Well, look who's blogging two days in a row? (shock/awe/applause)
For the first time in my two years of Quakerness, I may be feeling a leading stirring to actually commit. A little bit. Perhaps.
I'd been doing a bit of complaining about the lack of leadings in my life.
In the summertime, when I was a kid, my harried mother (needing some quiet-time in a house brimful of children) would push us all out the screen door with a plate of peanut butter sandwiches, latch it, and say "Play in the yard! Entertain yourselves! Unless someone is bleeding or throwing up, I don't want to see you back here 'til supper!"
And beyond that, she would not tell us what we were supposed to be doing. In a way, this freedom was great. While we were outside we weren't being asked "please wash the dishes", "please change a diaper", "please clean your room", "please do four pages in your math workbook". But it was also a little unsettling. After running around the yard a few times, catching ants in the compost pile, lying on the grass until we were covered in grass-prints, and hitting each other with sticks, we would run out of things to do. Then we'd go sit on the porch and look wistfully at the screen door. We'd examine our scratches and pick scabs to see if any of them counted as "bleeding". We'd imagine ourselves into stomache-aches.
I was kind of at this point just a few weeks ago. Like, "God! Please! Give me some homework! I'll load the dishwasher! Just let me inside!"
So then God says, "Fine, then. Why don't you start thinking about membership."
So I am. By the time I'd been at 15th Street long enough to think about joining, I moved. I've been very resistant about joining my current meeting because it's so big. And Big Meetings come with lots of opportunities for grumbling and a bad attitude, so meeting for worship is always an exercise for me, even if I feel I've spent the hour of "silence" listening to a lot of talking and I haven't been able to hear a peep out of God. It's give me a lot of opportunities to see my own shortcomings and petty impatiences and preferences/prejudices. Sometimes I visit another meeting that is not so big, and I really love that meeting. But I live at the Big Meeting. And moving into the third floor of Big Meeting has been an amazing thing. I'd kind of hardened my heart a little against the Big Meeting when I first came to MA. I decided quickly that this was not the kind of meeting I wanted, and I'd attend, but I'd hold out for something better before I signed up.
Living in the middle of the meeting, I've had a lot of fly-on-the-wall experiences, and a lot of conversations, and I've been extremely humbled to see all the powerful things that go on in the Big Meeting, and what life and stirrings of the Spirit there are all week long--that the Meeting is more than the sometimes frustrating First Day MFW. And I've become a part of the community, whether I really intended to or not. And I care about it now as a part of Quakers, and I like helping to take care of it by washing its toilets, so why shouldn't I want to help take care of it in other ways? And, as arose in a deep conversation with Friends last weekend, why shouldn't I let it help take care of me? It's already lending me a physical roof. Why not a spiritual one?
And there's some big message in here about larger connected issues but I don't feel led to plot it all out right now.
I don't think I am quite ready for the clearness committee about becoming a member. I want to think and pray about it with myself first. Sometimes a clearness committee for membership just looks like a welcoming committee, and that's good and important, but I want something a little more searching and testing. After all, I've been waiting and waiting for a leading, and now that I might actually have one, I'd like to do it justice. I want to find out exactly what this leading is asking me to do and if I'm hearing it right. I don't want to join a meeting just because I get a case of the fuzzie-wuzzies at coffee hour one day.
So may I please hear stories from you guys about joining meetings, not joining meetings, and stuff like that?
Thanks.
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
14 comments:
Hi! I'm new to your blog, and I like it. I relocated in a big way several times from one meeting to another (as an attender) before settling for awhile. This was partly why it took me a LONG time to write that letter. I'd been attending for 15 years (!) but only _seriously_ attending for 5. Most people don't wait so long. Anyway, you will know, for sure, when it is time. (I did, several years before I wrote, but that's another story.) It's like getting married, I think.
Hi Amanda,
I am glad you are finding a spiritual home, even if it isn't at "the meeting that isn't so big." We will still enjoy your visits. The thing about Quakerism is that you do not join the Society of Friends, you join a particular meeting. The analogy to getting married works on many levels. First there is the idea of committment. You are committing yourself to giving a particular framework to your spiritual life. And you are committing yourself to a particular group of people to work that out with. You don't choose to get married in general, you choose to marry a particular person. You get the whole package, the things that are wonderful but also the areas that still need work. I have yet to find a meeting that hasn't had work to do in some areas. And there are also the quirks that are just what they are and no amount of work is going to change them.
So blessings as you follow your leading and feel free to join us at the less large meeting anytime you want an hour with less outward speaking.
Will
Wow. I am glad I posted this, because I didn't really think of it as marriage with one meeting. More I am strugglig for a good analogy. Maybe--joining the neighbourhood co-op, only really seriously. No, that doesn't sound seriously enough. I guess I was thinking of it as affirming a serious Friendship. You're committed to a serious friend, and you support each other, but it's not till-death-do-us-part.
I don't think I'm ready for "marriage" in this situation. But I guess God will let me know on that one. I will bring it into prayer.
Thanks again.
So a difference between marriage and membership is that if one moves, one can keep one's marriage partner but one can transfer one's membership. This is an important distinction to me.
When Chris M. and I were ready for membership and marriage, which happened at about the same time, we were also preparing to leave NYC. We got married anyway, but we were not able to join a meeting for about three years after that, as we moved around. In the end, it was the controversy over not being married under the care of the Meeting that was more painful than not becoming a member.
My own membership committee was pretty pro forma and superficial, I think. But our meeting has gotten deeper in the last several years and our membership committees have taken more time to search with Friends about their leading to join. I personally think a clearness committee hasn't done its job if they don't ask at least one question that the person seeking clearness doesn't already know the answer to. Unprogrammed Friends don't offer a lot of opportunities for people to sit and really talk frankly about what they do believe and what their questions are. Your membership committee is one of the few times that it really is all about you. Well, it's also about the meeting, but still, it's about the meeting's proposed relationship with you.
If you want a more serious clearness committee, you can put that in your letter of application. In our meeting, however, the entire letter of application is read out in business meeting, so have pity on the reader and the hearers and don't write more than a page or two in the letter. It can be as short as two sentences, if you really want. I don't know of anywhere you can read a sample of letters of application, but I do know of a short one that was published on a blog, by Rebecca.
I personally think that my membership in my meeting is a very important connection. I go back and forth on what benefits and responsibilities should go with membership and what should just be the work of any church toward any seeker. But I think it is a sign of the fact that I take Quakerism seriously and I want others to take my relationship seriously. We're not just shacking up here, to go back to the marriage metaphor, this is a long term commitment, a permanent commitment, as much as anything in life is permanent. Yes, you join a particular meeting, but you also join the larger Religious Society of Friends. Come on in, the water's fine.
Yes-- Robin is exactly right--the transferability of membership is a key distinction. You don't divorce a meeting. I had become quite involved in my meeting (including substantial committee work) before applying for membership. So I did not expect a huge change after the process--but nevertheless it does feel different. I feel _more_ of a responsibility to get involved with Meeting for Business. More of a stake in choices made. More secure and as if my contribution is taken a bit more seriously (even though I did get involved before). I liked the clearness committee process--I think if you really are ready, it is kind of a formality, but it is a good experience for helping you clarify things. And of course, if someone isn't ready, it will probably come out in the CC wash.
I've been a pretty crappy Friend lately, but I'd be more than happy to sit in on a meeting for clearness if you need support. We see each other far too little given how close we live to one another. I miss you! If I don't go to Northampton this weekend, I'll be at Meeting. Take care. Love, Rob
Sometimes I do think we're weirdly connected; I'm seriously considering applying for membership right now, too.
The reason I haven't is oddly enough connected to your last post. Right now I'm in a period of spiritual bonfire, and while in me it flares up and then embers down on a fairly cyclical basis, I'm worried to apply during a flaring period because I'm worried that it'd really be the excitement of the flare pushing me on as opposed to a true leading.
But really, even in quieter times, I am certain I want to apply for membership, so I probably should.
One other thing, sort of related; I feel a need for a lot of discussion, too, and one of the things I'm considering is talking to a Catholic priest. I'm pretty clear on my decision to leave the Catholic church, but before I join Quakerism formally I want to be 100% clear. I also want some spiritual direction of the sort most Meetings aren't too good at providing . . . surprisingly enough, I know a Friend who has received excellent spiritual guidance from the Catholics. Hmmmmm.
Hello, Amanda --
I understand your desire not to have a clearness committee that merely feels like a welcoming committee. That was the sort of clearness committee I wound up with, at the first Friends meeting I ever joined. And because it was only that, and did not seriously test or review the reasons why I wanted to join, it left me unprepared to handle the serious disagreements with that meeting that I encountered in the following two or three years. It thought it was being kind to me by not withholding approval until it had tested my desire to join carefully. But, quite frankly, it would have been far more kind to me if it had helped me recognize the differences between my ideas about Quakerism, and the reality of the meeting I was wanting to join, before it gave its approval.
Many years later, when I joined the meeting I belong to now, I took no chances: I wrote a two- or three-page letter detailing my understanding of Quakerism and the reasons why I was feeling drawn to join the meeting. I was making sure that, if there were differences between my understandings and the meeting's, that the meeting would see them and would want to talk with me about them. My new meeting understood that this was what I was doing, and gave my application the thoughtful consideration that I was hoping for. God bless 'em!
I agree with the Friends who compare membership in a meeting to marriage. In a healthy meeting, there is a degree of intimacy, of vulnerability, of deep involvement, in the joys and sorrows, the gains and losses, of one's fellow members, that is much more intense than simple friendship. There is a sense of spiritual joining, of growing or dying back in the life of the spirit together, that again goes beyond simple friendship.
And if the membership doesn't work out -- as in the case of the first meeting I belonged to -- and one has to resign one's membership -- as I did -- the pain is terrible. Surprisingly like divorce.
You may not expect to come to that kind of involvement and intimacy and vulnerability in your own involvement with your own meeting; but whether you expect it or not, it happens -- the relationship just deepens and grows that way -- unless you are deliberately holding the meeting at arm's length, in which case it's membership in name only, and hardly deserving of the name.
The apostle Paul compared the members of the church to the arms and legs and vital organs of a body. I think he was quite right. The joining between members is that tight, and that organic, when it really happens.
I am very, very glad to be happily joined in membership to my meeting, just as I am very, very glad to be happily joined in marriage to my dear wife. I hope you find something similar, because it is just a totally wonderful thing to have.
Thee might remember Mary Shannon. Her mother put it very well... "go where you hear God's voice the loudest".
The aspect of which meeting... is a little different. I think, we should be able to fit into any meeting where we find ourselves. I know there are Friends who can make a meeting arguementative and unworkable. Well, the centered Friends should have the patience to work towards loving unity anyway. If a meeting is disfunctional, it might be a call to even a new ( and very centered ) Friend to help gather the meeting. I am not big on Friends who go to meetings in the same Quarter to avoid conflict, rather than seeking peace and clearness...
But, I am pretty sure, thee knows that thee is joining the right meeting... and thee knows it is time for thee to join.
A warm welcome, Friend.
lor
Well, I don't know, not at all. My leading is to seek clearness about joining a meeting, not to join. Not yet anyway. But I do know I'll be shown in time.
All of these comments are tremendously helpful. Thanks very much, everyone. I do kind of see how it can be like marriage (allowing for the transfer part) in that once you've joined, it's not in good order to think "Okay, I've had it, I'm out of here and I'm going to try meeting X or church Z", while as an attender, that sort of thing might be more acceptable.
Like the difference between marraige and dating. If you are dating someone and you just are not "clicking" then you can move on. If you're married you ought to stick it out, except in cases of abuse/etc, which CAN happen in a meeting, just as in a marriage. I guess sometimes there is an in-between committed but not bound stage, like an engagement, or when people move in together before marriage to see if they can stand each other 24/7 before they take the leap.
As seriously as I take this (and I do)I am kind of giggling, because the meeting and I HAVE moved in together already. Cow/Milk, etc.
Not really relevant to your post, but I thought I'd share it anyway...
I know several Quakers who are very involved in their meetings who have an issue with joining anything and identifying as a member of any group.
However, there was an announcement in our meeting a while back that someone in the region had just applied for membership - she was 90-something years old, had been an attender for decades, a warden of a meeting for decades and had just moved into a nursing home and decided it was time she became a member.
Well, it made me laugh ;)!
Take your time and make the decision that is right for you and at the right time for you.
I wonder if membership is really an affirmation of the relationship that has already formed between you and your current meeting. Perhaps you have already been through the struggle that has brought you to this point?
CA
Amanda
I am in the mittle of applying and just waiting for the apporval but I am also moving. I do not see a problem with becoming a member and then moving because it is a way for me to clam where I am from. I applied to become a member just weeks before my family new we were moving and it was a question that was covered in my clearness committee.
I think it is important for me to be a member even if i won't be at the meeting because it is claming who I am will lead me to where I am supposed to be in a few years. When I join here in California I also join Pacific Yearly Meeting and that is part of me. I can travel and I can say I am a member and I hope to come back to PacYM if not Santa Cruz meeting. My letter is one the internet but when you read it you should also read the letter that came right before it because they are connected and then some of the references in my membership letter will make sence. when they were read at Business Meeting the one on Woolman was read first as a lead into membership. (robin gave you the link already).
hope your leading feels good
rebecca
I may have a series of comments, so bear with me, please.
Since I have been gone for more than two weeks, I am reading Of the Best Stuff... in reverse order--from most recent to least recent. And so now I have an observation: the impatience that you write about in the June 28 entry, and the remembrances you write about in the June 24 post--perhaps these are "up" for you because you have been holding the question of membership [i.e. commitment] in recent weeks.
Considering making a commitment--even if you never actually commit--is enough to upset anyone's insides. All of our old relationships, failed and disastrous and tender and hope-filled, come onto our mind's personal video screen... and sometimes we have no PAUSE button. And when we're not aware that the video is playing in our unconscious, it's likely we'll start "leaking" all sorts of behaviors and emotions and irrational thoughts that spook us.
So I wonder if your question of membership is triggering some other unhealed, semi-forgotten elements of who you had been...?
Does this make sense? I lift these ideas up because it's the one thing I seem to be able to do when there are no fast and easy answers. ...That, and to let you know that I have had to face a few inner demons of my own as I have gotten closer to obtaining something that I was truly wanting.
We are such strange creatures, aren't we?
You are in my thoughts. And now I'll get back to answering the real question you raise, about offering our own personal experience around membership and clearness processes.
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up
Now, back to the question:
In my case, when I requested a clearness committee for membership, it was because I was struggling with how to reconcile my Judaism with my nudge to pursue membership as a Friend.
I couldn't GET clear without a clearness process. I needed to ask my own questions to hear other Friends' stories about their own struggles... and in making my struggle known by including it in my letter requesting membership, the members of the committee brought their own stories into the fray.
So my experience was anything BUT a rubber stamp. And I think the committee met six or eight times as a result.
Sometimes I wonder if attenders wait too long to request a clearness committee--that is, do Friends wait until they themselves are completely convinced they are ready for membership... in which case, how much can the committee push them to let go of their own agenda that they are ready for membership?
That said, I do support you in holding your concern prayerfully for a time. But also know that you can request a clearness committee for membership if you are wrestling with things that you cannot on your own work through.
As for the marriage analogy, this is something I have had to mull over. I had believed I was entering into a reciprocal, growth-oriented relationship. But the large urban meeting has been a difficult place for me to have enough intimacy that would reveal the meeting's corporate values, etc.
So now I am in a place in this relationship where I am able to say to the meeting, "I value the possibility of transformation and obedience to the Spirit, and I firmly believe in a God-centered Quakerism, but it seems as if you value shared ethics, spiritual hospitality, and a Quakerism that is person-centered. Now what?"
There is no answer yet. Maybe I am called to be polygamous, given my relationship with the nearby worship group...
In the end, the tipping point for me to surrender my identity as a non-practicing Jew and move into membership as a Quaker came when I realized that I could not, in fact, live up to my measure of Light without becoming a Friend.
God wants us to be all of who we are, wherever and with whomever that might be. God doesn't care if that is in a mosque, a steeplehouse, a synagogue, a farm field, or a jail cell. Just so long as we are faithful.
Thanks for inviting us to share our stories. What a delight to read the responses.
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up
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