divine Spirit in my soul - my Christ within. |