Purpose Becomes Meaning ~ Geoffrey Durham

"I don’t know about you, but I have had experiences in Quaker worship that have been electrifying. And they have almost always been the result of a realization that, in that moment, meaning and purpose have become the same thing. At the time that I was talking to those colleagues, I thought I was going to Quaker meetings to understand myself better, to achieve religious insights for myself, to give myself meaning. I was looking for a sort of spiritual cushion. And I found it, I suppose, because I kept coming, but what I didn't know was that the cushion would turn out also, at exactly the same time, to be a springboard. It is a ridiculous image, I know, but it is true for me, because as a result of some unnameable spiritual process, what happens to me in worship is that I discover that the meaning I've been looking for is to be found in getting out of the meeting house and doing something with and for someone else. So meaning becomes purpose and purpose becomes meaning, and I can’t tell the difference between the two, and it doesn't matter. Because what love requires of me is that I simply go where I’m pushed. We sometimes call it faith in action. I think of it as worship in action."

~ Geoffrey Durham

More at http://www.nayler.org/?p=565