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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker Life
June 2002
From the Source
By Martin Cobin
God speaks to us through many channels, through experiences and words. Experiences are multitudinous and varied, including such diversity as the beauty of a tulip and the pain of a crucifixion. When God speaks through words, we may believe the words appeared miraculously, in some form that was revealed to someone who could copy and distribute what was revealed either by writing or remembering. When God speaks though experience, those who are given such an experience are often moved to share it with others; this can be done through writing or through speaking. In all instances, we recognize a source for this recording, transmission, and reception. In the spiritual communication of ministry, the source is God; the recording is done by one who serves as a channel between God and those who did not, themselves, obtain the words or the experience directly; the transmission is the sharing of the words or the experience; and the reception is the consequence of the sharing. Ideally, we would all prefer to receive the ministry of God directly and we frequently do. We benefit from and value, however, the sharing of what others obtain and transmit.
We should recognize this process is not always dramatic. Waiting for God to speak to us as a voice coming from a burning bush, we may not heed the message of the tulip. We will fail to appreciate how accessible God is to us and how constantly we travel in God's presence. Similarly, as recorders and receivers, we will overlook our capacity and opportunities to share spirituality with one another. To engage in the ministry of the written word, we need not be trained as ministers or as writers. We just must be capable of recording what comes to us.
We choose words and react to them influenced by our past experiences. I could react to the word "cat" by remembering the pet purring on my lap by the fire last night, the mountain lion that stalked my granddaughter when she wandered off a bit from our family picnic, or the huge machine pushing earth and stone on the road-building project causing traffic delays on my way to work this morning. The use of words requires both knowledge of context (which can be cultural as well as linguistic) and a degree of interpretation. Interpretation is involved in the recording, the transmission and the reception. We should take all this into account when—as recorders, transmitters, or receivers—we engage in ministry through the written or oral word. Not being sufficiently aware results in many of disagreements and failures among those who would utilize either spoken or written ministry.
Verbal ministry, then, must be undertaken with humility. The limitations of the written word must be recognized. One who would transmit the written word of sacred text should be aware of the problems. One who would formulate a written ministry by self-selecting the words to be used in sharing a spiritual experience or message should recognize that this self-selection is part of a transaction process in which God remains the source. Finally, all of us involved in the transaction process should remain aware of our limitations and the need to provide a minimal context for ourselves by relating what God gives us to what God has already given.
During a recent period of meditation, a question came to me that I recorded in the following manner:
What is the difference
between the spiritual experience
of opening myself to whatever may come
and the intellectual experience
of contemplating the implications and significance
of whatever does come?
Using written language out of my desire to share this, I avoided the use of imagery so as to minimize the divergence of reactions they might stimulate. I wrote in a poetic form rather than as prose going from margin to margin because I wanted the lines to serve as a clarifying method of punctuation. When I now read it to myself as if I were the receiver, I pause at the end of each line and I react to the close interrelationship of the elements within each line. If I was to read it aloud to others, I would pause at the same places, try to establish the same sense of relationships. Each time I read this question as I have written it, I find myself stimulated to explore the answer; for me, that was the original purpose—what came from the source.
Martin Cobin is a member of Boulder Friends Meeting (Colorado) whose writings have been published by Pendle Hill Pamphlets, Friends Journal, Friends Bulletin, and Quaker Life.
Copyright (c) 2002 Friends United Meeting
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