FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (16) - MOIRA FITT (2022) 'THE GOLDEN THREAD IN MY LIFE - A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY WITH QUAKERS'

 In the last year of her life, in late May 2022, Moira paid a visit to our Stennack home in St Ives to thank us for a message of support we had sent. 2022 was our first year as Quaker attenders, not in person but through Zoom because we were fearful of the threat of Covid infection. When Moira came, Louise was gifted with a half-hour meeting; I was walking our dog. Moira left a handwritten card thanking us for holding her in the Light of God's love and healing. She wrote: 'The Meeting House is a very special place for me, somehow it has a "spirit of place" where the 330 years of Quaker worship seems to emanate from the walls and seep into us as we worship. Thank you for joining us.' That card has a permanent place on our mantelshelf.  

Moira's story of her spiritual life was the fruit of her last years as she sought to pull together her experiences so she could share her journey with others. In 2022, dying of cancer, she never gave up writing and editing to the very end. Her daughter, Penny, and husband, Tony, have published this book as a tribute to her passion and out of deep love. 

Moira Fitt (1940-2022) wanted to share her spiritual journey with others. 

Moira was convinced that her life experiences were linked by a single 'golden thread' which was a 'leading of the spirit'. In that odyssey, specific places helped nurture the development of Moira's faith over a span of sixty years, drawing her closer to understanding the mystic roots of the core Quaker belief: We, being human, all have access to that of God within. 

Moira was a bright child who passed the 11plus exam to gain a place at Watford Grammar School for Girls. Unfortunately, she was stricken by illness in her teens, suffering from both T.B. and meningitis. Slowly recovering but missing a whole year of school Moira passed her O-levels and went to secretarial college. Around this time she met her husband-to-be, Tony Fitt. He had started to attend Watford Friends Meeting and Moira began to attend too. A Quaker wedding followed in 1960 in Watford and Moira and

Tony spent their first year of marriage together in Oxford where Tony was an undergraduate at St Catherine's studying Modern Languages. I find it a remarkable twist of fate that I am ten years younger than Tony and in 1967 aged 18 I became an undergraduate at St Catherine's studying History. 

When Tony graduated and became a German language teacher at Penzance Grammar School, Tony and Moira found themselves in Quaker worship not in a group of about one hundred as in Oxford but in a group of six Friends at Marazion gathered around an oil stove once a fortnight on Sunday afternoons. It was largely Moira's doing when the meetings became weekly and in the morning. The arrival of children changed much in their lives. Her son's disabilities made great demands but Moira was still able to set up a playgroup in Penzance, the first in Cornwall, and as the children grew older Moira returned to secretarial work. 

Marazion Meeting House - 2023

She became aware of the lack of opportunities for women who wanted to return to work and eventually she became a Career Adviser for Adult Employment, helping not only women but also the unemployed miners of Pendeen who now faced the consequences of the collapse of tin mining in Cornwall. Within the Quaker movement, Moira served at the national level as a member of Meeting for Sufferings, the national executive body, and as Area Meeting Clerk for four years. She furthered her own education as best she could given all her other commitments and gained her B. Ed at the age of 53. As a Quaker married to Tony, she delighted in the opportunities to be a Friend in Residence in Woodbrooke, Birmingham here in the UK and in Pendle Hill, Philadelphia in the USA. She was a constant support to Tony when he was Executive Secretary to the Europe and Middle East Section of Friends World Committee, travelling to many different countries. Moira's Quaker journey led her to explore meditation and mysticism, founding Penwith Meditation and writing articles on mysticism in 'The Friend', the Quaker journal.

Woodbrooke, Birmingham, United Kingdom - a Quaker Study Centre

Pendle Hill, Philadelphia, USA - a Quaker Study Centre

A central context for Moira's spiritual journey always remained the Marazion Meeting House. She writes (pp.13-14):

'I have been coming to this Meeting House for nearly 60 years now... I know I am here because I feel drawn, like a magnet, to take my body to where my spirit will be nurtured. I have been nurtured by the inspiration of the long heritage of Friends who have worshipped here for over 300 years, by those no longer with us, and by the living community of all the individuals that make up the group we are today... In short, I feel happier than I can remember. Thank God.'  

An interior image of the Marazion Meeting House taken in September 2023 at the time of Louise Donovan's textile art exhibition

   The Woodbrooke connection, too, was very important for Moira. Woodbrooke is the Quaker Centre based in the Bourneville house that George Cadbury left Quakers for educational purposes. Here, Moira was able 'to widen her knowledge of the historical background of a faith that leads to action on human rights, education, peace-making, respect for the earth and the equality of all God's people.' (p.15)

Moira's links with Woodbrooke go back to 1959 but a deeper spiritual awakening took shape in 1998 when an unexpected opportunity arose to be Resident Friends for a term at Woodbrooke. Moira writes:

'I have long felt an inner conflict between "Moira-the-Organiser" who enjoys challenges and "Moira-the-Mystic" who has a sense of the "Golden Thread in my Life". This "otherness" had become particularly apparent during the year Tony and I were Resident Friends at Woodbrooke. There, I enjoyed a great sense of release from responsibility which allowed me to explore my spiritual self at greater depth. Friends openly remarked that a "different", and more confident, person returned to Marazion. I felt called to minister in Meeting from a firmer spiritual centre than I had found possible before and later found myself readily accepting the call to serve as monthly Area Meeting Clerk.'   

The year before, in 1997, Moira and Tony had been invited to be Resident Friends for the Fall Term at Pendle Hill, the Quaker College and Conference Centre, not far from Philadelphia on the eastern coast of the USA. Both Moira and Tony had recently retired and were free and keen to embark on a new adventure. Several strands of Quaker insight became the focus for their spiritual development during this autumn term. Moira was already familiar with the ideas in 'The Way of Mysticism', written by a Quaker, Joseph James, whom she had met in 1958. Now, at Pendle Hill, Moira was able to meet and share time with Jennifer Elam, a Quaker psychologist who was researching Friends' experiences of mysticism and mental illness. Jennifer spoke of how her painting and modelling clay enabled her to explore further these matters of the soul. She learned the art of being an "accompaniment" as she listened to the stories of others, "maintaining a level of uncertainty, standing alongside, neither believing nor disbelieving what they were saying, but honouring and respecting their uniqueness, allowing them their own distinctions." (p.31) Such wisdom became Moira's from hereon.   

During her stay at Pendle, Moira was drawn into a deeper connection with God using, as she writes, 'the devotional practice of silent contemplation, prayer - and, surprisingly, in singing too.'  In 2003, Moira was invited by a Friend to join her in a local choir and she found that 'singing God's praise in a choral group brought healing and wholeness to my spiritual life and singing became a new way of praying'. (p.44) Listening to music now became a pathway to the numinous moment when Moira could feel utterly inspired. She references the words of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German mystic and composer, who wrote that she felt as if she was 'the feather on the breath of God'. The plainsong that Hildegard created touched Moira at a very deep level, reducing her to tears at the same time as lifting her to heights of spiritual awareness. 

An illumination from Hildegard's Scivias (1151), showing her receiving a vision and dictating to the teacher, Volmar the monk. 

Moira cites the wisdom of Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic, who wrote:

'Be helpless, dumbfounded,/ Unable to say yes or no./ Then a stretcher will come from grace / To gather us up.'

For Moira, only when she was overcome by a sense of utter helplessness could she let go of her own egocentric need to solve all problems. Other mystics too helped shape her spiritual path: Julian of Norwich, Jesus of Nazareth, George Fox, and Sri Ramakrishnan, to name a few. 

The Quaker experience is 'essentially empirical', Moira writes, 'relying on direct experience to convince us of the reality of God.' It is in this light that Moira understood her gift as a healer being used as a channel for God's love. Her job was not to understand but to allow God to work through her. 

Between 2005 and 2015, Moira was drawn to stay with the Quaker community at Whanganui in New Zealand when visiting her daughter and family who had moved to New Zealand in 2003. Here, Moira learned about the importance of "Living Lightly", finding more sustainable ways of living together and using the land wisely as the indigenous Maori culture had learned to do. 

I found Moira Fitt's depiction of the Golden Thread in her life illuminating and inspiring. Thank you, Moira.