1981 Conference Reports
As we review the 1981 Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology at Haverford, we well may wonder that four persons from strikingly disparate backgrounds could speak so clearly to Quaker convictions and concerns. Obviously Teresina and Joseph Havens, members of our Society, could speak to Friendly concerns, and they did. But Silvio Fittipaldi has been a member of the Augustinian Order and a student of Zen Buddhism and other eastern religions for many years. Rachel Hillel is from a solid Jewish background and spoke from that perspective and that of a Jungian analyst. However, all of us were seekers, and like the early Friends, we and our speakers were open to truth.
Terry and Joe spoke to personal concerns: the difficulties of achieving true simplicity in daily living and of understanding how our inner lives can be prepared to deal effectively with the wrongs and blindness we see in the world around us.
Yet Silvio and Rachel, too, spoke to some basic convictions Friends have held over 300 years. The conflict of opposites Silvio spoke of led to George Fox’s “great openings.” The emptiness Zen Buddhism awaits is what Friends believe they need as they worship, so that the Spirit can invade.
In regard to Rachel, mother of five, the announcement that she had been an officer in the Israeli army was indeed startling, as we saw before us a slight, dark-eyed woman with a sweet singing voice. However her songs and her message demonstrated allegiance to a different calling.
Rachel did not relate any of her ideas to Friends overtly, but relationships were apparent. For example, when she spoke of God and man’s need for each other, we could recall Rufus Jones’ book, The Double Search.
There was also her story about the young man whose dream told him that some sort of institution was blocking his experience of God. We know our founder, George Fox, actually experienced this repeatedly.
Speaking from a Jungian perspective, Rachel said, “Religious and spiritual events … cannot be made; they happen to us.” She added, “Psychic contents break into life with living force … (as) manifestations of the transpersonal … the experience of God is a psychic realty.”
Similarly, as Fox walked in torment from one English village to another, he heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” And then his “heart did leap for joy.”
Rachel’s description of humble, inconspicuous people, whose saintliness Jews believe holds the world together, brings to mind images of Friends who have gone before—truly humble people through whom the love of God was channeled. We all have our own favorite examples, but many of us knew William Bacon Evans and Rachel R. Cadbury, who, in quiet ways, showed others how to “walk in the light.”
The Gnostic gospels Rachel Hillel discussed, seem to agree with Friends’ understanding of Jesus and his teachings—an understanding derived from divine revelation. Robert Barclay told of an illiterate Friend refusing to accept a certain biblical passage, which Barclay discovered had, indeed, been incorrectly translated.
The Gnostic interpretation of the resurrection as symbolic of a resurgence in the life of the spirit, as Rachel reported, is harmonious with the thinking of many Friends.
To say that a person could—as a child of God—be one with Jesus (as the Gnostics did) has been an offense against the body politic from the time of Stephen to that of the modern absolutist conscientious objector. Early Friends’ belief that in a state of sanctification they could not be wrong outraged authorities of church and state. Nonviolent followers of Jesus still experience this.
Later, when Rachel spoke of God as “wounded healer” one could recall Rufus Jones’ boyhood and his parents saying, when he had done something he knew was wrong, “How does thee think God will feel?”
In her concluding vivid description of the dream of a young girl, Rachel Hillel brought home to us not only the majesty of God, as symbolized by the colossal Buddha of the dream but the need Friends feel for worshipping “in the realm of silence.”
In sum, we find the connectedness between Rachel Hillel’s thoughtful studies, deriving from a striking variety of sources, with the gently humorous personal sharings of Silvio, Teresina, and Joe to be moving and delightful.