I agree with those that say there was A Friends Testimony which has since been described in more explicit terms in varying forms in various "Disciplines" and "Faith and Practices." The Friends Council on Education has utilized SPICE as a short hand form to summarize these for students, parents, and teachers, the great majority of whom are not Friends. I have utilized the acronym and an added S for Stewardship that has been added by some in the more environmentally aware past few decades.
I am of an analytical mind that does tend to organize concepts into structures that seem coherent, convenient, and compact. Thus I have played with SPICE a little bit and am temporarily playing with the following:
Simplicity ... Stewardship
Peace-making ... Prophetic
Integrity ... Individual
Community .... Compassion
Equality ... Excellence
( ... implies some prepositions that may fit as/in/for/through/by/with )
Simplicity is not just for the sake of being plain but rather to allow others to share in all the resources and to indicate that material things are not to be sought for ones self)
Peace-making is a prophetic task in living for God's will rather than human occasions for war
Integrity of I AM in Truth as an individual
Community with compassion for each other
Equality of all as children of God but each with gifts/talents to be used as much as possible
Some of these sound "trite" and are definitely NOT my "full" intent, but without writing a "book" it seems impossible to express adequately or accurately my faith and belief.
Tom
Posts
Tom, you write,
ReplyDelete"With regard to the acronym SPICE for Friends testimonies, I find it much too limiting and to a degree misleading."
Once again, the acronym SPICE, or any other acronym, has nothing to do with Quakerism. I don't know who invented these silly things, or exactly when, but you'll find nothing about them in the literature of the first two centuries of Quakerism. "SPICE" has no authority whatsoever; forget about it.
"There is much disagreement as to just what should be included in the 'Faith and Practice' of Friends"
Which Yearly Meeting are you addressing? Every yearly meeting has its own "Faith and Practice." So far as I know there is no move to produce one "Faith and Practice" for all Friends, and it would be impossible anyway; the differences between different branches of Friends are much too great for that to be feasible.
"just as there is disagreement on just what are the 10 commandments."
You must be kidding. Differences about what the 10 commandments are are extremely minor. Comparing them to the huge differences between Quaker groups is absurd.
"The Hebrew tradition doesn't necessarily have 10 commandments but rather the LAW."
It has both.
"The Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants each seem to have slightly different versions of the 10 commandments drawn from a list of at least 13 separate statements in Exodus with a whole different version in other parts of the Torah."
The differences, again, are extremely minor. The differences among modern Quakers are major.
"The Friends Council on Education has utilized SPICE as a shorthand form to summarize these for students, parents, and teachers, the great majority of whom are not Friends."
I've been a Quaker for 40 years and never heard of this organization.
"I am of an analytical mind that does tend to organize concepts into structures that seem coherent, convenient, and compact."
Whose concepts? Those of the Friends Council on Education? Is that whom you are addressing in your blog? Are any of them reading it? Whom are you writing for? If you are trying to explain Quakerism to the general public you're going to run into a little interference from this reader, as so far you have shown no understanding of original Quakerism, no awareness of the divergent branches of later Quakerism (and how they came to diverge), and no awareness of the variety of Quakers that exists today. You may, for all I know, understand the particular corner of the modern Quaker world that you are familiar with and that I know of only at a distance. But you write as if you were an authority on Quakerism in general, which will certainly mislead your readers if nobody protests.
Then you "play with" (your own term) the acronym a little more and write,
"Some of these sound "trite" and are definitely NOT my "full" intent, but without writing a "book" it seems impossible to express adequately or accurately my faith and belief."
If what you are trying to do is express your own faith and belief, so far you have not succeeded in conveying to me what it is. Why not forget writing about Quakerism for a while, and forget acronyms, and get down to basics? If you have something to say that is simply your own faith and belief I will try to read it sympathetically.
Licia Kuenning
Farmington/Quaker Heritage Press
licia@qhpress.org
http://www.megalink.net/~klee
http://www.qhpress.org
"All my cats are in one basket."