ON THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR INPUT ON THE QUERIES AND MEETING FOR WORSHIP FOR BUSINESS

We have a long tradition in our meeting, of holding each month's query in the Light, discussing it among our family, perhaps at meals, or at family prayer or worship time, and then, as it was raised at Meeting for Worship for Business, Friends who felt moved might rise and give a message that had been powerfully called out by Spirit moving among them in their time of consideration of the query, that it might be entered in the permanent record of the Monthly Meeting. By recording their voices, we understood what our ancestors believed, and how we passed down to each generation the continuing revelation of our beliefs as they evolved.

For members of the Religious Society of Friends, belief is not a static thing, to preserved forever in a block of stone, immovable and unchangeable. We believe that in the same way that God spoke to Moses and to Jesus, he still lives in us and speaks to us.Revelation is ongoing and it is the business of our lives to be listening at every moment, in every decision of our lives.

It is the responsibility of every member and attender of the Monthly Meeting to be at the Meeting for Worship for Business. Business is conducted in the manner of worship to allow all present to listen corporately for the voice of God as it is present. The more of the body of the Meeting who are present, the more likely we are to hear the voice of God as it is meant to be heard by our particular Meeting, in how we are meant to act. As Clerk of our Meeting, I don't take this lightly! We cannot function without YOUR HELP!

Please help us be a whole community by participating in your small portion as a member of that body, thereby contributing to the whole of the discernment of the Meeting. We cannot do it without you.!

Community and Responsibility

In true community, we will not choose our companions, for our choices are often limited by self-serving motives. Instead our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where that person we least want to live with always lives! (Parker Palmer, in A Place called Community, PH Pamphlet 212)

A number of years ago I experienced what would become a pivotal event in my spiritual life. It was directly a part of my experience of living in community with my monthly meeting and experiencing all of our limitations to do so. It brought my idealistic view of what living in community meant directly into conflict with the reality of the limitations of our community. I could not reconcile it in my mind, and the result was a journey that still continues, a journey of resolution, dissolutionment, acceptance and commitment.

Growing up in an insular small town farm community, in a severely dysfunctional family of origin and extended family, I suppose I came by my desires for a different kind of community honestly. It would not be unfair to say that I was seeking what I lacked in my life, and that I was deeply attracted to the notion of intentional community as a corrective for the felt losses of my early life. It is also true that I found the commune efforts I sought out in the 70s to be lacking in spiritual center. This then was the covenant I brought to Friends when I became convinced: I will give you my all, and I will help you to build community, in return, I expect you to accept the underdog (like me) and to help right the injustice of the world. In fairness, I must say that it is only in retrospect that I can see this.

Still, it makes me wonder: What are the covenants we each carry with us when we join a spiritual community? I am fairly certain none of us entertains the thought as we start out that Parker Palmer posits: that true community is the place where the person we least want to live with will be found. Rather, the opposite is more often true, that we are seeking a community of like minded individuals where we can feel supported, loved and nurtured.

In fact, I didn't know that I desired anything different until a convicted sexual offender, who had served his time, gone through three psychological rehabilitation programs, and been released from prison, began to attend our meeting. At first none of us knew his history, and we experienced him as a rather eccentric but very intelligent man, with a gift for music and story, and a vast knowledge of Quaker history which was a gift to our second hours of worship. He had elected not to tell us at first, as he'd been summarily rejected from other communities and was trying a different way. I wondered when we asked him to share his music with the youth program and he declined. His history would only come into the public light gradually as he took the risk to share with some individuals, and eventually publicly when he was recognized by some members of a distant meeting he'd been written out of, at an annual session gathering. There, alarm was the resounding feeling, and he was asked to leave the session.

The accounts that follow would differ from person to person in our meeting, and I can really only tell mine, as it has evolved over the years. My purpose here is not to find fault or right or wrong in this matter, or to open wounds, but to expound on my personal journey and what it has brought me to in my understanding of true community.

I fell into prayer when I heard the news of my friend being put out of annual session. In this time of silent expectation, I heard that I should be a voice for the person, as our meeting had asked him to not attend while we sorted out the path we should take. I did not seek clearness on this with others, my first misstep in my community. Instead, in our emergency meeting I announced that I felt the man should have a voice, and that God had called me to be this voice.

I was unprepared for the outrage and indignation that followed. In taking the voice of the person, I had unwittingly become the target for all the feelings our community was experiencing: victimization, betrayal, fear, anger, and a host of other feelings. Not all of the community felt this negative response, and as a result we became polarized. Moreover, one friend felt so threatened that she felt obliged to warn me off that night, and I responded with a human, not god-led reaction of righteous indignation and anger.

I believe now that in that moment I lost my ability to be the voice of Spirit. I began responding out of my own fear and feelings of injustice, not from the place God was calling me. However, it would take years for me to see this clearly. I was feeling so defensive, that I was not open to eldering or leading from other members who tried to offer me help. Now I had begun to be a part of the problem, not a part of the solution as I believe God intended me to.

I am grateful that I did not abandon the meeting during this time, as continuing revelation and leading from the Light has brought me to a much deeper understanding as the years following have evolved. If it is true, as Parker shows us, that true community is God's attempt to help us grow and evolve, this was truly a potential growth experience for our entire meeting. Would that I had committed to a clearness committee then as I have now, and this journey might have been much clearer on my part. Some who fled the meeting in fear for themselves of their children, have, in my observation, not nearly reached the peace that God has graced me with.

It was a sad, sad time for our meeting. Our visiting Friend fared not much better, except that the salvation of this event was a core group who continued to meet with him, off the meeting property, to help him to find a place to worship, and to clarify his responsibility in the series of events. I believe we were able to help him gain some insight in to his responsibilities in community: to care for his own mental health, to be honest and forthright in entering a new community, to uphold the tenants of his parole, and to work to seek God's truth for himself. Eventually we did find a worship group which had no children as a part of it, where he was welcomed in.

I grieved that we could not find a way to incorporate him into our own meeting. It is not that I did not share the fears for our children, and for others who felt unsafe with him in our midst. It is that I strongly felt that we do not choose our neighbors or community members, and that God had delivered this man to our midst for the purpose of our own spiritual growth. I could not reconcile my idealistic view of this with the realities of the spiritual life and community in our meeting and its individuals.

The first gift that came out of this event for me was the realization that in accepting that I had always been a Friend in my soul, I was also part of a much larger community, and that community was able to meet some of my deepest needs while my own home community could not. I went to the following annual sessions, bleeding from the woundedness I felt, seeking a vision or a message, or some hope that I could remain a Friend. I certainly did not feel worthy. Friends I did not know well seemed to sense my need, and I was brought to conversations and tasks that began to help me see that God was still leading me.

One friend sat with me over lunch one day and helped me to frame the event in the larger picture of our meeting and Friends in general. He was a person that I had previously found to be challenging and in this instance I found his kindness, gentleness and nurture to be somewhat of a paradox, albeit a welcome one.

Some friends who were members of our meeting that I had not been so close with before sat with me numerous evenings, helping me sort out my pain. Friends from neighboring monthly meetings experiencing similar dilemmas shared their experiences which were far different than ours. We brainstormed how issues could be addressed differently and how healing could be sought.

I was asked to serve in a number of tasks that brought to the Light my gifts rather than just my woundedness. In this, I began to feel the Light moving within me.

I left that annual session knowing that the god of my understanding was still present and ministering through the greater whole. It was a revelation that began my calling to understand what true community is.

I resolved to return to worship. I intuitively knew that if I did not resume my role as a part of the mystery that is Hopewell Centre, I could not contribute or receive healing. I went when I was able, but I did not yet understand that the healing for my anger, grief and woundedness could be found in sitting with the discomfort in corporate worship.

This is not the end of my story. It is only the beginning. After that first year, I came to worship whenever I could. I also sought other spiritual teachers outside of meeting. I had to come to terms with the idea that although I dearly needed clearness, something inside of me did not feel worthy of a clearness committee, or thought that the meeting had other more pressing needs than to minister to me. From the position of my woundedness, I could not feel anything but weakness and fear in seeking the help of others.

One or two members of the meeting emerged as my caregivers and mentors. Their gentleness allowed me to hear them, and as I healed, I began to hear the messages that had tormented me in a different light. I began to have compassion for those who had disagreed with me, and to cease competing for the “right” way.

Intuitively, I had always known that as we continued to worship, God would create something new in us. This is one of the most powerful elements of my faith: that there is much that is a mystery to us and can only be revealed through grace and our willingness to be shown something new.

Years before I became a Friend, I understood the power of community. It is simultaneously the glue that holds us together and the water that washes us and pulls us apart and shapes us into something new. As Friends perhaps the most unique gift we possess is our ability to sit in corporate silence, waiting for God to reveal to us what we must know to survive and evolve.

Now, through this desert experience, and the incredible prodigal return, I have begun to understand how integral this is to our survival of the planet and all of its inhabitants. I do not mean this in a grandiose way, but in the most simplest of ways. Community will call us to learn new ways to live together, if we let it.

What I desired was a community where we could welcome anyone brought to our doorstep as God's gift, possessing yet another kernel of light necessary to our wholeness. What I found was the reality that neither I nor most of our community had arrived at a point of acceptance of that gift.

I am a little closer now.

Thankfully, God has not stopped speaking to me and directing me. The call to understand true community has become stronger and stronger. It has begun to feel like a gift that we should offer ourselves and the world around us: to understand how standing in conflict and in love, seeking Truth, can reveal new ways. God is still creating, and community is the canvas.

I am continuing to listen, research, learn and seek guidance as to how God wants me to minister to others about community. Once again, from out of the darkness has come a pinprick of light, which has spread to cover the darkness for me. The god of my understanding is constantly creating, growing, and revealing and for that I am grateful.

Community and Individualism

This morning I was snowed in, and unable to get to Meeting for Worship.  I'm always sad when this happens, because I have come to rely deeply on the time spent in corporate silence, to direct my life and focus me for the week ahead.  Why, you ask?  It is because I believe deeply that one cannot live a life of integrity and wholeness devoid of community.

I found this video on youtube this morning, (The Myth of the Individual, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI4KIos7tuU)  as I was searching for a sort of community with my fellow Friends via Quakerquaker and a variety of other social connection sites.  Parker Palmer talks here about the paradox of community and individualism; that one cannot exist without the other.  In order to bring ourselves into community, he says, we must bring ourselves, our whole individual self, to the table.  This short conversation is well worth listening to as a foundation for your own silent meditation.

I have mostly approached this conversation as a dialectic for our societal culture of individualism.  I want to call to Friends to stand strong and vocal in their communities, to call others to join in, and to speak out in our individualistic society for the need for community.  I have said that I feel that community is the single most powerful tool Quakers bring to the table, whether the conversation be about peace, ecopolitics, world hunger, or any other social justice issue. 

What Parker Palmer speaks about is the paradox of individualism and community:  that one cannot exist without the other.  In fact, a conversation about being a strong individual has no merit spoken in a vacuum.  What he points out is the strength of the many individuals discerned in corporate worship; that in the practice of sharing our silence, we begin to be able to discern the greater good that can be found.

I don't want to digress from this message in too much conversation here.  Rather I would encourage you to listen to Parker's message and spend some time with me in silence.  Then bring to the conversation what you have heard from the Greater Good, the Light within.

Call for the Question

Suppose you walked into a party, and the host said to you: "Folks, there's only one rule for tonight's festivities. You may ask all the questions you want, but the only statements you can make will be in response to a question.  In other words, you may not start conversations with statements about yourself or your observations, unless a question has been put to you.  I will be circulating among you to be certain that you do not digress.  And please, allow a little time to unfold between your responses; don't be afraid to take that moment to allow yourself to digest the question before you respond.  Have fun, and don't be afraid to ask any question."

Ponder this a moment.  Really allow yourself to imagine a past situation you were in, be it a social event or a meeting, and imagine all the characters and how they approach you, and see yourself in the situation, mainly asking questions (queries) and only responding to the ones that are put to you.  Drop your expectations of the event, and allow the situation to unfold.

Isn't this the quaker practice of worship sharing taken to a new limit?  How do your imagine your own behavior might change were you prompted to view all of your interactions from the perspective of worship sharing and to focus on the questions rather than the answers?  Is this the manner in which you go out to greet the world?

These are some of the queries that surfaced as I entered the Visioning Retreat at Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), even before we began the actual process.  Thanks to the creative genius of Michael Marquardt, we were introduced to a new way to think and work on 8 challenges that the staff of BYM put before us.  We broke into small groups, each one addressing a query, and set upon our task.  

I was surprised to see how uncomfortable we seasoned Friends were with a process that we would view as a part of our core, when it was put into this context.  It tuned me into my own presumptiveness when I come into a situation like this retreat:  that I am already primed with ideas and agendas that I might not even consciously be aware of, and that are certainly not seasoned in the Light.

Michael Marquardt is a professor of Human Resource Development and International Relations at George Washington University and President of the World Institute for Action Learning, the organization that teaches "Action Learning," the process described above. (http://wial.org,     http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/faculty/marquardt.cfm) He is a Quaker and a member of Herndon Meeting.  To my knowledge, this was his first time bringing his cutting edge process to his own "family" of Friends.  Michael is like so many other Friends over time, who have quietly integrated their own manner of living as a Friend into their business practices.  In this case, Michael has actually taken his translation of a part of our Quaker process into the secular world of business, across continents and around the world.  As one who has often pondered what impact Quakers might have on global decision making, this was very exciting to learn!



It was delightful to be called to accountability to live our own manner so succinctly.  In each group were coaches whose job was to keep the time frame, help with clarity, and hold us to the task of the day:   to consider the query and utilize questions to creatively move through the process of responding to that challenge.  Of course, being Friends and comfortable with queries ourselves we had some questions for Michael too:  "Can we have a period of worship?"  "Can we redefine the question?"  "What happens in the executive world, do people end up taking a vote?"  (Michael assured us that in all of his years working with this method, no one has ever come to a vote.)

I'll have another post on the actual challenges that were put to us to work on, but for now I'll just focus on the process.  While Michael was encouraging us to think outside of the box, I was aware of how much he had done just that in his development of the Action Learning method of problem solving. 

What's fun about an experience like this is the personal awareness it calls us to.  When what may be our usual practices are put into a different box, or called a different name, we may fail to recognize them as our own.  The difficult part of this is how we may struggle with the "new" concept, failing to see where it fits in our own toolbox of constructs.  The titillating part is in being called to look at our own process with new eyes, and see the way that process then reflects back through the rest of our being.


In our group there was a bit of a struggle to decide if we were doing things the "right" way.  We wondered if we should redefine the question as we went along, rather than just living the one we had.  We wanted to inject our own ideas into the mix rather than stay on the task of answering the ensuing questions put to each of us or the group as a whole.  We balked at trusting the process.  Some of us had to put our own agendas aside to be truly present.



To be fair, we were doing a condensed version, scheduled to fit in this 5 hour retreat.  This did put a bit of pressure on us to move at a pace much faster than our usual Quaker amble.  I believe that the whole concept of Action Learning is to move beyond the linear model of thinking into a more circular one, and this is probably a struggle for many of us even in a more accomodating time frame.

It was a breath of fresh air in what could have been an arduous process.  As we laughed and wrangled our way through, the time passed incredibly quickly.  I noticed no yawning or dozing.  Some of the ideas that rose to the surface were solutions we are used to hearing, but many were new observations or calls for a different approach.  


As I left the retreat, feeling energized, my mind whirling, I wondered what the continuation of the process will look like.  Will the new thoughts or out of the box ideas be raised to the top, so that they can be heard?  Will the spirit of ongoing revelation continue as we strive to bring vision to reality?  Will there be the opportunity for further use of this process to move us from suggestion to implementation?  Will the staid be able to move aside for the creative new?


I have no answers, only more questions.

Friends as a Corrective for Culture

I'm always grateful when reading something, be it a blog, or a classic text, or the Bible, or any other spiritual writing, wakes me up from the slumber of apathy or indifference that comes over me from time to time. I find the structure of society lends itself to such numbness. Multi-tasking is the new opiate of the people. At least I can say it is for me. If the demands of our society keep us so busy that we cannot think, what is to become of us?

I'm going on record against it. Nothing good can become of dividing one's self in six different directions at once. What can be said for transporting one's children across town to their myriad of activities while conference calling with one's staff, yelling food orders into the microphone at the fast food place, while contemplating the next move to be made in one's approach to their client. It's an accident waiting to happen, literally and figuratively.

How can this multi-tasking ability be considered such a positive talent to possess, when it means quite frankly, that no one gets my undivided attention? This is the antithesis of how I want my life to be. I suspect that is true for many others as well, but most of the time we are moving so quickly, we don't have the time to stop and regroup.

I was reading Plainly Pagan's post A Quaker Mask of Respectability, when I woke up. Her call to others to recognize her spiritual need for connection spoke to me, and led me to the place of this blog. It lead me directly to the history of my own same feelings. How long I have wandered in the wilderness, silently crying for recognition. I honor her ability to speak aloud.

Everything that being a Friend has led me to has been counter-intuitive to the prevailing culture of individualism.

Where my society would call me to be a staunch individualist in all areas of my personal and working life, my faith calls me to be a member of community. Where my government calls me to war to protect the peace, my beliefs tell me that peace cannot be borne out of violence. When culture tells me that I must protect what I have and hold on to it, lest I be taken advantage of, my conscience tells me that if I leave my door unlocked and give away what I have, there will be no way my enemy can take advantage of me.

Still it is hard to live counter to the prevailing culture, in fact, it is almost impossible. Living in this dichotomy, most of us strike our own level of comfort or balance in the midst. We may function in the society to the degree we must, and end up closeting some of our beliefs to be shared only with a close few. I believe it's fairly common for some of us to throw our beliefs overboard for a period early in life, in order to strike out and make our way in the wilderness of adult life. Perhaps we settle for a moderate religious life, when we begin to have children and want them to have the "right" upbringing. Some of us come to Quaker Meeting on Sunday, desperate for the hour of quiet and the chance to shed off the weight of the garments of our outer lives, then hastily returning to the demands of the day..

I'm grateful that not everyone feels such a need to pull on the garments of our society; not everyone rejects the inner pull toward community. We all exist along a continuum that reflects the paradox of our need to fit and our need to follow our beliefs. Those who stand in the place of holding their belief up for others to see, who are not able to hide their Light under a bushel, make clear the path for those of us not able.

I'm struck that by the period of late middle age, even those of us who have had to sacrifice our "idealism" have begun to search more ardently to find real meaning for our lives, and we have begun to re-awaken to the lofty ideas of our youth, of living more and more in accordance with our values. It's appropriate at this time, because many of us are also being freed from the bondage of daily work through retirement. Without the demands of providing for our families by working in the outside culture, we are now again free as we were as adolescents, to bring our creative, spiritual thoughts into reality.

This individualistic, multi-tasking, fast-paced world does not make it easy for quiet faiths like the Society of Friends to survive. In a world where loud and fast is the norm, we are quiet and slow.
Where being a staunch individualist is the highest cultural value, we base our actions and decisions on the sense of the whole. Yet it is precisely this that we can offer to the seeker, the unquiet one.

Our Society is the corrective for the frailties of the secular society. Where society breaks families and friends apart, we gather them. Where the wheels of industry grind loud and hard, we offer solace and silence. When the long hours and hard work deprive the individual of energy, we offer the place to recharge their inner batteries. Don't we?

So many an attender has commented to me after worship on how inviting the silence was, how there was something they had not felt before in both the quiet and the messages. Many have said they felt a Presence there, or felt the spirits of those come before.

We need to be certain that in our meetings, we do carry sense of Presence forth into the world, and certainly into the time surrounding worship. Are we greeting worshipers as they arrive in a spirit of love and grace? What are we doing to help our community to incorporate and carry the peace they gain from worship into the rest of their lives? Are we risking to be vulnerable amongst each other, so that the Spirit may flourish and grow among us?

Too often I hear people say that they wished they could participate in a meeting activity but were too busy to stay or come back. What are we doing to insure that the activities offered in second hour or religious education are meaningful and relevant to the needs of our community? Do we send our Friends forth into the coming week carrying something that will uphold and uplift them in their daily life?

I have no doubt that we are offering something of dire need in this lightning-paced technology-laden world of the twenty-first century. My own meeting seems to be growing with new attenders. Our anniversary celebration of this year has given us cause to speak out, and we have chosen to use this time to invite the curious and the seeking. I see that the task before our meeting is not just to attract those travelers to us, but to nourish and sustain them in ways they are not finding in their everyday world.

In my own life, I see that this calls me to a new place too. Like those travelers, I came to the Society of Friends seeking, starving and stretched beyond my limits. Slowly, as I worshiped among
Friends, I came to see that I was a Friend long before arrived, but had not until now found my home.
I did go through a period after a few years where I began to question whether Quakers could meet my needs. I was again feeling parched.

Thankfully, I had been given the gift of silent worship and prayer, which I now knew was available to me in any time and place. Here I learned the true meaning of Fox' words, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition." Through the nourishment of the Light, I also came to see that I had to ask what I could offer, allowing God to work through me.

When I began to ask what I had to give, and I began to surrender to the power of Spirit working through me, I found that I indeed had not come to Friends by accident. I had been Led. But what was more amazing than opening to that leading, was finding that I really did have something to offer. The real gift was not in what I had come to receive, but in finding what I had come to give, most of which I am still uncovering.

If we are, as the Society of Friends, to serve as that corrective for our prevailing culture, then we must be willing to make ourselves available to be a growing community: What have you come to give to your community? What part of the whole are you holding? Would you deny to your Friends that part of wholeness that only you can bestow?

The paradox of community is the age old lesson, that it is in the giving that you truly are fulfilled.

Seasoning

I'm struck by all the space the "doings" of one's life take up. Having just declared myself "no longer a landscaper" (a misnomer, really, since I still have contracts to honor) my life begins to take on a new patina...not the harried, sketchy, thinking, thinking, thinking of the landscape designer/installer, but the meditative perspective of the writer, counselor, listener.

Amazing how simple that is; change one's perspective, change one's view of the world. Had I known it was this easy, perhaps I would have done it much sooner. Perhaps not.

Each step of a journey is a necessary one, is the point I am making. It will remain to be seen what all the lessons were of stepping from the visionary path to the practical one for some 20 years. If God is, as Daniel Snyder tells us, the infinite divine lover of my soul, then I cannot doubt that meaning will be made of whatever steps I have taken. Something way beyond the right or wrong of things. This has proven to be true in my life at each point up to this one, so I have no reason to doubt it.

I remember that when I lived in John Greenleaf Whittier's poetry garret (where he wrote when he stayed along the Delaware River), the mere thought of it was enough to inspire me to write my own river journal. Prosaic, and full of my life's meanderings alongside that wandering river, it was as if Whittier's spirit had infused with mine, and creativity flowed unencumbered. Before that moment, which was also one of the loneliest of my life, I had no idea I was a writer. I wrote out of my longing, my desperation, my deep-soul searching for God. It started from a chance meeting with my landlady, where she showed me a first edition of Whittier's works and remarked, as if by chance, that he sat in the window of my tiny apartment and looked out over the river as he wrote.

A couple hundred years of trees later, one couldn't really see the river from that garret, except in the dead of winter, peering closely through the treetops. It didn't really matter though. It was Whittier's spirit that spoke to mine, talking about the spirit and how it moved here and there between home and the river, and how God spoke to him as he wrote. I understood, and I wrote too.

And what about the time spent with a samurai healer, learning the Japanese herbs? That too was a conflagration of spirits, teaching me how the earth and humans communicated for eons before me, the simple truths that opened doors into my heart and body, and healed me from a lifetime of abuses inflicted by self and others. I understood how a samurai could be both protector warrior and spiritual healer to a whole village of people, and how reverent and responsible that role was for the holder. How sacred each role of each life was to all.

How many incarnations have I had in this life? Too many to number. The God of my Understanding has led me, by the Light, to each of a myriad of places that I needed to encounter to bring me to exactly this place that I stand now.

I always knew that God was calling me. Since I was a child, I've known. Then, in the midst of dreams and visions, I saw the things the Bible could only talk about...the burning bushes and the staff into snake into staff. I knew they were there for me as signs that God loved me. I knew they were there in case I doubted, and doubt I did.

My whole life long, unsureness has been the constant. Right alongside of God, the inconstancy.
Perhaps this is what free will is about. Will you choose the familiar, earthbound fearfulness, or choose the unknown, beckoning God? Will you venture out to the edge of the boat, fearful of falling in? An teacher said to me a long time ago, "We find God at the edge of the boat in the midst of the rocking sea." And me, I've carried a fear of drowning all my life: a fear of swallowing too much water, or knocking my chin on a hidden rock in that water, or not being strong enough to swim against the current.

Yet swim I must. The little inner voice has only gotten louder over the years. "You are a Minister," it virtually screams at me now. Okay, I get it. Really. At 57 years old, I finally realize that it is not going to stop, not going to go away, not going to leave me alone. I surrender.

God is the infinite divine lover of my soul.

Therefore, God will never desert me, never give up on me, never leave me alone.
And I? I just need to stop and listen. But listen with new ears. Really hear what is being said, and then stop and listen some more. Deep listening. Deeper listening. Be in relationship with the lover of my soul.

Never has something been more scary in my life. Where will You lead me? What adventures lie ahead? Do I have what it takes? Evidently I do, for You have chosen me.

Yesterday I read, in the 1959 Britain Faith and Practice, that we adults have the responsibility to listen to the call of God, and to act on our leadings, so that we might set the example for the youth to come. If we don't step out in service, how will they know what to do? This little volume even talked about the supernatural leadings of the Light, and our duty to answer them.

For years I have wandered about asking questions in the darkness. Is this real? Who would believe me? Am I crazy? Even now, attempting to "answer the call," I don't really know what that means.

It takes seasoning, the elders say. So I am waiting. But not waiting alone. Finally I have understood the need for clearness, and that it cannot be sought in a vacuum.

The Oasis of Community

It has been so long since I posted that I almost deleted this blog and started another. But there is something to the process that needs to be preserved. Having just come through a period in my life where I felt barren, like there was a desert inside, and no water to nourish my spirit, I trudged off to Baltimore Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions. I had the sense of a dying person approaching an oasis, hopeful against hope, yet doubting, as if that oasis might be just another mirage. Thankfully, it was the real thing. (BYM has never failed to refresh and renew me in all the years I have attended.) I was grateful I planned on attending the pre-sessions retreat, as it was like being plunged into a spring, and I emerged refreshed, already with a growing sense of clarity.

The Business of our Lives: The Transformation of Faith into Practice, was the focus of Annual Sessions this year. So the retreat promised us that "we will be exploring how our faith and testimonies can lead us to fulfill our role as representatives of God on earth. We will look at where we are now on our life/faith journey; where we are to go on our journey, and how to get there." I would say that the retreat more taught us the process that we could use to do this work. Most of the focus was on the deep listening that one can offer another in discerning their leading. I found this most helpful, and was also pleasantly surprised when one of my small group members stepped outside this format to say, "Well do you have a care/clearness committee?" and offered other tidbits about her own process that shed light on my own path.

I don't know if it's the fact I missed last years Sessions, or if it was that the agenda was truly so varied , or if my ears were just opened, but the week that followed offered me more nourishment and opportunity to learn than I can remember. I experienced it as though my spirit had entered paradise! What some might call the "work" of people's lives, I came to see as that which also fed them. The fulfillment of those involved in work in Africa, in the African Great Lakes Initiative, Friends Theological Institute, and Hlekweni Friends Rural Service was infectious. Workshops as diverse as Sabbath Economics, as basic as the Practice of Living Simply, helped me renew my faith in the Quaker process. Singing, worship, dining -- fellowship with Friends -- was the real food that my soul craved!

Our clerk, Howard Fullerton, is becoming simultaneously more amusing and adroit as each season passes. Business sessions were refreshing and succinct. Was it my imagination, or was every presenter cognizant of the listeners, striving to be not just informative but engaging? Even the memorial for our older Friends who have passed from this place this year, was like plunging into a refreshing pool. My thirst was quenched.

Out of this came crystal clear clarity. I cannot continue to live a life divided between my Quaker Life and my "other" life. Much like the parable of George Fox and William Penn, where Fox challenges Penn to wear his sword as long as he can, I feel that I can no longer wear the outside world's values and lifestyle. When I fall back into that lifestyle, it is only a matter of time before I feel empty, depressed and like life has no meaning.

This may sound extreme to some, but it is the way I experience it. It has become heavier to carry the burden of not listening to one's calling than it is to follow it. Somewhere inside I always have known it would come to this. The God of my understanding is loving, persistent, and never gives up on a soul. At the workshop on prayer by Daniel Snyder, I heard God called "the infinite, divine lover of your soul." In this week of spiritual retreat and renewal, I came to truly understand this. I can only hope to model an approximation of this love, and to someday pay forward the gift I was given this week. I am blessed to be a member of such an oasis of community in this difficult world.

Response to Quakers and Pagans

I have reprinted here my response to Cranath's post related to the May 4, 2008 Christianity Today article, "Are the Quakers Going Pagan?" I originally found this article titillating to my spiritual senses. I even brought a copy to my Adult RE class in our meeting, where we have been discussing just what we each believe, curious to see how others would respond. However, when I read the noted blog by Cranath about our "new Church growth strategy," I felt myself called to respond.

I find that I cannot keep our Light hidden under a bushel. Whether others are serious or merely poking fun at liberal Friends, I feel called to point out my own experience and point of view, that we hold one of the best kept secrets of the Society of Friends and christans in general too close to our heart. "Liberal" or unprogrammed Friends have been able to provide a haven for those seekers of peace and Light who do not feel comfortable within the confines of a more structured church environment, or who have never experienced the love of God in any church environment, but who desire to dwell in community with others who will support them on their spiritual journey.

Perhaps those who doubt the spiritual centeredness of those of us who choose a more liberal or universalist path need to adjust their own lenses to see what we are able to do. Grounded in spiritual community, lead by the indwelling Light (of Christ as we have traditionally called it), Friends have been able to see that which is of God in a vastly wider community and have been able to minister to that community as it seeks solace from the world. How different is this than early Friends, or even the original followers of Jesus? I do not ever fear that these seekers will lead me astray, when I am guided by the loving Inner Voice and the spiritual eldering of weighty Friends.

Recently I heard Krista Tippett interview three evangelical pastors on "Speaking of Faith," and I was struck by the similarity of the messages they had to what I feel the Society of Friends has to offer: all three had the feeling that the church had to offer a renewed activism to the world, a faith so strong that it moves one to act on God's accord. This is the message the Society of Friends has always offered, and liberal Friends are no different in wanting to live their faith:

Those inclined to make fast judgement of liberal members of the Religious Society of Friends would do well to refer to the May 2008 issue of Friends Journal. There you can read about the movement among young adult Friends who are seeking a "radical, spiritual Quakerism."

Living without closely defined creeds or doctrine does open the door for some unusual seekers to make their way into worship. This has proven in my own unprogrammed meeting to provide delicious fodder for spiritual discussion and journey. Somehow even conservative Friends seem to think that the absence of this doctrine, or of a defined leader like a pastor, will leave liberal Friends treading down the path to damnation.

Instead, quite the opposite is true. In over 25 years since being convinced I was a Friend, I have dwelt in strong community with other Friends and attenders who, like me, were seekers of the Light. Some of us came as pagans, some as refugees from the more organized Christian or Catholic worlds, some were lifelong Friends. Among us there was one common theme, the desire to live and work as the Light directs us, and to support each other in that living. Some of us call that Light the Christ within, but some, feeling damaged by the church communities from which we came, feel more comfortable referring to that inner direction as only the Light.

Our meetings function as any other healthy spiritual community: we worship together, we try to live daily our spiritual beliefs, we support and elder each other in growing along our spiritual paths, and we tend to each other and the world around us in need.

In recent years, living in a world that seems to think that there is somehow something peaceful that can result from war, our testimony that "there shall be no occasion for war" has drawn many wayfaring strangers to our midst. They are seeking something not found elsewhere: an answer to the question, what else is there to do?

Jew or gentile, pagan or Christian, or from any other religion, I believe what Jesus wants is that we open the door and welcome these travelers in. Many Friends throughout history, and many theologians in all traditions have admitted that God is so much greater than anything we can imagine.

The Society of Friends is growing in our little corner of the world, not because we have found a new strategy for church growth, but because we are not afraid to invite those travelers to join us on our journey. The Light of God, that lives within us all, is far more influential than any one tradition. I trust that Light will guide us all.

Psalm for a blogging experience

Dear Friends --
How does a non-techhie Friend get linked to you? Blogging and connecting with other Friends around the globe is so appealing to me, yet so elusive.

Like my early experiences of connecting with God in worship, you are so close yet so far away.

I have been searching the web for you, reading, occasionally commenting, writing here, even praying and meditating, yet you elude me.

Even though I cry out for you, I am lost in the wilderness of the online experience, and I cannot reach you. Where are you? What can I do to connect to you?

I will trust in the Lord my God to help me. In all other things he has answered me. I will seek the light and become more quiet. I am listening, Lord.

Covenant Community: Notes to Ponder

July 2007
I would like to invite you into a discussion I have been having with other individuals, with my monthly meeting, and with God. It involves the manner in which we have been called together into our monthly meeting, yearly meetings and as members of the Religious Society of Friends. As we begin with some gathering moments of silent worship, please hold your own meetings and what themes or currents they have running through them in contemplation...
What is a covenant? It is an expression of the relationship between God and God's people:
Scripture came into being as the expression of the relationship between God and his people. To use the formula that occurs repeatedly in Scripture, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Lev. 26:12; Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 37:27, etc.). The Bible typically portrays this relationship in terms of the covenant or its theological equivalents: the kingdom of God, the family of God, new life through membership in the Son of God. All issues and concerns raised in Scripture have their place within the ebb and flow of the covenant relationship between the Lord and those who have pledged their loyalty to him in worship and obedience. In this sense, covenant is the air we breathe in Scripture. Even where the concept of the covenant recedes into the background, it still supplies the framework and the thematic material for understanding all parts of the Old and New Testaments. In particular, it has profound implications for Christian worship. (http://www.laudemont.org/index.html?MainFrame=http://www.laudemont.org/a-bcacw.htm)

I am hoping to gather together here some snippets of discussions that are happening in many groups, from evangelicals to non-theists, conservatives to universalists. It begins with our early ancestors in the Society, and continues forward to today. Some claim it has skipped generations; I will leave that up to you to decide.

Most importantly, it involves the manner in which you and the Friends within your monthly meeting have been gathered, and the particular gifts which you all possess, that give your meeting its particular flavor. Please feel free to join in at any time, this is really a workshop, not a lecture, so I'm interested to hear from you equally or more than from myself. I see myself as offering some beginning concepts for your consideration and discussion.

My own journey begins with my discovery of the writings of Lloyd Lee Wilson. Lamar Matthews recommended his readings to me several summers ago, following a retreat on gospel order here at Baltimore yearly sessions. (Ask if all understand what gospel order is: the manner in which we understand God asks us to live). As a liberal, non-theist Quaker, I have to admit that I had to struggle through some blocks I had with Lloyd's language and beliefs as a conservative, yet something called to me immediately in his books. He was talking about something I had experienced, yet did not have clarity on. It was the difference between a “welcoming community” of individuals, and a community that is called together by God. This is the community I'm speaking of today.

For years at different times, I've been a member of Ministry and Counsel, Pastoral Care, Advancement and Outreach, Adult and Children's Religious Education. I have observed the ups and downs of attendance and participation, the feeble and courageous attempts at outreach with mixed results and the varied levels of care and comfort offered to our members and attenders. Many times I had meditated and wondered over the seemingly random changes of our meeting makeup and the mysterious disappearances of attenders I thought were clearly engaged. Lloyd Lee Wilson gave me a framework to begin to think differently about all of this:

p. 71 When meeting is understood to be primarily a human community, the unusual is threatening. Newcomers are unusual by definition, and most visitors can feel this sense of threat; they respond by not coming back. Some few, those who are least different from the people who are already in community, stay to become members themselves. When meeting is understood to be a Covenant experience, the unusual is God breaking into our lives in a new way – cause for celebration! Visitors to a Covenant meeting are given a truly heartfelt welcome and are more likely to want to come back again. When we live in a Covenant relationship with God and one another, we offer the spiritual refugees who come to our meetings far more than shelter from the storm – we offer a path to a transforming relationship with the One who makes all things new, who makes of each one of us a new creation in Christ.

p.72 The path to genuine, Spirit-led and Spirit-fed growth in our meetings lies not in contriving to make our meetings as comfortable and nonthreatening as possible to those who may visit, but in accepting with joy the covenant relationship with God that is expressed in the meeting to which one belongs. The most convincing argument one can humanly give to another about the healing, peace and joy that comes from giving up one's refugee mentality and entering into the Divine Covenant is the simple testimony of one's own life, lived in that same covenant.
These concepts began to get at what I have been alternately seeking and wishing to build within my own meeting. It also brought me back to thinking about some processes I'd been involved with in my prior meeting in PYM, where we worked towards visioning what God had planned for our meeting.

So that is the process I'd like to engage you in today – visioning what God has created in calling together all of the members and attenders of your meeting, those you agree with and those you don't, those who appear to fit and those who don't, those with clearly defined gifts, and those who may appear to be floundering. It's my thesis that no one is called by accident to the meeting they begin to attend and continue to attend, and that our work together and individually is all called by God.

“In the covenant community we choose to be in relationship with God, and God gives us to one another and to the community. Our primary bond is to God, which makes the community itself resilient and capable of great healing. The crises and interpersonal failures which would destroy a human community become, in the covenant community, opportunities for the love of God to heal and reconcile us to one another and for the community to witness about God's healing presence in the world.”
--Ogilvie, Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order, p. 62.

Let's take a moment to think about our own individual meetings, and some recent events in the meetings. It may be a conflict, or it could be an event such as homecoming, a wedding, a memorial...even a major repair. Try to visualize who stepped forward in that instance, and what their gifts were to the meeting. Try to visualize what blocks there were, if any to the event going off smoothly – anyone or anything that stood in the way. What happened in the process of coming to a united sense of the Meeting?

Now imagine that God has gathered each and every person and event that happened for the purpose of the spiritual growth of the corporate whole and possible of the individuals involved. Employ the idea that there are no accidents in order to see if there is any different understanding you can gain of the incident. What do you find?

Imagine what happened to the community of believers who put forward the Declaration of 1660:
We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world. The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.
-to Charles II, 1660

Note the phrase “The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided..” This is not a community that believes it is acting as a group of people, it is a group who are being led by a mutual power. This community is gathered for this purpose among others.

In John 15:15, Jesus says to his disciples, “ I have called you Friends. Everything I have learned from the Father I have given to you.” This simple phrase is the basis for the naming of our religion. It is the personal covenant George Fox entered in to and what came to be the basis for the Religious Society of Friends. In Fox's and Ogilvie's language, we are more than people who mediate our relationship with God through Christ. We are Friends of Christ and therefore of God. Our community is based on this friendship and how we respond to it. When we become convinced of our relationship with a meeting, implicit in this is our primary relationship with God.

How do we respond to the way in which God calls us here?
DO we live in covenant community?
Do we weep or rejoice for it in times of trouble or joy?
Do we feel the soul of our own community as the individuals within it struggle or are ill?
What do you feel about the notion that you are tied inextricably to the others in your Monthly meeting, in your Yearly Meeting, to all other Friends?

Recently I learned that some Midwest and Pacific YM Friends are having a discussion about “Convergent Friends.” Robin Mohr of PYM defines these friends as “Friends who are seeking a deeper understanding of our Quaker heritage and a more authentic life in the kingdom of God on Earth, radically inclusive of all who seek to live this life. It includes among others, Friends from the politically liberal end of the evangelical branch and from the Christian end of the unprogrammed branch.” (from her blog)

Convergent Friends is an evolving idea that has been discussed widely in the Quaker blogging community. The conversation emphasizes relationships that foster the building and edification of the Kingdom. It is a return to the beliefs of the early Friends in many ways, and an attempt to live lives that are not secularized or divided by our exposure to modern culture. As a universalist Friend, I take some issue with the language of “the Kingdom,” but I do believe it is only a matter of time until this conversation expands to become more pluralistic.

The evidence I have for this is the work of Philip Gulley and James Mulholland, two evangelical Friends who have come to believe that God will “save” every person on earth. I was first taken with their book, “If God is Love: Rediscovering grace in an ungracious world.” The authors describe their journey from very rigid, right and wrong beliefs, to seeing the grace of God acting in all aspects of life in ways that could not fail to challenge them to move beyond the narrowness of their denomination.

On page 137, they talk about “gracious religion:”
Gracious religion isn't an unbending allegiance to a narrow orthodoxy. It is about approaching our life with God and others in a spirit of gentleness, humility, and openness. These tools become the means by which God fits us for citizenship in the world and God's kingdom. It is about being less committed to a rigid, self-concerned institution and more concerned about authenticity, integrity and faith.

This faith is not about believing the right things about God, but about trusting God to remake us in God's image, full of grace and truth. Its goal i is not dogmatic certainty, but making our peace with a great mystery – that God's simple truth is revealed in a multiplicity of forms. All of these forms reflect a common conviction – that we are most like God when we love each other.
What a glorious day it will be when the Convergent Friends begin to converse with the universalist Friends in a dialogue where each accepts the presence of God in the other.

The FUM conflict over hiring of homosexuals threatens to lead us just to that place. Conflicts over sexual predators in meetings lead us there. Any place where there is no easy solution, God offers us a door to a new creation, and we need only accept that we are called to be with each other for this possibility.