Cyber Worship and Traveling Among Friends

I have spent years doing political organizing over Zoom, but when I have even suggested doing a committee meeting over Zoom friends have been very resistant.   Now however in this brave new world of pandemic crisis has forced us to do something that even with liking Zoom I did not think would be a good idea: have worship on zoom.   And Friends are surprised that it is working pretty well.

The first week my Meeting did this we were visited by someone who grew up in the Meeting who was from Italy (and in the midst of a very scary time for Italy).   The Meeting also supports a project in Uganda to support Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered people in a country that will kill them for the "Offense".   We were able to be joined from a woman from Uganda from that project.

This got me thinking.   This week I joined the Meeting I was a member of for 25 years before moving here.  Next week I will try to join the Meeting I grew up in, even though that will be a two hour time difference.....and waking up for 8am worship is a bit daunting.  My travels never take me back there anymore and so it feels like a gift this sort of possibility. I'm pretty sure I cannot get myself together to visit my favorite Eastcoast Meeting because that would mean starting worship at 7am my time. But just this idea that one can suddenly freely - without expense, travel or time - visit almost any Meeting....is actually quite awe inspiring.

Both last week and this week worshiping with different groups I noted that people who have health issues that makes it too hard for them to come to Meeting normally were joining us, as was also true of a Friend who lives far from any Meeting and sometimes travels an hour to be able to worship with us.

My Meeting also held a "community dialogue" which was a time for all to share about how they were coping. It went on for two hours with 25 people and was really lovely and rich.   My former Meeting was discussing how to use the "chat room" function of Zoom to have "Committee Sunday".  (Frankly in most Meetings where committees meet at seperate times- it is easier and each committee just gets its own link for its time.)  They were bravely considering if they could try Meeting for Worship for Business.

I will still always favor in person worship.   It's just part of how I feel about people.  But I am going to ask FGC if they can start offering online worship that runs every hour on Sunday across the US time zones AFTER the pandemic, so that those isolated or health challenged Friends always have a place to worship.

What a funny silver lining from a pandemic.

Not a discussion

Recently I sat in a Meeting for worship where a number of messages were given.  Someone rose after at least 4 messages had been given and said:  “What I would like to add to this discussion is….”    I hope that person just chose their words carelessly or was using an expression of speech.   I hope they did not really think that messages shared in Meeting are a discussion or that they rather than spirit had something to “add to the discussion”.   Am I nit picking here?   If it is perceived so, we are more lost then I would hope for the Society of Friends.   So I wrote this for new convinced Friends and Seekers so they may understand the issue.

George Fox famously asked Friends to look inward to find the Light of Christ within, to see what the still small voice said to them – not he said what the preacher or the Bible said to them (and I would add now not what the media says.)   He, in fact, based Quakerism on the idea that we could listen, in silence, for the truth which would present itself to us.  Our worship is unprogrammed by humans but is supposed to be programmed by God!  The silence is supposed to be a space to listen and hear the voice of God, and all messages delivered are supposed to be faithfully discerned before delivery to be from the Holy Voice.

I have written a number of previous posts about messages in Meeting:  Expectant Silence,  and  TheQuality of Silence talks about what makes a living silence and FaithfullyDelivered talks about the importance of delivering messages that we are given.  But I have not written about the discernment process of discerning whether a message is to be delivered.  I am realizing for most new comers it must be a mysterious process that some people rise and speak.  If you hang around a bit you hear that you are supposed to be moved by God to speak.  For some that is so imposingly high a bar they never speak.  Other’s noting the casualness with which some speak, conclude, as the person above did that it is a discussion, and if you have something pertinent to say why then you speak.

But the reasons we are called Quakers is because some of us have been known to literally Quake before we speak -others describe it as “butterflies in stomach”.   This is a curious thing because I speak in public all the time, sometimes in public testimony challenging existing policy, and I do not have fear of public speaking or butterflies.   And yet in Meeting for worship, if I am to speak I will have some thoughts (which I have all hour long) but after THESE thoughts I get a sensation in my stomach.  If I ignore the sensation it gets stronger (and more unpleasant) – a clear tap on the shoulder.

In the past year a newer Friend gave a message that was clearly from God but was also a bit rambly and disjointed.  When I talked to this Friend about this message he acknowledged that the message felt important but unclear to him.   I suggested: “sit with it, review it, it will get clearer.  You do not have to speak the minute the message arises in you.”    For me I will get the initial sense that maybe a message is to share – I will then review it – if it is, the physical feeling will get stronger.  If it is not I will just be again thinking about something.  I also have had to discern is the message for me or the Meeting?   Once I had the funny experience of feeling a message coming to me in a Meeting I was visiting, but no urge to speak.  I thought maybe it is just for me.  I returned home and tested it the next Sunday.  No urge.   However, several weeks later I remembered it and then received a distinct urge to speak.  Apparently, it was being held for a particular person to show up at Meeting for Worship!

Certainly all our messages come thru the veil of our own spoken language, the way we have learned to turn a phrase, the twist of our own personality -but when done correctly it serves The Holy One and not our own egos which is why we are also not responding to other messages.  I left a Meeting once permanently when people had gone to arguing with each other through messages about a contentious topic in the Meeting and M&W had not figured out how to stop this abuse of the worship space.  In a Gathered Meeting (as described in my other posts) there can be a sense of a theme and like in an orchestra different instruments sounding differently on the same note and melody.   However, when God is the one orchestrating it is indeed beautiful music.   When it is people contributing from their heads to a topic that is provocative – it has a distinctly different, and intellectual feel to it.  If you violently disagrees with something someone has said: time enough to tell them after Meeting and you will not have multiplied the voices speaking unfaithfully.

So we sit in silence and we wait for words, which may or may not be given; we discern if we have the right words and if we are truly to deliver them, and then we are faithful.

The Quality of Silence

Normally my posts here are addressed to a Quaker audience.   Recently talking to someone I had just met about the silence in Meeting for Worship, I realized I had something to write to those who are trying to figure out online what Quakerism is like and if it is something they want to explore further.

My tag line says I am an unprogrammed Friend.   What does that mean?  Quakerism like many other churches has had splits – the first and most significant split was between programmed and unprogrammed Friends,  or between having a minister and not having a minister.   Unprogrammed Friends (those is Friends General Conference, in Friends Conservative and truth be told almost all Independent yearly meetings) keep an hour of silence for worship as did George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, and the Valient 60 – those original Quakers that spread the new born religion.

Throughout my life when I have told someone in conversation that the format of my weekly church service is an hour of silence the most common response is amazed disbelief.   At least some state “that would be very hard”.   Others inquire about the purpose of the silence.  I explain that Friends  believe that in the silence we wait to hear God’s voice, that God can and will speak to us directly.  (that we do not need an intermediator as in so many religions.)  

This belief comes directly from the original opening of George Fox:  “But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the Separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh! then I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition': and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. ...and this I knew experimentally. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God, and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing. For though I read the Scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit. Then the Lord gently led me along, and let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history or books; and that love let me see myself, as I was without Him. I was afraid of all company, for I saw them perfectly where they were, through the love of God, which let me see myself.”

So we sit in the silence and we wait to hear God’s voice and sometimes those hearing a message receive an inward prompting that the message is for sharing and they are moved to (stand and) share it.   Depending upon the size of a Meeting there maybe between 1 message or 6.  It is called a “popcorn” meeting when too many messages are given.  This phrase also implies that as a group we did not ground and so there was a lot of popping up and speaking, but not from spirit!  It is also possible that there are no messages given.  No messages could be just , or it represent a failure equal to the popcorn meeting for the group to ground in spirit.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: the quality of silence.   On one level we think of all silence as the same –the simple absence of noise.   Someone told me there is a language (don’t recall which) that had multiple words for snow:  snow that has just fallen, snow that is crunchy, snow that is slushy, snow that is powery, snow that is old and dirty, etc.   Certainly how many words we have says something about the cultures focus upon that which it names in so many ways.   Apparently English speaking cultures do not pay much attention to silence because we have only one word for it and yet there are many kinds of silence.   For example outside of worship think of an akward silence.   Oh yes we have all had that experience!  Think also of board silence and think of silence in nature alive with crickets or birds but also almost the sound of a branch falling.  Think of the angry silence.   And think of the rich silence that you can go into as a respite and refuge – a place of dreams, reflection and imagination. 

So the quality of silence in worship also varies greatly.  Recently I drove away from my Meeting with a Quaker who was visiting from another Meeting.   She told me that she was drawn to my Meeting because she had experience very good vocal ministry at my Meeting.  There had been none that morning, and so I said:  “Normally we have about 3 message but recently we have had a lot of dead silence.”  She understood immediately what I meant and we began to talk about the difference between a dead silence and a living silence.  For me the dead silence comes when most of the members of the Meeting for worship are not centering – when the main activity in the room is people making to do lists in their brain, fighting inside their head with their boss or their spouse, or daydreaming or problem solving.    We all probably need to do that sort of thing sometimes (That is what the drive to Meeting is for??) but it is not what Meeting for worship is for.  It is certainly not the case that all messages do come from spirit as suppose to be the case.   Quaker’s have jokes about the NYTimes message – which refers to the person who read the paper before coming and feels compelled to make commentary on current events.  There are also Friends who are known for speaking to frequently who compulsively feel the need to fill the silence and may speak almost every week with or without anything to say!

But a Living Silence is an entirely other thing:  it is a silence so rich and so centered and grounded that it is palpable to all but the spiritually dead and can be completely fulfilling even if no message is ever given.  “How interesting” the person I was telling this to said “and the place you listen from that you can discern the difference between a living and a dead silence”.

Out of a living silence can come what Friends call a covered meeting or a gathered meeting (both short for covered by Spirit or gathered in God).   In this living silence the Presence of the Holy One is so palpable that both with or without words, we can feel our connection to each othe,r and we can speak effortlessly to each other’s inward condition.  At its best I liken this living silence to a symphony where different instruments come in at different moments, sounding different notes through the unique resonace which is their instrument, and yet together they create one song, one body of work, one amazing harmony.   While on face value the messages are on different topics, one may discern none-the-less a sort of theme that runs throughout.  This is my finest experience of Quaker Meeting for worship.   In such meeting for worship it is not uncommon that at least some are moved to tears. 

Friends have the saying: “This Friend speaks my mind” which is for use in Meeting for business to indicate that one agrees with the previous speaker and thus avoid the trap of speaking simply to re-emphasize a point.   However this saying goes well also for the experience in a really Gathered Meeting where a message can speak deeply to one’s condition, or even saying what one was going to say.   I have very literally had the experience of asking in silent prayer for guidance from God and having someone rise a few minutes later in worship and give a message that I knew was the answer I had asked for!

“So what” a despairing Friend has asked me, “are we to do about a Meeting where there is repeated dead silence?”  To me that is what we have religious ed, Ministry and Worship, or Ministry and Oversite for (various names for committees in different Meetings which do the same work.)  If Meetings are becoming uncentered, it is time to spend some time in worship sharing during second hour, or to study Quaker history, or to have discussion about spiritual practice….in short it is time to stoke the fires of our collective spirit life!

It is also time to tell the truth to each other about the current spiritual condition of our Meeting.  I remember many years ago when my Meeting was writing its’ annual state of the Meeting report my suggesting we add the sentence “We have been going through a period of spiritual dryness”.   Oh my goodness the dirty looks I got and objections that this was not true.  Despite our Quaker commitment to integrity it is apparently hard for us to tell the truth sometimes about our dry spells.  I shortly thereafter went on M&W and addressed the issue that way.   So it is possible to return to a Living Silence through many means.

Faithfully Delivered

There is a well known Quaker joke:  Two men sit next to each other on a bench.  The one shakes for a long time in Meeting and yet never rises.  Eventually the other man rises and gives a message.  The Meeting for Worship ends and the second man turns to the shaker at the rise of Meeting and says:  "Next time give your own damn message."    This is funny to Quakers (yeah try giving this joke to a group of non-Quakers... you have to explain the joke just to get polite smiles.) because we recognize what it is to sit on a leading to speak.   We have all done it at some time.  I have also heard people say  "Yeah not going to do that again...not worth the heart attack"  meaning that the racing of the heart and the butterflies in the stomach felt while not delivery the message are not worth it!

We all also have stories of times where people's messages deeply spoke to us which, is both magical and a deep motivation to faithfully deliver messages given to us.  My own story of that happened on an occasion where I had gone to not my own Meeting, but a local meeting in Jan the Sunday after Martin Luther King Day.   On that Sunday I was deep in thought concerned about an issue concerning my then step-son and feeling somehow like two cherished values were pitted against each other and trying somehow to figure out which one was actually more important or how to reconcile them.   Towards the end a young man rose and said:  "I went to the Martin Luther King march this Monday and I was very struck during the pre-rally by how someone quoted him saying: " But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian  faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love".  As I heard this it shot through me "Oh yes Love.  Love is the answer.  Love trumps all and I had forgotten this.  

After Meeting I went to him and thanked him for being faithful in delivering the message because it had spoken to my condition.   His eyes got big.  He said:  "I have never spoken in Meeting before and I did not know why I should just repeat that quote.  It seemed silly, but I kept shaking so I finally did."  Both parts of this story are important -that he was faithful and spoke to my condition and that I let him know as this wound up being an eldering in the importance of being faithful. Interestingly, I had had a strong urge to go tell him.  I also had been faithful to the inward prompting.  This would be an example of how we are one of another in community.  I would also note here that I did not say "I liked your message", but "thank you for being faithful".  This is an important distinction; when we thank Friends for "their message" we add to the confusion about where messages come from and tempt the ego of the one who delivered.

I remember once going to a Meeting in another town and being given a message, but no prompting to give it.  I was confused by this and spent much of the hour trying to decide whether to give it, but eventually concluded that I was not to.  I wound up thinking it was a message that God intended only for me.  And in fact it was meaningful to me for quite a while.  Then one Sunday in my Meeting I somehow felt moved to give the message.  "Really God?"  "Yes really"  So I stood and gave the message.   Later a Friend who did not often come to Meeting, came and thanked me for the message saying how much the message meant to her.   Wow, I had no idea that God could work in such a way!

I'm not sure if that is the oddest way The Holy One has brought a message to Meeting through me or if it would be this story.   I once woke on a Sunday morning from a dream in which I had been in Meeting for worship and one of our Members had sung a message and some other thing had happened.  I went to Meeting and thought about this dream - after a while I started feeling the familiar stomach sensations indicating to deliver the message.  'really?...but this is a dream its not a message"  Yes really!   So I rose and told the dream and sat down embarrassed.  Late,r the person who had sang in my dream came to me and said that she had been for several months been getting words to a new song in Meeting for worship but did not think of herself as a song writer and so had not written them down.  We looked at each other and she said:  "I guess I had better write them down huh?"   She did and some months later sang the song for Meeting.

In my Yearly Meeting there was for two years a Clerk who was very good at racing through the agenda, but not very good, it seemed, to listening to the Spirit.  In his first year an issue arose where the nominating committee was not being able to get people to agree to serve on committees.  So they took the position of laying themselves down to force the Yearly Meeting to look at the issue. However, as people began in business meeting to look deeply and focus on what was wrong in our Yearly Meeting, the clerk abruptly cut off discussion in favor of simply having an Ad Hoc committee create a new nominating committee.  Later, I simply thanked the tearful clerk of nominating for being faithful.  For it was clear to me that she had been faithful in delivering a painful message, and that she had done all that was her part, but was thwarted by others not listening in the Spirit.

The next year we were down to the last hour of business in this clerk's term and again someone began to question the creation of yet another committee to try to solve the same problem that we had quite possibly created a committee earlier in the morning to solve.   The question was again raised what is wrong in our Yearly Meeting?  This time speaker after speaker rose speaking of their distress about the condition of our Yearly Meeting, the non-spiritual nature of business meeting, etc. It was like a geyser that could not be contained.  The clerk again tried to cut off the discussion, but this time a young woman, not even from our Yearly Meeting rose in tears about the her sense of the Spirit being stiffled and plead that we would sit in silence and listen to the Spirit and so this time (and in part because worship was next on the schedule) the clerk surrendered and the messages poured out for another half an hour.  For me this was a very powerful example of how Spirit is determined to be heard and will use every faithful voice in the room to bring the truth home.

What dear Friend is your experience of being Faithful in delivering a message?

Expectant Waiting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bringing Spiritual Intention to our Meetings

I have for many years now been a fan of Wayne Dwyer, author of the Power of Intention, among many books (and often seen on PBS) Dwyers messages is definitely spiritual, but no explicitly Christian, and so not usually spoken about in Friends Meeting - I would like however to bring part of his Light to our on going struggle to have our Meetings support the Life we want for our Meetings.

First I would say we need to have an explicit dialogue in our Meetings - what do we want?  What do we intend for our communities?  Do we want more young families?  Do we want to keep our youth? Do we want more vital ministries?  Do we want a more active and powerful social witness?  Do we want a deeper sense of community?  Do we want our business meetings to be truly spirit led?  Do we want to know the presence of God more deeply?

Whatever the longing - first we must name it - then we must imagine it fully achieved, the spirit of it - not endlessly lamenting the "not happeningness of it" as Dwyer might joke.  Then in tasting what it might taste like we must walk our selves backward from that image.  What conditions would have to exist to allow or nurture that vision?  Would a certain committee of the Meeting be different?  Would worship be different? Would community be different?  Then peel back another layer:  What committees or other activities prepare us for worship or to learn our practice?  What removes the obstacles in worship?  Do we expect to find the Divine on the bench with us? What practices could we change that would better support our cherished intentions?  What practices do we have because "we always did it this way"... or because when we had a lot of children we did x, or because of the force of personality of 1 Friend now long dead, or because we think this is how "all Quaker" do it, etc. etc?

How can we examine our practices and release those who no longer serve.  A number of years sabbatical years were popular for Meetings- laying down all committees for a year and discerning what was essential and bringing back committees only with intention and renewed purpose.  Do our committees match our numbers?  When does a meeting grown to where Ministry and Oversite should be separated (into Ministry and Worship & Pastoral Care)   And when have we shrunk to where they should be recombined into Ministry and Pastoral Care?

Sometimes this conversation becomes a little bit of a "What comes first the chicken or the egg?" conversation because we imagine we cannot do the work that it would take to make a better meeting without more people and yet we feel that without more people we cannot do that extra work.  Here Friends I would remind us that it is not our work alone to do.  This is where it is good to remember God!  How do we invite in God's help?  How do we remember that God also wants these things we want: deeper worship, greater community, etc.  and in fact if we can notice that it is really arranging the practices of our Meetings to let the Light shine through then it is not simply empty form or endless meetings - it is the joyful work of the Holy One and us as the instruments.

God is not Done Speaking Yet

Over a year ago the UCC church down the street from my Meeting had a big banner which said:  "God is not done speaking yet".  At first I thought rather smugly "Well Quakers know that the Truth is evolving, that is why we have testimonys and not creedal statements."  But I eventually came to just appreciate the sign as a good reminder that we have to keep listening to hear and know God.

The summer issue of Friends Journal is on Testimonys and has challenged us throughout the issue to not put a rich deep history, most of which was lived without any such concept of testimony's, into neat little boxes.  It challenges to keep living in the Root of those testimonys and not in their fruit.  It demands of us that we not make them things and as such creedal statements instead of living testimonies.

Parker Palmer, the well known Quaker theologian, many years ago wrote of the cross that it is the intersection between the vertical now of God, and the horizontal here and now of our lives as we live them on this plain.  It is a powerful intersection.

Both that cross and that issue of FJ ask us, as the Peace testiomny does "to live in that Life and Power"....yes the one that takes away the occasion for all war, but also the one that can invade our being and reorder it, that can center us in a second, that can fill us with Love, and give us the courage for powerful action.  There is a decision I have made throughout my life, over and over again, that I want to live in that center...and yet over and over again I find myself somewhere else and having to return to the attempt to live in that center.

I can bring my body to Meeting for Worship, and I can sit and think about my problems.  But when I do that I am doing that out of the old habit that I am author of my life.  It is an entirely different thing to bring those problems to The Holy One, to ask for guidance, to submit them in prayer, and to sit still wait listening to hear the answers from a God who is still Speaking.

Living in that Life and Power

I have long felt the most fascinating phrase in the peace testimony is not the famous part of "All bloody Principles & Practices, we do utterly deny, with all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward Weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our Testimony to the whole world."  but rather the phrase, "We live in that Life and Power which takes away the occasion for all war."   This second phrase to me speaks so powerfully a real testimony of faith, a witness to the whole world of a transformative and overwhelming power and rock upon which early Friends found the strength not just to refuse conscription but to stand non-violently in the face of harms way in any number of other witnesses to the world.  It also describes the peace of living in God's Life.  It calls the listener forward to want that life.  And I have sometimes wondered, feared, whether we modern Friends have lost hold of that Life and Power.

Recently an email came into my inbox entitled: "Towards a testimony on Gun Violence." Oh how exciting I thought.  I opened it in anticipation of something that calls out in a similar way to the listener to forsake the violence of Guns.   Imagine my surprise when instead I read what I can only describe as a policy proposal for Friends to endorse existing proposals for gun registration.  I was quite disappointed.  Now mind you I have no objection whatsoever to gun registration; it is a logical and much overdue step.  Certainly it is strategically the next step this country could/should take.  But is it a Quaker Testimony? Certainly not.  In fact I was moved to write the committee writing the minute saying if it was presented at Yearly Meeting that I would most probably rise to oppose it as long as it used the word testimony because as such it violated my sense of what a testimony is.

I was raised with the understanding that our testimonies are different than creedal statements because they are statements of "the truth as we know it now."  I was told that the Truth is known experientially and that we struggle as a community to hold up to each other the truth and to find it together and reach unity on the Truth, that we act as a corporate body when we recognize together a shared Truth. Well Friends, it cannot be that the greatest truth we have after 350 years as pacifists is that guns should be registered!  When we say that we live in the Life and Power that takes away the occasion for all war...do we not also feel it takes away the occasion for violence?  Do we not feel that while we may fail, that we are called to live as nonviolently as we can?  I assume that means that little ol' Quaker ladies are not packing pistols in their purses, nor do Quaker men keep guns in the bedside table.   I think we are called to put our faith in God for safety and to live in ways that make no one intent on hurting us, and to speak to that of God in the stranger who may come with ill intent, and to suffer an injury if need be rather than to inflict one.  This, I believe, would be consistent with the Peace Testimony.  And in fact when we look at the first part that I quoted: "all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward Weapons, for any end"  (emphasis added) it would seem pretty clear.   A gun is an outward weapon and it is rejected for all ends or means.

Now I realize that in proclaiming to the world that they should lay down their guns and try to live nonviolently that this will seem dangerous to some, laughable to others, way too idealistic to be "practical," a threat to the Second Amendment, etc.  But why should that stop us from proclaiming the truth?  After all the peace testimony itself is seen to be absurdly impractical and idealistic to most of the world and has for three and half centuries and that has not stopped us!  In fact, when we first suggested to the world that they give up slaves that was seen as unrealistic (something that we had first had work a century on within our own ranks) and yet it was useful to the world that we held out that idea, or the idea of women's suffrage, or same sex marriage.  Eventually the world sometimes catches up to idealists.  It still has not come to accept the idea that it is wrong to fight wars and yet I don't see us laying down that testimony any time soon.

So instead it is time to note that if a testimony is the "truth as we know it so far" that it is indeed now time to expand the peace testimony.  I think it is time for us to tell the world that we are called to that Life and Power that takes away the occasion for all violence against other humans.  That we utterly deny the use of any weapon against another child of God and that we are called to walk in struggle for understanding, love, and compassion which can lead us into peace with others when there is conflict.

Rippling Rings

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

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

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

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

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

Is There a God?

I was 12 years old and I was sitting on a bench in Meeting for Worship and I was wondering: "Is there a God?"  This seemed like an important question to which it was not clear how one could get an answer to this question.  As I sat there I looked at a purple Iris outside the window with a huge dew drop on the petal.  The sun was hitting it refracting a rainbow within the dew drop.  I rejoiced in the beauty and majesty of all this!

I reflected upon what we had just been studying in biology: about how flowers reproduce, about how light is refracted, about how water evaporates and goes up in the air and is held in clouds and then is released in rain, and the whole rather perfect cycle of nature there, and in reproduction of plants, and of birth and death and rebirth of plants and animals, etc.  "It is all perfect", I thought.  And suddenly I knew; I knew there is a God.  Because I realized nothing could accidentally or randomly occur that was this perfect.  I saw there was an intelligence in the universe.  I felt an energy that could be turned to for guidance and wisdom.

As I got older I would contend with questions like: Why does God allow suffering? What does God want me to do and how do I know?  How do I pray?  And what is the correct name of God?  But for then, for 12, it was just good to know there is a God.

When I was much older I had a long argument with a friend who identifies himself as an Atheist.  I told him that while I could understand someone being Agnostic, not knowing if there is a God that I did not know how he could claim to know conclusively that there is not a God when others say they have experienced God directly.  He made various arguments and asked me several times to what my experience of God was.  I described it and he said he had not had that experience. I acknowledged that but said I still did not think he could dismiss others experience. 

He did acknowledge that there is a principle of intelligence within the Universe, but then said crossly that he did not understand why I was calling that God.  I said that I did not understand why he would refuse to call it God.  He talked over and over again about the evils of the church throughout history.  I acknowledged that the organized churches have done many evil things and that that is the doing of humans while hiding behind the cloak of the church.  I said that you could not throw God out with the churches.  He eventually said that if I was calling the Mind of the Universe God that he agreed that it existed, but found it unnecessary to call it God.

We were young then.  I have not asked him where he turns for comfort when the world looks dark?  Or where he finds strengthen when he has to do the hard things? Or what helps him to find connection to all people around him even the crappy ones?  But these are reasons why I have discovered there is a God not just a Mind of the Universe.

Intentional Acts of Kindness

A month ago a colleague of mine died suddenly, one day after his 60th birthday.  He had a big birthday party with friends and family. A mutual colleague had flown to WY to be with him and then, as planned, the two of them went on a day hike the next day.  Towards the end, 1 mile from the trail head, Bob collapsed and, as was later established, died instantly of a massive heart attack.  Our mutual colleague emailed 60 of us who responded with a sort of online memorial service, sharing our shock, are sadness and our memories of Bob.  Bob had a huge heart (ironically considering how he died).  He was very kind to everyone, quick with humor and to aid another.  Someone asked his wife if she wanted flowers or donations or what, sent where?  Her response was she said "Do an act of kindness in memory of Bob". 

It seemed a perfectly fitting memorial.  My problem was I thought of several things I was already scheduled to do that were acts of kindness. Well, those did not seem to count - they would have occurred anyway.  What was big enough, or special enough, or not premeditated enough, or planned enough to count as the act of kindness for Bob?  While I was trying to figure this out, I noticed that my family members were irritating and pissing me off in any number of ways which was leaving me feeling very justified in responding in snarly ways. That when it felt like they were standing on my "emotional shoes" that I felt quite justified in getting them "off" my shoes. I certainly was not acting in kindness towards them.  Oh Bob, I hear you calling.

However, this was not as easy as it seemed.  I would notice time and again, after not being kind that I had forgotten my resolve.  This is really very embarrassing for a Quaker.  Hardly, walking over the earth answering cheerful to others, huh?  In fact, I do not think I have enough consecutive hours in, to in anyway, to say I have honored Bob yet.  

So today in Meeting for worship I was reflecting on this, trying to understand the problem and how I can get a handle on this and turn it around.  I was also aware of it being 9/11 and my feelings of judgment of this country that in our grief over 3,000 dead, we have caused the deaths many times over of American soldiers, Iraqi and Afghani soldiers and thousands of civilians.  I realized that just like me, this country in its pain and vulnerability reacted to protect itself and feels justified in doing so.  As I continued to wrestle with this, I saw the part of me that I feel I need to defend, a hurt little girl, and I mentally could pick her up and put her on God's lap.  From that vantage point I could feel the peace from which to be loving, compassionate and kind.   I hope that our country too can find its way to God's lap.

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?

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?

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