Where I've been, what I've heard

This past weekend, 10-12 Third Month, I was in the Cincinnati area for a retreat sponsored by FGC's Traveling Ministries Program. Friends who travel in the ministry, or who have emerging gifts of ministry, were invited to attend and to bring along either a Friend from their ongoing support committee (FGC calls them "anchor committees") or from the meeting's Ministry & Counsel Committee.

I was taken aback and made low to have received an invitation, since I do not yet have a travel minute from the meeting, but the committee that has been working with me for clearness was very encouraging--and insistent--about my being at the retreat.

I need more time to consider what I may feel prompted to share about what happened at the retreat, other than this:

While there, word came to one Friend, and then another, and another, about the discovery of Tom Fox's body. It was around 10:00 p.m. on Friday night when those first few Friends received word, and many Friends who had turned in early after a day of travel were awoken so they would hear it, Friend to Friend.

The news of hearing about Tom Fox might be for me one of those moments that is sealed in time, like where you were when the space shuttle Challenger blew up, or when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, or if you are older, when Kennedy was shot.

Five minutes prior to hearing about Tom Fox, I had received a phone call from my partner:

She was in the emergency room with possible appendicitis.

So it was that while 50 other Friends were integrating the news about a body in Baghdad, I was integrating the news that my beloved was a few hundred miles away in a hospital bed.

I was able to tell a few Friends my own news, since some where there who know both of us. One Friend, already heavy-hearted with the CPT news, dropped her backpack and threw her arms around me in genuine concern when she heard. I was moved deeply that someone's heart had had enough space to carry my news, too.

As the minutes ticked on for me on Friday night, I felt God's Grace alight in my heart. I was told I could rest easy, stay put, and get some sleep. I wondered how I could possibly sleep, but God made it so. I was awoken in the middle of the night by a follow-up call, that my partner was admitted; that there'd be more tests; that someone was with her; that everyone felt I should stay where I was.

The next morning, I was told that my partner's counts were going down... and that our very own doctor was doing rounds at that hospital that particular day! Blessed indeed. I was also told that it was unlikely that surgery would be needed, and if my partner weren't discharged by the end of the day, she'd probably be discharged on Sunday.

In-between my getting a few hours of solid sleep on Friday night and my getting an optimistic update on Saturday morning, the participants in the retreat gathered for a scheduled meeting for worship. The retreat planners were aware that not everyone would have heard the news from the night before, and as we settled into the early stillness of the day, one of the planners arose and read the letter that is posted on the CPT website about grieving Tom Fox.

We fell into an impromptu sort of Meeting for Worship for Memorial, and we were also reminded by the planners that our work is to be faithful to how we are called, to live into the space between the feelings around Tom Fox's death and the work that God calls us to bring out into the world.

As the weekend went on, we shifted from sharing our grief and shock to sharing what it means to be doing the work we are doing, be it as a Friend with a spiritual concern or as a Friend providing care and nurture to such a Friend.

I also learned definitively that no surgery would be needed for my partner, despite the diagnosis of "slight appendicitis." More than a few of us back home and at the retreat chuckled over that: Is that like being a little bit pregnant?

On First Day after extended worship and lunch, we all made our way to the airport or otherwise hit the road for the long trips home. I was scheduled to fly out the next day--I like having a bit slower pace for traveling to events like this--but I heard reports of a major snowstorm brewing for Minnesota. I had the sense that I'd be better off riding a small plane into the beginning of a storm on Sunday night rather than riding a bigger plane into the tail-end of a storm on Monday morning.

My discernment paid off. The airport was closed on Monday, but I was already safe and warm--and with my partner, appendix and all!--on Sunday night.

Blessings,
Liz

Quaker preservatives?

In recent days, I've begun wondering what the difference is between preserving a thing and conserving a thing. Why do some Friends talk about "conserving Quaker tradition" but few Friends talk about "preserving" it?

I think of jams and preserves all jarred up on grocery store shelves in glass containers; and I thnk of someone who conserves energy by turning off unnecessary lights, biking instead of driving, or following the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle).

Maybe the first is an outward product, wonderful as it is, just sitting there waiting for a consumer, waiting for someone to discover its delight. Maybe the second is more of an inward lifestyle and attitude, something that others can observe and be influenced by; it is about keeping a thing alive and accessible.

Here are a few definitions, from Dictionary.com:

PRESERVE
To maintain in safety from injury, peril, or harm; protect.
To keep in perfect or unaltered condition; maintain unchanged.
To keep or maintain intact.
To prepare (food) for future use, as by canning or salting.
To prevent (organic bodies) from decaying or spoiling.

CONSERVE
To protect from loss or harm; preserve.
To use carefully or sparingly, avoiding waste.
To keep (a quantity) constant through physical or chemical reactions or evolutionary changes.

The two concepts are similar, as evidenced by the first definition of each, but in my thinking, I find I am making a few distinctions as related to Quakerism:

1. PRESERVATIVE QUAKERISM, hypothetically speaking: A Quaker set of disciplines, traditions, and beliefs that are captured, suspended, isolated, or practiced in such a way so as to prevent change in the way the faith is praticed or experienced.

I think of the Shakers. After all, the Shakers have a historical connection to Friends. Were they too committed to preserve their way of life, rather than working and practicing to conserve it?

2. CONSERVATIVE QUAKERISM: A Quaker set of disciplines, traditions, and beliefs that are adaptable as circumstances change and as leadings emerge; that promote mindfulness and disciplined action of how the faith is to be integrated, practiced, or, if deemed necessary, discarded.

While there is a genuine branch of Conservative Friends, can't the secular concept of conservation be applied to any branch of Friends or to individual meetings...?

It seems to me that a preservative form of Quakerism may allow us to study and replicate it, but it may die because of its rigidity ("keep in perfect or unaltered condition").

But a conservative form of Quakerism may live on, because the intention is not to preserve it unchanged until the end of time. Ours is to open ourselves to new Light in such a way that we ourselves are changed, that we can be responsive to the events of our day, and that Quakerism itself is not lost--To keep [it] constant through... evolutionary changes."

Blessings,
Liz

Posters, themes, and historyof FGC's annual Gathering

Over at the Quaker Ranter, Martin writes about, and I comment on, the opportunity for intervisitation at FGC's Gathering.

Within my comment to that post, I reference a page on FGC's website that has a collection of posters from 30 or so of the 40+ years of when the Gathering was held annually. The themes over the years (1970-2001) are like genetic traces of the heritage and Quaker family from which we come:

1970 - not a theme, but a quotation is lifted up: "You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?"

1980 - "Here Am I! Send Me."

1990 - "A Time to Mend"

2000 - "Deep Roots: New Growth"

2005 - "Weaving the Blessed Tapestry"

2006 - "Swimming in Living Waters"

Some of these themes over the decades are nice, but only a few are distinctively Quaker. And though it's likely I'll be on the 2007 Gathering Committee for River Falls, it's unlikely that I will be called to labor with and bend an entire committee to the idea of selecting a distinctively Quaker theme. (I pray I am not so called. Oy, the pain I and the committee would have to endure!)

But the other jewel that is hidden in this part of FGC's website is the history of the Gathering, how it moved from being a group of separate conferences, sometimes held concurrently (leading to the formation of Friends General Conference), to biannual conferences held at the same site every two years for decades, to its current form of annual Gatherings.

Yum! Every now and then, I want to call on Friends to donate their posters from the missing years for this collection and seek to have the collection (and the webpage) updated... (A task for a certain blogger who works at FGC, perhaps?)

And every now and then I get the nudge to look through these lists and images, and I begin to understand how it is that liberal Friends are where we are today in the Quaker continuum.

Blessings,
Liz

UPDATE, 30 Third Month 2006: In the comments is now a list of all the Gathering themes and locations between 1975-2005, in case anyone is interested.

Elizabeth Watson has passed away

Friends,

Last Friday, February 24, 2006, word reached me that long-time Friend Elizabeth Watson had passed away. Her health had been declining over the past year.

I had been waiting to share this news, in part hoping to have a link to an obituary, but I have not come across one.*

Not finding an obituary is a bit unsettling for me, for I'm sure it would be quite extensive, given her prominence among Friends, her many writings on Quaker universalism and other topics (a search at QuakerBooks of FGC turns up a few titles), her curatorship at Walt Whitman's birthplace (1973-1977), being a long-time ally to the LGBTQ community, etc.

Blessings,
Liz

*UPDATE: The Minneapolis Star Tribune printed Elizabeth's obituary after all, but I don't know how long the link will be active. [It's not any longer.]