Quaker scholar Douglas Steere taught Religion and Philosophy at Haverford College near Philadelphia for many years. In one of his books, this one entitled, The Very Thought of Thee, he quotes Evelyn Underhill, the English writer on Spirituality as saying:
“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs, to Want, to Have and to Do, craving clutching and fussing...we are kept in perpetual unrest forgetting that none of these verbs has ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb, to Be: that Being not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life”.
Thus the spiritual life involves paying attention to our inward being. Listening so to speak to our selves, our deep selves. Listening to the light within, to the storminess within when such is present and to the resistance and deception within--the shadow side of being. These manifestations of who we are, are subtle and easily missed. And queries rather than analysis often help. An example. Is what I am doing in tune with loving God with all my heart, mind and strength and my neighbor as myself? Or, am I heeding the promptings of love and truth in my heart?
In the Jewish Bible, God is spoken of as the “ I AM”, Beingness or Isness, and later by St. Paul as the Presence in which we live and move and have our being. The deepening and the tuning of our beings involves sitting in quiet prayer, longing for the Beingness of God like yeast in the dough, to rise in and through our lump of beingness. I expect this is what Underhill meant when she referred to spending our lives conjugating the fundamental verb to Be. Quaker silent waiting worship is about the verb “to be”. “Be still and know that God is God.” Listen, down deep, give over your running, ruminating, fussing, craving, fear, and ask what is it that God wants of us?
The kindness, compassion, peace and justice that our world craves rises from the well spring of beingness. At that place we are somehow connected with the Divine, and adjusting our attention inward in that direction, means the Light penetrates our doing and having. The call here is to spend a little of each day being still, learning to pray, conjugating the verb to Be. Being is groweable and gardeneable after all. How else are we to become fruitful ( our purpose in being here)?
Peter
There is a river, a sweet, still flowing river, the streams whereof will make glad thy heart.
And learn but in quietness and stillness to retire to God, and wait upon the Spirit;
in whom thou shalt feel peace and joy, in the midst of thy troubles from the cruel and vexatious spirit of this world.
Isaac Penington, 1675