Epistle from a new committee in FGC

In recent months and during 2010, Friends General Conference has overhauled its committee structure and trimmed its gifted staff, feeling its own economic crunch. The epistle below is from one subcommittee of the new Committee for Nurturing Ministries, and it addresses how earlier initiatives are being addressed within FGC's new structure.

In addition to the epistle, at the bottom of this post, I have included links to just a sampling of related articles. --Liz

First Month 2011

To Friends Everywhere:

After months of wondering and praying, the new Transforming Subcommittee of the Committee for Nurturing Ministries has had two opportunities to meet—once face-to-face at [FGC's] Central Committee in New Windsor, Maryland 10th Month 2010 and again just this past month by teleconference. We want to let Friends know that we are under the weight of our work and excited for what lies ahead.

When Friends General Conference (FGC) undertook reorganization of our committees last year, there was much concern from Friends that the important work of many of our committees might disappear in the transition. Friends of Color and young Friends and young adult Friends who had been so hopeful with the establishment of the Committee for Ministry on Racism* and the Youth Ministries Committee* feared that perhaps FGC was creating a way to slide out of the commitments we had made to eradicating racism in the Religious Society of Friends and to creating the radical transformation needed to make meaningful space for younger Friends in the structures of our Society.

We are clear that the same Spirit which led to the formation of these committees is alive and well among us today. We are clear that the work will go on. We wanted to take this opportunity to let you know about the work in which we are engaged currently and the road ahead as we see it at this time.

First, we have heard from some Friends that the name of our group does not speak to them. Although the name may not lift up the groups we serve, it does acknowledge the nature of the work before us. We are clear that transformation is required if we are to become a community of seekers who are led by Spirit and who reflect the richness of the tapestry of our human family. At Central Committee several years ago, some of you may have heard about the need for a paradigm shift—for change at the deepest level if we are to develop intergenerational community successfully. Some of you may have heard about the profound change in assumptions required to make our meetings hospitable for People of Color. This transformational work—work which opens us to enact our belief that the Spirit speaks through each and any of us as Spirit chooses—is the work being undertaken by the Transforming Subcommittee of the Committee for Nurture Ministries. And, it is transformational work.

We know that for our society to come to reflect the blessed diversity of God’s creation will require each of us to open ourselves to the workings of the Spirit— We know that making our meetings hospitable places for People of Color and for youth enhances the fabric of the meeting and deepens our shared faith journey and we are engaged in seeking and developing those tools which will help us each move successfully on that journey to transform ourselves and our meetings.

Let us share with you some of the specifics of the work which is under way.

”Build It”: The project to create tools for Monthly Meetings to build more meaningful intergenerational community begun by the Youth Ministries Committee in response to articulated need in our meetings is continuing under the stewardship of a working group of the Transforming Subcommittee. We expect that the tools will be available for Friends by mid-year.

Templates, workshop materials, facilitators and facilitation training: Meetings who wish to understand the history of the relationship between Friends and People of Color in this country need support; using some of the understanding which has come from how we have worked effectively with intergenerational concerns, we are continuing to support this anti-racism work and to develop other programs in addition to the Fit for Freedom Facilitators already trained to carry forward this crucial initiative.

Participation of Friends in the White Privilege Conference: The 12th annual White Privilege Conference (WPC12) will take place in Bloomington, Minnesota, April 13-16, 2011. We will offer a workshop in order to share some of our work on racism and some support for Friends who choose to attend including a major discount on your registration fee. If you are interested in participation in this Conference, see the FGC website for more information.

Opportunities for Friends of Color to gather: We are continuing to plan Gatherings of Friends of Color which are so important for mutual support and expect to hold one before the end of this calendar year.

The People of Color Center at the Gathering: We continue to support the Center which provides important opportunities for Friends of Color and their family members and allies to come together, rest, share and plan for the future.

Opportunities for young People of Color at the Gathering: We intend to build on our initial attempts last year to provide particularly welcoming space for Youth of Color at the Gathering and to explore the ways in which we may address their particular needs, a project which seems entirely suitable for this new committee with its amalgamated portfolio to serve Youth and Persons of Color.

Support for Cross-branch inter-visitation: We continue to seek ways to support those Young Adults who are so committed to this work. We are exploring and planning new ways to advance this important undertaking.

The possibility for collaboration: We continue to explore the possibilities for ways we could join with the fledgling Quaker Volunteer Services group to help “incubate” this fledgling organization for the benefit of Friends and those communities of need they would serve.

You can find out about activities which relate to our Programs: Ministry on Racism or Youth Ministry just as before by finding these programs listed on the FGC website. As we engage in ongoing service to Youth and People of Color in the Religious Society of Friends we will have opportunities for Friends and seekers to join in the work in new ways. If you are interested in participating in this transformational work, please contact us through the website.(fgcquaker.org).

With divine guidance, we will continue to engage the need to “Transform our awareness so that our corporate and individual attitudes and actions fully value and encompass the blessed diversity of our human family.” (Goal 4, Friends General Conference Statement of Purpose and Goals 2009). We envision, and will continue to work toward the blessed community—where neither age nor color are criteria on which people are judged and where seekers can find welcome and nurture to grow in the Spirit no matter their race or their age. This is the transformation FGC seeks and to which we are dedicated. We ask that you join your prayers with ours, Friends, as we continue on this journey.

Jean-Marie P. Barch, clerk, Transforming Subcommittee (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting)

Beckey Phipps, clerk, Committee for Nurturing Ministries (New England Yearly Meeting)

Vanessa Julye, Ministry Coordinator, Ministry on Racism Program (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting)

Deborah Fisch, FGC Associate Secretary for Ministries (Iowa Yearly Meeting-Conservative)

Members of the Subcommittee: Seth Barch, (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting); Janice Domanik, (Illinois Yearly Meeting); Jaya Karsemeyer, (Canadian Yearly Meeting); Katrina McQuail, (Canadian Yearly Meeting); Miyo Moriuchi, (Baltimore Yearly Meeting); Miriam Mulsow, (South Central Yearly Meeting); Alma Sanchez-Eppler (New England Yearly Meeting)

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*These links will likely become inactive at some point...

RELATED POSTS, WEBPAGES, etc.

An article from Friends Journal on how White Quakers might work toward ending racism
An article from Quaker Life on the extent to which our Quaker meetings and Friends churches really want racial diversity
Martin Kelley's post about what young people want from their meetings
An FGC post about building intergenerational community among Friends

Spiritual accompaniment and joy from faithfulness

This is the last of a three-part series, focused on the workshop provided by Margery Post Abbott. --Liz

Accompaniment

In the afternoon of her workshop, Margery Post Abbott asked us to get into pairs and reflect together on a number of questions about spiritual accompaniment:

1. Where do I need accompaniment?
2. What is nurturing and valuable for me, even if it is difficult to hear?
3. What kinds of words or behaviors make me withdraw or reject accompaniment?
4. What makes accompanying others difficult for me? What causes me to say "I can't do this work"?

Being safe and being known

Something I thought of as we returned to the large group and shared what came up for us was that there is a tension between wanting to be safe and wanting to be known. This too is a form of taking up the Cross.

To be safe, we withdraw a bit from our community, we don't risk being vulnerable or sharing how we might be struggling with some element of Quakerism.

But by keeping silent about our inward struggle, our doubt, our spiritual loneliness, we miss opportunities for others to know us at a deeply personal level.

I'm a believer in the concept that when one of us takes a risk and shares something vulnerable, it allows others to take a similar risk, too.

Here's an example of the Cross we live into:

We love ourselves enough to protect ourselves from potential harm. And we love our worship community enough to allow ourselves to lean into the Everlasting Arms and let ourselves be loved a bit more deeply than we feared was possible.

Soon after our large group sharing, we identified a few ways we provide spiritual accompaniment for one another in our meetings:

• Spiritual friendships.
• Care committees and clearness committees.
• Care-and-accountability committees (aka anchor committees).
• Having a concern actively taken up by the meeting.
• Meeting for Worship for Healing.

Faithfulness, freedom, and joy

I think I am not spiritually mature enough to grasp the connection between the taking up the Cross and experiencing joy...

I do know that when I am faithful, especially when I have feared or dreaded giving up my own will in a situation, in the end, I experience a visceral or emotional sense of release. Sometimes it's coupled with relief--"Whew, glad that's over!"--but more often, the feeling is of a burden being lifted, and in turn, a freedom of spiritual movement.

I've heard that for some people, when that happens, there is a subsequent sense of being uplifted, of feeling joy.

We tossed around a few comments and reflections about joy and the Cross:

• "My yoke is easy and my burden, light." This might be a call to do the hard stuff joyfully. Not for the sake of suffering or for martyrdom but because we know we are doing God's bidding and we know that God loves us.
• The Cross of Love, if we can see it as this, means the transcendent power of God and joy.
• Taking up the Cross means laying down one's willfulness, and in this way, we can grow closer to God.
• If we open to Love, even in difficult moments, we may ultimately find joy.

In the end, in the closing moments of the day, I jotted down this query for myself:

What barriers to love, faithfulness, and humility have I put in front of myself or between me and God?

Am I willing to stand in the Cross and await God's direction...?

Thanks for reading me. The time with Marge was so very fruitful!

Blessings
Liz

RELATED POSTS:

My own reflection on Taking up the Cross
More reflections and other tidbits from Marge's workshop

Other tidbits and reflections from Margery Post Abbott workshop

In many ways, this post is a continuation of my previous post, about the workshop on Taking up the Cross, offered by Margery Post Abbott. I'm not sure how organized I'll make these pieces, but I believe they are worth sharing, even if rough form.

What is it to be a Friend?

This question is what Marge started us with, speaking out of the opening worship. Here is some of what she offered, to set the tone:

1. It involves an attitude of waiting and attending: This form of waiting is waiting for something to happen, as well as being ready to serve, as in waiting tables.

2. To know Christ inwardly, we need to take up the Cross and live into the Kingdom of God.

3. We seek the Truth by turning inward: By engaging in times of retirement as individuals, and by engaging in times of worship as a community.

When these three things happen, they can build a broken and tender community that will allow for the in-breaking of the Spirit.


Love... and the paradox of the Cross

Within the Cross is an intersection of horrible suffering and infinite love. Marge's companion in ministry, Ken Jacobsen, spent some time talking about Love and its relationship with the Cross:

The Cross is the consequence of taking up the way of Love.

I took this to mean that when we take up the Cross, we are tested to love one another beyond what we ever believed we would be asked to do. At one point, Ken added this:

Love may lead us into some horrible places, but that same Love will also sustain us and lift us up.

Later, the group returned to the theme of love and noted a few other things:

• The fact that we try to love brings us closer to doing just that.
• When something rises up in us to resist the Love that is offered, and because God is Love, we must be willing to lay aside our ego and instead follow God's will.
• Love is transcendent. Even death cannot stop Love's transcendent nature, and the Love of those who have passed away can reach across death's threshold and be among us.

Taking up the Cross and our relationship with God

At one point, someone raised the question, "What's the difference between having a relationship with God and taking up the Cross?" My own reflections in response to that question are these:

• There are lots of different ways to be in relationship with God. Taking up the Cross is a specific experience that we hadn't expected or, for many of us, hadn't been told about and certainly don't ask for.
• The experience of being pierced by the Light might also be connected with taking up the Cross. It's not about being shown something that we hadn't been ready to see or know before: It's more about recognizing that to deny God's call brings us more pain than being faithful to the call itself.
• When we take up the Cross, we rely more heavily on the Guide to lead us through the difficulty. It may be days, weeks, or years later before we can understand what that trial was about, but if we have carried it out in love and humility, knowing we have been faithful despite the burning pain, our relationship with God will have been deepened.

The Cross as symbol?

At one point later in the day, a Friend challenged all of us to consider that the Cross is a symbol and that "Quakers don't do symbols."

It's true that unprogrammed Friends engage in a form of worship that focuses on the stripping away of outward symbols. We don't establish alters, use incense, ring bells, or even sing hymns to prepare ourselves. Rather, we are to leave the matters of the world behind as we approach our place of worship, opening our hearts and minds to the Spirit.

The danger of having outward symbols is that a symbol and even the story around it can become an idol, and we can mistakenly begin to worship the symbol rather than the Living Presence to which that symbol points.

It's often hard for me in the moment to find the words I want to say, but reflecting on this piece brings me back to this element of Quakerism:

Quakers embody and internalize all sorts of outward symbols inwardly.

There is the element of communion, when we are gathered together in the Spirit. ...The experience of baptism, when we feel anointed and blessed by the Holy. ...And the symbol of the Light itself, which is described in detail--not to encourage idolatry of it but to help us understand how it functions as a Living and Loving Principle.


The Christian story and the Quaker tradition

During the workshop, we were reminded that even Christ wasn't an outward symbol for early Friends. They believed and experienced the Living Christ as real and immediate.

For all of our wrestling with our modern version of Quaker tradition, theology, and spirituality, I think it was Marge who made this point:

Early Friends didn't have a tradition to wrestle with! But modern Friends wrestle with what we understand to be the Quaker tradition.

Early Friends encountered the Christian story in a new way, forgoing both the established tradition and the recognized authority--the Church--of their time.

Today's Friends also wrestle with what we perceive to be authority, establishment, and tradition. We don't care for being put into boxes or identified by labels, let alone being told what to do and how to do it. Maybe it's because so many Quakers are White or because we are American or because we are primarily middle class that we have to take something that is given to us and re-make it, rejecting and casting out some elements while reshaping and even elaborating on others.

But I unite with what Ken Jacobsen stated, and I'm paraphrasing here: To retain its vitality, the Quaker tradition must be transformed into our lives.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. I hope to wind up this series of posts with a shorter one about spiritual accompaniment and the joy that comes from faithfulness.

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RELATED POSTS:

My own reflection on Taking up the Cross
Some thoughts about spiritual accompaniment and joy out of faithfulness

Reflection on Taking up the Cross

Yesterday I participated in a one-day workshop with Quaker author Margery Post Abbott. Much of the day focused on taking up the Cross and what that might mean for today's Quakers. Marge gave us lots of time to reflect and talk with one another about that concept, how we wrestle with it, and how early Friends used the phrase.

Early in the day we were asked to spend a few minutes journaling our thoughts in response to three questions:

1. What is your intellectual definition of "Taking up the Cross"?

2. What is your emotional response to it?

3. What blocks rise up when you hear that phrase?

Here's my response:

Taking up the Cross means choosing to be obedient to the will of God, to be willing to sacrifice at a time when we greatly and intensely don't wish to--either because of societal pressures/expectations, our own fear or dread, or even distaste for what God has put in our laps. In essence, as Eleanor Roosevelt has said, taking up the Cross means "To do the thing we think we cannot do."

Over time I have grown into the phrase. I have come to cherish it, as one does when coming across a faded photograph of a dear family member, around whom there are stories and happy lore. The phrase "take up the Cross" captures so much about the human condition of the "push-pull" of obedience, of wanting to be a faithful servant and fearing how doing just that might turn out. The phrase gives words to an inward condition that contemporary American society resists, denies, squelches, minimizes, ridicules, or demeans--yet it is an inward condition that, when acted upon faithfully, can bring healing, transformation, and new Light to an individual, group, community, or the world.

Of course, there are blocks that rise within me when I hear the phrase. My Jewish upbringing generates tremendous cognitive dissonance within me, since all references to Jesus, even as teacher or rabbi, were kept out of my early religious education. And who can hear the word "cross" or see it in print and not also see the body of this historical figure being crucified...? In addition, my own dread arises: When will God call me to take up the Cross again? what will that task or ministry or witness look like? Who will be there to accompany me?

To me, there are phrases among Friends that are remnants of a way of life, an attitude, a body of disciplines that are on the brink of disappearing. These remnants give us a way to look through the looking glass of time and piece together much of the rest of the pattern that was and is traditional Quakerism. At least, this has been my experience. These remnants inform how I might be in the world, if I am faithful to what the Spirit gives me.

There were lots of tidbits about the Cross that others shared.

• Taking up the Cross involves crucifying the ego and self-will.
• It is about involuntarily carrying a burden that has been placed on us.
• It is the intersection where Heaven and Earth meet.
• It requires surrender.
• The Cross is the consequence of taking up the way of Love: Love may lead us into some horrible places, but that Love will also sustain us and lift us up.
• It is an attraction that can't be ignored without having serious consequences.
• Taking up the Cross is being obedient to the power of God.
• It is to be bold in spirit and gentle in action.

Through the respectful and authentic, energetic sharing, we were drawn together, and the boundaries of our individual meetings and worship groups, the boundaries of our individual lives, began to melt away...

Marge is a gentle presence with a gift for inviting deep and tender conversation about complex subjects and hard questions that live within and are the fabric of our Quaker faith.

I hope to write a bit more about other themes we touched on during the workshop. In the meantime, I'll continue to digest what was shared and reflect on how my spirit has been refreshed by the conversation yesterday.

Blessings,
Liz

RELATED POSTS:

I wrote about other tidbits I gleaned from the workshop.
I also wrote about spiritual accompaniment and the joy that comes from being faithful.