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

Twenty-One Tips on Personal Peace Making

I think we as Quakers spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing peacemaking, but when it comes to how to do it on the personal, one-to-one level we are often at a great loss. Last year I was supervisor of a group of six people who were going through a huge amount of personal conflict and upheaval among them. I found myself reflecting on everything I had ever learned in my life about how to heal or avoid personal conflict. I wrote it all down to share with them. When I was finished I realized that it is useful for many people to think about this. Here are the 20 things about conflict that I have learned in nearly 50 years.

1. Nothing is gained in trying to decide whose version of what happened is true. It does not matter in the end. What matters is that each person truly experienced it the way he or she reports it. That is how each person heard the words, and that is what each meant by his or her communication when saying it. That is how things looked to that person and that is what things meant to him or her. (Of course, it’s absolutely vital that the parties are being honest with themselves about their experiences.) Attaining peace doesn’t require one party to accept or capitulate to the other party’s version of truth. Each person simply has to grant that what it has heard is the experience of the other person. For instance, if two people went on two separate vacations and one person’s vacation was “wonderful until x happened” and the other person’s vacation was horrible “all along,” they would not argue about that, but would express sympathy and try to figure out how to do it differently and better next time. This could also happen if they went on the same vacation but had different experiences.

2. Blame is not a helpful concept. It does not move things forward. No one wants to be the blamed one. No one wants to be wrong. No one wants to have been bad or have harmed other people. When we blame, it increases the other person’s defensiveness and blocks his or her willingness to listen to us. Blaming, either internally or aloud, is a way to focus on the other person and his or her behavior, rather than on our own painful feelings and our part in what has happened.

3. Instead of saying: “It is his fault,” “It is her fault,” or “It is my fault,” it is more helpful simply to say, “It is.” If you can begin to look at the events of a conflict as simply what is, what happened, you will find it begins to change how you feel about it. It just is. That does not mean it is not still painful or that you still might not seek to change the situation in some way. This simply takes out the poison of blame and judgment and in some way helps us focus on more practical actions for the future and lessons to learn from the past.

4. Running away from conflict does not solve it. The conflict is still there when we return, but now someone may also feel abandoned or insignificant. Often, the resulting lapse of time has allowed bad feelings to fester and false assumptions to be made. It is best to address conflict as soon as one has control over one’s emotions and the other person is able to engage.

5. When people are very, very upset they get flooded by adrenaline. This is a biological wiring for “fight or flight.” We cannot just turn it off. It takes at least 20 minutes with attention off of conflict—longer if it is hard to get attention off of it, to get rid of all the adrenaline. If the other party asks for a break and then watches TV, it does not mean this person does not care. It may simply mean he or she is trying not to focus on the conflict in order to reduce adrenaline. It is a bad idea for someone to try to talk, listen, or make decisions while flooded with adrenaline. Rational thinking is impaired and the brain has a difficult time working constructively.

6. Timing of efforts to address a conflict is a two-party affair. People exist on a broad spectrum from “eager to address issues” to “extremely terrified about addressing issues.” It is not fair for the most willing party to demand that the other person engage because the first party wants to/needs to, and it is similarly not fair for the more avoidant party to insist that his or her non-engagement policy be accepted by both (or to continue avoiding without addressing when he or she will be willing to engage). If the two parties are not both willing to engage at the moment a problem arises, the one who needs more time to either calm down or gather thoughts needs to indicate that he or she needs this time and when he or she will be willing to meet. This agreement really must be met if the avoidant party expects the other party to do the hard work of holding onto oneself while waiting.

7. When in a conflict with another person, it is not helpful to keep going over in our mind (or with another person) how bad the other person is, or how bad his or her actions were, how upset he or she makes us, or how much we hate this person. All these kinds of thoughts just magnify the conflict, keep us connected to the difficult part of the person, keep us flooded with adrenaline, and prevent us from being able to move into a new place with the person. Contrary to how it often feels, focusing in this negative way does not protect us from the other person.

8. What is helpful is to focus on the good points of the person. If we are not aware of any, try to notice what those might be or what other people like about that person. In a pinch, make up something: “This person is kind and loving to his or her cat at home.” The idea here is not to lie to ourselves or live in fantasy, but we need to start connecting to the part of that person that we would like to have in our life. No one is without good. The more we focus on what we do not like about a person, the more we experience what we do not like about him or her.

9. Making fun of the person you are in conflict with, or engaging in sarcasm or ridicule is poison. When you disrespect a person, you are very far away from where reconciliation or peace can happen. It is in fact known to be one of the markers for a marriage that will end in divorce.

10. Each person has something to teach us. People do not arrive in our lives by mistake, even when we did not choose them to be in our lives. If we successfully evade one “nuisance,” another one with the same traits will show up. It is best to learn the lessons about ourselves and life that we are to learn from this person. That we do not like this kind of person is not the lesson. This person is in your life as a teacher. It is not that this person is sitting around thinking up lessons for you in a conscious way, but in the sense that God has sent this person to illuminate an area where you struggle and where you can grow.

11. Judging a person or deciding “who is wrong and who is right” is just another form of blaming. People have differences in opinion, in cultural norms, in styles of doing things, in interpreting information, and in acting in the world. There is not a right or a wrong way about this. Our standards are right for each of us because of the life we have lived. That does not make our standards right for someone else, who has lived a different life (which, of course, is why you are free to disagree with me about this if you choose). When we judge someone else or try to define him or her as wrong based on “our truth,” we are insisting that our way is the way. Instead of this, we must acknowledge and accept the differences. We must figure out how to build bridges across the differences.

12. People do not cause other people’s feelings. Rather, Person A does something and Person B observes that action and then decides what it means to him or her. We all have had experiences of starting out feeling one way about something, getting a slightly different perspective, and then having a different feeling about it. Despite the sense we have that our feelings are automatic and unbidden, we actually do choose what we feel. When we have been hurt in childhood and in our adult years, we often have an accumulation of feelings about a certain set of behaviors. When someone engages in that behavior, then we have those feelings. This is called re-stimulation, and it is something within us. It is not caused by the other person. Even though we may not welcome it, it is a chance to look at our old feelings, process them, and heal.

13. When someone else is disappointed or angry with us, this does not mean that we are bad or unworthy. We may have been told this in the past, and therefore this feeling may readily rear its head. It actually just means the other person is having a lot of strong and perhaps complex feelings. It is a good idea to care about others’ feelings, but when we start operating/speaking out of guilt or shame, we are now actually having a competing upset that steals the attention from the person who was originally upset. Once two people are upset, the whole thing becomes a much larger mess.

14. Dragging other people in by trying to convince them of our point of view or trying to get others to choose sides just makes the conflict bigger and worse. As a result, this causes pain in additional people and is another reason for the person with whom we are in conflict to be angry with us. It is one thing to ask someone to process feelings with us (ideally someone who does not know the person) or to speak without identifying the person. But it is quite another thing to “compile a case together” or confirm each other’s negative feelings.

15. When we direct all of our actions towards trying to prevent another person from feeling a certain way (angry, hurt, disappointed), we find ourselves caught in co-dependent emotional caretaking. We need to redirect our attention toward how we are feeling, what our needs are, and how we feel about our own behavior.

16. When speaking to another person about our upsets, it is best to use “I” statements of our experience and reactions as our own, rather than blaming others or making them responsible for our feelings. It is also best to listen carefully and respectfully to the other person’s responses and be willing to change our minds if presented with different information.

17. The use of drugs, alcohol or violence during a conflict, or during the attempt to fix it, will make the conflict worse.

18. People who are very alike often have a great deal of conflict. This is because the behavior of the other person reminds one of oneself in some very painful ways. Perhaps we see our worst or most detested trait in the other person (but of course it looks much worse on him or her). What is helpful is not to focus on how awful the other person is but to focus back on how we feel about ourselves when we behave that way and begin by working on forgiving ourselves for our own behavior. When we can love ourselves as we are, the other person magically becomes much less annoying and more an object for compassion.

19. We are responsible at all times for choosing behavior that meets our highest moral/ethical standards—to truly live by the Golden Rule, to live in such a way that, if anything true we did was published somewhere for all to see, we would have no embarrassment, guilt, or shame about our action.

           
20.  Culture does impact conflict.  Different cultures have different ways of showing respect, caring, boundaries, etc.  The culture we are raised in is invisible to us – it is like air.  It is just their and is presented as “normal” or “reality” or “the way things are”.  We all therefore are somewhat blind to our own cultural assumptions and usually sadly ignorant of other peoples.  It is very easy to transgress without realizing it.  It is however helpful to realize this potential and try to figure out if it is part of the conflict and if so to try to address it and use if as an opportunity for learning.  White people in particular often make the mistake of assuming that other white people are the same “culture” as they are which is generally not true.  Second generation American’s and beyond tend to think of themselves as totally assimilated and are unaware of the cultural beliefs passed down through their families even centuries later.  It is helpful to learn more about one’s own cultural roots and those of people we are closely connected with.

21. When we have made a mistake, it is best to apologize immediately, rather than trying to justify, rationalize, diminish, or cover up the mistake we made. We are not bad because we made a mistake. If we live without blaming, others should also be able to accept our mistakes without blaming. If someone else engages in blaming, that is the other person’s issue and not something we have to take on ourselves
Published in Friends Journal Aug 2008

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