More reflections on ministry, leadings, and gifts

In recent weeks, I've been given more opportunities to reflect on the nature of spiritual gifts, ministry, and leadings. Other bloggers and I have written on these subjects before, but these additional reflections, borne of recent and revisited conversations, seem to want a bit of air, too.

Claiming versus having stewardship of a ministry, leading, or gift

I shared with Friends how I have been wrestling with whether or not I am acting out of ego or out of a true leading, as I sit with the vision of a Quaker resource center in my part of the U.S.

I had been talking with a Friend about this question at the rise of worship one First Day a few weeks ago. That Friend's response was "You have to CLAIM it; it's yours!"

My response was something like, "Well, that sounds like it's coming from a socialized white-American-male view of things." (I felt I could speak plainly to this particular socialized white American male Friend.)

Something about the energy of "claiming a leading as mine" didn't fit for me, I countered, and the Friend wisely suggested I look again at Lloyd Lee Wilson's book, Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order.

The next day, I did in fact pull out good ol' LLW:

...the gifted individual has become steward of a spiritual gift which God has given to the faith community for a particular task or occasion, and must learn how to be a good steward of that gift. The community in turn needs to learn how to encourage and nurture its gifted members... (p. 92)

...the task of claiming our giftedness has more to do with the individual's willingness to accept the gift being named as something for which (s)he is intended to be the steward... [Until] I claim, or accept that gift, it is bound up and incapable of being fully developed or exercised... We are stewards, not owners of our spiritual gifts, and to be a steward... of a spiritual gift is [to be] the servant of God who has bestowed the gift... [One] must exchange a portion of one's apparent independence for intentional servanthood. (p. 101)

Reading these two sections helps me understand that claiming a gift or a leading without the humility to use it in service to God is vastly different from accepting stewardship of that gift or leading.

I feel better for having wrestled about the line between the two, and for having that understanding affirmed by how Lloyd Lee has articulated it.

The Great River and a tether

In a committee meeting the day after the conversation I had with the "socialized white American male Friend," I was reminded of how living in the Spirit is often compared to being in the stream or in a river: There is a current, and we can either swim against it--tiring ourselves--or we can swim with it. Or we can float along and perhaps be tussled onto the banks.

This reminder strongly reflected some writing I had done the previous week.

The committee explored the River metaphor more fully, and I became aware of the helpfulness of being tethered. I sat with that felt-sense, of what it had been like for me to have been "tethered" to the monthly meeting over a three year period as I explored the concern I had, about how we convey our faith as Friends and what sustains us in our Quakerism.

I understood that night that having a committee of care-and-accountability, particularly under the care of a worshiping community, is in fact that sort of tether.* I went to bed feeling very full and enriched, both by the topics we had explored and by the spiritual hospitality that Friends provided me that night.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. Friends General Conference calls these sorts of committees anchor committees.

What is dear to me about Quakerism

What follows below is the major part of a letter I sent to a couple of Friends shortly after we saw one another at a local Quaker event.

I wrote them because they wanted to hear what I shared with a different small group. It is based on some journaling we were asked to do during the event, following which we were asked to "prepare a message" inspired by our writing. --Liz
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What is dear to me about Quakerism

When we gather for worship, the living Silence embraces us and we are joined to one another: we are yoked together with the Spirit.

It is such a precious time.

And when, out of the silence, someone feels moved by the Spirit... when the Living Spirit speaks through one of us while we worship, we are being offered such a gift.

I wait to hear what my fellow worshiper has to offer. Perhaps it is a message of how God has reached that person and has helped her or him be transformed, broken open, brought closer to the Spirit.

And it is in the silence that the community who hears such vocal ministry will come to bear witness to that person's transformation and healing. We will help hold the Friend prayerfully as she, or he, sinks down into the Seed and begins to share the story...

So of course I become expectant in the waiting: How is God speaking to me, to us, through this person? What is God calling me, or us, to do?

When I hear of someone's experience of how God has been speaking to him or her, of being broken open, of wrestling to yield to God's guidance, of being transformed; when I hear how God has spoken so deeply to that person that her or his life is changed, then I myself am somehow also changed, at a deep and wordless level.

It is as if I am being made ready for God to open me, too.

Maybe not immediately, maybe not the next day, but at some point.

When that time comes, I know that I will be called upon to speak out of the living Silence, to share how it is that God has worked on my soul, has broken me open, and has helped me be transformed.

And when that time comes, not only do I know that the gathered body will bear witness to my words during worship, but I also know that I will be held tenderly by God.

Blessings,
Liz

On being an agent of God

This is a short piece I wrote during a local Quaker event where we were given just a few minutes to journal about any part of our Quakerism. --Liz

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The Power of God--the Loving Principle and Inward Teacher--lives and flows through me. It is a living current and I may step into it and follow its direction, or I may resist or struggle against it, or I may remove myself from it and watch it go by, at least for a time.

But when I am in that Stream, when I add my energy to the Great Current, I feel alive, ready, engaged, and attentive--able to risk in ways I hadn't before, and able to see how God is leading me--sometimes gently and sometimes insistently--into a measure greater than who I thought I was.

I am called into More--more of who I am, more fullness of Life, more depth of Love, more willingness to be an agent of the Living Loving God.

How God reaches us

Shortly after I finished reading Marty Grundy's pamphlet Early Friends & Ministry, I considered more fully the purifying sear of what early Friends sometimes called the refiner's fire. Marty touched on how this quality of the Light helps us understand how we block God's presence in our lives and what blocks us from opening to receive God's love.

So it is that when we pass through the refiner's fire, we are made to become more truly ourselves and what God intended us to be. We become more ready to live up to our measure of the Light we have been given.

In a Meeting for Worship shortly after I finished reading Marty's pamphlet, I also began to consider the phrase "that of God in everyone." I found myself reflecting on some of the writings of Margaret Fell, as shared by Michael Birkel in his Pendle Hill Pamphlet The Messenger That Goes Before.*

Margaret Fell writes beautifully about "that of God" while making it clear that what each of us has inwardly that IS of God--our measure of the Light--is not identical from person to person.

And because of that, God must reach each of us through different means.

As I sat with that statement, I found myself thinking of how the key to my front door does not turn the lock to my backdoor, yet the doors belong to the same house. If my neighbor and I own the same make and model of car, the ignition key to my car does not start the ignition to the car my neighbor drives.

All mechanical keys are similar to one another, yet each one opens--or answers to--only one lock.

Once we ourselves understand both the refinement process and that "that of God" is unique in each of us, then we ourselves can practice the discipline of answering that of God in one another--not necessarily by being "identically kind" to one another but by striving to know how to interact with our brothers and sisters, so their own blocks to God's love and guidance might be cleared away; so that their lock may be opened and God may find a way into their hearts.

Blessings,
Liz

*There are other, more comprehensive books dedicated to the writings of Margaret Fell.