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2016 Sunderland P. Gardner lecturer Maggie Knight urges transformation through Continuing Revelation

On the evening of August 7, 2016, Maggie Knight presented the annual Sunderland P Gardner lecture to Canadian Yearly Meeting, held this year at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose, on Treaty 6 territory. The lecture was filmed and will be made available in coming weeks.

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Maggie Knight

 

Entitled Continuing Revelation: Quaking with Grace and Joy in Modern Times, Maggie spoke about transforming ourselves, transforming the Religious Society of Friends, and transforming our world.

Speaking to assembled Friends, she said,
“And so, what do we mean when we talk about ‘continuing revelation’? It is the commitment to ongoing discernment, to the belief that the divine will continue to unfold its wisdom to us if we listen, that our faith is an ongoing practice and journey. It is the belief that our faith continues to evolve, rather than stemming from a static religious text. It allows us to embrace and lead social change in our time, beyond what Fox and Penn and Fell could have imagined. This belief in continuing revelation is the reason I’m a Quaker.” 

Here’s how the speedy fingers of Canadian Friends Service Committee’s Matt Legge and Publications and Communications Committee Clerk Chris Hitchcock livetweeted the evening.

In Part I: Transforming Ourselves, Maggie shared some of her experiences with workaholism, activist burnout, and ways to foster rest, space, and healthy boundaries in our lives. Speaking about the importance of acting through joy and abundance, she offered three queries:

  1. What is enough?
  2. When do I most love myself? When am I in best balance with myself?
  3. How am I staying open to Spirit?

In Part II: Transforming our Religious Society of Friends, Maggie spoke about the ongoing nature of our evolution as a community, saying “the critical discernment is the wisdom to know the difference between the times we truly need more discernment, and when we are simply resisting the discomfort of change, resisting walking into the continuing revelation laid out before us.”

She identified three themes for Friends to work on:

  1. Leaning into the discomfort: talking about money and embracing abundance
  2. Journeying through conflict
  3. Healthy boundaries and deeper discernment: above all, nurturing our blessed community

Emphasizing the importance of building a loving community through the creation of strong relationships between individual Friends, she said, “There are a million little kindnesses that add up to a beautiful community. We are all responsible for the inward health of our Meetings, just as we are all responsible for living our leadings outwardly.”

Pendle Hill

Pendle Hill

 

In Part III: Transforming our World, Maggie offered six ideas on what Quakers have to offer an increasingly secular world:
  1. The cultivation of a practice of collective silence and contemplation in an age of distraction.
  2. A faith grounded in strong and compelling testimonies that offer up ways to heal the world.
  3. A beloved community in a time of growing social isolation and a fraying social safety net.
  4. A spiritual practice based in discernment, in questions, rather than dogma – critical for many experiencing great existential angst and fear for the future.
  5. Inter-faith work that transcends the Clash of Civilizations narrative.
  6. A long tradition of speaking truth to power, and engaging in faith-based advocacy. The integrity to show up for our own work and a spiritual practice to keep at it.
She spoke about the importance of sharing our Light in the world through compelling personal stories.
Halifax 2013. Picture by Tori Ball.

Halifax 2013. Picture by Tori Ball.

Finally, Maggie closed with three asks for all Friends:
  1. Practice explaining your faith and inviting others into it. What is the Light that you delight in letting shine? What are you quietly, humbly proud of?
  2. Find your way to contribute to community-building in your Meeting, to help your community transcend and Quaker crankiness, get better at conflict and money, and turn towards each other’s bids for connection.
  3. And finally, discern what your life would be like if you decided to spaciously, joyously, abundantly gift some of your time to Friends. What Quaker service would you let go? What else in your life would you like to let go? What new service would be led to undertake?

Maggie’s slides are available here.

Maggie grew up on unceded Coast Salish territory in Victoria, BC. She’s a member of Vancouver Island Monthly Meeting and has sojourned with Meetings in Montreal, Halifax, and Vancouver. A third generation Quaker of British extraction, she became involved with Friends after attending Camp NeeKauNis in her early teens. She has worked on restorative justice and Indigenous rights with Canadian Friends Service Committee and recently served as Clerk of Canadian Young Friends Yearly Meeting and the CYM Determining Priorities and Envisioning Change Working Group.

A social and climate justice activist since her teens, Maggie studied Environment and Economics at McGill University and served as President of McGill’s undergraduate student union during the 2011-2012 Quebec student strike. She was progressive political non-profit Leadnow.ca‘s first Managing Director, building a distributed national campaigning organization while navigating the joys of 4 time zones and 17-staff-person calls via Google Hangouts. Now 27, she works as the BC Civil Liberties Association‘s new Operations Manager.

In 2015, she married her long-time partner Nat Egan-Pimblett (now Nat Knight) under the care of Vancouver Island Monthly Meeting. They live in Vancouver with their very talkative cat.