Themes

Feeling loved and worthy of love—whether from God or people we are close to—is critical to our capacity to live a life of faithfulness, even facing tremendous challenges. In reality, there is a deep interconnectedness between the love we experience and our ability to trust God and other humans with an open, vulnerable heart. It is very difficult to feel loved by God if we have not experienced love from people who are close to us. 1 John 4:7-21 says that we cannot love God (whom we have not seen) if we do not love our brothers & sisters whom we have seen.

Which comes first: the capacity to offer an open-hearted willingness to God or an open-hearted trust in others? Does it require an actual lived experience of love from other humans? Is Divine love sufficient?

Howard Thurman describes this need to experience both personal and divine love, and their relationship to each other, in Mysticism and The Experience of Love.

Early Friends knew the importance of loving personal relationship. Isaac Penington wrote a Letter to Friends in Amersham in 1667 which begins “Our life is love & peace & tenderness, and bearing with one another…” Paulette Meier set this letter to one of her plainsong chants in Our Life Is Love.

Kenneth Boulding delivered the 1942 William Penn Lecture to Philadelphia YM (Orthodox) on the subject of The Practice of the Love of God.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote this about love: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

The term “beloved community” was first coined by Josiah Royce, the founder of the pacifist group, Fellowship of Reconciliation. The term was picked up by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and used to describe a just society where every person was treated with compassionate care.

Beloved Is Where We Begin contains two intertwined blessings from Jan Nicholson read at a Three Rivers worship in the fall of 2022.

Elise Boulding writes of another form of love in Children and Solitude: “…the fruits of solitude for children: A sense of who and what they are, whence they came, their place in God’s world. And out of this positive and secure relationship with the universe comes the freedom to “play” with creation…”

Trust

Members of a faith community are much more likely to be willing to be transparent about issues going on in their own lives if they feel loved and held by other members of the community—and able to trust others to treat them with compassion and not judgmentalism.

The Closing Minute of the 2011 Quaker Spring Gathering discusses the importance of love and trust within the meeting family, as a way of enabling members to be feel able to open up their lives vulnerably to each other.

Guarding the privacy of others is important in maintaining trust. Confidentiality (a principle that derives from the realm of medicine and law) is often treated as an absolute principle among modern Friends. It is valuable, however, to balance the needs for confidentiality against the need for openness and mutual knowledge within a faith community. See the Queries on Confidentiality & Openness as an aid to discerning these issues within a faith community.

Compassion

  • A Shelter from Compassion by Ruth Durr (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #87, 1956) A refuge from mankind may also be a fortification that dooms us to weep alone. The God within us is compassion.  

Pastoral care

Pastoral care refers to care given to one another within a faith community, particularly in times of illness, grief, relationship difficulties, and other personal hardships. In some meetings, particularly in Friends United Meeting, the meeting hires a pastor (meaning “shepherd”) with care of members being a major part of the role. In other unprogrammed or “un-pastored” meetings, Friends may convene a committee to handle pastoral care needs. Smaller meetings may give this responsibility to the same committee responsible for worship (e.g. Ministry & Counsel Committee). 

The task of caring for one another is a major part of being “members of one another”, united as a body. The idea of pastoral care is described in Jesus’ words to Peter on the beach at the very end of the gospels in John 21:15-17. 

Bill Taber, recorded minister in Ohio YM, calls pastoral care A Fruit of Gospel Order: “…through Gospel Order, Friends will be led to give the pastoral care that is needed or to see that someone is found who can do so.”

Intercessory Prayer

When we lift up requests to others for prayer, either for ourselves or for others, we come to know each other better, reveal the places we need help, and also open ourselves to the loving gift of others’ prayer and concern for us. The practice of “holding others in the Light” in many Friends meetings has deepened our connections with each other. This is discussed more in this library’s section on Spiritual Practices.