Committing to the Quaker Spiritual Path

Quaker author Lloyd Lee Wilson believes that there are many paths to God, but that once you’ve picked one, you have to be “all in.” What does that look like for the Quaker path?

Quaker author Lloyd Lee Wilson believes that there are many paths to God, but that once you’ve picked one, you have to be “all in.” What does that look like for the Quaker path?

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I think one of the things that many spiritual traditions share is the teaching that the eye cannot see itself. In order for us to make even the individual spiritual growth that we desire, it’s necessary to have some other eyes than ours looking at us objectively and telling us truthfully what they see, or what they don’t see.

Committing to the Quaker Spiritual Path

I’m Lloyd Lee Wilson. I’m a member of Friendship Friends Meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is part of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative).

Immersing Yourself in a Faith Tradition

It is, I think, impossible to get the benefit of any faith tradition without immersing one’s self in it. I believe like the Sufis that where thee digs thy well and where I dig my well may be on different creeks, but they come from the same living water and they flow to the same ocean. I feel that there are in fact many paths to God, but they are distinct paths. If one is intent on making that journey, the best way there is to follow the path of the faith tradition thee has chosen.

The temptation if we don’t is to avoid those things we don’t like. If we begin to treat our spiritual growth as a buffet or a salad bar—we’re only human, we take more than we need of the stuff we really like and we shy away from the stuff that doesn’t taste good or that gave us heartburn. But it is the nature of the faith journey that it’s often those things that we don’t like the taste of that are making the growth in us that we need in order to go forward.

Exchanging Individualism for Corporate Discernment

We live in an age of rampant individualism. It’s all around us, we breathe it in with every breath. I think that one of the hardest things about committing to the Quaker faith tradition is exchanging that individualism for a sense of corporate discernment and corporate wisdom. We go through our meetings and we’re asking, “My meeting is not giving me the things that I need for my spiritual journey.” It’s a question that I hear all the time. But I think that the real question–the question that will help us more–is to ask, “How can I be the member my meeting needs me to be in order to do the spiritual work God has given it to do?”

So to make that switch first of all requires a great deal of courage. To give up the fact that I’m going to be my own defense here, I’m going to look out for myself and be responsible for my own spiritual journey. It takes a lot of trust to feel safe and secure, to feel that yes, these people are seeking to discern God’s will, that together we can discern it better and I have nothing to fear. That’s very hard, very hard.

Committing to the Quaker Tradition

Quakerism has not been a perfect journey for me. I have never sat down in the perfect Quaker meeting and never expect to. But even those difficult places are places where we grow and we grow as a community. So that’s the concept I’ve been trying to articulate in my writings and my talkings about Quakerism: that it’s not a salad bar situation. You have to step inside of the tradition: commit to the tradition. Commit to something larger than yourself and then you begin to understand, “OK, this it the part of the tradition that’s real for me, I can take this in.” But you can’t stand outside the tradition and even understand it, much less critique it.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Power of Vulnerability

What’s the most effective way to encourage social change? For Quaker artist Joey Hartmann-Dow, it’s got to include vulnerability.

What’s the most effective way to encourage social change? For Quaker artist Joey Hartmann-Dow, it’s got to include vulnerability.

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Joey Hartmann-Dow: It’s like here we are, all connected to the same thing and yet we’ve found ways to separate ourselves from each other. I want to bring it back to the same thing. I want to celebrate our differences, and bring it back to us all being connected. And that’s a challenge, and that’s what I want to ask questions about in my art.

The Power of Vulnerability

I’m Joey Hartmann-Dow. I grew up going to Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and I am an artist/human. It says that on my business card. I work mostly in 2D, mostly painting and drawing. So I use maps a lot, and I’ll often draw or paint directly on a map.

Connecting with Our Humanity and the Earth

The idea comes from me wanting to make work about the relationship between humans and the Earth, which includes all kinds of creatures. Maps felt like a really awesome way to do that. I would say that the creatures look most of the time vulnerable. That’s something that I put in there because I want it to seem like this thing that you should take care of and not mess up.

I would love if people looked at my art and saw the Earth as a living thing and asked themselves, “What if I treated this as a living thing that I maybe shouldn’t kick in the face but maybe take care of?” So I want these creatures to read as human but without any of the features that we use to characterize different groups of humans. Because we humans, we’re so good at that: boxing people into different categories like race and gender and age and ability and I wanted to represent humans without any of that.

How Quakerism Has Influenced My Work

I feel like the way Quakerism affected my personal growth, I would definitely say it affected my philosophy and how I communicate and how I am, and that feels very much interwoven with who I am as an artist. I want my art to be a reflection of who I am, and that very much comes from the John Woodman quote, “Let your life speak.” When I first heard that I was like, “Yes, I want to do that!”

Reconciling With the World

I would go to Quaker Meeting and hear all of this anti-war sentiment and I thought that was normal, but it turns out it’s not. That was something that I struggled with, separating this thing that I knew with what the majority of people were experiencing and feeling. It became this challenge to speak my truth in the face of other people’s opposing truths. How are we going to move forward if our truths are different? And I know that I have something in common with everybody, so that’s what I want to find. I think that the very obvious thing that I have in common with other humans is being a human, so that’s like my go-to, is to draw on other people’s experience of being human and go from there.

Encouraging Social Change

The thing about social change is it’s usually slow and what I’m thinking about is how to get a person to change something about their lifestyle that is going to positively affect the community and the Earth. I’ve noticed that fear and guilt doesn’t work, so I thought to myself: “what might work?” It does come back to vulnerability, because I think someone is more likely to really go there with an issue if they’re feeling vulnerable and they’re communicating with another person who is getting vulnerable. I’ve seen that individually and in groups when people can really let loose and be vulnerable with each other, all this truth comes out. And all this connection. And that’s where I want to go, because that’s where we’re going to see change.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

What Do Quakers Believe?

What do Quakers believe? As an experiential religion with no creed, there isn’t always an easy answer. We asked 26 Quakers about belief, and the resulting conversations were powerful.

What do Quakers believe? As an experiential religion with no creed, there isn’t always an easy answer. We asked 26 Quakers about belief, and the resulting conversations were powerful.

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George Lakey: I believe that there is a spirit that delights to do no evil. (laughs) A spirit that yearns for me to be happy and to be able to connect on deep levels with other people. A spirit that wants me to search and to find, and to act. A spirit that wants me to be responsible and at the same time to be bold and take risks.

What Do Quakers Believe?

Max Carter: Quakers describe themselves as a non-credal religious body. We don’t have our beliefs set out in formulaic expressions, like the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene creed. The experience of Friends is that religion and spirituality ought to be a direct, immediate experience of one’s own encounter with God.

Patricia McBee: George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, one of the earliest Friends, said that “You can say that Christ sayest this and the scriptures sayest that, but what canst thou say?” What do you know from your own experience?

“That of God in Everyone”

Jane Fernandes: Quakers see that of God in every person. I think that’s fundamental, and when you see that of God in everyone—that’s everyone—that changes everything.

Valerie Brown: The christ consciousness—the belief that each person has within them an energy that is unalterable of goodness—that is available to every single person, no matter your circumstance, no matter what you have done or not done or said or did or had or didn’t have. You don’t have to dress fancy on Sunday; you don’t have to speak a certain way; you don’t have to study a certain kind of text. Who a person is, by their very nature, we have that availability of God.

Mark Judkins Helpsmeet: So I would put that right at the core: this universal experience. And, that we’re usually distracted from that experience by something that grabs our attention, and our world is set up to distract us. So I think that at the center of Quaker belief, if you will, is this common-held knowledge, is that the way that you get to what’s real is that you clear off the distractions.

Waiting Worship

Lloyd Lee Wilson: For many folks coming into Quaker meeting for worship who aren’t already familiar with it, there aren’t many cues to indicate what’s going on, and it sometimes seems like we’re having worship based on silence but in fact something very different is going on. Sometimes this is called “expectant waiting;” in my yearly meeting, it’s more often called “waiting worship.”

Greg Williams: The uniqueness is that you’re sitting, waiting to be touched and to be moved. God is there, and God may not come to you in the way that you expect. If you’re centered, you can have a sense of that presence that’s within you.

Laura Goren: Through quieting ourselves, quieting our ego, quitting our racing mind, we can access that truth for ourselves and together as a community, that truth of where we are being led together. And that’s a mystical thing, I can’t explain that logically.

Kevin-Douglas Olive: When we come together in that reality, and we seek to be humble in that reality, we find ourselves connected in an intimate way. Sitting in silence with a group of people Sunday after Sunday, that’s as intimate as I can think of within a community like that.

We Are All Ministers

Ingrid Lakey: As a Quaker, I believe that we all have access to the divine, that spirit is available to us, there is God in everyone—including me—and that we don’t need an intermediary to be in contact with the divine. The divine is always with us.

Margaret Webb: Quakers believe that each person has a ministry, has a call, has something that the spirit is calling them to do, and because of that we believe that each of us has gifts, and that we each have a role in our meeting community. So we each minister to each other, within a Quaker community.

Deborah Suess: We believe that Christ is present, that Christ will speak directly to us, that you sure don’t need a pastor to do it for you.

Vanessa Julye: Each individual person has God within us, and each of us has a message or a gift from God to share, and we just have to be available to each other to be able to hear and to see those gifts that God has given us.

Mary Crauderueff: So, by extension, everyone can speak in meeting for worship and preach. In turn what this meant was that in unprogrammed Quakerism, we tend to think of it as that we don’t have clergy, but actually what early Quakers thought was: we have clergy. We don’t have laity. We are all the clergy.

Benign Sanchez-Eppler: The possibility that we don’t know who’s in charge, it’s very rich for me, because it’s a sign that the spirit may be in charge.

Inward Transformation, Outward Testimonies

Deborah Shaw: Quakers believe that through this interaction with God, with the Divine, with the Inward Christ—however we name that which we cannot name—through that interaction, we are transformed interiorly and through that inward transformation, that our outward lives will be joyful and of service, and there will be an integrity in our outward lives.

Max Carter: Quakers come out of a radical interpretation of Christianity, which means a desire to go back to the roots of Christianity, which means the Gospels, which means especially the Sermon on the Mount, the teachings and examples of Jesus. Out of that context comes an emphasis in Quaker belief on peace, nonviolence, simplicity and plainness, equality, integrity, a direct personal relationship to God, an openness to God’s leading and direction in one’s life. But Friends don’t have those ready creeds, so tend to talk about their beliefs as what “we testify to be true in our experience and in our community’s experience, and thus are expressed as “testimonies.”

Tom Hoopes: And so when we talk about our testimony on nonviolence, that is a direct natural outgrowth of my understanding that my life matters and, it turns out, other peoples’ lives matter, too. If I live in a world where there is a very clear message or even institutional expectation or rules or laws or practices that demean some people’s lives, I can say that that is a straight-up violation of my beliefs.

Anthony Smith: Faith is about your entire life, and my faith means that those principles hopefully should be reflected in the wider world. It’s not just about how I live my life, it’s about the world that we seek. If I can do things, without being sectarian, per se, to put my faith values into action, I think I have an obligation to do that.

Mackenzie Morgan: You’ll find that Quakers nowadays and even in the past have been really socially active in trying to help others. For modern Quakers, you see lots of anti-war protests because we believe that war is wrong, that God will never call us to kill another person. We also campaign for equal rights and human rights, and that’s a thing that’s been going on for the last 150 years or probably longer. If you look at women’s suffrage in the U.S. and the civil rights era and things like that, Quakers were involved in those things and nowadays, right now, the sanctuary movement is a thing that Quakers are getting involved in again.

The Bible

Stephanie Crumley-Effinger: For me, the Bible is a really precious and important part of that seeking and guidance, and at the same time I want it to be used with great care because so often the Bible is used in ways that are not life giving, and that’s not its fault. It’s a library with the Holy Spirit inspiring but with fallible people writing, and it needs us to be listening for guidance as we approach it and make use of it, and wonderful gifts can come when we do so.

The Afterlife

Deborah Suess: I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about heaven and hell, at least this Quaker doesn’t. I figure that’s up to God. Early Friends talked about the universal saving light of Christ and that was one of the things that first drew me to Quakers. It made no sense to me at all that good-hearted people who seek to follow God would be condemned to hell because they don’t know the name of Jesus or weren’t choosing to follow Jesus. And so when I started reading about the universal saving light of Christ, that people of faith who live lives of love have encountered the spirit of Christ whether they know the name of Jesus or not, that was one of the things that drew me straight into the arms of Quakers.

Chris Mohr: Sometimes I think that fundamental Quaker belief of everybody having access to the Divine makes us all happier, peaceful people because we have this basic reassurance that, “No really, it’s ok. The world is ok. We mess up, we screw up, we get dirty, we have to wipe away our tears. But in the end it’s ok. And it’s ok now, we don’t have to wait until we’re dead for it to be ok.” But Quakers are human, we don’t really live that moment to moment. We aren’t really praying without ceasing. If only we could, maybe we would be happier, more peaceful people. I think Quakers have touched that sense of heaven on Earth enough that we have hope that we can be there together.

Christ

Thomas Hamm: We need no intermediaries between God and ourselves to experience God, to understand God. I think you would find a general acceptance, moreover, that the best and most perfect way to do that is by living the experience of Christ. For some, that would mean accepting Jesus Christ as a personal savior. For others it would be seeing him as a model, a teacher, a savior who shows us the way.

Stephanie Crumley-Effinger: I come to ideas and phrases like, “Jesus has come to teach his people himself” drawn from Early Friends, and that that means holy availability and that our responsibility is to seek to be guided and led, to take time to pay attention for what that guidance and leading may be, and to try to be faithful to it.

Continuing Revelation

Mary Crauderueff: So Quakers believe in this idea of continuing revelation, which means that God still speaks to us today. That didn’t end when the Bible was written, but even today even tomorrow, 50 years ago, 50 years from today, we still get to hear God’s message and have the ability to transform our theology and our love for each other based on those messages.

Vanessa Julye: One of the things for me within Quakerism is it feels, it’s alive and its alive because it can be responsive, that it’s not a religion that was set up and is stagnant.

Lina Blount: There is this possibility of spiritual connection and truth continuing to unfold in the world as we listen to it, as we act, as we’re prayerfully together in community, there is more being unfolded. I think that some take it specifically to the Bible, that the prophets are still walking among us or being spoken to now. For me, that’s a less compelling part to it as much as: things are still unfolding and God isn’t done talking.

Theological Diversity Among Friends

Doug Gwyn: The central paradox of Quakerism is the belief in a light that’s in each person’s conscience. Early and traditional Friends understood that to be the presence of Christ but they, from the very beginning also believed that that light was in everyone’s conscience beyond the realm of Christendom. So there’s this universal side, and then there’s this very Christ-centered understanding of the Light, and they exist in this dynamic tension that can generate a lot of good energy as well as a lot of argument and disagreement. But if we keep trying to come to the center of the paradox by trying to come closer to one another across that divide, good things will happen.

Patricia McBee: While I never had a period in my life where I didn’t believe in God, I have spent my entire adult life remodeling what it is I think God is or does. A blessing to me about being a Quaker is I don’t have to make excuses for that. I don’t have to recite a creed with which I may find myself unsure from time to time.

A.J. Mendoza: There’s no Quaker Pope, so there’s no one to say who is or is not Quaker and what that leads itself to is a huge breadth of belief that’s held under the Quaker umbrella. Everything from more non theistic Friends to very programmed, very evangelical conservative Friends, and I like that. I like that it can all be held and that we’re all Friends.

A Living Faith

Kevin-Douglas Olive: Here at Homewood and in the meetings I’ve been in across the spectrum of Friends, Friends have found something. We’re not just seeking. We seek and find. And what we’re finding is a living water. An endless stream of power. It’s quiet though. It’s not loud. And we can be loud: “No justice, no peace!” We’re not whispering it on the streets, but it’s a living faith that goes beyond belief. So what do Quakers believe? We believe in a living reality and we believe in possibility.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker

How do Quakers “love thy neighbor”? For Michael Birkel, it meant crossing religious boundaries to have meaningful conversations with his Muslim neighbors.

How do Quakers “love thy neighbor”? For Michael Birkel, it meant crossing religious boundaries to have meaningful conversations with his Muslim neighbors.

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There is within Islam a sacred saying called a “hadith,” in which God is speaking and God says, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known.” This was one of the motivations of the act of creation itself. “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known.” If that desire— that deep desire—is imprinted on the very fabric of the universe, then our coming to know one another across religious boundaries is a sacred task and a holy opportunity.

Reading the Qur’an as a QuakerConversations About the Qur’an

So I traveled among Muslims who live from Boston to California, and I just had one question for them: would you please choose a passage in your holy book and talk to me about it? The result was a series of precious conversations, because what they brought to the conversation was their love for their faith, for God and for the experience they had of encountering God’s revelation through the Qur’an.

The Experience of Reading the Qur’an

One of my Muslim teachers told me, when I asked him, “what is it like to read the Qur’an?” and he said it’s this experience of overwhelming divine compassion. You feel yourself swept up into this divine presence where you feel so loved that nothing else matters. Any other desires you had in the world just disappear. You are where you want to be. At the same time, you feel this overwhelming sense of compassion for others. And he told me if you don’t feel that, you’re not reading the Qur’an.

A Diversity of Voices

I spoke with Muslims from many places that are within the spectrum of the Islamic community. I spoke to Sunnis, I spoke to Shiites, I spoke to Sufis, I spoke to men, I spoke to women. I spoke to people of many ethnic heritages. If there’s one thing I learned, it is that whatever you think Islam is, it’s wider than that.

One imam—who was by 39 generations removed a descendant of the prophet Muhammad himself—spoke to me and said that for him, one of the jewels of the Qur’an was this notion that you do not repel evil with evil. You drive away evil with goodness. And if you drive away evil with good, then you find that the person whom you regarded as your enemy can become your friend.

Another Muslim teacher taught me that according to the Qur’an, when we hear about good and evil, our task is not to divide the world into two teams—here are the good guys, here are the bad guys—but rather, our inclination towards evil is found in every heart and that is where the fundamental conflict resides. This to me sounded very close to the message of early Quakers.

Encountering the Qur’an as a Non-Muslim

I believe that for a non-Muslim, encountering the Qur’an for the first time might be perplexing. You might imagine being parachuted down into the book of Jeremiah. There you land: you don’t know the territory, here are these prophetic utterances (which is how Muslims see the Qur’an) and in Jeremiah they don’t always have names attached to them. They’re not in chronological order and they’re not thematically arranged. I believe the Qur’an can read like that to a newcomer. That’s why I think it’s valuable to read it in the company of persons who have been reading it their whole lives.

What is it like to read someone else’s scripture? I think it’s quite possible that it can change you in ways that I can’t predict for any reader, except to say that it will make your life richer. It will make your life better to know this. I am not a trained scholar of Islam. I did some preparation for this project, but mostly what I did was go out and talk to my neighbors, and it changed my life. And so I would like to encourage anyone who’s hearing these words to go out, cross religious boundaries, talk to their neighbors, because your life will be changed too.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Quaker Meeting is Like Jazz

As a jazz musician, Colton Weatherston finds solace in silent Quaker meeting, where he doesn’t have to to think about music. But he also finds some similarities.

As a jazz musician, Colton Weatherston finds solace in silent Quaker meeting, where he doesn’t have to to think about music. But he also finds some similarities.

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When you’re in meeting, you’re with a group of people and you have an opportunity to speak but you also have a responsibility to listen, so there’s an expectation of balancing speaking with listening, and I think that’s a crucial skill for a musician. To be able to hear the other voices in an ensemble of musicians, to be able to give them the space to speak their truth and not dominate them with my own point of view—I think successful Jazz music has a balance between all of the people within the ensemble.

How Quaker Meeting is Like Jazz

My name is Colton Weatherston, I like in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’m a musician and I’m a member at Plymouth Meeting in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.

Channeling the Spirit

There are some examples of music where I hear it and I know that I’m in the presence of the Spirit. Some examples would be John Coltrane. When I hear John Coltrane’s music, particularly his late era where he was really exploring and playing these extended lines with a lot of breath and a lot of fire, I know that I’m in the presence of the Spirit when I hear his music.

I have to be careful because I know I don’t want to be worshipful of these great musicians but I recognize what’s coming through them, this gift that certain musicians have that are able to express. I think of it in the form of an incantation, where people are meditating deeply on existence and the meaning of life and you get to this place where you just allow yourself to express these melodies. When people are able to take all of their technique and training and study and intellect and then bring it into a place where you’re combining your body and your mind and your spirit into an experience of oneness—that’s a great and rare place to be as a musician, but that’s kind of the inspiration. One hopes to get there.

Balancing Our Voices

Especially artists and musicians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same background. Each of us will bring a lot of baggage into the meeting of the musicians and we have to build trust with each other and people need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist without feeling told by the leader how exactly to play—we have to work it out as an ensemble. And I think that’s very true with meetings also.

If you think of all the committees that exist in any given meeting and the different conversations that take place, there’s a lot of give and take that has to happen in order to have a successful and equitable committee, and a lot of those skills that you learn, they translate well to being an artist. So there’s a time to speak and there’s a time to listen.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Painting for Worship

Quaker painter Adrian Martinez works in solitude yet craves the communal silence of Quaker worship. We talk with him about art, spirituality, and how a poor kid from D.C. wound up painting for U.S. presidents.

Quaker painter Adrian Martinez works in solitude yet craves the communal silence of Quaker worship. We talk with him about art, spirituality, and how a poor kid from D.C. wound up painting for U.S. presidents.

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For me, painting is—and I see in retrospect it always was—very similar if not congruent to Quaker meeting for worship. The difference is in that worship, alone in my studio it’s more of a solitary prayer by myself. You would think a person that spends 8 hours a day by himself in silence wouldn’t need to go to this place to be with many other people for more silence. It’s essential for me to have the experience of being with people.

Painting for Worship

My name is Adrian Martinez. I live in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. I’m a member of Downingtown Meeting. My work is oil painting. It’s oil paint on canvas. It’s a very old school technique, very simple, goes back 500 years. There’s nothing technologically innovative about it, but with these simple tools you can get infinite variations and glazes and scumbles, and so the poetry of just a few paints has always been miraculous to me, and it still remains that way today.

Discovering Art

I grew up in a very bad place, a very dangerous place, a very violent place and thank God it was an area where they had large, magnificent and free museums. In a museum, I had an “art attack” looking at a painting. I had favorites that I wanted to find: my favorite knight on a horse, my favorite soldier, my favorite… you know, boy stuff. And then I walked by a 13th-century painting, a very obscure artist, Sassetta. I got flushed and panicky. I rushed out and was hyperventilating and was thinking, “Oh my god, what’s happening to me?” And then I realized—I’m talking 9 years old here—I realized, “Oh my god! That’s art.” That’s what art does. That’s what art can do. And then I went to the next step and said, thought, felt: “I can do that.”

Painting for the White House

I grew up in Washington, D.C., before the subway system. It was a very different place. At night it was a ghost town except for the slum areas. When I was a little kid in D.C., I had these clothes that were very raggedy and we were very poor and I remember having my hands around the bars of a big fence looking at the White House and thinking, “What goes on in there? Who’s in there and what are they doing?” And every once in a while, the gates would open and a big black car would come out and people would gather around, saying, “Who’s in that car?”

Thirty years later, I met President and Mrs. Bush. They bought a large painting of mine, and when he became president, they asked me to do the first Christmas card. To do that, I’d have to go to the White House. So I went to the White House. In the White House, the gates opened, I went in. I had a very good time with them. And that is a relationship that continues to this day. It’s very fulfilling.

Painting a Meeting for Worship

I did a painting connected with the series I was doing on Native American interaction with Quakers, and one of those paintings was called Meeting for Worship. All these children and parents were dressed—from my Meeting, from Downingtown Meeting—were dressed in 18th-century clothes, sitting as they do in Meeting for Worship. All those people, including my wife and son are there, were and are close friends, members of Downingtown Meeting. It actually became a meeting for worship. The kids, they just went into a “covered meeting.” And that I didn’t expect. And even when I was done with my work, I was not going to interrupt… I just sat there. It was incredible.

The painting I did, Meeting for Worship, I just knew was not something that was going to get sold. It was not an economic decision. It was a necessity to do, nonetheless. When I did it, I had this big show and it was immediately purchased. First one. And it’s interesting: where it went was the boardroom of an insurance agency. The man that owned the company bought the painting because he said, “The reason I need this painting, and I need it in the boardroom, is because we need more of that in our business.” And I thought, this goes back to when I was a 9-year-old sprout getting an “art attack” in the National Gallery. I’m thinking, “That’s art. That’s what art can do.”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

What is the Quaker Approach to Leadership?

In the Quaker tradition, leadership looks different than you might think. QuakerSpeak talked to alumni of Guilford College’s Quaker Leadership Scholars Program to learn why that may be, and why it’s powerful.

In the Quaker tradition, leadership looks different than you might think. I spoke with alumni of Guilford College’s Quaker Leadership Scholars Program to learn why that may be, and why it’s powerful.

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Rania Campbell-Bussiere: The Quaker approach to leadership I like to think of as if you think of a community or group as a tree, rather than thinking of the leadership as coming from the top, that it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from the roots. It’s giving the community what it needs to thrive and it’s facilitating growth but it’s not directing it.

How Do Quakers Approach Leadership?

Melissa McCourt: I think the Quaker approach to leadership is one that recognizes the gifts within a community and how every individual is necessary and important.

Yves Dusenge: People come together and have to actually talk and listen to each other before. There isn’t one person who makes all the decisions. That process is very important to Quaker leadership.

Dorsche Pinsky Krevitz: In my experience, leadership for Quakers is much more about community than it is about an individual. I think when people hear the word leadership, they think of one individual and I think that Quaker leadership is so much more about building up a community.

Melissa McCourt: In Quakerism I’m constantly thinking about the many different facets of leadership rather than only the charismatic forms of leadership. So whether I’m recognizing the way that someone else is quietly guiding a community or I’m recognizing the moments when I’m quietly guiding the community, and that it’s all essential and important.

How Quaker Leadership is Unique

Jesse White: I think the dominant idea about leadership is one in which the leader has a lot of power and invokes a community to move forward somehow with their power. I think what’s different about Quaker leadership is that it’s the Spirit moving through us, hopefully to find some kind of unity on a topic, and that’s where our power is, in being a reed, being a vessel, letting it move through us.

The Quaker Leadership Scholars Program at Guilford College

Melissa McCourt: The Quaker Leadership Scholars Program is an intentional community of Quakers and non-Quakers who want to build spiritual connections with one another and want to develop their spiritual connection to the divine.

Yves Dusenge: It’s bringing students who are interested in Quakerism and who are interested in community and interested in having a conversation around faith and spirituality.

Tom Clement: There’s worship, there’s discussion, and reflection, and queries, for the purpose of growth and for the purpose of growing leaders.

Learning About Leadership in QLSP

Rania Campbell-Bussiere: In the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, I was a co-clerk my 4th year. I learned a lot about how to listen to a group and support a collecting and support a conversation and a process that helped the individuals and the collective come together and listen and process and make decisions together.

Yves Dusenge: Before coming to QLSP, I grew up in Rwanda, lived in Kenya, spent some time in Uganda, and finally came to college in the U.S. And being in QLSP, I learned a lot about leadership. In other places, you can think of a leadership position as someone who has to do programming or has to tell people what to do. I think what you truly learn about leadership in QLSP is that, especially during meetings, where you are a leader, you have to listen to the whole. As a leader, you have to take yourself out of the whole equation and try to discern about the people, the meeting, and try to get a good solution to the body, to everybody. It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in QLSP.

Jesse White: I think what the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program helped to show me about leadership is that the way that I hold space in a group, the way that I’m actively listening, the way that I can elder if necessary—that these are quieter, gentler ways of being a leader in a community, and they’re essential, just as somebody who might be the face of an organization or give the rousing speech.

Melissa McCourt: My senior year, I remember feeling so sad that I wasn’t asked to be a clerk. Not only that I didn’t have that position but that I didn’t have the opportunity to give back to QLSP in that way. But I think that throughout my senior year and up to now, that really informed my understanding of, like, I would sit in the meeting house and I would pray. I wouldn’t have been able to do that in the same way. So I think it broadened my understanding of what it means to be a leader, and that more than being a leader it’s about how can each individual think about what’s best for the community.

A Prayer for Global Leadership

Melissa McCourt: I think Quakers have a lot to teach the world about leadership. One of those things is valuing process over the product. Another thing is building relationship with one another, getting to know each other. Building connections, understanding the whole person.

Jesse White: I think my hope for global leadership would be that, similarly to how we do it in Quaker leadership, we’re seeking what’s best for everyone, for the common good, how we can move forward together. To really hear what’s being said and shared and what needs to happen for everyone, where the best decision is, and to be open and willing to be changed, if it’s for the good of everyone.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Weird Quaker Tweets

Out of curiosity, Mackenzie Morgan started searching Twitter to see what people were saying about Quakers.

Out of curiosity, Mackenzie Morgan started searching Twitter to see what people were saying about Quakers.

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Twitter is a platform where you can see what people all over the world are talking about at any given time, and you can scroll back a bit and see what they’ve been saying the past couple of days, but at one point I got curious what people are saying about Quakers, and so I started looking. Now I keep keyword searches for “Quaker” and “Quakers” (plural) and see what people are saying about us, and sometimes I get into conversations with them.

Weird Quaker Tweets
My name is Mackenzie Morgan, I’m a member of Adelphi Friends Meeting and I’m one of the hosts of “Quaker Faith and Podcast”.

So here are examples of a few of the kinds of tweets that I come across and see as recurring themes:

“Lol He had a gun. This is Texas, everybody has a gun. My florist has a gun. I don’t have a gun. My ancestors were Quakers.”

That’s a quote from the movie Ms. Congeniality. There’s always a half dozen of those every time that movie is on daytime TV.

“Using a candle for light to guide me to the next room. I feel like a Quaker. I think. What’s a Quaker?”

It’s pretty common for us to get confused with Amish. You also see ones where people say they saw a Quaker. They probably saw an Amish person.

“Quakers are blamed for fires and power outages that are actually caused by squirrels. Several states do cull them.”

It turns out there is a type of parakeet that is called a Quaker and is an invasive species in North America so when it escapes from peoples’ homes, they turn into these wild flocks that cause havoc.

“It was the Quakers who helped the slaves, not the Christians. So how come you never see black Quakers?”

While nowadays, it might be a little more up in the air whether any given Liberal Quaker is or is not a Christian (although most of them are), 150 years ago this wasn’t in question. We were definitely Christian back then and so trying to separate those out is a little weird. So those ones I’ll jump in and say, “History lesson! Back then, definitely Christians.”

The second part of that of course saying, “Why don’t you ever see black Quakers?” You do. We definitely have black Quakers here in the U.S. There’s not that many, but it’s really quite a shame to see them erased.

“My ancestors were F-ing Quakers. The only thing they were enslaving was oats.”

This is a sentiment that you’ll see often when people are talking about reparations or racism in the U.S. or anything like that, where someone will say that because their ancestors were Quakers, they don’t have anything to do with whatever bad things white people have done to black people. This is one where I’ll pop in, because Quakers actually did own slaves up until about the 1770s. There were Quaker slave owners, there were Quakers involved in the shipping take that brought people from Africa to the U.S. to become slaves. Our hands aren’t that clean either.

Here’s a tweet that’s from a Quaker:

“If I had a nickel for each time I was asked about my Quaker upbringing and ‘not believing in sex or electricity’, I’d have $$$”

So the not believing in sex thing might sound really surprising to people. There’s this other group, they’re called the Shakers–technically, their founder was a Quaker when she was young–but they are celibate. It’s kind of like, you think of nuns and monks who live in their little dormitories and don’t get married and stuff, but this is an entire denomination of that. There’s two of them left. And people get us confused with them so it’s not uncommon for people to think that Quakers are all dead because well, you’re going to run out of people as the Shakers are doing.

The electricity one, well, we’re not Amish.

“We just passed a place called ‘Quaker Steak and Lube’. Do what you will with that, internet.”

If you are not familiar with this restaurant, it is commonly found in Western Pennsylvania. They have all you can eat wings, so I see a lot of tweets that are about “going to Quaker for wings”. I grew up in Pittsburgh so I knew what that was about but I’m sure there are lots of confused people.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How I Became a Quaker

Discovering George Fox’s Journal when we was just 14 years old, Kevin-Douglas Olive found a language to describe his experience and the people he belonged with.

Discovering George Fox’s Journal when we was just 14 years old, Kevin-Douglas Olive found a language to describe his experience and the people he belonged with.

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There was always this part of me that yearned for something outside of myself, something bigger, something beyond. What I read from Friends, especially Early Friends, was that I didn’t have to go beyond myself, that I could find what I’m looking for within. And that no matter what was troubling me, what was hindering me, no matter what my hurt, habit, or my hangup was, there was a power that could help me overcome that and that I wouldn’t be ruled by that.

How I Became a Quaker

So I’m Kevin-Douglas Olive, a member of Homewood Friends in Baltimore Yearly Meeting. I’m a French teacher in Baltimore County Public Schools.

I grew up most of my life in east Tennessee–Knoxville, Tennessee, go Vols–and my dad was military. He was army and we lived here in Maryland for a while; we lived in Korea; I was born in North Carolina, so we traveled around a bit and that was sort of the context that I grew up in. My family was secular. We didn’t talk about religion. We didn’t go to church. I went to Baptist church with friends.

Discovering Quakers

I happened to read the Witch of Blackbird Pond in 7th grade when I was 12 and identified with the Quaker in the story. So I asked the librarian, “Hey, who are these Quakers?” and she gave me a book about the underground railroad and Levi Coffin. They’re made for middle schoolers and there was only so much reading and I wanted more. And what did the public library have but The Journal of George Fox. So plowing through that at 14 was an endeavor, and then Barclay’s Apology.

How Quaker Theology Spoke to Me

I was going to school every day with people who said that you’re going to hell if you didn’t believe in Jesus, that Jesus died for you and it’s your fault that he was crucified. That’s what I got at the Baptist church that I did go to for a while. So Quakerism, from what I read and understood, was this revolutionary idea or this revolutionary way to approach God through sitting in silence where we’re all ministers, we’re all potential ministers, we all have this responsibility to not only be faithful and yield to this power within us but that when we turn over to this power, we also have the power to transform the world around us.

That’s not what I was hearing from church. I was hearing about heaven and hell and I’m reading George Fox basically saying, “Heaven and hell, meh!” He kept talking about all of these things that are so important to the Christians around me and kept calling them “airy notions”. That was radical stuff for me, and it gave me a language that I was able to use to describe not only what I was experiencing, but also I felt like these are the people I belong with. They stood up against a Christianity that was oppressive as best they could. They stood up against social structures that were oppressive as best they could, and that’s what I wanted to be a part of.

Talking with My Parents

Finally I told my parents what I was doing, and they were like, “Uh… what? The who?” They still saw bonnets and hats and carriages, and when I disabused them of that concept of who Quakers were, they still said no. Well, you don’t tell a teenager “no”, that’s how you light the fire. The more they said no, the more I… but I felt that God was actually calling me to this. There’s no other way to describe it, really.

Attending Meeting

I remember sitting the second time in Meeting. The sun was coming in on my back, it was springtime. I was in this deep space, the only way I can describe it is sort of someplace between the dreamworld and the waking world. It was a very deep place. And I heard a voice say, “speak”. It was as clear as if you were talking to me now. “Speak”. So I got in this argument with the voice in my head. “What am I supposed to say?” “Who are you?” “Am I going crazy?” “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say!”

And in the middle of that argument with the voice, all of the sudden I was speaking. My heart was racing, I was pouring sweat, and then I was done. I could feel my mind catching up with the words and once my mind caught up with the words, the words quit.

It’s like the bucket of evidence that there is a power greater than me. A bucket of evidence. And I find that most often in unprogrammed worship where I am not in control (in fact, the more I try to control my experience in worship, the more I get in my head) where I can just sit back and say, “This hour of my week I’m going to let the Spirit direct things.”

The Promise of Quakerism

There is the promise that Friends provide that there is a way and a truth and a principle that can lead us into peace and unity, not just with God but with ourselves. And that’s what’s kept me coming back when I’ve run off to the Wiccans or run off to the Episcopalians or run off to the Russian Orthodox—all of which I’ve run off to—I keep coming back, because it’s a simple faith that doesn’t require much in terms of what we have to do other than to be present and be willing.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

If the Church Were Christian

Where did the church go wrong? For Quaker pastor and author Philip Gulley, it’s not heeding Jesus’s central message: compassion.

Where did the church go wrong? For Quaker pastor and author Philip Gulley, it’s not heeding Jesus’s central message: compassion.

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I think a lot of Americans are disillusioned with religion because religion has been often, especially fundamental religion, a poor advertisement for the reality of God. It has been too deeply concerned about its own power, about its own wealth. It has insisted upon a level of respect it has not earned, and it has been woefully silent in critical junctures of American history. It has far too often aligned itself with the powerful and the immoral, and it has in the process neglected its responsibility for the outcast.

If the Church Were Christian

My name is Phil Gulley. I live in Danville, Indiana which is about 20 miles west of Indianapolis. I’m a Quaker pastor and a writer and pastor of Fairfield Friends Meeting, which is about 3 miles south of the Indianapolis international airport. Been there since 1826. The meeting has, not me.

I don’t think Jesus intended to start a religion. I think Jesus intended to make the religion he was in more faithful. I think Jesus understood himself as a teacher and perhaps a prophet in the line of the 8th century prophets, but this notion that Jesus came and was intending to start a new religion because Judaism was corrupt, I think that’s a poor reading of history.

The Focus of Jesus’s Ministry

If we say that Jesus did not come to start a new religion but that he understood himself as a faithful Jew who went about saying yes to the presence and work of God whenever he encountered it–and it’s clear that he did this–then we begin to look at his message, and we ask ourselves, “What were his priorities?” And it’s clear: compassion, compassion, compassion. Everywhere he went. So I think that’s the heart of Jesus’s message, and consequently I think any church which doesn’t practice compassion, which instead encourages division, separation, isolation, has lost the point.

It was just recently that Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, informed us that God had given Donald Trump permission to use nuclear weapons against North Korea. It’s clear that once you say that, you have lost all understanding of the compassion of Jesus Christ.

If the Church Were Christian

If the church were Christian, it would welcome the other unconditionally. It would not say to gay people, “If you repent of your lifestyle, you are welcome here.” If the church were Christian, it would lose its fascination with doctrines and creeds, which to me always seem to confine the will of God to a sentence. I think if the church were Christian, it would listen deeply to the poor and to the marginalized who were the friends of Jesus. There are a few instances of Jesus befriending the powerful—the Roman centurion—but far and away more often, it turns out Jesus seemed to really seek out and welcome those whom the world had rejected, and I think if the church were Christian, it would be following that model.

Why I Stay

When someone tells me they’re disillusioned by the modern church, I totally get it. I tell them, “I am, too.” The only reason I stay in it is because I’m fortunate enough to have found a community of Quakers who are committed to being the church in their care for others, in their commitment to justice, and in their love for the underdog. If I didn’t have that, I would probably not remain in the church.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Is Quaker Worship Meditation?

Unprogrammed Quaker worship is easy to mistake for meditation—an hour of silence where everyone has their eyes closed. But how are they different? We asked 5 Friends who have experience with both traditions.

Unprogrammed Quaker worship is easy to mistake for meditation—an hour of silence where everyone has their eyes closed. But how are they different? We asked 5 Friends who have experience with both traditions.

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Amy Ward Brimmer: So is Quaker meeting for worship the same as meditation? Is meditation practice the same as sitting in meeting for worship? The short answer is no, they’re not the same thing. Not at all. The other short answer is yes, there’s a lot of overlap. And I think both Quakers and Buddhists or meditations practitioners would appreciate that “yes and no” answer.

Is Quaker Worship Meditation?

Valerie Brown: The question about the difference and the common space between meditation and meeting for worship is a really important question and it’s something that I struggled with initially.

Doug Gwyn: The meeting for worship can be mistaken for meditation. If you bring a background or intention in meditation to it, that’s what it’ll be. But I think over time as you listen to messages coming out of the silence, you probably will begin to shift your understanding of what’s going on to something that maybe includes meditation but is also something larger than that.

Individual vs Group Experience

Amy Ward Brimmer: There’s a difference in intention between meditating and gathering for meeting for worship. While it’s true that I can meditate in a big hall with a hundred people, for the most part each of those hundred people is in their own experience of meditation.

Mark Helpmeet: I’ve seen for Zen Buddhism when you sit in meditation there, oftentimes they have you sit facing a wall. It’s explicitly not looking into the center of the group. But I find worship to be a central… it’s like there’s a prism of light that we’re all focusing together in our center. So it’s invaluable to have other people there.

Valerie Brown: This is not just disparate people that decided to show up on a Sunday morning or whatever. We’re here and we’re engaged in an act of being in the presence of something that is quite mysterious. Mystery. Sacred.

The “Point of Reference” of Quaker Worship

Doug Gwyn: The point of reference of worship is a transcendent God, the divine—or perhaps another non-theist understanding of what that transcendent reality is—but something we’re giving worth to in the basic meaning of worship, “worth-ship”.

Kevin-Douglas Olive: For me, the Spirit is my high priest, or my high priestess if you will. The Spirit is the one who guides the worship. The liturgy—the works—depend on what the Spirit wants me to do. So I come in with one intention (on a good day) and that intention is to be faithful.

Amy Ward Brimmer: We gather together as a faith community and as a faith community open our minds and hearts to receive whatever Spirit, God, the universe has for us in that intended hour of worship.

Mark Helpmeet: It’s kind of like I go through my individual experience, and I think we all do that to reach that common thing that’s in the center. A voice that we all can hear, and we’ll hear it differently and that’s fine. But in the worship, by clearing out our chatter I think what we find is a stillness that enlightens us.

Vocal Ministry in Quaker Worship

Amy Ward Brimmer: Sometimes it’s completely silent for an hour, but most of the time there is vocal ministry. And so it’s different in that way than meditation as well. So I’ll hear somebody give a message, or I’ll be moved to give a message myself.

Valerie Brown: When I first started, everytime somebody would stand up to speak I got irritated, like, “You’re interrupting my meditation here with words!” But over time I came to understand and got it a little bit that in meeting for worship, this is a practice of waiting and a receptivity as well.

So can you meditate in Quaker Worship?

Amy Ward Brimmer: I use actually a lot of my meditation skills—my mindfulness skills—to center down, to get prepared. I’ll follow my breath, I’ll feel my body, I’ll scan through my body and release where I’m holding tension as a way of saying I’m open to divine revelation.

Mark Helpmeet: Meditation can teach you—and there’s a lot of different forms of meditation—can teach you disciplines that allow you to remove your focus from where it normally sits. So there’s overlap in any case with meditation.

Kevin-Douglas Olive: Sometimes worship is work, you know? Turn. Feel. Sense. “Oh crap, there’s another thought in my head.” Turn my mind to God. Turn my mind to love. Turn my mind to that healing energy. Turn my mind to that small voice and feel the love, the growth, the creativity.

Valerie Brown: And so it does take a discipline. It’s takes a capacity to notice that the mind has wandered to Tahiti, or wherever I’m not. Here. And to, with a sense of awareness and compassion, to bring back that wandering mind, to refocus.

Amy Ward Brimmer: There are many ways to meditation but the basic Vipassana meditation is to do as little as possible, just meeting each moment, any object that arises moment-by-moment for your attention, you meet it with your attention and see what’s here. But the idea is not to connect to anything in particular, or be inspired by another being or a divine being. And so in Quaker expectant, waiting worship, there is this sense that altogether, here we are. What do you got for us today, God?
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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Teaching Religion in a Friends School

Often in a Friends school classroom, “the majority of people in the room are not Quaker, and there is no expectation that they should be.” But as Tom Hoopes of George School says, the Quaker ethos is present in the conversation.

Often in a Friends school classroom, “the majority of people in the room are not Quaker, and there is no expectation that they should be.” But as Tom Hoopes of George School says, the Quaker ethos is present in the conversation.

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I am very clear in a public context that I never say, “I teach religion,” because I have learned in my life that that’s a conversation stopper. For most people that I encounter in the United States of America, they hear that as, “I participate in indoctrinating people in the correct way to think in terms of the cosmology or the metanarratives of religious philosophy.” It couldn’t be further from the truth at a Friends school. That is not what we do. In fact, when I say to people, “I teach religions,” they say, “Oh wow, that sounds cool!” I’ve heard people say when I say I teach world religions, they say, “Oh that was my favorite subject in college, I loved that,” and it’s a conversation opener. And that’s what we’re doing at Friends schools, we’re opening the conversation, we’re not closing it.

Teaching Religion in a Friends School

I’m Tom Hoopes. I am a member of Valley Meeting in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. I teach at George School, a Quaker international boarding school, and this is the George School meetinghouse.
For me as a teacher, my goal is to create an energized, safe space for students to get in touch with their own ideas but to encounter the ideas of other people in the room and other people from other times and other spaces, either through a text or through the internet or some other device that I share and I want them to be alive in the present with what’s real for them.

The Quaker Ethos

Quakerism is a wonderful container to have conversations around the edges. I often say that Quakerism is a great religion for people who are entering religion for the first time or for people who are leaving religion.
So we have a lot of people who are excited about Quakerism because they’ve thought of themselves as agnostics or atheists and then they encounter this tradition that permits that possibility but also invites exploration of the mysterious and doesn’t block out experiences of transformational or paranormal possibilities.

And then there are other people who have come from very doctrinal or creedal religions and they have felt oppressed or controlled by those traditions and Quakerism gives them freedom. Great, welcome!

So we have a tremendous mix within our community, and that’s a mix that we also have in our classrooms because at Friends schools, the majority of people in the room are not Quaker, and there is no expectation that they should be—and more often than not, the teacher is not Quaker either. So what we’re doing is we’re having a conversation that is possible because of the Quaker ethos of acceptance, tolerance, universality, and openness to the unknown.

Creating Safe, Discursive Space

This is not a situation where there’s a catechism or a planned method of instruction so that you get the right answers or the right information. It’s quite opposite, actually. What we are doing at a Friends school is we are creating safe, discursive space for people to ask into the sublime, into the mystical, into the beautiful, into the mysterious. And it turns out that everyone has had that experience. We’ve all had dreams. Are dreams real? Are dreams religious? Are some dreams religious? Are no dreams religious? In fact, what does it mean to be a person who is in touch with a dimension of reality that we can’t measure or see? It means to be fully alive, so let’s talk about that.

Exploring Our Identities

And at the same time, I am very happy bringing in the language of scientific cosmology and what some people call atheism because that belongs in the room as well. So when I tell them that when I was young, I identified as both Quaker and atheist, I see their eyes get wide, like, “Oh that’s a thing? Like, I’m allowed to be that?” Sure! What are you, what’s your truth?

And then suddenly I hear a polyphony of different identities around the room and suddenly now we’re talking, because, “Well I’m Jewish and Christian?” Well, theologically speaking, how can you be both? Well it doesn’t matter, let’s not interrogate that question. Let’s honor that that’s your truth and let’s talk about what that means to you. Which stories speak to you? Which parts of those traditions have meaning for you personally, and why is it important that you honor both of those traditions when you were asked what religion are you? And let’s welcome all of that and stumble forward.

Learning from Rich Traditions about Our Own Experience

I want students to leave my class saying “That was fun!,” because it is fun actually. It’s fun to realize that you are having some dimension of reality that you know is true validated by somebody else and then you find out that there are rich traditions that offer different narratives, different names, different colors, different stories, different energies to exactly the stories that you personally have had. Wow, that’s cool! Now turn to the person next to you and talk about your experience and listen to their experience and notice if there are similarities or differences.

And now let’s come back to what we were talking about. Maybe we have a text from the Bhagavad Gita that says something really profound from a couple thousand years ago, and now let’s look at the Gospel of John, or the Gospel of Thomas even! Or maybe we’ll look at something from Deuteronomy and say, “How does this compare to your dream? What do you love?”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Were Quakers Puritans?

With all the talk of “witch hunts” lately, we’ve noticed that sometimes people confuse Quakers with the Puritans. Clearly they haven’t heard the story of Mary Dyer.

With all the talk of “witch hunts” lately, we’ve noticed that sometimes people confuse Quakers with the Puritans. Clearly they haven’t heard the story of Mary Dyer.

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Max Carter: An old professor of mine at Earlham College, Earlham School of Religion, Hugh Barbour, once wrote a book called “The Quakers in Puritan England.” And it places the first Quakers within the context of the Puritan revolution in England in the mid-1600s. Hugh would describe Quakers as “left-wing Puritans.” They out-Puritan-ed the Puritans.

Were Quakers Puritans?

Now there were several similarities to the Puritans. The Quakers sought to purify the Church, the Church of England at that time. Some within the context of the Church, working from within to purify it. Others leaving the established church because they felt it was a corpse that couldn’t be resuscitated. But there was an attempt at least in the 1640’s, 1650s to purify the Church, to bring it back. To restore original Christianity in the expression of the Church of England.

Theological Disagreements

The Puritans, however (as an official body, capital “P” Puritans), had some beliefs that Quakers disagreed with. These were the major differences between that body of reformers. Primarily, it was that the Puritans believed in predestination, and Quakers believed in the possibility of all people being saved, that there was that “Light” within that when turned-to could lead to salvation, even if one had never heard the name of Jesus, because it was not the name it saved but the power that that name signified, that that name represented, that life and power that John’s gospel says is within each person.

So Quakers believed that when a person, whether they were a professing Christian or a Muslim or a Jew or a Native American or you name it, turned to that inward light which was the light and life and power of Christ within, they could overcome their sin and darkness, turn to the light and be made whole, be “saved/” That was a major difference.

“Preaching Up Sin”
Another major difference that Quakers had with the Puritans was that the Puritans were constantly—as George Fox said—preaching up sin. Constantly referring to humans as “loathsome sinners” as Jonathan Edwards once said, “dangling by a slender thread over the very pits of hell,” and nothing they could do would save them because of their sinful nature in both mind and body.

And as George Fox and other Quakers proclaimed, “You keep preaching up sin, you Puritans. You keep emphasizing the sin of Adam.” “In Adam’s fall we sinnèd all,” as the old McGuffey’s Reader used to say. What about the second Adam? What about Christ, the second Adam, who removes our sin, whose life and light and power enables us to overcome sin? Whereas George Fox once proclaimed, “There is that ocean of darkness and death but above it an infinite ocean of light and love.” And we can come through the darkness into that infinite ocean of light and love.

And so Quakers emphasized that possibility and continually railed against the Puritans for “preaching up sin” rather than that blessing of the second Adam.

Conflict Between Quakers and Puritans

The Quakers were not overly popular with the early Puritans, because there’s no fight like a family fight, and here these Quakers were these “left-wing” Puritans who had these disagreements over the understanding of sin, human nature and the possibility of salvation, opposing predestination and the elect, and were banished from Puritan colonies.

In Massachusetts in the 1650s, it was a capital offense to be caught “driving while Quaker” the third time. You come to the colony as a Quaker the first time, you were turned around and sent back at the captain’s expense. Second time, you were whipped, tortured, often women stripped to the waist, tied to the back of ox carts and whipped and tortured. Sometimes, full body cavity searches to see if there was Quaker material they were trying to smuggle into the commonwealth.
Third time, you were executed. Not that Quakers bear grudges, but we can still name them. William Leddra, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, and Mary Dyer. Mary Dyer being hanged in 1660 created such a stir that a woman was being executed that even King Charles II sent a missive back to the commonwealth of Massachusetts saying, “Uh, you can torture them. You can beat them, but just don’t hang them anymore.”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

My Spiritual Awakening

Valerie Brown was a high powered lawyer. Then she had an experience that changed everything.

Valerie Brown was a high powered lawyer. Then she had an experience that changed everything.

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My name is Valerie Brown, and my Meeting is Solebury Monthly Meeting, here in Solebury Pennsylvania or New Hope, Pennsylvania. And my work is as a leadership coach, and I do a lot of writing and speaking, and it’s sort of strange because, even as I’m saying this, I’m still getting used to describing myself in this way. For many years—most of my life, up until about 3 years ago—I had a very high-powered career as an attorney and a lobbyist.

My Spiritual Awakening

The last 3 years has been this becoming. A new career, a new life, and I jokingly call my job title “Chief or Director of Purposeful Life and Work” and that feels about right.

The Process of Transformation

So the leaving of my lawyer job to what I’m doing now is a process. Sort of like the process of Winter becoming Spring. Winter doesn’t immediately turn to Spring. It is a process of becoming.

I became a lawyer before I knew who I was or what I believed, and I became a lawyer essentially for some very crass reasons, primarily to make money and to get out of Brooklyn. I can assure you that Brooklyn was not the swanky place it is today. There weren’t yoga studios and latte shops and all of that. It was very much a place that a person wanted to leave. And so that was my priority.

A Moment That Shifts Things

But I had one of those moments in a person’s life that shifts things. The moment was I was in a really stressful time at work, so like many people I decided I was going to take myself on vacation. I took myself to one of my very favorite places in New Mexico and I climbed to the top of a very big hill and I took off my backpack and laid back against a nurse log.

I was just looking up at the sky, just chilling and as I looked up, I noticed that the clouds were moving. I know what you’re probably thinking, “Duh. Of course clouds move.” But for me, that was a revelation.

A Revelation That Became a Practice

I was so nose to the grindstone, so about work, so about running, so about getting ahead, I was completely alienated from the natural world, which of course meant that I was alienated from myself. That moment of actually noticing how the clouds move was a revelation for me. It changed everything.

Even now today, my spiritual practice every day is to look at clouds. Every day. I find a great sense of the presence of God there in the movement of clouds.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Are You a Quaker?

You might be a Quaker and not even know it! Watch this video to find out.

You might be a Quaker and not even know it! Watch this video to find out.

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Norma Wallman: If you want a direct relationship with God, then you probably have a good chance of being a Quaker. A lot of it is based, I think, on that. Do you want the direct relationship with God?

Are You a Quaker?

Lidney Molnari: I think we’re all born Quakers. We just discover that in us. I think you’ll know you’re a Quaker when you visit a Quaker meeting. You’ll know you’re a Quaker when meeting for worship meets your condition. You’ll know you’re a Quaker when you come and visit and feel the love, feel the community, and feel the Spirit move. And in my experience, the spirit moved within the silence.

How Do I Know I’m a Quaker?

Cheryl Speir-Phillips: Oh my goodness, that’s a good question! How do I know if I might be a Quaker? Well, often Quakers have a sense of longing for peace and justice issues—for a spiritual connection.

Ray Treadway: I think one way of knowing whether you’re a Quaker is whether it feels right for you, and whether it speaks to your condition.

Julie Peyton: You might be a Quaker if you’ve tried a lot of spiritual paths or even one spiritual path and it wasn’t transformative. So you try something else and it’s not transformative. And maybe you get a whisper, “Hey, the Quakers are doing it differently.” And you’re willing to give yet another shot to find something that can be transformative.

Sara Hernandez: Are you the kind of person who enjoys taking a moment of quiet to think through the issues in your life? Are you somebody who is committed to peace and caring for others and trying to make this a better world for all human beings?

Brenda Cox: I think that if you wonder if you’re a Quaker, I think the best way to find that out would be to go to Quaker churches and see if you fit in. There, again, Quakers are so diverse that you could probably fit into a Quaker church somewhere.

How to Find a Quaker Meeting

Lidney Molnari: So if you’re thinking you’re seeking to be a part of a Quaker worship or part of a Quaker church, just Google it! Or go to Friends World Committee on Consultation, which has lists of Friends Meetings and Friends Churches around the country and around the world.

Norma Wallman: When you look on the web and you see that there are different kinds of Quaker worship—we have programmed, unprogrammed—and you are puzzled by that, then we say, “Come and see!”

Ray Treadway: If you came to our meeting, we would want to be sure you understood that while our meeting worships in silence and expectant waiting for those who wanted to share spoken ministry, that you might go down the street to another Friends meeting who might have hymns, someone who would give a pastoral message… so not all Quakers are alike, and you may find that you prefer ours, or you may find that you prefer some other form of worship.

Sara Hernandez: So which one to pursue? I would say it’s a question of where you feel you are at in your own religious search. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to try both of them.

Julie Peyton: The temptation’s to say, “Come and see” but I would say, try it. The fundamental thing of being a Quaker is, “Does it work?” If it doesn’t work, try something else, try it differently, but keep trying.

Your First Experience

Cheryl Speir-Phillips: I would hope you would experience as a newcomer to be able to feel embraced and welcomed and not afraid.

Lidney Molnari: I would hope that your experience at Quaker meeting would be what you need, would be what you’re seeking.

Julie Peyton: If you were to come visit West Hills on any given Sunday, I would hope that you would first feel welcomed, and there would be no pressure put on you, or that you would not feel any pressure to do or to be anything. The expectation—and this is a spoken expectation at the beginning—is that you will know that your presence there has an impact on us, or certainly can have an impact. You can be part of that meeting that day. You may be called upon by God to stand and say something to all of us. But just your presence, listening with us, is an important thing.

Brenda Cox: We do especially try to welcome you when you walk through the door, make sure we introduce ourselves. Then, when the service is over, you’ll often be invited to someone’s house for a meal. If you have any questions, we’re happy to answer them. Nobody’s going to push anything down your throat. If you want to come back, you’re welcome. If you don’t, we’re sad, but that’s ok. It’s your decision.

Sara Hernandez: Because each meeting is different, that one first experience will not give you a clear experience of the Quaker experience… the religious search of the Quakers. It helps to be coming more than one time, really get a feel for the community for the community and the religious experience itself.

What to Know Before Visiting

Ray Treadway: When you first came to our meeting, we’d want to be sure that you realized that we wouldn’t have hymns, we wouldn’t have a pastor, that we’d be sitting in silence. And we know that for someone who, perhaps like yourself, who’ve never experienced this, it might seem a little strange but we have found that many newcomers who come have a sense of belonging, have a sense of being in the presence of God.

Norma Wallman: I think that we want you to come with a curiosity, with a longing to know what the Quaker experience is about. If you come with that earnest desire to find out about Quakerism, to experience, then the knowing part—the knowledge part of it—you can look all that up later.

Lidney Molnari: What I would want you to know about Quakerism is the fundamental belief there is that of God in everyone. That belief is what attracted me to Quakerism at the beginning.

Sara Hernandez: So to me the value of Quaker meeting is precisely that centeredness and trying to find peace within. It’s not easy. It’s a job in a way to find that inner peace. Many times I find myself thinking about all the problems I have. “How am I going to resolve this issue?” So it helps me meditate, but ideally, the best meeting is when I can really find that center and be quiet, internally peaceful.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Was Richard Nixon a Quaker?

One of the most famous Quakers ever is also one of the most controversial. So was Richard Nixon really a Quaker? Author and Quaker historian Larry Ingle tackles the question.

One of the most famous Quakers ever is also one of the most controversial. So was Richard Nixon really a Quaker? Author and Quaker historian Larry Ingle tackles the question.

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Formally, Richard Nixon was a Quaker. He was member of East Whittier Friends Church, and he had Quaker heritage from his Milhous ancestors, represented, for him, by his mother. The other things—whether he’s a pacifist or not, whether he lives by the testimonies or not—are really not important, in his view of things, apparently. At least if you look at his memoir, in which he devotes three paragraphs out of, what, a 670 page book. Three paragraphs to his religion! That’s all he needs to say. That’s all he says.

Was Richard Nixon a Quaker?

My name’s Larry Ingle. I live in Chattanooga, and I go to Chattanooga Meeting. I wrote a biography of George Fox, called First Among Friends, the first scholarly biography of Fox in ’94. And soon after that, I began work on studying Nixon and his religion, and that produced a book published by the University of Missouri Press last June. It’s entitled Nixon’s First Cover-Up: The Religious Life of a Quaker President.

Who Was Richard Nixon?

Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. He liked to keep a list of the first things he did. The first time any president had ever done “x,” he would note that. I don’t know that he noted that he was the first president ever to resign, but he was.

Was Richard Nixon a Quaker?

If Nixon had been sitting here, and you asked him the question, he would say, “I’m a Quaker because of the Quaker heritage of my mother.” Who was Hannah Milhous. She came to California, to Southern California, from Indiana, and they had a long Quaker heritage going back to the 17th century. He didn’t attend, he never attended after his mother died in ’67. He lived until 1994, so that’s, what, 28 years or so? A third of his life he didn’t attend.

How Politicians Use Religion

Donald Trump simply announced, a few weeks ago, two months ago or so, that he was a Presbyterian. I heard a report last weekend that that probably is not true, although I don’t know that. He certainly proclaims to be a Presbyterian. Well, Richard Nixon was much the same way. He didn’t make a big thing of his religion. He was a Quaker, and that was it; he didn’t talk about anymore. It seems to me that they are treating religion very much the same way, which is to say, as a vehicle for their political aspirations. I think that Richard Nixon saw that the popular appeal of a certain variety of Quakers would redound to his political advantage. He did this because those actions in support of the underground, in resisting the war, and supporting slaves, that those positions would redound in 1959 and 1960 to his benefit. They would remind people that Quakers were people who opposed slavery, who not only opposed it but aided slaves to escape.

The Testimony of Integrity and Nixon’s Enemies List

Quakers have no creed. You can’t go anywhere and say Quakers believe this. Therefore Quakers have developed “testimonies.” The most basic of these testimonies is the testimony of integrity, because that testimony assumes that we will do and be what we say we are. After looking at Richard Nixon’s life, and studying as many memoirs, as many recollections as you can find that have been kept and produced, the one that I have found most valuable talked about Richard Nixon setting up in the White House an “Us versus Them” category. That we’re different from everybody else. We’re doing what’s right. Everybody else is doing what’s wrong. That’s the basis of the enemies list, a list of enemies of the administration. For me, the testimony of integrity undercuts and destroys any enemies list. Everyone is a human being to be respected. Quakers insist that there’s something invisible in human beings that we call “that of God” in people. Nixon seldom saw that of God in everyone.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Watch Me Talk About QuakerSpeak

So I feel a little bashful about this… but my co-workers thought it was a good idea for me to talk to the camera for a little while.

The video project I’ve dedicated my 30’s to so far is wrapping up its 3rd year and nearing a million views on YouTube. To celebrate, the Friends Journal editors turned the cameras around and asked me some questions about the project.

Thanks to everybody who follows the project and has supported me throughout the years.

It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How to Deepen Quaker Meeting for Worship

Though many Quaker meetings happen in silence, there is a distinct feeling when a meeting really “goes there.” What can we do to encourage that experience? We talk with Friends from New England Yearly Meeting about how to deepen Quaker meeting for worship.

Though many Quaker meetings happen in silence, there is a distinct feeling when a meeting really “goes there.” What can we do to encourage that experience? We talk with Friends from New England Yearly Meeting about how to deepen Quaker meeting for worship.

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Debbie Humphries: Sometimes our silence is silence, and sometimes it’s “gathered.” And when it’s gathered, sometimes there’s messages, and sometimes there are not messages, but there’s a different quality in the room, that is alive.

How to Deepen Quaker Meeting for Worship

Brian Drayton: When our meeting has tried to, has grappled with, the question of how to deepen its worship when we’re in a dry spell, a thing that has worked more than once is to take a deep breath and to ask each other—set aside some time and ask each other—what we mean by deep worship. What are we missing? What are we longing for? What do we mean by worship? And any Friend will tell you that if you get into that conversation, you’ll hear really wonderful stuff and really surprising stuff.

What is Deep Worship?

Roger Vincent Jasaitis: Deep worship in the Quaker meeting is about possibility. It’s the possibility of the Divine breaking in. And in order for that to happen, there’s a certain level of openness that has to be there.

Abby Matchette: When I feel I’m in deep worship, I feel like my feet are grounded, as if in, like, the sand; I’m on the ocean shore, and the sand has really sucked my feet in but the waves are continuing to crash at my waist or chest and that crashing—that uncertainty—my feet are just grounded.

Brian Drayton:There’s a sense of freedom, and openness, and complete safety. It starts, I think, with a feeling of my moving out of a sense of my own quietedness to a real awareness of the other people in the room.

Honor Woodrow: One of the things that I value so much about Quakerism in particular is the way in which I think that we are all on this journey together and that we can hear God more clearly when we’re in worship together. So I think I come for communion with the other people of the meeting and looking for guidance and wisdom in how to most fully do the work of God the rest of my week.

Greg Williams: And maybe you’re not thinking about anything in particular, but you just have this peace, this calm, this sense that God is with me, Spirit is with me, Christ is with me—however one wants to name the Divine. And you’re quite comfortable just sitting there. And there are some days they start shaking hands and you’re like, “Oh, that was quick.”

Holding Care of Meeting

Roger Vincent Jasaitis: In Putney Friends Meeting, we have a custom of having somebody host the meeting, which is basically closing the meeting, but also being a worshipping presence during the meeting, even before the meeting begins. Many times, Friends will come and sit and ground themselves, and act as an example for Friends walking in that now is the time to settle.

Greg Williams: So if you have care of meeting you’re sort of holding the gathered meeting as your ministry. I’m holding everybody in prayer. I’m focused on the community.

Cultivating Vocal Ministry

Callid Keefe-Perry: There are times in Fresh Pond where there’s vocal ministry that kind of, like, swoops out of the corner, and I wasn’t ready for it, and it makes me go “uh-oh.” And then there’s the response to say, “Oh, I’ve got some work to do.” But I think that’s part of what the power is in that meeting. It’s not just a quiet gathering. It’s the fact that we expect, and then experience, that sometimes the words we’re given are bigger than us.

Pat Moyer: I think the key to the deepening worship part is letting the messages sink into the silence and letting the whole meeting begin to digest it. It allows the group of people to begin to sink into the spiritual realm and absorb whatever has been said in their own way. We’re not really listening—we’re listening to each other, but we’re listening to God through each other.

Honor Woodrow: I think it’s really important to talk about the vocal ministry that happens in meeting for worship. I think particularly when people who are giving vocal ministry are able to talk to one another about it and to talk about the experience of “What was that like? How did you know that you were supposed to speak? How did you know when to stop speaking? How did you know when was the right time to speak? Did you feel that you were faithful in your speaking?” Because I think that helps us to understand for ourselves what vocal ministry feels like, and what it looks like, and how to develop that as a skill.

Deepening Your Own Spiritual Practice

Debbie Humphries: When I think about a depth of worship, it starts with every individual. And if you are struggling with it and hungering for something deeper, the first place to start is with your own spiritual practice. My own experience is that we are hungry and we’re all waiting and jumping in—diving in. There’s a wealth and a richness there.

Abby Matchette: I think there’s just, like, an acknowledgement in knowing that my personal spiritual practice greatly influences and deepens my worship in meeting, and that if I’m able to have those times individually with God, within community, and when I’m one-on-one with someone, that those three aspects really create a deepening worship.

Other Ways of Deepening Worship

Debbie Humphries: Some of the things we’ve done include having a period of “joys and concerns” so there is a definite space for people who feel a need to speak but whose messages may not rise to the level of ministry.

Callid Keefe-Perry: If you want to talk about deepening meeting for worship you have to ask: “Is the Gospel present?” Well, you don’t have to use that language, but: “Is there good news, and is there power here?” And I want to say, if you want to really talk about deepening worship, blow the lid off of what it looks like and seek after the power, do whatever you need to do to get after that power. That’s what’ll deepen it. And it’ll look different in Poughkeepsie, it’ll look different in urban Detroit, it’ll look different in a worship group somewhere tucked up in Alaska, but that’s what you want to do. If you want to deepen worship, go after the Power of God, and keep playing with stuff until you feel like you touch it. And then do that more.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How to Have A Quaker Clearness Committee

Quakers help each other listen by holding a clearness committee.

Quakers help each other listen by holding a clearness committee.

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Peterson Toscano: Early on in my time with Quakers I learned about this thing called a “clearness committee.” Basically the way it was described to me is that you’ve got something that you need to figure out, you have a problem you need to solve, or a question you need to answer. You don’t necessarily need advice. You probably know what you need to do, but you need to clear through all the things that are interrupting your ability to access what, in your heart of hearts, you know you need to do. So you can then have a clearness committee.

How to Have a Quaker Clearness Committee

Leslie Manning: I have a personal prayer: I am the clay. Mold me. I am the vessel. Fill me. I am the instrument. Use me. But in trying to decide how best to be used, I need the prayer and support and listening of others.

What is a Clearness Committee?

Roger Vincent Jasaitis: A clearness committee is a small group of Friends that gather and basically ask you tough questions about what your leading is, what your concern is, what’s happening inside you. What do you feel?

Pat Moyer: Well people regularly have what’s called a clearness committee for marriage. We have clearness committees about whether people are actually called to do a ministry that they’re thinking about. We have clearness for membership. Are you ready to join the Religious Society of Friends?

Anthony Smith: A clearness committee, I think, in Quaker terms, very much involves humility. You are submitting yourself, generally voluntarily, to an entity that is part of your Meeting, your congregation.

Cherice Bock: And so a lot of people will convene a clearness committee if they’re getting married, if they’re choosing what college to go to, or choosing which direction to go in their career, or that sort of thing.

Margaret Webb: So that’s where we get the name “clearness committee.” It’s about clearness. Becoming clear about a decision.

Who to Have on Your Committee

Gil George: When we call this group together, we’re looking for very specific kinds of people. We’re looking for people who are good at listening, and who don’t have a tendency to give advice.

Cherice Bock: These should be people that are important in your life and in the life of your community, but not so close to you that they’re going to be influenced by your decision one way or another.

Roger Vincent Jacaitis: They’re not there to provide answers. They are there to try and help you see clearly what the situation is, what’s happening, and what you should do about it.

Monica Walters-Field: It’s a gift of your spiritual community, saying, “you don’t have to struggle alone. Here are your companions that can work with you and go on this part of your journey with you,” which is, to me, phenomenal in this day and age. That we could be so blessed that our community says, “You don’t have to do this alone. We’ll help.”

Preparation for a Clearness Committee

Ashley Wilcox: The prep work for a clearness committee is that the clerk will find a place and time and put together the committee, and then the person who is the focus person of the committee will write a page or two in advance.

Gil George: And so you start off by actually describing the situation. Like, really sitting down, writing it out so that everybody has access to it and you can say, “Ok, this is what’s going on, and this is why it’s confusing to me. These are what I perceive my options to be in this situation. What am I missing?”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Looking to Let God Out: One Quaker’s Story

For Anthony Smith, discovering the Religious Society of Friends was an opportunity to develop his spiritual understanding and personal theology.

For Anthony Smith, discovering the Religious Society of Friends was an opportunity to develop his spiritual understanding and personal theology.

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Anthony Smith: I think what keeps me going back to meeting is that helps bring a sense of peace. I’ve done both indoor worship, and outdoor worship, and in both of them, it involves taking a point in the world, carving out a space, and creating peace. And looking for that of God within, both individually and as a corporate body. And I always leave meeting with such a sense of serenity. I like to call it serenity-inducing. And it’s hard to find that other places. You can, but it’s much easier to find it there.

Looking to Let God Out: One Quaker’s Story

My name is Anthony Christopher Smith. I currently live in Newark, New Jersey, I am a New Jersey native, and I am a member of New Brunswick Monthly Meeting, part of New York Yearly Meeting

Finding Friends

I was one of those probably rare few who actually went to college and found their faith. I always knew I had some faith that was very unformed, and attending and becoming a member of the Religious Society of Friends actually helped institutionalize that for me, because in my teens I would sometimes have these really, especially if I was in nature, have these really intense spiritual experiences. And I think as I was in college and started going to meeting and doing things in an organized fashion, I didn’t always feel them as strongly, but I felt them a bit more regularly. And it started to help the development of my spiritual understanding and my personal theology.

Tools of Quakerism

I’m trying to think now about some of what about Quakerism, what kind of tools does Quakerism bring that matter to me and that I find useful. I know that it certainly made me more comfortable in my identity as a liberal Christian. I think the idea that we are looking within, and I remember once I was visiting a meeting, and I remember; it’s one of the few times I really remember something I said in meeting; that it’s not about looking to bring God in, it’s about looking to let God out and searching for leadings of the Spirit seeing see where that takes you. Also understanding that God loves everyone, and that God is omnipresent. God is present within everyone, God loves everyone. And coming from that perspective, I think, is one of the most valuable things that Quakerism offers.

God loves us, God has already forgiven us of our shortcomings and our sins, and our failings, and that we must love one another as God has loved us.

Coming from Love to Come to Peace

I mean there are different forms of love: agape, eros, philia. And love for one and other, philia, thus Philadelphia, of all things… it means that we don’t always agree. It means that I care about you as a person, that even if we have different perspectives, and Quakerism can lend itself to some fairly strong views on some things, and more moderate ones on others, but the point is, even if we have a disagreement, I still love you and so does God. As a matter of fact, God always loves you, therefore I must. So even if we disagree on war and peace, if we disagree on political issues, if we disagree on social issues, if we are coming from Love, we will be able to come to Peace. I think that’s one of the things that comes from the Quaker perspective. The work that we do, we do because we love, because we care. It may bring us into tension with people, but that’s not important. I mean, what’s important is that we must follow our faith. We must go where the Spirit leads us.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org