Quaker Parenting

This article appeared in Friends Journal in the April 2015 issue.

By: Lynn Fitz-Hugh & Sara Alice Grendon

My daughter, age 16, is a dyed-in-the-wool Quaker.  Other Quaker parents are often very curious how I pulled this off.  To me one of the most significant things is that from her birth, I felt I was steward of a spiritual being, a soul sent into my care and nurture.

I noticed early on her own expressions of spirituality, and unlike non-religious parents who might ignore or even discourage these expressions, I encouraged and nurtured them. My daughter had a great love of nature and expressed a sense of awe that tied what she encountered to a sense of majesty and the mystical.  I affirmed this.  I was influenced by the writings of Barry and Joyce Visnell who say that our image of An All Powerful and hopefully Loving God is shaped by our early experience of our own parents as all powerful.  This makes much more important how we as parents use power and model just, fair, compassionate and truthful behavior.

I am a leader among West Coast high school Friends, and soon to be part of a lovely team of powerful young Quakers, clerking FGC’s high school program. You don’t get this way by accident. There are choices my mother made as a Quaker parent which led to my growing into my Quaker-ness, and I suspect if one asked my weighty Young f/Friends how they got that way, we’d have similar experiences.  If we really wish to see the Religious Society of Friends continue, Quaker parents must raise Quaker children, and this does not have to mean shoving your beliefs down your kid’s throat. 

It seems Quaker parents rarely tell their children what to believe. However, they often don’t give them the spiritual framework to figure it out themselves, which is oh so necessary for a child exploring their own spiritual life. What I find most horrifying is when we don’t acknowledge our kids as having spiritual thought. As if somehow being a child means they can’t feel the Spirit. Doesn’t that contradict the idea of, “that of God in everyone”?

“Mommy, what is God?” I asked from the 3-year-old booster-seat.

“I can’t tell you,” my mother said. Unsatisfied with this frustrating answer I asked, “Why not?”    

“I could tell you what I think God is, but you’re going to have to form your own definition,” she told me, meeting my eyes thru the baby mirror.  I know that I proceeded to ask my mom for her definition of God, but I couldn’t tell you what she said next, because that isn’t the significance of this memory. This conversation from the back seat on a spring day when I was 3 is still so memorable because this interaction set a precedent for the rest of my life. I knew from that point onward, that my mother would never tell me what to believe.  

When Sara was about 3 or 4 we went to the Olympic Peninsula and camped overnight on a bluff looking out at the rock stacks jutting up in the ocean.  We woke at low tide and walked through the fog out to the base of the now exposed stacks.  The ocean had retreated to reveal starfish, barnacles, and small fish in tide pools swimming to the music of the ocean!  Sara was enchanted!

A number of years later when 7 she announced to me:  “I know what God looks like.”

Some parents would have rushed in with logic about how no one can know what God looks like.  I held my breath and calmly said:     “What does God look like?” 

She then described to me the mystical experience she had on the Peninsula that morning and said solemnly “that’s what God looks like.”  I could only agree and be amazed at her wisdom of recognizing the Presence of the Creator when 3 years old.

            I never set out to teach Sara the testimonies.  I tried to live them and this made them values that were real to her.  Each of us describes below our memories of how some of these things were communicated/learned:

Social Justice: 

When Sara was three, WTO took place in our town.  I decided I would take Sara to the demonstration but leave if it got violent or tear gas was released (this was before all that began.)  How to explain to a three year old what was happening?  She knew who our President was, and most children’s books had Kings as rulers, so I explained to her that there was an important meeting happening in Seattle where Presidents and Kings of other countries were coming together to decide how things like water and food would be made available to people all over the world, and some of the things they wanted to do would make it hard for people to have clean water or enough food.  Sara said,  “We should tell them to share with everyone.”  I told her that the people we were going to walk with would carry signs to make that message to the Kings and Presidents.  When the tear gas started a mile ahead of us I quickly pulled us out of the march and turned around to go home telling her simply “we need to go home now.”  She cried saying “No mommy, I want to see the Kings first.  We have to tell them.”

I think children naturally want to do what is right for all and if you don’t confuse them by doing otherwise they stay with that belief.  Throughout Sara’s life I explained why we bought certain foods or products and not others and what the labor conditions of the workers or the implications for other people were. Politics were constantly discussed at our dinner table.

I am an Activist. Most 16 years olds will not own up to that yet.  One of my frustrations with our faith is that not all Quakers are Activists, but I believe the words should be synonymous. When social justice is a testimony of our faith and we believe in peace, equality, integrity, and stewardship why would we not stand up for these?  I was taught to. Partly out of being born with a rebellious spirit, but largely due to my mom’s example.  I still remember WTO protest and many other protests. I was taught that if you want justice in this world you must seek it through non-violent revolution and that it doesn’t get done any other way.

Peace:

 My own parents, also Quakers, would not let my sister and me have toy guns or even water pistols growing up.  I resented the water pistols part so when Sara was little I got her a plastic fish that squirted water.  I did however always tell her that it was wrong to kill under any circumstances because there was that of God in everyone and that one should not hit or be violent to others either. I also told her that her classmates would believe otherwise because of how they were raised by their parents and prepared her for the idea that beliefs about this differ widely in our society. She never entertained the idea that violence was a way to solve things.  I acknowledge readily to parents of boys that I think this is much more challenging when raising a boy because of the messages in our culture to boys about violence.

The peace testimony is one I’ve watched parents nail bite over, and is perhaps the hardest to teach in a society that worships violence. In the simple logic of my toddler’s mind it wouldn’t make sense to hit another kid in the face for a toy, because then they would hit me, and who wants to get hit in the face? But it’s a little more complex than that; our culture is so saturated in violence that it’s hard to not expose our kids, but that’s the key: exposure. I was not allowed to watch certain TV shows, or movies rated higher due to “violent themes.” I won’t lie: I didn’t like it. When all your other friends with non-religious, non-pacifist, and very American parents get to watch something and you don’t, it’s not fun. But it was those kids that hit each other for building blocks and used violent language.  I’ve grown to appreciate my mother’s sensibilities.

Equality:

I was not allowed to watch Disney as a kid. This was the hardest media sensor of all because little girls love princesses, all my friends loved princesses, and wanted to be one. Of course I eventually saw some of the Disney Princess movies at other little girls’ houses, but that didn’t stop my mom’s intention from living on.  She would tell me;

          “Disney is sexist and racist; all those princesses are always rescued by men, why do they need men to save them?”  I never had an answer for that question. I look back now on my childhood and I frequently tell folks that my mother’s greatest feat as a parent was not allowing me Disney. Because I didn’t watch Disney I didn’t learn from the crows in Dumbo, or the warthog in the Lion king that, people who talk in Ebonics or with a Latin American accent are dumb.  I didn’t learn from the shading differences in lion’s fur that “bad guys” are darker than the other lions. In fact I didn’t learn the concept of “bad guys.” Simultaneously hearing in Children’s meeting that God is in all of us, along with less exposure to stereotyping, I learned equality.

  I did not want Sara to learn good/bad dichotomies or stereotypes about gender and race , but all her friends could watch Disney, and so this was frustrating to her.  I would explain to her what a stereotype was and that these movies had them.  This was uninteresting and unsatisfying to her and I did not think I was getting anywhere, till one day when she was four she was looking at a Disney T shirt of princesses in a store (a previously much coveted item) and she said to me:  “I don’t want this anymore.”  I asked why and she explained:  “There is no princess for Layla” (an African American friend in her preschool).  I knew at that moment that she understood.

Integrity:

 I told Sara it was important to tell the truth and I always told her the truth.  Sometimes I would tell her a subject was too adult and I would not talk about it, but even when I made her promises I would not make them unless I knew I could follow through on them.  I also made clear to her that I expected her to tell the truth and that it was important to me that she not lie.  I realized when she was small that if she did something wrong and I punished her when she told the truth, this would teach her to lie.  So if I asked her something like “How did this get here?  Who spilled this?” or “Who broke this?” and she told me the truth I did not punish her.  I just told her what I wished she had done or expressed my disappointment or other feelings about it.  I also sometimes expressed appreciation that she was telling me the truth. 

As she got older she would sometimes initiate discussions with me about situations with friends where she was struggling to figure out how to act with integrity.  The sincerity with which she examined these things always impressed me, and I wished some adults I knew would give as much thought to their integrity!

Integrity is my favorite testimony; it’s also the hardest to live by 100% of the time, which is why it is my favorite. Every kid will experiment with lying; when I did my mom didn’t get mad, just disappointed. That disappointment was enough to make it feel icky, and it remained so. But integrity is more than simply honesty.

This testimony I learned alongside equality, and in my world they are inseparable. I learned Integrity to myself as female, being spared images of Barbie’s “basketball boobs,” and Disney princesses’ helpless wails. Like violence, it’s about what you expose your kids to.

As a child I played a game with which I still do. When I didn’t like my classmates I’d look for their Light, in trait that wasn’t that awful, or the way they drew with crayons. Now I look for what I can relate too, even if it’s only their teenage insecurity. This is how I learned to treat even the kids I didn’t like with integrity.  

Simplicity:

We all know the United States is a hot bed of consumerism.  The encouragement to want, want, want, and buy, buy, buy, is a trap easy for children to fall into, since advertising is catered toward them. In part I learned simplicity because growing up with a single mom we never had a ton of money, so when I’d ask for luxury grocery items I was denied.  But she would say to me with my bottle of Nutella in hand. “Do you need that?” And I couldn’t make a case for why these things were a necessity, so this logic forced me to put them down. 

From my Aunt Cindy (who is not Quaker) I learned that gifts aren’t always material. Every year she takes me to a show for my birthday, and it’s the best gift she could give me.  My mother lives simply (as Americans go) and I learned by example, but never felt deprived or empty, only fulfilled by life.  

  Like most children Sara wanted toys her classmates had or things she saw advertised on TV.  We had a LOT of dialogues about how and why I was not going to buy most of these items.   I tried to tell her that she had enough and did not need toys that do things for you.. Everyone and their uncle was giving Sara stuffed toys, and when there were 30, I put my foot down!  I told her she had too many to play with and they needed to be loved by someone.  Then I said that from now on if she got another one she would decide whether to keep it and give up one she already had or to just give it away.  She kept to this and as a result we could see some parts of her bed!

If I had to say one thing to Quaker parents it would be that Quaker parenting requires a lot of hard stands, swimming against the tide of popular society, needing to explain a lot of things and having the strength of your convictions, but it also unites with that which is innate in all humans—a sense of fairness and love and wanting good for all.  The results are pretty stunning.

Sara now goes by Alice.  Both belong to Eastside Friends Meeting near Seattle, WA.  Lynn is a therapist and Climate Activist.  Sara Alice has turned 18 since this was written and attending Hampshire College and Mt. Toby Meeting and is a climate activist in her own right.

Why should NPYM affiliate with FGC?

The first time I went to FGC was when I was 22.  I went every year for the next 13 years until my daughter was born after which I went more irregularly. I think I have been 22 times.  In my twenties like many Young Friends I moved around the country until I finally landed in Seattle at 26.  My membership remained in the Meeting I grew up in until at 36 I knew I was going to stay somewhere and transferred.  So between 18 when I left home and 36 the constant in my Quaker experience was my annual attendance at FGC.  Some of my deepest most profound experiences have happened at FGC.  Thus I would say from personal experience FGC helps keeps young people attached to Quakerism.


What was so important to me at FGC?  The format of FGC is different than a Yearly Meeting.  No business is done at the national level – that is properly left to the Yearly Meetings.  It is Sat to Sat affair.  There is 5 whole days of the mornings spent in workshop- you choose one topic from a smorgasbord of topics and immerse yourself for 3 hours a day in that topic.  The topics are on a range of spiritual and Quaker Practice topics (with a few purely recreational topics).  Most attendees rank the workshops as the highlight of their week. Children attend a very fun children’s program during the same time and also in the evening while parents are at Plenary.  The Plenaries are talks or performances given by well known Quakers or one prominent none Friend (Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at FGC during this lifetime.)  The “free time” in the afternoon is jam packed full of opportunities to go on local field trips, hear speakers from Quaker organizations or meet in any number of interest groups or support groups (Women’s Center, Men’s Center, Family Center, Friends of Color, AA, etc.)  This is why my ex-husband used to say:  “You go there every year like a dead battery and you come back renewed.”


I’m not a native Northwestern, although on my next birthday I will have lived in Seattle longer than my Midwestern origins.  I do understand the intentions of the founders of this Yearly Meeting to remain separate from the divisions in Quakerism – to perhaps be an assistance to the healing.  This is a very worthy goal. I also know that currently the Yearly Meeting is made up of unprogrammed Meetings – just as FGC is.  In fact, FGC has two United Yearly Meetings affiliated, it has Meetings that are programmed and also affiliated with FUM in its midst.  I know that when Friends move out to the west from FGC affiliated Yearly Meetings, they look up our Meetings and attend them, and they never notice the difference.   I traveled broadly among Unprogrammed Friends, and honestly I cannot tell you one difference I have been able to notice in Independent Meetings vs  Unprogrammed Friends.  For me it feels far less divisive to stop talking about Beanites and Hicksites and instead just talk about unprogrammed Friends.

This is not to sweep away the importance of the issue of what should we do about the divisions in Quakerism?  I simply would say if we want to focus on that, then we ought to focus on that, and figure out something to actually do.  Not affiliating is a non-action.  It is a not doing anything.  Given that there are other Yearly Meetings in the NW that are affiliated with FUM and with Evangelical Friends – I fail to see how our Independence has healed anything.  If those Yearly Meetings would be upset by our affiliation I would have to ask them why they affiliated long ago?

In the meantime if we look at the programs of FGC:
The Bookstore and its publications
The Annual Gathering of FGC held in July each year
Small conferences and workshops
The interfaith committee
Traveling Ministries programs
Friends Meeting House Fund
Committee on Ministry for racism
Youth Ministries Committee

There is much we already benefit from here and much more we could benefit from.  Most Meetings in this yearly Meeting have purchased books or First Day curriculum from FGC bookstore and many Meetings have benefited from the Meeting House Fund.  Many Friends scattered throughout our Yearly Meeting have on occasion (a few regularly) attended the Gathering.  Traveling Ministries offers to send Seasoned Friends to help a Meeting solve a problem or deepen its spiritual life.  Not unlike M&O of our Yearly Meeting does – but it is another resource, sometimes more neutral.  We could benefit from more exposure to the Committee on Ministry for Racism’s gentle nudges to see the racism we maybe unaware of.  The Youth Ministries Committee while new is hard at work trying to figure out how to nurture Young Friends- they are seeing to the future of Quakerism.  FGC offers all these services to any Meeting in the US or Canada regardless of whether they are affiliated which is why we have been able to make use of many of these programs.  However, I feel we need to apply the NPR standard here. I listen to NPR and because I do, I choose to pay an annual membership to it.  I could just listen- but I don’t think that is fair.

Friends rightly are concerned about whether paying for our affiliation, finding representatives and paying for their flight will be a burden to the Yearly Meeting.  For myself I wonder if we need all 4 representatives we are allowed.  I think we could get by just fine with two- its not like in consensus there is some numerical advantage to having more representatives.  I think like our other representatives some who serve will combine their service with visits to friends or family that they intend to take anyway and will not therefore ask to be reimbursed for travel.  I also think all Quaker organizations are being pressed to look in this area of declining oil and increasing carbon pollution at how we can to our business in more environmentally friendly ways.  I think Friends are increasingly trying to use technology: conference calls, skype, etc to do our business.   FGC is actively looking at how to reduce the number of committee meetings.  In fact FGC may have to look at creating a West Coast and an East Coast Gathering because of the travel cost.  If there was a Gathering of OK Friends, Intermountain Yearly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting,  Alaska Yearly Meeting, and NPYM would that be something that would make you glad to be part of FGC?

I have noticed among some of my lifelong NWYM folks a sort of suspiciousness or distrust of those “East coast Philly folks”.   (Kind of like the joking maps of the US – the ones on the east coast showing some detail till you get to the Mississippi and then after that a sort of misshapen expanse.  The ones drawn on the west coast showing detail to the Rockies and then misshapen expanse with Chicago, NYC and DC drawn in.)  I’m not sure this kind of world view moves any of us forward.   We shake our heads when Americans make gross characterizations of people from other countries they have never visited.  It would be good if we could not do that about other Quakers because they come from other parts of the country.   We have things to learn from them and they have things to learn from us.  For those who feel this uneasiness about affiliating I think we must look closely and figure out is the easiness about real issues, or about a sort of unconscious distrust of the unfamiliar?

I asked my daughter, age 14 who has been to FGC most of her life what role it plays in her close identification with Quakerism.  She said:  I saw there that Quakerism is big.  (Gatherings held on college campuses tend to be about 1500 to 2000.) and the workshops I went to (children’s gathering) we did worship sharing and that’s the only place I have done that ,and I had spiritual experiences there.  I made friends with Quakers my age.”  (She stays in touch with them all year via email and Facebook.)  Like many young friends there are not enough young people her age to have that experience in our Meeting or even really in Yearly Meeting.

My greatest reason why I wish our Yearly Meeting would affiliate with FGC is the concern that I have carried for decades: the concern for the survival of unprogrammed Friends.  All my adult life I have been waiting to not be one of the youngest Friends in the room.  Sadly at 51 I’m usually still one of the youngest in the room.  There is something very wrong with that picture!   Since FGC’s whole mission is about nurturing the spiritual life of unprogrammed Friends – I feel it’s mission is something that is really, really important.  A Yearly Meeting simply does not have the resources to do the kind of nurturing that a national organization does.  I’m not sure how we will heal the splits of Quakerism by simply witnessing the slow decline decade by decade of unprogrammed Friends.

Vibrant Meetings Grow the Society of Friends

  In 2007 FWCC reports 35,413 unprogrammed Friends, about a 10^th of 1% of the US population.  FWCC also reports this to be a 3% drop in our membership numbers in the past 30 years.  I don’t wish to be an alarmist, but no group can maintain the integrity of its traditions or its viability when it drops below a certain critical mass.  It is hard to say what the critical mass is, but this is a problem we need to address now before we reach that point.  Quakers have a proud heritage of what they have contributed to US history and I believe they can play a critical role in the 21^st century as well.  It is of the utmost importance that we look seriously at and address the factors leading to a decline in our membership.  For decades now the number of our members lost through death has exceeded the number of children born into Quakerism, as evidenced by the majority of grey and white heads at any Quaker gathering.  There is no difficulty in having many long living Friends, but we need to gain at least as many new members as the number of those dying!  The problem is one of not attracting enough new members, not retaining the members we have, and not keeping our youth.

Sharing Quakerism

We must go to the heart of our relationship with each other as a community of Faith if we want to address declining membership.  The reason that people come to our church or any church is to share religious fellowship with others whom we perceive share common theological beliefs with us and choose to worship in the same manner.  It is my firm belief that if more people knew about Quakerism, more people would indeed choose Quakerism.  (In fact a popular web site which provides a quiz on theological belief to match people with the religion that best fits their beliefs, directs thousands of people a year to the Society of Friends.)  I believe Quakerism combines many elements that people long for:  a non-dogmatic approach to the Divine, an open and accepting environment, a proud history of aligning values with actions for justice, and the space to find Truth, to find one’s Inner Voice or Teacher, and a deep mystical union with the Holy One.  How many people long for just such a faith are discouraged to the point of paralysis by churches that are bound by close-minded dogmas, that have ugly histories of oppression or apathy, or that lack the space to allow for experientially found Truths?  Somehow in our historic opposition to proselytizing we seem to have forgotten that we have something uniquely wonderful to offer friends, family, and co-workers.  If we would enthusiastically lend someone a favorite book, or recommend a movie or TV show that we found enriching, then why on earth would we not recommend to them that which we find fulfilling in our Meetings?

Disturbingly, I think this is because many of us are not enriched in our Meetings.  We may go because our family does or because we have decades-old friendships there, it’s a nice group of people to hang out with, or because we want our children to have a religion.  Now these aren’t terrible reasons to go; probably all churches have some percentage of people who attend for these reasons.  But those reasons are not the ones that will cause us to enthusiastically encourage a friend to go, nor are they reasons that will draw a newcomer back again. 

What will allow us to do genuine and moving outreach is that our Meetings are, or once again will be, places of spiritual inspiration that nourish our souls; places where spoken ministry sometimes moves us to tears or stuns us by how amazingly it speaks to our unspoken condition; where we are so closely connected by Light that a message for another can come through one person’s mouth and be spoken in total faithfulness - even words or ideas alien to speaker, but clearly intended for one of the community members sitting amidst us; where souls weary and wounded from the events of the world can come and in the silence be restored again.  When our Meetings are such places, how could we fail to recommend them to those we care for, and how could a seeker finding us for the first time not be enthralled and delighted at having found what they sought?  Why would our young people want to leave such a home?

Now before hundreds of Friends take up paper to write FJ protesting that their Meetings are just such places, I want to say that I know there are many such Meetings, thank God, throughout the U.S.  But I also know that, sadly, there are many that are not.  In many Meetings that through dangerous smallness (bordering on dissolution) or through Meeting dry spells, unaddressed by the membership, there is no verbal ministry Sunday after Sunday and little happens within the silence.  There are also Meetings so large and undisciplined (or uneldered) that popcorn messages with much chaff and conflict are delivered every Sunday, leaving the recipients overfed and dull, but not nourished. 

We have work to do in our local Meetings and our Yearly Meetings if we wish to see a spiritual health in our Meetings that can again lead to the growth of our Society as a whole.

The easiest place to begin is in taking an earnest stock of why we have lost members or long time attenders from our Meetings.  Many Meetings have no process in place for even checking in with Friends who suddenly stop attending.  Such Meetings feel it is none of their business or the Friend’s own choice to make.  Such complete autonomy from each other, I believe, renders meaningless the idea of membership, having a marriage under our care, or being in fellowship with each other.  Early Friends believed that living a truly spirit-centered life was no easy matter, but one in which we helped each other achieve this in loving fellowship.  This suggests to me, at bare minimum, that our M & O’s or our Pastoral Care Committees call Friends who have been absent for several months to check on them!  Reasons may range from poor health or family crisis, (which could benefit from some Meeting support), or a spiritual crisis, or a dark night of the soul which might also benefit from some ministry by caring Meeting members, to perhaps being really angry with the Meeting or some of its members over things which have happened at the Meeting.  This last should definitely be addressed because where one is driven away by conflict, others will be too.  Two close and dear friends of mine, attending Meetings on different ends of the country, have stopped going to their Meetings to worship because of badly handled conflicts in their Meetings, and in each case no one has even called them.  (Calling a year after the person has stopped coming and after they have sent a letter declining to serve on any committees, simply adds insult to injury.)  This should never happen!  

Healing our Conflict

Our unresolved conflicts are probably one of the biggest ways we loose people.  I hate to say it, but we Quakers for all our reputation as peacemakers are not very good at conflict!  Too many come to us attracted to the peace, wishing to leave behind troubling memories of conflict elsewhere, but without having learned skills for conflict.  We don’t teach conflict skills, because one of our great myths is:  “We all get along”.  I think it would be much more productive if we said:  “Peace is our ideal and like the rest of the human race, we still have to learn how to do it.”  The next step would be to start telling the truth about the conflicts in our Meetings - the decade old conflicts between 2 parties or 2 factions (sometimes carried on beyond our memory of why).  If we put on the table the fresh, still bleeding and still festering conflicts and hurts about contentious decisions and figured out what resources to call on to create personal or Meeting wide events for healing, then there might be forgiveness and reconstruction of new ways forward!  The good news is all Yearly Meetings, as well as programs like FGC, FWCC and our retreat Centers have skilled, seasoned Friends who do know how to help facilitate and give birth to such healing!

Keeping our Youth

I want to start the topic of keeping our youth by saying no church keeps a very high                           percentage of their youth.  This is in the nature of life.  Parents’ choices are not always right for their off-spring.  As seekers we know people are drawn to different expressions.  It is part of the developmental work of teenagers to differentiate from their parents.  So I don’t expect us to keep all our youth or view it as failure when we don’t.  But I would like to feel that we have something to offer and nourish youth who are drawn to us (unfortunately I am not confident that this is what happens).  Many, many Meetings, even those with large First Day programs do not have high school (H.S.) programs.  Such myths exist as:  H.S. age Friends just don’t like going to churches; we have no H.S. Friends in our Meeting; we don’t have enough H.S.’ers to hold a program together or “they” are happy to just go to Yearly Meeting events once or twice a year.  (Does once or twice a year nourish any soul?)  Usually our Meetings have not ever directly asked the H.S. Friends what they would like.  To go on much more runs the danger of trying to speak for them, a form of ageism we practice far too often.  Instead I will stop on this topic with the encouragement that we take seriously the charge to mentor the next generation of Friends and for us to be ministered to by the passion and intensity of their Lights!  

One important part of this is allowing them to become adults in their Meeting.  I went to Earlham College and so knew many other Young Adult Friends my age.  I remember one of my Friends telling me a few years after we graduated that he felt he had to leave the Meeting he grew up in (and the only one by him) because too many people could not see him as an adult.  He said they continued to refer to him as “X’s son”, even though he was a Member.  I, on the other hand, grew up a Friend and stayed one so I know it is possible!  I have sat in a Business Meeting where a discussion was taking place about Children’s Meeting and where a young Friend home from college had come to Business Meeting.  Someone referred to the “children” of the Meeting while gesturing at him!  Routinely our nominating committees do not approach Young Adult Friends about service on committees, still seeing them as children.  Some Meetings do have some sort of ritual designed to acknowledge passage into adulthood for their teen members.  This may be more important for the members of Meeting than the young person if we have trouble seeing them as adult members of our Meetings.

Mentoring Newcomers

Much of what our youth need is what our newcomers need – a way to learn Quaker practice that does not leave them constantly feeling they are making faux pas or forever “outside” a mountain of inside knowledge and rules.  This ranges all the way from Quaker speak (our alphabet soup of FGC, FWCC, AFSC, etc.) to our historic phrases (“seasoned”, “the way opens”, “eldering”, etc.).  Yes, the ambitious new Friend may pick up a book of Quaker history or Quaker practice, but not all are so inclined to learn this way.  How do we lovingly non-critically help them learn those things as well as our practices for business and committee work?  How do you teach the history and experiences that have led to our testimonies?  How do we teach our Meeting’s unique way of doing certain things?

This is very important because no on likes feeling stupid, awkward or like an outsider and if we leave them feeling that way too long they simply don’t return.  Maybe worse yet, in large Meetings with big influxes of new Friends and a shortage of seasoned Friends to help explain our practices, newcomers simply substitute ways they have learned outside.  Sometimes this may be good – but more often can lead to poor process, more conflict, more issues to heal and more loss of what is unique and powerful in Quakerism.  Therefore, mentoring newcomers is of key importance.

Some Meetings are so small that the newcomer is attended to by every member of Meeting, which can be “too much”, overwhelming, or cause much self consciousness!  Small Meetings have to figure out how to do this lightly.  Large Meetings may have a regular Introductory Quakerism class or monthly intro talk which is very helpful.  They still may need to add intentional mentoring to that structure.  In the medium size Meetings there may be no systematic way and at this size it is when unseasoned Friends are pressed into committee service that they can really be left to navigate without a map.  It is important that these Meetings really have dialogue about how they help their newcomers.  Recent newcomers are great sources of information about what is needed and where the holes are!

The Heart of the Matter

I have talked about sharing Quakerism, attending to lost members, healing our conflicts, keeping our youth and making a place for newcomers.  Obviously this is enough to keep M & O’s busy for a long time!  However these are only structural matters unless they come from a spiritual center.  The heart of the matter is really that our fellowship be infused with a tender love for one another.  Early Friends were on fire with the mission of living a life completely faithful to God.  They saw their relationships with each other as key to that; they held each other accountable; they prayed for each other and they bathed in the Light of God together in worship.  Committee work was a joyful carrying forward of the spiritual work of the community and a time of spiritual fellowship.  It is still possible that we can infuse our nominating process and our committee work with this Spirit.  It is also possible that we can find ways to deepen the spiritual life of the Meeting and to make the silence again a living silence, not a dead silence; that we can tend to the growth of membership in our Meetings with a sense of the vital and vibrant spirituality that we have to share with each other; that we can come to a Living Center that is compelling to any seeker to return to again and again!

Published In Friends Journal May 2008