Discernment...A Quaker Gift for the World

Modern Quakers tend to see clearness committees as for membership and for marriage.  And I have heard some Quakers complain that convinced Friends may see this as more of a rubber stamp function because “of course we want this person to join our Meeting or to get married.”  In a life time of Quakerism I’ve only twice known a clearness committee for marriage to find a couple “not clear” to be married.  In both cases the couple did wind up breaking up, so presumably the clearness committee discerned correctly that the proposed marriage was not rightly ordered.  Done right the clearness committee can ask questions that prompt a deep and meaningful self-reflection.

I would like to argue here that the tool of discernment is one of the greatest gifts Quakerism has to offer the world and should be applied more widely.  So for example here are some of the other uses of a clearness committee I have known people to use a clearness committee for: whether to take a job (especially one that involves moving away or maybe is ethically challenging.), whether to enter a certain profession or change professions, whether one is called to commit holy obedience, or whether one has a leading to work for a social justice cause.  One may also discern whether to leave a marriage, whether to sue someone, whether to “come out”, whether to have a baby and even whether it is time to die!  As you can see the sky is the limit, and think how rich it is to have others to help discern God’s will about such serious and life changing decisions.

Early Friends had Committees of Elders to support members who had been found to be carrying an ongoing ministry.  Their purpose was to make sure they stayed faithful and grounded in their ministry – did not go up in their ego and “outrun their leading.”    Now a days we call these anchor committees.  Some people call them support committees but I’m afraid that secularizes the process and sees it as just “emotional support” – and overlooks the primarily spiritual task of anchoring the person in spirit.

Rightly ordered a clearness committee is not a body to “just listen” or to give advice.  It is to listen in a worshipful way – for each member to try to notice if the person is rightly ordered, to ask questions to try to help clarify, and to reflect what each member understands in the spirit.  Quite profound.

I have an anchor committee now for over 6 months which is helping me discern the right steps for my ministry regarding climate change.   Recently I was at FGC leading a workshop on Quaker practice – I was having to talk about and explain Quaker practice.  Somehow something came together in my head and I realized that many of the non-Quaker activists I knew (some spiritual, some not) were struggling to discern correct steps and some were struggling because they have not discerned and are in the chaos of being pulled hither and yon and everywhere with their concerns for our troubled world.  They do not have Thomas Kelly’s wise words: 

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks,our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular.".

So I started explaining just a bit to my activist friends and asking them if they would appreciate some help with discernment.  They were quite interested in the idea and I started having one on one meetings with people and simply asking the question “what are you most passionate about in the work against climate change?”  I listened and asked more questions to help them explore.  What emerged was a wonderful flurry of creative and spirit led activism.  My next move would be to teach a clearness committee structure so they don’t have to be dependent upon me for this.   I thus highly recommend that Quakers start learning how to take the discernment process out into the world.

Out running Your Light: a Confession

Recently I was watching a tv show where a lapsed Catholic went into the confession booth and said: “Forgive me father for I have sinned, it’s been 13 years since my last confession.  I have…”  After a life time of just finding the concept of confession odd (probably because I did not and still don’t believe in sin) I watched this scene with a certain envy.   It seemed like a comforting idea to be able to go somewhere and confess that you have strayed from your connection from God, and to ask to have that connection restored.   I guess readers’ you will hear this Quaker’s confession.

Quakers have a historic concept of outrunning one’s leading, or one’s light – as I have explained in a previous post.   In that post I explain the idea that God can give us a leading but that Quaker’s of old had a clearness committee or now called anchor committee of elders appointed to support their ministry.   These elders were to hold them accountable and be a source for them to turn to for grounding so the ministry would not wander from its source, and become ego driven or over taken by worldly considerations.  The phrase out running one’s leading or light meant that you tried to do more than you were given light or divine direction about.

Two and half years ago I founded a chapter of a climate change organization in the city I live in.  I had been operating under a leading to do climate change work for years, and the way the pieces fell together to start the group was also very clearly a leading.  It had all the hallmarks of way easily falling into place, doors opening before you could even ask, etc.  In the first year of the group we did amazing stuff and I had the peace and contentment one has when on the proper path.  The inner leadership of the group was an odd assortment of personalities, but I felt a little like Jesus who had collected a strange assortment of fisherman, prostitutes, and sinners, as his inner circle with which to do amazing work.  (I did not feel like Jesus, just to be clear, only that my process of collecting people felt as random.) 

But then to my heartbreak the infighting started.   Because I knew I had been lead to create this group and because I could already see the powerful difference the group could/did make I instinctively felt protective of it.   I would argue and fight with those on our leadership team who I felt were taking us in the wrong direction.   I only ever had 20 to 25 hours a week to spend on the group, while some members were spending 40+ hours on it.   So in my free time (the 20 to 25 hours) a week I would rush like a mad person – to the extent that my closest friend said in exasperation one day “No Lynn, it is not just getting through this up coming action/event…perhaps you have not noticed you have been going at this pace for over a year.  Being over busy is a form of spiritual disobedience.”  I heard her, but I still felt caught on a treadmill I could not exit.

As I prepared to write this blog I see the previous blog about outrunning one’s leading written a whole 10 months before.  I see the one I wrote about giving testimony where I recognize that I had spoken cleverly while giving public testimony,but not as lead.  In my July blog post I even spoke about my realizations that the ways in which I have learned to do Quaker process do not work well outside of Friends Meetings – and that was one of the many struggles I was having on how to be a faithful Quaker doing this work in a secular setting.  I go on to say: "I now have a better way, but I will need a Quaker committee of elders or anchor committee, so I do not get lost in ego or blindspots by this way of trying to lead.  In general the American public does not see the search for Truth as part of the work of life. "  But I did not do that.  Why?   This is not an excuse, but it is true.   Like many Meetings in America right now mine is of shrinking size.   The active members struggle to take care of a Meeting House, and to do pastoral care for our aging members increasingly in ill health.   How do I ask an over stretched Meeting to create an anchor committee for me?  But I am clear now that for any future climate work I do that I will have to…or again I will be over extended beyond my light.

So I sort thought about my experience as that I and one of the leadership were having a lot of fights.   (Looking back I wonder why I did not look for that of God in her despite her atheism.) I failed to notice till the very end that it was actually a power struggle.   That she was trying to pull certain things away from me, to go around me, and to minimize my position as coordinator of the group.   I reacted instinctively to protect, to defend, to deflect which I thought just meant I was always being pulled into conflict, but really meant I was in the power struggle just defensively and unconsciously so.  My brain was increasingly trying to figure out what to do, how to counter her next move…caught in a big chess game – something which in no way resembles a faithful walk.  

Increasingly, I was wearing armor whenever I was engaging my leadership team, which due to email meant many times a day in my own home.  When you have to put on armor that many times a day, it eventually does not come off. Thankfully, I can say I never became mean, vindictive or attacking.  But at some point I realized that I was becoming a different person because I was living inside my armor with my heart locked away, becoming a person I did not want to be. When it reached its height I walked away and left rather than demand that everyone take sides and engage in an all-out war.  Which meant I took the pain, and the loss on myself…and that I got to take the armor off.

Why was I outrunning my light?  I was returning to activism after a several decades long break to raise my child.  Activism was from a time in my life where mostly I did secular activities – my faith-life strongest in other times of my life.  These two parts of me existed separately and without integration.  I was lead to start a secular organization – a puzzling thing from the start.   But I don’t live on the East coast in a thicket of Quaker population.  There were in fact in my whole large city no Quaker’s I could even pull into my secular group.  Like so many Quakers whose work life takes place in a secular setting I just saw this as a natural development, but not as a danger to faithfulness.  And I think perhaps if I had done it a different way, it could have been done faithfully.  Looking back I can notice I would have needed to pray about everything I did, all my own personal decisions made within my group.  And I know I would have to have an anchor committee.

Right now I am in spiritual recovery.  I am slowing down enough to be able to hear a still small voice again.  I have stepped away from my group so that the chess game in my head will finally shut off.  I am noticing the nudges I had, but was completely distracted from by choosing other paths that the power struggle required.  I am divesting of tasks I took on out of duty or responsibility, but not out of leading.  I am deciding that like Quakers of old that would come to a cross roads and wait until they discerned which way to go, that I can take steps slowly and wait for the next step till I have Light.  Because while the planet melting has urgency, God’s timing is always deliberate and perfect. I am re-deciding that I will move at a pace that includes self-care, play and fellowship even if it means I get “less done.”  I suspect less will become more; that what I will do will be more effective.  Certainly if God is in charge it will be!