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!

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?

Expectant Waiting

Do we expect to find God at Meeting for Worship?  Excuse this bold question, but it has come to me that I think maybe we don't really.  How would are Meetings be different if in fact we did expect that every time we settled into silence?

Some months ago I got up late and decided instead of going to my Meeting I would go to another Meeting in my neighborhood which meets later on Sunday.   As I settled into worship I realized that I was excited.  I did not know most of the worshipers.  I had no preconceived ideas about who would usually speak or what they would usually say.  (Sound familiar?).  And because it is a large Meeting I felt fairly sure that a message would be given.

I wound up giving a message because as I noticed my excitement I realized that it was "expectant waiting" and with that phrase I remembered that this is actually the spirit in which we are invited by our traditions to wait in silence for the Holy One to speak...through us.  Ironically, Spirit seemed to want me to speak and remind Friends gathered that this is what we are waiting for.

I think modern Friends are very easily losing this idea.  I have heard Friends from different Meetings across the country complain about Friends who come with a book to read from "for inspiration" or the now famous NY Times headline message, or its' sister the book report message. Additionally, I have heard Friends complain about the person who speaks every Sunday or who speaks clearly not from the Spirit.  But primarily they are complaining about Friends not following protocol.  I do wish they were complaining about our failure to expect Spirit to show up.

After all this is really not different from those of us who go for "peace and quiet" from our families, "a place to think", for the fellowship, or to sit and try to figure out our problems.   All of these fail to wait expectantly for Divine whisperings although we follow protocol.

In fact I think that most Friends would not make a distinction between a Living silence and a dead silence.   Next time your in Meeting try to notice...which is it?   Recently a member of my Meeting told a very funny story to which we all laughed about how when her kids were young they arrived late one day and she was fussing about this and her daughter said:  "Don't worry Mom, I think we are late enough that they will all already be asleep."    Amusing as this, I think it speaks to a dead silence if a child cannot feel anything moving in that silence.  In fact my teenager complains that the Young Friends do not like to come to business meeting with us in any of their Meetings because they cannot feel the Spirit present or available to us in our conducting of business.

This of course brings us to the problem: how do we bring forth a living silence in our Meetings and an expectant waiting?   Well some of this may have to do with what we have lost when we did away with the facing bench and the elders.   They were not just grim old folks who stared down at the other members.   Part of their "job" was actually to hold the Meeting for Worship in prayer - to attempt to ground the whole Meeting for Worship.  I remember once when I was on Ministry and Worship suggesting that the member of the committee who had responsibility for breaking Meeting also hold the Meeting in prayer during the whole Meeting.   I no longer remember what we concluded about that experiment, but I do remember that during that same time I often felt we had Gathered Meetings. What if we asked our whole Meeting to do such an experiment on the same Sunday?

And of course there is always how do we tend to the Life of the Spirit in our Meeting for worship throughout the month?  Do we tend our own spiritual life?  Do we prepare for worship?   Do we use worship sharing formats to share with each other about our spiritual lives?   So often we meet in Silence and have no real personal exchanges and do not know each other spiritually.  Early Friends lived in small farming communities where they knew the members of Meeting as their neighbors and local business owners.  They did not have to have sharing time at Meeting to know of births and deaths and other highs and lows of the lives of their fellow members.   But now we don't know unless we create a way to know.   My Meeting started at tradition over a decade ago of during the last 10 minutes of Meeting for Worship we ask for the sharing of joys and concerns to be shared in the spirit of worship.  (We added that last phrase to remind or inform new folks that we expect still to have silence before and after each sharing.   But we do not hold the same bar of expecting a divine prompting to share a joy or concern.)  Occasionally regular messages are also still shared during this time as well.  In my opinion it has deepened our community because we know each other better.

I have heard Friends from different Meetings describe starting worship by focusing for a moment on each Member present (and sometimes even those absent) and holding them in Light.   This is something only possible when we know each other in personal ways, but it again speaks to this idea of grounding into worship.  Prayer is something we can do any where, but to come into communal worship - to expect to be used by Spirit for each other and to be ministered to by Spirit through each other is a very different matter indeed.

Releasing Ministers

The March issue of Friends Journal was dedicated to Funding Ministry.  Even the two words together were a little odd for me because Funding is a worldly term not a spiritual one.  But as I was reading along I enjoyed the modern term of "bivocational ministry" and found it helpful, and thought when I saw the second title that it would be about "released ministries".  I really liked the idea of using computer technology and crowd funding to achieve the OLD idea of releasing Friends.  However, I was very surprised that the article actually did not talk about the traditional method of releasing Friends to ministry, but only about the modern problem of no funding.  As I continued to read I started to feel a state of disbelief  "Oh my Gosh is no one going to say it?  Is this state of Quakerism today?  Have we forgotten our own traditions for releasing ministers".  I was relieved when the last article at least touched on it.

So Friends we had a rich tradition in the first 100 to 150 years of Quakerism of releasing Friends in ministry.  What this meant was a Friend would bring a leading to Meeting for discernment, if their clearness committee found them clear and the Meeting united in confirming the leading as coming from God, then the Meeting also embraced the support of this leading.  So for example if someone was lead to travel to an adjoining Yearly Meeting or even another country to minister to Friends there about how faithfully we were testifying to "A Gospel of plainness, staying low and not going to vanity".  Then the meeting provided both 1 or 2 elders to travel with the minister to assure that they stayed grounded and did not outrun their light, but the meeting also provided financial support.  What this meant was providing for their travel and board costs that were not provided for by Meetings they visited.  Some times it meant providing financial assistance to the family left behind or help with child care.  (Since many Friends were farmers often the spouse who remained behind could continue to provide financially as long as they got help from other Friends at key points in the growing cycle.)  But the commitment was clear that the member with the leading and their family were not to go with unmet needs.   It would seem that the articles in this issue point to the fact that we currently live much more self-sufficient not community oriented lives which means we are not providing this kind of support to our ministers.

Another confusion for me throughout the issue was the word ministry seemed to be almost exclusively be being used to apply to what I would call pastoral ministry, either a religious vocal ministry or pastor care for our meetings themselves, serving a Meetings needs directly.  This is certainly a kind of ministry and one that non-programed Friends have much conflicted feelings about because in our split with programmed Friends this was one clear and noticeable difference.   They identified A pastor and paid that person.  But there is another kind of ministry, it is one of leading and is often out into the world on behalf of one of our testimonies.  It is a ministry for sure to the Truth as that person is lead, but it is not pastoral.  I would offer John Woolman as perhaps the greatest example of this.  He was passionately led on the slavery issue and spoke to Friends and non-Friends alike on this issue.

So in regards to the first kind of ministry: pastor ministry I think we need to get over ourselves and our history and decide to compensate fairly as valued employees those Friends who serve us in our Meetings and Quaker Organizations doing work that we value.  But in regard to the second type of ministry: a lead ministry I would like us to remember our own traditions of "releasing Friends".   As we enter into a time of environmental collapse many Friends maybe called to minister to our societal crisis in ways that will be full time work.  I hope that we can unite that they are indeed carrying a calling that we have joined with and just as they may sacrifice a better paying job or free time that others in the meeting sacrifice some comfort to put additional money into the "funds for suffering" (which is what Friends use to call the separate fund kept to support Friends and their family who were in jail for their witness or traveling under a leading.)  The idea here is that is a separate and additional obligation than our monthly tithe to the Meeting.

I would recommend to Friends the long out of print book: Charity Cook: A Liberated Woman by Algie Newlin Friends United Press.  This book describes the released traveling ministry of Charity Cook who lived in the 1700's and was the mother of 11 Children. I would also share that shortly after I graduated college I shared with Elders in my Meeting the passionate desire I felt to speak about peace, social justice and simplicity to others.  My Elders told me "this is a leading" and got a clearness committee for me, and a letter to my Yearly Meeting (Illinois Yearly Meeting) where my leading was brought to and confirmed by the whole body of the Yearly Meeting.  The entire small yearly Meeting paid into a sufferings fund for a year while I traveled to every Meeting in our Yearly Meeting speaking both to each Meeting and to outside engagements that they arranged while I was there.  I chose because of my ministry about simplicity and social justice to live at minimum wage, but none the less all of my living costs and travel costs were covered during that year.  I would like Friends to not think this is a quaint footnote of our historic experience, but that our history can help us, combined with modern tools like crowd sourcing, to release Friends today to minister to the urgent needs of our suffering world, and that those of us not actively engaged in such a ministry can see ourselves bound in community and shared testimony to the support of those lead ministries of other Friends.

Rippling Rings

We toss a stone in a creek and the rings go out from stone. The first ones as they reach some other object, then beginning a new backwash of rings.  The first rings we can follow, but as smaller ones still eminent from the stone and as they begin to interact with the backwash rings a third motion begins, and it becomes impossible to keep track of all that is set in motion from the one stone we drop in water.

This is not unlike the effects we have in the world.  One reason I will always appreciate the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" is because it so profoundly makes this point.  George Bailey thinks his life has come to nothing because he has not realized his dreams and is currently overcome with problems.  But he is shown that events that he had completely forgotten from his childhood had kept a good man out of prison, and also by saving his brother saved a whole carrier ship of US soldiers during the war.  This is not to begin to account the qualitative better town he has contributed to because people own their own homes rather than living it debt, etc.  Each of us lives this way, setting in motion a chain of circles and loosing complete track of how they interact with other forces and how they impact others.  If our intentions are good they let loose a positive motion in the world.  When our actions are filled with anger and fear they set loose yet another set of energies that reverberate through our world.

I think our words are particularly powerful in this rippling way.  Have you ever had the experience of someone coming back to you days or even years later to let you know they really thought about something you said, that the words really moved them?  I have.  But the most interesting example of this was that after I was divorced and feeling rather down, I received a post card from someone who had taken my workshop literally YEARS before.  The person said "just wanted to drop you a note to let you know how life changing my workshop with you was.  Thanks".  This was a ring that had gone out further than I could see it, and then came back to touch me at a moment I needed it!

Several years ago my Meeting had a worship sharing on "memorable messages".  We just shared messages that we had had heard in Meeting for worship at some point in our life which had touched us deeply enough to still be holding the message.  Think about it - this does not even come from us, but from our faithfulness.  The message is from God, but someone has to be faithful enough to the quaking to get up and deliver it, and because they do it is held for decades in someone else's mind!  And I have to say the sharing of them was a "covered worship" for it went deep.  In how many other ways can we make deep waves in the world by being faithful?

I invite readers to post here the messages you remember still.  Let the rings wash out far.

From the Center

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, then democracy, a majority rule mindset, starts to sift into our business meetings and committee meetings. The way of the World suggests that we strike compromises rather than engage in the process of divine guidance that leads to spiritual consensus. A polite social distance that is not too "nosey" drifts into our expectations of how well we know each other. Uninspired messages, or no messages at all, are given because we no  longer know how to season or test messages. Ultimately, when we fail to teach and model Quakerism, the ways of the world start to sneak in and we lose what is most precious to us as Friends, our 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 “given” as a message to the author while visiting AZ  Half-Yearly Meeting of InterMountain Yearly Meeting.

This was published in Friends Journal in Nov. 2010 under the tittle:The Divine Center and Communal Nurture