Pineapple's and Butterflies

When I was 13 or 14 I sat on a bench in Meeting looking out the window wondering if there was a God.  Out the window I could see a purple Iris with a drop of dew on it with the light glinting in the drop to show a rainbow.  I started to think about how light refracts, about how water evaporates and then becomes clouds which become rain returning to nurish plant life.  I thought about how bees help plants reproduce, and I felt overwhelmed by the perfection of creation, and in that moment I knew there is indeed a Creator.  I have also since then not seen a purple Iris without knowing that there is God (One of the reasons I carried them at my wedding.)

It use to annoy me that people said " God bless you" when everyone sneezes.  I thought of it as a foolish superstition going back to old beliefs that when we sneeze the devil can enter our body.  But I decided one day:  "What if I just take the words literally, as God blessing me.  So sneezes have also become a reminder for me of the presense of God.

In an event that happened so long ago I no longer remember all the details, I was having a very spritual moment and a butterfly landed on me, and then flew off almost leading me somewhere.  After that event I have chosen since butterflys do not come by that often, to let them also remind me of the presense of the Holy One.  These three signs have seemed like the right number.

Photo: Fay Anderson

                                                              
But on Sunday pineapples took on a new meaning for me - no not about the presence of the Divine, but rather the absence.  In our Meeting we have a tradition of someone bringing flowers which sit in their vase on a small side table in front of the picture windows looking out on the 2nd growth 100 year old woods.  Some times if the person designated to bring flowers forgets, we have a vase on a back table with a couple of small branches of a tree that have small origami paper peace crane's dangling from them.  We bring that vase forward.  On this Sunday our Meeting was full of visitors come for Yearly Meeting Coordinating committee, and it appeared someone had forgotten the flowers.

I sat for a long time debating in my head whether I should get the vase of paper cranes or if someone was just late.  Eventually the children left and I realized that I had been worrying about this for 10 minutes!  I thought:  "this is ridiculous...either go get the vase or let this go."   I decided that it would be a good spiritual practice of detachment if I would let it go.  So I let it go.  And the very next minute in came a Friend carrying a pineapple and three small votive candles which she with difficulty lit in front of the pineapple.

It occurred to me that the next time I saw pineapple it would be a reminder to check how I was doing on releasing the things that keep me from worshiping My Creator.  What things serve for you as reminders of the presence of God?

Growing Towards the Light

Yesterday was a beautiful first day of spring.  I went outside to survey the garden.  In the fall my husband and son had replaced some logs that held a bank in place.  They had dropped cut pieces on the ground were months before flowers had been.  However, now in spring those same bulbs had tried to come forth, only to find their tender buds under boards.  I moved the offending boards to find that the plants, sensing a small crack of Light, had grown sideways till they reached the edge of the board and then up - in a sort of backwards L.

Hmmm,  I thought: Life is kind of like that.  We sense the Light, even when it is only a small glint of it, and we grow towards the Light.

Recently for our anniversary my husband and I were looking at the photoes from our wedding 4 years ago.  Everyone is familiar, but older.  In the kids cases, they are a foot taller now and more "mature" looking, but for most of us, it means more grey hair and more wrinkles.  Yes, I thought, the slow march towards death.  Huh, how does that fit with my previous thought that all life grows towards the Light?

Then I realized - oh yes, it is the same.  Our slow march towards death is also the path back to the Eternal Light.  It seems some of us will live shorter lives than we thought we would and others will live much longer than they thought they would.  So what of the march - does it matter if all our days our numbered, how we spend those days? How do we make our days count?  I think it is not some "productive doing", but rather have we lived those days with Love and with Light?  Have you grown towards the Light today?

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.

Meeting for Worship and the Heavenly Host

Several Years ago this west coast Friend took a trip to the East Coast where I worshipped one Sunday in a 200+ year old Friends Meeting and then traveled down to Philadelphia and visited the Arch Street Meeting house.   While many older East coast Meeting houses  still have signs of when men and women were divided during worship – West coast meeting house are often built in the last 75 years or are rented facilities.   Thus I was very struck by how as I sat worshipping in the NY meeting I felt the palpable Presence of Friends in black and grey, in bonnets and with broad rimmed hats in their lap.  And this same feeling was overwhelming in the empty gigantic worship room of

Arch street

.  I felt like I could feel hundreds of souls gathered to hear the Truth, and was roused by thinking what it would have been like to have the majority of all one’s neighbors actually be Friends.

I thought of that however as basically a tourist experience – meaningful primarily to a current Friend and not perceivable to the average tourist.  This week however, in a book study group for my Meeting which I attend we got to talking somehow about how the vast majority of members sit in the same seat each Sunday and we shared somewhat amusing antidotes about why we sit in the seat we have each selected.  As I thought about it I realized with was mostly true at many Meetings I have gone to over the years.

I also realized that I still feel the presence of several of the dozen deceased Friends from our Meeting who have died in the past decade.  Each had their familiar chair they sat in which usually stay vacant until some unsuspecting new person claimed the chair.  Other’s nodded as I shared that I still felt them with us in worship.

 We decided, with some amusement that this Sunday we would each sit in a completely different spot and see what happened.  My own thought was that the familiarity of the spot somehow helped us to center and that it would be a distraction.  However, perhaps it was a coincident, but we had a very Gathered worship this Sunday- after a long period where we have had primarily silence in Meeting for worship.  I must say I’m sort of struck with a rather quantum mechanics idea of time: past, present and future being also simultaneous.  Next time you sit down to worship you might wonder upon whose lap you sit?

A message from the Past: Perfect Love Casts out Fear

There is an old Quaker joke:  “Two men are sitting on a bench.  The first man feels the second man begin to tremble and shake, but this goes on for a long time and no message is delivered.  Finally the first man rises and delivers a message.  At the rise of Meeting he turns to the second man and says:  Friend, next time deliver your own damn message thy self!”   To Quaker sensitivities this is a very funny joke because it talks about both the imperative to deliver a message and the fact that we sometimes deliver a message for another.

            In the past year my Meeting had a second hour/adult Ed hour in which we were asked to share messages that we had heard at some point that “stuck with us”   Many remembered deep, meaningful, searing messages or  Covered Meetings in which all messages flowed as if one piece of music.  I too thought of messages like this, but eventually I was moved to share of a message that had stuck with me for what I thought of as a “bad” reason.

            In the Meeting I grew up in there was an elderly woman who spoke almost every Meeting at almost exactly twenty minutes after the hour.  My father who was very genuine about the injunction to only speak when moved by God was very irritated with her and would frequently in the car on the way home make negative comments about her or jokes about how “God sets his watch to her.”  That and the fact that she quoted the Bible resulted in my never taking her very seriously.

            But the message she gave over and over again was to quote one of the verses of Corinthians and to talk about how “perfect love casts out fear”.   As I shared this remembered message with my Meeting, it suddenly occurred to me that the Achilles heel of my faith life for as long as I can remember has been how being in a state of fear or anxiety about something, I “forget God”.  Suddenly as I was speaking I found myself saying:  “I now realize she was giving the message for me, and because I was too young to understand it she had to say it over and over again until I had memorized it….only to remember it 40 years later and finally receive the message.”  I sat down in tears.

            In addition to being a very amazing way to receive a message it has also taught me to make no assumptions about the validity of a message given by another.

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

Diversity and Unity in the Religious Society of Friends

One of the trickiest things before the Society of Friends today is how to embrace our diversity without losing our Center or that which defines us as a faith.  Since the times of the great splits in Quakerism we have not handled this well. The scar tissue is present and in some cases contributes even to this day to our difficulties.

A look at almost any page of Fox’s journals shows that our founder most definitely saw himself in a personal relationship with an Inward Christ and that he had memorized the Bible from which he quoted frequently.  It is hard to argue anything other than he defined himself as a Christian.  This explains why historians list Quakerism as a Christian church. Yet the heart of his message, that we could know the Truth experientially and personally, embraces a kind of tolerance that naturally allows for and includes a huge diversity of beliefs.  Among modern day unprogramed Friends, we find those who identify as Christ-Centered or Christian, as God centered Christians, as God Centered non Christians, Universalist or humanist Friends, and any number of Buddhists, Jews and Pagans who find the local Friends Meeting to be their spiritual home.  Most Friends Meetings welcome and include all who come to worship there – sometimes cheerfully and peacefully, and sometimes not without tension and conflict.

Travel among unprogrammed Friends and you will quickly find that various Meetings can become fairly polarized between at least two of the above mentioned groups.  You will also see that people can feel quite threatened as to whether their brand of Quakerism is really welcomed and accepted in Meeting, and anxious about whether “those people” will take over the Meeting and destroy that which the individual holds most precious and dear.  The conflict is often especially sharp around language – whether God/He or Goddss/She or God/no-gender pronoun should be used and whether Christ or no Christ should be used in spoken messages. 

Diversity

One can also hear expressed fears that we have become so tolerant and accepting of divergent views that we are in danger of becoming nothing but a group of nice people who all meet together on Sundays and are politically progressive!  (This especially can be seen in the contentious dialogue about whether sweat lodges should be allowed at FGC.)  Is it possible to stretch a religious view so far that it no longer means anything?  In 2009 would George Fox still express himself in the same way and what would he think about the diversity in our midst?  (This is a guy after all who went to other people’s churches, stood up in the pews while the minister was speaking and preached his own Truth of the Inner Christ!)  Talk to anyone who has served on a committee to rewrite our Faith and Practice and you will hear how hard it is for us to come to consensus on a statement of our beliefs.  (Several Yearly Meetings have Faith and Practices’ more than a dozen years old for I fear this very reason.)

Tolerence

I can only speak to these questions in a personal way.  I grew up in one Meeting, sojourned among many, and then transferred my membership some 12 years ago to my current Meeting.  I feel that both my Meetings have embraced lovingly the diversity of beliefs in our midst.  I was instructed as a child by my parents that Quakerism is a historically Christian religion and that the correct answer to the question “did I belong to a Christian church?” was yes.  This was taught to me by my father, who was very clear that he did not believe in the divinity of Christ, but only in the historical Jesus.  Jesus was as powerful a teacher for him about non-violence as his other two cherished heroes: Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  My father identified as a universalist and a humanist.  I identify as a non-Christian Quaker, with a devout belief in God, who belongs to a Christian church.  This maybe confusing for some, especially non-Friends, but it is not at all confusing to me.

Some of my closest friends in Friends have always identified as Christ Centered Friends and this is not troubling to either them or me.  It is not a problem because when we speak to each other of our spiritual experience, we find at the heart the same relationship to the Divine.  In fact I think when one reads the great sacred texts of any religion you can feel beneath the surface of the words the experience of the Eternal One.  I wonder if we could learn to listen to each other this way in Meeting?  If a speaker gives a message with different pronouns or descriptors of God than we might use (The Christ, he for example or the Goddess, She) could we learn to hear the Eternal One beneath those words?

The balancing act between tolerance of other Friend’s views and the abandonment of the essence of Quakerism is the most challenging thing before us.  It is good that Buddhist or Jewish or Pagan individuals feel they can come and worship with us- that our format is flexible and accepting enough for them to find the Truth as they know it in the silence.

However, I do not feel that being welcome means that one then gets to change what Quakerism is.  I do not expect that a welcome guest in my home gets to move all the furniture around.  Even though I do not identify as Christian I do not get to change Quakerism from being a Christian religion or claim to the world that it is not Christian.  I believe that Christ and universalist mysticism were both central threads in the spirituality and practice of George Fox and early Friends.  I do not believe that either group of current Friends can claim that they are the only legitimate inheritors or practitioners of Quakerism.  Both threads are woven throughout the history of Friends.

The influence of American liberalism is one of the things that have contributed to confusion among Friends about how to respond to our differences.  For the most part the US educational system is based upon liberalism and certainly American social change organizations are.  Liberalism is a way of thinking about the rights of individualism, freedom of speech and self-expression, change, new ideas, tolerance, coalition building by finding common ground, and finding value in all experience,  etc.  When wed to politics they are a very positive force for change.  These are all very valuable ideas, but they are not theological ideas.  Most Quakers in the US are in their life outside of Meeting, liberals and associating with liberals.  Thus we bring a liberal mindset to Meeting when issues of what to include and what to exclude from our Meetings arise.

I hope if someone came to Meeting and worshipped with us for a while and then one day came wanting to perform animal sacrifice in the Meeting fireplace because they had found this to be a very meaningful spiritual experience in another setting, that we would say NO!  I think that is so clearly contrary to the spirit of the peace testimony or the practice of silent worship that we would be clear to say No to this.  However, many Friends equate so closely the posture of Liberalism with the spirit of Quakerism that they are left struggling how to say No because to do so is counter to the spirit of individualism, tolerance and coalition building that is part of Liberalism. 

Unlike other churches we do not have dogmas that claim you must believe this to be one of us and if you don’t you are not part.  We have testimonies- a more softly held set of beliefs. We say instead, “this is the Truth as we have so far been shown it”, humbly allowing that we may be shown new Light and that our understanding of the Truth may evolve.  I am delighted that we hold the Truth in this flexible way instead of as a rigid thing chiseled in stone.  And I am aware that it makes it hard for many Friends to even answer the question:  “What do Quaker’s believe?” when they are asked this question.  I have encouraged other Friends for years to answer from the spectrum and then in the particular.  In other words to be able to say:  “Some Friends believe X (one end of spectrum), other Friends believe Y (other end of spectrum) and I personally believe Z.” This speaks to the power of Quakerism, that it is flexible and a place of individual encounter with the Truth!

Our testimonies do not define the boundaries of Quakerism, like dogmas do for other churches.   Because Friends struggle to even answer “what do we believe?”, Friends are often at a great loss how to respond to attenders who come to us with views or practices disparate from Quakerism and wishing to practice those beliefs within our Meetings.  Perhaps we have enough clarity to say no to animal sacrifice or other spiritual practices which are clearly foreign to Quakerism, but practices from the world like voting, Robert’s rules of order type conducting of a committee or simply the secular assumption that our lives our private and not the business of our community are all things which can creep in below the radar of a liberal stance and start to change the nature of Quakerism.

Rooted in Truth

Thus we find ourselves in the very strange position of needing to be able to say to all in our midst:  “You are welcome here, the Truth you find is welcome and your expression of it is welcome, and we will not change our Practice of Quakerism unless our whole group is lead in discernment to change it”.  Otherwise any time someone dissented from any belief or practice we have, and it had to be laid down, then in fairly short order we would have no belief or practice at our center any more!  (In some of our very small Meetings and worship groups around the country I fear this sort of liberal desire to embrace everyone has indeed led to such a loss of belief or practice at our center.)  If people are attracted to us for the beliefs and practices we have, then they need to be willing to either learn and adopt those beliefs and practices, or not adopt them, but co-exist in a spirit of tolerance and forbearance to those aspects they are not in unity with.  (a posture somewhat like standing aside in business meeting.)  This then in the end might be one of the most valuable things we have to teach the rest of the world:  a model of how diversity, tolerance and acceptance coexist with a centered position rooted in Truth.

Was Published in Friends Journal Sept. 2009