
From Worship to Witness
There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of God, but the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind – an earthquake. After the earthquake – fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:12) This was the experience of Elijah hearing and accepting God’s call.
It’s one thing to hear a voice. It’s another to hear what is asked and trust in the power. What did and does this voice ask? It did not tell Elijah that he should return and sit quietly in his cave or, in my case, a Friends Meeting simply connecting to the power of love and peace. Elijah was told to make a huge nuisance of himself and charged with bringing the people to right living, or else they would perish. The prophets had intense struggles; they were ridiculed and attacked, often having to flee for their lives. Prophetic mystery-ministry involves embracing not only the struggle seen in the outer world but also the internal struggle.
Listening to “a still small voice” has been central to my being a spiritual person. While I always knew social concerns were important, I saw a sharp divide between those who identified as peace activists and those who were mystics. I clearly and unequivocally identified with the latter. The first message I gave in a Quaker Meeting for Worship was in the beginning years of Framingham Monthly Meeting when we met in people’s living rooms. I was twelve and simply said, “God is Love.” This was so real to me. My spiritual obedience was and largely remains simply to love with all my heart and soul, to do my best to love my neighbor as myself. It hasn’t been easy, and I fail often, but being obedient and faithful means attempting even with all our sometimes way too humanness.
Twenty-four years later, I had an opening and gave the second message of my life. It was essentially the same. God is, in essence, love, and it’s our job to manifest this in the world. What is wanted from us is to do our part to build a world of peace. The ultimate wish for us is that we live in such a world: a world of harmony, faith, beauty, and joy.
I heard that alleviating the suffering of the oppressed is vital – that we are joined together; as one suffers, so do we all. I heard that I needed to take appropriate initiative, provide unconditional support for others, and learn and model being an ally. The impossibility of achieving a world of peace when any group has to deal with discrimination and violence grew into a conviction that the necessary healing cannot take place until the oppressor and those who let hostility happen learn they have a spiritual disease. The spiritual disease is a soul-obscuring attitude. Thus, in 1990 began the Clothesline Project to bear witness to violence against women.
I devoted myself to this issue for five years, but the still small voice was not finished with me. There was a repeated call, an opening waiting for me to unlock my heart. When I did, I had a very rude awakening about oppression. The perpetrator was me. I was steeped in a culture of racism and benefited without awareness of white privilege. It was time for me to embrace the struggle in a different and scary way. The witness became two-fold: a witness in the world and a self-witness.
For me, the journey from worship to witness travels as a circle. Witness leads back to worship, worship to witness, all embraced in a mantle of holy obedience. All I have to do is get out of the way. Too often, I try to lead the Light into my activities rather than let the Light lead me. Being obedient means surrendering to a particular spiritual path united through the heart, sustained through the breath and the voice. If ever there was a time to work together, it’s now. Our time is short. We are joined together in Light, in Love, in oneness, to heal in order to connect fully with that which is eternal. With gratitude and truth, be ready to change.
(published on the front page of “The New England Friend” Spring 2006 issue)