Johan Mau­r­er exam­ines a clas­sic Quak­er dilem­ma from a new angle. Are we some­thing unique and rad­i­cal or are we just anoth­er brand of Chris­tian­i­ty? Describ­ing Britain Year­ly Meet­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, though it could describe many Lib­er­al Quak­er spaces:

In par­tic­u­lar, Chris­t­ian lan­guage and God lan­guage are often held at arm’s length. Quak­ers’ eth­i­cal dis­ci­ple­ship (a.k.a. the “tes­ti­monies”) are held in high regard but are often described with­out ref­er­ence to their Chris­t­ian ori­gins. The cus­toms and folk­ways of meet­ing for wor­ship and meet­ing for busi­ness are like­wise faith­ful­ly main­tained but their con­nec­tions with what ear­ly Friends called “Gospel order” are often not emphasized.

This is one of those def­i­n­i­tion­al conun­drums that have no easy answers. For me per­son­al­ly, yes, I’m part of the larg­er church. I think pride is often at the root of some of our denials. Ear­ly Friends also expe­ri­enced cor­rupt­ed and hyp­o­crit­i­cal estab­lished church­es but did­n’t aban­don the project so much as call for a renew­al back to basic prin­ci­ples. The his­to­ry of Friends is our insti­tu­tions like­wise get­ting fre­quent­ly mired in insu­lar think­ing and moral cor­rup­tion but being drawn back by prophet­ic fig­ures call­ing us to do bet­ter. That said, the spark of the Quak­er mes­sage is the call to lis­ten to the inward Christ and that can eas­i­ly be done (and is fre­quent­ly done) by peo­ple out­side the Quak­er movement.

There’s a live­ly dis­cus­sion of Mau­r­er’s post hap­pen­ing on Red­dit if you’d like to share your two cents.

John Lam­p­en, writ­ing in The Friend, makes a use­ful dis­tinc­tion between two modes of Quak­er peace­mak­ing.

Friends who are called to be prophets can’t be neu­tral; they iden­ti­fy some­thing which is wrong and speak out clear­ly against it. Those who rec­on­cile are heal­ers; they look for com­mon ground on which con­tes­tants can meet, find agree­ment, and hope­ful­ly put the past behind them. Both roles are nec­es­sary; both are impor­tant aspects of Quak­er witness.

Lam­p­en argues that we are called to both of these forms of peace­mak­ing but that they exist in a ten­sion that often requires us to choose one at a time and he shares sto­ries of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion work he did in North­ern Ireland.

https://​the​friend​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​p​r​i​n​t​/​s​t​r​a​i​g​h​t​-​n​o​t​-​n​a​r​r​o​w​-​j​o​h​n​-​l​a​m​p​e​n​-​a​d​d​r​e​s​s​e​s​-​s​o​m​e​-​m​i​s​c​o​n​c​e​p​t​i​o​n​s​-​o​v​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​p​eac

I don’t think I ever men­tioned that the April issue of Friends Jour­nal is out. There’s a fun arti­cle com­par­ing bird­watch­ing to Quak­er min­istry. That’s the kind of claim that might nor­mal­ly make my eyes roll but the author, Rebec­ca Hei­der, makes it work! Also, a great episode of Quak­er­S­peak this week pro­files the Ramal­lah Friends School and the com­mu­ni­ty’s longterm Quak­er wit­ness under suc­ces­sive occu­pa­tion by Ottoman, British, Lebanese, and now Israeli forces.

I thor­ough­ly enjoyed Gary Shteyn­gart’s Cry­ing Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever. It’s a joy of self-depreciation, snark, care­ful obser­va­tion, wrapped in won­der­ful writing.

For the sec­ond time in ten years I did­n’t feel the New Jer­sey earth­quake. No one in my house felt this one, even though peo­ple fur­ther out from the epi­cen­ter did. I was on a rat­tling train dur­ing the 2011 earth­quake and walked about ten miles toward home after the sys­tem was shut down (but don’t wor­ry, it was a love­ly day and I stopped at mul­ti­ple hip­ster cof­fee­house and even got a hair­cut in). Clouds held out for this week’s eclipse and the fam­i­ly got a good view.

My meet­ing host­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing talk last Sun­day on efforts to sup­port restored habi­tats for clams and oys­ters in New Jer­sey estu­ar­ies. These mol­lusks sta­bi­lize the shore­line, clean the waters, and make our shores more resilient to both cli­mate change and the nat­u­ral­ly sink­ing South Jer­sey landmass.

On some­what sim­i­lar themes, I talked to Peter Blood-Patterson this week about “hold­ing in the light,” the pop­u­lar con­tem­po­rary Quak­er phrase for prayer. His arti­cle, We Are All Held in Love: Reflec­tions on the Prac­tice of Hold­ing in the Light appears in the March issue of Friends Jour­nal, the theme of which is “Prayer and Healing.”

From the video description: 

Peter Blood-Patterson dis­cuss­es the Quak­er prac­tice of “hold­ing in the light”, which involves shar­ing prayer con­cerns dur­ing meet­ings. The phrase orig­i­nat­ed in the late 1960s but became more com­mon­ly used among Friends in the 1990s. It allows com­mu­ni­ties to care for those expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties through entrust­ing them to God’s love. Peter explores what “the light” rep­re­sents for Quak­ers his­tor­i­cal­ly and today. He also reflects on how the prac­tice has helped him release con­trol and rec­og­nize the lim­its of what he can fix.

Bonus: I dug up the first instance of “hold” with “Light” in Friends Jour­nal, a 1969 poem by Bar­bara Reynolds called Bal­lad for a Friends Meet­ing that describes an upwelling min­istry in wor­ship and sug­gests “hold­ing it to the light” as one ris­es to share it.

Last week I inter­viewed Quak­er heal­er John Calvi for a Friends Jour­nal author chat. John has long worked with trau­ma vic­tims and those suf­fer­ing from AIDS and he tells part of that sto­ry in March’s “Car­ry­ing Light to Need.” One of the parts of this that fas­ci­nates me is his shar­ing of los­ing much of his spir­i­tu­al insight after a recent ill­ness. Reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog know I love sto­ries of Friends who are able to sense prompt­ings and to have that abil­i­ty and then lose it is a piece of the mys­tery of where it comes from. I’m remind­ed of Anne E.G. Nydam’s “The Con­duits” from the Novem­ber 2022 fic­tion issue; I can’t say more with­out spoil­ers but read it and you’ll see what I mean.

The pod­cast is back for sea­son three — now with a new cohost, Miche McCall. First up, a look at Quak­ers and com­mu­ni­ty. It includes an inter­views with Nathan Kle­ban about his expe­ri­ence with inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties and eco­nom­ic jus­tice work and excerpts from Lau­ren Brown­lee’s recent Quak­er­S­peak video on using Quak­er tes­ti­monies to con­front white suprema­cy.

Quak­er Pod­cast — Pod­cast Explor­ing Quak­er Life & Reli­gious Beliefs 

Quak­ers Today, host­ed by Peter­son Toscano, fea­tures writ­ers, musi­cians, and thinkers who are seek­ing wis­dom and under­stand­ing in…

Friends Journal