George Fox said: “You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles saith then, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?” This he said during a period of time when the Catholics and Protestants were fighting with each other about the ultimate source of truth: the Bible or Papal authority. Fox’s radical message was that people could have a direct experience of God and know the Truth themselves. It is still a very radical message.
It is to this Center – the direct experience of God - that we must return over and over again as we try to make our Meetings what we want them to be. How would our business Meetings be if we could listen for Divine direction? How would our committee meetings be if we could find that Guidance? How would our fellowship be if we could feel the Inner Light of those we are Gathered with? How would our worship be if we believed the Holy One would provide the messages and that is what we heard? This help is available to us in that Living Center
In the early days of Quakerism Friends would greet each other: “How goes the Spirit with Thee?” This was a serious question. It was not the “How are you?” with obligatory answer of “Fine” (regardless of how we really are), but a sincere desire to know the spiritual state of the other which was considered paramount. Friends expected to know each other spiritually. Early Friends also worshipped with their neighbors. They raised each other’s barns, they birthed each other’s babies and they usually knew each other from cradle to grave.
Spiritual Nurture
It is harder for modern Friends to really know each other. We usually see each other only on Sundays, and we sit in silence which does not breed familiarity. One of the things we must find new ways to do is to know each other spiritually, so that when we look around our Meetings for Worship we know each other’s spiritual conditions and those speak to us also in the silence. It is good that in our adult ed hours we learn about Quaker history, our testimonies and about the social concerns of our day, but we need to do worship sharing together as well – to know who has a spiritual dry spell right now, who is alive with the spirit, who is in a spiritual crisis, what is the nature of the spiritual dilemmas we each struggle with? We need to know how our personal relationships with God are going!
When we know each other in this way, a work party is holy fellowship. When we know each other this way, we have patience and forbearance for each other in our committee work. When we know each other this way, we hear the holy message clothed in the personality and speaking style of our friend who has risen to deliver the Author’s message. When we are known this way, our community becomes The Parent’s arms which hold us in our struggles.
There are more convinced Friends in the Society of Friends than ever before since the first generation of Friends. Some convinced Friends have been Friends for many decades, others have attended for only a few months. Small Meetings struggle with how to teach and model Quakerism to new attenders. When we fail at this, we risk losing our Center as a Religious Society of Friends. Mennonites are much clearer than Quakers in talking about God's Kingdom and the World, which is made up of "powers and principalities." They speak of two ways of being in the world – one with the Divine at the Center and one where we are lost in the values, customs and beliefs of the popular culture. Among Mennonites, non-conforming means not to adhere to World values, instead to be true to Kingdom values. When we, as Friends, fail to teach new Friends about the Divine Center Divine Center
Eldering:
To nurture each other well in Quakerism we must recapture the original meaning of eldering. Among Friends these days, ‘Eldering’ has taken on something of a “dirty word” status because in the worst days of our history during the splits, elders wrote people out of meeting and elders tried to keep a rigid orthodoxy. The phrase itself is not self-explanatory. While it seems to simply imply an older person, early Friends records show “elders” or “weighty friends” were often recorded in their 20’s; it had nothing to do with age. Eldering is about nurturing others in Quakerism and having spiritual discernment. We could attempt to substitute the modern day word mentoring, but a mentor is not necessarily grounded in Spirit, nor does the word connote spiritual support. This would again bring in concepts from the World that do not reflect the whole spiritual picture of the Kingdom.
It is easy sometimes to look at our Meeting with frustration and see the shortcomings from the Quaker ideal, to compare this Meeting with others we have attended or to this Meeting in better times. I think instead we must approach our relationship to Meeting as one approaches a marriage. Two parties have entered into a mutually committed relationship: for better and for worse, in sickness and in health…and Quakers were so wise to add: “with divine assistance I will be such a partner”. So rather than looking at what is missing in our Meetings and feeling critical we must look at it as the beloved one that we are to nurture and that we will do this not alone but with Holy Assistance. Again as we turn to the Center we will receive guidance with which to improve our Meetings.
Ministry
If we feel that ministry is not rich in our Meeting, we must work to build worship sharing and ways of getting to know each other spiritually at a greater depth. If we feel our committees are not functioning well we must look to a spiritually grounded nominating process, and we must look to how we have built fellowship in general in our Meeting. If our committees are overburdened we must look to outreach, nurturing Friends who maybe disaffected, and to simplifying our committee structure so it serves well and does not merely mirror “how we have always done it”. If our Meetings for Worship for Business are tedious and non-productive we must look at the overall spiritual wellbeing of our meeting and how well our committees are functioning, as well as how we teach business practice to our new members. We must also look to how we use outside resources: FGC, Yearly Meeting, Pendle Hill, etc. to build skills in our clerk and committee clerks.
Marriages are work. They do not succeed without effort and nurturing. The same is true of Meetings. We are also enriched by marriages which provide us a place to give and receive love and to build a home. The same is also true of our membership in our Meetings. Some people wonder over the reason to become a member as opposed to remaining an attender. For me it is to commit ourselves to a mutually fulfilling relationship and the work which that entails.
Elders do this kind of work in their Meetings. They listen to the Center to discern the condition of the Meeting. They take actions designed to support the spiritual wellbeing of the Meeting, and they nurture other members in their spiritual life. This means everything from encouraging the unfolding verbal ministry of those who are just beginning, to nurturing the Children and newcomers in learning the ways of Quakerism. It means discerning and nurturing the gifts of members in our nominating processes. It means creating adult ed programs designed to support where the Meeting struggles and is trying to grow. It means providing pastoral care or oversight to Meeting members and attenders that deepens their connections to the Meeting and nurtures their spiritual lives. It means facing the conflicts in our midst and dealing with them with love rather than trying to sweep them under the carpet. It means being willing to share joyfully what we experience in Quakerism with those we meet in the world. It means sharing what we love and cherish about Quakerism, so that we may offer it as an attractive place for others to visit and find their spiritual home.
This was published in Friends Journal in Nov. 2010 under the tittle:The Divine Center and Communal Nurture
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