Wherever You May Be, Walk in The Light

On the simple wisdom of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism.

Image: George Fox, christianity.about.com

I’ve had the George Fox song stuck in my head for about three days now. Unless you went to one of the 78 Quaker schools in the US or are one of the 400,000 members of the tiny Christian sect, you probably haven’t heard the George Fox song. The chorus goes like this: 

“Walk in the light, wherever you may be/Walk in the light, wherever you may be/In my old leather breeches and my shaggy, shaggy locks/I am walking in the glory of the light, said Fox” (You’re welcome to look up the melody, but you might end up like me, folding your laundry, singing a Quaker song from the 1960s about a man from the 1660s.) 

I went to one of those 78 Quaker schools for high school. We were taught about the core Quaker values, called SPICES: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. We held Meetings for Worship and long periods of silent reflection (25 minutes, but that’s a long time when you’re 15, and it’s right before lunch). We sang the George Fox song about the English founder of Quakerism at school assemblies. I suppose I technically received a religious education, but given that modern Quakerism focuses more on personal reflection and community engagement, it felt more like I was receiving an education on how to be a person among other people. 

The uniqueness of Quakerism

Image: ar.inspiredpencil.com

Quakerism is unique among Christian sects because it doesn’t use much of what we associate with Christianity—no Holy Trinity, no scriptures, no clergy. The second verse of the George Fox song says, “O, the book, it will perish/And the steeple will fall/ But the light will be shining/At the end of it all.” It’s a decentralized vision of Christianity, where the general idea is that as per verse one: 

“There’s a light that was shining/When the world began/And a light that is shining/In the heart of man/There’s a light that is shining/In the Turk and the Jew/There’s a light that is shining/Friend, in me and in you.” 

This seems to do some heavy lifting for a creation myth, or at least makes the Light a little harder to confront, since yelling “why, light, why” doesn’t quite have the punch as wailing “why, God, why.” Believe me, I’ve tried. 

But I found this very Quaker idea, that “there is that of God in everyone,” comforting in school, even though I was never a Quaker by religion. It was a nice reminder of shared humanity and a responsibility for the people around you. But I’m having a little more trouble with it now. 

The world wasn’t great when I was in high school, a period which I think of as “the long 2016”. But it feels worse now, maybe because I feel worse now. I’m a little older now, six years out of Quaker school, six years out of weekly Meeting for Worship, six years out of a musical reminder to walk in the light, wherever you may be. Six years isn’t a very long time, except when those six years sour you on the idea that there’s that of God in everyone. I feel like I see more and more people every day who must not have that light in them, or at least they have the shades drawn. 

Is it because the world is worse? (Yes.) Or is it because I’m older and have to interact with the people and systems we’ve built as an adult? (Also, yes.) Is it because I have watched people abandon the vulnerable, the forgotten, the very planet that we live on, in a desperate attempt to play-act that things are fine as is, which goes against everything I was taught about

Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship? (You’re never going to guess…but yes.) No wonder there are only 400,000 Quakers. Living by the SPICES also involves watching the rest of the world pour salt all over everything and say, “That’s enough spice for us, thanks.” 

If I believe there is a light inside me, that guides me not just to love but to protect my neighbor, to act as a steward of the environment and my immediate surroundings, and to foster peace and equality in my communities, how am I supposed to believe there is light in others who seek to destroy those things? If that light pushes me to be as much of a force of good as I can, how am I supposed to see it in the people who push to be, if not a force of evil, at least a force of selfishness? 

Society of friends

Image: ft.com

But that’s not what the George Fox song says. The George Fox song doesn’t go: “Walk in the light/Whatever you may be/Except for that guy over there/And all the oil and gas CEOs who knew about climate change back in the 70s and didn’t do anything about it and now you’ll probably never have kids because you don’t want to give them a disease-riddled planet that’s burning from our own lack of care about each other and future generations.” The George Fox song says, “There’s a light that is shining/Friend, in me and in you.” Quakers are also known as the Society of Friends and often refer to anyone as “friend,” Quaker or not, actual friend or not. That “friend” is everyone else, even the people who I can’t see the light inside of. 

That’s the whole point of “there is that of God in everyone.” The light doesn’t pick and choose, but you, as the bearer of that light, do get to pick and choose—about what you do with it. If everyone has God within them, how are you going to use that little sliver of divinity? It stops us from creating the hierarchies of purity that cause so many to balk at organized religion. If we all start with the same divine building blocks, then we can’t be judged on our nature but just on our actions. 

When I’m struggling with this (which, if you can’t tell, I currently am), I think about verse two: “O, the book, it will perish/And the steeple will fall/ But the light will be shining/At the end of it all.” The light doesn’t disappear in dark times, as everything around it falls. It shines, waiting for us to steward in a beautiful world for it to illuminate. And so I will, or at least I’ll try. I’ll try because if there is that of God in all of us, then we all deserve a world where we can act like it.