The Quaker Enterprise of Metaphor, continued

Regardless of whether early Friends were fully aware of this philosophy (it’s possible some had encountered it through neo-Platonists or alchemy), they nonetheless sensed its working in what they voiced as Christ and the Light. As Rosemary Moore observes (The Light in Their Consciences),

"In the first years of the Quaker movement, … [George] Fox was mainly concerned with the unity between Christ and the believer, for which he was several times charged with blasphemy. When he spoke of ‘the light,’ sometimes he used the phrase as an equivalent to Christ and sometimes he meant the way Christ made himself known. It may be that ‘the light’ developed into the characteristic Quaker phrase because it was a safe alternative to ‘Christ,’ to be used with less risk of blasphemy charges."

One quality of metaphor is its ability to convey multiple meanings, with the reader or listener responding from individual experience. It may simultaneously embrace a number of images and corresponding ideas, to be applied at will; light, for instance, may be seen as the sun, a rainbow, a ray or beam, a flame, a wood fire, a forest fire, a neon bulb, a house ablaze, or even a specific frequency somewhere between infrared and ultraviolet, each with its own set of personal associations. Light, alone, remains abstract and flexible, as does Seed. In addition, the metaphors Friends used were drawn from and built upon Biblical passages that would have been widely recognized at the time. Their metaphors also directed action and shaped identity.

Still, the very imprecision of metaphor allowed Friends some wiggle room. As Moore explains,

"It was perhaps the experience of several trials for blasphemy, and possibly the advice of such people as Judge Fell, that persuaded Quakers to adapt their language. The more extreme language describing union with God or with Christ is confined to letters, while material for publication was more cautiously expressed. Apart from inviting prosecution under the Blasphemy Act, such language risked encouraging Ranterish behavior, and the many exhortations to Friends not to go beyond their measure, and to pay attention to the light in their consciences, indicate that the leaders of the movement were well aware of the risk."

Where Moore finds "that Quaker teaching about ‘the light’ was very confused" and "Quakers were not consistent in the ways they used the word ‘light,’" I instead see individuals experimenting with various formulations within the metaphor to best express their intense experience. We might see this as a set of Venn diagrams in motion as various concepts, images, and shades of understanding are overlaid, unlike a linear progression of syllogisms leading A and B to C. Instead of examining these expressions for their underlying unity or fuller possibilities, however, the Society of Friends ignored the opportunity in successive generations and instead veiled the meanings in the gray garb of later respectability.

The muddle lingered nearly a century and a half, up to Quaker minister Job Scott, who, according to Arthur J. Worrall (Quakers in the Colonial Northeast), "carried to extremes the beliefs which critics had always maintained were basic to Quakers and which Friends had in some fashion or other denied publicly for a century." On the verge of plainly advancing implicit logical deductions within the dynamic of the Light and Seed metaphors, Scott’s life was instead cut short by smallpox in 1793.

In the schisms that erupted shortly after his death, the two central metaphors fell from understanding and their traditional use. In their place, we have in some branches, but not all, a concept called Inner Light, carrying much different characteristics. In effect, Quakers dropped the metaphor of Seed altogether and grafted many of its assumed meanings onto Light, which then lost its connection to Christ and Logos. Other Friends turned increasingly toward conventional Protestant theology and worship.

Admittedly, metaphor can be slippery in its application and have limitations. Too much light, for example, would blind or kill. On the other hand, any light in darkness is helpful. At some problematic points, shifting to one of a given metaphor’s overlapping concepts can be helpful: moving "too much light" to "too much life" or even "too much love," for instance, animates the underlying thought again.

Metaphor can also be misunderstood. The Light is not the same as a measurable range of energy to be studied in physics. Nonetheless, adeptly applied, an extended metaphor may lead its faithful followers, as Zen Buddhists observe, from Right Thought to Right Action to Right Wisdom.

Examining this dynamic within poetry, Robert Bly (Leaping Poetry: An Idea With Poems and Translations) argues,

"In ancient times, in the ‘time of inspiration,’ the poet flew from one world to another, ‘riding on dragons,’ as the Chinese said. Isaiah rode on those dragons, so did Li Po and Pindar. They dragged behind them long tails of dragon smoke."

Bly explains,

"In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of the work … from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown and back to the known.

He sees, too, that authors "make the leap in an instant" and "the unknown part of the mind lies at the very center of the work." This sounds, too, like the intense religious experiences reported by early Friends, except that I see their encounters plunging not only into the unknown parts of the mind (or, as Bly contends, the three different regions of the brain) but also into intuitive, emotional, and even muscular and tactile awareness. Rather than dragons, we could say they were riding beams of Light, sometimes bouncing with reflections, sometimes opening through prisms into rainbows, sometimes burning away debris.

Bly, however, opens an additional line of debate:

"As Christian civilization took hold … this leap occurred less and less often in Western literature. Obviously the ethical ideas of Christianity inhibit it. From the start Christianity has been against the leap. Christian ethics always embodied a move against the ‘animal instincts’; Christian thought, especially Paul’s thought, builds a firm distinction between spiritual energy and animal energy, a distinction so sharp it became symbolized by black and white."

Bly adds: "Christianity taught its poets – we are among them – to leap away from the unconscious, not toward it."

These are serious charges. They may also explain some of the controversy surrounding early Quaker exhortation. Jackson I. Cope ("Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style") finds at the outbreak of the Friends movement, "when the Quakers pour forth their heart’s belief and hope, they do so again and again in the same modes of expression, modes only approximately and infrequently appearing in the sermons and tracts of non-Quaker contemporaries." He presents a sample passage from Fox and remarks, "although the universe of spirit might smell of heavenly flowers, or might glisten with holy light, spiritual food was no staple of his religious imagery." Instead, with "his actual practice of eating and drinking . . . in the front of his mind, [this] is evidencing a tendency to break down the boundary between literalness and metaphors, between conceptions and things."

What emerges across Friends’ literature is a "relationship of language to experience in the early Quaker mind." Indeed, Cope perceives "the distinction between metaphoric and literal expression wholly obliterated on occasion" and "metaphor has transcended its normal function, and instead of merely indicating a point of resemblance between two differentiable entities, it has totally merged them." He continues with more examples, and deduces, "This ‘incantatory’ style is ubiquitous in early Quakerdom."

One characteristic that so bewildered and alarmed critics is the absence of orderly progression in these Quaker utterances. Rather than having a beginning, a middle, and an end, the Quaker message erupts at the middle. While this has much in common with modern micropoems and flash fiction, it also returns us to Bly’s insights on leaping poetry and what happens when it is oppressed:

"The loss of associative freedom showed itself in form as well as content. In content the poet’s thought plodded through the poem, line after line, like a man being escorted through a prison. The ‘form’ was a corridor, full of opening and closing doors. The rhymed lines opened at just the right moment and closed again behind the visitors."

This is, of course, also a description many well crafted sermons or homilies, rather than a prophetic message arising out of the silence of a traditional Quaker meeting for worship, where the speaker must be faithful not to say more than is given at the moment, and then to sit down before crafting a conclusion or running beyond the inspiration.

Cope further explains, "The ‘incantatory’ style is an epistemological tool: it appears when Christ is speaking within the Quaker, and showing forth the Word [Logos] which is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end of understanding the runes of eternity." His point becomes clearer once one recognizes how, in the Quaker metaphor, Light serves as another name for Christ and the Word. That is, the Light speaking through the individual brings enlightenment. In a similar compression, the passage from Genesis could also be turned: "God emitted light and it sounded good"; the sequence of events becomes one overlapping wholeness.

The application of metaphorical theology is not confined to early Friends. It influences our own practice, often without our being aware of its activity. In Quaker Religious Thought (May 2007), devoted to the Friends’ maxim, "Speak Truth to power," Shannon Craigo-Snell looks closely at metaphor and places the Light in an equation with Truth:

"The various traditions of Christianity over the centuries have used many metaphors to describe the power of God. God is Father, Mother, potter, king. God is Son, the way, the door, the vine. God is Spirit, breath, light, wind, fire, and seed. The multiplicity and fluidity of these images prevent us from reducing God to something we can grasp, while the comparison to familiar things acknowledges that we think about God with minds formed in mundane reality."

Turning specifically to Quakers, Craigo-Snell continues:

"Friends have embraced biblical metaphors that help us understand God in a non-mainstream way, such as Light and Seed. … For example, the metaphor of Light, so vital to Quaker theology, was actually a fairly common image used in discussions of epistemology in the early modern period during which Quakerism arose. … The Quaker affirmation of the Inward Light has ramifications for understanding power – religious authority cannot be confined to an elite few if all persons can know God in and through the Inward Light – yet it is primarily an epistemological term."

That is, Light is a way of knowing. In an imaginative and contemporary twist, she then explores virus and infection as a metaphor of God’s operating from the bottom-up. In her vision, our faith spreads unseen, one person to another, rather than by commandment from hierarchical authorities.

In the same edition, Newton Garver examines the Light metaphor as an equivalent of Spirit. His systematic description of Light, something not found among early Friends, probes Light from the perspective of Spirit, rather than Christ, and avoids discussion of Jesus. Would early Friends have embraced his definition, or instead quibbled with it? We do know that in the 1800s, Joseph John Gurney also equated the Light with Spirit and came to conclusions that shunted Friends toward a quite different understanding. Tellingly, Garver says little of what this Spirit or Light is, per se, but focuses largely on what it does and how it acts. In effect, the metaphor of Light gives face to action.

The reality remains that Light is a mysterious and powerful metaphor connected to many Biblical verses. Examined with an understanding of metaphorical process, early Quaker writings on the Light present a rich source for advancing a unique spiritual practice. Seed appears as much more of a work-in-progress among early Friends and holds the potential for greater development in our own time as we apply insights from expanding fields, such as psychology or contemporary literature of the Soul.

The very difficulties Rosemary Moore details may bring heat and energy to the investigation. Where Bly argues that the apostle Paul leads away from a leap into the unconscious, early Friends, often applying quotations from Paul’s epistles, demon-strate quite the opposite. Paul, after all, had been knocked to the ground by a flash of light and become both blind and speechless. The associative freedom in the narrative turns everything on its head, as does the active image of light that blinds, silences, and knocks one over.

Bly’s caution about Christianity acting to inhibit the wild associative leaps, however, strikes soon in the early Quaker experience. Even before passage of the Toleration Act in 1689, Friends were moving toward inhibitions. The establishing of the Second-Day’s Morning Meeting in 1673, to pass on Quaker manuscripts submitted for publication led, Cope observes, to "curbing extravagancies" in exchange for a long list of pardons for imprisoned Quakers. The consequence, according to Cope, is that "Quaker style henceforth was to be distinguished only by a few pathetic anachronisms of diction."

That’s not all that became lost in the transition from scandal to respectability. Cautious about offending the wider public, Friends declined to use their new freedom as an opportunity to fully and openly present the theology implicit in their metaphors.

Today, however, we are free to reclaim the early "enthusiasms" and the essential vitality in those early Friends and their seemingly peculiar language. For us, "Mind the Light" now means listening in a different context. Here, the Seed – not the ear – will hear and respond.

Works Cited

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