What is a Leading?
The first topic we have selected is the Quaker concept of “a leading". Future topics will grow out of our discussions on this site, suggestions we receive from visitors, and our own explorations. Please check out the Quaker Speak video that relates to this topic: https://quakerspeak.com/video/how-to-listen-for-a-leading/
Some questions to get us started:
- What is a leading and how is it different from just “following your passion,” “finding your bliss” or doing what makes you happy?
- How does a leading relate to meditation and the inner light?
- Do you feel your life has been led? In what way? What was your earliest experience of following a leading? What is your current experience?
- Do you have a leading about our current social, cultural or political situation and your response to it/them ?
- How can the meeting as a whole support you in your leading?
Our first first post, meant to kick off a discussion, is by Kristina.
What is a leading and how is it different from just following your passion or your bliss or doing what makes you happy?
For me, a leading is deeper than desire. I remember many years ago writing in my journal about desire. Even as a young adult, I recognized myself as a person who is basically motivated by desire, as we all are. It has taken many years though to see that my desires have changed, and that that change came from “an inner conviction that impels one to follow a certain course under a sense of divine guidance” which is the definition for a leading according to the Quaker glossary of Friends General Conference.
As is often the case, there was no direct course of action that resulted in such a fundamental shift, but more so a slow altering. I think Friends have helped me understand that if I think something needs to be done I should do it, or be willing to, rather than expect someone “higher up” to take care of things. This is an important, weighty aspect to life: there is no one higher up to take care of things. When I drop that, my desire to be taken care of has to change, and while admittedly it hasn’t happened over night, I feel that needing approval no longer fits in a life that is willing to trust the impetus behind the doing.
Another example came when I recently took a plein air painting workshop. While I learned a few important and fundamental concepts about art, the teaching was mainly about rules and skills: develop these particular skills, learn and follow these rules and you will be successful (at art or anything else). I was never very good at following someone else’s rules and this is true to this day. So I was not particularly successful in school. I didn’t want to be led. I wanted to learn to ask the right questions.
My desire was:
How do I get noticed?
Who is noticing me?
What will they see?
Now I think:
How do I notice?
What can I notice?
What will I see?
In many ways this is what people do as they get older-hopefully not too much older!-they learn to ask the right questions. We are often misled in life, or wounded by some skewing of the truth, but, as long as we remain hopeful and we listen, we can do something we’ve been asked to do, maybe not as bold as many Quakers before us, but true nevertheless.
Art is what is showing up for me in my life now. Simple brush strokes, applying color to the bottom left-hand corner of a painting which leads to the next color and the next. Painting, especially plein air painting, is a very moment-to-moment experience, alive with the turning of the Earth. I trust the result because I didn’t plan it as a skill-based exercise. I responded. I collaborated.
But then, like it or not, the rules come in. Rules and skills are necessary to create a “truthful” image. So I am back at the beginning, but with a greater appreciation for the circle.
“I look not to myself, but to that within me, that has to my admiration proved to be my present help, and enabled me to do what I believe of myself I could not have done.”
Elizabeth Fry, 1780-1845
Well, that's a rousing start to a new chapter in the life of Gila Friends Meeting! Thank you, Kristina and Sandra, for sallying forth with this blog.
ReplyDeleteA leading ... never thought much about it. Like my Dad before me, I thought a leading was when you're exploring back roads and you come to a fork and say, "That one looks like the worse road; let's take it!" ;-}
I think something less trivial is intended, which for me might be how I became a Quaker. "“An inner conviction that impels one to follow a certain course under a sense of divine guidance” would fit that experience.
My childhood was really unchurched, nominally some sort of Lutheran, but never attending. I was confirmed in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church because my fiancé was Missouri Synod ... a pragmatic more than theological choice. I did the church things, was even an officer in a congregation in Lakewood, WA, but there was no incentive to continue after my marriage fell apart. Not really a commitment.
After I remarried and we were living in Deer Lodge, MT, Jan and I were friends with a young couple in the community who were also Friends, he from Barnesville, OH, and she from Circle, MT. We started meeting in their living room, with their dog snoring in the corner. No trappings. No ritual. No catechism. No hierarchy. The ministry of personal experience ... gained from trudging along the paths of Quaker testimonies.
The first meeting I formally joined was Hopewell Friends Meeting, housed in an ancient slate-roofed stone building dating back to about 1760. As I settled into the silence of my first meeting at Hopewell, I felt uplifted ... I felt I was in the presence of all the Friends who had ever worshipped there! I'd had similar powerful emotional experiences only twice before - at Palapala Ho‘omau Congregational Church in Kipahulu, Maui, HI, and in Casa Rinconada, a Puebloan great kiva in Chaco Canyon. The message of that experience at Hopewell was that I was home, that separate spheres of my existence had moved into alignment ... and that that was good! When I joined Hopewell Friends Meeting in 1980, I said it was because the testimonies and the values of Friends were the truths my life experience had taught me were rock bottom, foundational.
I have since formulated it this way: I'm a Quaker because I believe as I do; I don't believe as I do because I'm a Quaker.
Whether that's a leading ... I'm not sure. Thanks for posing the question!
Tom
Now I think I have a real leading! Hearing that Rep. Angelica Rubio is going to introduce a bill to ban private prisons in New Mexico inspires me to want to do everything I can to support its passage!
ReplyDeleteTV