Irene Pickard's journey into Quakerism began almost by accident. She had grown up in the evangelical traditions of the non-conformist churches: one of her grandfathers was a Baptist Minister, and her step-mother was the daughter of a Wesleyan minister. Faith was a given: it was only a matter of what form it would take. As a young woman, she had been inspired by a seaside preacher to envision herself becoming a missionary somewhere in the Empire, taking the faith to the heathen.
In order to support herself, and possibly to free herself from the parental home which was full of children from her father's second marriage, she trained as a secretary. Perhaps she was thinking that such a training was a useful stepping stone on the path to becoming a missionary? There were not many career paths open to women at that time. In 1911 a chance opportunity for some piece work came from Woodbrooke, the Quaker College, which began her association with Rendal Harris, its first Director of Studies. She found herself increasingly travelling to Selly Oak to collect work from him. In 1914 came an offer that would free her from home and make her independent: Rendal Harris needed a full time live in secretary now his wife had died. Irene seized the opportunity.
In August of that year came the shock of the outbreak of the First World War. Like many, Irene had her view of the world shattered and with it her faith: a loving God does not tolerate the sufferings of trench warfare or its pointless carnage. Moreover, she was confused by the enthusiastic support among so many denominations for the war: was that really Christianity in action?
Her confidence in the Christianity of her upbringing was also brought into question by the work she was doing as Rendel Harris's secretary. She had been taught to trust in the literal truth of the Bible. His discoveries of Early Christian documents in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East painted a very different picture, as did the advances in Biblical Scholarship to which he was privy. Discussion of such matters often formed part of his correspondence with other scholars; correspondence which Irene was responsible for typing, as she would have been responsible for typing up his essays, articles, lecture notes and draft copies of his books. As she discovered, his view of Christianity was very different to the one she had inherited. She quotes him as saying:
There is no suggestion nor fragment of evidence that we might, by excavating a thousand years, unearth an ecclesiastical Christ. He, at all events, is the dream and creation of a later age.1
Her own reaction was that for quite some years to become iconoclastic and deeply sceptical about religion. However, working at close hand with her employer Rendel Harris exposed her to his Quaker ways of not being overmuch concerned with “belief” but being open to the certainties of experience – of being moved. Ways that demonstrated their authenticity through the actions that followed. Quakers did not simply talk peace – they did peace. They served in the Friends Ambulance Unit. They refused War Service. They went to prison as conscientious objectors. They provided relief to those suffering from the effects of war. They worked in regions beset by famine and rife with epidemics, often at considerable risk to themselves. They fed the starving children in the homelands of recent enemies.
In 1923 she married Bertram Pickard, a very down to earth Quaker who lived in that tradition of doing rather than preaching. He was Secretary to the Friends' Peace Committee at Friends' House, London, a position much concerned with the practicalities of peace-work. In 1926 he was offered the post of Secretary to the Friends Centre in Geneva. He and Irene moved there, he to run the centre and to report on the proceedings of the League of Nations for a number of newspapers, she to assist him and to run the planned Quaker Student Hostel that was to provide accommodation for those studying the evolving field of International Relations.
The final element that helped shape Irene's religious development was her discovery of the work of Carl Jung. She was introduced to it by Elined Kotschnig, a fellow Member of the Geneva Meeting of Quakers. Elined's therapist, Tina Keller-Jenny, arranged for them to meet Carl Jung in person, the result of which was a period of intense study of Jung's ideas, supported by visits from Emma Jung, a notable psychoanalysts in her own right, and trips to Zürich by members of the Geneva Meeting to attend meetings of the Psychology Club.
In a brief account of her religious development, presented as part of an exploration into what they actually believed by a study group of the Geneva Meeting, she wrote:
Shock of war; disillusionment in churches during the war period; emotional unreality; gap between belief and action; beginnings of search for intellectual and emotional sincerity and first hand religious experience. Intellectually iconoclastic period lasting many years, but work with and membership of the Society of Friends built up foundations of inward experience. Study and experience of Jung's analytical psychology over a period of years clarified both emotions and emotional blocks and provides a framework within which first hand religious experience can develop.2
The extent to which Jung had influenced Irene's thinking, can be judged by this passage from a paper she wrote called Jung's Conception of the Self and the Quaker Experience of the Inward Light:
Modern man suffers from nervous diseases and hysterical disorders, and civilised society from barbaric upheavals, and for the majority of people today such events are considered beyond their control. Jung's work, both as scientist and doctor has been to lift some of the curtains of ignorance, and reveal causes and effects at work in that most subtle of all realms, the inner life. In doing so he shows how many more evils of living are within our control than we supposed, and how far it is possible to disentangle, label and control forces within us making for disruption, both individually and socially, of which we are scarcely aware.3
The direct relationship between the Geneva Quaker Meeting and Carl Jung led to Bertram writing a paper called A Brief Note on Quaker Doctrine and Practice of Psychological Significance which was read to Jung at the Psychology Club by his wife, Emma. In it Bertram outlined what he saw as the essence of Quakerism:
Quakerism is thus a mystical rather than authoritarian form of Christianity, though Quakers have often been called 'Practical Mystics' on account of their distrust of induced states of exultation, and insistence upon the necessity of right action following inspiration. So called 'creaturely activity' was to be avoided. It was assumed and found, that prayer and service were complementary, each helping the other. 'Religion and life are one' is a usual way of summing up the Quaker faith.4
The avoidance of “induced states of exultation” was stressed by Quakers, in contrast to the practice in many evangelical and other churches, for which it is still something of a staple: “Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit” as George Fox counselled. That wonderful phrase “creaturely activity” was used by early Quakers to refer to actions impelled by human desires, including seeking fame, fortune, praise or other earthly reward. The Quaker way was for the deep communion of silent waiting to give birth to the inspirations which would guide action.
Bertram goes on to claim that the Quaker way arose quite naturally as a consequence of the mystical experience encountered during the long hours of silent waiting:
The most striking thing about the central Quaker practice of corporate worship, is that it was not thought out but simply happened as the result of the mystical experience. Instinctively, the Quakers draw together in joint worship upon the basis of silence, but with freedom for vocal prayer, or mutual exhortation, 'as the Spirit led'.5
He then detailed what he saw as the traditional understanding of the Quaker practice:
Silence was the basis of the Meeting, but only the basis. The expectation was that in a 'gathered' atmosphere, as it was called, with minds divested of daily pre-occupations, and with spirits open and receptive, the Holy Spirit would use one and another as channels of communication.
The 'promptings', or 'openings', as they were called, which came through 'waiting upon the Lord' were assumed to be serviceable not only to the individual himself but to others in the Meeting whose 'condition' was 'spoken to' through the communicated word or prayer.
To those who have experienced it, nothing is more certain that the urge to 'communicate' is somehow different from the mere impulse to say something. The refusal to respond to a strong prompting produces a sense of failure and depression. The impulse to speak is generally accompanied by a pounding of the heart which is different from ordinary nervousness. The manner and style of speaking is often quite different from the same person's normal manner of address.
In a really good Meeting for Worship the synthetic effect of different contributions of thought and experience is quite remarkable.
Of course the meeting demands the voluntary discipline of external quiet and inner attention; with readiness for the responsibility of communication. The simple and halting utterance has often a remarkable effect upon the atmosphere of the Meeting whilst elaborate (especially if prepared or semi—prepared) sermons are more likely than not to destroy the Meeting.6
In a somewhat unexpected way, Irene's wish to become a missionary was fulfilled. In 1940 she and Bertram were forced to flee Geneva by the German invasion of France. They feared that they would be trapped in a Switzerland that might also be invaded, with the real possibility of them both being interned or imprisoned. They were offered refuge in the United States, and Irene was appointed by the Friends World Committee on Consultation to travel in the ministry, tasked, among other things, with informing the disparate branches of American Quakerism about the prevailing tradition in Britain of unprogrammed meetings – meetings without anything prepared or pre-planned having a shared silence as the basis that allows for spontaneous ministry to arise. It was as part of this mission that she wrote her paper The Place of the Work of Ministry in the Society of Friends.
Starting with her understanding of the practices of the first generation of Friends, she wrote:
The central place occupied by the Meeting for Worship in the life of Friends in the 17th century, arose, of course, from the experience of “Search and Waiting” for a revelation of truth which would meet the spiritual needs of the age, and of individuals; and the hours of silent assemblies, long and patient probation and discipline on the part of hundreds – literally thousands – before the Light was revealed, naturally, both prepared the way for the reception of truth, and laid the emphasis on such a method, i.e. silent waiting – which did lead to individual and group apprehension of truth, and which was completely different to the current religious practice in the formal churches of the day. These latter Fox called “the World's way and worship, praying and singing which stood in forms without power, men's inventions and windy doctrines by which they blowed the people about.” 7
She goes on to say of the method that evolved:
There is no doubt the the English tradition, the Meeting of Worship based on Silence and without official pastorate, stands as the distinctive contribution of Friends to Christian experience and organisation. It has existed for three hundred years, and still continues with varying success in its witness to Living, Spiritual grace and truth.8
She reminds her audience that the method of silent worship entailed the acceptance of the equal worth of each and every person as potential speakers of the truth:
Now the very heart of this method of worship is the belief in the 'Priesthood of all believers, and the acceptance on the part of individual worshippers of that responsibility; which of course includes (but is no means confined to) the communication of grace through the spoken word.9
Quoting George Fox's words that, “The Lord opened to me that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge10 was not enough to qualify men to be ministers of Christ: and I stranged at it, because it was the common belief of men”, she continued:
For early Friends the emphasis was on the message, its validity and meaning for those to whom it was given, rather than on the manner of its delivery. The discovery of the message of the Word for each occasion, was approached through the method of silence – but nowhere, do we gather, that Silence was an end in itself.11
Returning to her point that early Quakers had laid stress on the need for mental and spiritual preparation before speaking during Meeting – so that being moved to speak should come from deep within – or, as she puts it, following William Penn's12 guidance:
… the prophetic word which comes from such deep levels of life and being that the message seems to be “given”.13
Turning to the eighteenth century Quaker Samuel Bownas14, whose book A Description to the Qualification Necessary to a Gospel Minister was published in 1750, she reiterates Bownas' stress on the need for preparation and self-examination, and quotes his guidance:
“Examine our won hearts with care … Hereby we shall find a law in our hearts that we have broken, and a Spirit in our inward parts that we have rebelled against and in our ignorance, being hurried in our pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh, and Vanities of this life, have overlooked. We have been followed by it, and it has strove with us; for the Spirit worketh in us secretly”15.
Perhaps with her own experience in mind, and with the insight gained from her study of Jung, she points out how those inner conflicts and distress caused by personal problems can be the mechanism for opening to the deeper reservoirs within:
That individual travail of Spirit, which almost without exception early Friends expressed, leading to a convincement and conversion within the orbit of their personal problems, was the gateway to a larger life wherein they could receive the gift of messages for others, and in regard to the needs of their time; and could speak with all the power of first hand knowledge which gave vitality to their words.16
In support of this she also cites both Isaac Penington17 and James Naylor18; Penington's instruction to “turn within” and to search for the “least of all seeds” that one might meet with the “pure, living, Eternal Spirit”19; and Naylor saying:
Whatever is thy condition wait in the Light which lets thee see it – there is thy counsel and thy strength to be received, to stay thee, and to recover thee …
Art thou in darkness, mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more; but stand still, and Act not, and waiting patience until the Light arise out of darkness to lead thee.
Art thou wounded in conscience? Feed not there, but abide in the Light, which lead to Grace and Truth, which teaches to deny and puts off the weight, and remove the cause, and bring saving health to light...20
That is the fountain from which the word should rise – but it is not licence to amplify. That need to limit oneself to speaking only what one was strictly inspired to say became known as the “Doctrine of Measure”. Irene cites here Samuel Fothergill21:
This advice again limits human participation and stresses the conception of the Minister being a channel. Samuel Fothergill, a successful preacher about 1756 said “I feel like a tube; some liquid crystal stream runs through me to others, but I doubt little remains”.22
And she repeats Bownas' advice, quoting from his Qualification:
Now a spiritual minister is and ought every day to be like a blank paper when he comes into the Assembly of the Lord's people, not depending on any other former opening or experience either of his own or others, that he had heard or read; but his only and sole dependence must be on the gift of the Spirit, to give to his understanding matter suitable to the present state of the Assembly before him.23
Continuing with Bownas' advice:
… if we keep to our openings, we shall be furnished with suitable doctrines … but when we raise our voices or hurry on above or beyond that inward strength we feel in our minds, we are apt to cloud our own minds, lose sight of or outrun our guide, and then run into a wilderness of words, which I have often done, and found the consequences of such imprudence, poverty and death.24
Perhaps because of the awareness of the role of the ego in inflating the individual that she had gained from her study of Jung, she turned to Penn's statement that good ministry speaks to the condition of the hearers, because it comes from the principle (A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers, p.39):
They reach to this inward state and condition of people, which is an evidence of the virtue of the principle, and of their ministering from it, not from their own imagination, glosses or comments, or Scripture.25
or, as Irene says:
Then again, a warning to preachers not to direct attention to themselves in the proclamation of truth, but always to the Light within the hearer.26
And likewise, the listeners should themselves weigh what they heard. For this advice, she once more referred to Samuel Bownas:
He warns against too quick judgement, on part of both preacher and hearer … Hearers must be careful about judging … Let time elapse to show whether those who minister be of God or of themselves.27
Irene then suggests that by shutting off the opportunity for prophetic ministry by not preparing people to watch deeply inwards, and to be prepared to wait, perhaps for considerable time, whilst the silence quietens their more outward life, is to lose that well-spring that the early Quakers had discovered. The practice must also be prepared for and accompanied by deep and reflective reading and the cultivation of an understanding of life. Then, as she says:
The Prophetic Ministry does speak through the deeper life of men to the deeps in others, and opens up new avenues of life and thought and interpretation and vision. It often happens that the interpretation relates the past and future in a new way. And the revelation brings with it, not only new knowledge, but renewal of life and power and direction for action. In the Prophetic type of Ministry, the speaker is more than an individual, he is the mouthpiece of common life flowing through all.
To achieve this there is a need for:
… a great development of sensitivity to the common life, and a very deep discipline in the discernment of spirits.
Again, Irene stresses the need for both preparation and training for prophetic ministry to occur:
A prophetic ministry also means a message in terms of our own day, and in relation to the forces that are at work in the hearts of men. We Friends need to be closer to the movement of the spirit in our own age. We do speak of the secularisation and materialism of the present time, and the 'spiritual vacuum' of the masses.
In fact, the materialism is the outcome of a great preoccupation with the outward events and happenings of life, the cares of bread-winning, the preoccupations of immediate pleasure or comfort, or adaptation to a changing society. It is the energies of an over extroverted society run to seed. But there is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum, as again the terrible disasters are rapidly revealing.28
In the light of her Jungian understanding, Irene did not confuse the lack of overt religious observance with the disappearance of spirit. She was very clear that the spirit had found expression through other channels, that it had attached itself to other archetypes, those that led to the holocaust and to the dropping of the atomic bomb. She goes on to say:
Along with the revelation of terrible spiritual forces abroad, there is also evidence of God at work – can one find Him in the present confusion, and proclaim again his reality, His Word for today? Will we recognise him in unexpected places? “That of God” is not confined in its expression to the accustomed, the conventional, the formula; and the life of God today may be manifest in may ways not expected, - new expressions of community, more profound ways of learning to respect the individual, newer forms of love and sacrifice. Can we go deep enough in ourselves to find God at work there, and through that experience be able to recognise Him outside, and share with others the reality of His Challenge?
Informed by Jung's notions of the psycho-dramas that take place in the unconscious, the consequence of which intrude into our conscious life, Irene suggests the need to be sensitive to the presence of what Jung termed the “God-archetype” deep within. A factor which he saw as generating the “God-images” of our conscious experience. How that “God-archetype” might manifest, and project into our conscious would have very real consequences depending on the image it attached itself to. The fundamental experience had through the practice of silent waiting was to be alert and sensitive to the workings of that archetype – to be aware of its seeking. It is “That of God” within being active in peoples lives, and being witnessed in the world. The dangers were, that if not nurtured, or worse if repressed, the archetype will lead the spirit to find other, perhaps more destructive images to attach to, as had been all too clearly seen in the intense devotion shown towards Hitler – devotion even to the point of destruction.
Acknowledging the need to learn from what modern psychology had to say, particularly in reference to the training and preparation of people for ministry, she noted:
But we have not yet brought to bear the wealth of new comprehension which modern psychology unfolds, either on interpretation of the Bible, or of understanding how and why our lives may be enriched through its teaching.
A shaping of the god-image by exposure to what speaks most deeply to one's condition. In the case of our Western culture, that is most likely to be the teachings of the Christian tradition, because it is the most easily available and the most readily accessible.
As Quaker faith & practice reminds us (27.34):
We understand the Bible as a record arising from … struggles to comprehend God’s ways with people. The same Spirit which inspired the writers of the Bible is the Spirit which gives us understanding of it: it is this which is important to us rather than the literal words of scripture. Hence, while quotations from the Bible may illuminate a truth for us, we would not use them to prove a truth. We welcome the work of scholars in deepening our understanding of the Bible.
London Yearly Meeting, 1986
And as George Fox originally expressed it (Qf&p 26.42):
Now the Lord God has opened to me by his invisible power how that every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all, and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation and came to the Light of Life, and became the children of it, but they that hated it and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light, without the help of any man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it. For I saw in that Light and Spirit, which was before Scripture was given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit, if they would know God or Christ or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by.
George Fox, 1648
1p.70: Memories of J. Rendel Harris: Pickard, Irene; privately printed, Sutton Surrey, no date.
2“Proceedings of the discussions on belief, Geneva Study Group, Winter 1937/8” in Irene Pickard's archive
3Jung's Conception of the Self and the Quaker Experience of the Inward Light: Irene Pickard's archive item # 7
4p.1: A Brief Note on Quaker Doctrine and Practice of Psychological Significance: Irene Pickard's archive item # 76
5p.3: ibid
6p.3: ibid
7p.1: The Place of the Work of Ministry in the Society of Friends
8p.2: ibid
9ibid
10To be ordained as a minister in the established Church in England it was expected that the candidate should have studied theology at one of the only two universities in England.
11ibid
12William Penn: 1644 – 1718
13p.6: ibid
14Samual Bownas: 1676 – 1753
15p.7: ibid
16ibid
17Isaac Penington: 1616 – 1979
18James Naylor: 1616 – 1660
19p.7a: ibid
20ibid
21Samuel Forthergill: 1715 – 1772
22p.9a: ibid
23ibid
24p.9a: ibid (The imprudence, poverty and death of which Bownas writes are spiritual not literal. It is the outrunning of inspiration so that the speaker ends in a forest of words that are not lit by the spiritual insight.)
25p.10: ibid
26ibid
27p.11: ibid
28ibid
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