Corporate Witness

"There is a journey that some follow by starting in prayer and others follow by starting in action.  It is the witness of our tradition that those who are naturally inclined to begin in prayer will eventually feel led into outward action, and those who are naturally inclined to begin with action will eventually feel called more deeply into prayer.  However, it is sometimes the case that those who pray do not act, and those who act do not pray.  There is an unfortunate tendency among some Quakers to separate prayer and action rather than to integrate them."
Daniel Snyder   Quaker Witness as Sacrament p.22

I encountered this quote recently in a worship sharing.   I am reminded of the idea: does something arise from an inward motion or an outward motion?  When said this way it is clear that either motion can be the motion towards a leading.   That certainly has been my experience.   At age 16 when someone handed me a flyer describing the despicable conditions of farm workers, I thought: "Someone should do something about this".   Then I heard a voice that said: "And who is someone?" which resulted in several years of activism on this issue. This would be the example of an outward motion.

When I was 21 walking through the Smithsonian museum, having somewhere on a back burner a wonderment about whether I should take part in an act of civil disobedience designed to testify against cutting the safety net from under the poor, I had a sort of mystical experience walking through the museum.  Panorama after panorama showed the lifestyle and technology and struggles and advances of Americans throughout its history.  By the end I sat down on a bench and felt as if I was in a covered Meeting- I felt powerfully the eternal struggle of humans to provide a better life for the next generation and that at its base was a struggle for goodness and for uplifting fueled by Love. Somehow in that same Centeredness I knew I would act the next day in solidarity for the struggle for people to have basic needs meet and lives of dignity.   This was an inward motion.

Although as the last example shows the world may take us to prayer, and the deep seatedness of the testimonies, of basic values that point us towards the Truth as we currently understand it, makes even the encounter with the outward injustices of the world, a nudge to return to deeper truths.

I have to say growing up inside Quakerism I saw that Friends I knew fell easily into categories: the social justice Friends for whom that was always what motivated them and the spiritual Friends who gave beautiful ministry but seemed never to take social action.   It is unfortunate that in modern day Quakerism that which was bound inextricably in early Quakerism is so easily divided.  However, in those Friends who have most deeply touched me and who are often found to be "weighty Friends" I find that those to threads are interwoven.

Recently, I have heard people from many different Meetings lamenting that many Friends within the Meeting do "good works" but that the Meeting has no shared social witness, or action that it does together.   Sometimes this is accompanied with a wondering of how they could get this?  (With a wistfulness that I liken to wondering how one could get some of those magic beans that Jack got?)  My feeling is that we are forgetting our own history.  If one examines the history of  Quaker corporate witness: to worship freely, to not swear oaths, to oppose slavery, to support Women's equality, and to support Civil rights within the US - you will notice that each of those things began with the witness and leading of one or a small handful of Friends.  Those Friends were NOT always happily received by their fellow Friends, and were controversial in their time, and yet they also did exert substantial influence which grew with....well the power of Truth, until a 100 years later Friends could stand in unity against slavery, or support a 100 year movement for women to get the vote, etc.

It strikes me that once again the influence of American liberalism within Quakerism is a sort of tolerant "We all have the freedom to do whatever we want, and we don't have to require anything of anyone else".  So therefore we are free to pursue our individual good works but it is considered annoyingly inappropriate and perhaps self-centered to insist that others MUST/SHOULD unite with our view of the truth.   The problem with this is that early Quakerism believed there was A Truth, one that God called us too.  They saw themselves as in community for the purpose of raising up that Truth to the general society.  Thus corporate witness meant not giving a member a pat on the back for good works, but having to discern with that Friend if they were bring Truth for the whole group.   I am not sure that in our current use of clearness process or business process that we still expect to find corporate Witness.

"For one thing, the legacy of John Woolman invites us to be open to recovering more fully the collective dimensions of meeting for worship.  We are summoned to "dwell deep".  For another, we are invited to see our activism as a species of worship.   For activists, this is an invitation to root our activism more fully in the transforming power of meeting for worship and the love of God we encounter there.  For those who are more contemplative than an activist orientation, it challenges us to broaden our understanding of the boundaries of the meetinghouse, and the boundaries of worship itself."
Michael Birkel  "Mysticism and Activism: On learning from John Woolman  a talk at SEYM

 I close with this quote also from the worship sharing (special thanks Christine Hall) because I love Birkel's phrase activism as a species of worship - because I think of the times like on the bench in Smithsonian where my activism brought me into worship or the recent EQUAT action where 100's of Friends sat in PNB banks and prayed that they stop funding mountain top removal. And I know that without my community choosing to serve as an anchor to my activism, I am in danger of being swept into the ego, strategy, power plays, etc that can live in the world of activism.  I am challenged to keep foremost in me the Outward Motion of God's Love as the energy from which I act.   This also challenges me to think about which of the many faces of the Divine that I know: Creator, Lover, parent, Shepard, Comforter, am I connecting with and witnessing to when I act in the world for truth and justice?