I saw the movie Gandhi when it first came out. It is still my favorite movie all these decades later because it changed my life. I saw it in a Chicago theater on a very busy crowded street. I remember when I stumbled out of the dark theater and the meditatively paced 3 hour movie, feeling overwhelmed and bombarded by the cacophony of traffic noises and neon flashing lights and commercial advertising.
Raised Quaker I had of course always been raised to admire Gandhi as a powerful non-violent activist who had freed his whole country through non-violent resistance. But I did not at that point know very many details of his life or his struggle. It certainly also helped to have the beauty of India on a gigantic screen to make his life seem very three dimensional to me. I felt a deep peacefulness as I watched the movie. The same peacefulness I experienced if I was in a Gathered Meeting for worship.
But what I was really struck by first was how the campaigns that he lead against the British had so much moral power. Since the movie is long I had time to reflect on how it was that he picked just the right thing, how he made hard choices to fast or to risk arrest or assault? Slowly it dawned on me as scene after scene showed him in meditation, or prayer, or spinning prayer, that he was not "figuring it out", that he was listening to God and he was as Quakers believe, receiving answers.
As I walked down that raucous street afterwards, Gandhi taught me something about being Quaker. I was in my earlier 20's. Until that time going to Meeting was something which I did on Sunday. It was almost like God lived there in the Meeting house and I went to visit, and then went home for the rest of the week and lived the rest of my life. It suddenly dawned on me as I reflected on the movie that there was this possibility to live my life from that deep centered place from whence the direction of the Divine came from. I was awe struck by the Majesty and Possibility that was there if one lived ones whole life, every minute in faithfulness - not just Sundays. I immediately decided that that was the life I really wanted.
I wish I could say that I have in fact successfully done that. But of course few of us are Gandhi or Mother Theresa. However, it has never left me that that is in fact my goal and my horizon line and I think that changed my whole life. I will often become aware that it has been a long time since I stopped to really hear God's voice or to center, and then I am pulled back to that effort because I do know it is the only true North on the compass.
When I had my daughter, I for practical reasons, took an almost 15 year break from activism...but as I started to wade back into it I simply began to do the activism that I had been taught before Gandhi. The kind where you think of strategies and implement them. Where you make allies and work with them. And sadly where you enumerate the reasons to be angry with your "opponent" and act on those. However, a series of events cast me out of that way of doing things and reminded me that there is another way of doing things that involves being faithful in our quest for justice and following that Inner Compass for direction and that is what I am trying to do now. I think it is a closer walk with Gandhi.
Showing posts with label faithfulness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faithfulness. Show all posts
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Faithfully Effective
At the Delta 5 trial in order to prove the necessity defense the 5 defendants were asked repeatedly to tell the other things they had done and to say whether these things were effective. They said no they were not effective as that was part of proving that the act of breaking the law was necessary. I think this is a very confusing message for our movement.
In reflecting upon this I think it is an incorrect question. I think in fact that everything we do to fight climate change is somewhat effective and also not successful. But I think the correct question was: but is it faithful?
In facing the greatest moral challenge of our lifetimes we can only listen for God's guidance and be faithful. Joanna Macy famously says: "We must realized that the ancestors, the descendants, and the other life forms on this earth and the earth itself are all trying to help us." I was deeply moved when I heard Joanna say this. I have struggled with the feeling of the weight on the world on my shoulders as we face this grave crisis. But when I heard that I realized "hmmm yes why do I assume it is a human brain that will think of the solution or even create the movement for change? Or that we can even recognize the solution as it emerges?"
When Shell was here in Seattle last year with their arctic rig - hundreds of people came out in their kayaks and tried to stop them. They basically pushed us aside like flies and proceeded. However they ran aground outside of Bremerton (while evading only 3 kayaks) and were stuck there for a few hours. I could not help but think of Joanna and believe the earth itself had reached up and grabbed the rig.
Later their one required ice breaker, sprung a leak (apparently from ice slashing the steel) and therefore had to come back to Portland for repairs. While they were there,was when the world watched them be delayed for several days by protesters dangling off the bridge stopping them from going forward. The leak itself cost them several weeks, the protesters several days. In the end their short window for drilling was shortened enough that they got only one hole drilled instead of two as they had planned. And because of that their very expensive mission failed and they therefore have given up on arctic drilling. In my mind the earth is helping us...the ice reached up and in its own act of vandalism, slashed, and said no!
It would seem to me therefore in God's universe it is unknowable what the outcome of climate change will be, but we all must be not so much effective as faithful in the fight against climate change because we do not know how life will act to protect life!
In reflecting upon this I think it is an incorrect question. I think in fact that everything we do to fight climate change is somewhat effective and also not successful. But I think the correct question was: but is it faithful?
In facing the greatest moral challenge of our lifetimes we can only listen for God's guidance and be faithful. Joanna Macy famously says: "We must realized that the ancestors, the descendants, and the other life forms on this earth and the earth itself are all trying to help us." I was deeply moved when I heard Joanna say this. I have struggled with the feeling of the weight on the world on my shoulders as we face this grave crisis. But when I heard that I realized "hmmm yes why do I assume it is a human brain that will think of the solution or even create the movement for change? Or that we can even recognize the solution as it emerges?"
When Shell was here in Seattle last year with their arctic rig - hundreds of people came out in their kayaks and tried to stop them. They basically pushed us aside like flies and proceeded. However they ran aground outside of Bremerton (while evading only 3 kayaks) and were stuck there for a few hours. I could not help but think of Joanna and believe the earth itself had reached up and grabbed the rig.
Later their one required ice breaker, sprung a leak (apparently from ice slashing the steel) and therefore had to come back to Portland for repairs. While they were there,was when the world watched them be delayed for several days by protesters dangling off the bridge stopping them from going forward. The leak itself cost them several weeks, the protesters several days. In the end their short window for drilling was shortened enough that they got only one hole drilled instead of two as they had planned. And because of that their very expensive mission failed and they therefore have given up on arctic drilling. In my mind the earth is helping us...the ice reached up and in its own act of vandalism, slashed, and said no!
It would seem to me therefore in God's universe it is unknowable what the outcome of climate change will be, but we all must be not so much effective as faithful in the fight against climate change because we do not know how life will act to protect life!
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Listening to the Still Small Voice: Returning to Faithfulness - a guest blog
Guest Blogger: Alice
My daughter wrote this for a class assignment in a dance class where they were asked to do something kind for their bodies. It is a writing about going beyond your light, and coming back to Center. Lynn
I didn’t know this was my something kind until I did it, and perhaps this
is counter-intuitive, but here it is: I quit “Megawatt” the PILOBOLUS dance
piece that I’ve been a part of since August. It started by trying to set a
boundary with my rehearsal director about tech on Sunday, that I need to go to
Quaker Meeting for Worship and that is not something I’m willing to sacrifice
as I have already sacrificed so much for this piece. I didn’t mean when
initiating this conversation to withdraw from the whole thing. However, this
statement lead to a conversation about how I’ve been feeling all semester. I
ended up telling him that doing this work has been really hurting my heart in
addition to my body, I was crying because authority figures intimidate me and
it was an uncontrollable nervous bodily reaction. He reacted by saying we would
phase me out. This was a surprise, but welcome as I had been considering
leaving the piece for the spring. More importantly than the details of my exit:
the reason.
I was born, raised, and am
a practicing Quaker. My faith has taught me to do nothing but listen to the
“still small voice” inside us each, the fraction of God in each of us. And I
believe that part of our collective job on this planet right now is learning
how to listen to and follow ones heart/intuition. On the day of the PILOBOLUS
audition the company members told us all about their philosophy of work, of
pushing and going, of bigger and better. And that small voice whispered, and I
shut my ears. As I went home that day my head was hurting, I was dizzy, and I
was out of it. I was worried I was concussed. My body was speaking. In the
intensive week one of the company members, whom I loved and appreciated dearly,
told us horror stories of the things he and other company dancers have done in
the name of this work. My small voice asked, “what for?” I left those 6 hour
long days, with my head and body throbbing. My body was screaming. And I didn’t
listen. My heart and body kept speaking throughout the process and I kept ignoring-
I kept being unfaithful. I won’t recount all the greater impacts this had on
other aspects of my journey. But finally there was no choice, but to listen.
I have been taught my whole life to listen. And I know
that so much of my calling and work in this lifetime is about dismantling the
paradigms of pushing and going, of bigger and better. Those paradigms are the
narratives that have driven the colonization of the Earth and its Peoples. That
is a mind frame that I cannot create or embody art within, because I make art
to CREATE. I have watched this work destruct, many dancers, in different ways.
And those convictions that I hold so deep could not stay hushed by my sense of
loyalty to a previous commitment, or by a sense of obligation.
When I came home that night one of my dear friends, who I meditate with often
and knows my heart in a tender way looked at me and said, “Alice you look
lighter, you look so much less stressed out.” He’s been asking me all semester
in random moments, for reasons unapparent to me “are you okay? You looked
stressed.” And I’ve always denied, not only to him, but myself. I asked him how
he knew, and he told me it’s in my body language. And that's how I knew this was my physical research. My body is responding with relief, and the headaches I've been experiencing after every rehearsal during this process left. My heart lightened. And I feel the presence of the Divine in a way I alarmingly have missed for a long
time. I feel freedom.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
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!
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!
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Faithfully Delivered
There is a well known Quaker joke: Two men sit next to each other on a bench. The one shakes for a long time in Meeting and yet never rises. Eventually the other man rises and gives a message. The Meeting for Worship ends and the second man turns to the shaker at the rise of Meeting and says: "Next time give your own damn message." This is funny to Quakers (yeah try giving this joke to a group of non-Quakers... you have to explain the joke just to get polite smiles.) because we recognize what it is to sit on a leading to speak. We have all done it at some time. I have also heard people say "Yeah not going to do that again...not worth the heart attack" meaning that the racing of the heart and the butterflies in the stomach felt while not delivery the message are not worth it!
We all also have stories of times where people's messages deeply spoke to us which, is both magical and a deep motivation to faithfully deliver messages given to us. My own story of that happened on an occasion where I had gone to not my own Meeting, but a local meeting in Jan the Sunday after Martin Luther King Day. On that Sunday I was deep in thought concerned about an issue concerning my then step-son and feeling somehow like two cherished values were pitted against each other and trying somehow to figure out which one was actually more important or how to reconcile them. Towards the end a young man rose and said: "I went to the Martin Luther King march this Monday and I was very struck during the pre-rally by how someone quoted him saying: " But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love". As I heard this it shot through me "Oh yes Love. Love is the answer. Love trumps all and I had forgotten this.
After Meeting I went to him and thanked him for being faithful in delivering the message because it had spoken to my condition. His eyes got big. He said: "I have never spoken in Meeting before and I did not know why I should just repeat that quote. It seemed silly, but I kept shaking so I finally did." Both parts of this story are important -that he was faithful and spoke to my condition and that I let him know as this wound up being an eldering in the importance of being faithful. Interestingly, I had had a strong urge to go tell him. I also had been faithful to the inward prompting. This would be an example of how we are one of another in community. I would also note here that I did not say "I liked your message", but "thank you for being faithful". This is an important distinction; when we thank Friends for "their message" we add to the confusion about where messages come from and tempt the ego of the one who delivered.
I remember once going to a Meeting in another town and being given a message, but no prompting to give it. I was confused by this and spent much of the hour trying to decide whether to give it, but eventually concluded that I was not to. I wound up thinking it was a message that God intended only for me. And in fact it was meaningful to me for quite a while. Then one Sunday in my Meeting I somehow felt moved to give the message. "Really God?" "Yes really" So I stood and gave the message. Later a Friend who did not often come to Meeting, came and thanked me for the message saying how much the message meant to her. Wow, I had no idea that God could work in such a way!
I'm not sure if that is the oddest way The Holy One has brought a message to Meeting through me or if it would be this story. I once woke on a Sunday morning from a dream in which I had been in Meeting for worship and one of our Members had sung a message and some other thing had happened. I went to Meeting and thought about this dream - after a while I started feeling the familiar stomach sensations indicating to deliver the message. 'really?...but this is a dream its not a message" Yes really! So I rose and told the dream and sat down embarrassed. Late,r the person who had sang in my dream came to me and said that she had been for several months been getting words to a new song in Meeting for worship but did not think of herself as a song writer and so had not written them down. We looked at each other and she said: "I guess I had better write them down huh?" She did and some months later sang the song for Meeting.
In my Yearly Meeting there was for two years a Clerk who was very good at racing through the agenda, but not very good, it seemed, to listening to the Spirit. In his first year an issue arose where the nominating committee was not being able to get people to agree to serve on committees. So they took the position of laying themselves down to force the Yearly Meeting to look at the issue. However, as people began in business meeting to look deeply and focus on what was wrong in our Yearly Meeting, the clerk abruptly cut off discussion in favor of simply having an Ad Hoc committee create a new nominating committee. Later, I simply thanked the tearful clerk of nominating for being faithful. For it was clear to me that she had been faithful in delivering a painful message, and that she had done all that was her part, but was thwarted by others not listening in the Spirit.
The next year we were down to the last hour of business in this clerk's term and again someone began to question the creation of yet another committee to try to solve the same problem that we had quite possibly created a committee earlier in the morning to solve. The question was again raised what is wrong in our Yearly Meeting? This time speaker after speaker rose speaking of their distress about the condition of our Yearly Meeting, the non-spiritual nature of business meeting, etc. It was like a geyser that could not be contained. The clerk again tried to cut off the discussion, but this time a young woman, not even from our Yearly Meeting rose in tears about the her sense of the Spirit being stiffled and plead that we would sit in silence and listen to the Spirit and so this time (and in part because worship was next on the schedule) the clerk surrendered and the messages poured out for another half an hour. For me this was a very powerful example of how Spirit is determined to be heard and will use every faithful voice in the room to bring the truth home.
What dear Friend is your experience of being Faithful in delivering a message?
We all also have stories of times where people's messages deeply spoke to us which, is both magical and a deep motivation to faithfully deliver messages given to us. My own story of that happened on an occasion where I had gone to not my own Meeting, but a local meeting in Jan the Sunday after Martin Luther King Day. On that Sunday I was deep in thought concerned about an issue concerning my then step-son and feeling somehow like two cherished values were pitted against each other and trying somehow to figure out which one was actually more important or how to reconcile them. Towards the end a young man rose and said: "I went to the Martin Luther King march this Monday and I was very struck during the pre-rally by how someone quoted him saying: " But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love". As I heard this it shot through me "Oh yes Love. Love is the answer. Love trumps all and I had forgotten this.
After Meeting I went to him and thanked him for being faithful in delivering the message because it had spoken to my condition. His eyes got big. He said: "I have never spoken in Meeting before and I did not know why I should just repeat that quote. It seemed silly, but I kept shaking so I finally did." Both parts of this story are important -that he was faithful and spoke to my condition and that I let him know as this wound up being an eldering in the importance of being faithful. Interestingly, I had had a strong urge to go tell him. I also had been faithful to the inward prompting. This would be an example of how we are one of another in community. I would also note here that I did not say "I liked your message", but "thank you for being faithful". This is an important distinction; when we thank Friends for "their message" we add to the confusion about where messages come from and tempt the ego of the one who delivered.
I remember once going to a Meeting in another town and being given a message, but no prompting to give it. I was confused by this and spent much of the hour trying to decide whether to give it, but eventually concluded that I was not to. I wound up thinking it was a message that God intended only for me. And in fact it was meaningful to me for quite a while. Then one Sunday in my Meeting I somehow felt moved to give the message. "Really God?" "Yes really" So I stood and gave the message. Later a Friend who did not often come to Meeting, came and thanked me for the message saying how much the message meant to her. Wow, I had no idea that God could work in such a way!
I'm not sure if that is the oddest way The Holy One has brought a message to Meeting through me or if it would be this story. I once woke on a Sunday morning from a dream in which I had been in Meeting for worship and one of our Members had sung a message and some other thing had happened. I went to Meeting and thought about this dream - after a while I started feeling the familiar stomach sensations indicating to deliver the message. 'really?...but this is a dream its not a message" Yes really! So I rose and told the dream and sat down embarrassed. Late,r the person who had sang in my dream came to me and said that she had been for several months been getting words to a new song in Meeting for worship but did not think of herself as a song writer and so had not written them down. We looked at each other and she said: "I guess I had better write them down huh?" She did and some months later sang the song for Meeting.
In my Yearly Meeting there was for two years a Clerk who was very good at racing through the agenda, but not very good, it seemed, to listening to the Spirit. In his first year an issue arose where the nominating committee was not being able to get people to agree to serve on committees. So they took the position of laying themselves down to force the Yearly Meeting to look at the issue. However, as people began in business meeting to look deeply and focus on what was wrong in our Yearly Meeting, the clerk abruptly cut off discussion in favor of simply having an Ad Hoc committee create a new nominating committee. Later, I simply thanked the tearful clerk of nominating for being faithful. For it was clear to me that she had been faithful in delivering a painful message, and that she had done all that was her part, but was thwarted by others not listening in the Spirit.
The next year we were down to the last hour of business in this clerk's term and again someone began to question the creation of yet another committee to try to solve the same problem that we had quite possibly created a committee earlier in the morning to solve. The question was again raised what is wrong in our Yearly Meeting? This time speaker after speaker rose speaking of their distress about the condition of our Yearly Meeting, the non-spiritual nature of business meeting, etc. It was like a geyser that could not be contained. The clerk again tried to cut off the discussion, but this time a young woman, not even from our Yearly Meeting rose in tears about the her sense of the Spirit being stiffled and plead that we would sit in silence and listen to the Spirit and so this time (and in part because worship was next on the schedule) the clerk surrendered and the messages poured out for another half an hour. For me this was a very powerful example of how Spirit is determined to be heard and will use every faithful voice in the room to bring the truth home.
What dear Friend is your experience of being Faithful in delivering a message?
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