On becoming a Quaker

Occasional extra bit, #1

I’ve been thinking about writing about this for a long time, but it’s hard to know how to fit it in to a weekly newsletter. So I’m giving it its own space. I hope you enjoy it.

As regular readers will know, in 2023 my best friend Lou was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. It was not so much devastating news as a foundational shift in my life and the lives of our families.

I had never adulted without her; I had never imagined I would need to.

As we absorbed the news and moved into treatment, and action, and coming-to-terms, and loving and supporting each other as well as we all could, I had immediate physical reactions. I stopped sleeping in any meaningful way. I cried a lot. I got eczema, something I had never suffered from before, first of all on my eyelid, and then all over my face. I could no longer tell if I was hungry; sometimes I ate, sometimes I didn’t, but I was so full of love and anxiety and fear that I couldn’t disentangle basic bodily needs from existential worries. All of this in the background to the important things: my friend, her wellbeing, her needs, and the needs of those around her to love her right to the bones while we could.

Underneath everything, there was a creeping, insistent need for… something. It took me seven months to work out what it was. Since ‘all this’, as we called it in shorthand, began, I had done a lot of coping and barely-coping and comforting and being comforted. I’d made many promises (I will make sure the boys have proper birthdays, I won’t buy a scythe) and plenty of plans, for both Before and After Lou died. The thing I hadn’t done was to, as they say in customer service circles, escalate the matter. I had not spoken to the manager and tried to get this whole mess sorted out, in a mutually respectful and satisfactory manner.

I was raised in the Methodist tradition. By ‘raised in’ I mean my Grandma and Aunties went to church, and I went with them, and I taught in Sunday school and went to church youth clubs. I was part of a community of people doing the right thing. It was the 1980s, when being good was easy, or at least clearly defined. You collected money and sent it to places in the world where people were starving. You went to jumble sales and spring fairs and the proceeds always went to good causes. Jesus was an example, and God kept his big eye on you, and that was that.

By the time I was in my mid-20s and fighting off depression and all sorts of Life, my faith had gone, but I didn’t really think about it. I clung on (with Lou’s unstinting help) through some tough years, and when I came back to myself and had a bit of time and space to consider what I believed in, I found that my credo was simple. Most people are good people. I can choose to behave well in the world, to be kind and helpful. So that’s what I did. And I rolled happily on with these background beliefs and ‘just don’t be an arse’ philosophy for a couple of decades.

And then, following Lou’s diagnosis, and seven months in to this new, unwanted world, I thought something that might boil down to: I need to know who is behind all this. Did I want someone to blame? Not precisely. Did I want to know who was in charge so I could ask for a meeting and try to get the outcome changed? Absolutely. (I would not have swapped someone else into Lou’s position, and given someone else our misery. But I would have negotiated hard to get her at least another decade, and a promise of no pain.) Did I want to understand what happens after death, and to know that that place is comfortable and a wonderful place to rest and wait? Yes. YES. I didn’t know what I was going to do without Lou, but I did know that, wherever she was going, I needed her to be happy and safe.

So, I reexamined my faith. And I couldn’t make it come alive; I couldn’t anchor back into Christianity. Then one day I thought - and I’m still not sure why - I wonder if I should go to a Quaker meeting?

To be clear: I had never knowingly met a Quaker. (I probably knew that Judi Dench was one, because that’s like knowing that Liza Minnelli is Judy Garland’s daughter.) I wasn’t really sure what Quakerism was about. My only cultural references were Patrick Gale’s (wonderful) ‘Notes From An Exhibition’ and that episode of Fleabag. But I had an idea that it might be worth a try. So I tried it.

In February 2024, I got up early on a Sunday morning and drove to my nearest Quaker meeting, about 40 minutes away. I went into a room where a circle of chairs waited. Two or three people sat down, and so did I. I had a small panic as I did so. Would I be able to be quiet and still for 45 minutes? I realised that much of my life over the last seven months had been avoiding any situation where I was too much on my own with my thoughts.

But I was there now, and there is nothing more likely to keep me in my place than possibly inconveniencing a roomful of people who I met less than 10 minutes ago and would likely never see again. So I stayed.

I thought about being at yoga, letting my breath travel in and out of my body. I looked at the flowers, in a vase on the table. I don’t remember what they were, but I do remember they were pink. At least, at the beginning of the Meeting they were pink. By the end, when I’d looked at them for 45 minutes, they were more than a colour. They were something quietly astonishing, a miracle of softness and purpose.

A Quaker meeting is not like a church service. There is no leader, no form of words, no ritual. Rather, people sit in silence and, if they feel moved to speak, they speak. It’s not about getting something off your chest; it’s about connection, and something deeper. (There’s info about how Quaker Meetings work here.)

There was something in that first Meeting that made me want to go back. So I did.

I quickly discovered that, although I’ve never been much of a joiner, this was a group to which I could see myself belonging. You don’t have to believe in God to be a Quaker. I would say that I definitely don’t believe in God, but rather think of my spiritual practice as recognising that there is something of light in everyone.

But Quakers do have strongly held beliefs that feel valuable and important to me: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship. Quakers act against injustice and wage peace. The Quakers that I met, in those first weeks, I recognised as people who care deeply about the planet and its people, and who were acting and working for change. They reminded me of the way I used to be, when I was in my teens and twenties and nothing felt as important as trying to save the world. I couldn’t remember when that stopped.

As the months passed, I came to value that time every week more and more. I started to tell people that I was going; that it meant something to me, though I didn’t know what. I felt moved to speak in Meetings, once or twice, the feeling a kind of swelling in my belly that rose and rose until it made itself words.

I started to see that there were things I could do, right now, today, that would work for good in the world, in however small a way. (I started making compost. I ordered a weekly veg box. When I was asked to become a school governor I said yes.)

I talked to Lou about it all, from the start. She was glad. One of the things that I hadn’t really factored in when I thought about her dying was that she would want to make sure everything was going to be okay for everyone else.

At Meetings, I sat in the silence and let myself be part of something greater than I am. I tried to imagine the light in me joining in the light of those around me. Sometimes Quaker meetings are a kind of spiritual magic, with a sense of belonging and togetherness the like of which I have never experienced before: nourishing, real, something I feel myself dissolving into and becoming small and warm. In these moments I knew that Lou would be alright, that I would be alright, that our families would be alright; things I had resisted admitting, because I did not want to be an adult about this. Something in me just wanted to wail until someone else fixed it.

At other times, Meetings felt difficult. I would mentally compile lists of things I needed to be doing, or had forgotten to do, or I would arrive and realise I was tired and should have stayed in bed rather than spend 45 minutes sitting resentfully in a chair trying not to drop off. One week, I heard Kirsty McColl’s version of ‘Days’ on the radio on the way in, and spent the entire Meeting crying. Not the sobbing sort of crying, the sort where tears just sheet silently down your face and there is not one thing you can do to stem the flow. I mopped my face for a bit and then just tucked my hanky under my chin to absorb what it could. (To be clear: this wasn’t me doing some kind of strategic Quaker crying. It was just what the tears did that day.)

I soon came to understand that Quakers are fine people. Everyone I met lives their values, feels passionately about making change in the world, and knows how to listen. My Friends are activists, thoughtful and determined in every element of their lives. (Also, excellent company. I know I have just made them sound a bit worthy.)

At shared breakfasts after meetings I found myself quietly, lovingly cared for; I was asked how I was, how Lou was, and I knew I could say as much or as little as I wanted or needed to and I would be heard. My emotional bandwidth was limited, but there were ways I could be useful in return: helping at events, getting involved with campaigns, joining committees, doing the garden. (Though only when well supervised. I cannot be entirely confident that I always know what a weed is).

Somewhere around the end of 2024, I realised that going to Quaker Meeting wasn’t something that I did. It was part of what I was.

In February this year, I asked to be, and was, accepted into membership. I am pleased and proud, now, to call myself a Quaker.

Did I get The Answer I was seeking? No, I didn’t. But I found a new way to move through the world.

I found an organisation that cares about the things I care about (and Lou cared about), and is determined to make change.

I found a place where I can sit in silence and know that what I am is unimportant, in the very best of ways. I have come to a belief of my own, which words cannot quite bring into being, but I’ll try:

I’ve come to believe that life and all of its pain and jubilation is a great space filled with light, and that I am moving through it for as long as I move through it, and afterwards, the great space will remain. Which is a wonder.

And although I miss Lou beyond words, although there are times when the sheer injustice of her death and family’s pain close my throat and split my heart - I think it is wonder enough.

Thank you for reading.

Stephanie x

You’ll find info about Quakers in Britain here.

And here is the obituary from Lou’s employer. I have never said too much about her life because - well, because it’s not mine. But this will give you a sense of her.