By using the power of mature, redemptive love we can show each individual that we need his or her uniqueness to make us whole. We will then see that we have something to give others and that others have something to give us.
How do we do the work of embodying the Beloved Community in [our] meeting? It starts with honoring each other’s gifts and callings and showing loving kindness and respect towards one another. In our Meeting we have doctors, nurses, therapists, writers, artists, actors, teachers, academics, lawyers, gardeners, parents, grandparents, children, and much more.
I have been at a Quaker school since the age of eleven and one of the things I have found to be most important is how Quakerism embraces and acknowledges differences, whether they be racial or cultural ones, or gender and religion. Where there is less focus on similarities and an appreciation of individuality and difference, there is common ground for understanding which I think is part of what makes up the Quaker ethos and the integration of diversity at my school.
This is the true ground of love and unity, not that such a man walks and does just as I do, but that I feel the same spirit and life in him.
The surprising thing about my journey in the Quaker faith, is that despite it being a predominantly white faith community, I’m still able to show up as my entire self and not be penalized for it or punished for it, in fact to be celebrated for it.
“I’m not a member.”
Throughout my journey with Friends I have said that sentence many times and many different ways (apologetically, insecurely, matter-of-factly, as an aside or by means of explanation) but very rarely with any sense of empowerment. The reactions to this revelation vary (surprise, bafflement, consternation, concern) probably because I seem so committed to the Society.
So we are called to wholeness and simultaneously to recognition of our incompleteness; called to power and to acknowledge our weakness; called to both individuation and interdependence. Thus the problem – indeed, the total failure – of the “ethic” of rugged individualism is that it runs with only one side of this paradox, incorporates only one half of our humanity.
Throughout the week [of the first virtual Friend General Conference* in June 2020], Friends used technology to engage with each other. They attended Pre-Gathering Retreats and affinity groups where they found safe, joyful spaces and community. They participated in workshops and afternoon presentations, listened to stories, made art together, laughed together, and worshiped together. We missed singing and dancing together.
A Quaker Meeting is a fine place in which to bring up children when families do many things together – worship, play, and share the ups and downs of life. There was a group of about six families in our Meeting that shared so much that in a sense we all raised each other’s children and to this day we are one huge extended family, traveling any distance to be together for special life events like the next generation’s marriages.
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.