Quaker Ministry I
QUAKER MINISTRY I
About the Author—Nancy Alexander is a member of Hartford (CT) MM & an active attender of Friends Meeting of Washington; she is a member of Ministry & Worship Committee there. Nancy’s special interest is in how religion, psychology, & politics converge to change hearts & societies. In her early career, she marketed systems & publications, & was a legislative assistant. Currently, she is a lobbyist with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). 1 part of this pamphlet was developed for Wilmington YM Peace lecture. Other parts were developed for “Anger, Conflict & Spiritual Growth” & “Why Bother with Feminist Theology” workshops.
[Introduction]—Luke 10:29-37 [“Good Samaritan” cited]. Who is my neighbor? Who do I consider a stranger? After FCNL, I broadened my “neighbor” definition to include all the world’s people. Most conflicts [at all levels], stem from we humans setting up “we/they” situations which make the “other” a stranger, someone who unacceptable as is, to be isolated & avoided. How can we transcend our habit of thinking in “we/they” terms? When the stranger is within us, & is ignored & repressed, then we can’t act from our center. If we embrace the stranger within ourselves, we gain access to stores of compassion for the strangers in our life. [I will work with the definition of neighbors and embracing strangers, and embracing the “feminine” principle]. If men & women reintegrate the “heart sense,” then someday, goals of a compassionate world may be within our grasp.
The Abbot & the Rabbi (by Scott Peck)—An old monk lived in a monastery, which had dwindled to only him & 3 other monks. They disagreed on how to find new postulants; the abbot told them to “Pray fervently...that God will show us how to make this monastery a place of light & love.” One day, feeling particularly desperate, the abbot decided to visit the rabbi & seek advice. [As they] shared a morning meal, they bemoaned the lack of interest in the spiritual life; they spent the day together. The abbot asked, “Rabbi, what can I do about my monastery? The rabbi said, “You don’t need to worry about it. One of you is the Messiah.” The abbot stumbled back to the monastery & repeated the rabbi’s answer to the other monks. They [speculated & saw] one another with new eyes. Each person thought it couldn’t possibly be himself. The abbot & the monks treated each other with a new reverence & respect. People noticed, & soon the monastery became a great center of light & love in the land.
PRACTICING COMPASSION FOR THE STRANGER IN THE WORLD—The 1st step in loving the stranger is defining one’s community in an inclusive way. Are we using a we/they view of reality, or are we using the view of a family with I/Thou relationships? Practicing compassion means overcoming our fear and separateness and being willing to give and receive from a stranger. Do we define our world community or the community of Friends in an inclusive way? The US and USSR exclude each other from their definition of world community. Their threats to use destructive weapons makes the developing nations pawns of the superpowers and strangers to each other. The question of whom Friends consider strangers is important because the Religious Society is numerically shrinking in the US. Within our meeting-community do we allow differing ideas to divide us? Whether we define the Society of Friends in an inclusive or exclusive way will determine whether we grow, spiritually as well as numerically. In the 19th century, Quaker women were deemed the spiritual equals of men, but socially and politically they were subject to a different standard, estranged from some Friends for speaking to mixed-race and mixed-gender audiences.
The 2nd step in practicing compassion is learning to separate people from problems. When we can separate people from problems, it frees us to work through problems in a healthy, non-violent way. No matter how much we differ with people, we can still affirm them as people. I’m not my problems & others aren’t the problems or conflicts I experience with them. The mind-set that [seeks to overcome a fatal flaw] & to become better educated, more skillful, better dressed, or even more spiritual is a mind-set that tries to conquer rather than experience God.
In a Washington leadership seminar, a large group of Quakers met with a major general. He was asked: “If there are 2 bulls in a china shop, does it matter which one is stronger.” The major general replied without hesitation, “Of course.” [Derision and fright was the reaction of the mostly Quaker audience]. I became aware of the negative impact of speaking to the major general rather than with him. How easy it is to see this Pentagonian as a symbol of the powers and principalities. It was we righteous Quakers against Pentagon death merchants. I want to ask: “What has shaped your choice of profession? When and how has your political philosophy undergone change? How does the Pentagon’s mission fit with Jesus’ message? What is the most effective way you think we can work together for peace? What are your professional objectives?
Learning to differentiate between positions & goals is the 3rd step in loving the stranger. As Friends we often have differences about how to walk the path of faith and works, but we share an underlying goal of being faithful to the inner light. As an FCNL lobbyist, the positions I take are usually different from positions of the majority of Congressmen & women. FCNL’s goals are that we seek: a world free of war and threat of it; a society with equity and justice for all; a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled; an earth restored. Members of Congress share the goals of Friends. We differ on how we should achieve our common goals.
[There are differing positions but the same goals between couples wanting to parent, & between parents who want to supervise their child, & the child who wants independence]. Internationally, Israel had a position of keeping the Sinai Peninsula, with an underlying goal of security. Realizing the parties’ goals, the negotiators facilitated an agreement in which Israel relinquished land for security by demilitarizing the Sinai & resuming diplomatic relations. It is evident that win/win solutions are possible when we differentiate between goals & positions.
PRACTICING COMPASSION FOR THE STRANGER WITHIN—Whether the above steps work depends on our hearts’ attitude. If we are hard-hearted, all the steps in the world won’t work. [One has to have com-passion for the stranger within before there is transformation]. [The 1st [of 3] things is that one has the courage to name one’s hopes. When we tune God in & dare to hope for & name specific things that we need to carry on, it removes an [obstacle] & enables God to move in our lives. When I have just a grain of faith, a way often opens.
The 2nd of 3 things is that one names one’s fears. Scott Peck writes: “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the taking of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear, into the future. Many of us are taught too well to practice fear. Some of our defenses are necessary; many are not. Our questions [revolve] around survival. [Fear causing] distance allows us to ignore the other as having no significance. [Fear causing clinging] offers us an excuse for never expressing or confessing our feelings of hurt and brokenness. Both men and women have a choice to practice compassion for or rejection of the stranger within.
The 3rd step is to assume responsibility for one’s hopes & fears. Not assuming responsibility leads to projection, where we attribute own emotions to someone else. When we dare to be whole, we invite greater responsibility, commitment & change. Most of us need a true community to enable us to take these compassionate steps. The false community only offers a flimsy security by becoming an “in” group which projects its fears onto an “out” group. Real community engages us in healing & transformation by its inclusiveness & compassion. Community can enable us to deal with our individual & collective strangers, & help create a more just & peaceful world. By seeking to know others, we learn to know ourselves, & thereby gain access to the inner light, our power, compassion & wisdom. A spiritual community can nurture the spirit [“love mercy, & do justice.”]
RECLAIMING THE HEART SENSOR—LOVE—The particular focus of this section is on the challenge before women and men of integrating the “heart sense” with the “head sense.” Men can be more genuinely masculine, and women more thoroughly feminine when they have integrated the “heart sense” and the “head sense.” Love and intimacy are not possible unless we integrate head, heart and soul. Our culture assigns the heart or feeling sense to women and the head or decision-making sense, to men.
Head Sense is: objective; reasonable; powerful; analytical; strong; cool, unfeeling, aggressive, productivity-oriented; initiative-taking. Heart Sense is: needy; emotional; dependent; intuitive; vulnerable; cooperative; nurturing; responsive; sensitive. Too much head sense and women are dubbed unfeminine. Too much heart and they are deemed weak, too emotional, and incapable. The concept of man as the head of the relationship and women as the heart breeds men who are alienated from their vulnerable, caring selves, while breeding women alienated from their logical, rational selves.
Men need to express caring values in the privacy of the home. Men are taught not to say “I love you,” especially to sons. Children need father love as well as mother love. Men need to recognize that they might not develop their heart unless they strive to know their vulnerable, emotional self as the stranger. The woman’s pitfall is becoming so consumed with being a heart for others that they lose touch with their own needs. They are unable to name hopes, fears, & take responsibility for them. The role of the women and the heart [is greatly] devalued in our society. Women are often taught that what is feminine is uncontrollable and mysterious and to be feared. [Attempts at role reversal for husband and wife result in labels of ]“free-loading bum” and “negligent mother.”
In addition to accepting heart sense, women are challenged to develop their head sense, exercise leadership capability, [& overcoming the view that] she has claimed power not her own. It strikes me as unfortunate [that decision-making isn’t shared], that people have so little faith in the power of prayerful joint decision-making. Many families in the traditional form don’t segregate head & heart functions, but instead contribute to the full development of both partners. The division of labor is recognized as a transitory arrangement only until the children are grown. Opportunities for the woman’s self-expression & self-development are planned for. [Sometimes home maintenance & child care responsibilities are shared] to make her independent activity possible.
WORK—Men & women need courage to practice caring values in the public realm, especially where decisions affect the planet. [When world leaders are urged to macho behavior & violence], Friends need to speak out. When the nurturing stranger within one is rejected & violence is used, one creates strangers in the world. Women are living alone, heading families, & working in the public sphere. The danger is that we will adopt macho values & lose touch with our vulnerable, caring selves. The opportunity for women is to ignore such advice & retain our heart sense while developing skills in analysis & judgment. [Largely from the woman’s role in the working world], the workplace is becoming more humanized. Woman are twice as likely as men to question technological decisions. Questioning of assumptions & applications [is necessary to avoid] great catastrophes. Men & women may be concerned about the same issues, but their specific concerns on the issue may be different.
RELIGION—If we bind together traditional religious understanding with distinctly feminist understandings, we can live more compassionate, spirit-filled lives. People won’t be strangers in a world in which women & men are whole, compassionate individuals. Feminist theology helps me name my hopes for wholeness, & my fears about parts of myself that feel lost or broken. It seems that we don’t name or take responsibility for hopes & fears because we have been made to feel inadequate & unaccepted as we are. Women as caregivers, may work harder & harder at “pumping up” others as fear of their own emptiness grows. Men as achievers may overcompensate by becoming workaholics.
[My points on theology in general and feminist theology in particular are:] traditional theology is political, strategic and exclusive on the whole; heart sense is a devalued aspect of women’s and men’s experience necessary for spiritual wholeness; feminist theology is necessary for the next step toward theology affirming the sacredness of life. 3 tasks of feminist theology are: naming the great women in religion; correct female stereotypes and symbolic misrepresentation of women; re-imaging Christianity in a more wholistic way.
[Our spiritual fore-mothers such as Mary, mother of Jesus, and Eve, and our Quaker] foremothers such as Fell, Dyer, Mott, Grimke, and Foster usually get short-shrift compared to any forefathers. Mary and Eve are misrepresented in theology. Feminine symbols are used in institutions and fields that until recently excluded women. The symbol for wisdom is a woman in a land where women are [excluded from positions requiring wise decisions]. The visions of spirituality, images of Jesus and of God which Harvard Divinity School and Women’s Research Associate Program conveyed were very different. They sometimes complemented and other times flatly contradicted one another. The images “Kingdom of God and “peaceable kingdom” need to be updated with inclusive and non-patriarchal language. In the ovumary [women’s school], there was an emphasis on the horizontal community path rather than on a lonely, ascetic vertical spiritual path.
Feminist Theology magnifies the Christianity’s central message, that when we touch the stranger, or the outcast pain in ourselves, we touch the outcast in others. We need to engage some Quaker churches and other faith communities struggling with the role of women in the church. Women and men need to work together to restore the vision of wholeness in private and public life. Surely a deepened faith will empower us to know God in a caring and personal way and build communities that welcome and nurture the stranger.
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87. A shelter from compassion (by Ruth E. Durr; 1956)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR—Ruth Durr is a native of Philadelphia. She studied architecture at the University of PA. She is a member of Abington MM of the Society of Friends & has been active in the Young Friends Movement. Ruth spent two terms at Pendle Hill. This essay was read as a Term Paper at Pendle Hill.
[Madwoman on Chestnut]—A madwoman has no reason to be on Chestnut Street. But there she was, [amidst the hustle & bustle of] the noon rush hour, shuffling dreamily along in her little aura of obliviousness to the chaotic tempo all about her. Her hair jutted out [in all directions] under the frayed brim of a filthy hat. She was an incongruous assortment of fashions, one black & one white tennis shoe tied on with twine. She carried a bulging shopping-bag, & clutched a bundle of yellowed newspapers. [She was singing a hymn], bawling in a strident voice that still suggested a trace of sweetness. I forgot about the errand I was on and paused in a doorway. Most of the passersby were too engrossed in their own pursuits even to notice the madwoman.
A few noticed & averted their eyes. They had learned long ago that it isn’t nice to stare at exceptional people. Young stenographers at first sauntered glamorously, then broke ranks, whispered, tittered, & giggled among themselves. A half-dozen office boys burst into hoarse guffaws & hootings. Some had faces veiled with pity, who lowered their eyes & shook their heads in puzzled sadness. Several mink-clad matrons exchanged disapproving glances, saying: “Really!! Something should be done about this sort of spectacle.” A small child demanded to know “what’s the matter with that funny lady?” A shabby old woman snorted & sneered with cold hostility.
I slipped back into the stream of pedestrians & moved pensively on the inner side. I wasn’t shocked. Strangest of all, I felt no pity for the madwoman; the time to pity her had passed. She had been hurt far beyond endurance & had bought imperviousness to further hurt. She was on the other side of fear now, free even from fear of madness. Men go mad because it is the only way they can escape their humanity & still remain alive. Perhaps her madness was saner than the sanity of those who recoiled from her disquieting appearance. Perhaps, while they had merely sight & senses, she had visions so celestial to tempt all men to madness, a world of unfettered fantasies, of buoyant dreams lifting her to the very feet of God. She may indeed have been with God in paradise.
There was no cause to judge [the confused, chained ones around her], that they shrank from the huge challenge she laid upon them. I saw that they cared too much and could not bear to know they cared. [In caring], they would have been engulfed in a sense of impotence and guilt, useless both to themselves and to her. Their only sin lay in a pathetic lack of integrity and disloyalty to higher instincts.
Once having opened gates on compassion, they would be in danger of being led further out of themselves & into the madwoman than they could let themselves be. [They might be stranded & perish] in an unexplored Antarctic of the spirit. They might have glimpsed God’s face, which frail mortality couldn’t survive. Better never to unlock those gates. Everyone has built themselves shelter from compassion, a moated castle of the Self, drawn up against besieging claims of sorrows not their own. Compassion is internal, no external armor can silence it.
Refuge from Humankind—Each of us according to skills & materials at hand fashions ones own little fortified retreat. As individual, finite creatures we are bound to virtually complete engrossment in personal & family interests. For those whose lives merely touch it tangentially we have only the crumbs that fall from the table. The size of the world’s sorrow is far too vast. The one realistic choice is to pass by in dispassionate silence.
We are so unschooled in the arts of human kindness that we have little to say or do when confronted by a distressed soul. Through ignorance we are cruel to one another. It is probably better that we evade any demand upon us to be consoling, since we do it so inexpertly. But it is only by [the difficult] breaking through mutual barriers & learning to see others as they see themselves that we can establish a true ground for compassion.
[Instead], we can throw ourselves zealously into large, vague causes that bear the clear label of magnaniity but never bring us too close to the hurt that is starkly written in one man’s eyes. [Involvement in such a cause] is the most deceptive because it works not by [dismissing the] need to feel compassion, but by assuring us that we do feel compassion. Then there is the plea-of-innocence shelter. “I had nothing to do with driving the old woman out of her mind. I have no power to help her.” And there is the flight into fantasy. What better escape can there be than to people a little world of dream-folk, where we can lavish sympathy without restraint.
The turtle-shell refuge is perennially popular because it is portable and ready for occupancy at a moment’s notice. The upper shell grows from the belief that our own troubles are very heavy, that the world is hostile toward us. The lower shell is formed of the little devices we have evolved for being nice to ourselves to atone for the shabby way that life has treated us. The house of mirrors reflects back the attitude of the crowd around us. No more is required of us than is standard for “other people.”
For the pious the shelter may take the form of a temple, and rituals in the cult of non-compassion. Its devotees view the sufferings of others as a well-merited consequence of their transgressions. The methodical minded will categorize people into those with whom we sympathize, and those with whom we do not. The deciding criteria are those facets of their nature over which they have little or no control. The storm-cellar brand of refuge is the lowliest of them all; [it treats life as a race and everyone as a competitor; it would be foolish to stop and help anyone]. There is a secret wicked delight that can be drawn from the failures and miseries of other people. Their appearance of failure gives us the appearance of success.
Although a soul may crumble under the burden of the loss of something immeasurably precious, it is out of triumph over this sorrow that the sublimity and greatness of the human spirit have sprung; never having had anything that precious to lose brings the decay of bitterness and frustration, and a numbed and crippled being. People can sympathize with the grief-stricken; but they can only despise and reject those who never possessed anything precious to lose. Such people are the poor in spirit whom only Christ has blest.
The very fortifications shielding us from the world’s tears will doom us in our turn to weep alone. A shelter from compassion [is] a barricade from God. If any man would learn God’s name, let him join in kinship of God’s concern, [from the universe to] the plight of a lonely man & a fallen sparrow. The God within us is compassion. More precious to God’s heart than wine in a jeweled chalice is a tear in secret shed for another creature’s sorrow.
About the Author—Elizabeth O'Sullivan offered a version of this work as the daily Bible at the Iowa YM (Conservative) yearly sessions in 2017. She writes a column about sustainable farming for her local paper and essays about domestic and sexual violence for the Hope Center (Faribault, MN) blog. Elizabeth farms and teaches group fitness classes. She is pursuing a Mdiv at UTS Twin Cities.
[Introduction]—Crossing the bridges that keep us apart from one another & from God can be a transcendent experience. On that bridge's other side, our lives won't be the same. Quakers have always been transcending barriers. Often the crossing-over work falls short; disconnection & injustice remains. We keep circling back to the same work as if we can't leave it alone. In the rich & winding tales of Scripture, I read about so many people who were called to cross boundaries between themselves & God or between those who were kept apart by society. Holding stories with all their power & ambiguity can show us how to be faithful in our own lives.
I will focus on the bridges built by: the Israelites led through the desert by Moses; Jonah's story; Isaiah's call; the woman with the [blood hemorhage's] healing. I delight in the chaotic abundance I find, & I recognize in it many parts of life where the Holy Spirit is at work. Every story, every insight that is worth anything draws us deeper into God's love. Feeling love & compassion stirring in my heart as I read the Bible or seek prayer guidance is confirmation of learning & acting in accord with the Holy Spirit. Something that doesn't open to us with love is a mystery to be revealed later.
The Israelites and the Promised Land—To enter the Promised Land, Israel's ancient people had to cross emotional and spiritual bridges as well as the River Jordan. It brought devastating complexity because it involved liberation & genocide. It was used by European Americans to take Native American Land, and by Martin Luther King to fuel the fight against white supremacy. The Hebrews wandered in the desert for 40 years after having been slaves in Egypt for several hundred years. God performed a series of miracles so the nation didn't starve or die of thirst. In practical terms, they lived in a marginal environment, always at the brink of disaster.
A vision had come to their common ancestor Abraham over 400 years ago from God asking him to go. They believed God's promise that they would be given the land Abraham had talked about & they were wandering in a desert just across a river from that very land. Carrying the hopes of their people, leaders left the arid land & entered as scouts. They carried grapes, pomegranates & figs on poles home to show how delicious that land might be. The scouts were afraid though. "The who live there are fierce, with large towns that are well fortified ... We felt like mere grasshoppers, so we must have seemed to them" (Numbers 13: 28,33). Every day, for generation upon generation, they were given the message they were defeated, and that message became part of how they thought the world would see them. The strong and wounded leaders never made it to the Promised Land; they died while their nation was still wandering in the desert. None who doubted would see the Promised Land.
I don't see failing to see the Promised Land as a an angry God's curse. It is an exploration of what it means to be human; the experience of these ancient people, [especially their scouts], is still reenacted daily with modern people who have survived trauma. Trauma can hold great power for a lifetime, preventing us from entering our yearned-for Promised Lands, even after the menacing physical threat has eased. How many of us stumble in important relationships because of unhealed wounds? How many of us don't love with Christ's passion, because we are afraid of being vulnerable? How many of us struggle with addictions meant to manage anxiety or pain? How many of us have felt too beaten down to pursue God's gift that was entrusted to us? There is still a chance for us to cross that bridge into a Promised Land that will satisfy us with its sweetness.
The next generation of Israelites that approached the Holy Land had their lives defined by wandering through the desert instead of enduring slavery. People already lived in the Promised Land, and Israelites massacred them because they believed and felt entitled to the land and [called by God] to do this. [It was standard procedure]. In that time and place. The same legacy of trauma and violence continues in modern Israel through the brutal struggles for the control of land the oppression of Palestinians. The dominant US culture has barely begun to work through the genocide that undergirds everything which has happened on the land. What looks health disparities and disproportionate poverty today are new manifestations of the older massacres and thefts. How do we act in the wake of this old and ongoing injustice? Where do we find the courage to act?
[Martin Luther King used the story to opposite] effect. He said: "I want you to know tonight; we as a people, will get to the Promised Land. I'm happy tonight. ... I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." For him the Promised Land was justice & ending oppression. He said: "It is no longer a choice between violence or nonviolence in this world; it is nonviolence or nonexistence." What would happen to others if we do nothing? [NOT "What will happen to us if we act?] "When people get caught up with what is right ... & sacrifice for it, there is no stopping ...short of victory." God's children are heirs of great power that was meant to be used to build bridges which make God's reign & justice more manifest here on earth.
The Call of Isaiah—This story illustrates what many Friends seek when we go to meeting for worship: if we make ourselves still & available to God, then the Holy Spirit will find us & fill us. It will create a bridge that crosses all worldly obstacles, & it will transform us. Isaiah experienced God in a visceral & earth-shaking manner. When our God of Love has built a bridge to us, we are part of this holy & ancient story. Isaiah probably fears death like other people of his time, & was despairing & overwhelmed by his vision of God in God's temple.
Today's experience of intimacy with the Spirit can lay us low. Crossing a bridge over what separates us from the Divine, we become aware of frailty, impermanence, and "fundamental" beliefs or connections [that no longer apply]. An experience like Isaiah's brings challenges for modern people because we feel like we are going crazy. [Separating and discerning] mystical experience from mental illness [requires] a deep understanding of both mental illness & mystical experiences, which is a rare combination.
Isaiah knew that something amazing surrounded him and that he had a relationship to that glory. He could have cowered in terror and said nothing, but he added his voice to the chorus of angels, which opened the door to his receiving a gift from God. The angel touched his lips with a live altar coal and his "corruption is removed and sin pardoned." [The coal brings to mind the refiner's furnace fire, which] is used to heat metal to draw out the base elements. Many life experiences serve as furnaces, [basically any which] burns out our senses of earthly security and pride. Sometimes people enter the fire because that is where God has led them.
In the fire, we cannot depend on our own strength, and some of us learn how to base our strength on the Lord to survive. The burnt out places where pride and certainty existed may sometimes be filled by a transfixing Light. When we are living intentionally in this Light, we are crossing the bridge between ourselves and God frequently. To survive physically and emotionally, we follow the Light that shines from the burnt out places and from every place where God is building bridges into our lives. I have seen hope and healing in people in my life who have come through terrible situations with faith and a gift to share.
Even so, I picture myself thinking, "Yeah, keep your coals to yourself buddy, because that thing is going to hurt." The process of transformation can be excruciating; Jesus talks about it as being born again. I put myself in the place of the baby, [and] the mother. The process was a gift, which I was only able to accept because I could not decline it and because I was awash in love; I think Isaiah might have felt the same way. After being touched by an angel's coal, he hears the question: Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? I love the "Here I am send me" of the story; it's an amazing way to start the day. Isaiah's story begins with God building a bridge to him and Isaiah responding in faith. Isaiah lived the rest of his life serving the source of all love.
Jonah and the Forgiveness—When a great fish swallows Jonah, he survives & travels to his enemies, calling them to repent. Jonah didn't want to respond to God's call by building a bridge between groups of people to share God's love & forgiveness. Jonah was sent to Nineveh, Assyria's capital. This nation was a fearsome enemy in a time where brutal, torturous warfare & occupation was normal. Some believe that the book was written by Jonah before Assyria's devastation of his kingdom; some believe it was written after the devastation. It seems remarkable that there would be a story of forgiveness for the kingdom that had inflicted murder, torture, & erasure.
I might have run away too. Whatever our experiences have been, we confront formidable systems of oppression and pain, like white supremacy and gender oppression. We can be laid low by the wounds inflicted by our families, especially when they manifest in abuse, addiction or abandonment. Confronted by the enormity of oppression and wounding, we sometimes run away individually and corporately. We really need to get over ourselves and listen to other people and to our own wounded hearts.
Jonah ran the other way, and it caused misery to himself and others. They tried everything to save the boat before finally, reluctantly, tossing him out into the sea. It annoys me that Jonah saddled others with the guilt of his apparent death. Lives can be changed in unpredictable ways when we fail to bring about the healing God set out for us and when we act out of the feelings of shame and fear that come with living on the run. Jonah being swallowed by a great fish seems like an amazing illustration of depression. In his willingness to be thrown off the boat he felt like he was the source of everyone's problems, and the world would be better off without him. The book closes with him still wishing he were dead.
Jonah said: "Out of my despair I cried to you/ and you answered me./ From the belly of Sheol I cried ... You raise my life/ back up from the pit, YHWH, my God." Physically and spiritually, Jonah was immobilized by darkness, which released him only when it was ready. Jonah did something amazing inside that fish. He turned toward God, [which for him meant] turning toward the Temple, the place where God made a direct connection with people. Jonah must have managed just a slight tilt of his head in a subtle act of will that flew in the face of every other message coming from his surroundings and his heart. He turn himself toward the source of all love.
[Jonah's turning toward the source of love, & his message to the Assyrians of their impending destruction] worked out messily, & it worked out miserably, but it worked. Jonah helped bring about transformation of a people who were mired deeply in destructive ways of empire & brutality. Later, Jonah is sitting outside of town waiting in vain to see the city destroyed & wishing he were dead. In the book's very last verses God is speaking to him again, encouraging him to look at this situation through divine eyes of love & mercy. In spite of all the mess & the depression, he ultimately worked with God to build an amazing bridge of love & mercy to a people he had every reason to despise. I am encouraged. [There is hope for us, even with our messy, painful lives].
The Woman with the Issue of Blood—She sneaked up and touched Jesus' robe in search of healing, even though in that time women did not just go around touching men, which in her condition violated clean/ unclean rules. She was probably anemic and exhausted all the time, so her desire for relief overcame the hesitation she might have felt for violating rules. Those laws spell out that it isn't just the woman who is unclean, but anyone who touches her or what she has touched is unclean until evening.
The impurity label she bore reminds me very much of the shame carried by survivors of abuse. Many are left with a legacy of shame around the natural parts of gender & sexuality. This woman can be a representative for survivors of abuse, gathering up her courage to approach Jesus & being transformed by his powers of love. She had nothing left to bring but a little hope & moxie to approach Jesus. Just being close to him would be enough, she believed. I believe that going toward the glory she saw in Jesus is the most significant bridge she had to cross to be healed. This woman didn't leave approaching God to anyone else. Her courage is astounding.
She had to be sneaky, because of the cultural barriers she was bridging to do this. When dozens of people were bumping against Jesus, she reached down, touched his robe, & knew instantly she was healed. As soon as she made contact with him, he stopped, asking who touched him. What was obvious to Jesus wasn't noticed by anyone except the woman. She had no time to process the fact that she was healed, & he wouldn't accept her denial. She had touched a man in public, made him unclean, & now had to publicly face up to what she had done.
She came before Jesus for the 2nd part of her healing. She explained the embarrassing details, probably expecting the worst. Instead, she heard, "My daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace and be free of your affliction." If she had not heard Jesus call her "daughter" and bid her go in peace and freedom, she [might have lived the following years] in shame and defeat, believing she was never going to be good enough. That kind of belief could have attacked her body, as it often does, and left her with another physical illness.
Jesus freed her from that. The lifting of that miserable emotional weight must have felt as revolutionary as physical healing. I bet she stood differently. [She could more easily look] into other people's faces. [If she was like me, the experience might have left her glowing, & that] glow may have felt like it faded with time, as the details of life press themselves into awareness again. How does a peak experience play out for one through-out one's life? No matter how she or anyone carries that light of Christ over time, the marks Jesus leaves in our hearts can never be taken away; they stay whole & bright & safe, no matter what, never to be undone.
When Jesus wanted her to go forth in peace and be free from suffering, he was asking her to do something that can be extremely difficult. At times in my recovery, peace and freedom has felt like a threat to my existence. I learned that a symptom of ongoing, repeated trauma is that our brains can begin to operate as though our lives depend on remaining in survival mode. We can change the structures of our brain to overcome that, but it often takes very good help, hard work, and time. The aspects of her character that led this woman to Jesus in the first place make me believe she could tackle her next assignment from God with grace. I want us to take any sympathy and hope we might have for this woman from 2,000 years ago and shine those feelings back on ourselves and the people who need it most in our lives. Let's forge ahead into peace and freedom even when the primitive parts of our brains are screaming that this is seriously questionable judgment. Let's root for ourselves as Jesus would and keep focused on building victorious lives.
Go Out and Build—Whether we are called to bridge chasms separating groups of people from one another, or chasms which separate justice and righteousness [from those who need it most], whatever barriers we are called to cross, we have to go. The beginning and the end of our callings to build bridges are not always clear, and even the main part of the action can feel ambiguous or confusing. Use the time you have to work on building the bridges you were born to build. Throw your heart into opening up the next part of that story to the glory, the wisdom, and the love of the one who made us and who guides our every step. This is what our lives have been designed to do. "We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus to do the good things God created us to do from the beginning" (Ephesians 2:10).
Queries—How have you experienced the key of love & been drawn more deeply into the love of God when reading the Bible? What particular story spoke to you on this theme of transcending barriers? When have you had to cross emotional and spiritual bridges that separated you from the Promised Land or wander in the desert sustained only by God? How did God's forgiveness play a role? What is your understanding or experience of the refiner's fire and transformation? How have you, like Jonah, fled from a calling or leading? How is emotional healing more difficult than bodily healing? How have you and/ or your faith community lived the work of building connection and transcending barriers?
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182. On speaking out of the silence; vocal ministry in unprogrammed meeting for worship (by Douglas V. Steere; 1972)
About the Author—Douglas Steere joined the Religious Society of Friends by convincement in 1932, after a religious quest. Having worshipped with friends in nearly every part of the world, he had occasion be ministered to by many sorts of messages. The present pamphlet is from a paper given at his Radnor Meeting.
[I]—We now know that there are many ministries [besides vocal ministry], ministries of: works; [solving] social & institutional problems; writing; counseling. There are others besides Quakers who are interested in the 3 centuries of corporate experience of unprogrammed meetings & the prophetic ministry that may emerge from a lay group. [Among Quakers] there is a faith that something is going on in our silent waiting, something beyond our surface mind’s capacity; there is a yearning communication that is continually operative.
What is this yearning communication that was promised us and that we have from time to time experienced in our meetings? Dorothy Sayers suggests [of Trinity] that the Godhead's creative unplumbable abyss yearns itself forth as God the Father [creator]; as the message of redeeming love in the Son; & in the Holy Spirit’s continuous communication within one's unfathomable depths. All 3 of these movements of the Godhead are in continuous communication now and when we give or receive vocal ministry. We come to our meetings for worship because we suspect that this communication may help us discern what action is being asked of us, and may strengthen us [enough] to carry this out. We come, too, for healing and forgiveness and renewal.
We do not come alone to meeting. Others sit down with us: in those actually in the room with us; in those wretched and poor of the earth, both in spirit and in body; a new sense of unity with them may be opened at that sitting. Some hope for complete silence in meeting, but consistently silent meetings wither away. The Advices say, “Let none of us assume that vocal ministry is never to be our part.” Neither should someone come to unprogrammed meeting certain that they will minister.
John William Graham says, “It comes in waiting. When I sit down in meeting I recall whatever may have struck me freshly during the past week... Often two or three of the thoughts that have struck home during the week are woven together in unexpected ways. When the fire is kindled, the blaze is not long… The sermon is made, but I the slow compiler did not make it.” No mention is made of his fellow worshippers, but ministry that is lastingly helpful is always deeply aware of the people who are gathered together in meeting. In a meeting for worship in a redemptive community which the Society of Friends is meant to be, the human situation of the community is a real factor in the communication.
Most ministry is given in some connection with the ministry [that has preceded it]. I think that learning to move in the exercise of the meeting so that one is a part of it, yet taken beyond it and brought to see some new light is most important in creative ministry. A cluster of messages that goes on down, with each message deepening & intensifying and helping to light up a further facet of the communication can be most effective. If there is One who gathers the meeting inwardly and who is communicating and drawing at our lives, it should not surprise us if several persons in the meeting were moved to minister on the same theme. [There are frequent instances of one feeling] drawn to share a message, only to find another rising & ministering on almost the same theme. The vocal ministry’s workshop when we are drawn into its inner chamber is alert with power and wonder.
The great freedom of the unprogrammed Quaker meeting may be taken as an invitation to press some personal cause. Often the silence & its subsequent ministry can transform this speaking into something very helpful. When in the life, Friends have spoken to man’s deepest needs & have never been content to confine ministry to moral preachments. For the one often torn by inward struggles who has been drawn to speak, there may be only a broken burst, or a prayer, or a snatch of a question [to share in vocal ministry]. William Dewsbury wrote: “And thou, faithful babe, though thou stutter for a few words in the dread of the Lord, they are accepted.” For me, the dropping of surplus illustrations or peripheral considerations frequently takes place, sometimes willingly & sometimes with pain. Constantly the restraining influence of the Guide stops my saying all that I meant, or half meant to say; rarely have I regretted the omissions; it may well be that we can’t finish, but we can always stop.
There is such a thing as ministry that can be so finished and rounded off that members may hesitate to attach other messages to it. How should controversial issues be brought into the ministry of the meeting? Howard Brinton said: “A solemn reverent appeal for greater sensitivity of conscience in economic matters might deepen the meeting.” It is possible for Friends to outrun their Guide, and to be misled into identifying their own current resolution of social issues with Divine truth. To wait for the Guide and to be content to have the melting-down process that can take place in a gathered meeting do its work; this can only strengthen worship.
To receive a message in meeting is not the same as to receive the call to give it. It may not have been matured, nor shaken down as yet. [It may yet be put to use in some as yet undisclosed way. There are also instances where a Friend returns to a meeting for 3 weeks in a row and is not feeling released from his obligation to repeat the identical message. No message is likely to be meant for every one of the worshippers. What may not affect me, may open out life for another. [Simple gestures may be more effective than outright verbal encouragement after a helpful vocal ministry]. There is no standard preparation for vocal ministry.
Quakers have never made the Bible their only authority, but have always insisted that it is only as we are brought into the same spirit that gave forth the Bible that we can begin to understand. Learning can strengthen what one has to give when it was put at the disposal of a deeper guiding; it is no substitute for authentic tendering that takes place in a gathered meeting’s heart. Henry T. Hodgkin’s daily preparation in private was connected to & crucial for his public life. Whatever gifts or sufferings or prayer-life or training or insights or learning Jesus takes, he mercifully transforms them & draws them into his service in another state than he found them.
My own experience is that the gathered meeting provides a nurturing ground for effective ministry. [I have recommended corporate gathered silence to other denominations, & a longer time in pastoral Quaker meetings for open “communion” (when anyone from the congregation may pray or minister)]. [Vocal prayer can be helpful and open a meeting to the Guide, so long as it does not become a mere formality]. If we are true to [corporate waiting & vocal ministry], it will bless our lives, make our community more redemptive, & be something we can offer to the ecumenical Christian treasury that may be seen as a gift whose usefulness is beyond measure.
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460. On Vocal Ministry: Nurturing the Community through Listening and Faithfulness (by Barry Crossno & J. Brent Bill; 2019)
About the Authors—Barry Crossno is General Secretary of Friends General Conference (FGC). He carries a special concern to deepen Quaker spiritual practices while also making Quaker spirituality more visible and accessible, through programming public speeches, written works and workshops.
J. Brent Hill is a recorded minister, retreat leader, photographer, and author. His books include: Beauty, Truth, Life, and Love; Holy Silence; and Life Lessons from a Bad Quaker. He has been a local meeting pastor, FGC staff person, non-profit director, Earlham School faculty member, and lives on Ploughshares Farm (IN).
[Introduction]—[Most] meetings struggle with worship time being used for political diatribe, lecture, or announcements, things not close to vocal ministry. Perhaps you weren't told about how to season a message (or what "seasoning" means), or about what is or isn't vocal ministry. You may be unsure how to respond to Spirit & how to serve community with ministry. Vocal ministry is spiritual practice. We will explain "vital vocal ministry," messages that take the community of faith deeper into what is helpful, loving, challenging, and timeless.
Worship—Meeting for Worship is at the heart of Quaker faith & practice. We gather as individuals & as a community in a particular place & at a particular time to listen to God speaking through each other. We gain strength for living our days & being faithful witness to the Light in an often dark world. We are quieting our minds to hear the leadings of the Holy Spirit, to be shown greater truths, and to be searched by the Light and laid bare. Worship is about faithfulness to that which is larger than ourselves; our lives are not ours alone. Our lives are part of a community of faith rooted in a long spiritual tradition that is growing and evolving today.
It is in worship that we surrender our selves to the great mysteries of how we "live and move and have our being" in God. Instead of trying to codify or intellectualize it, we come to be enveloped and changed by it. We seek an expanse beyond our selves, beyond the limitations of the self, where we are touched by what connects us all. Worship is about the care of the communal body we are part of and that the Spirit is enveloping. The "Inward Christ" is present in our gathered worship to guide, instruct, comfort, & challenge. [Into our communion of] cares and concerns, joys and sorrows, frets and elations, the Spirit comes to heal, help, rejoice and care for us.
Meeting for worship is a time for us to be held in the Light, in the Divine Presence, to see love, be stripped of our blindness, be renewed, be healed, and be a channel for healing and insight through loving and prophetic witness. We hope to help you ponder possibilities and explore personal transformation, so you can be faithful to Spirit while serving those with whom you worship, the people with your spiritual journey is intertwined.
The Importance of Vocal Ministry—George Fox "had a [great] gift in opening Scriptures. He would go to the marrow of things & show the mind, harmony & fulfilling of them with much plainness & to great comfort & edification ... [with a] fewness & fullness of words." Caroline Stephen [writes of many voices of vocal mini-stry]: "[With] harmonies & correspondences ... it is sometimes as part-singing compared with unison... [Perhaps] some of the motherly counsels I have listened to would reach hearts [perhaps] closed to the masculine preacher."
The potential is there for the Holy Spirit to move—indeed, compel through the Inward Guide—anyone to offer a message or song or prayer. Truly gathered worship means full participation of everyone, holding the meeting in the Light, and speaking if so led. The leading to speak can be frightening, & was often resisted for months by those called, who would say in spirit, "Lord, I am weak and altogether incapable of such a task." We should come to worship prepared to receive ministry, but also be willing to give it if called by the Divine to do so.
How are you called to share a message during worship? These are guidelines to assist you. As always the movement of the Spirit is the final authority. [NOTE: In the case of a YES answer, proceed to the next step.] [NOTE: In the case of a NO answer, one always Returns to Centering Worship]
1. Worship Begins: Center, open self & wait. 2. If a message starts to form, test the message. 3. Is it from the Holy Spirit, & not from intellect/ ego? 4. Is it meant for community? 5. Is it more than response to an earlier speaker? 6. Is it prophetic, grounded, not partisan or a lecture? 7. Is it clearly worded & one you are compelled to speak? 8. Share the Message. 9. Return to Centering Worship.
Speaking that is not true ministry can hinder or even derail the sense of a gathered meeting or of spiritual life and transformation. Learning about true vocal ministry can help us become conduits that hold, nurture, and share godly insights with the communal body and the world. We seek to convey things that we feel will help Friends determine when they are truly led of the Holy Spirit. It may help those elders faced with nurturing those who have gifts of vocal ministry, or those who speak sincerely but without grounding.
When to Speak During Meeting for Worship: Worship Begins; Open Your Self, and Wait—How is this message from the Holy Spirit and not from Intellect or Ego? There are things you can do to prepare for deep worship: pay attention to breathing; set aside concerns; embrace those that continue to bubble up; allow the others to drop away; welcome the Divine; relax into God's surrounding love; acknowledge and pray for others in the room; [experiment] to find the right way for you to center at this time. You may experience the space of spiritual communion as: formless; unnameable; a place of prayer or nudges of the Spirit towards vocal ministry.
How is this Message Intended for the Community?—There is a difference between the beautiful & banal workings of your mind & what comes from beyond you. Some Spirit-work is just for you, insights & truth, to be pondered not shared. In other offerings, you begin to sense that the message you hear is meant for more than just you. How does the message contain: love; caring; beauty; persistence; rightness; harmony with knowledge of God; [calling others] to the heart of the Divine? Does it come from a heart of love? The delivery & tone of a message needs to be full of care. Is there a certain beauty, call to creation, re-creation, or restoration?
If your thoughts and heart move away from the message to something else, allow the message to move on too. If it returns, then pay attention to its perseverance. In true ministry, a message has persistence, timeliness and timelessness. How is this message consistent with your own life and witness? How does it fit rightly with where the hearers are—or need to be? How is your personal story part or not part of the message you have been given to deliver? How are you being called to be faithful? How harmonious is the message with your understanding of God's nature and way? Lack of harmony is reason enough not to share. How is your body responding to the nudge to speak (e.g. quaking, heart pounding; palms sweating)?
How is this message more than a response to an earlier speaker?/ How is this message prophetic and grounded and not partisan or a lecture?—How is it the Spirit reaching in & through you to others & not you thinking others need to hear? Let the message sit in your soul & work there first. What effect will it have on listeners? How will that effect be similar to the work it did in you? If one is asked by another whether a response is appropriate, one should advise them to return to a state of worship. You must be careful that you're not responding out of ego, a desire to contradict or correct. If something damaging or prejudiced is spoken, there are steps you & the meeting can take. Response can, & most likely should be made outside of worship, perhaps even engaging a member of Ministry & Counsel. It is proper to build on messages given earlier in the worship if so led by Spirit, thereby amplifying & reinforcing the Spirit's prevailing messages. How might someone mistake this message for a personal announcement, partisan statement, or a lecture? Find a more appropriate place after worship for this announcement, statement, or lecture.
How clearly is this message worded; how compelled are you to speak?—How much Quaker jargon are you using? You don't need every word to line up like a script. How clear are you about how to say the words you're called to speak? Make it easy to hear. Whether it will be heard is up to the worshipers' hearts & the Spirit working in them. If, after listening & testing, you feel led, speak clearly & loudly, so all can hear. Spirit doesn't want simply words heard, but that our spirits speak to the spirits of those gathered. Eloquence might convince heads, but hearts are moved to action by authentic soulful sharing. Use only enough words to communicate & trust Spirit to amplify their meaning deep within listeners. In worship we seek to be a conduit for some-thing that is arising from a deeper place. The queries suggested here are not meant to be absolutes. Sensitivity to the Spirit's movements means there cannot be absolutes. The message may not satisfy all or any of the guides you've followed, except its persistence and insistence. Faithfulness then requires that you rise and speak.
More Discernment on Prophetic Speech versus Partisan Political Speech—[Saying that politics have no place in vocal ministry is also not an absolute]. Prophecy & politics are often interwoven, & one of the hallmarks of being a Friends is attempting to live a life of integrity—to have our personal beliefs & experiences harmonize with our action & way of being in the world. Harmonizing testimonies with our actions in the world sometimes prompts Spirit to have us stand and advocate for certain political or economic principles or policies.
We must discern the difference between vocal ministry that is prophetic & politically partisan speechifying. Certain messages may be experienced as partisan hectoring, not prophetic ministry if done during worship. This may trigger poor vocal ministry in a heated response. A message of prophetic ministry with political implications is a message from Spirit in service to a room of people who have all gathered to know that which is larger than themselves; the political implications are to be explored personally and corporately outside of worship.
Straightforward political advocacy in worship is sharing personal thoughts in a way that leaves some in the room feeling they are a captive audience for someone's political beliefs. A personal political announcement or advocacy includes: political action without dialogue; names of political parties and politicians; assumptions of common opinions; naming systems of oppression or operations that need to be unpacked. What is the spiritual basis for what you feel led to say? How is it rooted in an understanding of how we are to be the Religious Society of Friends in this place and time?
Vocal ministry needs to be free of partisan speech that lacks prophetic grounding, that divides ideologically instead of calling us to examine our souls and actions in this world. It is as much about how we speak prophetically as what we speak. When a political position is added onto prophetic ministry, it skips over the dialogue that is necessary to explore and develop a shared communal response to a core issue. True ministry draws us closer to the breaking heart of God and to the creation and re-creation of God's beloved community.
The most powerful vocal ministry will reference principles, not particular public figures; will illustrate the issue's universality; will invite prayer & dialogue; & will gather the community to work with Divine assistance to bring a better world. A good example of vocal ministry on environment is: "Friends, I have been praying about ... how rising waters are displacing people... Spiritually... we have responsibility to care for the earth ... [&] for those who are displaced & suffering ... Our response must go beyond individual charity... How can we faith-fully find common ground that guides us & helps our broader community find responsible solutions for the earth's & fellow citizens' problems with the dignity that creation & every God-child deserves?"
The same ministry can be more emotionally & perhaps spiritually charged, [while remaining] a genuine witness for Spirit, such as: "We are to tend the garden, Friends, not grind it to dust [in] mistreatment of the earth ... [the evidence is all around us]. I can feel God's recriminations boring a hole through my soul! Flooding is ... the new normal; we must [find how] to address it ... We must find a response that meets the problem's scale ... Let us [now] pray together, study together, & find ways forward to serve the community as the Holy Spirit demands!
To be ministry, a message must be one that rings true & whose words open up, not close down the listener. What made one message for reflection, & another one you couldn't hear? We now need prophetic messages, not purely partisan ones, messages that lifts up what needs to be examined & leaves solutions for the gathered, faithful people's shared discernment at a later time. The real test of vocal ministry is the Spirit's call to speak.
A Culture of Vocal Ministry—Every meeting, church, & group of Friends, has a vocal ministry culture & expectations, which are meant to increase chances deep messages from the Spirit will be voiced & less helpful sharing will be filtered out. It is important to learn expectations, so we can avoid disharmony in ministering. Ways need to be found to reveal unstated, invisible expectations. Naming expectations can be helpful to elders & committees in guiding Friends in vocal ministry discernment, & encouraging a sensitivity to the Spirit's movement. Expectations are the pipes through which the Spirit's message flows; these pipes can & should change.
Roger Wilson says, "As Christians, we need to see ourselves as God's plumbers, [maintaining the flow of] living waters that can quicken the daily life of men, women & children ... All patterns Jesus showed us of ways to share living water, caring, & service challenge [our culture's] pattern of Mammon with its quicker results ... "
"17th century Friends were good plumbers ... Our Quaker forbears challenged the conventions of the day—in politics, commerce, law, established church, social etiquette, education, war, poverty, and crime ... They found living answers about the ways in which men and women might go about living together."
Difficult Speech during Meeting for Worship—What do meetings need to do when faced with speaking in worship that doesn't rise to the level of vocal ministry; when something racist, homophobic, factually wrong, or injurious is said? Friends have learned from institutional racism among Friends that focusing on the speaker's intention, not the impact on others, allows injustice to persist. The worst thing a meeting can do is ignore something racist, sexist, or homophobic in vocal ministry; the equality testimony is also then ignored.
Some words & ideas are so harmful that it's necessary to consider "resetting" the room by calling Friends back to shared principles. Elders or Ministry & Counsel (M & C) committee members are especially called to caring for the quality of vocal worship in this instance. If called to reset the room, your actions should be guided by love & care for every person in the room. As a member of M & C you aren't seeking to shame anyone. You must assure the gathered body, including those hurt, that you noticed what happened, it wasn't in good order, it does not reflect the meeting's values, and that such speech and the ideas underneath it will be addressed.
[Such an occasion could be addressed with]: "... During meeting for worship, race issues were referenced ... We as a meeting have work to do [about] how we ... talk about race, nurture & affirm one another. M & C will be active on this issue in the coming week." Here you acknowledged obliquely that: something occurred; we need to do better; it will be addressed; & you will be available for consultation. Your goal is to provide opportunities for education & healing as rapidly as possible. Another possible response is: "I hope the speaker & I can talk. If anyone else was made uncomfortable, I hope you talk lovingly with the speaker or with me, as you are led."
[Dealing with People Speaking with Intent to Harm]—You may have a speaker who speaks at length with intention to harm or with disregard for others' feelings. You may feel called to stand in silent eldering until they stop talking & sit down. After meeting, you & another member of M & C should approach the speaker & say, "I know you; I don't believe you meant harm. It feels important to be in right relationship with you around it. When can we get together to talk about it? We suggest at least 2 Friends address the issue. When meeting breaks, announce that anyone concerned about why you stood is invited to speak to you about your action.
We must take care not to brush aside harmful words because of our relationship with the the speaker; we might compromise our own lived truth, while further hurting those Friends who may be deeply grieved by what was said. We do no one, even one we love deeply, a favor when we gloss over opportunities for them to see the issue & grow. [Talking with people about questionable speaking in worship] is sometimes described as "calling people in." Your starting intention in it is a deepening of the relationship of this person with the community.
What do we do if someone says something that is simply factually wrong during vocal ministry? Response depends on the level of error & whether time is a factor. If the factual error is crucial, you may feel called to correct the error during announcements; don't make a habit of this. In many meetings members of M & C make a practice of speaking to people in 2's to communicate that this isn't personal interaction but a committee action. If you are open to the help of the Spirit, the speaker may then correct their misstatement in the future.
What if you are the person who offended, and you still feel you were being faithful? You might feel surprised, embarrassed, fearful, or angry and unjustly targeted. Do your best to take a moment and breathe before you react. Remember, most Friends find it difficult to challenge or point out hurt to someone. If they are doing so, you should listen closely and try to lay aside defensiveness. You might say, "I'm still not seeing it. But I re-cognize the hurt you feel. I want to continue to try to understand. Can I have some time to talk to others and pray on this?" This enables you to help preserve the community and to carry an openness in your heart even if you're still confused or feel you're right. There may better ways to address situations such as these. Here we simply seek to open a conversation so that you and your meeting can prepare, as you are led, to act quickly and thoughtfully, and always be motivated by love and concern for the speaker as well as for the worshipers.
Final Thoughts [& Queries] on Vocal Ministry—Continuing revelation is at vocal ministry's heart. Engaging in vocal ministry relies upon trust & surrender. [The provision for] our and the gathered body's actual needs are present. Those needs may not conform to our own expectations. With a responsive communal life, worship will vary. The room may remain held in the deep, unbroken silence of Christ's presence. Or the Spirit may speak repeatedly through the gathered body, with a message needed by some or all in the room; we need to listen.
The spiritual practice and dedication of each person in the body adds to the readiness of the meeting to be a vessel of revelation, reconciliation, and hope. By being faithful to the call to offer ministry, we affirm the deep spiritual truth that we are not alone. Being gathered as a community allows us as humans to surrender to the duality of our mortality and our inter-wovenness with that which has no beginning or end. Expectant waiting and vocal ministry open us to experiences that are affirmations of the love we all seek. They give clarity and affirm that there is an ocean of Light that pours over the ocean of darkness in this world.
What constitutes authentic ministry for you? How do you discern whether to speak in vocal ministry? [Has it ever taken some time and persuasion for you] to share vocal ministry you've been given by the Spirit? When you look over queries regarding discerning vocal ministry, which seem the most relevant to you and your meeting? What are your ways of recognizing what comes from beyond your self? How is ministry that invites listeners closer to the heart of God a regular part of your meeting? What qualities make you listen to a challenging message more deeply?
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460. On Vocal Ministry: Nurturing the Community through Listening and Faithfulness (by Barry Crossno & J. Brent Bill; 2019)
About the Authors—Barry Crossno is General Secretary of Friends General Conference (FGC). He carries a special concern to deepen Quaker spiritual practices while also making Quaker spirituality more visible and accessible, through programming public speeches, written works and workshops.
J. Brent Hill is a recorded minister, retreat leader, photographer, and author. His books include: Beauty, Truth, Life, and Love; Holy Silence; and Life Lessons from a Bad Quaker. He has been a local meeting pastor, FGC staff person, non-profit director, Earlham School faculty member, and lives on Ploughshares Farm (IN).
[Introduction]—[Most] meetings struggle with worship time being used for political diatribe, lecture, or announcements, things not close to vocal ministry. Perhaps you weren't told about how to season a message (or what "seasoning" means), or about what is or isn't vocal ministry. You may be unsure how to respond to Spirit & how to serve community with ministry. Vocal ministry is spiritual practice. We will explain "vital vocal ministry," messages that take the community of faith deeper into what is helpful, loving, challenging, and timeless.
Worship—Meeting for Worship is at the heart of Quaker faith & practice. We gather as individuals & as a community in a particular place & at a particular time to listen to God speaking through each other. We gain strength for living our days & being faithful witness to the Light in an often dark world. We are quieting our minds to hear the leadings of the Holy Spirit, to be shown greater truths, and to be searched by the Light and laid bare. Worship is about faithfulness to that which is larger than ourselves; our lives are not ours alone. Our lives are part of a community of faith rooted in a long spiritual tradition that is growing and evolving today.
It is in worship that we surrender our selves to the great mysteries of how we "live and move and have our being" in God. Instead of trying to codify or intellectualize it, we come to be enveloped and changed by it. We seek an expanse beyond our selves, beyond the limitations of the self, where we are touched by what connects us all. Worship is about the care of the communal body we are part of and that the Spirit is enveloping. The "Inward Christ" is present in our gathered worship to guide, instruct, comfort, & challenge. [Into our communion of] cares and concerns, joys and sorrows, frets and elations, the Spirit comes to heal, help, rejoice and care for us.
Meeting for worship is a time for us to be held in the Light, in the Divine Presence, to see love, be stripped of our blindness, be renewed, be healed, and be a channel for healing and insight through loving and prophetic witness. We hope to help you ponder possibilities and explore personal transformation, so you can be faithful to Spirit while serving those with whom you worship, the people with your spiritual journey is intertwined.
The Importance of Vocal Ministry—George Fox "had a [great] gift in opening Scriptures. He would go to the marrow of things & show the mind, harmony & fulfilling of them with much plainness & to great comfort & edification ... [with a] fewness & fullness of words." Caroline Stephen [writes of many voices of vocal mini-stry]: "[With] harmonies & correspondences ... it is sometimes as part-singing compared with unison... [Perhaps] some of the motherly counsels I have listened to would reach hearts [perhaps] closed to the masculine preacher."
The potential is there for the Holy Spirit to move—indeed, compel through the Inward Guide—anyone to offer a message or song or prayer. Truly gathered worship means full participation of everyone, holding the meeting in the Light, and speaking if so led. The leading to speak can be frightening, & was often resisted for months by those called, who would say in spirit, "Lord, I am weak and altogether incapable of such a task." We should come to worship prepared to receive ministry, but also be willing to give it if called by the Divine to do so.
How are you called to share a message during worship? These are guidelines to assist you. As always the movement of the Spirit is the final authority. [NOTE: In the case of a YES answer, proceed to the next step.] [NOTE: In the case of a NO answer, one always Returns to Centering Worship]
1. Worship Begins: Center, open self & wait. 2. If a message starts to form, test the message. 3. Is it from the Holy Spirit, & not from intellect/ ego? 4. Is it meant for community? 5. Is it more than response to an earlier speaker? 6. Is it prophetic, grounded, not partisan or a lecture? 7. Is it clearly worded & one you are compelled to speak? 8. Share the Message. 9. Return to Centering Worship.
Speaking that is not true ministry can hinder or even derail the sense of a gathered meeting or of spiritual life and transformation. Learning about true vocal ministry can help us become conduits that hold, nurture, and share godly insights with the communal body and the world. We seek to convey things that we feel will help Friends determine when they are truly led of the Holy Spirit. It may help those elders faced with nurturing those who have gifts of vocal ministry, or those who speak sincerely but without grounding.
When to Speak During Meeting for Worship: Worship Begins; Open Your Self, and Wait—How is this message from the Holy Spirit and not from Intellect or Ego? There are things you can do to prepare for deep worship: pay attention to breathing; set aside concerns; embrace those that continue to bubble up; allow the others to drop away; welcome the Divine; relax into God's surrounding love; acknowledge and pray for others in the room; [experiment] to find the right way for you to center at this time. You may experience the space of spiritual communion as: formless; unnameable; a place of prayer or nudges of the Spirit towards vocal ministry.
How is this Message Intended for the Community?—There is a difference between the beautiful & banal workings of your mind & what comes from beyond you. Some Spirit-work is just for you, insights & truth, to be pondered not shared. In other offerings, you begin to sense that the message you hear is meant for more than just you. How does the message contain: love; caring; beauty; persistence; rightness; harmony with knowledge of God; [calling others] to the heart of the Divine? Does it come from a heart of love? The delivery & tone of a message needs to be full of care. Is there a certain beauty, call to creation, re-creation, or restoration?
If your thoughts and heart move away from the message to something else, allow the message to move on too. If it returns, then pay attention to its perseverance. In true ministry, a message has persistence, timeliness and timelessness. How is this message consistent with your own life and witness? How does it fit rightly with where the hearers are—or need to be? How is your personal story part or not part of the message you have been given to deliver? How are you being called to be faithful? How harmonious is the message with your understanding of God's nature and way? Lack of harmony is reason enough not to share. How is your body responding to the nudge to speak (e.g. quaking, heart pounding; palms sweating)?
How is this message more than a response to an earlier speaker?/ How is this message prophetic and grounded and not partisan or a lecture?—How is it the Spirit reaching in & through you to others & not you thinking others need to hear? Let the message sit in your soul & work there first. What effect will it have on listeners? How will that effect be similar to the work it did in you? If one is asked by another whether a response is appropriate, one should advise them to return to a state of worship. You must be careful that you're not responding out of ego, a desire to contradict or correct. If something damaging or prejudiced is spoken, there are steps you & the meeting can take. Response can, & most likely should be made outside of worship, perhaps even engaging a member of Ministry & Counsel. It is proper to build on messages given earlier in the worship if so led by Spirit, thereby amplifying & reinforcing the Spirit's prevailing messages. How might someone mistake this message for a personal announcement, partisan statement, or a lecture? Find a more appropriate place after worship for this announcement, statement, or lecture.
How clearly is this message worded; how compelled are you to speak?—How much Quaker jargon are you using? You don't need every word to line up like a script. How clear are you about how to say the words you're called to speak? Make it easy to hear. Whether it will be heard is up to the worshipers' hearts & the Spirit working in them. If, after listening & testing, you feel led, speak clearly & loudly, so all can hear. Spirit doesn't want simply words heard, but that our spirits speak to the spirits of those gathered. Eloquence might convince heads, but hearts are moved to action by authentic soulful sharing. Use only enough words to communicate & trust Spirit to amplify their meaning deep within listeners. In worship we seek to be a conduit for some-thing that is arising from a deeper place. The queries suggested here are not meant to be absolutes. Sensitivity to the Spirit's movements means there cannot be absolutes. The message may not satisfy all or any of the guides you've followed, except its persistence and insistence. Faithfulness then requires that you rise and speak.
More Discernment on Prophetic Speech versus Partisan Political Speech—[Saying that politics have no place in vocal ministry is also not an absolute]. Prophecy & politics are often interwoven, & one of the hallmarks of being a Friends is attempting to live a life of integrity—to have our personal beliefs & experiences harmonize with our action & way of being in the world. Harmonizing testimonies with our actions in the world sometimes prompts Spirit to have us stand and advocate for certain political or economic principles or policies.
We must discern the difference between vocal ministry that is prophetic & politically partisan speechifying. Certain messages may be experienced as partisan hectoring, not prophetic ministry if done during worship. This may trigger poor vocal ministry in a heated response. A message of prophetic ministry with political implications is a message from Spirit in service to a room of people who have all gathered to know that which is larger than themselves; the political implications are to be explored personally and corporately outside of worship.
Straightforward political advocacy in worship is sharing personal thoughts in a way that leaves some in the room feeling they are a captive audience for someone's political beliefs. A personal political announcement or advocacy includes: political action without dialogue; names of political parties and politicians; assumptions of common opinions; naming systems of oppression or operations that need to be unpacked. What is the spiritual basis for what you feel led to say? How is it rooted in an understanding of how we are to be the Religious Society of Friends in this place and time?
Vocal ministry needs to be free of partisan speech that lacks prophetic grounding, that divides ideologically instead of calling us to examine our souls and actions in this world. It is as much about how we speak prophetically as what we speak. When a political position is added onto prophetic ministry, it skips over the dialogue that is necessary to explore and develop a shared communal response to a core issue. True ministry draws us closer to the breaking heart of God and to the creation and re-creation of God's beloved community.
The most powerful vocal ministry will reference principles, not particular public figures; will illustrate the issue's universality; will invite prayer & dialogue; & will gather the community to work with Divine assistance to bring a better world. A good example of vocal ministry on environment is: "Friends, I have been praying about ... how rising waters are displacing people... Spiritually... we have responsibility to care for the earth ... [&] for those who are displaced & suffering ... Our response must go beyond individual charity... How can we faith-fully find common ground that guides us & helps our broader community find responsible solutions for the earth's & fellow citizens' problems with the dignity that creation & every God-child deserves?"
The same ministry can be more emotionally & perhaps spiritually charged, [while remaining] a genuine witness for Spirit, such as: "We are to tend the garden, Friends, not grind it to dust [in] mistreatment of the earth ... [the evidence is all around us]. I can feel God's recriminations boring a hole through my soul! Flooding is ... the new normal; we must [find how] to address it ... We must find a response that meets the problem's scale ... Let us [now] pray together, study together, & find ways forward to serve the community as the Holy Spirit demands!
To be ministry, a message must be one that rings true & whose words open up, not close down the listener. What made one message for reflection, & another one you couldn't hear? We now need prophetic messages, not purely partisan ones, messages that lifts up what needs to be examined & leaves solutions for the gathered, faithful people's shared discernment at a later time. The real test of vocal ministry is the Spirit's call to speak.
A Culture of Vocal Ministry—Every meeting, church, & group of Friends, has a vocal ministry culture & expectations, which are meant to increase chances deep messages from the Spirit will be voiced & less helpful sharing will be filtered out. It is important to learn expectations, so we can avoid disharmony in ministering. Ways need to be found to reveal unstated, invisible expectations. Naming expectations can be helpful to elders & committees in guiding Friends in vocal ministry discernment, & encouraging a sensitivity to the Spirit's movement. Expectations are the pipes through which the Spirit's message flows; these pipes can & should change.
Roger Wilson says, "As Christians, we need to see ourselves as God's plumbers, [maintaining the flow of] living waters that can quicken the daily life of men, women & children ... All patterns Jesus showed us of ways to share living water, caring, & service challenge [our culture's] pattern of Mammon with its quicker results ... "
"17th century Friends were good plumbers ... Our Quaker forbears challenged the conventions of the day—in politics, commerce, law, established church, social etiquette, education, war, poverty, and crime ... They found living answers about the ways in which men and women might go about living together."
Difficult Speech during Meeting for Worship—What do meetings need to do when faced with speaking in worship that doesn't rise to the level of vocal ministry; when something racist, homophobic, factually wrong, or injurious is said? Friends have learned from institutional racism among Friends that focusing on the speaker's intention, not the impact on others, allows injustice to persist. The worst thing a meeting can do is ignore something racist, sexist, or homophobic in vocal ministry; the equality testimony is also then ignored.
Some words & ideas are so harmful that it's necessary to consider "resetting" the room by calling Friends back to shared principles. Elders or Ministry & Counsel (M & C) committee members are especially called to caring for the quality of vocal worship in this instance. If called to reset the room, your actions should be guided by love & care for every person in the room. As a member of M & C you aren't seeking to shame anyone. You must assure the gathered body, including those hurt, that you noticed what happened, it wasn't in good order, it does not reflect the meeting's values, and that such speech and the ideas underneath it will be addressed.
[Such an occasion could be addressed with]: "... During meeting for worship, race issues were referenced ... We as a meeting have work to do [about] how we ... talk about race, nurture & affirm one another. M & C will be active on this issue in the coming week." Here you acknowledged obliquely that: something occurred; we need to do better; it will be addressed; & you will be available for consultation. Your goal is to provide opportunities for education & healing as rapidly as possible. Another possible response is: "I hope the speaker & I can talk. If anyone else was made uncomfortable, I hope you talk lovingly with the speaker or with me, as you are led."
[Dealing with People Speaking with Intent to Harm]—You may have a speaker who speaks at length with intention to harm or with disregard for others' feelings. You may feel called to stand in silent eldering until they stop talking & sit down. After meeting, you & another member of M & C should approach the speaker & say, "I know you; I don't believe you meant harm. It feels important to be in right relationship with you around it. When can we get together to talk about it? We suggest at least 2 Friends address the issue. When meeting breaks, announce that anyone concerned about why you stood is invited to speak to you about your action.
We must take care not to brush aside harmful words because of our relationship with the the speaker; we might compromise our own lived truth, while further hurting those Friends who may be deeply grieved by what was said. We do no one, even one we love deeply, a favor when we gloss over opportunities for them to see the issue & grow. [Talking with people about questionable speaking in worship] is sometimes described as "calling people in." Your starting intention in it is a deepening of the relationship of this person with the community.
What do we do if someone says something that is simply factually wrong during vocal ministry? Response depends on the level of error & whether time is a factor. If the factual error is crucial, you may feel called to correct the error during announcements; don't make a habit of this. In many meetings members of M & C make a practice of speaking to people in 2's to communicate that this isn't personal interaction but a committee action. If you are open to the help of the Spirit, the speaker may then correct their misstatement in the future.
What if you are the person who offended, and you still feel you were being faithful? You might feel surprised, embarrassed, fearful, or angry and unjustly targeted. Do your best to take a moment and breathe before you react. Remember, most Friends find it difficult to challenge or point out hurt to someone. If they are doing so, you should listen closely and try to lay aside defensiveness. You might say, "I'm still not seeing it. But I re-cognize the hurt you feel. I want to continue to try to understand. Can I have some time to talk to others and pray on this?" This enables you to help preserve the community and to carry an openness in your heart even if you're still confused or feel you're right. There may better ways to address situations such as these. Here we simply seek to open a conversation so that you and your meeting can prepare, as you are led, to act quickly and thoughtfully, and always be motivated by love and concern for the speaker as well as for the worshipers.
Final Thoughts [& Queries] on Vocal Ministry—Continuing revelation is at vocal ministry's heart. Engaging in vocal ministry relies upon trust & surrender. [The provision for] our and the gathered body's actual needs are present. Those needs may not conform to our own expectations. With a responsive communal life, worship will vary. The room may remain held in the deep, unbroken silence of Christ's presence. Or the Spirit may speak repeatedly through the gathered body, with a message needed by some or all in the room; we need to listen.
The spiritual practice and dedication of each person in the body adds to the readiness of the meeting to be a vessel of revelation, reconciliation, and hope. By being faithful to the call to offer ministry, we affirm the deep spiritual truth that we are not alone. Being gathered as a community allows us as humans to surrender to the duality of our mortality and our inter-wovenness with that which has no beginning or end. Expectant waiting and vocal ministry open us to experiences that are affirmations of the love we all seek. They give clarity and affirm that there is an ocean of Light that pours over the ocean of darkness in this world.
What constitutes authentic ministry for you? How do you discern whether to speak in vocal ministry? [Has it ever taken some time and persuasion for you] to share vocal ministry you've been given by the Spirit? When you look over queries regarding discerning vocal ministry, which seem the most relevant to you and your meeting? What are your ways of recognizing what comes from beyond your self? How is ministry that invites listeners closer to the heart of God a regular part of your meeting? What qualities make you listen to a challenging message more deeply?
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