{"id":2317,"date":"2022-01-01T20:41:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-01T20:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=2317"},"modified":"2022-01-02T21:10:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T21:10:01","slug":"aims-for-a-new-year","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/january-2022\/aims-for-a-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Aims for a New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keith Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.<\/em><\/p>\n

(QF&P 26.70 – Isaac Penington 1661)<\/p>\n

At the start of this new year I\u2019ve been thinking that, when they\u2019re formulated just right, goals and targets \u2013 resolutions if you like \u2013 are very useful in encouraging us to try harder. But if they ask too much, they can be discouraging and demotivating. For me, Isaac Penington\u2019s exhortation to \u201cgive over thine own willing \u2026\u201d asks too much. I note that he doesn\u2019t say \u201ctry to do these things\u201d; he presents them as imperatives \u2013 in modern parlance, he says \u201cjust do it!\u201d I\u2019m sorry, Isaac, I can\u2019t. I am not that Quakerly.<\/p>\n

Do Penington\u2019s words mean nothing to me? That\u2019s not at all what I\u2019m saying. I feel the need to try to respond to God\u2019s will, but I have no hope of reaching the level of submission Penington seems to demand. That probably makes me a very bad Quaker, but I am a Quaker nonetheless, and in my everyday life, I do try to feel some purpose and to respond, albeit in very small, even trivial ways to God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I\u2019ve achieved some success in my efforts to see \u201cthe other side of the story\u201d. When I\u2019m presented with a situation where someone seems to have behaved badly or irrationally, I try very hard to understand why they may have acted in the way they did. I\u2019ve been gifted with a lively imagination, so I can usually come up with suggestions that are at least potentially credible. And often that gives me a whole new outlook on the matter, which I can sometimes share with others.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m much less successful in other areas of submission to God\u2019s will, such as frugality. I\u2019ve tried for a long time to reduce my energy consumption, to print fewer sheets of paper, not to waste food and so on. I\u2019m still conscious that I could do more, however, and one of the few positive things about lockdown was that it made me think very carefully about minimising waste, as everything was so much harder to replace.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really count seeing all people as equal among my successes because I\u2019ve felt this to be true for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, I know that I have no room for complacency; recognising my own prejudices is no trivial task.
\nWhen it comes to truthfulness, I would again claim a modicum of success, but certainly no more. I know that, like all Quaker testimonies, it\u2019s far from being as simple to put into practice as it sounds. Without deliberately trying to be contentious, I believe that there are situations where a lie is probably a better reflection of God\u2019s will than the truth.<\/p>\n

To sum up, I can\u2019t do the big things Penington requires of me; I don\u2019t think I will ever be able to \u201cgive over mine own willing\u201d and \u201cgiving over mine own desiring\u201d is definitely out of the question! So, in 2022 I\u2019ll have to content myself with responding in small ways while always being conscious that I must strive to do better. I hope that\u2019s enough to make my life a little more purposeful, and to provide some small justification for my hope of being a Quaker in more than name alone.<\/p>\n

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Photo by SL Granum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Forty-Three<\/em> Newsletter \u2022 Number 513 \u2022 January 2022
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keith Wilson Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt … Continue reading Aims for a New Year<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":2271,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2317","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2373,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2317\/revisions\/2373"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}