Sunday morning meeting
Words used: Apophatic, Cataphatic, Ineffable
A Friend stood and spoke of their experience of explaining Quakers to ‘Churches Together’. I was trying to manage Zoom so I only caught certain phrases, I heard something about God being ineffable. They also mentioned the word ‘apophatic’ which I had to look up, it means only that which can be said which God is not.
The Friend also spoke of other Christian groups being Cataphatic, I had to look that up as well, it is the opposite of Apophatic in that it speaks of the positives of God.
It seems he demonstrated that we may be the different sides of the same coin.
Another Friend stood some minutes later and spoke about what would be the single common denominator of the 19 of us gathered. He had been influenced in his thinking by his child completing a Maths exam.
Ten minutes before the end another Friend stood and felt that God was not always present but ‘popped up’ every so often.
In afterthoughts, others shared their reflections which included the thought, ‘Do we pop into God’, the Buddist thought that when we forget ourselves we are more present, leading another to see it as us tuning into the divine.
g
