Over on my main “Nonviolence.org blog”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000436.php I link to Punkmonkey’s great post, “refusing to get political”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/09/refusing-to-get-political.html, where he talks about why Christian pacifism is more than simply anti-war activism. Oh how I wish more Quakers knew this! I like Punkmonkey’s blog a lot. He’s also recently written about what it would mean to be a “missional community of faith”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/07/missional-community-of-faith.html:
bq. a missional community of faith is a living breathing transparent community of faith willing to get messy while reach out to, and bringing in, those outside the current community
Amen brother. The whole post is great. I love his critique of check-writing churches (perfectly applicable to most peace and social concerns committees I’ve seen). He also hits something I see a lot: Meetings that are “welcoming and excluding” in their cliquishness: “small groups of people who seem friendly, and welcoming but in actuality are not welcoming.” Punkmonkey’s not Quaker but Bebbeblog’s Joe Guada is and I started reading his posts next. There I found a really interesting counterpoint: “Can I be a (fill in the blank here) & be a Quaker, too?”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2004/09/file-under-Quakerism-religion-can-i-be.html. Joe’s post also talks about identity, praxis and superficial half-welcoming. He quotes a friend who’s not joined Quakers:
bq. Yes, I know that everyone has the Inner Light. Yes, I remember how uncomfortable it is to be looking for a group and to feel left out (though it’s not as uncomfortable as feeling like you’re part of the group, getting deeply involved and then finding out that you’re a bad fit because people weren’t telling you up front that you didn’t fit).
Lots of great reading in all this!
These posts and links come at a good time, Martin. The other day (First Day) was Meeting for Worship for Business (MfWfB). One item before us was whether to endorse a “peace minute” that had been approved by the Yearly Meeting a few months earlier.
Several of us spoke to the concern that such minutes do not speak to the possibility of transformation, do not challenge us to be more obedient to the Spirit, but rather seem to put into words a shared value (“war bad, peace good”) — *without* calling us to put our values into action, without calling us to listen for God’s guidance as to how to – or whether to! – witness in the world.
Such peace minutes, while they might alleviate our grief, anger, and despair in the moment, do not relieve us of our responsibility to bring our light into the world, as we are Divinely led.
In his Pendle Hill pamphlet “Members One of Another” (#371, which I finished last week), Thomas Gates has helped me understand the trap that some meetings fall into around considering minutes in urgent times. Gates speaks of 4 elements of membership, including “meeting as a place of shared values” and “meeting as a place of transformation.” (Meeting as a place of acceptance and Meeting as a place of obedience are the two other elements.) He writes:
*Mature meetings recognize that some of their members …require more than a sense of belonging and shared values, and that the community’s responsibility has now moved beyond hospitality and acceptance… A meeting will foster transformation to the extent that it lifts up the expectation that individuals… [and] the meeting itself [are] being challenged to make room for the Spirit, to be willing to change…* (pp. 24 – 25)
You also reference a post by Joe Guada, about the popular question, “Can I be a (fill-in-the-blank) and be a Quaker too?”
I have come to some new thinking about this question. I am believing that convinced Friends – and perhaps Friends born into Quaker families as well – go through a process of forming and claiming an identity as a Quaker. Part of that spiritual maturation process may include being a “hyphenated Quaker” for a period of time.
Admittedly, this was part of my own process. I was a Jewish hyphen Quaker, but clearly not a Quaker hyphen Jew. Now I accept that I am Quaker. Or, if a hyphen is necessary, a Quaker hyphen Quaker. [Have I seen this language elsewhere on this blog? I can’t recall…]
What I mean by this is that when I struggle with something, I turn to my Quaker community for support; I look to Quaker traditions for guidance; I lean on the Spirit and listen deeply over time for how I am to proceed. It is clear to me that my life is informed by my Quakerism, not by my Judaism.
But this was not always the case. I had to be ready to release my identity as a Jew [though the Jewish faith considers me a Jew because of my matrilineage]. I had to be ready to commit to Quakerism at a deep level, just as William Penn had to be ready to release his former identity as defined by his wearing a sword and deepen his commitment to Quakerism.
There’s another point I want to add here, something I’ve come across either in my online reading or elsewhere: there is a difference between the hyphenated Quaker whose Quakerism is informed by other traditions and the hyphenated Quaker who wishes that Quakerism would conform to those other traditions.
Having said all this, I recognize that not all of us are ready to let go of the hyphen in our identity at the same moment in our spiritual maturation as Friends. For those of us who have, though, we can be a steady presence to Friends who *are* struggling in that in-between place. We can accept them where they are in the moment, while paradoxically calling them to yield to the Spirit as they are led. Not an easy line to walk, but little about Quakerism is.
Thanks for reading me.
Blessings,
Liz
I appreciate your thoughts on these issues, Liz. I had not considered that there might be differences between “hyphenated-Friends”, as you cleverly put it. There are those who do so to demonstrate that they find support for their Quakerism in other faiths; and there are those who do so in hopes that Quakerism will change to be more like them.
I’ve had my time as a hyphen-Quaker, too!
My concern tends to be at the institutional level. There are resources out there, I guess, that encourage Friends to not only see Meetings as places of acceptance and shared values, but as places of transformation and obedience (your reference to the pamphlet by Thomas Gates is a good example). However, I just don’t believe that this is adequately emphasized or even known at the Monthly or Yearly Meeting levels. At least this is the impression that I have.
How can Friends as a community emphasize these latter parts of a mature Meeting (as well as of a mature individual Friend or YM)? There seems to be the tendency to downplay or deny these aspects of Quakerism so as to avoid appearing coercive or judgemental. This tends to be my biggest gripe these days. 🙂
Joe, thanks for your honesty about one of your “biggest gripes” being the seeming inability for Meetings to help Friends grow into some of these deeper levels of commitment.
It seems to me that one person’s gripe is another person’s spiritual concern. I have been doing some wonderful reading that helps me feel less alone in my concern, and in fact gives me hope that I can speak to this issue – and be faithful to the Spirit in doing so.
I am also helped by connecting with members and attenders who are interested in what I have to say. And, I must add, it is by reading blogs like yours and Martin’s that I feel inspired to bring my voice forward as well, God willing – not through anything as refined as a blog, but through personal relationships within and beyond my meeting, and by offering workshops and presentations, as I feel led.
Healthy eldership and modeling can inspire all of us to explore Quakerism more fully, as well as reclaim our Quaker traditions. The more I see presiding clerks and committee clerks lift up the expectation that we _will_ seek God’s guidance in our discernment, and that we _will_ test our leadings through a corporate process, the more I see us collectively and individually temper our human urgings and discipline ourselves to wait upon the Lord.
Besides, this is how I _myself_ have become more committed to my Quakerism, because other Friends have challenged me to do so because they let their life speak, and because they share their spiritual struggles with me in their yearning to be faithful.
Blessings,
Liz
Dear Friend Liz,
I’ve read several postings of yours here at ‘Quaker Ranter’, and I wanted to say that your postings here sometimes have the same ‘feel’ as the writings of Early Friends.
I’m trying to understand the position (and the spiritual life style) of the Early Friends.
Thanks for your writings.
In the Light of Christ, Albion
Dear Friends,
I’m wondering if any of you here have read the Nickall’s edition of ‘George Fox’s Journal’.
If so, did it “speak to thy condition?”
I’m very interested in becoming more tied to those Friends who identify themselves as “Conservative” (I might even say, Conservative Christian – Friends).
We live in Northern Iowa, and so that might be possible here.
Only in the Barnesville, Ohio area, and some parts of North Carolina, is it possible to find many other “Conservative Friends”.
I would suggest that one take a look at an old article by Chuck Fager about Ohio Conservative Friends;
afriendlyletter.com/afl 101.html
or, simply type in a google search for; “Ohio Conservative Friends article by Chuch Fager”.
Is there anyone else here searching Fox’s, and other Early Friends writings, for guidance?
I’m also very interested in learning about “The Inner Light Light of Christ”, and Early Quaker understandings of the Bible.
Is there anyone else here that is interested in these ideas and understandings?
I would be more than happy to discuss them with anyone who is sincerely seeking for an understanding of Early Friends Worship.
You can contact me at; quicksand53@msn.com if you too are searching.
May the Inner Light of Christ show thee the Way,
Albion
May 04, 2006
P.S. I also posted this post over at Kwakersaurs Blog too. I hope that no one minds that I post it here too.
Liz Opp said;
“It seems to me that one person’s gripe is another person’s spiritual concern. I have been doing some wonderful reading that helps me feel less alone in my concern, and in fact gives me hope that I can speak to this issue — and be faithful to the Spirit in doing so.”
Dear Friend Liz,
I think that people (even Friends) get scared sometimes of a person’s spiritual background.
I’ve looked all over for REAL spirituality.
Native American spirituality, Celtic (Druidic) spirituality, and I’ve studied the Tao Te Ching and Daoism pretty throughly, SOME people can accept these spiritual wanderings with out being afraid, but sadly, most cannot.
That I landed back in the Light that we find within Quakerism, is in many ways, a true miracle!
But if I try to tell alot of people about this(anyone within Programmed Friends I’d say), they’d think that I’m simply “demonized”, from my looking into these other non-Christian, forms of spirituality.
I’d say, that everything that I’ve been through, brought me to this moment, and to this place, that I now myself, spirituality.
What I mean’t to say (from May 5th 05:18 Blog)
“I’d say, that everything that I’ve been through, brought me to this moment, and to this place, that I now find myself, in spiritually.”
From Albion
The REAL reason for the’Advices and Queries’.
I found this jewel in Lewis Benson’s booklet ‘What did George Fox teach about Christ?’ (New Foundation publications no.1);
Lewis Benson feels that ‘the Advices and Queries’ that Friends published have to large extent (especially here in America) been perverted.
Benson claims that most Friends now say that the reason for the Advices and Queries is for self-examination.
That is, they were to be read in one’s private devotions, and put to oneself.
But the real reason for the Advices and Queries in the days of Early Friends, and right down to own time (as Benson remembered) was for the CHURCH to examine itself.
That is, the the Queries read: Are Friends doing this, are Friends doing that?
The Meetings had to answer these Queries and send the answers up to Quarterly Meetings, and then on to Yearly Meeting.
Essentially asking if Friends are learning together, obeying together, and suffering together.
And if Friends were NOT, they had to DO something about it.
Benson felt that in modern times, that the Advices and Queries were no longer used by Friends in this manner, and hence forth, they contributed little to the moral life of the Friends Community.
I’m very interested in the Advices and Queries. And in learning more about them.
The copy of the Advices and Queries that we have came from Ohio Yearly Meeting.
And I’m also wondering if anyone is reading my blogs here.
We are rather isolated here in Northern Iowa from other Conservative Friends, and I long to hear from other Friends.
I also wonder if anyone here has read John William Graham’s old book (published in 1920, I believe); ‘The Faith of a Quaker’?
I would like to purchase this book, but I’d love to read a reader’s review first.
Thanks, In Christ’s Light, Albion
Hi Albion,
Your rush of comments has come at a time when I’ve been trying to keep my head above water with work-related concerns. I’m glad you’ve found my blog and hope it will help connect you with like-minded Friends. I know Iowa’s a bigger state that most of us East Coasters think but at least you share a state with a wonderfully open Conservative Quaker community. Quakerism isn’t just thinking the faith but living it and I hope you can manage some road trips to visit Iowa YM(Cons) events this summer!
I was very struck when I first realized the queries were once meant to actually be answered, in writing, by the monthly meeting itself. As you write, it’s quite a difference from the personal reflections they’ve become. I have to run off to another bit of work but I’m thinking of you and hoping the internet does facilitate some faith connections.
Your Friend, Martin
A couple of corrections;
“Lewis Benson feels that ‘the Advices and Queries’ that Friends published have to large extent (especially here in America) been perverted.”
I should have said; “have been perverted in the way in which they are currently used.”
And;
But the real reason for the Advices and Queries in the days of Early Friends, and right down to OUR own time (as Benson remembered) was for the CHURCH to examine itself.
Thanks, Albion
Hi Albion,
I don’t have time to pour through reference texts but I’m pretty sure the early Friends didn’t have queries. They were a later innovation (second or third generation), a step in the codification of Quaker institutions that also included the concept of membership and the earliest editions of “Faith and Practice.” I say this to point out that corporate answering of queries is not necessarily an essential component of Quaker practice. “Perverted” is an awfully strong word. We are called to be obedient to the Living Spirit, not to the forms. The age of an ancient Quaker practice should not the primary judge of its rightness.
That said, it certainly was a technique that helped define and bind the Quaker community for many generations. It is certainly worth asking whether its abandonment by the majority of world Friends was done too hastily. Have we found other techiques that adequately serve a similar function or is there a gap? Might our current meetings be served by reintroducing some form of corporate answering back into our annual business?
Answering of queries is still practiced here and there; I’d love to hear some feedback from Friends who have direct experience of it.
Dear Friend Martin,
Yes, I agree that “perverted” is an awfully strong word. It was Lewis Benson’s word though, not mine.
I also agree with you that we are called to be obedient to the Living Spirit, and NOT the forms.
Though I think that Lewis Benson would have agreed with you too.
I find his writings to be full of his Quest as a Friend for the Living Presence of the Light of Christ Within.
His (Lewis Benson) writings remind me of Isaac Penington’s writings alot, another Friend who was also looking for the Living Spirit, and not the forms.
I thank you for your kind welcome to me here also.
There are alot of very talented Friends who write here and I always look forward to seeing what’s being discussed next.
And yes, we are going to get out and take some road trips to visit other Friends Meetings here in Iowa, and Minnesota this Summer.
I would like to quote Isaac Penington here in a rather long quote, from his book ‘The Light Within and Selected Writings’, which has no copy right that I see, would it be ok to quote several paragraphs from said book?
Thanks for your help.
In the Light of Christ, Albion