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Friends United Meeting |
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September 2005
Reading and Remembering
By Michael L. Birkel
The spiritual life embraces more than the reasoning faculty alone can bear. So, like poetry, it speaks to us in symbolic language—not a secret code, but a means of communication in which the images bear much more than their literal content alone.
Earlier Friends did not produce much poetry, yet they did make use of powerful symbols to express the depths of their spiritual lives. Early Friends regarded scripture as having that kind of symbolic power. The stories of the Bible are powerful not only because of their literal meaning but because they communicate in what we have been calling the language of the inner landscape.
Reading scripture is itself a worshipful act. It requires waiting upon the Spirit to understand its meaning for us? Early Friends spoke of the “history” and the “mystery” of scripture. The events of the biblical narrative or “history” have a meaning to believers in the “mystery,” that is, in the interior life.
Early Friend Dorothy White wrote A Trumpet, or, to use her full title in all its 17th-century glory: A Trumpet Sounded out of the Holy City, proclaiming Deliverance to the Captives, Sounding forth the Redemption of Sion, which hasteneth. And this is sent unto all her blessed Children, who wait for her Advancement; this Message of glad Tidings from God the Father of our Lord Jesus, is sent unto you all. The text is a rousing piece, announcing hope to the suffering faithful. She wrote it in 1662.
This was a time of dashed hopes. Quakers and other radical Puritans had been optimistic for building a godly commonwealth in England under the reign of Oliver Cromwell.
After Oliver Cromwell’s death, the social and religious revolution dissolved. The restored English monarch and a vengeful Cavalier Parliament did not tolerate dissent to the official, state-sponsored Church of England. Friends suffered fierce persecution under a series of laws enacted to stamp out nonconformity to the Anglican Church. Despite these distressing external conditions, Dorothy White and other Friends retained hope, based on their internal experience of triumph of good over evil. In spite of the outward trials and persecutions that Friends faced, the great and long-awaited act of redemption is beginning. A Trumpet draws freely on many biblical texts but repeatedly on the later chapters of Isaiah and on the book of Revelation. These two texts were written to offer consolation to the oppressed faithful, and Dorothy White makes use of them in order to offer comfort to Friends. Here is a portion of A Trumpet:
And now is the glory of all nations come,
and the bridegroom’s voice is heard in the land of the redeemed,
who are come out again of Egypt,
who are become the first fruits unto God, and to the Lamb.
These shall arise in the glorious power.
These shall mount upward, as upon eagle’s wings…
These shall come unto the holy mountain, where the feast of fat
things is prepared…
Mount Zion, where the song of Moses and the Lamb is sounded
before his throne,
who hath now appeared in his eternal glory…
And so blessed are all whose feet are upon the rock,
the foundation of God which standeth sure.
I will make my people as Mount Zion, saith the Lord of holiness,
and as the walls are about Jerusalem,
even so is the Lord God round about his people.
And blessed are they that dwell…under the over-shadowing of
the Almighty.1
Almost anywhere in this text, we could cast our nets for biblical allusions and haul in a catch so full that our boat would nearly capsize. Without becoming overwhelmed with details, we can listen closely in places while also stepping back to see the bigger picture. Let’s begin with the opening words of A Trumpet.
And now is the glory of all nations come,
and the bridegroom’s voice is heard in the land of the redeemed,
Dorothy White’s opening words hearken back to the prophecies at the close of the book of Isaiah (66:18) that speak of God’s glory being revealed to all peoples, which for early
Friends resonated with their experience of the universality of the Light of Christ:
I will gather all nations and tongues,
and they shall come and see my glory.
The bridegroom refers to the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, from Matthew 25:6-7. This parable was often understood to refer to the return of Christ at the end of
time. Dorothy White understands this coming of Christ to be a present, inward reality. Now is the voice heard.
And at midnight there was a cry, “Look! Here is the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.” Then all those bridesmaids arose and trimmed their lamps.
But it is not the voice of the bridegroom himself who in the parable utters this cry announcing his arrival. The phrase “the bridegroom’s voice” is mentioned in the Gospel of John (3:29), where John the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom and of John’s joy in Jesus’ coming:
He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore my joy has been fulfilled.
This joy in the arrival of the beloved echoes the Song of Songs (2:12), where the lover, understood by Dorothy White as Christ, the lover of the soul, calls to his beloved to arise and come away:
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
How can we describe Dorothy White’s approach to scripture? Her method of reading is, like the recent book that has brought her writings back to light, “hidden in plain sight.”2
By tracing the biblical strands in this excerpt from A Trumpet, we find a layeredness of meaning in her writing. Exploring the biblical sources evident in A Trumpet suggests how she approached the act of reading scripture, as an intricately woven text, inseparably interwoven into her own life. Her reading of scripture shaped her understanding of events in her own life, and her personal experiences in turn gave shape to her reading of scripture. The relationship was rich and complex. The spiritual vitality of Dorothy White’s writings invites us to consider reviving this invigorating practice of reading scripture in these ways.
Endnotes
1 Dorothy White, A TRUMPET Sounded out of the HOLY CITY, proclaiming Deliverance to the Captives, Sounding forth the Redemption of SION, which hasteneth....(1662) from Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women’s Writings 1650-1700,
edited by Mary Garman, Judith Aplegate, Margaret Benefiel, and Dortha Meredith (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill, 1996), pp. 147-148, with some modernization of orthography.
2 I’ve taken this phrase from the title of the book that has brought Dorothy White back into light: Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women’s Writings 1650-1700, edited by Mary Garman, Judith Applegate, Margaret Benefiel, and Dortha Meredith (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill, 1996).
Excerpted by permission from Engaging Scripture: Reading the Bible with Early Friends by Michael L. Birkel, Friends United Press, 2005.
Michael L. Birkel is Professor of Religion at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.