Speak Lord for thy servant heareth

When I was a child my parents and I lived in suburban Kent. We were 'C of E', Church of England, which meant in practice that we usually went to church on Sunday and I went to Sunday School during part of the service and learned hymns and Bible stories.

At home, among my collection of sumptuously illustrated Ladybird books, there were Bible stories too and the one that I remember best told the story of Samuel - The Child of the Temple - who heard the voice of God but did not recognise that it was calling him.

At school, primary and secondary, I learned more Bible stories and read them in the language of the King James version. They became part of my life, but in the same way that Shakespeare did, not set apart as something different.

When I was about 12 years old I had what I later learned to call a 'transcendent experience'. In one moment out of time I knew, with an absolute certainty which has never left me, that everyone and everything was connected and valued in love and that that love was God. I knew that there was life after death because there was life before it in one unbroken continuous thread of which I had been, was and always would be somehow part.

I did not know what to do with this experience. I did not tell anyone about it but I refused to be confirmed in the Church because I did not want to be confined and limited by what seemed like just one set of certainties. I did not give this as a reason though and others assumed that I had no belief. At school I was not allowed to take Religious Knowledge 'A' level because I was 'not religious enough' and although this closed off an academic route to greater knowledge of the Bible with hindsight I can see that was not the way I was meant to go.

Eventually, when I was in my early thirties, I found Quakers and got to know about Britain Yearly Meeting through my job as a librarian in Friends House Library in London. In meeting for worship I recognised a connection with the experience I had had as an adolescent and began to hear the voice of my Inward Teacher. Gently but inexorably I found myself pushed out of my comfortable isolation and towards a life of community and eventually I joined Reading Meeting.

Among other things I felt that I was being urged to get to know the Bible better but I was not sure how to do this in the context of the Quakerism I knew. Over time several opportunities for learning were given to me.

I was sent as a Britain Yearly Meeting representative to Ireland Yearly Meeting and found that there regular Bible Studies were a natural part of the meeting, something I had not experienced before. I attended a couple and found them engaging, the facilitators well informed but not intimidating and relating what was studied to the participants' own emotions and experience. I then attended a workshop given by the 1995 Swarthmore lecturer, Anne Thomas of Canadian Yearly Meeting, which explored a way of looking at Bible passages by acting them out and inhabiting the different viewpoints of the characters involved.

All this was expanding my horizons so that when I read a pamphlet on Friendly Bible Study I was excited and enthusiastic. The idea of studying the Bible in small groups, looking at what each passage says to us now, seemed to me a valuable approach which would concentrate on the truth of continuing revelation, a very important part of Quakerism for me. I tried to bring Friendly Bible Study to my meeting, with the approval of elders, by inviting anyone interested to meet at my home. About half a dozen people came but among them were three older men, all 'weighty Friends' who refused to engage with what I was trying to do but instead turned the meetings into sessions of competitive academic sparring. It was all Greek [or Hebrew] to me. I could not compete or make them understand what I was searching for. I and the rest of the group were silenced and I gave up.

The voice of my Inward Teacher is still pushing me to find ways of looking at the Bible more deeply and most importantly as part of my Quaker community. The blogosphere has brought me into contact with so many Friends who are doing this. I can read and learn from them at a distance but what I long for are opportunities to share with others in my own local and Yearly Meeting. It is not a solely academic approach I am after but a way of sharing spiritual experience with others in the context of the Bible and seeking guidance on our way forward together. I have come to realise that I need companions on this journey for, like Samuel, I need help to follow where God is leading me.


Gil Skidmore is a retired librarian who has been a member of Britain Yearly Meeting for thirty years. She was a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow in 1994, giving workshops on spiritual autobiography, and writes about this and Quaker history, particularly the 18th century. She is currently co-clerk of QUIP [Quakers Uniting in Publications].