The Answer isn't Always What You Expect; Neither Are the Questions

Many of you know that I have been on hiatus from my Quaker meeting since late last May, when someone gave vocal ministry that described a Quakerism I didn't recognize at all, and in response, God whispered in my ear, "You don't need to be here for awhile." I'd have gotten up and left at that moment, except that the kids were getting their annual gift of books from the meeting, and I stayed to collect my kids' books.

I've still been acting as treasurer, but many months I have gone to business meeting just long enough to give my report. This was partly because of health problems that required me to carefully decide how to use my energy--I had, for about a year and half, not even enough spoons to stay awake and out of bed for a whole day, and sitting through business meeting was just too costly. But it was also because I found it hard to be with that group of people.

The reasons I took my hiatus feel complicated and, in some cases, petty. It has been hard to talk about (though I do talk about it an awful lot!) and it has often left me confused. Certain irritations had been growing on me for a long time, and a big handful of painfully offensive conversations I'd had with specific members have stayed with me, unresolved. For a long time, I was cheerfully able to accept that people come to Quaker meeting for different reasons, and that if some people were there to get something different from what I was looking for, that didn't mean I couldn't also find what I needed. But I began to feel that the Quakerism I was looking for was being crowded out by, for instance, liberal politics and a small but vocal number of Friends who were openly hostile to the idea of talking about God.

I've had a very hard time sorting out what things have to do with individuals, and what have to do with the meeting. For instance, one reason I've been uncomfortable with the meeting is the sense that, overall, we are affluent and highly educated, and not especially willing to be aware of our privilege, or think about what it means. And I still think that's true. But when I think back over things people have said that seemed absolutely clueless or hostile or offensive on class issues, it is primarily one person. So, is this a problem with the meeting, or a problem I have with this one person?

Similarly, we have an awful lot of college professors, lawyers, and doctors in our meeting. On the one hand, this creates a certain meeting culture that I wish we were more aware of: for instance, when a grad student comments in Joys and Sorrows that she's taking comps this week, the collective groan of sympathy that passes through the room really says something about who we are. We also tend to use language that goes beyond merely middle-class to--having trouble with words here, a little short on spoons today--erudite, academic, almost jargony. If we want to be a diverse and welcoming meeting, it would be good to be aware that when someone makes a joke about capital gains tax in business meeting and most of us laugh, or someone says about a recent trip to Europe, "I just can't relax unless I'm on another continent, that's just how far away I have to get," and a non-zero number of listeners chuckle in recognition of the sentiment, we are sending powerful signals about who we are. And believe me visitors for whom capital gains tax and trips to Europe are not on their list of active concerns will pick up on those signals. (Full disclosure: I was the one who made the joke about capital gains tax. And then immediately wished it back. But this is why I say "us, us, us," and not, "them, them, them," when talking about social class and my monthly meeting.)

None of that makes us bad people. It makes us who we are, and I only wish that, as a group, we were willing to think more about that. But it's mixed up in my mind with hurtful interactions I've had with specific people: for instance, only two people in my whole life have ever patronized or condescended to me because I am a housewife. Both of those people are college professors who are members of my meeting. I cannot always tell where the line is between "some people in my meeting are like this," and "my meeting is like this."

I don't want to slip into my Litany of Complaint here. The short version is that I often find myself not sharing specific values that seem to be taken for granted by many in the meeting; that I am interested in pursuing a possible call to a ministry that is not supported in liberal Quakerism; that I want a more religious religion than many Red Cedar Friends seem comfortable with; that I am troubled and discouraged by vocal ministry that draws on NPR and The New York Times for inspiration, or is what the British call "daffodil ministry" ("I saw daffodils blooming on the way to the meetinghouse this morning..."). The specific vocal ministry that inspired God to let me take a break from my struggles was so different from my own understanding of Quakerism's historical roots and influences that either the person offering it was sadly misinformed, or I need a refresher course.

The problem is that not attending meeting didn't end my struggle. It just gave me a short break from it. After some months, all the questions started rising up for me again, but my thinking is no clearer--I rehearse the same old complaints, questions, and doubts, but don't find movement. I took God's message very seriously--that "for awhile" implied to me that I would be back at Red Cedar someday. But the months passed and I was not led to return. Last month, inspired by the Lenten reflections of my friend Pastor Julie, I decided to try going back as a Lenten discipline. I went twice. It was horrible both times. The second time I found myself so wounded and angered by something that happened during the social hour that I cried in the car on the way home.

Now, I find myself considering the possibility that I may never go back. My term as treasurer ends in May, and I am supposed to serve on the Adult Religious Education committee. This seems like a good fit for me, something I should be excited about. The meeting is going to experiment with regular ARE activities twice a month, now that we're in our own meetinghouse. I love leading study and discussion groups, and book groups. I spent the first few months of my hiatus reading deeply and widely on religious subjects, and have many ideas for materials that might be of interest to the meeting. I have been bitching for years about the Gospel of The New York Times; this is a chance for me to put my money where my mouth is and join with other members of my meeting in religious reading and discussion.

But, right this minute, my heart is just not in it. I was actually considering last week whether I ought to let the meeting know they should find someone else to fill my spot. And then, yesterday I got a nice e-mail from the Worship and Pastoral Care committee telling me that they would be providing Connecting Kids to Quakers money for my children to attend FGC Gathering: a total of $720 for my three kids. I found that I wasn't sure I felt comfortable accepting the money; David says I should, he says it's premature to think of myself as no longer part of the meeting or undeserving of the services it provides. But I feel a pang, and think it's possible I accepted David's argument so readily not because I feel he's right, but because without that money, the kids and I can't go to Gathering, and I want to go. The fact that my reaction to the message was to feel uncomfortable about the money tells me something important, I think, about my relationship to my meeting and where it might be going.

God said eight words to me, and I thought I understood them perfectly well: You get to take a break, and then you come back. But what if I'm wrong? I've been waiting for way to open, and for that way to be a door back into Red Cedar. I thought it would look like one of those internal shifts where you find yourself able to transcend the pettiness, accept things as they are, open your heart so wide that people who used to hurt and disappoint you are objects of sympathy and affection. Or maybe, I thought, God would give me a word to speak, a clear leading about how to be different in my meeting, a ministry that could be heard there; God might transform me from a whining, self-pitying, over-sensitive complainer into someone with something meaningful to offer, an agent of grace.

But what if God is cutting me loose? Can it really be true that God no longer wants or needs me to be a Quaker in a monthly meeting? Is there someplace else I'm needed? How would I know? I thought I'd have answers by now, but all I have is a new set of questions I never thought I'd be asking.

Well (she said briskly, dusting her hands) they don't have to be answered this minute. This minute, there's a Yehva-related mess in the kitchen that needs to be cleaned up, a shower to be taken, a worryingly sick cat to be taken to the vet, a grocery list to be written, bills to be paid.

A Quaker Thinks about Lent

I am a liberal unprogrammed Friend (Quaker), and we don't do holidays. We don't have a liturgical year (though there's an old joke about the Quaker high holy days being Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday and Hiroshima Day). We don't celebrate the sacraments of baptism or communion. We don't all join together in celebration or mourning or atonement at set times.

We do trust that, at our best, communion with the divine will come to us, that we will find ourselves together in celebration or mourning. In my meeting, we recently experienced the death of a valued Friend; this spring we will celebrate together the wedding of a beloved couple, and anticipation is already building. My meeting tends to get giddy at the birth or adoption of a child, and I was astonished and comforted by how deeply people in the meeting shared our terrible months of uncertainty during our custody dispute with Yehva's birthfather.

So, it's not that we're not in there together as we pass through the inevitable joys and sorrows of life.

But we don't, for instance, celebrate the birth of Christ together at a certain time, or join together in repentance. For good and ill, we believe all days are equally holy, and if that sometimes means we forget to treat any of them as holy, well, that's one of our challenges as modern Friends. But sometimes I catch a glimpse of what we're missing. I think modern Quakers tend to focus on the happier aspects of our faith: "We celebrate That of God in everyone!" we chirp. We don't wrestle with that which is not of God the way early Quakers did. We think of the Light in which we walk as something warm and full of love. We forget it's also a searchlight, a firebrand, something that sears when it shines so brightly we can no longer pretend not to see our failings. We like to quote Margaret Fell, convicted by the preaching of George Fox, pulled to her feet in church to cry, "We are all thieves!" But I'm not sure any of us wants to experience what she did. We are thieves, too--we let her experience the pain and regret of empty ritual and false religion for us.

I could comfortably not think about these things, except that among my dearest friends are a Jewish family, and a Lutheran pastor. So these little hints come my way: my kids have Hannukah gift boxes their friend Noah gave them, that I'm pretty sure still have some gelt in them; a few weeks ago, I asked my friend Carla what she was planning for the next day, and she said, "Well, it's Tu B'Shevat, so we're going to spend some time outside with the trees." And every 10 Tishrei, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, invites Jews to fast and repent of their sins.

On the Christian end of my ecumenical spectrum of friends (for whom I thank God quite sincerely), Pastor Julie has been talking about Lent on her blog. On Facebook, she linked to a friend's blog post about Lent that I found very interesting, even if it was aimed at Lutherans.

What I have been hearing in this talk about Lent is less about the usual trite notions of self-denial ("should I give up chocolate or coffee?") than about bigger notions that resonate with me as a Quaker. Julie titled her post, "Lent is a journey toward unconditional love," and her friend wrote, "Lent is one of the penitential seasons of the Church year, meaning that it's a time where we get real with God and ourselves about what things keep us from a fuller relationship with God and with others, and try to make Godward changes." In other words, it's about toning down the warm full-spectrum Light of God we bask in, and turning up the searchlight a little bit.

On her blog, Julie wrote, "Lent is an opportunity to work on relationships." In her work as a pastor, she has resolved to increase her visitation during Lent, to take her presence and her cute little traveling communion kit and the word of God and her bubbling joy-filled personality and her "laugh you can hear in the next county" and her willingness to let her own failings be visible, and be with people.

Julie is a searchlight, darn her. Because I have been out of right relationship with my Monthly Meeting since last May, when I got a clear message from God in worship that said, "you don't need to be here for awhile," after a couple of years of struggle with the things that are hard for me about being in that meeting with those people, things that have to do with social class and with my being a quirky outlier in my notions about how children should be treated and with my wish for a more religious religion.

I heard "you don't need to be here" as a gift of rest, a respite from struggle. But I heard "for awhile" just as clearly, and I left feeling sure I'd be back. But the "while" has lasted longer than I expected it to, and it has been hard to trust that, as we Quakers say, way will open in good time.

I experienced an opening last weekend at the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgenger and Queer Concerns Midwinter Gathering. At a panel during which a transwoman, a gay man, and a lesbian spoke about their monthly meetings' responses to and support, or lack of support, for their relationships, I was powerfully reminded of times when my monthly meeting has gotten it right. A few years ago, for instance, when a lesbian couple sought clearness for marriage, and the straight people on their clearness committee were so distressed to learn about how little legal support there would be for their relationship, or for the non-biological mother's relationship to any children they might have, that they brought a concern to the monthly meeting about what we could do as a body to support families that do not have full legal recognition.

Straight people! Bringing a concern for the well-being of gay and lesbian families! One reason why I do love my meeting so very much.

I came home from the midwinter gathering thoughtful, prayerful, deliberate, still not sure whether that was enough of an opening for me to return to worship with my meeting.

And then Julie writing about Lent reminded me that sometimes claiming to be thoughtful, prayerful, and deliberate is a code for "dithering." That "waiting for Way to open" can be code for "I can't be bothered to get off the couch, but if the answer falls into my lap, so be it." That not every door is an automatic one; sometimes you have push on it.

If Lent is an opportunity to work on relationships, perhaps attending Meeting for Worship could be a Lenten discipline for me. Do I feel sure about that? No. Do I feel nudged? Yes. Am I afraid of failing? Oh, you bet--just four or five days ago I sat in my seat in a terrible popcorn meeting at the midwinter gathering, literally praying to God for the patience to make it to the end--and I failed. I got up and left with ten minutes left. So I'm not making any promises just now, not to God and not to you. But I'm doing my best to face the question squarely.