A change in plans

I have had an idea or two for some additional blog posts, but those will have to wait:

I am headed to my folks' place on the east coast, where my mother has been caught between caring for my dad who has a bad case of sciatica (and is not the most compliant patient) and caring for my 101-year-old grandmother (well, she turns 101 in just over two weeks). Grandma was hospitalized for a week recently, with pneumonia and gastritis but--amazingly--is back home now (Baltimore area).

The three of us siblings (southern Oregon, Boston, and me in the Middle) have had one conference call to sort out a plan of action, since we each half-expect the burden of support to fall on us alone: my older brother, for being the oldest; my other brother, for living the closest; and me, for being the daughter.

So this weekend, for a few days, it's my turn. And based on the report of my Boston brother who was with our folks this past week, it's unlikely that there'll be any real down time to speak of.

Yeap, I'm definitely Grown Up now. Time to start providing care to those who long ago provided care for me.

Blessings,
Liz

UPDATE, Tenth Month 2006. My grandmother is out of the hospital but clearly is not the same woman she was when she was, say, 95. My mom's stress has shifted from caring for my grandmother to continuing to care for my dad, who is still in some discomfort and has not been able to walk without a walker. My two brothers and I are considering setting up a family meeting, when all of us can gather face to face and share our concerns, hopes, and observations with one another. All in all, I'm feeling less stressed and I'm getting back to the other parts of my life.

When Quakers meet Mennonites

Over the weekend on Saturday, I awoke before dawn, ignored the cat, got dressed, and quietly left the house to head to the retreat center where I would meet a group of Mennonites. The pastor had asked me to speak with them for twenty minutes about the Quaker model of decision-making prior to the group's delving into larger questions that they themselves face.

Here's what I feel good about:

Releasing myself, at first, from the idea of having only twenty minutes to present, and instead letting myself write notes at several different times to see what arose, and then holding all of those scratch papers prayerfully and asking for Help to know what to lift up.

The handout I pulled together, which included a few quotes about the grounding of Quaker business practice, a very short glossary, a distinction between secular and Quaker process (see Michael Birkel's Silence and Witness, pp. 68-69), and a chart-matrix that describes how degrees of disunity and unity are articulated by individuals, expressed by the corporate body, and reflected by the clerk.

My asking to be invited to "speak out of the silence," so that I could have one last chance to quiet myself and pray that I might be faithful.

Yielding to a strong prompt I had felt, to caution the group against simply transplanting into their Mennonite tradition the Quaker practice of a God-centered, unity-seeking decision-making process.

This last point caught me off-guard, since I wasn't sure if this was an item I should lift up... but there it was, coming out of my mouth. I saw a few head-nods among the group, including from the pastors, so I take that as a good sign.

I had already described the theological foundation of our business practice, that there is one Light that can be known directly by each of us, and therefore we, as Friends, seek and listen for God together. But I had a feeling that there was more to the Mennonite tradition that could inform their own move away from a Roberts Rules of Order voting model, and I wanted to encourage them to learn about their own history and practice.

Later I would find out that this particular group of Mennonites, at least, has many members who hail from different faith traditions and that the Mennonites historically were "highly schismatic." ...Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Here's what I don't feel so good about:

I didn't have anyone travel with me as a spiritual support person. Those who I would typically call on were either dealing with the death of a parent or were out of town. Plus, I was reluctant to ask for someone to get up early on a Saturday, drive more than an hour to the retreat site for that short of a presentation, and then drive back.

I underestimated how intensely focused I would be, which left me exhausted as a result. I also didn't know until I was at the retreat that I was expected to listen to some small-group reports and identify what might be "next steps" for this particular Mennonite congregation, in terms of their moving away from a conventional voting model. The listening that was asked of me was "acute," meaning I felt tapped by the Spirit in a way that required of me an intense level of focusing to which I am not typically accustomed.

All that said, would I do it again? Absolutely!

I felt well-used and appreciated; I felt like I was faithful.

Later this week, one of the pastors and I will get together to reflect on the experience. By that time, he will have heard a bit from the congregation about their own take on how things went.

The interesting thing is, there are now four of us from the worship group who have direct connections to this particular Mennonite congregation: two of us have done presentations with them; and two others (a couple) had worshiped there for about a year before discovering the worship group. (They happened to have been at the retreat as well, given their earlier commitment to attend.)

Not to mention that where the worship group meets and where the Mennonite's church building is are within blocks of each other. ...I wonder what else God may have in store for all of us...

Blessings,
Liz

20 minutes, 60 Mennonites

A week or so ago, the pastor of a local Mennonite church asked if I would provide a short presentation to the congregation on how Quakers conduct business. Specifically, I've been asked "to speak to the questions of history, uniqueness, and benefits" of that practice.

And to do so in about twenty minutes.

I thought I'd survey the Quakersphere to get a sense if I'm even on the right track:

Given twenty minutes, what one, two, or three pieces of the Quaker decision-making process would you talk about?

Who knows--maybe we'll hit on a sense of the cyber-meeting in response!

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. You should see the handout I'm putting together...

Something to push against

Over at The Quaking Harlot there is a post that makes a brief reference to the blogger's concern of being told how to blog, how to be a proper Quaker, how to be "QC" (as opposed to PC).

I struggle not to take some of what is written there, and within the comments, personally. You see, I was one of the bloggers who engaged in the possibility of a blogging Faith & Practice. And my most recent post describes what I have experienced as a form of Quaker blog etiquette, especially among some early Quaker bloggers who seemed to appreciate each other's care in writing.

I don't know if the Quaking Harlot was directing a comment at me, but I do see this as an opportunity to share a bit about my choice to engage in the Q-blogosphere in the way I have been, to make explicit some of my process in order to reduce readers' guesswork about why I write some of what I do.

Here's my theory:

Quakers need something to push against.

We're not always so disciplined about entrusting our committees to thresh an idea and to bring back to the meeting a thoroughly seasoned proposal. We'll pick it apart, question why X was explored but not Y, like the idea of carpet rather than linoleum but prefer blue over green.

But let the proposal season for a month and Friends start to see the care and creativity that went into it. And one more month of seasoning allows the initial resistance to melt away. As if Friends simply needed permission to say No before they could yield to say Yes or even Maybe.

So it is that some of my posts are launched as trial balloons. After all, an individual does not a committee make. And if a post gives a reader something to push against, to hone her or his own thinking, then some good has come out of it after all.

Blogging Faith & Practice

When the idea was broached for a blogging F&P, I was skeptical at first, I admit. But I've been skeptical about other suggestions, including the use of the term convergent and that turned out alright...

The way that the blogging F&P was "turning out," well, I found I had something to say, so I said it. Not right away, and not frequently. In that way, I feel like I was being a part of someone's clearness committee. The committee doesn't cast a vote and neither does it dismiss the Friend's idea right away. The committee listens. It works to help the Friend understand how God is leading her or him, and the committee helps the Friend test the leading itself:

Does the leading persist?

Is the Friend's own learning increased somehow?

Does the leading bear fruit, such as patience, lovingkindness, self-control?

As time goes by, does the Friend have an increased "felt-sense" that she or he is well led?

Is the leading congruent with Quaker practice? with Scripture?

And then there is the concept of living into the experiment, to see how direct experience of the thing might indicate the rightness of the leading... or not.

I would say, from my experience, that the concept of an online Faith & Practice is not right for this time, this cyber-place, this current set of bloggers.

But I'm not sure it will never be right, either.

No right way to write a Q-blog

There is no precise, singular way to be a Quaker, though there are practices and processes that are intended to help us discover how to live into the measure of Light we've been given, and how to come together as a community to engage in worship and to tend to business.

It's also clear to me that there is no precise, singular way to write or maintain a Quaker blog. But I personally don't believe that we Quaker bloggers are doing something completely unrelated to one another, that we use completely disconnected or independent practices.

In fact, I know my own practice of writing posts and submitting comments is an extension of what I understood, assumed, or interpreted that the original Q-bloggers were doing--even if I couldn't know if any blogger was engaging in careful discernment or in stream-of-consciousness writing.

So I wrote about the etiquette that seemed to go into the Quaker blogs that kept drawing me back to them, week after week; the comments that got me thinking and seemed to advance the conversation.

Was it my place to write such a post? Maybe not; maybe it was (or is) too individualistic of me to put my thoughts out there.

(BTW, I had considered not publishing that post for that very reason: there had been no online "committee" to thresh such a thing... but that gets back to the whole online F&P topic...)

But I recognize now, days later and with my own finger pointing back at me after reading the post at The Quaking Harlot, that I had also written the post to see how or if others might push against it:

Was I way off the mark?

Would what I wrote resonate with others bloggers?

Would another blogger take a kernel of what was there and turn that kernel into something of significance for the rest of us to read?

Radical community

If we see ourselves as separate from one another, with no interconnection between us, then I agree with what Quaking Harlot writes, that the cyber-culture of Quaker blogs will more and more "resemble the current status-quo of Quakerism" (and I assume it's Liberal Quakerism to which QH refers).

But if we see ourselves as interconnected despite the cyber-distance that separates us; if we allow for the possibility that we may be opened and transformed by the Spirit of God that speaks through our blogposts, then the self-same cyber-culture of Quaker blogs can more and more resemble the radical covenant community that God yearns for and that some of us are working to restore.

Blessings,
Liz