forebearance

Early Friends spoke of holding each other tenderly, in love and in forebearance.  In John 13:35 it is said: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

In the age of Trump this can seem like a fairly foreign concept.  What is modeled from the highest office in the land is anger, hate speak, intolerance to any difference and bullying.  Unfortunately, as studies show, examples from highest levels trickle down.  Thus it is even more important that we act from love and give visible example to forebearance.

We long for the blessed community, but in truth in thru our doors come the same people who are "out there" - people who are carrying their wounds, some with anger, some with depression, some trying desperately to avoid all conflict in ways that also do not serve, etc.  At times we have conflicting needs and at times we are simply rubbed the wrong way by someone else's personality.   So what does it look like to hold that tenderly, in love and forebearance?

I think at the heart of it is this central idea of Quakerism that there is that of God in each person.  It means that at the moment you annoy me, or hurt me, or anger me that you are still a child of God.   And if we have come to know each other in the fellowship of community then hopefully I have seen your shining strengths, your gifts of the spirit, your good heart as well as in your vulnerabilities and your hurts.  In other words that I have already seen you as a child of God.  That aught to be a help.  It aught to make it easier to reach for the Spark within you rather than speak to the most clumsy or dark part of you, or worst yet project onto you my own darkness.  God did not say I will send you only the nice people, or the fun people, or the dedicated to be your fellowship.  The creator apparently loves all of us and intends for all of us to love each other too with all our warts and snarly parts.

Years ago someone came, relatively new to our Meeting, having left a previous faith.  He became excited at one point about a project he wanted to do and yet met some resistance from the property committee.  At a business meeting he lost his temper and yelled at people and made various accusations.   I called him later to talk about what had happened.  In the conversation he made various characterizations of individuals he was upset with.   He spoke of one woman who is known to be very gentle of spirit and actually sort of afraid of men, as being "unmoveable and patronizing".   I did understand how through his filter he had made that interpretation of her, but having known her for many years I felt this was a misreading of the situation.   It was an interesting moment for me of seeing how knowing the members of my Meeting was protective against misunderstanding them, their motives or their behavior.   That is not to say none of them never annoyed me.  It just meant I had another way to think about their behavior - through the eyes of love.

Certainly there are many examples of our tenderness with each other that has to do with service to each other: care committees that have cared for people onto death, loans that have been made at critical moments that buoyed someone over a rough spot, rides to meeting that were given to folks who would not otherwise have gotten there, etc.   These are important ways we come together as a community that resonate on the physical level.

But forebearance happens on the emotional, spiritual level.  Last year a member of my Meeting died of Alzheimer's.    For years he has certain messages that he gave over and over and over again.   I believe there were some members of our Meeting that found this annoying, and certainly his wife was very uncomfortable fearing he was annoying us.   But most people listened with love in their hearts for him.   When he would raise his hand in business meeting the clerk would lovingly say: "OK, hold on a minute I will come back to you."   He would allow us to navigate through the item at hand and then at the end call on this member so he could speak, but not disrupt us with a somewhat incoherent thought.   For me it became a spirit exercise to listen to the repeated messages and hear the heart which was underneath them, and indeed I found this easily - the messages spoke to what inspired him, or to what amused him or a concern he had for us - and that was where the love lived even in dementia.  I spoke at his memorial to this perception of mine and a member later thanked me saying the message was useful to her in terms of seeing how to listen in tongues.