I know some people in my meeting come and stay because they find support and recognition for their political activism, a community that sees that work as important and spirit-led. Some come, I think, because we're a group of nice, welcoming people. Although some people in our meeting have known each other for twenty years or more, we're not insular. I think we do a pretty good job of making newcomers feel welcome but not overwhelmed. We can be accepting in good ways--one single mom who started attending a few years ago told me she appreciated the lack of judgment about her status as a single mom and about the way she dressed, after spending some time at a church where she felt scrutinized.
Some of us come to Quakerism because we're not comfortable with liturgical worship, or because we've been hurt by the Christian churches of our upbringing. This was my path; I wasn't raised in a church, but as a young radical lesbian feminist with vague spiritual yearnings, I couldn't see myself listening to a sermon about God the Father or singing hymns about Jesus. I tried joining some of the local lesbians in their pagan celebrations, but it didn't seem to me that anybody there really believed in what they were doing (I could have been wrong about this). And I wasn't comfortable with the Native American Lite spirituality of many white lesbians. So I tried the local Quaker meeting, and liked it well enough to stay.
The thing is, we come there for all kinds of different reasons. This can create tensions--as at a recent Meeting for Business I've talked about before, in which I had been seriously thinking, "If we approve this wording about what it means to be a Quaker, I'm going home and writing my letter withdrawing my membership," only a few minutes before a very beloved Friend said something like, "When we do this kind of word-smithing, I think we're getting awfully close to defining a creed, and I have to tell you if we start spending very much time on this kind of thing, I'm out of here." Despite the distress I was feeling, I couldn't help grinning inwardly and thinking of Mr. Bennett telling Elizabeth, "An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do." I think people in the meeting that day would be aghast to think they'd come to the brink of losing one or the other of us.
But I think overall we--my meeting, at least--do a pretty good job of being together in all our unlikely unity. I have a mystical relationship with a personal God I know experimentally, and Paul is an avowed atheist, but not only does the meeting want (and need?) both of us there, but Paul and I really care for and about each other. It seems to me that we bump up against our differences as we go about our Quakering--half the meeting loves so-and-so's vocal ministry, and the other half wishes he'd shut up already; one person needs to name God and another is pained to hear the word--but when we take time, in retreats or in business meeting, to listen to each other, we do it well, and it unites us.
What was my point?
Oh, I was going to say that we come to Quakerism for a reason. We're looking for a place where we will be comfortable and accepted, or where some of our questions can be answered. Does anybody walk through the door hoping to have all her most treasured beliefs challenged, to be transformed by faith, to be converted? Somehow I doubt it. And yet, to me, that's the best part of being a person of faith (also the scariest): the completely unexpected things that can happen to you when you let yourself be open. I joke that I am a person of faith today because when people told me that Quaker worship was a bunch of people sitting around waiting on God, I naively believed them, and after I waited long enough, God started showing up. And the thing is, once God shows up, crazy unexpected things start happening. Your whole like can change.
The balance seems tricky to me: we don't want to frighten people off, but if we think our purpose is to make them comfortable, we're never going to do God's work or help them find their piece of it. And yet, if we're honest with people, we would have to tell them that they're taking big risks by trying to listen to God, even if they don't call what they're listening for by that name. Mary Karr, author of The Liars Club and Lit, converted to Catholicism right in the middle of the pedophile priest scandal. She totally gets why people think she's a complete moron, and yet her conversion felt inevitable to her, and it was central to helping her become sober--conversion saved her life. But it also wrecked her life. Does anybody come to meeting for worship hoping to have their life wrecked? Should we warn them?
I went looking for a Flannery O'Connor quote I remember from 20 years ago, something about most people coming to church by means the church does not allow, and I couldn't find it. I found this one, though: "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."
I preached in worship on Sunday (I just can't say "offered vocal ministry" right now, sorry) on the subject of conversion. At least, I think that's what I was trying to talk about, with God's help. I was hoping, I think, to encourage people to be open to the way their faith and their practice can change them, though I also ended up talking about why people resist that. Why I do, even after having been through it before. It's because your faith and your practice can change you in ways that seem intolerable from where you're sitting now.
When I first came to Quaker meeting, I came to "Quaker meeting." It was years before I could say "worship," or anything else that sounded religious. Now I have an affinity for the religious aspect of our society (I am the one who, if I didn't rein myself in, would be prissily correcting people who talk about "The Society of Friends" instead of The Religious Society of Friends) and even for religious language from outside our tradition: convicted, preach, grace, mitzvah. And yet, having gotten comfortable here, I don't really want to be changed any more. It's not that I have thrown down all the walls and am ready to follow God wherever God leads; it's more like I moved the walls. This far, and no farther.
I talk about me here, and I talked about me some in worship on Sunday, not only because I like to talk about me but because I want people to know that when I invite them to be open not only to the comfort that Spirit and spiritual community provide but also to the ways that Spirit and their spiritual community can change them, push them in uncomfortable ways, I am not speaking as someone who has solved this problem for herself. It's more like I'm looking for company in a prickly and frightening place.
I am woefully ignorant about the Bible (I recently asked my friend Julie, a Lutheran pastor, to clarify for me: Peter and Simon Peter: one person, or two? Julie is very patient). But in the few bits I do know, it seems like Jesus is always asking people to give up all they have to follow him. And nobody can blame the ones who answer, "You have got to be kidding me," and go back to their vineyards and mansions and piles of gold coins. And even the ones who say yes sometimes get what seem like paltry returns. There are a couple of people in my meeting who can speak eloquently on the subject of following a leading right into a brick wall at 60 miles an hour.
Hmm, I don't think Ministry & Outreach is going to be asking me to write the new outreach pamphlet anytime soon. All this talk about life-wrecking. But there you have it. You come into a silent room for a little peace and quiet, with maybe some coffee after with nice people who seem to like you. And then a bomb goes off.
3 comments:
Hmmm. I find that I have a lot to say on this topic, but somehow it's hard translating it into a written response. I come from a rather different experience, I stuck with the pagans, though I agree that for many it's more about the magic or possibly the trance experiences and altered states than true religious feeling. Somehow I came across ADF Druidry and found my home.
I feel like I am being pulled rather like a stubborn child to a number of life changing things, and it is scary. I have serious cold feet. You speak of God, I speak of gods and spirits and ancestors. I wonder if it is any easier when there's only one of them pestering you.
Then there's the whole concern that true religious conviction is no more than mental illness. Really what is the difference between a dissociative state where someone talks to a teapot and religious revelation? I think in fact that there is a connection between the two.
It seems more common and accepted for people in Druidry to talk about and experience deep life change associated with the Gods. Often they find a particular deity that speaks to them. It's referred to as a Patron or a Matron.
I still have problems speaking in terms of worship of deity. I speak in terms of honoring them a lot, having moved away from the typical pagan invoking of deity, as if they were to be called when wanted and then shoved aside when no longer of use. Piety is one of the core virtues of ADF, I really had to work through a lot of issues with that word. Still am for that matter, though I'm finding out that I'm probably one of the most pious pagans I know!
Anyway, most of this is just rambling nonsense, but there is someone out there keeping you company in that prickly place.
I think a lot these days about Flannery O'Connor's title, "Everything that rises must converge." It gets across what you're talking about, and adds the particular aspect of discomfort that seems to bedevil different branches of Friends. You have to come very close to people you don't want to be close to, if you want to get closer to God. That seems to be where we all start putting up barriers, don't you think?
Rosemary
Rosemary, I had never thought of that title or that concept in quite the way you put it. Very thought-provoking for me.
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