Sometimes my Quaker Ranter posts dry up for awhile. I console myself that I’m doing enough giving out the “daily reading list of Quaker posts”:/quaker, reading through my new old Quaker book collection (Samuel Bownas just visited the “meeting I’m attending most frequently these days”:http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php!) and working my new “advancement and outreach “:www.FGCquaker.org/ao job – oh, and of course there’s also “the family”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/40269563/! But you could also just follow my train of thought by looking over my shoulder at comments made at other sites. Over the last few days the Quaker blogosphere has had a number of interesting posts. Here’s a cobble-together of posts and comments that have spoken to me about the inherent Quaker snare of confusing our “Quaker faith” for God.
Over on Kwakersaur, David M “shares some renewal queries for his yearly meeting”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/11/consultation-and-renewal.html. “Nancy A”:http://nancysapology.blogspot.com detected a “sense an overall fatigue” in them and “Beppe”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/ agreed, asking if the seemingly-simple answers to these sorts of queries require that we first have the much harder-to-come-by “understanding [of] who we are.”
One of the queries goes “What does our Quaker faith ask us to DO?” _Eeeyyaa-aa-yaaaaawwwn_. My favorite Quaker committee-meeting trick of late consists of replace all the “we”-like phrases with _God_. How about “What does God ask us to DO?” (Just a quick testimony: I love David’s work and I value his wonderful online ministry. Any time he wants to come down to Philly to tend to our flock with talk of Quaker renewal, he’s welcome!! I’m sure everyone on the Consultation and Renewal Working Group is deeper than the queries would indicate and suspect that this is an example of the Quaker corporate dumbing-down tendency that’s practically our modus operandi.)
All this ties into a great post from AJ Schwanz, “Can I Say I’m Emerging If I Haven’t Emerged or Quaker If I Haven’t Quaked?”:http://ajschwanz.com/index.php/2005/11/07/can-i-say-im-emerging-if-i-havent-emerged-or-quaker-if-i-havent-quaked/,. Here’s a taste:
bq. Part of me has thought of shedding my Quaker pin. How can I use it?: have I ever quaked with the power of God? Shedding my differentiation label certainly would support the idea that “there’s really only one church, but lots of meeting places.” Particularly in this town where the Quaker college is perceived as pretty insular, would I have different interactions with folks if I simply said “I’m a follower of Christ” rather than a “Friend”? What would I miss out on? What would be gained?
Paul L implicitly addresses the question of shedding the Quaker pin in his “review of Punshon’s Reasons for Hope”:http://showerofblessings.blogspot.com/2005/11/reasons-for-hope.html, where he asks if “Quakers have a unique niche to fill in the Christian and broader social landscape.”
Are we Quaker because it’s comfortable, because our friends are, because the buildings are cool and the social hour coffee hot? Or the opposite: are we Friends because we really liked “Barclay’s Apology”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/333004 but couldn’t care less for the messyness of flesh-and-blood religious community? Another Quaker blogger recently sent me a private email in which he confided: “My main question of late to Quakers is: what is so remarkable about Quakers? I sometimes have to be a pain-in-the-ass in order to ask these questions.” That seems like both a good question and a important meeting role.
There’s something about living both within a community and outside it. The real deal isn’t in any of our human institutions, theories or notions yet it is through these that we live out our faith. Christ as transcendent everythingness and Christ as a particular guy in a particular place speaking a particular language and living a particular life. The pull between the eternal and peculiar is the very essence of the human condition. The same voice that spoke to the prophets and apostles speaks to us today, if only we have ears to hear. How can we learn to lessen the volume on our own self-kudos long enough to hear the divine whisperer?
I can’t describe how delightful I find this:
“My favorite Quaker committee-meeting trick of late consists of replace all the “we”-like phrases with God. How about ‘What does God ask us to DO?’ ”
And I find even more delight in being a member of a religious society that is occasionally able to hold out for an answer.
Glad to learn you have found a well to drink from, in terms of attending another meeting more frequently. Seems like God is bringing you some sweet times these days, with job, family, and meeting.
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up
How dare you use the word God in a Quaker rant !! Geez. Are you a crypto-Calvinist !! For Geezsakes keep it down. Keep it Light. Keep it vague. What drew me in to the Quakers…will it ultimately drive me out !! I need a drink, like a good Scotch Presbyterian. Perhaps it does come down to Faith and Practice. “Doctrine is no substitute for a love affair of the heart.” I dont have it right, but where is your fruit? Perhaps that’s what is most important? How will we be judged by God anyway?
Whew, the peanut gallery’s at it again, I need to put some spam block on this comment system.…..
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.….….….… thanks Barb (I think). Your comment reminds me of Kwakersaur’s recent Morning Friends post on orthopraxis vs. orthodoxy, which everyone should go read…
Martin, Martin, Martin…I am not a peanut gallery. I might be throwing peanuts however. I hope you see that I am ranting and kidding at the same time. I read your blog with great joy, and a big part of it is because you acknowledge and use the G‑word. Another joy is what you share as you grow. I get excited and so I express myself, but not so much in the heavy self-serious way of many serious. Look upon me as a punk rocker drowning in a sea of singer/songwriters. I do want to stave off middle age for as long as I can.
Martin writes: “One of the queries goes ‘What does our Quaker faith ask us to DO?’ Eeeyyaa-aa-yaaaaawwwn. My favorite Quaker committee-meeting trick of late consists of replace all the ‘we’-like phrases with God. How about ‘What does God ask us to DO?’ ”
The writer in me suggests a third option: “What should we do?”
Can we simply struggle with all of our being – a being the best part of which, in Quaker tradition, is the voice of God – to discern and do what is right, and let God worry about who is responsible? Honestly, I think the claim that our work is God’s allows us to both evade personal responsibility for bad outcomes, and to evade the fact that we will make errors, again and again and again.
Yes, there is a voice (call it what you will), and yes, we must attend to that voice faithfully. But let us never assume that, by invoking the name of God or Jesus, we have transcended human error.
What book(s) would you recommend I read in order to understand the Quaker faith and life.
@David: I have some recommended books up at the QuakerQuaker
Bookspage.