Reflections on the Fabric of our Lives

A poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, once said, "We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know."

I love the way this image conveys a life. Our lives are interwoven, and only mean something insofar as we are connected. We are building upon threads of the past. And, we can never fully appreciate all of the other lives we touch, or the way our cumulative experience shapes the whole. And yet, we can move through life with single minded purpose, and piercing poignancy.
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I am inspired by one of my favorite Quaker Quotes. James Naylor was arrested and tortured for blasphemy in 1600.  He was released and wounded, heading home to his wife and children. On the way, he was robbed and bound, and found towards evening in a field. He was taken to a Friend's house near King's Ripton, where he died. These were some of his last words:

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It's conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places in the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

 

These thoughts lead me to reflect on the way the Spirit calls us into Community. A favorite Quaker writer, Parker Palmer, wrote in 1977:

God comes to us in the midst of human need, and the most pressing needs of our time demand community in response. How can I participate in a fairer distribution of resources unless I live in a community which makes it possible to consume less? How can I learn accountability unless I live in a community where my acts and their consequences are visible to all? How can I learn to share power unless I live in a community where hierarchy is unnatural? How can I take the risks which right action demands unless I belong to a community which gives support? How can I learn the sanctity of each life unless I live in a community where we can be persons not roles to one another?

Thank you Friends, for being in community with me.

Scott