Category: Quaker Practice

CHOOSING FRIENDS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Theological issues play very little into why a family chooses one church over another. So the surveys tell us. Instead of its beliefs, a church is chosen for its youth program, its overall vitality, music, the kinds of expectations it will or won’t place on members, and so on.

Puts Friends in a pretty strange position, doesn’t it? What committee do you want to serve on?

On the other hand, our existence as a “do-it-yourself” congregation requires us, personally and as a group, to draw out individuals and families and engage in their daily lives. One of our strengths is that Quaker meeting allows room for spiritual growth over the years, within a wide range of activity, while maintaining an intimate connection. Our small size, in an era of mega-churches, presents us with advantages, especially in knowing one another authentically. Besides, worship is quite distinct from entertainment.

Now, how do we roll out this welcome mat? Maybe I would remind folks that our place of worship is a house, first and foremost. Come on in and get comfortable. And then be fed. Be sure, of course, to lend a hand with the dishes.

BUSINESS AT HAND: IN THE MINUTES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Much in our Quaker practice seems quaint, none more than our practice of minuting. It’s not the same as taking minutes of a company board meeting or city council session, but has a dimension all its own. Originating in the recording of persecutions in the initial decades of the Quaker movement, and in the subsequent petitions for redress and justice, our earliest minutes tell of “sufferings for Truth’s sake” and soon lead into the efforts of determining just what it means to live as a people of conscience.

Sometimes today we find the practice burdensome or unnecessary. Friends who follow the Old Ways in this matter will draft and read aloud the record on that part of the agenda, moving ahead only after that minute has been revised to satisfaction and approved. It’s slow and tedious, but it does focus the deliberations.

Here, the concept of clerking – especially for the recording clerk – has a meaning related to “clerk of court,” where the official records decisions from the bench above. In our case, Friends traditionally feel the high judge as Christ, and the meeting gathered as witnesses who would voice the sense of the resolution. I suppose we might see Friends attending our business sessions as a jury, then. If it were only as simple as guilty or not guilty!

Revisiting historic minutes, as I’ve done as a genealogist in the archives at Swarthmore and Guilford colleges, opens an appreciation for the practice as an art form. Perhaps no other records in America before the 1850 Census offer as much genealogical information as ours do. Even so, one discovers how faulty even the best efforts become. A individual simply fades from sight, a family moving away is recorded simply as “Robert and Sarah and children,” rather than naming them individually, as another clerk might have done, or the records might be lost to a house fire, as Centre, North Carolina’s, were, or simply lost altogether, as the first half-century of Dover’s were or West Epping’s were in our own lifetime. You might see an erasure, from first cousin to second, or a misspelling – and suddenly, you find yourself sitting with that clerk, somewhere in our history. This becomes something other than quaint, but personal engagement.

LOOKING FOR AN UNCOMMON GROUND

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

If you’re part of a faith community, you can ask this about your own circle: What do we have in common? That is, if we were required to write a “confession of faith” (in my case, for our Quaker meeting), what would we profess? What I’m envisioning is not a listing of what we do together, which our annual State of Society Report too easily becomes, but rather what lies under and behind our actions. I know that some Mennonite congregations from time to time draft what they call a “constitution,” although a corporate “mission statement” may also do here. The idea is to sharpen the focus of what a group already possesses and where it would like to go into the future. It’s a way of acknowledging and enlarging on the strengths and dreams of its members. Think of one retailer’s slogan, “Let’s build something together,” with its unvoiced understanding that they’re talking about people’s homes, rather than their investment portfolios, and maybe you get the picture.

I would hope that what we have in common is something other than similar tastes, income, educational attainment, lifestyles, party affiliation, or the like. Perhaps, in asking the question, we can even come to a clearer understanding of what diversity we, in fact, possess, and the potential it offers us.

Answering the question would, I suspect, be far more difficult than we might originally anticipate. On one hand, answering candidly might actually prove divisive. We’ve seen this as we responded to New England Yearly Meeting’s attempt to revise Faith and Practice for the next generation. On the other, delving into the question might also lead us into a clearer understanding of the core energies at the heart of our worshiping community. I recall Caroline Stephen’s amazement Friends can do anything, considering that Quakers are essentially a body of mystics. We’ve heard others compare trying to get us moving together like “trying to herd cats” or go somewhere with “a wheelbarrow full of frogs.”

What I do know is the difficulty of maintaining a witness – even plainness – apart from a community of faith. Community, with its definition of common unity. In the end, it requires far more than strength in numbers. It’s a matter, I’d say, of strength from our hearts.

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Now, for my stab at the statement:

Dover Friends Meeting (Quaker) is a body of individuals and families who together encourage and pursue the New Testament goals of simplicity, equality, honesty, integrity, nonviolence and pacifism, and divine love in daily life. At its organizational core are the weekly hour of open, waiting worship in the presence of the Holy Spirit and the monthly meeting for business, both conducted in accord with the longstanding manner of the Society of Friends.

RETURNING TO THE MONET WINDOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The window I long viewed from my seat on the facing bench in the meetinghouse may also be regarded as an icon or mandala – a piece of art to facilitate the practice of spiritual focus and release. As an image used to settle a person into meditation, the window is hardly static. I’d settle in and close my eyes, as usual. At some point, though, I’d open them, softly, gaze around the room and then the window. Where is my heart today, truly? Where are my emotions? Let my thoughts still, for now. One looks out, to look within.

I recall another Friend, Randy Kezar, who once proposed photographing the view from another window in the room. His concept was to shoot the same scene from the same spot, at the same hour every Sunday for a full year. The record would show the small wooded slope blooming and in fullness, autumn color, snowfall and melting. Sunny days and rain. Glimpses of the city cemetery beyond.

On most Sundays after that, I would ask myself which artist best related to the scene framed before me. It turned out to be quite a collection.

And then there was that one April morning when I realized the visual quality of the air itself had changed. We’d crossed out of winter and into the light that accompanies summer. In the coffee hour afterward, a former TV producer told me of the ways his cameraman had to have the film adjusted to accommodate for this change every spring and again every autumn.

Just as telling was that one morning in May when I was struck by the hues of green and blue in the window and saw what resembled a Monet painting. While this was not a reference many of the earlier Friends in the room would have acknowledged or accepted, it definitely was one I could … along with most of the others present that day. The view in that color continued for three weeks but has never returned quite the same.

If I watch my own window hoping for a return of the Monet experience, I can too easily miss what’s present.

AN ILLUMINATING DIALOGUE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve suggested meeting with some of the historic Friends sitting on our meeting library shelves, and mentioned the possibility of finding one or two who converse intimately with you, usually in the English of another era. (I’ve seen this happen rather frequently, even if it takes time to find the unique voice.) In this sense, one or two may become timeless companions in your inward growth. Or maybe an old Quake is simply a mentor along the way.

Knowing them can also help us as a PEOPLE of faith. Their range of experiences and concerns provides insights into other streams of Friends today, as Dover Friends have found in our relationship with Cuban Quakers. It also gives us a basis for renewed dialogue on everything from worship and teaching to outreach and social justice issues. We quietist Friends have as much to learn from Evangelical Friends as they do from us – even as we explore our branching out from the same powerful roots.

I’ll leave this for now, saying only that in digging for Quaker roots, it’s possible to find yourself jolted, like grabbing onto a live wire. And who knows where that will lead.

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Now, for an update. For ease of convenience, let me point you to overviews of these earlier Friends, all at my As Light Is Sown blog:

MEETING WITH HISTORY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Some have observed that Friends look to their history more than most other denominations do. They say a group that lacks dogma, creed, or liturgy will by necessity rely on its tradition for its guideline and authoritative reference. Well, maybe so. After all, to function as a Society of Friends, we need a common language that enables us to convey our diverse experiences, insights, desires, and needs in ways that knit us together. English Quaker Caroline E. Stephen (1835-1909) was amazed that any group of mystics could actually operate together at all, yet Friends do – and have. Eventually, I think, that functioning becomes part of the attraction early Quakers, especially, extend to us.

While much can be learned by exploring the history of Friends, there’s even more to be gleaned by uncovering a historic Friend who resonates especially with YOU. Sometimes these appear in the published journals, which relate inward and outward journeys through life (a gem may pop up in the middle of an otherwise tedious stretch of travel). Other times, they’re in memorial minutes, letters, or tracts. Sometimes, the words of an obscure Friend begins a lifetime dialogue. Ask around meeting, and there will be many suggestions. Or simply delve into the meeting library (the leatherbound collection holds many surprises, too).

In my experience, I can say that in actively invoking these ancestors, we cross a point where they’re no longer quaint (that nostalgic view of the smiling Quaker Oats man or people in some country meetinghouse) but instead astonishingly revolutionary. Their struggles and discoveries may suddenly speak to our own, even if what erupts is a loud argument – like the one Lewis Benson and John Curtis had in the mid-20th century before concluding that George Fox meant exactly what he was saying, scriptural citations and all. To speak of walking cheerfully in the face of brutal oppression and imprisonment is startling – and a starting point for transformation. It’s beneficial, too, when we discover we don’t need to constantly reinvent the wheel in our practice of faith, but also disconcerting when we realize how much of the work they began remains for us to continue. At least they stand ready to help us.

OF MINISTERS, ELDERS, AND OVERSEERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Traditionally, Quaker meetings recognized and nurtured individuals who had spiritual gifts as ministers, elders, or overseers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their service extended over the entire congregation.

A person who offered vocal ministry during worship might be designated as a minister, if the messages were considered theologically sound. Because a minute would be drafted and approved in the meeting’s records, the individual would be known as a recorded minister.

Elders were those who held the ministers and ministry in prayer through the service. In other traditions, they might be called bishops, except that in Friends meetings, they function within the congregation, rather than over it. In the novel, Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, Miz Lillian Leander upholds this role, even though her Lutheran denomination might not recognize its importance.

Overseers were individuals who were skilled in sensing the needs of others and in knowing how to respond. They were the ones who could transform the meeting for worship into a community of faith or a people of God.

After the painful divisions within the Society of Friends in the 1800s, these distinctions typically fell by the wayside. For quietist Meetings, there was an increasing aversion to hierarchy, especially one where ministers or elders might be appointed for life; other Friends, especially those west of the Appalachian Mountains, moved progressively toward services led by a pastor – someone who was often expected to embody all three gifts.

Still, the work’s there to be done, by somebody. Some forms, I’ll argue, work better than others.

NAMING THE GIFTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

The Nominating Committee is as close as my Quaker meeting generally comes to recognizing and perhaps nurturing the varied spiritual gifts present in our community. In New Testament terms, these are the charismata – abilities in emotional and physical healing, prophecy, discernment, teaching, and the like, but the list could be expanded if we closely examine our community. My name, Jnana, arises from a similar application along a Hindu path. In Quaker tradition, these inclinations were acknowledged indirectly in selecting our overseers, ministers, and elders, back when these positions were acknowledged.

A vibrant Friends Meeting has all three roles present, even if we no longer see them that way. There’s also evidence that some of the historic problems resulted when one was lacking and another tried to compensate for that deficiency. I’m not sure when committees supplanted the old structure, but it often seems that Friends have wound up with a system based more on the work to be done than on the talent and energy to be released. In quietist meetings like mine, the clerk, incidentally, now typically becomes the de facto pastor – including the role of Public Friend, permitted to speak on behalf of the Meeting – while one of the difficulties for pastors in “programmed” meetings is the expectation they can perform in all three roles, overseeing, vocal ministering, and eldering, in addition to being the congregation’s chief executive officer.

Maybe it was a matter of viewing the story through my Quaker perspective, but this dynamic runs through Walter Wangerin Jr.’s Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, a novel about a young Lutheran minister assigned to his first parish: black, inner city, Midwestern. That congregation survived largely because of the dedication of one elderly couple, Miz Lil and her husband, Douglas – one, the wise elder; the other, the mostly silent overseer. Together, they gently guide their young pastor in spiritual and personal growth, and in doing so, bring about a rebirth of the parish that survives them.

I still hear a recorded minister in Ohio with his counsel, “When something becomes everybody’s responsibility, it becomes no one’s,” and wonder how we ensure that our responsibilities and individual talents are aligned effectively. When this happens, we are blessed – in large part, because our nominating committee has been doing much more than routinely filling in blanks on an organizational chart. From there, the matter of developing gifts also means we need the worshiping community more than ever. Mentors, helpers, friends – however you want to name them – all growing together.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

We’re in that time of the year when we receive cards and letters. Personal ones, I mean, rather than direct-mail advertising.

Each year, I find myself reflecting on differences among generations regarding this custom. My dad’s circles, for instance, would send out and receive about two hundred cards apiece – keeping touch long after their high school and Air Force years, and trailing off only with illness and death. My generation, in contrast, falls away quickly. Each year, more lost connections, often with a pang of disconnection. There are, of course, a few who cling on, often with nothing personal included. There are also some older friends of my parents or a handful of relatives, in some sense of duty. (Only one of my first cousins has kept in touch). There are even a few correspondents who have reconnected, after years of silence. My wife and kids, being of a practical mindset, figure the folks we see regularly know what’s up with us (and so there’s no sense in mailing greetings), while those we don’t see, well, they’re history (so what’s the point?).

I think a lot of my dad’s era was a continuation of an earlier awareness, before cheap long-distance phone calls and then email. Those connections were special. My kids, on the other hand, don’t send letters of any kind, but they do have a wide range of online correspondents and texting. (Should we ask what will happen to the timeless art of the love letter?) What all this says about American society is another matter.

Quakers in some measure maintain an ancient practice of epistles, typically sent from one Meeting to another or even from a Meeting or “weighty Quake” to individuals. Some of our most powerful expressions survive there, and not from George Fox exclusively. Still, in an email world, how do we extend our faith? What efforts will survive? What will be read over the years? How do we reach out with something personal and special? Suddenly, I notice how many people are buying candles, especially at this time of year! Candles, in an electronics age. Remarkable! A spark of Light in the dark!

ADVENT AND MORE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This is the time of year when many people work themselves up into a frenzy of festivity, inevitably followed by a letdown. For whatever reasons, it has me reflecting on the contrasts between many of the expectations and realities in our surrounding culture. For instance, Christmas is supposed to be a holy occasion, but the fact is that one can eliminate all mention of religion and still engage fully in its revelry and spending. Family gatherings, too, are emphasized, although at the office, what we’ve noticed, listening to the police radio scanner, is how family structure is drifting: “live-in boyfriend or girlfriend,” becomes “fiance or fiancee” after their second child together. Maybe that’s a reflection of a widespread fear of commitment in America today – as if having a child isn’t a commitment. Those calls, too, typically arise in domestic abuse or breakdown, in turn arising in other fears. Think, too, of the troops overseas, and their families at home. We might ask, then, what is the real Christmas message.

Here I believe we can look to small children for a clue – those who are old enough to sense that something special is about to happen, but not old enough to equate it with receiving particular products. (Hmm, might the latter suggest something about the expectation of prayer many people seem to hold? Well, that’s another topic.) What I’m thinking about is that tingling anticipation that’s full of wonder and discovery and emotional overflow. Everything is new or newly repeated, from last year or maybe two. Full of hope and questioning, as well. Their exuberance and obsession are contagious. And, yes, they crave the stability of a loving family.

That is the energy early Friends had when they were known as Children of the Light. May we, too, be filled with a revived sense of that vitality and urgency –the ecstasy of apocalyptic faith that shakes the world for miles around, and brings change. And brings us together.