Separation anxiety among Quakers.

Through having spent all of my adult life with the very good company of a rescue dog, I will be among the first to recommend this particular type of friend. It is a wonderful privilege to be welcomed every time you enter the house by your greatest fan........... although I do rather wish it wasn't necessary almost every time, to re-arrange the carpet.

Many rescue dogs have a tendency to suffer from separation anxiety. From insecurity, loneliness, hunger and mistreatment, a new leader of their pack arrives. Suddenly there is someone to latch on to, prepared to provide for all their needs giving them a home. For this reason it is very important to practice leaving your dog, building up intervals of separation gradually, causing the minimum disruption every time you arrive or leave. Since the relationship we have with our dog is based on trust, it is very important that we are not unreasonable in our expectations. However well adjusted and well trained, dogs are social creatures who need exercise, and cannot be left alone in the house too long.

Since it would be possible for my dog to do a great deal of damage, I like to think that rearranging the hall carpet is more symbolic than the result of prolonged distress. On my return, she is usually asleep in her basket, and through the limitations of a dog's short term memory, cannot recall digging about in the hall for those few crucial incriminating disruptive moments just after her pack leader left.

For Early Quakers there cannot have been much doubt who was the pack leader. Through their letters and testimonies there is so much evidence of trauma from the recent civil wars, howls of anguish through lack of consistent leadership, feeling very lost, and then finally re-homed with a living experience of Christ in their midst. Their responsibility towards God was decisive. Whether it be through leaving their plough, wives, likelihoods, rejecting the excesses of fashion, social protocol, refusing to swear an oath of allegiance, interrupting the priest, not paying tithes, burning all their musical instruments, going naked for a sign or heading to Boston for almost certain execution, duty to the pack leader totally transformed their lives. The depth and closeness of this relationship was expressed in many ways.

Typically, the Early Quaker William Dewsbury said during his final days

"If anyone has received any good or benefit through this vessel called William Dewsbury, give God the glory; I'll have none, I'll have none, I'll have none."

These days it may not always be so clear who Quakers have as their pack leaders. Instead of reacting quickly to every whistle of command, we tend to consider the prospect first, wonder if running after balls is really worth the effort since we are all such busy and important people really.

Absence of leadership can often lead to panic. At times Quakers also have a tendency to dig up the hall carpet, desperately looking for meaning. Without a guiding influence in our Meetings there may be dog fights because in the strength of our opinions we too can get preoccupied with power.
We may make our mark in all the wrong ways, considering Quakerism to be merely a way of life and our sole responsibility to the rest of society is merely to make an impression. At times in the absence of leadership, Quakers can be quite ingenious in their ability to ignore the rules. Through misguided priorities and lack of trust we raid the rubbish bin. Through not being challenged, there is a tendency to chew away on all sorts of improbable items because even though we do not like to admit this, it can be very frightening to be left on your own.

Those Early Quakers understood how hard it was to be patient but at least through a sincere preoccupation with truth, they were facing in the right direction.

Isaac Pennington later recalled how
" I have been a man of sorrow and affliction from my childhood, feeling the want of the Lord and mourning after him, separated by him from the love, nature and spirit of this world, and turned in spirit towards him almost ever since I could remember."

For lonely impatient dogs waiting on a somewhat lumpy hall carpet, there is hope, that moment of joy for every seeker after truth, the sound of a key turning in the lock above their head, a furiously wagging tail rearranging all the letters on the mat, then a desperate need to find some toy to show your pack leader and, above all else, that knowledge of being loved.