The Pronoun Dance

It is so much the fashion now to not just give your name, but your preferred choice of pronoun. This is supposed to be more inclusive. What right do I have, if and when I speak about you, to categorise you as male or female? Unless I know you intimately, how should I know how I might be transgressing against your sense of identity? Perhaps male, perhaps female, perhaps something other? There is a rainbow of hues possible – so we are told. The pain of those who struggle with their identity testifies to the suffering caused by attempts to conform to the binary identities imposed by society – a simple 100% M or 100% F – branded onto you at birth. Why should I corral you into one or other sorting pen, conferring on you the appropriate privileges or strictures as a result? I do not wish to injure you.

Even if you are happy with your classification as F or M, it does not follow that you are happy with the cloud of expectations that accompany it: you may not want what is on offer in the pink aisle or in the blue aisle. There are as many ways of being male or female as there are men or women.

Mostly we signal identity externally: this is how I dress, so this is what I am. This is the body shape I have, so this is what I appear to be. Sometimes those are in harmony. Sometimes not. The use of 'he' or 'she' follows the appearance, almost as an ingrained reflex: the two tribes being discovered so early in childhood; each with their own way of being, reflected in speech, mannerism, dress and approved choices. A girl acting girlishly get adoring looks, a boy acting like that soon earns a reprimand. Exhibiting the behaviour of the opposite sex has always risked provoking repression. Societies police the sex boundary with varying degrees of severity.

Sometimes people play with this, knowing and enjoying the confusion and discombobulation caused. Long live drag! The gender bending as performance has a long history. There is much that is tolerated on stage that is pillared in daily life, as boys in the UK who tried to attend school in skirts found out. Cross-dressing for fun is tolerated, even celebrated, but cross-dressing in daily life is problematic and even risky. The existence of male and females codes of dress only serve to emphasise how deeply embedded the binary is, how it shapes so much of our culture and expectations of what is to be accepted. It invites and even enforces conformity. There are always those prepared to police the boundary, and enjoy the licence and power they think is conferred on them.

Non-conformity is discordant. It jars. It challenges. It may provoke reaction, invited or not. Those of us who are to a greater or lesser extent androgynous know the dangers, and too often have tasted its bitter fruits. You learn how to duck and weave, to camouflage, to anticipate and dodge the blows. Societies self-appointed police savour the opportunities proffered by the non-conforming. Socially tolerated coercion is an opportunity for the sweet indulgence of much that is normally denied and repressed: the joy of bullying, the ecstasy of violence. It is a catharsis of liberation for socially manacled.

The more we stretch the boundaries of tolerance the more we invite explosive reactions. 

Jung was deeply aware of the dark potentials in people, lurking in the unconscious waiting for ecstatic release. It was witnessed only too clearly in the popular embrace of the cruelties and excesses of the regimes of his times. Most obviously in the Third Reich, but with a polite veneer and deniability in British and French empires, or the cold logic of the Soviet gulags; and since his times in the hysteria of the Cultural Revolution, the madness of Pol Pot's killing fields, the Rwandan genocide or the Srebrenica massacre.

And the pronoun dance? It invites yet another stretch of tolerance and acceptance; a blurring of the boundaries; a suspension of policing – conscious or unconscious – an effort to accommodate those who do not fit easily or comfortably into the binary of male or female; but it also poses a double problem. 

Firstly, many people are happy and comfortable with the binary, they embrace and live it for they are living out their maleness or femaleness as they feel it – it is authentic for them. That is why there is so much unease with the claim that 'gender is a social construct'. It would be more honest to say, for a huge number of people it is an organo-social construct – they are organically the construct they feel they are. Being male or female is their organically authentic selves. It is not a superficial, acquired construct like being a Manchester United supporter – a voluntarily acquired association. Those who try to pull sex and gender too far apart, making them not deeply interwoven but detachable, play a largely intellectual game to win a space for building a language more accommodating to diversity, but less aligned with lived experience.

Secondly, is there a right to require of other that they use words that do not arise naturally and spontaneously in response to what they encounter? Here is a conflict between what happens when someone externalises their inner difficulties with their identity and the perception of others. Should attachment to a self-ascribed pronoun preference take priority over the spontaneous and authentic responses of others? 

To know that how you see yourself is significantly different to how you are seen is essential to personal growth and maturation. Jung was acutely aware that people were largely blind to their shadows: not just to what lurked in the depths of their psyche, but to how they appeared to others. As Robert Burns wrote:

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

(Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!)

People's pronoun choice about us is their authentic response to how we appear to them, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us feel. 

Being 'out and proud' may challenge others to accept you as you see yourself, but that may not be what they are confronted with: they will see your shadow and that may be far from how you see yourself. That is what they will respond to. We all run the risk of wearing the Emperor's New Clothes!

Some of the recent furore over male to female transexuals 'invading' female spaces is because of the dichotomy between how the would be woman sees herself, and the shadow he still casts.

Even a superficial understanding of Buddhist psychology would warn that attachment to how others speak about you is a cause of suffering; liberation would be in indifference to the choice of pronoun used by others about you – in wholehearted acceptance of what is proffered. 

Quakers did away with the heirs and graces of title that implied hierarchy, understanding the attachment to rank was a delusion best dispensed with. Are we now substituting self ascribed pronoun titles in place of those of rank and not seeing them as being a modern equivalent? The same desire to bind others with how we wish to be addressed? We are plainly what others would see us as being, and that should determine their words, not our need for confirmation of the peculiarities of our chosen identity. The discordance between what we have chosen and how we appear may not allow the words to flow naturally.

As one who lives biologically on the boundary between maleness and femaleness –  androgynous as a birth-right – or birth infliction – I have no wish to control others choice of words about me. At best, a label stating my preferred pronoun would only achieve superficial compliance in my presence, and confusion and discomfort on part of others. 

Pronouns are usually used in the person's absence, so what compliance is likely anyway? Is it an aspiration that a not externally obvious identity might predominate even in your absence?

Liminal spaces or bathing in the Styx

The walls of hospitals have heard more prayers than the walls of temple, mosque, or church 

claimed a recent social media post, emblazoned across a photo of a hospital corridor, no doubt hoping to provoke comment. Was it intended to invite condemnation of institutionalised religion? Or comments on the human condition? Or on our relationship with religions – press the panic button/ pull the rip-cord/ set off the distress flare – otherwise don't bother me?

My thoughts were "Ah! the liminal spaces."

liminal |ˈlɪmɪn(ə)l|
adjective technical
1: relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2: occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

What greater transition is there than that from life into death? Or lesser ones from able bodied to disabled? From having life threatening injury to being healed? From diseased to well? It is no wonder that they let patients sound a bell when their cancer treatment course is complete.

But, perhaps more importantly, they are spaces where our daily praxis fails – that web of expectation, action and result with which we order our day to day – where we are masters of events. We know how the day/week/month/year goes – except suddenly it doesn't. 

That's when we fall into a liminal space. 

The rules no longer work. 

It is very disorientating.

But it is also a rich source of wisdom. A space for potential growth. 

Rinzai Zen makes great use of catapulting the student into a liminal space where the student is dumbfounded. The koans are designed to twist the mind into capitulation because it is there that one's 'true nature' is encountered. 

The contemplative traditions of Christianity – largely denied to the laity –  likewise take the initiate into that liminal space.

Like Soto Zen, with its endless hours of sitting facing a wall, pilgrimages are intended not as glorified tourist trips, but to grind you down by physical exhaustion until you are nothing more than the pilgrim: they are intentionally liminal. No one should go on a pilgrimage with an iPhone! 

The meaning webs in which we spend our lives screen us from encountering the wilderness of the liminal; but they also confines us to culturally created comfort zones. 

The rationalist uses unimpeachable logic to cling to the safety of their web of meaning. The sharp edge of 'science' used as a sword to plunge into heart of any threat. Only science is not like that: it provides updatable answers depending on the best set of evidence available – it is a process. Sometimes an exquisitely honed tool – the gold standard of five sigma – sometimes little better than our current heuristic. 

Limply, those who would set religion off against science– you might as well say setting off irrationality against rationality – want to anchor their certainties in one or other received teaching – hallowed by time and no doubt deeply emotionally appealing and comforting – especially if you are 'born again' or 'saved' – but far too often contrary to testable fact. Belief is a poor substitute for hard earned knowledge, no matter how fervent the belief. 

There are those who, in the name of this or that faith, are only too ready to harvest people who are in liminality, posing as real life Charons ready to ferry the stranded to a safe shore on the other side, from one web of certainty to another: the real gift would be bathing in the Styx. 

Belief is a mistaken road if it is presented as a higher case of knowing. One should not believe. One should be open to experiences of the liminal – to its taste and feel – to the not knowing – to simply being in its raw state, shorn of intention. 

When people say they believe in the existence of God, it has never impressed me in the least. Either I know a thing and then I don't need to believe it; or I believe it because I am not sure that I know it. I am well satisfied with the fact that I know experiences which I cannot avoid calling numinous or divine.     Jung's reply to H L Philip's question about whether all we are limited to is knowledge of the God-archetype: H L Philip "Jung and the Problem of Evil": Rockliff, London, 1958

The sound of doors being bolted shut

When you are researching an archive, the historical events that form its background can unexpectedly connect with your own family's history and with current events. It stops being remote and become so much more real. Last week the papers were full of this story:

Washington Post

By Amy Cheng

November 19, 2021 at 4:03 a.m. EST

Britain’s Conservative government could be allowed to strip people of citizenship without giving them notice to appeal if legislation being debated in Parliament becomes law.

The Nationality and Border Bill would permit the home secretary, Britain’s top domestic security official, to cancel citizenship without warning on national security grounds if it is not “reasonably practicable” to do.

The stripping of citizenship – well, that's familiar! History repeating itself, but in a minor key. It was a problem that the subjects of my researches had grappled with in the late 1930s. Bertram Pickard, in his role as a reporter for a number of newspapers, including the Washington Post, but also as an observer on behalf of the international Quaker community, attended the conference at Evian-les-Bains held between the 6th and 15th of July 1938; a conference called by President Roosevelt precisely because of the stripping of citizenship from so many people in central Europe was causing a refugee crisis. 

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had stripped German citizenship away from 'non-Aryans'. The Anschluss and the annexation of Czechoslovakia now extended that to the Jewish, Roma and other 'non-Aryans' of Austria and the freshly dismembered Czechoslovakia. 

Évian was the sound of the world bolting their door tight against any potential influx of refugees. Only previously allowed quotas would be accepted. In many cases, much as a result of the often hysterical reporting of the press, there was pressure to reduce even those. The Daily Mail ran headlines such as:

 German Jews Pouring into the Country

and wrote reports such as:

Never before has it been more difficult for an alien to land unlawfully and remain out of police hands for more than a few hours. The favourite method is to come ashore in a rowing boat with the appearance of having been out for a short sea-trip. Despite coastal watch it is possible for an alien to escape notice in this way, but his inevitable struggle for existence is almost certain to lead him before long into police hands.  Daily Mail, 2nd August, 1938

What! Aliens landing on British shores in small boats! 

Migrant crisis ‘out control’ as Channel crossings treble last year’s total

THE growing number of illegal migrants crossing the channel is now a "national emergency", a senior Tory MP has warned.

By Macer Hall

23:03, Mon, Nov 22, 2021 | UPDATED: 23:04, Mon, Nov 22, 2021

 

Sir Edward Leigh told Home Secretary Priti Patel that the Government had “lost control” in the crisis. Anger erupted at Westminster yesterday after figures showed more than 25,600 people have made the journey across the Channel this year. Small boat arrivals in 2021 now stand at more than triple the figure for the whole of last year, when 8,417 people crossed.     Daily Express, 22nd November, 2021

Clearly history is repeating itself, replete with press outrage and calls for the government to act, as Becky Taylor (Reader in Modern History, University of East Anglia) reminds us in her recent blog post on Refugee History.

Just as now there are those who see refugees not as a threat but as people in distress who need help, so there were in the late 1930s. The subjects of my research were very much involved in such action, and were part of the Quaker effort to provide relief and assistance. Efforts that were co-ordinated from Friends House, London, the central offices of the Quakers in Britain:

Up to 1937 the staff and volunteers in the London office were never more than nine people. The work escalated after the invasion of Austria, so that by the end of 1938 the number of case workers employed had risen to 59. The stream of refugees needing help at Friends House swelled so much that the two great staircases became more or less permanently blocked by queues of people waiting to be attended to. Interviews had to be conducted in corridors when the offices were overflowing. A few months later, in February 1939, the work moved to Bloomsbury House. At this time a staff of 80 case workers moved out of Friends House along with 14,000 case records. The expansion of the work for Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia led to the formation of a co-ordinating body known as the Inter-Church Council for German Refugees. Bertha Bracey was the Secretary of this body, whilst still employed by Friends Service Council as Secretary to the Friends Committee on Refugees and Aliens.    Lawrence Darton, Friends Committee on Refugees and Aliens, Appendix IV and pp. 58-9

My own family became involved when my mother received into her home a Jewish couple from Czechoslovakia, having paid the necessary surety money to the UK government to ensure that the couple would not become 'a charge upon the public purse' – the equivalent of about £5,000 in modern values. Technically the couple came as 'domestic servants' – due to the so called 'servant shortage' that was one of the very few categories of immigrant allowed into the UK – quite a claim for a couple who had owned a major store in Prague trading in fur coats – but a necessary fiction.

In the light of subsequent events, it seems the Quakers, and, in this case, my parents, were on the right side of history.

 

The I Ching, Cary Baynes and Irene Pickard

Archives always hold unexpected discoveries. One of them in Irene Pickard's archive was a letter between her and Cary Baynes, best know as the translator from German into English of the I Ching. It was one of those moments when you go "who? what? why?" It did not seem to make sense that two women from apparently utterly separate worlds should have connected with each other. 

Irene Pickard: wife, mother; one time personal secretary to the first director of studies at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, UK; resident in Geneva because of her husbands post as secretary to the Quaker Centre in Geneva – itself not exactly the most prominent or prestigious post in the world – a woman whose largely domestic life would not necessarily have connected with many people outside her day to day circle, or the small world of Quakers visiting Geneva. She was at times warden of the small Quaker hostel in the city and was noted for her ability to cater for unexpected guests.

Cary Baynes: American, born in Mexico, educated at two prestigious American institutions – Vassar College and John Hopkins University – thrice married; a friend and collaborator of Carl Jung and occasional resident in Zürich; translator into English of one of the most published Chinese classics – the I Ching – and largely resident in California. 

The degree of separation seemed almost maximal. 

That there should be a letter, written in friendly and almost intimate terms between the two, seemed almost crazy; but there it was in the archive, dated August 1936. 

From the contents both women clearly knew of each other's personal lives and had formed a degree of friendship. 

What the letter revealed was that they had met when Emma Jung had travelled from Zürich to Geneva in order to deliver a series of seminars to a group of interested Quakers including Irene Pickard. Cary Baynes had accompanied Emma to help with interpretation. Clearly the friendship between Cary and Irene had developed then, perhaps because of Irene's famed flare for hospitality, but just as likely was their shared passionate interest in Jung's ideas. 

Cary Baynes had trained under Jung, but never practices as an analyst. What she did, however, was to translate from German into English three of Jung's works, two of them in collaboration with her then husband, H G Baynes. More importantly, she translated from their German versions, two Chinese classics which Jung has deemed of great psychological importance: The Secret of the Golden Flower and the I Ching. Jung wrote major introductions to both of these translations. 

There can be few homes of the hippy generation of the '60s without a copy of the I Ching. It is almost a requirement of anyone who dabbled in Far Eastern philosophies of life as an antidote to the suffocating narrowness of dogmatic Christianity, or the barrenness and sterility of scientific materialism. The choices on offer to the mid-twentieth century Western mind were bleak. Flirtation with the exotica of the East seemed to offer an escape route.

Irene Pickard's world in Geneva was centred very much on the small, but international, circle of Quakers in the city; among the member of which was Elined Kotschnig, a trainee Jungian analyst and wife of a member of the secretariat of the League of Nations. The analyst under whom Elined was training, Tina Keller-Jenny, was one of Jung's earliest protegees, and was the first Jungian analyst in Geneva. Tina was drawn to the Quaker circle, and spent a lot of time in their company, attending Quaker Meetings on occasions. It was Tina who was instrumental in bringing her friend and analyst Emma Jung to Geneva to give a series of seminars to the Quakers.

I am always impressed how the social networks we form are so fundamental in affecting our lives and transmitting attitudes. It is almost as if to understand who we are we need to understand what networks we are part of. 

The Jungian network and the Quaker network first intersected in Geneva. There have been many interconnections since.  

Nozizwe Charlotte Madlala-Routledge, who now occupies the role first created between the wars by Irene's husband Bertram Pickard, spoke of 'ubuntu' in her 2021 Salter Lecture – of a person being a person through others. "I see you" being an African greeting that acknowledges another person as a representative of their social and familial networks, not just as an isolated individual. More widely, ubuntu is:

A collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African origin view as making people authentic human beings. While the nuances of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups, they all point to one thing – an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental and spiritual world.   ( Mugumbate, Jacob Rugare; Chereni, Admire (2020-04-23). "Editorial: Now, the theory of Ubuntu has its space in social work". African Journal of Social Work. 10 (1). ISSN 2409-5605.)

Radical re-centring

Part of the wonderful journey of discovery resulting from researching Irene Pickard's archive – it was like being a tourist for six years through other peoples minds and spiritual experiences – was encountering the radical re-centring that seems to lie at the root of Quakerism. 

The derailing of the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church by the Reformation and of its replacement, the Church of England, by the dethroning of Charles I, left a space for ordinary people to explore their spirituality without the fear of punishment. 

The publication of King James' authorised translation of the Bible into English (1611) and the spread of literacy due to the availability of books and other printed material, enabled many of the post 1611 generations to have direct access to 'the word of God' which had been denied to earlier generations. They had the tools to explore what had formally been the preserve of Latin reading priests, and some of them did just that:

At another time it was opened in me that God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands. This, at the first seemed a strange word because both priests and people use to call their temples or churches, dreadful places, and holy ground, and the temple of God. But the Lord showed me, so I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and the Apostle Paul bore testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with hands, not even in that which he had once commanded to be built, since he put an end to it; but that his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.
The Journal of George Fox 1647

Fox was far from alone. The combination of direct access to the Bible and the freedom from fear of persecution led many to be radically adventurous, following where their deepest conscience led. And that was the point: they had not lost their lust for spiritual truth, if fact, set free of the fetters of church authority, it grew stronger. They sought for new centres of authority for their spirituality to replace the crumbling edifices of institutionalised religion. As Professor Alec Ryrie suggests in his Gresham College lecture The Spiritual Quest against Religion, they were bravely going where only heretics had dared to tread.

Their conclusions could be extremely radical. Here is Margaret Fell telling of George Fox's words which had so profoundly altered her life: 

'The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord’. And said, ‘Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’   Margaret Fell, 1694

Conclusions that anyone could have direct access to the same source that had inspired Christ and the apostles – an inward 'light' that made truth shine in the heart; and when the light shone, the world changed:

Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.   George Fox, 1648

It was the charismatic experience of communion with the holy spirit (that of God in everyone). A radical re-centring which validated the spiritual experience of each and every person. Experiences that led to 'great openings' as Fox called them. 

And I went back into Nottinghamshire, and there the Lord shewed me that the natures of those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men. The natures of dogs, swine, vipers, of Sodom and Egypt. Pharoah, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, etc. The natures of these I saw within, though people had been looking without. And I cried to the Lord, saying, 'Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?' And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I also saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings.   George Fox, 1647

That radical, iconoclastic path was never going to be comfortable to follow, as the Woodbooke tutor Stuart Masters told in his 2020 Salter Seminar, Creating Heaven on Earth: The Radical Vision of Early Quakers: The World Turned Upside-Down.

Three hundred years after George Fox, Carl Jung was encouraging his patients to discover and connect with exactly that same centre, the inner well-spring of guidance and inspiration, no matter what they termed it: it would present itself to them in whatever form best suited their prejudices. 

The language available to Fox in a deeply Christian milieu was always going to shape the expression of his 'openings'; the language available to Jung's patients in a much more secular-scientific age would likewise shape theirs. What they shared in common was the force of that inner compass once it was discovered.

A republic of seekers not an empire of believers

From the very start Quakerism was a rebellion against institutionalised religion. Quakers felt that the churches – notably the Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian – were of this world and of worldly power. They were empires that held their subjects in place by enforcing an adherence to belief. Enforcement that could extend well beyond fines and imprisonment to torture and burning at the stake. Quakers were averse to creating new institutions and hierarchies – especially the latter – so they strove to have only the barest minimum of organisational structures creating in effect a republic of seekers who engaged collectively in a search for truth. For many years they referred to themselves as 'The Friends of Truth', or simply as 'The Friends'.

From their heritage amongst the Seekers they gained a deep dislike and distrust for any who would set themselves up as authorities: they were deeply anti-clerical and anti-creedal. Although often well read in the bible, they did not regard it as an authority either: it might and did inspire, but it did not command. 

They gathered together and sat in silence – often long periods of silence – waiting for direct inspiration and guidance. A silence that might be cultured by what they had read or heard, but in which they tested the spiritual truth of those words and waited beyond that for an inner feeling of rightness that was not of their own volition. 

There was suspicion of 'creaturely activity' that was to be recognised by states of excitement or elation. They would not have been happy among modern evangelicals! God's voice was that 'still voice of calm': a feeling of being at one with what was revealed. This was a trend in Quakerism inherited from the Seekers that came more to the fore in the Eighteenth century, although the Seventeenth century generations were well practised in silent waiting – at the deepest level they were all shaped by it.

Eighteenth century Friends, in the Age of Reason, put their trust in that which was Beyond Reason and we neglect the quietist tradition at our peril. Its most compelling image was that of the Aeolian harp which, being nothing in itself, was in its very emptiness the instrument through which the winds of God could play. We err, and err gravely, if we think that quietism has anything to do with “being quiet”, with indolence, or with aloofness from the world. It protested against “creaturely activity” but taught that the soul, emptied of self-will and self-running, was being prepared to be the instrument of the holy spirit. Edward H Milligan: Nine for the Nine Bright Shiners: The Seeker, Autumn 1987

Around this kernel grew a set of practices; a way of living rather than believing. They set themselves apart in dress, in manner and by the 'right ordering' of life. Effectively they set up a counterculture, so much so that when the opportunity arose many fled Britain for the hardships of settling in Pennsylvania and breaking new land rather than giving up their 'distinctiveness' and conforming to the demands of King, Church and Country. A distinctiveness that had earned them many spells in prison and repeated fines or distraint of their goods and chattels.

They devised methods of collective governance that created a minimum of institution. No priest or ministers only Elders and, the unfortunately named, Overseers. In the light of slavery 'overseer' is not a word in favour now for describing what was a pastoral function concerned with the wellbeing of Friends: much needed when in the early years they spent so much time in prisons, or having their goods or chattels distrained. Neither appointment was ever permanent, but only held for a limited time – often no more than three years – to prevent the accumulation of power. Often there were also two servants of the Meeting: the Clerk and the Treasurer. Neither with any power to do anything beyond what was instructed by the Meeting. Likewise, they only served for a limited time. None were ever paid: it was a way of rendering service.

Those instructions came from the inspirations that arose in the silence of the 'gathered' meetings of Friends. That 'still quiet voice of God' was the authority sought. It spoke through the voice of one or other Friend during Meeting, guiding their words. It was recognised by the lack of resistance to its truth on the part of the listeners. It mattered not if it were man, woman or child that spoke: the truth spoke for itself. It created a harmonious accord between Friends when it arose. Quakers have never voted on any matter to this day – voting divides: seeking truth unites. 

Carl Jung admired this way of proceeding, feeling that the Quakers had discovered a method of shared access to what he termed 'the God-archypype' that was both an element within the deep mind of each and beyond in what he termed 'the collective unconscious'. In his letter to Irene Pickard he referred to them as being "the only true Christians" because of exactly that charismatic element. 

An element that concerned itself not with theological niceties of whether 'God' existed or not, or what he/she/it/they might be but with the vitality of the experience:

That is why whenever we speak of religious content we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object. If, for instance, we say “God” we give an expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course of time. We are, however, unable to say with any degree of certainty — unless it be by faith — whether these changes affect only the images and concepts, or the Unspeakable itself. After all we can imagine God as an eternally flowing current of vital energy that endlessly changes shape just as easily as we can imagine him as an eternally unmoved unchangeable essence. Our reason is sure of one thing: that it manipulates images and ideas which are dependent on human imagination and its temporal and local conditions, and which have therefore changed innumerable times in the course of their long history. C G Jung: Answer to Job

Complete, definitive & long, or selective & short?

What to do? What to do? Masses of material: many documents, papers, articles, speeches, letters, booklets, notes, drafts, etc. Add an associated library of 115 Jungian related titles. In all the product of near seventy years. A pile of stuff that Irene Pickard described as her 'compost heap' (Inward Light, No 59, Spring 1960). How best to process and present this trove? How to put over its significance? Was there indeed any coherence in the collection? Was there a narrative that would bring it together? How to relate its creation to its historical context? How to trace the lines of development within? Who were the main actors? What were the consequences of their very evident interest that brought these items together and preserved them? How does exploring and writing about it fit into public discourse? What discourse? Within which communities?

Opening an archive is rather like discovering a cave system. An unguessed at network of chambers and passageways is explored, and slowly the system is charted. Perhaps cave paintings, or remains are discovered, and natural wonders revealed. A catalogue of what is there might be created, and a guide to how to access it written and detailed maps drawn. Maybe a history of its discovery and exploration is recorded. What was unknown becomes shared and public. It becomes accessible and known, and may even be valued and added to tourist itineraries. It becomes part of the public landscape.

There clearly was a central event of importance: the direct contact in the 1930s between a group of Geneva Quakers and the psychologist Carl Jung and his circle, just at a time when Jung was developing his theories about the fundamental importance to psychological health and wellbeing of what might be termed the 'spiritual' aspect of life. 

There are the antecedents to this event. Then there are the consequents. How much of each belongs in an account? Where to start and end the narrative? The choice of length and depth would very much dictate how much of each to include, as would considerations of who the likely audience might be and which discourses it might contribute to.

The question of purpose comes into all of this. What is my purpose in researching and reporting on the archive? The latter is easily answered: lacking a specific career goal, such as submitting a thesis, or building a reputation – I am post-career, retired, somewhat past such concerns – I have written about the archive and its creators because that is the only way I know of coming to understand what it contains. It has been my way of processing the contents and their relationship to the historical context. I have then felt compelled to share what I have discovered because, other than whatever contribution it might make to the historical record and the discourses around that, I think it will interest others who share my overlapping interests: philosophy, psychology, history, theology, peace-studies, ethics, Quakerism and the love of a good story. As I opened up the archive, that latter became obvious. 

The main protagonists had extraordinary lives. True, that was in part because they lived in what the apocryphal Chinese curse calls 'interesting times'; but most pertinently they proceeded through those times in countercultural ways. Their history is a history of exception not of conformity. Pacifists and peace-makers in a time of war and bellicose posturing; quietly and undogmatically religious in a time of avant-garde secularism and iconoclasm; deeply and self-critically questioning in a time of assertive certainties (patriotism, nationalism, imperialism, fascism, communism); open and receptive to new and emerging ideas and pluralities, whilst remaining connected and even embedded in their reluctantly evolving and somewhat traditionalist faith community. 

To top it all there were the elements of a good yarn: romance, thwarted love, danger, adventure, and the quest of a woman to find her place in a fast changing and disorientating world; and of an otherwise obscure man who became a founding member of the United Nations secretariat and who was instrumental in helping to shape the post Second World War order.

If I were chasing reputation or career, then a short, punchy account would do the job; but there would only be opportunity for one bite of this particular cherry. A definitive account would be unlikely ever to be written if a short, punchy account was chosen; however, a definitive account would take time and would be difficult to find a publisher for. What was in the archive deserved better than a hit and grab raid, as did the lives of the protagonists, so in the end its been the long haul: a definitive account.