I’ve been writing “A Life” since October now, in the expectation of soon reaching 70. Which I finally did on Saturday 20th January just gone. When I decided to mark and celebrate the day by giving myself some advice. About the kind of life I’d like to be living now I’m officially older.
The advice comes mostly from my time of spiritual searching a couple of years back. During which I was briefly a visiting friend of the Quakers. But welcoming though they were to agnostic me, in the end I wasn’t at ease in what is, at root, a Christian congregation. So I moved on. But remain, as this list will show, my own version of a solo walking around kind of Quaker to this day
The ten thoughts then, to give full credit where it’s due, are largely based on a list of forty two “Advices & Queries”1 handed to me in a little booklet the first time I went to a Quaker Meeting down School Lane in Liverpool a couple of years ago. A list still and often looked at when I’m feeling the need to be what I always call “A bit more Quaker.” But forty two ways of doing that? Quite a lot too many to be remembered out in my walking around life, I always think. And also a good many of the real Quaker list are about practical Christianity and the going to meetings, which don’t apply to me. Hence this special birthday reduction and rewrite of the original Advices. Just for me, so I can be a better solo version of a real Quaker.
And not, can I emphasise, in any way is this list intended as any kind of advice to or argument with proper Quakers. It’s addressed only to myself, on the occasion of this special birthday. Advice on becoming older and, in my own way, more Quaker.
The advice follows.
How To Be More Quaker
1. As your future unfolds stay open to the promptings of love, truth, beauty and enthusiasm in your heart. Trust them.
2. Set aside quiet times for stillness and contemplation. Carry your inner stillness as a way of life.
3. Be honest with yourself and learn from the mistakes you will still inevitably make.
4. Respect everyone. Assume they are doing their best until people's actions suggest otherwise. But never give up on forgiveness.
5. Cherish and care for your loves and friendships, so they will grow and flourish over time. Expecting though that some people will fade from your life as their own lives change.
6. Live adventurously. When choices come up consider whether any of them might offer you a balance of self-fulfilment whilst also being of service to those around and perhaps beyond you. Let your life continue to speak.
7. Attend every day to what a simple life requires of you. Which might not be great busyness. Every stage of life brings different choices to be made.
8. Live with the acceptance that death, your own and of those close to you, is a natural part of life. And treasure all the days before its arrival.
9. Live simply and ethically in all the ways you can. Free from wanting what you do not need.
10. And know humility. That in all of these things your reach will fall constantly short of your intentions.2
In the next chapter the story will finally reach the current century.
See the full list here at Quaker Advices and Queries.
And there’s some late in his life Leonard Cohen contemplation in this one.
Happy birthday Ronnie ! Through your precious writings I can see that you wholeheartedly try to live by these wise words from the Quakers. Live simply and honestly. Best wishes.