What Chairs can learn from the Quaker Business Method

April 10, 2019

The author Shiv­a­ji Shi­va isn’t talk­ing about the fur­ni­ture we sit on but rather the leader of board meet­ings. The sec­tion on the role of a clerk is very use­ful, cov­er­ing sec­tions like “Humil­i­ty,” “Con­tri­bu­tions and ‘air-time’, and “Nav­i­gat­ing con­flict­ing views.” He concludes:

If some of these approach­es are less famil­iar to you, why not find out more about Quak­er busi­ness meth­ods and how a gov­er­nance tool kit used for more than 350 years could work for you? 

What Chairs can learn from the Quak­er Busi­ness Method

Sin, corruption, temptation and distraction

January 2, 2019

Patri­cia Dall­mann on the role of sin:

It is bet­ter to see the sin of the world as uni­form and sin­gle rather than to view its man­i­fes­ta­tions as par­tic­u­lar prop­er­ties belong­ing to spe­cif­ic cor­rupt­ed per­sons. That is to say, in its uni­for­mi­ty, the world’s sin is more like an expanse of mud than it is like sep­a­rate rocks sit­u­at­ed at inter­vals in a field! See­ing sin as a uni­form force helps the intel­lect direct the incen­sive pow­er toward sin itself, and away from par­tic­u­lar offend­ers who have suc­cumbed to and embody demon­ic power. 

I like how she pulls from fourth-century spir­i­tu­al texts but uses them as a way to under­stand our own modern-day psy­cho­log­i­cal respons­es. Mod­ern Friends don’t often explore the dynam­ics of sin and I think we some­times lose out by sim­ply dis­count­ing it. The lan­guage of temp­ta­tion — and the Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion by ear­ly min­is­ters like Samuel Bow­nas – has helped me under­stand moments when the easy path of acclaim is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the right choice.

Pow­ers of the Soul

The Art of Persuasion

March 16, 2018

The Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing high­lights artists, includ­ing Signe Wilkin­son and Ramona Sharples, in The Art of Per­sua­sion:

“I was think­ing about (emo­tion and art) recent­ly as I was going through all my comics, and there is a rhythm that is very slow and qui­et. It’s not very actiony comics that I’m draw­ing … because … a lot of the feel­ings that I am describ­ing are melan­choly, and that plays a role in the way that my comics are presented.”

On the State of Religious Discourse at Haverford

March 13, 2018

This one only tan­gen­tial­ly skims Friends but it’s an inter­est­ing case. A inde­pen­dent stu­dent web­site at the historically-Quaker Haver­ford Col­lege decid­ed not to do a spe­cial issue on reli­gion and one stu­dent penned an arti­cle about why he dis­agrees: On the State of Reli­gious Dis­course at Haverford

Haver­ford is not immune to this plague: we too rel­e­gate reli­gious knowl­edge to a dimen­sion of the per­son­al. Con­sid­er­ing the reli­gious his­to­ry and Quak­er roots of our insti­tu­tion, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling. Haver­ford sells itself as a Quak­er insti­tu­tion, and there is a sense in which this is true, as there are cer­tain tra­di­tions at Haver­ford (speak­ing out of silence, quo­rum, con­fronta­tion, etc.), and yet the school split from orga­nized Quak­erism long ago, and one need only look at the last year to under­stand that we make deci­sions as an insti­tu­tion that are quite sep­a­ra­ble from any pro­mot­ed quak­er values.

Haver­ford’s offi­cial state­ment on its Quak­er iden­ti­ty is a rather strained two sen­tences, but in recent years it’s devel­oped a Quak­er Affairs pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly led by the awe­some Wal­ter Sul­li­van. The pro­gram’s Friend in Res­i­dence pro­gram has brought in some great Quak­er thinkers on campus.

More on this top­ic soon as Friends Journal’s May issue will ask “What Are Quak­er Val­ues Any­way?” (Some of my pre­lim­i­nary thought are here).

Quakers acting badly

August 11, 2017

Friends don’t have a par­tic­u­lar­ly good track record with regards to con­tro­ver­sy. There’s no rea­son we need to pre­tend to be talk­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly. We’ve had two major year­ly meet­ings break up in this sum­mer (meet Sierra-Cascades Year­ly Meet­ing and North Car­oli­na Fel­low­ship of Friends), with at least one more “at bat” for some future long hot summer.

Con­tro­ver­sies flare up in many places. Friend Sa’ed Atshan just broke his media silence to talk about the can­ce­la­tion of his talk at Friends’ Cen­tral School in Feb­ru­ary and the sub­se­quent walk-outs, fir­ings, and lit­i­ga­tions. The con­tro­ver­sy around Avis Wan­da McClinton’s dis­own­ment by Upper Dublin Meet­ing con­tin­ues to incense large num­bers of Philadel­phia Friends, with fuel to the fire com­ing from the role that the Undo­ing Racism Group does or doesn’t have in the year­ly meet­ing struc­ture. Last year a major­i­ty of Friends of col­or boy­cotted pub­lic events at the FGC Gath­er­ing over frus­tra­tion at the site selec­tion process and the under­ly­ing issues extend to oth­er Quak­er venues.

The most-commented recent arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal is “It Breaks My Heart” by Kate Pruitt from the online June/July issue. Many read­ers relat­ed to her sense of alien­ation and loss. Two com­ments that hit me the hard­est were:

Not all Friends are found in Quak­er Meet­ings. You’re bet­ter off with­out your meeting.

Gone now is the hope… of find­ing com­mu­ni­ty among Quak­ers. To be frank, why both­er? There’s plen­ty of bro­ken­ness right where I am.

And I get enough “Why I’m leav­ing Friends” man­i­festos in my email inbox every month that I could turn it into a reg­u­lar Friends Jour­nal column.

It seems to me that are a num­ber of under­ly­ing issues that tie these con­tro­ver­sies togeth­er. What do we do when a group of Friends starts act­ing in a man­ner that seems con­trary to our under­stand­ing of Quak­er tes­ti­monies and prac­tices? How do we bal­ance love and judge­ment when con­flict aris­es among us? When do we break out of Quak­er nice­ness? Maybe even more chal­leng­ing, how do we main­tain our integri­ty and account­abil­i­ty when con­tro­ver­sy breaks us into camps will­ing to engage in exag­ger­a­tion? And just what do we say when the out­side pub­lic only gets half the sto­ry or thinks that one side is speak­ing for all Friends?

So this is a plug for sub­mis­sions for Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal.  The theme is “Con­flict and Con­tro­ver­sy” and the sub­mis­sion dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 9. We’re not look­ing for blow-by-blow accounts of being mis­treat­ed, and we’re not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed (this time) in man­i­festos about Quak­er cul­tur­al norms. I’m less inter­est­ed in spe­cif­ic issues than I am the meta of dis­cern­ment: How do indi­vid­u­als or small groups of Friends move for­ward in the heat of con­tro­ver­sy. What do we do when the easy solu­tions have failed? How do we decide when it’s time to break out of Quak­er nice­ness to lay down some truth — or time to kick the dust off your san­dals and move along?

Remembering Christine Greenland

April 6, 2017

Over email, the news that Chris­tine Manville Green­land has passed. In recent times I worked with Chris­tine most­ly through the Tract Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends but I’ve known her for so long I don’t know when I first met her.

When­ev­er she said some­thing it was well worth lis­ten­ing to. On online forums from Soc.religion.quaker to Face­book she was always encour­ag­ing to what Samuel Bow­nas had called “infant min­is­ters.” She had the rare abil­i­ty to slice through thorny Quak­er issues with unex­pect­ed obser­va­tion and wis­dom. She had a long view of recent Quak­er his­to­ry that put things in con­text and she would pull metaphors from her train­ing as a botanist to explain mys­ti­fy­ing behav­iors in our coreligionists.

She also had a wealth of insti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry. There’s incred­i­ble val­ue in this. Friends, like most humans, give a lot of val­ue to the ways we’re doing things right now. It only takes a few years before a process feels time­less and essen­tial. We for­get that things once worked dif­fer­ent­ly or that oth­er Friends have a dif­fer­ent meth­ods. By being involved with Friends in dif­fer­ent areas — Cana­da and Col­orado — Chris­tine brought geo­graph­ic aware­ness and by being involved in Philadel­phia so long she brought a mod­ern his­tor­i­cal aware­ness. That dys­func­tion­al meet­ing everyone’s talk­ing about? She’ll remem­ber that every­one was talk­ing about it thir­ty years ago for anoth­er con­tro­ver­sy and point out the sim­i­lar­i­ties. That doubt you’ll have about a path? Chris­tine will tell you how oth­ers have felt the lead­ing and assure you that it’s genuine.

She did all this with such gen­tle­ness and mod­esty that it’s only now that she’s gone that I’m real­iz­ing the debt I owe her. More than any­thing per­haps, she showed how to live a life as a Friend of integri­ty through the pol­i­tics and foibles of our Reli­gious Society.

I used Google to find pre­cious gems of wis­dom she left on com­ment threads. It’s a long trail. She was active on soc.religion.quaker back in the day, com­ment­ed on most Con­ver­gent Friends blogs and was active on Face­book. She took the time to write many enlight­en­ing and warm com­men­tary. Here is a ran­dom sample.

Com­ment on my post “Vision and Leadership”

Yes­ter­day, I  clerked a small quar­ter­ly meet­ing work­ing group — I’m co-clerk, since it  isn’t my quar­ter… and the oth­er co-clerk is, which works well. We keep ask­ing the ques­tions and see­ing the poten­tials … but when it comes down to being faith­ful (a term I use instead of “account­able”) that needs con­sis­tent test­ing. It is impor­tant to cen­ter in wor­ship, no mat­ter what we are doing.

I had the expe­ri­ence of being chair of a group of biol­o­gists, and found that, even then, I con­duct­ed busi­ness in the same way… one of seek­ing guid­ance from oth­er mem­bers of the group — even though the group of which we were a small part used Robert’s rules of order. I felt our group was too small to make that approach work­able… Occa­sion­al­ly, I for­got I was­n’t among Friends until anoth­er mem­ber of the group (a Unit­ed Church grad­u­ate of Swarth­more Col­lege) remind­ed me… Church of the Brethren folks just grinned and allowed as how they pre­ferred the approach; we were, after all, both friends and biol­o­gists.  For most of us, the work had both a sci­en­tif­ic and a spir­i­tu­al basis.

To Mic­ah Bales’s “Is It Time to Get Rid of Year­ly Meetings?”

I checked in with Friends at our Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing pic­nic yes­ter­day; respons­es were mixed for a vari­ety of rea­sons, some hav­ing to do with resis­tance to chang­ing the ways in which we are Friends, and oth­er respons­es that I can only describe as “insti­tu­tion­al cheer-leading”.

Some of this has to do with expect­ed ten­sions as we grap­ple with mat­ters of both race and class; still oth­er mat­ters have to do with the fact that our struc­tures have changed at least twice in 30 years, as has the out­line of our faith and prac­tice. The ques­tion I have (of myself and oth­ers) is “How do we — indi­vid­u­al­ly and cor­po­rate­ly — show that we tru­ly love one anoth­er as Christ has loved us?” By that, I mean all others.

The most hope­ful exchange was speak­ing with a dear Friend in my for­mer meet­ing who had gone for the first time in decades, and feels strong­ly led to encour­age her meet­ing to assist in work going on at both the quar­ter and year­ly meet­ing lev­el; this will cross bound­aries. I was hope­ful in part because this Friend exudes con­sis­tent love. … and has in the 25 years I’ve known her. Love of God/neighbor are insep­a­ra­ble. She lives that bet­ter than I do.

It seems I have much to learn.

Com­ment on my “What Does it Mean to be a Quak­er?” (on an old site)

I cringe when I hear the word “Quak­erism” or “the Quak­er Way”… I find the two terms inter­change­able — both can lack sub­stance. It seems we have final­ly become the “bureau­crat­ic asso­ci­a­tion of dis­tant acquan­tances” rather than the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Some years ago, an expe­ri­enced Friend wrote that Integri­ty (say­ing what one means, mean­ing what one says) was at the heart of Quak­er Prac­tice — as a testimony.

If we’re just going for PR, that lacks integrity.

The ques­tion — for me — becomes “How can I live as a Friend?”

Com­ment on Eric Moon’s “Cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly Not the Testimonies”

When I first came to Friends, it was the way of life — not the intel­lec­tu­al con­struct — that drew me to meet­ing week after week (a uni­ver­si­ty meet­ing in what lat­er became Inter­moun­tain Year­ly Meet­ing). When I applied for mem­ber­ship, my com­mit­tee of clear­ness ques­tioned more whether I could live into a way of life, into the com­mu­ni­ty of that par­tic­u­lar meet­ing. Friends felt that wrestling with the under­stand­ing of the faith tra­di­tion was a part of my edu­ca­tion. Only after I moved to Philadel­phia did I begin hear­ing of the “pars­ing” of the faith tra­di­tion. It seemed too pat.

Still, the over­lap­ping cat­e­gories are still as use­ful by way of expla­na­tion, but it isn’t the whole story.

As with many mat­ters of faith, for those who pos­sess it, no expla­na­tion is nec­es­sary; for those who do not, no expla­na­tion is pos­si­ble. Howard Brin­ton did his best by way of expla­na­tion, but faith-wrestling is a task we all have.

Com­ment on Ash­ley Wilcox’s The Cost of Trav­el­ing Ministry

My ques­tion about younger Friends serv­ing as trav­el­ing min­is­ters is some­what more seri­ous: Are their meet­ings atten­tive to both the spir­i­tu­al gifts and the needs (cost of trav­el, etc.)as well as the spir­i­tu­al need for sup­port. If not, is the Friend with a con­cern for trav­el, teach­ing, or any oth­er min­istry) hum­ble enough to ask the ques­tions Jon is ask­ing. In my expe­ri­ence (as an old­er adult Friend)there is lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion among age groups so that gifts of min­istry are ful­ly rec­og­nized… Young Friends are often left to their own devices. It may be that lack of spir­i­tu­al sup­port that is the “last door out.”

For instance, I would not trav­el with­out the full con­sent of my past com­mit­tee of care, all of whom know me well. They have gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed me this year (as well as my co-leader).

What con­cerns me is the ener­gy it takes (spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal), and that it most often takes an elder to attend to the mun­dane things — as well as to keep the min­is­ter on track.

She was also always one to think of the kids. Here she is com­ment­ing on Kath­leen Karhnak-Glasby’s “Bring­ing Chil­dren to Wor­ship: Trust­ing God to Take Over from There”

I recall one par­ent of a small meet­ing in Ontario at Cana­di­an Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions try­ing to encour­age his daugh­ter to sit qui­et­ly dur­ing wor­ship… Her very rea­son­able response was “but Dad­dy, I can pray stand­ing on my head!” Her min­istry caused me to reflect on whether I could indeed pray/worship in all cir­cum­stances, and from what­ev­er posi­tion I was in at the time. I still reflect on that…

At anoth­er meet­ing, when Friends noticed the pow­er strug­gles between chil­dren and their par­ents, we asked elder Friends to serve as “adop­tive” grand­par­ents, with whom the chil­dren could sit… That defused the pow­er strug­gles, and mem­bers of meet­ing who had no chil­dren of their own were very help­ful to par­ents in that meeting.

I also recall learn­ing to sink deeply into wor­ship — and hear­ing a younger Friend’s grand­moth­er gig­gle. I looked down and there was the 1 – 2 year old peer­ing up in won­der at why/how I could sit so qui­et­ly when he was busy crawl­ing under the bench­es. it was just fine. He became a part of my prayers that day, and still is a part of them.

And this one has to be the last I’ll share, from a Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sion start­ed by Richard B Miller and titled “Elders’ Corner”

Like you, I learned about the role of elders from Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends (in Cana­da and Ohio).  In the con­text of my own meet­ing (and quar­ter), how­ev­er, there are Friends who can and do serve as guides and sound­ing boards — offer­ing cor­rec­tions as may be required.  Ide­al­ly, elders should arise from the month­ly meet­ings, and then be rec­og­nized in larg­er bod­ies of Friends, not nec­es­sar­i­ly being named by a year­ly meet­ing nom­i­nat­ing committee.

I was asked to serve as an elder for Year­ly Meeting/Interim Meet­ing… but because I was also on the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee, had a “stop” about whether that was right­ly ordered. I con­sult­ed some North Car­oli­na Friends, who agreed with the “stop”.

One dif­fi­cul­ty that you raised is that many of the con­ser­v­a­tive Friends who held that tra­di­tion are no longer avail­able as guides… One effect is that the role elders once played is dimin­ish­ing among con­ser­v­a­tive Friends.

I’m feel­ing pret­ty bro­ken up right now. And I’m feel­ing the weight of this loss. I’ve found myself more and more to be the one giv­ing out advice and giv­ing his­tor­i­cal con­text that new­er Friends might not have. It’s the kind of perch that Chris­tine had. I’m only start­ing to appre­ci­ate that she formed a gen­tle men­tor­ing role for me — and I’m sure for many others.

A few years ago my wife and I lost our remain­ing par­ents (her dad, my mom) and we had the unescapable recog­ni­tion that we were now the old­est gen­er­a­tion. I know there are old­er Friends around still and some have bits of Christine’s wit and wis­dom. But one of our human guides have left us.

Ask Me Anything: Conservative and Liberal Friends?

February 22, 2017
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Marl­bor­ough (Pa.) Friends meet­ing­house at dusk. c. 2006.

A few weeks ago, read­er James F. used my “Ask me any­thing!” page to won­der about two types of Friends:

I’ve read a lit­tle and watched var­i­ous videos about the Friends. My ques­tions are , is there a gulf between “con­ser­v­a­tive” friends and lib­er­al? As well as what defines the two gen­er­al­ly? I’m in Mary­land near D.C. Do Quak­ers who define them­selves as essen­tial­ly Chris­t­ian wor­ship with those who don’t iden­ti­fy as such?

Hi James, what a great ques­tion! I think many of us don’t ful­ly appre­ci­ate the con­fu­sion we sow when we casu­al­ly use these terms in our online dis­cus­sions. They can be use­ful rhetor­i­cal short­cuts but some­times I think we give them more weight than they deserve. I wor­ry that Friends some­times come off as more divid­ed along these lines than we real­ly are. Over the years I’ve noticed a cer­tain kind of rigid online seek­er who dis­sects the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions with such con­vic­tion that they’ll refused to even vis­it their near­est meet­ing because it’s not the right type. That’s so tragic.

What the terms don’t mean

The first and most com­mon prob­lem is that peo­ple don’t real­ize we’re using these terms in a specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er con­text. “Lib­er­al” and “Con­ser­v­a­tive” don’t refer to polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies. One can be a Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend and vote for lib­er­al or social­ist politi­cians, for example.

Adding to the com­pli­ca­tions is that these can be impre­cise terms. Quak­er bod­ies them­selves typ­i­cal­ly do not iden­ti­fy as either Lib­er­al or Con­ser­v­a­tive. While local con­gre­ga­tions often have their own unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, cul­ture, and style, noth­ing goes on the sign out front. Our region­al bod­ies, called year­ly meet­ings, are the high­est author­i­ty in Quak­erism but I can’t think of any that does­n’t span some diver­si­ty of theologies.

His­tor­i­cal­ly (and cur­rent­ly) we’ve had the sit­u­a­tion where a year­ly meet­ing will split into two sep­a­rate bod­ies. The caus­es can be com­plex; the­ol­o­gy is a piece, but demo­graph­ics and main­stream cul­tur­al shifts also play a huge role. In cen­turies past (and kind of ridicu­lous­ly, today still), both of the new­ly reor­ga­nized year­ly meet­ings were obsessed with keep­ing the name as a way to claim their legit­i­ma­cy. To tell them apart we’d append awk­ward and incom­plete labels, so in the past we had Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Hick­site) and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Ortho­dox).

In the Unit­ed States, we have two places where year­ly meet­ings com­pete names and one side’s labelled appendage is “Con­ser­v­a­tive,” giv­ing us Iowa Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) and North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Over time, both of these year­ly meet­ings have diver­si­fied to the point where they con­tain out­ward­ly Lib­er­al month­ly meet­ings. The name Con­ser­v­a­tive in the year­ly meet­ing title has become part­ly administrative.

A third year­ly meet­ing is usu­al­ly also includ­ed in the list of Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. Present-day Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing once com­pet­ed with two oth­er Ohio Year­ly Meet­ings for the name but is the only one using it today. The name “Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive)” is still some­times seen, but it’s unnec­es­sary, not tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, and not used in the year­ly meeting’s for­mal cor­re­spon­dence. (You want to know more? The year­ly meet­ing’s clerk main­tains a web­site that goes amaz­ing­ly deep into the his­to­ry of Ohio Friends).

All that said, these three year­ly meet­ings have more than their share of tra­di­tion­al­ist Chris­t­ian Quak­er mem­bers. Ohio’s gath­er­ings have the high­est per­cent­age of plain dressing- and speaking- Friends around (though even there, they are a minor­i­ty). But oth­er year­ly meet­ings will have indi­vid­ual mem­bers and some­times whole month­ly meet­ings that could be accu­rate­ly described as Con­ser­v­a­tive Quaker.

I might have upset some folks with these obser­va­tions. In all aspects of life you’ll find peo­ple who are very attached to labels. That’s what the com­ment sec­tion is for.

The meanings of the terms

For­mal iden­ti­ties aside, there are good rea­sons we use the con­cept of Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism. They denote a gen­er­al approach to the world and a way of incor­po­rat­ing our his­to­ry, our Chris­t­ian her­itage, our under­stand­ing of the role of Christ in our dis­cern­ment, and the for­mat and pace of our group deci­sion making.

But at the same time there’s all sorts of diver­si­ty and per­son­al and local his­to­ries involved. It’s hard to talk about any of this in con­crete terms with­out dis­solv­ing into foot­notes and qual­i­fi­ca­tions and long dis­cours­es about the dif­fer­ences between var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sub-movements with­in Friends (queue awe­some 16000-word his­to­ry).

Many of us com­fort­ably span both worlds. In writ­ing, I some­times try to escape the weight of the most overused labels by sub­sti­tut­ing more gener­ic terms, like tra­di­tion­al Friends or Christ-centered Friends. These terms also get prob­lem­at­ic if you scratch at them too hard. Reminder: God is the Word and our lan­guage is by def­i­n­i­tion limiting.

If you like the soci­ol­o­gy of such things, Isabel Pen­raeth wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Under­stand­ing Our­selves, Respect­ing the Dif­fer­ences. More recent­ly in FJ a Philadel­phia Friend, John Andrew Gallery, vis­it­ed Ohio Friends and talked about the spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Gath­er­ing and Quak­er Spring. Much of the dis­cus­sion around the mod­ern phrase Con­ver­gent Friends and the threads on Quak­erQuak­er has focused on those who span a Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­er worldview.

The dis­tinc­tion between Con­ser­v­a­tives and Lib­er­als can become quite evi­dent when you observe how Friends con­duct a busi­ness meet­ing or how they present them­selves. It’s all too easy to veer into car­i­ca­ture here but Lib­er­al Friends are prone to rein­ven­tions and the use of impre­cise sec­u­lar lan­guage, while­Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends are attached to estab­lished process­es and can be unwel­com­ing to change that might dis­rupt inter­nal unity.

But even these brief obser­va­tions are impre­cise and can mask sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar tal­ents and stum­bling blocks. We all of us are humans, after all. The Inward Christ is always avail­able to instruct and com­fort, just as we are all bro­ken and prone to act impul­sive­ly against that advice.

Worshipping?

Final­ly, pret­ty much all Friends will wor­ship with any­one. Most local con­gre­ga­tions have their own dis­tinct fla­vor. There are some in which the min­istry is large­ly Chris­t­ian, with a Quaker-infused expla­na­tion of a para­ble or gospel, while there are oth­ers where you’ll rarely hear Christ men­tioned. You should try out dif­fer­ent meet­ings and see which ones feed your soul. Be ready to find nur­tu­rance in unex­pect­ed places. God may instruct us to serve any­where with no notice, as he did the Good Samar­i­tan. Christ isn’t bound by any of our sil­ly words.

Thanks to James for the question!

Do you have a ques­tion on anoth­er Quak­er top­ic? Check out the Ask Me Any­thing! page.

How and why we gather as Friends (in the 21st Century)

February 15, 2009

On a recent evening I met up with Gath­er­ing in Light Wess, who was in Philadel­phia for a Quaker-sponsored peace con­fer­ence. Over the next few hours, six of us went out for a great din­ner, Wess and I test­ed some tes­ti­monies,
and a revolv­ing group of Friends end­ed up around a table in the
con­fer­ence’s hotel lob­by talk­ing late into the night (the links are
Wess’ reviews, these days you can reverse stalk him through his Yelp
account). 

Of all of the many peo­ple I spoke with, only one had any kind of
fea­tured role at the con­fer­ence. With­out excep­tion my conversation
part­ners were fas­ci­nat­ing and insight­ful about the issues that had
brought them to Philadel­phia, yet I sensed a per­vad­ing sense of missed
oppor­tu­ni­ty: hun­dreds of lives rearranged and thou­sands of air miles
flown most­ly to lis­ten to oth­ers talk. I spent my long com­mute home
won­der­ing what it would have been like to have spent the week­end in the
hotel lob­by record­ing ten minute Youtube inter­views with as many
con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants as I could. We would have end­ed up with a
snap­shot of faith-based peace orga­niz­ing cir­ca 2009.

Next week­end I’ll be burn­ing up more of the ozone lay­er by fly­ing to Cal­i­for­nia to co-lead a work­shop with Wess and Robin M. (details at Con​ver​gent​Friends​.org,
I’m sure we can squeeze more peo­ple in!) The par­tic­i­pant list looks
fab­u­lous. I don’t know every­one but there’s at least half a dozen
peo­ple com­ing who I would be thrilled to take work­shops from. I really
don’t want to spend the week­end hear­ing myself talk! I also know there
are plen­ty of peo­ple who can’t come because of com­mit­ments and costs.

So we’re going to try some exper­i­ments – they might work, they might not. On Quak­erQuak­er, there’s a new group for the event and a dis­cus­sion thread open to all QQ mem­bers (sign up is quick and pain­less). For those of you com­fort­able with the QQ tag­ging sys­tem, the Deli­cious tag for the event is “quaker.reclaiming2009”. Robin M has pro­posed using #con­ver­gent­friends as our Twit­ter hashtag. 

There’s all sorts of mad things we could try (Ustream video or live
blog­ging via Twit­ter, any­one?), wacky wacky stuff that would distract
us from what­ev­er mes­sage the Inward Christ might be try­ing to give us.
But behind all this is a real ques­tions about why and how we should
gath­er togeth­er as Friends. As the bank­ing sys­tem tanks, as the environment
strains, as com­mu­ni­ca­tions costs drop and we find our­selves in a curi­ous new econ­o­my, what chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties open up?