Maybe we need to remember that irritants are the progenitor of pearls

My Monthly Meeting's April business meeting was a big one for me. I came out with so much to think about. There's a whole big thing I'll need to write about how we describe ourselves and why, what unites us as Quakers, belief versus action, and big stuff like that. But today I get to write about something a little smaller.

Anybody who knows me in real life or reads my blog knows I've been struggling with my place in my meeting for awhile, and have been on hiatus since last May, though I have attended business meetings because I have continued as meeting treasurer.

Our meeting begins business meeting with worship sharing, during which we explore a query. Usually they're the queries from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Faith & Practice, and in April we took on #4: Care for the Meeting Community, which includes questions like, "Do I recognize and face disagreements and other situations that put me in conflict with others?" and "Are avenues for exploring differences kept open? To what extent does our meeting ignore differences in order to avoid possible conflicts?"

One of our members spoke to the query. She started out by describing herself as a "combative" person; I would not have used that word about her, but I recognized in her description my own perception of her as very direct and not afraid of conflict (I know a few people like this, two in particular in my meeting. I admire them, even though they intimidate me a little). But she went on to say that she thinks sometimes we fall into a mistaken belief that every little disagreement is something that has to be addressed and solved, but we might be better off recognizing that these little disconnects and differing perspectives are something we can just accept and live with.

"Hmmm," I said to myself. I have Big Religious Reasons for my hiatus from my Friends meeting; I also have Petty Little Personal Reasons, and, honestly, it is the petty little personal stuff that makes being there hardest, that blindsides me when I've been happily chugging along through the social hour, that leaves me uncertain how to proceed: do I need to bring this up with this person? Or is it best to let it be? If I don't bring it up, am I being accepting and peaceful, or cowardly? If I speak to it, am I bringing Truth or fomenting discord?

So this Friend's words spoke directly to questions I've been wrestling with.

A few days later, I went to the Festival of Faith & Writing. The festival opened with a talk by Scott Cairns, which I found a bit rambly and hard-to-follow, maybe because I was tired. But he said a few things that seemed like they were speaking right to me.

One was that he talked about alienation from church as "an ongoing failure." He sees isolated spirituality as lacking in an essential collective quality, as being unsupported and, in need, unsupportive. "Faith cannot be both solitary and healthy," he said. "Somehow or other, these beloveds must find their way home."

I know he said these things, in these words, because they spoke so directly to me that I wrote them down.

He then went on to talk about God as being an essential witness in conflict. God's witness, he said, has freed him from the need to make every offender aware of their offense. Practicing the awareness of the presence of God, and trusting in God as a loving witness, led, he says, to forgiveness being an almost-automatic process for him. He found that he was no longer an angry person who needed every person to be called to task for every transgression, no matter how small.

I was not challenged by this at all because I could see it had nothing to do with me, and my problems in my Quaker meeting. Thank goodness! Because I really want to cling to the belief that the problem is not with me, but with my meeting, and the other people in it, and that the solution is for me to find a way to speak Truth to them and change them. So many times in the past, the solution to a conflict, whether between me and David, me and one of my kids, me and a friend, me and my mother, or me and people in my Meeting, has turned out to be a change in my own attitudes and behavior. That's not gonna happen this time! No matter how much my Friend's comments in worship-sharing began to move me, or how convicted I felt by Cairns.

Am I convincing you? Because I'm trying really hard to convince myself.

The cherry on top of this sundae: the other day, on the way home from taking the kids to the park, I passed a church that had this message on its letter board (actually, this isn't the exact message. In my memory, it's got this profanity, but I'm sure there was actually a different word outside the church):

Stop bitching about your church. If it were perfect, they wouldn't let you in.

It's so true. I know for a fact that other people in my meeting are made uncomfortable by others' actions and opinions, too--and that I am one of those others. For instance, a year or two ago, one member spoke in worship-sharing about how troubled she is by how many families in our meeting homeschool. She has a concern that families that choose to homeschool are abandoning school systems in which they would be an asset, and improve the quality of the school for other children. She feels this so deeply that she was near tears talking about it.

Now, one reaction I have to this is that I've heard this argument before, many times, and rejected it. I have all kinds of reasons why I think this is a weak anti-homeschooling argument. And it would be kind of fun to run through those again.

But that's not the point. The point is, this woman feels a concern for disadvantaged kids and their educations, and she worries that parents pulling their kids out of public schools leaves behind the most vulnerable children and makes their learning environment worse. She may be right or wrong about whether my family's, or any other homeschooling family's, involvement would be an asset for a public school. But what she feels cannot be denied. And the number of families homeschooling in our meeting reminds her of her concerns, and that is distressing to her.

I've also heard one mom in our meeting say, half-jokingly, that she wishes there weren't so many of us in the meeting homeschooling, because she thinks her kids would be better off homeschooled and it's just not an option for them, and we homeschooling families are a constant reminder.

My point is, if there are choices people in my meeting make that remind me of my own concerns and fears, or are very different from my own carefully-considered choices, and are therefore painful or irritating to me, well, I'm performing that same service for others in the meeting. I am also a source of discomfort. Probably I am a source of discomfort in ways I don't know about, because people have not chosen to make me aware of my every transgression.

I tried for a neat little conclusion here, but I don't have one. So I'm just going to toss this all out there. It's what I've been thinking about. It feels like movement. God only knows where it will lead.