| Make of yourself a Light.
--Buddha |
In searching for stories from the Hindu tradition, I recently came across one that seems a perfect illustration of what religious education can and, in my opinion, should do. I have condensed it somewhat, and offer it herewith. I can think of no better example for Friends of how belief in "that of God in everyone" can change society.
Prince Hemachuda was hunting deep in the forest when a ferocious windstorm separated him from the rest of his party. Struggling against the powerful gusts, he glimpsed a small hermitage through the swirling clouds of dust. A young woman greeted him at the door and welcomed him hospitably with fruit and juice. . . . A clarity and intelligence radiated from her that was completely unlike the silly and superficial girls at [Hemachuda's] court.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "Why are you living alone here in the forest?"
The woman smilingly explained that her name was Hemalekha. She was the foster daughter of the sage Vyaghrapada. Together [they] lived quietly in the forest, practicing yoga [union with God] and worshiping Shiva. . . .
[Hemachuda was] love-smitten . . . [and] asked for [Vyaghrapada's] permission to marry Hemalekha. With his clairvoyant powers, Vyaghrapada looked into the future, and seeing that only good would come of this union, gladly gave his consent.
Hemachuda threw himself enthusiastically into married life, but noted that his wife never lost a certain reserve. . . . "I am always looking up to you, like a lily that turns its face to the moon, but nothing I do seems to please you," he complained one day. . . . "Why are you so indifferent to the wonderful things I can offer?"
"Darling, it's not that I don't love you," Hemalekha answered. "But I'm searching for the greatest joy of all, pleasure that will never lose its flavor. All the delightful things I've experienced here become tiresome after a while. . . . Right now my body appears beautiful to you, but as I get older, will it continue to appeal to you? Everything we cherish in life is eventually taken away from us, even our own bodies. There is no lasting happiness here."
As Hemalekha spoke, Hemachuda found dispassion beginning to well up in his mind too. As the months passed, Hemachuda [found] himself . . . one moment surrendering to his old impulses to indulge himself, and at the next feeling disgusted with himself and with people and things that no longer seemed to satisfy him. Finally he got on his horse and rode out to an old, abandoned tower. Ensconcing himself in the highest room, he sat down to follow his wife's detailed instructions about meditation and find lasting peace within himself.
As the weeks went by, Hemachuda's meditation deepened until finally he reached . . . the deepest state in which duality vanishes and one is immersed in the absolute unity of the being. The experience dumbfounded the prince . . . and he determined to spend the rest of his life in this condition.
One day Hemachuda felt his wife sitting quietly beside him, but he refused to open his eyes. "I pity you," he said, "still going through the motions of life at court. I have found the greatest good and will remain here in perfect Self realization. I wish you well, but please leave me alone."
"Darling, you are still as far from Self realization as the reflection of the stars in a pool is from the sky," Hemalekha smiled. "What kind of realization is this that vanishes the moment you open your eyes? Abide in your true Self . . . and resume your responsibilities at court. The Self is not harmed if you leave the world or if you remain in it. . . . My dearest love, come home."
Hemachuda's father and brothers were amazed at the difference in him. He now went about administering the kingdom with tranquillity and wisdom, and his relationship with his bride had changed from one of passionate infatuation to profound respect and deep sharing. When his relations asked Hemachuda how he had come to change so much, he taught them just as Hemalekha had taught him. Now the ministers were impressed at the dramatic change in the royal family, who were suddenly showing a maturity and serenity completely uncharacteristic of them. And now the people of the kingdom could scarcely believe the transformation in their ministers, who were suddenly tempering their actions with spiritual insight. The people wanted to know how this had happened, and the ministers in turn taught them.
In the end, nothing at all changed: Hemachuda and Hemalekha still loved each other, the king still ruled, the ministers still ministered, the washermen still cleaned the laundry, the cooks still cooked. . . . But everything had changed: all the people went about their business with Self awareness and a profound mutual respect born from their newfound recognition that the divine being they had discovered in themselves also existed in every other living thing. . . .
Condensed from Linda Johnsen, Daughters of the Goddess: Women Saints in India, St. Paul, MN: Yes International Publishers, 1994, pp. 15-17.
Religious Education Committee Clerk Renee-Noelle Felice can be reached c/o the Yearly Meeting office.
Can we take a few minutes and recall William Penn?
His birthday was October 14; he was born in 356 years ago, in 1644. This is an anniversary little-noted in the Commonwealth he founded.
Probably Penn the Quaker would have preferred it so: Quakers of his day sternly disapproved of formal holidays, did not observe Christmas, and even left many of their graves unmarked.
But perhaps I can be forgiven for wanting to take note of it here, for the truth is I admire Penn very much. Many Pennsylvanians know Penn only as a distant profile atop Philadelphia's City Hall; but like that statue, he was a many-sided figure who made important contributions in many fields of thought and action. Ironically, one source of Penn's relative obscurity may be the flip side of his accomplishments. That is, his vision and large-heartedness prevented many memorably awful chapters from being added to Pennsylvania's early history.
After all, he made and kept a peace with the natives that long outlasted him, so there are no wars of consequence to remember from that era. Further, while most early Pennsylvanians believed in witches as firmly as did the good citizens of Salem in Massachusetts, Penn saw to it that there were no witch hunts in his colony.
And of course, his pioneering brand of religious toleration precluded the dramatic heresy trials and banishments which so stained the history - but enriched the literature - of New England. In sum, Penn's work, both in England and in America, still benefits almost all of us, every day, in ways we now take for granted.
Not that Penn was a pure idealist. When he laid out Pennsylvania, he not only hoped to establish an outpost of religious and political freedom; he also wanted to make a fortune in real estate. By rights, he should have become rich from the new territory; lots of others did. Unfortunately, Penn proved a better statesman than an entrepreneur. Besides having to fend off continual challenges to his position on both sides of the Atlantic, he was also defrauded and bankrupted by his own business manager, a fellow Quaker.
In fact, apart from his momentous accomplishments as a statesman and Founding Father, William Penn's later life is a tale of almost unrelieved trouble, which keeps him at a human scale, at least for me: His political fortunes veered dizzily from being a royal favorite to fighting charges of treason.
On the personal front, his beloved first wife Gulielma died young, as did several of his children. Most of the others, especially those who tried to run the Commonwealth after him, were great disappointments. Selfish and foolish, they squandered their heritage while grasping after power and wealth. They were despised by Ben Franklin, and unmourned when the rebels of 1776 finally sent them packing.
Through it all, Penn was sustained by a deep faith which is hardly mentioned nowadays. Nevertheless, besides his political work, he produced many profound religious writings, such as, "Some Fruits of Solitude." Still in print after three hundred years, many consider this slim volume a classic.
In it Penn gave his Christianity a universalist tenor, as in this quote: "The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers." Few modern theologians could improve on that.
In William Penn's life we can see the heights and depths. "Never was there any person, wrote his friend James Logan in 1706, "more barbarously treated or baited with undeserved enemies." True enough; yet it's also true, as historian E. Gordon Alderfer noted in 1957, that "Penn was in the vanguard of those who resurrected the principles of religious freedom, separation of Church and State, and government recognition of the rights of conscience."
A full, productive life, I'd say; one worth remembering once a year or so.
Happy birthday, Friend William.
Chuck Fager
Cheshire Frager's talk to Yearly Meeting last summer was an inspiration, a wake-up call, and a challenge to religious education. Most of the children who come to us are already immersed in consumer culture for most of their waking hours - even those whose parents' values are informed by Quaker testimonies of peace and simplicity. What can we do, in one hour a week, to counteract the onslaught of consumerism?
I submit that we begin by joining with others in our meeting, especially the parents, in serious discussion about how we lead our lives. The children will learn mainly from what we do; our words will make sense to them only as explanations of the reasons behind what they see us doing. One guide to such discussions is Trek: venture into a world of enough, published by the Mennonite Central Committee and available for $9.00 (plus shipping) from Alternatives for Simple Living, P.O. Box 2787, Sioux City, IA 51106, (1-800-821-6153) or www.simpleliving.org.
Then, we include in our curriculum topics from some of the many excellent resources listed in the new Right Sharing of World Resources bibliography.
This will be available in early December (hopefully, at Representative Meeting). If it or you don't make it to Representative Meeting, write to Mary Eagleson and ask for a copy: 113 Greenacres Ave., White Plains NY 10606 or MLEagleson@aol.com.
Our meeting, Somerset Hills, has only two children, a four-year-old girl and her brother, age seven. When they arrive, we have a tag team approach. I take them for half of the time, and my husband, Larry, takes them for the other half. Seems to work out well. Larry takes them out of doors for ball practice, and I do the reading, drawing part.
Best, Carol Coulthurst
In order to see their relatives, the children of prisoners in NYS correctional facilities must spend many long hours traveling from places like New York City to one of the 70 prisons in upstate New York. The AFSC Families of Prisons Project in the Syracuse office has designed kits for these children to give them a positive outlet and help reduce stress and fatigue associated with long-distance bus travel.
Each kit must contain the following very specific items so that each child will receive the same items, and the items must fit in a clear Ziplock freezer bag, 10" by 11":
Ithaca Monthly Meeting's Power Quakers (teens 13-18) have pledged to make 100 kits for the AFSC project before Christmas. Perhaps this is a project your Monthly Meeting and First Day School can take on.
Send your kits to:
| The opportunity to learn--sometimes the struggle to understand--the deep spiritual basis of each of our corporate testimonies and practices, is a joy and a blessing. |
| Jeffrey Aaron |
Hello! My name is Kyri Murdough, and I am a 16-year-old junior from Lansing, New York. I attend the Ithaca Friends meeting and have been attending since I was 3 years old. My mentor, Janice Kelly, started an Out of the Nest, Into the World program at our meeting, and I was the guinea pig. In the program, each teenager at the age of 15 chooses a mentor. That mentor takes them through a modified version of Quaker Basics for six weeks and then meets with a clearness committee. After the person has completed those two steps, they choose a place outside their community to do a service project for a week or so.
I chose to go to Tutwiler, Mississippi. When Janice and I arrived in Mississippi, we were
greeted by Sister Maureen, a nun who had started a community center in Tutwiler 10 years
earlier. I latched on with The Helpers of Christ in building a house. We started from
scratch and built the entire house in nine days. I mostly painted and stained cupboards, but
I also put up shutters and cleaned floors. I also got to do some work at the community
center, where I played my violin for the kids and senior citizens. The woman that we built
the house for was named Shirley. She had three wonderful children, and it was such a great
feeling knowing that I helped another person. I encourage people of all ages to go out and
do community work, because it is an absolutely wonderful thing to do for someone else.
FROM FAITH AND PRACTICE, APPROVED THE 31ST JULY 1998, PAGES 41-43 (PAGES 55-57 IN THE 2001 PRINTING)EDUCATION In the quest for truth, training our minds is one way to improve our understanding of God's world. The home is the primary source of education. Quaker parents take serious responsibility for their roles as parents. Experience, well evaluated, is perhaps the highest form of learning. We hope schools will be environments of respect, receptivity, and excitement. Friends' schools encourage acceptance of individual differences within a caring community, the development of creativity, and spiritual as well as mental growth. The curriculum should be true to specific facts as well as to the whole of life and should be presented to students with the wonder, energy, awe, and love that nourish the life of the spirit. Many Friends are engaged in working to improve public education. We have a concern that schools provide an opportunity for young people to learn to care for each other and to practice the principles of cooperation. We want to talk about teaching methods and content with legislators, school boards, administrators, and teachers. The aim of learning, whether it be in a school or at home, is to make whatever testimonies we live by more of a need than a choice. . . . So that it becomes unthinkable not to serve others. So that it becomes unthinkable not to consider all humans part of the same family. So that a Schweitzerian "reverence for life" becomes a need rather than a self-conscious choice. Then, perhaps, some of our testimonies may have more meaning. - Richard L Eldridge, 1984 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Spiritual growth is on-going in all parts of our lives. Religious education is a useful part of this growth. It should be carefully planned to meet the needs of varying ages, but everyone in the meeting can help us understand that religion and everyday life are one and the same. Do we give our young people, starting well before senior high age, a good grounding in Quaker ideas and activities including worship and the process of business, so that they know what this religion is, and how we are putting our principles into action in our lives and our world? Do we make it clear what the joys and responsibilities of membership are so that they know what is and isn't expected? Do we make it clear that we are seeking too? Do we involve them regularly in activities that include people of all ages? Do we involve them in the workings of the meeting: committees, planning and running activities including business meetings? Do we try to keep our business meetings from being "dull, boring, and uninteresting"? Do our adults know our young people as individuals, not just as a collective group of "them" or as "so-and-so's children"? Are we really Friends? Is there joy in our worship, business, first day school, and other activities? Do we celebrate together? - New York Yearly Meeting, 1979 Specifically, through a realization of the living presence of God, religious education should enlarge and enrich our lives in such areas of experience as worship, the world of nature, the Bible, the life and teachings of Jesus, the history and testimonies of Quakers, the examples of other great religious leaders, the work and play of the meeting, and sharing with other peoples. Meetings often appoint a religious education committee. This committee, or the monthly meeting on ministry and counsel, provides guidance and suitable material for classes for children, young persons, and adults. Meeting retreats and conferences provide times to grow spiritually and to expand awareness of the ways of Friends in other places and of people of other faiths. |
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