Conflict in meeting and the role of heartbreak and testing

September 16, 2008

A few weeks ago a newslet­ter brought writ­ten reports about the lat­est round of con­flict at a local meet­ing that’s been fight­ing for the past 180 years or so. As my wife and I read through it we were a bit under­whelmed by the accounts of the newest con­flict res­o­lu­tion attempts. The medi­a­tors seemed more wor­ried about alien­at­ing a few long-term dis­rup­tive char­ac­ters than about pre­serv­ing the spir­i­tu­al vital­i­ty of the meet­ing. It’s a phe­nom­e­na I’ve seen in a lot of Quak­er meetings. 

Call it the FDR Prin­ci­ple after Franklin D Roo­sevelt, who sup­pos­ed­ly defend­ed his sup­port of one of Nicaragua’s most bru­tal dic­ta­tors by say­ing “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Even casu­al his­to­ri­ans of Latin Amer­i­can his­to­ry will know this only led to fifty years of wars with rever­ber­a­tions across the world with the Iran/Contra scan­dal. The FDR Prin­ci­ple did­n’t make for good U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy and, if I may, I’d sug­gest it does­n’t make for good Quak­er pol­i­cy either. Any dis­cus­sion board mod­er­a­tor or pop­u­lar blog­ger knows that to keep an online dis­cus­sion’s integri­ty you need to know when to cut a dis­rup­tive trouble-maker off – polite­ly and suc­cint­ly, but also firm­ly. If you don’t, the peo­ple there to actu­al­ly dis­cuss your issues – the peo­ple you want – will leave.

I did­n’t know how to talk about this until a post called Con­flict in Meet­ing came through Live­jour­nal this past First Day. The poster, jan­drewm, wrote in part:

Yet my recog­ni­tion of all that does­n’t negate the painful feel­ings that arise when hos­til­i­ty enters the meet­ing room, when long-held grudges boil over and harsh words are spo­ken.  After a few months of reg­u­lar atten­dance at my meet­ing, I came close to aban­don­ing this “exper­i­ment” with Quak­erism because some Friends were so con­sis­tent­ly ran­corous, divi­sive, dis­rup­tive.  I had to ask myself: “Do I need this neg­a­tiv­i­ty in my life right now?”

I com­ment­ed about the need to take the tes­ti­monies seriously:

I’ve been in that sit­u­a­tion. A lot of Friends aren’t very good at putting their foot down on fla­grant­ly dis­rup­tive behav­ior. I wish I could buy the “it even­tu­al­ly sorts out” argu­ment but it often does­n’t. I’ve seen meet­ings where all the sane peo­ple are dri­ven out, leav­ing the dis­rup­tive folks and arm­chair ther­a­pists. It’s a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship, per­haps, but does­n’t make for a healthy spir­i­tu­al community.

The unpop­u­lar solu­tion is for us to take our tes­ti­monies seri­ous­ly. And I mean those more spe­cif­ic tes­ti­monies buried deep in copies in Faith & Prac­tice that act as a kind of col­lec­tive wis­dom for Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty life. Tes­ti­monies against detrac­tion and for right­ly ordered deci­sion mak­ing, etc. If some­one’s actions tear apart the meet­ing they should be coun­seled; if they con­tin­ue to dis­rupt then their decision-making input should be dis­re­gard­ed. This is the real effect of the old much-maligned Quak­er process of dis­own­ing (which allowed con­tin­ued atten­dance at wor­ship and life in the com­mu­ni­ty but stopped busi­ness par­tic­i­pa­tion). Lim­it­ing input like this makes sense to me.

The trou­ble that if your meet­ing is in this kind of spi­ral there might not be much you can do by your­self. Peo­ple take some sort of weird com­fort in these pre­dictable fights and if you start talk­ing tes­ti­monies you might become very unpop­u­lar very quick­ly. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the bick­er­ing isn’t help­ful (of course) and just eats away your own self. Dis­tanc­ing your­self for a time might be help­ful. Get­ting involved in oth­er Quak­er venues. It’s a shame. Month­ly meet­ing is sup­posed to be the cen­ter of our Quak­er spir­i­tu­al life. But some­times it can’t be. I try to draw lessons from these cir­cum­stances. I cer­tain­ly under­stand the val­ue and need for the Quak­er tes­ti­monies bet­ter sim­ply because I’ve seen the prob­lems meet­ings face when they haven’t. But that does­n’t make it any eas­i­er for you.

But all of this begs an awk­ward ques­tion: are we real­ly build­ing Christ’s king­dom by drop­ping out? It’s an age-old ten­sion between puri­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion at all costs. Tim­o­thy asked a sim­i­lar ques­tion of me in a com­ment to my last post. Before we answer, we should rec­og­nize that there are indeed many peo­ple who have “aban­doned” their “Quak­er exper­i­ment” because we’re not liv­ing up to our own ideals. 

Maybe I’m more aware of this drop-out class than oth­ers. It some­times seems like an email cor­re­spon­dence with the “Quak­er Ranter” has become the last step on the way out the door. But I also get mes­sages from seek­ers new­ly con­vinced of Quak­er prin­ci­ples but unable to con­nect local­ly because of the diver­gent prac­tices or juve­nile behav­ior of their local Friends meet­ing or church. A typ­i­cal email last week asked me why the plain Quak­ers weren’t evan­gel­i­cal and why evan­gel­i­cal Quak­ers weren’t con­ser­v­a­tive and asked “Is there a place in the quak­ers for a Plain Dress­ing, Bible Thump­ing, Gospel Preach­ing, Evan­gel­i­cal, Con­ser­v­a­tive, Spir­it Led, Charis­mat­ic fam­i­ly?” (Any­one want to sug­gest their local meet­ing?)

We should be more wor­ried about the peo­ple of integri­ty we’re los­ing than about the grumpy trouble-makers embed­ded in some of our meet­ings. If some­one is con­sis­tent­ly dis­rup­tive, is clear­ly break­ing spe­cif­ic Quak­er tes­ti­monies we’ve lumped under com­mu­ni­ty and intergri­ty, and stub­born­ly immune to any coun­cil then read them out of busi­ness meet­ing. If the peo­ple you want in your meet­ing are leav­ing because of the peo­ple you real­ly don’t want, then it’s time to do some­thing. Our Quak­er tool­box pro­vides us tool for that action – ways to define, name and address the issues. Our tra­di­tion gives us access to hun­dreds of years of expe­ri­ence, both mis­takes and suc­cess­es, and can be a more use­ful guide than con­tem­po­rary pop psy­chol­o­gy or plain old head-burying.

Not all meet­ings have these prob­lems. But enough do that we’re los­ing peo­ple. And the dynam­ics get more acute when there’s a vision­ary project on the table and/or some­one younger is at the cen­ter of them. While our meet­ings sort out their issues, the inter­net is pro­vid­ing one type of sup­port lifeline.

Blog­ger jan­drewm was able to seek advice and con­so­la­tion on Live­jour­nal. Some of the folks I spoke about in the 2003 “Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” series of posts are now lurk­ing away on my Face­book friends list. Maybe we can stop the full depar­ture of some of these Friends. They can drop back but still be involved, still engag­ing their local meet­ing. They can be read­ing and dis­cussing tes­ti­monies (“detrac­tion” is a won­der­ful place to start) so they can spot and explain behav­ior. We can use the web to coor­di­nate work­shops, online dis­cus­sions, local meet-ups, new work­ship groups, etc., but even email from a Friend thou­sands of miles away can help give us clar­i­ty and strength.

I think (I hope) we’re help­ing to forge a group of Friends with a clear under­stand­ing of the work to be done and the tech­niques of Quak­er dis­cern­ment. It’s no won­der that Quak­er bod­ies some­times fail to live up to their ideals: the jour­nals of  olde tyme Quak­er min­is­ters are full of dis­ap­point­ing sto­ries and Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion is rich with tales of the road­blocks the Tempter puts up in our path. How can we learn to  cen­ter in the Lord when our meet­ings become too polit­i­cal or dis­func­tion­al (I think I should start look­ing hard­er at Anabap­tist non-resistance the­o­ry). This is the work, Friends, and it’s always been the work. Through what­ev­er comes we need to trust that any test­ing and heart­break has a pur­pose, that the Lord is using us through all, and that any suf­fer­ing will be pro­duc­tive to His pur­pose if we can keep low and lis­ten­ing for follow-up instructions.

Conferences and videos

July 7, 2008

Church­es Retool Mis­sion Trips — wash​ing​ton​post​.com

A grow­ing body of research ques­tions the val­ue of the trips abroad, which are sup­posed to bring hope and Chris­tian­i­ty to the needy of the world, while offer­ing Amer­i­can par­tic­i­pants an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, devel­op rela­tion­ships and charge up their faith. Crit­ics scorn­ful­ly call such trips “reli­gious tourism” under­tak­en by “vaca­tion­ar­ies.”

My brand of reli­gious don’t do this kind of mis­sion work but we are more and more enchant­ed with long-distance con­fer­ences. We now address every issue with a con­fer­ence but do we ask any “research ques­tions” about their effec­tive­ness? The web is a great tool to extend the con­fer­ence out­ward and yet, despite all the con­tent that could be eas­i­ly port­ed to the web, most con­fer­ences, con­sul­ta­tions and gath­er­ings bare­ly exist online. 

I know that real life has it’s own val­ue – I was hap­py to have a vis­it from indi­vid­ual trav­el­er Mic­ah Bales this week­end, a Friend with a great tal­ent for the good ques­tion that stays with you long after his bus departs. I just wish I saw more media com­ing out of these big events, more ways to boot­strap the vol­umes of con­tent pro­duced at these events into some­thing we can use for outreach. 

If anec­do­tal evi­dence is an indi­ca­tion, most of the peo­ple who have come to Friends in the last half-decade first encoun­tered us on Beliefnet, a for-profit dot-com with no con­nec­tion to any Friends body. It’s def­i­n­i­tions of “Lib­er­al Quak­ers” and “Ortho­dox Quak­ers” have become more impor­tant (de fac­to) than all of our books of Faith and Prac­tice. Beliefnet, Wikipedia and a site called Reli­gious Tol­er­ance have become the defin­ers of our faith to mil­lions of seek­ers. Noth­ing we’re doing comes close to Beliefnet.

And this is part fo the rea­son I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by a Youtube video that was made this week­end. It’s an intro­duc­tion to “lib­er­al Quak­ers” by some­one who’s nev­er been to Quak­er wor­ship. While this might sound pre­sump­tu­ous, the real crime is that hers is the only Amer­i­can lib­er­al Quak­er intro­duc­tion on Youtube. What the hell are we doing, Friends? I’ve been cor­re­spond­ing with the Youtu­ber. She’s 22, a spir­i­tu­al seek­er who cob­bled togeth­er a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty after fol­low­ing a cou­ple of dead-end spir­i­tu­al paths. She came across the Beliefnet quiz, came out a “lib­er­al Quak­er” and start­ed look­ing for real world Friends. She tried the meet­ing in her home town but it looked desert­ed (!) and so start­ed an email cor­re­spon­dence with a Friend she found on anoth­er meet­ing’s web­site. She did the Youtube video because she could­n’t find any Amer­i­can intro­duc­tions and want­ed to give back, espe­cial­ly to younger seek­ers that might not respond to a British Youtube series. Yes her video is awk­ward and a lit­tle sketchy on some points of lib­er­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, but it’s hon­est and does­n’t con­tain any view­points you won’t hear around most meetinghouses.

PS: Since writ­ing this I’ve come across the first video from the just-concluded FGC Gath­er­ing. I don’t know if it’ll help with out­reach but it is real­ly fun­ny. Thanks Skip, I feel like I was there! 

More ways to QuakeQuake in the socialscape

April 7, 2008

For any bleed­ing edge Web 2.0 Quak­ers out there, there’s now a Quak­erQuak­er Friend­Feed account to go along with its Twit­ter account. Both accounts sim­ply spit out the Quak­erQuak­er RSS feed but there might be some prac­ti­cal uses. I actu­al­ly fol­low QQ pri­ma­ry by Twit­ter these days and those who don’t mind annoy­ing IM pop-ups could get instant alerts.

Web 2.0 every­where man Robert Scoble recent­ly post­ed that many of his con­ver­sa­tions and com­ments have moved away from his blog and over to Friend­Feed. I don’t see that occur­ring any­time soon with QQ but I’ll set the accounts up and see what hap­pens. I’ve hooked my own Twit­ter and Friend­Feed accounts up with Quak­erQuak­er, so that’s one way I’m cross-linking with this pos­si­ble over­lay of QQ.

For what it’s worth I’ve always assumed that QQ is rel­a­tive­ly tem­po­rary, an ini­tial meet­ing ground for a net­work of online Friends that will con­tin­ue to expand into dif­fer­ent forms. I’m hop­ing we can pick the best media to use and not just jump on the lat­est trends. As far as the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is con­cerned, I’d say the two most impor­tant tests of a new media is it’s abil­i­ty to out­reach to new peo­ple and its util­i­ty in help­ing to con­struct a shared vision of spir­i­tu­al renewal.

On these test, Face­book has been a com­plete fail­ure. So many promis­ing blog­gers have dis­ap­peared and seem to spend their online time swap­ping sug­ges­tive mes­sages on Face­book (find a hotel room folks) or share ani­mat­ed gifs with 257 of their closed “friends.” Quak­er Friends tend to be a clan­nish bunch and Face­book has real­ly fed into that (unfor­tu­nate) part of our per­sona. Blog­ging seemed to be resus­ci­tat­ing the idea of the “Pub­lic Friend,” some­one who was will­ing to share their Quak­er iden­ti­ty with the gen­er­al pub­lic. That’s still hap­pen­ing but it seems to have slowed down quite a bit. I’m not ready to close my own Face­book account but I would like to see Friends real­ly think about which social media we spend our time on. Friends have always been adapt­ing – rail­roads, news­pa­pers, fre­quent­ly fli­er miles have all affect­ed how we com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and the out­side world. Com­put­er net­work­ing is just the lat­est wrinkle.

As a per­son­al aside, the worst thing to hap­pen to my Quak­er blog­ging has been the lack of a com­mute (except for a short hop to do some Had­don­field web design a few times a week). I’m no longer strand­ed on a train for hours a week with noth­ing to do but read the jour­nal of Samuel Bow­nas or throw open my lap­top to write about the lat­est idea that flits through my head. Ah the tra­vails of telecommuting!

Looking at North American Friends and theological hotspots

January 31, 2008

Over on Friends Jour­nal site, some recent stats on Friends most­ly in the US and Cana­da. Writ­ten by Mar­garet Fras­er, the head of FWCC, a group that tries to unite the dif­fer­ent bod­ies of Friends, it’s a bit of cold water for most of us. Offi­cial num­bers are down in most places despite what­ev­er offi­cial opti­mism might exist. Favorite line: “Per­haps those who leave are noticed less.” I’m sure P.R. hacks in var­i­ous Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions are burn­ing the mid­night oil writ­ing response let­ters to the edi­tor spin­ning the num­bers to say things are look­ing up.

She points to a sad decline both in year­ly meet­ings affil­i­at­ed with Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and in those affil­i­at­ed with Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence. A curios­i­ty is that this decline is not seen in three of the four year­ly meet­ings that are dual affil­i­at­ed. These blend­ed year­ly meet­ings are going through var­i­ous degrees of iden­ti­ty cri­sis and hand-wringing over their sta­tus and yet their own mem­ber­ship num­bers are strong. Could it be that seri­ous the­o­log­i­cal wrestling and com­pli­cat­ed spir­i­tu­al iden­ti­ties cre­ate health­i­er reli­gious bod­ies than mono­cul­tur­al groupings?

The big news is in the south: “His­pan­ic Friends Church­es” in Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca are boom­ing, with spillover in el Norte as work­ers move north to get jobs. There’s sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle inter­ac­tion between these newly-arrived Spanish-speaking Friends and the the old Main Line Quak­er estab­lish­ment (maybe not sur­pris­ing real­ly, but still sad). I’ll leave you with a chal­lenge Mar­garet gives readers:

One ques­tion that often puz­zles me is why so many His­pan­ic Friends
con­gre­ga­tions are meet­ing in church­es belong­ing to oth­er denominations.
I would love to see estab­lished Friends meet­ings with their own
prop­er­ty shar­ing space with His­pan­ic Friends. It would be an
oppor­tu­ni­ty to share growth and chal­lenges together.

For other uses, see Light (disambiguation)

March 21, 2007

Even though my last post was a five minute quick­ie, it gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of com­ments. One ques­tion that came up was how aware indi­vid­ual Friends are about the spe­cif­ic Quak­er mean­ings of some of the com­mon Eng­lish words we use — “Light,” “Spir­it,” etc.(dis­am­bigua­tion in Wiki-speak). Mar­shall Massey expressed sad­ness that the terms were used uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly and I sug­gest­ed that some Friends know­ing­ly con­fuse the gener­ic and spe­cif­ic mean­ings. Mar­shall replied that if this were so it might be a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence based on geography.

If it’s a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence, I sus­pect it’s less geo­graph­ic than func­tion­al. I was speak­ing of the class of pro­fes­sion­al Friends (heavy in my parts) who pur­pose­ful­ly obscure their lan­guage. We’re very good at talk­ing in a way that sounds Quak­er to those who do know our spe­cif­ic lan­guage but that sounds gener­i­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al to those who don’t. Some­times this obscu­ran­tism is used by peo­ple who are repelled by tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism but want to advance their ideas in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, but more often (and more dan­ger­ous­ly) it’s used by Friends who know and love what we are but are loathe to say any­thing that might sound controversial.

I’ve told the sto­ry before of a Friend and friend who said that every­time he uses the word com­mu­ni­ty he’s mean­ing the body of Christ. New­com­ers hear­ing him and read­ing his arti­cles could be for­giv­en for think­ing that com­mu­ni­ty is our reason-for-being, indeed: what we wor­ship. The prob­lem is that ten years lat­er, they’ll have signed up and built up an iden­ti­ty as a Friend and will get all offend­ed when some­one sug­gests that this com­mu­ni­ty they know and love is real­ly the body of Christ.

Lib­er­al Friends in the pub­lic eye need to be more hon­est in their con­ver­sa­tion about the Bib­li­cal and Chris­t­ian roots of our reli­gious fel­low­ship. That will scare off poten­tial mem­bers who have been scarred by the acts of those who have false­ly claimed Christ. I’m sor­ry about that and we need to be as gen­tle and hum­ble about this as we can. But hope­ful­ly they’ll see the fruits of the true spir­it in our open­ness, our warmth and our giv­ing and will real­ize that Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship is not about tel­e­van­ge­lists and Pres­i­den­tial hyp­ocrites. Maybe they’ll even­tu­al­ly join or maybe not, but if they do at least they won’t be sur­prised by our iden­ti­ty. Before some­one com­ments back, I’m not say­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty needs to be a test for indi­vid­ual mem­ber­ship but new mem­bers should know that every­thing from our name (“Friends of Christ”) on down are root­ed in that tra­di­tion and that that for­mal mem­ber­ship does not include veto pow­er over our pub­lic identity.

There is room out there for spiritual-but-not-religious com­mu­ni­ties that aren’t built around a col­lec­tive wor­ship of God, don’t wor­ry about any par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion and focus their ener­gies and group iden­ti­ty on lib­er­al social caus­es. But I guess part of what I won­der is why this does­n’t col­lect under the UUA ban­ner, whose Prin­ci­ples and Pur­pos­es state­ment is already much more syn­cretis­tic and post-religious than even the most lib­er­al year­ly meet­ing. Evolv­ing into the “oth­er UUA” would mean aban­don­ing most of the valu­able spir­i­tu­al wis­dom we have as a people.

I think there’s a need for the kind of strong lib­er­al Chris­tian­i­ty that Friends have prac­ticed for 350 years. There must be mil­lions of peo­ple parked on church bench­es every Sun­day morn­ing look­ing up at the pul­pit and think­ing to them­selves, “sure­ly this isn’t what Jesus was talk­ing about.” Look, we have Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians com­ing out against the war! And let’s face it, it’s only a mat­ter of time before “Emer­gent Chris­tians” real­ize how lame all that post-post can­dle wor­ship is and look for some­thing a lit­tle deep­er. The times are ripe for “Oppor­tu­ni­ties,” Friends. We have impor­tant knowl­edge to share about all this. It would be a shame if we kept quiet.

Reading John Woolman 2: The Last Safe Quaker

August 10, 2006

Read­ing John Wool­man Series:
1: The Pub­lic Life of a Pri­vate Man
2: The Last Safe Quaker
3: The Iso­lat­ed Saint

Some­one who only knew Wool­man from arti­cles in pop­u­lar Quak­er peri­od­i­cals might be for­giv­en for a moment of shock when open­ing his book. John Wool­man is so much more reli­gious than we usu­al­ly acknowl­edge. We describe him as an activist even though he and his con­tem­po­raries clear­ly saw and named him a min­is­ter. There are many instances where he described the inhu­man­i­ty of the slave trade and he clear­ly iden­ti­fied with the oppressed but he almost always did so with from a Bib­li­cal per­spec­tive. He acknowl­edged that reli­gious faith­ful­ness could exist out­side his beloved Soci­ety of Friends but his life’s work was call­ing Friends to live a pro­found­ly Chris­t­ian life. Flip to a ran­dom page of the jour­nal and you’ll prob­a­bly count half a dozen metaphors for God. Yes, he was a social activist but he was also a deeply reli­gious min­is­ter of the gospel.

So why do we wrap our­selves up in Wool­man like he’s the flag of proto-liberal Quak­erism? In an cul­ture where Quak­er author­i­ty is deeply dis­trust­ed and appeals to the Bible or to Quak­er his­to­ry are rou­tine­ly dis­missed, he has become the last safe Friend to claim. His name is invoked as a sort of tal­is­man against cri­tique, as a rhetor­i­cal show-stopper. “If you don’t agree with my take on the environment/tax resistance/universalism, you’re the moral equiv­a­lent of Woolman’s slave hold­ers.” (Before the emails start flood­ing in, remem­ber I’m writ­ing this as a dues-paying activist Quak­er myself.) We don’t need to agree with him to engage with him and learn from him. But we do need to be hon­est about what he believed and open to admit­ting when we dis­agree. We shouldn’t use him sim­ply as a stooge for our own agenda.

I like Wool­man but I have my dis­agree­ments. His scrupu­lous­ness was over the top. My own per­son­al­i­ty tends toward a cer­tain puri­ty, exem­pli­fied by fif­teen years of veg­an­ism, my plain dress, my being car-less into my late thir­ties. I’ve learned that I need to mod­er­ate this ten­den­cy. My puri­ty can some­times be a sign of an elit­ism that wants to sep­a­rate myself from the world (I’ve learned to laugh at myself more). Asceti­cism can be a pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al lens but it can also burn a self- and world-hatred into us. I’ve had friends on the brink of sui­cide (lit­er­al­ly) over this kind of scrupu­lous­ness. I wor­ry when a new Friend finds my plain pages and is in broad­falls and bon­nets a few weeks lat­er, know­ing from my own expe­ri­ence that the speed of their gus­to some­times rush­es a dis­cern­ment prac­tice that needs to rest and set­tle before it is ful­ly owned (the most per­son­al­ly chal­leng­ing of the tra­di­tion­al tests of Quak­er dis­cern­ment is “patience”).

John Wool­man presents an awful­ly high bar for future gen­er­a­tions. He reports refus­ing med­i­cine when ill­ness brought him to the brink of death, pre­fer­ring to see fevers as signs of God’s will. While that might have been the smarter course in an pre-hygienic era when doc­tors often did more harm than good, this Chris­t­ian Scientist-like atti­tude is not one I can endorse. He sailed to Eng­land deep in the hold along with the cat­tle because he thought the wood­work unnec­es­sar­i­ly pret­ty in the pas­sen­ger cab­ins. While his famous wear­ing of un-dyed gar­ments was root­ed part­ly in the out­rages of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, he talked much more elo­quent­ly about the inher­ent evil of wear­ing clothes that might hide stains, argu­ing that any­one who would try to hide stains on their clothes would be that much more like­ly to hide their inter­nal spir­i­tu­al stains (all I could think about when read­ing this was that he must have left child-rearing duties to the well-inclined Sarah).

Wool­man proud­ly relates (in his famous­ly hum­ble style) how he once tried to shut down a trav­el­ing mag­ic act that was sched­uled to play at the local inn. I sus­pect that if any of us some­how found our­selves on his clear­ness com­mit­tee we might find a way to tell him to… well, light­en up. I sym­pa­thize with his con­cerns against mind­less enter­tain­ment but telling the good peo­ple of Mount Hol­ly that they can’t see a dis­ap­pear­ing rab­bit act because of his reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties is more Tal­iban than most of us would feel com­fort­able with.

He was a man of his times and that’s okay. We can take him for what he is. We shouldn’t dis­miss any of his opin­ions too light­ly for he real­ly was a great reli­gious and eth­i­cal fig­ure. But we might think twice before enlist­ing the par­ty poop­er of Mount Hol­ly for our cause.

Twenty First Century traveling ministry: of uberQuakers, selfish Friends and the search for unity

July 28, 2005

A guest piece by Evan Welkin

Short­ly after fin­ish­ing my sec­ond year at Guil­ford Col­lege, I set out to under­stand what brought me there. Dur­ing the stress­ful process of decid­ing which col­lege to attend, I felt a strong but slight­ly mys­te­ri­ous urge to explore Quak­erism in my under­grad­u­ate years. Two years lat­er, this same urge led me to buy a motor­cy­cle, learn to ride it, and set out in a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney up the East­ern seaboard vis­it­ing Quak­er meet­ings. While Guil­ford had excit­ed and even irri­tat­ed my curios­i­ty about the work­ings of Quak­erism, I knew lit­tle about how Quak­ers were over a large area of the coun­try. I want­ed to find out how Quak­ers worked as a group across a wide area of the coun­try, and if I could learn how to be a leader with­in that community.

July 26th, 2005: Clarence and Lilly Pickett Fund project report

The Trans­port: Evan Welkin as he came through South Jersey.

The pur­pose of my trip as out­lined by my let­ter of intro­duc­tion was:

“…the devel­op­ment of con­struc­tive and enrich­ing spir­i­tu­al dia­logue between all branch­es of the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty. I plan to trav­el from South to North, speak­ing with meet­ings about how (or whether) they feel their region­al cul­ture affects their the­o­log­i­cal beliefs with the intent of gain­ing a greater under­stand­ing of the ‘spir­i­tu­al state’ of indi­vid­ual meetings.“

I was very com­mit­ted to keep­ing this vision open-ended in order to iden­ti­fy com­mon threads with­in con­ver­sa­tions I would have with Friends. I hoped in the dis­cus­sions I might iden­ti­fy whether there was some aspect of “region­al fla­vor” to a Quak­er meet­ing in South Car­oli­na ver­sus one in New Jer­sey, for exam­ple. I hoped to iden­ti­fy what these dif­fer­ences might be and some­how look for a com­mon Quak­er thread that ran beneath them I could address with all Friends. In addi­tion, I planned to take pic­tures of meet­ing­hous­es along the way to see if what peo­ple said about their meet­ings was at all reflect­ed in their meet­ing­house archi­tec­ture. In all hon­esty, how­ev­er, I was most inter­est­ed in sim­ply gain­ing a greater under­stand­ing of how Quak­erism is prac­ticed over a very large area of the US. As a Quak­er myself, I want­ed to know what it meant to tru­ly own up to and under­stand this part of my iden­ti­ty and to strength­en my spir­i­tu­al being and hope­ful­ly inspire others.

My ini­tial plans for this project were to pur­chase a motor­cy­cle, learn to ride it and dri­ve from Key West in Flori­da to Maine vis­it­ing Quak­ers along the way. I want­ed to stay near the coast, if for no oth­er rea­son than to have some kind of geo­graph­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity from the Atlantic to ground me along my way. The actu­al imple­men­ta­tion of my plan dif­fered slight­ly in it’s phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion, but I still found it to be a spir­i­tu­al­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing endeav­or. I trav­eled along the route indi­cat­ed on the attached map, cov­er­ing rough­ly 4,200 miles over the course of the trip. I began in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na and trav­eled south to St. Peters­burg, Flori­da. From St. Peters­burg, I trav­eled all the way along the East­ern Seaboard more or less to New York City. From there, I returned to the South by way of Greens­boro to fin­ish in Nashville Tennessee.

The Route: I vis­it­ed rough­ly 29 meet­ings hous­es and Quak­er places of wor­ship on my trip and met with groups from 15 of them. In a cou­ple of instances, I only met with indi­vid­u­als from var­i­ous meetings.

The prepa­ra­tion for my project was sig­nif­i­cant, most notably in respect to my trans­porta­tion. Before my deci­sion to take on this project, I had only once rid­den a motor­cy­cle, and my hazy mem­o­ry of the occa­sion makes me think it was just a brief ride on the back. Pur­chas­ing, insur­ing, licens­ing and learn­ing how to dri­ve a motor­cy­cle was a very involved under­tak­ing that required a con­sid­er­able amount of com­mit­ment to over­com­ing my fear. The process helped me become men­tal­ly pre­pared for the trip, though, by test­ing my phys­i­cal self so great­ly. In addi­tion, I wrote to over 50 Quak­er meet­ings all along the East coast intro­duc­ing myself and ask­ing them to con­sid­er meet­ing with me. As meet­ings respond­ed, I gave them an idea of when I might be in their area and we set up ten­ta­tive vis­it­ing dates. The pur­pose of the trip as out­lined in that let­ter changed over the course of my project, but I will return to that. In addi­tion to these two most time-consuming aspects of my project, there were quite a num­ber of oth­er small­er details to be tak­en care of that are inher­ent to any major trav­el. Pur­chas­ing gear, tun­ing up and prepar­ing my motor­cy­cle for long dis­tance tour­ing, dis­cussing details with my home meet­ing about the trip, etc. were some of the oth­er tasks to be com­plet­ed. For the most part, I did all of this alone. While I had Max Carter to help with some of the pre­lim­i­nary envi­sion­ing and last minute con­tact pos­si­bil­i­ties, I took on most every­thing myself. My home meet­ing was far away and could prac­ti­cal­ly offer very lit­tle in terms of coor­di­nat­ing efforts from that dis­tance. I was not sure how to pre­pare for the trip spir­i­tu­al­ly but left with an open heart and a strong com­mit­ment to be as open as pos­si­ble.
I was pre­sent­ed with quite a num­ber of chal­lenges on my trip, and it appeared that those obsta­cles came either in the form of spir­i­tu­al or prac­ti­cal tri­als along my way. Some of my prac­ti­cal chal­lenges were the theft of my cam­era ear­ly in the trip, the mat­ter of food and lodg­ing and the sheer effort of trav­el­ing over very great dis­tances day after day. The cam­era was sig­nif­i­cant loss because it made the process of gath­er­ing pic­tures for pre­sen­ta­tion much more dif­fi­cult. I had to rely on the poor qual­i­ty and much slow­er pro­cess­ing of a dis­pos­able cam­era for most of my trip. In gen­er­al, I had a sense of who I would stay with city by city along my route, but it was dif­fi­cult to not know any of these peo­ple in advance beyond let­ters and to rely on them so much for their gen­eros­i­ty. I real­ize that this demand­ed quite a degree of flex­i­bil­i­ty both on my part and theirs; this, like my stolen cam­era, helped me learn to adapt and try to be as gra­cious as pos­si­ble. The phys­i­cal strain and men­tal alert­ness I need­ed to trav­el long dis­tances was very tax­ing, result­ing in my deci­sion to not go as far as I had orig­i­nal­ly planned.

A prac­ti­cal issue that did affect the out­come of my project was which meet­ings end­ed up respond­ing to my let­ter of intro­duc­tion. I only received any word back from about half of the meet­ings I wrote to. Of those, I was dis­ap­point­ed that despite the fact I wrote to a large num­ber of Quak­ers both pro­grammed and unpro­grammed, I received a much small­er num­ber of respons­es from pro­grammed meet­ings and of those I did, a num­ber ‘dis­ap­peared’ after the ini­tial con­tact. This may have been entire­ly by chance, but none the less I found my expe­ri­ences with pro­grammed Friends to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly enrich­ing for their being so few and I regret­ted their brevi­ty. There­fore, most of my obser­va­tions were among unpro­grammed Friends and I shy away from mak­ing com­par­isons between “unpro­grammed” and “pro­grammed” Friends in this report because I sim­ply didn’t feel like I met with enough unpro­grammed Friends to tell.

In addi­tion, the inter­nal chal­lenge all these prac­ti­cal chal­lenges brought on made it dif­fi­cult to remain spir­i­tu­al­ly cen­tered. Con­stant spir­i­tu­al dis­cus­sion left me strug­gling to be light­heart­ed. I can’t tell if this made my lat­er dis­heart­en­ment with group con­ver­sa­tions greater or whether the dis­cus­sions them­selves dis­heart­ened me. As time went on though, my frus­tra­tions with the dynam­ics I wit­nessed in meet­ings right from the begin­ning of my trip onwards increas­ing­ly affect­ed my open­ness. I relied more and more on a reg­i­ment­ed con­ver­sa­tion for­mat, lim­it­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for spon­tane­ity of spir­it. By the end I felt like a slight­ly strange gen­tle­man who ris­es every week at about the same time in meet­ing for wor­ship with a mes­sage that seems unfor­tu­nate­ly sim­i­lar to the same thing he said the week before.

With the goal of cre­at­ing “enrich­ing spir­i­tu­al dia­logue” so promi­nent­ly placed as my goal for this trip, I spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time fig­ur­ing out what this meant and how it might be achieved. If I were able to cre­ate this dia­logue on my trip, I some­how felt that this would be imme­di­ate­ly ben­e­fi­cial to both Quak­ers and Quak­er insti­tu­tions by cre­at­ing a greater sense of vital­i­ty and uni­ty with­in them. I began to real­ize how sub­jec­tive uni­ty and vital­i­ty are. A dis­tinc­tion I failed to rec­og­nize in my ide­al­ized con­cep­tion was the dif­fer­ence between uni­ty of indi­vid­u­als, such as a good con­ver­sa­tion between myself and a host, and uni­ty of meet­ings, such as a group meet­ing and shar­ing con­ver­sa­tion. As time went on, I began to become frus­trat­ed in group dis­cus­sions and to try to “argue” my inter­pre­ta­tion of uni­ty and vital­i­ty in much the same way I saw oth­er Friends doing. I had hoped Friends them­selves would sug­gest points of uni­ty with­in Quak­erism, but often I just heard folks talk about what they believed in to the exclu­sion of oth­er beliefs. For instance, I asked many meet­ings what they might do as a group if some­one rose in meet­ing and brought a very evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian mes­sage to wor­ship. While at first many spoke about “try­ing to accept that mes­sage” as equal to any oth­er, it seemed that in essence many felt threat­ened by the ques­tion and that I should ask it at all. It seemed that few meet­ings had any estab­lished process of “elder­ing” or hold­ing indi­vid­u­als account­able for the group. I am cer­tain­ly not evan­gel­i­cal nor am I sure I am Chris­t­ian, but I some­how felt accused of being both in these con­ver­sa­tions and there­fore felt less wel­come. There were sev­er­al points on my trip where I strug­gled to find any hope Quak­ers could be lead to unite amongst each oth­er, and it was the dis­tinc­tion between indi­vid­u­als and groups that made all the difference.

Observ­ing group dynam­ics and look­ing for con­ti­nu­ity or uni­ty with­in Friends Meet­ings as a whole along my jour­ney was very hard for me. There were sev­er­al notable excep­tions, but as I fin­ished my trip I found myself ter­ri­bly dis­heart­ened in gen­er­al by much of the group behav­ior I wit­nessed with­in the meet­ings I vis­it­ed. In meet­ings were I felt most suc­cess­ful and use­ful the mem­bers appeared not only to care deeply about each oth­er and the vital­i­ty of their indi­vid­ual meet­ings, but were strong enough to work out­side their own com­mu­ni­ties to engage cor­po­rate­ly in the wider body of Quak­erism and the world at large. They had clear ways of hold­ing indi­vid­u­als account­able to the group as a whole and did so. I did not feel I found this sense in many of the meet­ings I vis­it­ed though, how­ev­er briefly, and could not tell how ben­e­fi­cial my vis­it might be to them. I was sur­prised to be so dis­heart­ened after see­ing folks so quick­ly, but often it appeared very obvi­ous­ly in group con­ver­sa­tions full of Friends inter­rupt­ing or con­tra­dict­ing each oth­er or from side com­ments I heard from indi­vid­u­als later.

I strug­gle to write these words because I felt cared for and looked after by folks from all the meet­ings I vis­it­ed, but I still could not help but feel sad when vis­it­ing meet­ings who steadi­ly lost mem­bers, strug­gled to take care of basic busi­ness or suf­fered from inter­nal feuds. Many meet­ings in Flori­da were in the process of build­ing new meet­ing­hous­es, and while the com­mon cause of such a large order of busi­ness seemed to bring them togeth­er, many Friends in these meet­ings expressed con­cern that it was only a tem­po­rary fix. In fair­ness, many of the meet­ings I vis­it­ed along the way were in fact wor­ship groups and not ful­ly meet­ings, but rather than this being a step­ping stone to a more estab­lished order, it seemed that many of these wor­ship groups strug­gled to keep the few mem­bers they had and seemed to not feel ter­ri­bly con­nect­ed as a group.

What appeared to be the main caus­es of this dis­uni­ty, how­ev­er, was the unfor­tu­nate fact that it seems many Friends are Quak­er for self­ish rea­sons. I’m sor­ry to say it, but that was my impres­sion of why so many meet­ing groups strug­gle to find an effec­tive group process. In many of the meet­ings I vis­it­ed it appeared that Friends not only expect­ed com­plete accep­tance of their per­son­al spir­i­tu­al path, but also their polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al ones as well. Like in the case of the evan­gel­i­cal mes­sage ques­tion, it appeared that an evan­gel­i­cal per­son was not sim­ply threat­en­ing to indi­vid­u­als in their spir­i­tu­al beliefs, but also in their inferred polit­i­cal lean­ings and cul­ture. This seemed to show me that the meet­ing was not actu­al­ly for embrac­ing peo­ple in a group atmos­phere as adver­tised but more a cul­tur­al, ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal sup­port group for like-minded indi­vid­u­als. “Quak­ers couldn’t be Repub­li­can. I can’t stand Repub­li­cans” . This is where the realm of the indi­vid­ual butted up against the cor­po­rate in my eyes.

The beau­ty of silent wor­ship, as many Friends agreed, was it’s abil­i­ty to speak to so many dif­fer­ent Friend’s con­di­tions while still being such a cru­cial­ly group-centered act. In the ear­ly days of Quak­erism, it appeared that this act of wor­ship was a cor­ner­stone for the con­nec­tion that could be felt between indi­vid­u­als in a group set­ting in busi­ness meet­ing, com­mu­ni­ty din­ners or the world at large. From what I saw on my trip, the grat­i­fi­ca­tion and ful­fill­ment of the indi­vid­ual appears more and more accen­tu­at­ed as Quak­erism pro­gress­es rather than ful­fill­ment of the whole meet­ing. When faced with a con­fus­ing or chaot­ic busi­ness process, for instance, it seems in many cas­es that every per­son wants to revert to the way THEY make deci­sions best as the ide­al way for the group. I would has­ten to add that I did not even attend one busi­ness meet­ing along my trip, and that my con­cern for the issue of busi­ness specif­i­cal­ly comes from many, many direct com­ments from indi­vid­u­als frus­trat­ed by their group’s busi­ness meet­ings. I saw on my own that many Friends have so many dif­fer­ent inter­ests and such com­plete­ly busy lives out­side meet­ing, it appears the most they can do to attend­ed worship.

So per­haps the para­dox of the indi­vid­ual and group with­in a uni­ver­sal spir­it is what Quak­erism can ben­e­fit from explor­ing today. I found my atten­tion so often turned to the great folks I found along my way who spoke direct­ly to my con­di­tion. I met so many incred­i­bly inter­est­ing, thought-provoking, eccen­tric, kind and inspired peo­ple on my trip, I can­not help but be awed and impressed. I cer­tain­ly found a kind of uni­ty between them and myself. While I can­not be sure my actions ben­e­fit­ed Friend meet­ings in total­i­ty, I know that my con­ver­sa­tions with Friends were both inspir­ing to me and the peo­ple I found along the way. I believe I bright­ened some folks’ days and gave them a chance to tell their sto­ries. The faith required to get on the road each day, not know­ing where I would end up by night­fall was awe­some and it stretched me con­sid­er­ably in a way that I think Friends appre­ci­at­ed. I am sure that I will con­tin­ue to be in con­tact with Friends I met along the way and will con­tin­ue to think about these issues with them.

In terms of this trip as a foun­da­tion for Quak­er lead­er­ship, I must say I was a put at a bit of a loss at what that might mean. Some­one men­tioned it might be like “herd­ing cats.” One lead­er­ship role I did see often, which wor­ried me, was that of the “überQuak­ers,” as we at Guil­ford like to call them. It appeared that in many instances, I end­ed up stay­ing with the mem­bers of meet­ings who were the “movers and shak­ers” of their meet­ings for their dogged ded­i­ca­tion to the meet­ing as a whole. Sad­ly, in many instances these folks seemed to bear a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of respon­si­bil­i­ty for the affairs of their meet­ings, spir­i­tu­al­ly, logis­ti­cal­ly and ener­get­i­cal­ly. They did not resent this role, but it appeared to me that they were rarely con­scious­ly cho­sen for that min­istry by the group but instead had the posi­tion thrust upon them. These folks were com­pli­ment­ed by an unfor­tu­nate­ly large seg­ment of Friends, often plead­ing busy sched­ules, who appeared to be unable to com­mit to the meet­ing beyond the cathar­sis of meet­ing for wor­ship. Part of wit­ness­ing this left me ques­tion­ing my com­mit­ment to Quak­erism by the end of my trip. If this is how Quak­erism works, why should I even both­er devel­op­ing ‘lead­er­ship’ to become an “überQuak­er”? While it may not have burnt out those who I stayed with along the way, why would I pur­pose­ly stick my neck out for the ben­e­fit of the group as a whole when it seems that few oth­ers are actu­al­ly inter­est­ed in any­one but them­selves at the end of the day? It is not that I begrudge self­less­ness by any means, but Quak­erism can­not sur­vive on the self­less­ness of some and depen­dence of many. Or at least it should not in my eyes.

Per­haps what wor­ries me is that with the amount of time and effort I put into this trip, I am already falling into the “überQuak­er” mind­set. “Well, if things aren’t going right I’ll just have to do some­thing myself and decide how they can be fixed.” This is my great fear. This is not the think­ing of a vital, post-authoritarian reli­gious soci­ety. I imag­ine a vital Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty that is full of folks with var­i­ous com­mit­ments, but all with a shared desire not only to come to wor­ship togeth­er but to do busi­ness togeth­er, reach out and make sac­ri­fices to bring in new mem­bers and active­ly take on projects as a meet­ing that all can agree are the Spirit’s will. I would like to see a much greater sense of group inten­tion­al­i­ty, but I know that is not some­thing one indi­vid­ual can force. I have learned that I have a great deal of per­son­al growth to go through before I am ready to con­tribute as I would like to the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty. I think in many ways this trip made me feel more inex­pe­ri­enced and appre­hen­sive with Quak­erism but I strive for that place of faith and con­fi­dence. I am begin­ning a book about my expe­ri­ences on this trip, in addi­tion to cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing the meet­ing­house pic­tures I took.

I wish I could say I knew this trip was God’s will, but the rhetoric with which many peo­ple have invoked God’s name in my life has blurred the lines between spir­i­tu­al sur­ren­der and ego­tis­ti­cal manip­u­la­tion. As one par­tic­u­lar­ly astute Friend put it “As with so much else in life, imple­ment­ing our inten­tions should allow for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being self con­ceit­ed.” Much of what I found along my trip reflect­ed strug­gles with­in oth­ers about the will of God in their lives, some of which start­ed ear­ly in Friend’s lives and some that only began when they took Quak­erism as their own. Iron­i­cal­ly, it appears that the dif­fer­ence I was look­ing for in geo­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion was actu­al­ly sur­pris­ing­ly absent over such a large area. All the Friends I talked to were in some way strug­gling with the issue of how they fit into the larg­er group, a com­mu­ni­ty of the Spir­it and of Quak­er busi­ness. As I sought to find par­al­lels in my con­ver­sa­tions with Friends, I was con­stant­ly remind­ed of the push and pull of the indi­vid­ual will ver­sus the will of the whole. In many Friends eyes, this strug­gle is fun­da­men­tal­ly a dance between the indi­vid­ual and answer­ing to the Spir­it that is with­in us all.

Some Queries I made up for myself along my trip were:

  • How do I remain secure and non-threatened in my own faith to be open to others?
  • What are my blind­ness­es or bias­es from my Quak­er roots?
  • What is self­less­ness and is it ideal?
  • How do I know what is my will and what is the will of God?

Friends Familiar with My Struggles

May 5, 2005

A Guest Piece from ‘Quak­er­s­peak’ C. Reddy.

On April 23 I flew to Ore­gon to serve on an edi­to­r­i­al board for a book that QUIP is putting togeth­er of young Friends’ expe­ri­ences of Quak­erism. After arriv­ing in Ore­gon but before I met with the edi­to­r­i­al board for this, I served on a pan­el with the oth­er young Friends on the edi­to­r­i­al board in a QUIP meet­ing (as we had arrived at the end of a QUIP con­fer­ence for our meet­ing) about how media, print­ed or oth­er­wise, inspired us spir­i­tu­al­ly. As we relat­ed our expe­ri­ences as young Friends (and grow­ing up as Quak­ers), a num­ber of issues sur­faced rather quickly.

As young Friends move through high school and enter the [young] adult world, there is often a gen­er­al lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between young Friends and adults in Meet­ings, as if there’s some ten­sion about it. Per­son­al­ly, as a young Friend in Durham Friends Meet­ing (NCYM(Cons.)), I’ve found that I know cer­tain adults — ones with whom I have inter­act­ed more specif­i­cal­ly over the years as I have grown up. Often these are par­ents of oth­er young Friends in the Meet­ing or peo­ple who have been involved in youth group events. What’s miss­ing is the con­nec­tion to the rest of the adults in Meet­ing; I’ve been attend­ing Durham Friends Meet­ing since I was born (with a peri­od dur­ing mid­dle school where I was most­ly absent, but for the last few years I’ve been quite reg­u­lar in atten­dance) and I feel like most of the meet­ing has no idea who I am. In addi­tion to that, I’ve not known how to com­mu­ni­cate my involve­ment and ded­i­ca­tion in var­i­ous nation­al Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties, such as being cho­sen as one of six co-clerks of the HS pro­gram at FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, my par­tic­i­pa­tion in Young Quakes, my atten­dance at a Pen­dle Hill Clerk­ing work­shop last fall, my involve­ment in this QUIP book, or how I have been read­ing many Quak­er books over the last few months, all of which have been VERY inte­gral in my spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. Even Friends in Durham Friends Meet­ing with whom I do con­verse some­times after Meet­ing do not know of all these things with which I am involved.

Also, when I stopped attend­ing First Day school in Jan­u­ary of my junior year in high school (a lit­tle over a year ago) and began attend­ing the full hour of Wor­ship, I spoke to two youth lead­ers about it briefly so they would under­stand, and then there was no fur­ther response. Look­ing back on this, I feel that the Meet­ing should be more involved in such a tran­si­tion for all young Friends — not just those adults direct­ly involved in the youth group/First Day school, but every­one should be more aware and atten­tive of the young Friends in Meet­ing and their involve­ment in Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties out­side of Meeting.

One thing that each of us felt is very impor­tant yet very lack­ing is men­tor­ship with­in Meet­ing for Wor­ship. There need to be adults who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly First Day school teach­ers, youth group lead­ers, or par­ents who are will­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with a young Friend as some­one who has had more expe­ri­ence with Quak­erism and can nur­ture a young Friend’s spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. A young Friend who was in Ore­gon with me relat­ed her expe­ri­ences with a men­tor she has at Earl­ham (she is a second-year there, cur­rent­ly), and how she sees him about once a week; often she even receives books to read from him.

As the only active young Friend at my school (I’m sort of the ‘token’ Quak­er around), I usu­al­ly do not have any­one to talk to about my spir­i­tu­al find­ings and lead­ings. As I have con­tin­ued to devel­op spir­i­tu­al­ly, I find more and more I need oth­er Friends to talk who are famil­iar with my struggles.

These are issues not only with­in Durham Friends Meet­ing, but in Meet­ings across the coun­try. I rec­og­nize that there are efforts to improve youth pro­grams every­where, but it nev­er hurts to start locally.

As a grad­u­at­ing senior this year, and as an involved Friend, I would like to improve my rela­tion­ship with the Meet­ing as a whole and make way for bet­ter rela­tion­ships between mem­bers and young Friends in the future. This, how­ev­er, needs to be ful­ly a double-sided effort.