QUAKER RETREAT GROUP

for Quaker retreats and one-to-one ministry




SOME REFLECTIONS ON PAST QRG EVENTS



EXILE AND RETURN: A QRG SILENT RETREAT LED BY BRIAN BRIDGE AND BRENDA WALL AT WHIRLOW GRANGE, SHEFFIELD, 22 - 24 OCTOBER 2004

Judith Smith

This was my first mainly silent retreat, but I had no problems with the silence, which felt very full of the rich reflections our leaders offered us, and the further reflections which grew out of these.  We were unobtrusively supported in the silence, too, by the Whirlow Grange staff, who, despite the fact that building work at the Grange was not quite completed, made us feel very welcome and comfortable, providing delicious vegetarian meals and a constant supply of a variety of hot drinks.

Brenda and Brian showed us something of the many kinds of exile human beings can experience: the loss of a beloved person, place, or community, of childhood innocence, of a cherished ideal; a sense of being excluded, of not being at home anywhere, of separation from God.  Often real return is made impossible by time, death, change – or lack of change – in our circumstances.  The fact that the retreat was being held in my native city, Sheffield, which I left nearly forty years ago, gave me my own experience of the near-impossibility of return - this was no longer the Sheffield of my childhood and youth: the city, “my” people and places within it, and I myself have changed too much for that.

A very important part of the retreat for me was our communal acceptance of such sadness as an inevitable part of life, symbolised in a heavy stone which we passed round our circle, each of us holding it for a few moments as the others supported us in silence.  Brian brought to our attention the moving words of Robert Tod (Quaker Faith and Practice, 22.82) on bearing and sharing pain and sadness together.

The stone remained in the centre of the circle throughout the retreat, and was placed on a cairn in the garden afterwards, so that the sadness should not be forgotten as we moved towards hope.  Brenda gave us René Girard*’s vision not only of human beings’ rivalrous, ambivalent attitudes to each other, but also of God’s unconditional and non-rivalrous love, his “unambivalent gaze”.  Brian told us of the pilgrim in Jan Amos Komenský’s The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart(1623) who has searched the world and found nothing but evil and suffering.  But then God calls to him to “return…to the house of the heart”, and it is here, within his own heart, that he finds God at last. (I was reminded here of Francis Howgill ‘s thoughts  - QF&P 26.71).

Both Brian and Brenda used the arts to complement ideas and reflection: readings from the Bible, music such as Tallis’ setting of the Lamentation of Jeremiah, and reproductions of works of art such as the gaze of icons and the sculpture of Christ by Peter Ball, with its look of patient compassion, and hands outstretched towards us.

I should like to thank our retreat leaders – and indeed everyone present – for insights that will inspire and enrich us for a long time to come.

*Girard is a former Professor of French literature, language and civilisation interested in the dynamics of society and culture in the world today.

 

SHAME AND BLAME: A QRG LISTENING EVENT LED BY BRENDA WALL AND ELIZABETH BROWN AT BISHOP WOODFORD HOUSE, ELY,   9 - 11 SEPTEMBER 2005

Margaret Trimble

Eight of us attended the event.  Perhaps I felt daunted by the subject at first but I found myself challenged both intellectually and emotionally.  At the end I realised I had learnt so much that is positive about myself and the subject.

Brenda brought to us the latest thinking from a group of theologians, neuroscientists, anthropologists and psychoanalysts.  It was looking at the subject of shame in a new way, not only as a bad/negative feeling but as something that is "the heart of the mystery of the universe."

She said she was offering us a new model.  We were asked questions which we wrestled with: "what is the beauty of shame?”, “can you find your own scheme as to where shame fits for you?", "shall we value it or get rid of it?"

"It is the most inarticulate experience of the human person and can only be dealt with through metaphor.  As a child I had no words to describe my feelings of shame, I only knew it to be so bad that I had to cover it with a cloak of secrecy."

We must not only talk of the negative side of shame but also about that which makes us human: discretion, humility, reverence, awe, respect, propriety, protection, a positive restraining influence.

We used story to help us engage with shame: the story of Narcissus, The Princess and the Pea, the "creation story" in Genesis.

The change of perception to an inclusive thinking is so new that it doesn't have a name, so we called it "the amorphous grunge"  - it is amorphous, wordless, the most sensitive place.  It registers offence, being wounded, and guilt is the naming of this amorphous thing.  It is a place where we know and we don't know, a place of ambiguity, the place of discernment and reverence, but above all of revelation.

From the creation story we learned that it was the beginning of the awareness of blaming and that blaming is death to relationship.  From The Princess and The Pea, we realised the two sides of shame, sensitivity and toughness and that they are both held in balance.

And our link to the way we think of God is that we are being invited out of blaming and into being partners with God in a continuing creation.

Finally we looked at several ways of practically dealing with our shame: psychoanalysis, self-help literature, the way of the Stoic, the moralistic answer and exorcism.

All in all it was an excellent weekend, rich, thought-provoking and healing.  Our thanks go to Brenda who has been reading, thinking and processing the material on shame for at least two years.  It was our privilege to be there and work together with her.