Not Outrunning One's Light

Quakers have a saying about not out running a leading or outrunning one's Light.  This is kind of like advanced math, in order to understand it you have to be able to understand some basic things about leadings to begin with.  While other religions do have some similar beliefs like believing ministers will receive a "call" to a congregation or to a certain work, I believe (perhaps with bias) that Quakerism has a more complex and developed tradition around leadings than other faiths, This is complete with a clearness committee process designed to help us properly discern if we are "led" or not.

Embedded in our traditions around both clearness process and around elders for a ministry (now commonly called an anchor committee) is the idea that in addition to the danger of not properly discerning an initial leading from a thought, or from ego, or the danger of not acting on a leading, is the danger of out running the leading.  What this means is to have an initial leading and set off on that undertaking only to become distracted by ego, or to have the thinking/planning mind sort of take over the leading and remake it in its own non-divine image.   In some cases it can simply mean that the person has become burned out or completed in the ministry and needs to acknowledge this and lay down the leading before it becomes forced or empty.

This was a hard thing for me to learn about as a young woman full of excitement and enthusiasm for the work of the spirit.  I remember serving on a clearness committee when I was 22 for someone who was about 10 years my elder.   She had a leading to do something.   To me that was enough I was ready to say Yes!   But the other older, wiser members of the clearness asked other questions:  What about her husband?  How did he feel about it ?(not supportive it turned out)  They were almost entirely dependent upon her income - how would the family manage if her income was cut back?  (Seems she did not have clarity about that part.)  The other members of the clearness committee wound up saying that they did not sense that this was the right time for her leading.   I felt frustrated and annoyed: was being married a dis-qualifier for leadings?  Was it her fault her husband was unsupportive?  Would God care about that? The fact that he sort of lived off her felt to me like a really unfair reason to say the finances were not right at this moment, etc.

However, as it unfolded her husband turned out to have cancer.  He became quite sick in the next year (the time she had been contemplating traveling with a ministry) and required her nursing till his death.  In retrospect it became completely clear that her clearness committee had indeed been correct that it was not the right timing.  Also as an older hopefully more mature person it now also becomes clear to me that while "not fair" to have marital issues interfere with spiritual work, it is indeed true that they do interfere, that it is indeed necessary to get our "house in order" before we can undertake a spiritual work.

Another story about the timing of a leading is a story from John Woolman's own journal where he writes about a strong leading he felt to go to the Barbados to minister to Friends there who held slaves.   He purchased in advance the ticket for passage on a ship and traveled down to the port it was to leave from.  However, arriving at the port he had a strong sense of the leading as having been completed and so did not sail but turned around and went home!  When I first heard that story I was again non-plussed on the level of getting stuff done in the world.   And I must confess it certainly opens one up to looking very crazy to one's friends and neighbors!   However, from a faith perspective I'm awe struck with the faithfulness of remaining listening not just after the initial urge to go and the initial steps were set in motion for going, but at each step.   I'm also awed by the faithfulness to lay it down, regardless of how that looked, when he no longer felt the inner prompting!

In a similar example of my own impatience of youth, a woman moved to the Meeting I grew up in and was led to first have a clearness committee and then out of that ask the Meeting to record her as a minister.  She indeed had great gifts of ministry. This caused a great uproar in my Meeting. It is a fact that all throughout Quaker history that Friends with a gift of ministry were so recorded, and were recorded with a leading to travel to minister with a certain message.  Examples ranging from "how we will stay low" (meaning not in ego) to the vanity of lace!  But despite these facts, no one had been recorded with a gift of ministry in my Yearly Meeting probably because of the conflict over "paid ministry" which was at the heart of the splits in Quakerism.

So some Friends in my Meeting found her request quite threatening or audacious.  Others saw it as simply a historic footnote and could see no current relevance of doing such a thing.  The Meeting discussed her request but did not reach consensus on it.   To me if God had lead her to this then I felt there would be a long struggle in my Meeting to get others to understand this.  But to my great surprise she announced that she had been faithful to the leading she had been given to her and that she found no further Light to proceed further and thus was content to lay the matter down.   I remember feeling disappointed by this at the time, however, now I can again look in awe a the careful faithfulness to discern that the leading was complete.  As I left home at that time I was not there to observe how this course of action may have impacted my Meeting or the woman who asked.   But I'm sure that in someway it did because I believe the Creator always has a magnificent intent without accident!