The Dazzle of Day

by Molly Gloss

How much longer can we few go on sustaining a society based on joy and authenticity—defining success as an internal process in a world that defines it by power and wealth?

The way of Friends is to think quietly and to listen. We ask the question, we consider how the answer is made by different people, we ask again, answer again, change our minds; we reach an understanding. The Meeting evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, not by the weight of the majority, but by the capacity of individual human beings to comprehend one another.

one of the four cardinal principles of the Religious Society of Friends: “Something of the inner light of God lives in every human being.”

What they marked was a company of stinking mud pots, the ground between them thawed and sloppy, yellow, spotted with tufts of brownish grass. The air was sulphurous,

There seemed always a little while at the beginning of a Meeting when the silence was trivial—people would cough and squirm, it was clear in their faces that they were thinking about commonplace things. Only after the first restless quiet was there real silence—the silence of God, as distinct from the silence of people, Kristina thought.

Death was inevitable, universal, and that rendered it meaningless, she felt; people had to look for meaning in the way they lived their lives.

It had been a while since a First Day Meeting had been Gathered Into the Light—not since the Ruby was gone ahead of them, Kristina realized suddenly. She and Arno believed

with the old Quakers, when words were truly spoken In the Light, they didn’t break the silence but continued it, the silence and the words all of one texture, one piece, so when the words ceased you had a sense of the silence continuing uninterrupted, seamless; and it was in such silences that God’s voice could be heard.

The more known, the more is known to ask,

Isaba interrupted frequently, trying to broaden the question, to turn things upward, but people went on arguing logistics, making claims and counterclaims, and the important question was lost in ever-narrowing lanes and culs-de-sac.

It was a compulsion they

all had, a need to divide a question into its sma...

A rule by majority or by representation always had been anathema to the old Quakers, but it was mostly the size of the gathering that had kept Humberto from speaking, and he thought other people were daunted too—lately it was the same dozen or so who would stand and offer their voices, people not known for the weight of their judgment but for not being timid.

“Be quick to hear and slow to speak, and let grace season the words,”

Kristina, when she saw that five of the eight were old people, wondered if the clerks were thinking age was the same thing as wisdom. She didn’t quite believe this herself, having known some foolish old people and some sensible children, but she thought people could turn a long life to good account if they worked at it a little.

Consensus was a method that was understood to be inefficient, cumbrous. It slowed down the introduction of new ideas, made sure that change was well-considered. No one had any experience with decisions that couldn’t be put off.

She had to read pages to find the scarce words of clearness, of judgment, the communal leadings, the congruences.

Humans tended to be destructive exactly in proportion to their belief in abundance.

It was people of meager lands who had gone on longest, on the

Earth, holding to an economy of sharing ...