The Unity of Paradoxical Quaker Extremes

A careful reading of early Quaker writings up through the early 19th century shows that earlier Friends were able to combine, in dynamic, creative tension, the paradoxical extremes (both ends of the arrows radiating from the center), while later Quakers, as we have become more acculturated and intellectual, have tended to separate into “camps” or “parties.” Once we have separated and lost frequent contact with one another, the tendency is to take one end only of a paradoxical truth, and thus gradually become more extreme. It is as if there is something in the human, analytical mind which wants to reach the security of a point of philo-sophi-cal certainty rather than staying in the seemingly less comfortable and more dynamic flux which keeps the paradoxical extremes in some sort of creative tension.

The circle in the center represents that place, in the heart of each tradition, where there is unity, and that it is possible to look beyond the boundaries and polarization and recognize one another as sisters and brothers in the faith, even beyond differences of theology, language, and culture.

Biblical
Intuitive			Jesus Christ
Individual Inspiration				Belief
Inward				Mission
God Within		+		God Beyond
Service				Outward
Experience			Corporate Inspiration
	Universal Light		Rational
Humanistic

Is it possible that the unquestioned power of earlier Quakerism lay in its ability to stay with the dancing, living Spirit in a place beyond the limitations of linear thinking, in a wideness of heart beyond the limitations of words and ideologies and systems?

See part two:
Frances Iren Taber's Paradoxical Understandings to Hold in Creative Tension