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“‘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.
The spiritual welfare of the meeting is greatly helped if its social life is vigorous and its members take a warm personal interest in one another’s welfare. The pastoral work of the Society is especially committed to the Ministry and Counsel Committee, but our members generally should not allow themselves to feel that they are relieved of the responsibility.
“The revival of Christian hospitality in which the members of the meeting partake of food with one another is essential. Visitors to the meeting and new members are especially grateful for this open hand of friendship. The increasingly elaborate meals which many consider it necessary to set before guests have made this hospitality difficult for persons in moderate circumstances, but a return to simplicity would help in bringing about the revival of this precious sacrament.”
“I am always cagey around Quaker history. I have no Quaker roots in my family that I know of, I have not even experienced children’s meetings or young Quaker gatherings.
There are few better ways to feel second class in a Quaker community than when reminded by another Friend of how rich and important their Quaker ancestry is.
It is perhaps no surprise really that I connect more with the early Friends – theirs was a time where everyone came in as an enquirer, a seeker.”
We do not want to discount the experience of Friends who live at too great a distance from their meeting to participate regularly, nor to deny that each of us must come individually to a sense of what is right and true and essential in spiritual matters. But time and experience have proven the value of a close, responsive community in fostering individual spiritual growth, in testing and tempering individual leadings and individual understanding, and in supporting individuals as they are called to act or to suffer for religious principle.
One of the universal responsibilities, especially of elders, but also of all members, is to be sensitive to the latent, but awakening spiritual gifts of others, and to offer encouragement for their increased service to the meeting. A kindly word of appreciation, counsel, or guidance may render a welcome service to one who is very much aware of a strange stirring within, yet somewhat bewildered by it.
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