You Know this Painting?

 

"What did you say about that painting, Simon?" I ask from across the small wooden gallery.
"It was painted here."
"REALLY?"
"You know this painting?" he asks in surprise.

"Of course!" Hugh and I exclaim together.

I join them over by the stairs for a closer look.  I know the painting well but I have never stopped to look closely at the architectual details but when I do, my jaw drops to the floor.  It WAS painted here.  Oh my gosh.  Are you kidding me? How amazing is that?  All the details are there, down to the spindles on the back of the bench.  Simon suggests going downstairs for a picture and that perhaps, when we develop the film, Christ will be seen standing beside us.

Hugh, who is from Ireland, Emily, who is from London, and I take our places on the facing bench looking out into the room just like in the painting, trying to look worshipful while grinning inside.  After taking the photos, we actually do sit there for a while in quiet before heading outside, to take in and try to hear the voices of all those who had worshiped there throughout several centuries including many of George Fox's original followers. It felt rather like stepping through some magical doorway into a world you have only dreamed about but is now very real.

Being one of the oldest meeting houses, just think of all the words those walls have heard.  At the time we were there, there was a talk going on in another room about how a building is infused with what has gone on within it, that there is an unseen memory.  What kind of memory does Jordans Friends Meeting have?  To me, it felt sacred, hallowed, as if I was entering into a larger circle of living fellowship beyond what my hands could grasp.  The Friends there must feel the same way because that belief is illustrated in how they laid out their graveyard.  The gravestones may be very simple, but the truth they stand for is simpler still,  yet it reaches down to the depths of living testimoney.

The gravestones are set up as in meeting, the people burried there are still listening to the voice of God.  Alive in a deeper sense than we are, we sat with them in meeting, hoping to catch a bit of what they were hearing, the words that were transforming them so they might transform us too.  Can you imagine the reality they live in?  They are listening to God far better than we.  Seeing the gravestones like that tells me that death doesn't stop us from being in God's presence.  It doesn't stop their community nor the holding of their light together.   They may not be present in the meeting house as they are pictured in the painting, gone from the building and moved outside, but they left behind truth and love that will never leave, that you can almost sense around you when you sit where they have been. 

They may be there in the graveyard, but the truths of their lives rise far above the grass that covers them, it goes on sharing with us that we are all in a cirlce, a community going far beyond denomination, beyond being Quakers, reminding us of a deeper commonality of all being in relationship with God and thus in relationship with each other, smaller circles inside larger circles.  Maybe if someone painted us in the graveyard, they could paint all the people sitting in the circle with Christ in the center, smiling at this wide community of friends.