From LizOpp, back on the blog:
I have come to believe that I live my life not in a straight line from birth to death but in a series of small and large circles: from birth to learning; from growth to forgetting; from remembering to prideful living; from brokenness to humility; from deep love and connection to separateness; from despair to faithfulness.
I too have felt circles coming back around. Liz attended last weekend’s workshop, the first multi-day retreat I’ve led since… check notes… 2014, when R. Scot Miller got me to Kalamazoo, Michigan, for Green Pastures Quarterly Meeting. Last year I finally stopped my meeting wandering and have settled down at Cropwell Meeting, where I get to be involved in all the silly, lightweight dramas that occur whenever a group of people come together.
There, I’ve felt my spoken ministry return. I was shocked a few months ago when I stood and was given words that started with reflecting of the sounds of the leaves blowing against the outside walls, referenced an attender who had just been sweeping them, circled to the history of the people who have gathered within those walls and maintained the building for worship, moved sideways into a gentle lesson on ministry in the quietist tradition, pulled it back to Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, and then tied it up in a bow with prayers of thanks to our faithful ancestors and to those today who continue to sweep away the ever-returned leaves. Readers, let me assure you I don’t think I’ve ever given such coherent, balanced ministry and I’m not sure where it came from. But faithfulness is key.
I’ve also felt the nudge to bring back some identifiable plain dress. For years I’ve tended toward what I used to call “Sears plain“1 and during the work-from-home life I’m sometimes lucky if I get through the day without still wearing my pajamas. Over the last few weeks I’ve been adding suspenders to my regular clothes. Of course I’ve gone through all the old familiar self-questioning: Am I doing this to stand out? Am I trying to puff myself up? Is this what faithfulness leads me? But these questions are part of the process and a tug toward plainness often precedes outward ministry; in his study Quaker Journals, Howard Brinton noted that future ministers often recorded inward nudges in their teen years and became plainer in dress to the ridicule of their peers. I’m not a teen and I doubt anyone is going to make fun of me (at least to my face) but I do feel a certain seriousness of intent come over me when I overcome my natural desire for social anonymity and put the suspenders on.