On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry

This is the name of a great book by Brian Drayton of New England Yearly Meeting. Basically, it is about vocal ministry in unprogrammed meetings. But Drayton defines it like this "Gospel ministry is service whose goal is to encourage, support, push, or invite people to seek and respond to the guidance, teaching, and activity of that Light and Life at work in all, right now. It is not merely speaking words in meetings for worship, but, under a sense of obedience to the motions of the Spirit, using words, deeds, or silent striving to help others (and ourselves) forward to the more abundant life that Jesus sought for his disciples, his friends."

Here are two ways to engage with this concern:

The Thursday Night Study Group at San Francisco Monthly Meeting will begin reading the book this week, on November 2, 2006. You don't have to read in advance - just show up. You can borrow a copy of the book for the evening, buy it there to take home with you, or bring your own, it's available through Quakerbooks.org. The Group starts with an informal potluck supper at 7:00 p.m. followed by discussion at around 8:00, and it's usually over by 9:00. We take turns reading out loud and stopping wherever it's convenient to ask a question or share a comment on the text.

I say "we" even though I stopped attending the Group regularly when my now eight-year-old son was about eight months old. But I think the format is still basically the same. I am so excited that they will be reading this book that I am making the time [and money for babysitters] available to attend again.

The Thursday Night Group is also a regular, communal meal that is open to all visitors. It serves as an entry point for many Friends, both those who are mostly looking for some friendly companionship and those who want to know more about our Meeting and the Religious Society of Friends. The attendance has rotated some over the years, but the core of the Group has continued to grow in depth and faithfulness that is an inspiration to me.

Twelve years ago, this Group offered me some of my earliest insight into living a more intentional Quakerism. This is the first place I heard people discussing the writings of early Friends and their own experiments with plain dress and Christian language. It has been a rich resource for our Meeting over the last fifteen years or so of its existence.

I hope that reading this book will be an opportunity for Friends in our Meeting who are called to vocal ministry to talk about what it's like, what does it mean for us as individuals, what does it mean for the Meeting, how do we prepare, how does it change our lives, and more, with others who share that calling.


The second opportunity will be Quaker Heritage Day 2007 - March 3, 2007 to be exact. Brian Drayton will be the featured speaker at Berkeley Friends Church's annual event. I just got the save the date card. It says that "As a recorded minister in New England Yearly Meeting, Brian has for many years carried a concern for nurturing and encouraging emerging ministries. ... Brian primarily works within his own Yearly Meeting and has never traveled in ministry in California before now. This is a rare opportunity to meet Brian on the west coast."

Last year, Quaker Heritage Day was a rare opportunity to meet Peggy Senger Parsons and Margery Post Abbott in California. If you'd like to read more about that, click on the March 2006 archives in the sidebar of my blog. One of the best parts was that I was able to host them and a few other Friends/bloggers for dinner that evening. I hope to provide hospitality again this year. I don't know if Brian Drayton will come - but I can hope! Let me know if you'd like to come for another convergent Friends event in the Bay Area.

Quaker Heritage Day 2007

Gospel Ministry and the Quaker Way

March 3, 2007
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Berkeley Friends Church
1600 Sacramento St., Berkeley, CA 94702
510-524-4112

RSVP: office@berkeleyfriendschurch.org
Pre-registration by 2/19 is appreciated so that they can plan lunch.
Pre-registration is required if you need childcare.
[My kids are already signed up.]
Suggested donation: $20 per person

Brian Drayton will take us on a tour of Quaker understandings of Gospel Ministry, past, present, and future. If you care for how God's truth is spoken in -- or outside -- of our meetings, this event is for you.

Session 1: Variations on Several Themes: Friends Ministry Through Time

Session 2: Disorder Under Heaven: Is Gospel Ministry Relevant To Our Calling Today?

Session 3: Meetings, Ministry, and the Seed's Victory

And bonus Sunday sessions

I would also like to gather convergent/blogger Friends for dinner afterwards. This was a wonderful Opportunity last year. If you'd like to come, please leave me a comment or send an email to the address in my profile and I'll send you the details.

I've written before about reading Brian Drayton's book, On Living With A Concern For Gospel Ministry.

Here's the bio from the flyer about QHD 2007:

Brian Drayton of Weare (NH) Monthly Meeting is a plant ecologist working in science education research. He has traveled extensively in the ministry carrying a concern to encourage those who contribute to their meeting's ministry. He has given workshops, retreats, and addresses on a range of topics in Quaker history and belief for monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings and Pendle Hill. In 1994, he published Selections from the Writings of James Nayler. In 2003 he was one of the originators of the Quaker Peacebuilders Camp, a program for teaching nonviolent action based on Quaker spirituality. His most recent book, On Living With a Concern for Gospel Ministry, was one of the best sellers on the book table at the 2006 Quaker Heritage Day.

QHD 2007, the longer version

Third in a series of seven posts about QHD 2007

Saturday was the fourth annual Quaker Heritage Day at Berkeley Friends Church. The first speaker was Hugh Barbour, second was T. Canby Jones, last year it was Margery Post Abbott and Peggy Senger Parsons. A few moments on Saturday afternoon were dedicated to holding Peggy Parsons in the Light, as we heard she had just returned the day before from two months of training trauma healers in Burundi. Last year was my first time at QHD and I was just about blown over by the experience. It was a more low-key presentation this year, but then it pretty much had to be.

This year's speaker was Brian Drayton, author of On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, one of the biggest sellers at last year's QHD book table.

I think I counted 12 adult attenders from my Meeting alone. Maybe a fourth or fifth of the event. Pretty much all the regular attenders of the Thursday night study group. Bet the discussion this week will be rich. (Alas, I'm providing childcare for the Executive Director of the HEART of San Mateo County while he attends a county planning meeting.)

I've struggled a bit with what to say about the talks. But plain speech is winning out. I don’t think that Drayton presented much that was really new to me. Using Bownas’s categories of milk for babes or meat for grown men, I felt like I was being fed bananas or avocados – nutritious, but nothing to really chew on, nothing spicy hot. Chris M. took better notes than I did, and he’ll probably post some of the juiciest nuggets. Nonetheless, I think it was good to soak in the atmosphere for a whole day. And other Friends were deeply moved by the whole thing. I think I just didn’t manage my expectations very well.

In the closing worship, I had these words but no opportunity to share them, so here they are:

Just as prayer can be a full-body experience, ministry can be a whole-life experience.

I was thinking of my Friend Elizabeth’s image of praying for the world’s children by hunching over like a woman in labor, crying “Save my baby!” Or the image of a novice entering religious life fully prostrate, face down on the floor, in submission to Christ. And I was thinking of all the ways are lives are called into holiness, into seeking perfection, in order to become a clear channel for the presence of God in gospel ministry. Earlier in the day I had used words like purity, chastity, temperance and humility. Brian Drayton had added time management or avoiding over-busyness to the list. Which was both disappointingly mundane and absolutely accurate.

I don’t know if BFC will have QHD again next year, since Max Hansen is leaving the pastorate, but I sure hope so. If you have suggestions of possible speakers, I’d be happy to pass them on to the church leadership.

Getting Rooted

[Third in a short series of highly subjective mini book reviews.]

Getting Rooted: Living in the Cross, A Path to Joy and Liberation
by Brian Drayton (Pendle Hill Pamphlet 391)

This is one of the clearest examples where I just want to say: read the whole thing. It’s not that long and anything I have to say about it is weak and pale in comparison.

One of the best points for me was about maintaining the balance between finding our roots but not idolizing the past. On this note, Drayton quotes from John Churchman’s journal, from back in 1740:

…An elderly man asked us if we saw some posts to which he pointed, and added, the first meeting George Fox had on this side of Chesapeak bay [sic], was held in a tobacco house there, which was then new, and those posts were part of it. John Browning [Churchman’s companion] rode to them, and sat on his horse very quiet; and returning to us again with more speed than he went, I asked him what he saw amongst those old posts. He answered, “I would not have missed what I saw for five pounds, for I saw the root and ground of idolatry. Before I went, I thought perhaps I might have felt some secret virtue in the place where George Fox had stood and preached, whom I believe was a good man; but whilst I stood there, I was secretly informed, that if George was a good man, he was in heaven, and not there, and virtue is not to be communicated by dead things, whether posts, earth, or curious pictures, but by the power of God, who is the fountain of living virtue.”

Ahem. For someone like me, usually a devotee of what Anne Fadiman calls "You Are There Reading," this is a good reminder. It's also good for anyone who has a tendency to think all the really good Quakers died before 1800.

I’ve read this pamphlet at least three times now. Chris M. wrote about it back in September. It is amazing to me that reading Drayton requires multiple passes – not because the words or grammar are that hard, but because the Truth is small and still and must be waited for. It’s not a page-turning adventure story. More like the slow growth of roots in the heart.

Another passage that Drayton quotes is from Isaac Penington. It’s pretty common among Friends – I even just bought a t-shirt with part of this on it:

Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know or to be any thing, and sink down into the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that, and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life…

Let Drayton’s words grow in thee too.

Was thee faithful?

The following is a guest post from Brian Drayton, speaker at last weekend's Quaker Heritage Day at Berkeley Friends Church. It was sent to Chris asking him to forward it to as many Friends who were there as we could find email addresses. Excerpts were also read at my monthly meeting's business meeting yesterday, as an epistle.

I felt compelled to write back, both with my personal responses and to ask if it would be acceptable to him to republish his letter on my blog. He has graciously agreed.

I recommend you read it more than once. (I had to print it out.) I have found that his words grow more compelling each time I read them. Especially the idea that spiritual hospitality begins with welcoming the Holy Spirit into our own hearts and lives.

3/8/07
To Friends in and around Berkeley

Dear Friends,

As I have sat in the quiet since Darcy and I were with you last weekend, I have repeatedly had the sense that I was not free of the work I had come for. Through fatigue or ineptness, I believe that I failed to convey some part of what I felt I should offer. For this reason, and with a strong sense of love for, and connection with you, I feel to write some few words as a conclusion to our time together, about ministry and the Seed's victory.

Our mission, our calling, is to offer hospitality to the active life of the living God, and so all ministry is given to help each other in this great task.We encounter this life in the place of stillness, when the many voices calling and commanding us from self, society, and culture can be set into the background, and for a while, to our surprise, lose their command over our attention. In reaching to the Lord's lovely spirit, we can learn to feel our unity with others, and with the creation, and our love for them; and there we can be confident of receiving guidance about how to join in God's work of healing and reconciliation, creation and thanksgiving.

The precious, little, sweet springing of that life is what we need to practice keeping our eye on, step by step; or feeling for its gentle stirring, its cool and refreshing presence, its sharp, clear truth-telling, which, as William Penn tells us, shows us our illness, and provides at the same time the remedy. Friends have loved to call this low, beautiful thing of potential and power the Seed. The very image of a little seed, stirring into opportunity, arouses in us the desire to nurture new growth, cultivate the ground, remove the over-burden that prevents growth towards the Light that is the source of life.

We know that the life Christ leads us towards is one of simplicity, peace, and other fruits of the Spirit, but we should help each other remember that these should not be the objects of our longing — we know too well how one or another virtue can itself become an idol, a substitute for what we truly are seeking, which is the lovely Spirit our companion and shepherd. So we must encourage each other to recall this simplest, basic yearning, and to sharpen our eyes and ears for the least evidence of its activity and direction — and we must school ourselves to relish and savor the sense of Presence, if only for a little moment, before translating the guidance, the insight, the release, into action or words.

In this way, by recalling over and over our first invitation, to "come and see," and remembering that this first impulse of longing and interest is always precious, and a treasure in itself, we will grow to see how many evidences of this life there are, in so many things around us. The act of hospitality to the Spirit will become a growing joy. Then, as we encounter in the light fresh insight about where we are not yet free, where our compulsions and fears, resentments, wounds, and appetites bind us, we will be more able to look at these sorrowful things with directness, and then turn from them towards the light, which will help us so to live that the bindings lose their power. It is the resolute turning towards the Light, keeping our hands on the plow, that releases us, however hard it is; and in the choosing to turn is the Cross. As we experience this process, we come to see how it is the preface to joy.

There is something majestic in the realization that, to the extent we and others come to honor that simple freeing power, it brings victory over the things in us that make for destructions large and small. The victory of that Seed's growth comes as it comes to overtop and shadow out the cruel, the angry, the hasty or fearful in us; and we are empowered to speak to that sweet, free, cool thing in others, activating it, perhaps, so that they can taste just a little of its delight again, and long to know it better. So we can come to the place John Woolman spoke of, where to turn ourselves and all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the chief business of our lives.

And "Seed" also means "descendent from the same fore-parents." We have been promised that Christ is our elder brother, the first-born of many brethren (as Paul has it). It is in living with this Seed, minding the Light that reveals it and guides us as we offer it hospitality, that we come to touch, and are enabled to accept, our child-hood of God, and our kinship with Christ, who as Seed and Light is there at work in us, before we even know how to name the power that is searching and soothing us, calling and comforting.

We minister truly, we truly serve, when we wait to feel that life, and the love that we have come to feel for it, when we speak or act. Our ministry may take the form of telling what has been done for us by that power, or what others have experienced; or it may take the form of guidance or warning about the path of growth and inward hospitality — true ministry will take as many forms as the needs are, and as the messengers are. But let us help each other to practice whatever helps come to that place of Presence and companionship, to form and hold a clear and intimate sense of that precious Seed, the Life of God coming to birth and growth in ourselves and all. More than that, let us never be too proud, or knowing, or weary, to stop and give thanks for that simple, sweet Presence, the foundation and goal of our soul's life.

In Christian love your friend,
Brian Drayton

"He is no true minister of Jesus Christ, but [he] who is led forth by His Spirit; and such we rejoice to hear declaring the things of God. Otherwise, upon meeting, we sit silent in the tongue, yet having a heart full of praises, where we worship God in Spirit and truth, who makes our bodies temples for the same Spirit, not speaking by hearsay and human arts, but lay all that down. When earthy thoughts, earthy words and earthy works are all laid aside and the temple within us is ready, the light of Christ shining in it, and the Lord with a further manifestation of His love enters it by His eternal power, [there]upon we can truly say that the Lord's presence is amongst us, feeding His flock and making us feel the power of an endless life."

William Britton, 1660, "Silent meetings a wonder to the world."

Practical advice for encouraging new gifts in vocal ministry

Here is one small practical piece of advice I’m taking away from Brian Drayton at Quaker Heritage Day at Berkeley Friends Church.

I asked a question about how to deal with emerging gifts in vocal ministry: how to notice and encourage a new minister without stepping on the tender shoots nor inflating beyond good measure?

Drayton recalled a Friend he had known who would come up to you after meeting for worship and say, “I was thinking about what you said in there. And it made me think … (whatever had come up for him).”

It let you know that he had noticed and gave an idea of his reaction. But it wasn’t empty or awkward praise or discouragement.

I like this suggestion a lot and I’m going to try to practice it. What do you think?

Reading Drayton in Community

So I went to the Thursday night study group last night. I think it's been eight years since the last time. Some things never change.

Chris M. and I used to go every Thursday, for about three years. When H. got too big to carry with us and just sleep through everything, Chris and I gave up going. Rather than have one of us be resentful every week, we decided neither of us would go. Harmony in our marriage was more important than our study group. However, I have tried to read some of the same books that the group has read and from time to time, I have recommended books or pamphlets that I have read to the group's semi-official leader. Members One of Another by Thomas Gates is one example that I think they took up.

I have been enthusiastically encouraging the study group to read Brian Drayton's On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry for six months now. They finally finished up the William Penn text that they'd been reading for months, and announced that this would be next. Hooray!

Several of us have already read the book. I agree with the person who said last night that he is really looking forward to reading this with other people. I am looking forward to the chance to discuss the calling to vocal ministry with some of the true (if unrecorded) ministers and elders of my Meeting. I phoned several other people in our Meeting who give vocal ministry to encourage them to come too. Some of them have other commitments on Thursday nights; some have too much going on in their lives already to add one more night out. But one of them showed up last night and I hope that others will drop in from time to time.

Last night, in one hour, we got through the Foreword by Fran Taber and about half the Introduction. That's about eight pages. Methinks we'll be reading this book for a long time to come. The group's method is only partly about reading the texts. As Friends said last night, it's also about sharing our spiritual journeys and questions and creating the blessed community among us.

I feel blessed to be part of this community. I had the opportunity to say last night how much the Quaker blogosphere has helped me to appreciate being part of my Meeting.

A Series of Highly Subjective Mini Book Reviews

I keep meaning to write these insightful book reviews about the great things I’ve been reading. But then I get bogged down in how to write about them without quoting half the book in the process, especially when I really like what the author has to say.

So I’ve decided to just write the little bits that come easily, which are largely not about the book but about me – or rather, the things I thought of when I read the book. Probably they shouldn't even be called reviews. More like "reflections on the occasion of reading a book." You can find more objective reviews elsewhere.

See? This blog is called What Canst Thou Say? Not what did somebody else already write. Feel free to write what thee thinks in the comments.

Upcoming titles that have inspired some reflection:

Holy Silence by J. Brent Bill

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren

Getting Rooted by Brian Drayton

Christianity for the Rest of Us by Diana Butler Bass

QHD, the short version

First in a series of seven posts about QHD.

Quaker Heritage Day with Brian Drayton was good. The dinner afterwards was great.

Thanks to Lisa for hosting. Thanks to Max for organizing QHD again and for taking photos (which you promised to post.) Thanks to Wess and Emily for coming up again.

Thanks to all the Friends who made the Opportunities of this day possible.

More content and live links to follow, after some sleep has been had by all.

My Three Words for 2017

Slow. Teach. Ask.

Slow, because I want to slow down and pay attention. Not speak too quickly. Not act too quickly. Not judge too quickly. Not fix it too quickly. I want to take the time to be more graceful, more patient. Most of the things I regret (was embarrassed by) in the last year/my whole life are because I spoke without thinking, leapt without looking.

In La Paz, Bolivia several years ago, at that high altitude, I learned that I could get along fine as long as I walked like a dignified Señora, and not if I scurried around like a little girl. If I tried to run up the stairs, I would be out of breath by the first landing. But if I just walked slower, I would get where I was going smoothly and with energy to do whatever I need to do when I got there. I want to remember that lesson as I approach 50 and beyond, even at sea level.


Teach, because it makes me happy. I like explaining things. I like sharing what I have learned. I like inviting people to consider new ideas and facilitating discussions. I want to accept more invitations to speak and to write when they come to me. I will look for ways to do this as part of my job, because it makes a better balance in my life with all the management/accounting stuff, so that I can continue to enjoy my job. And I want teaching to be part of my life at my monthly meeting and in my children’s religious education. For me, this will include taking time to write more articles, maybe even more blogposts! Invitations to teach do come my way every so often, and I want to remember that they are not a distraction from my real work – this is part of the work that God has created me to do, whether I get paid for it or not.

So, to start, I will be leading a discussion at Green Street Monthly Meeting on January 29, 2017 at 9:15 am, about a passage from A Language for the Inner Landscape: Spiritual Wisdom from the Quaker Movement by Brian Drayton and William P. Taber, Jr., pages 92-93, from the chapter on “Community and the Inner Life of the Meeting.” The discussion will focus on “What is the real purpose of our worship together?” And then, I will be writing a lesson for the United Society of Friends Women International 2017-2018 program book, Blueprints, on the same theme. I am grateful to the Friends who extended the invitations to do both of these.


Ask, because I want to be less bossy, less of a know-it-all. To ask first, do you want me to tell you more about this? Or not? Do you want help? May I? How may I help you? How would you like to be involved? How would you like to hear from me? What do you think? To say less often, “You know what, you should _____________!”

This is a life lesson, that maybe I can change and maybe I can’t. This is rooted in being an eldest child, so it’s a long time in the making. I am weighing this desire against the fact that girls with leadership skills are too often called bossy. But I think that I could be more effective in my leadership and my teaching and my interpersonal relationships if I were more thoughtful in my communications. Which makes this connected to my first word, slow, because if I thought for a second before I speak, I would find better ways to teach, better ways to lead, better ways to parent adult children, and be a wife and sister, etc.


I pray for God’s guidance and people’s forbearance as I move in these directions. I am grateful to Chris Brogan for his inspiration to choose three words each year. If you want to read some of my three words from prior years, here are 2016, 2015, 2012, 2010, and here are my prior attempts at new years resolutions from 2009 and 2008. If you write your own, use the hashtag #my3words so that we can find each other.

Coming Attractions

It seems that most of my writing these days is correspondence with new Friends. The excitement of finding kindred souls and shared interests in unexpected places is lighting my life these days.

Last weekend I went to the Christian Friends Conference, a quarterly gathering of Quakers in northern California that regularly brings together unprogrammed and pastoral Friends. I am trying to write more about this – but there are two parts, and some of it is tender, and it may take a few more days, or given that school is about to get out for the winter break, a few weeks.

Here are some Quaker gatherings that I am very much looking forward to next year:

• January 20, 2007 College Park Quarterly Meeting, with a concern for living in harmony with the earth, and an opportunity to consider how to balance our personal choices with global needs, including consideration of a minute proposed by Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting on reducing our greenhouse emissions, at Ninth Street Meetinghouse, San Francisco.
  

• March 3, 2007 Quaker Heritage Day, featuring Brian Drayton, author of On Living with a Concern for Vocal Ministry, at Berkeley Friends Church, and afterwards a convergent/blogger dinner at my house in San Francisco

• March 15-17, 2007 Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas, Annual Meeting, at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island
  

• April 13-15, 2007 Young Adult Friends Workshop with Betsy Blake, on entering a new understanding of purpose and calling; and listening to the one, even Christ Jesus, who speaks to our condition, at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, California

I will have different roles at each, which are still in discernment, but may include audience, hostess, fellow-worshipper, minister, and elder, and maybe some of each role at each gathering.

At any rate, the point here is to just say that I am planning to go, and I want to encourage other Friends to come too!

December 30, 2006: Now with live links to the various organizations!

Some Quaker books we think are important

This list was part of the handout at our interest group at FGC Gathering 2006. I'm too tired to make all the links. If one sounds interesting and you can't find it, let me know.

You are also welcome to add books or pamphlets that have inspired you to deeper Quakerism in the comments.

The Book of Faith and Practice of your own Yearly Meeting

The Authority of Our Meetings is the Power of God by Paul Lacey (PHP#365, 2003)

Convinced Quakerism by Ben Pink Dandelion (Southeastern Yearly Meeting, 2003)

A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister: Advice to Ministers and Elders Among the People Called Quakers by Samuel Bownas 1676-1753 (Pendle Hill Publications and Tract Association of Friends, 1989)

Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson (Quaker Press of FGC, 2001, originally published 1993)

An Experiment in Faith: Quaker Women Transcending Differences by Margery Post Abbott (PHP#323)

Gospel Order: A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Community by Sandra L. Cronk (PHP #297)

Living the Way: Quaker Spirituality & Community by Ursula Jane O'Shea (Quaker Home Service, 2003)

Members One of Another by Thomas Gates (PHP #371, 2004)

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton (Quaker Press of FGC, 2006)

A Plain Life: Walking My Belief by Scott Savage (Ballantine Books, 2000)

Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire (Sorin Books, 2001)

Quaker Treasures by Marty Grundy (Beacon Hill Friends House, 2002)

Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly (HarperCollins, 1996)

Where Words Come From: An Interpretation of the ground and practice of Quaker worship and ministry by Douglas V. Steere (Quaker Home Service, 1985, originally published 1955)

Why Friends are Friends by Jack Willcuts (Barclay Press, 1984)

What I'm Reading Now - Third Month 2006

As I am wont to do when under extra stress, I am reading small bits of lots of different things. Some more than once, many not for the first time. This approach works better with some books than others, but that never stops me.

Voici a list compiled primarily by walking around the flat and writing down the names of all the books that are still lying where I left them:

Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris

Walk Worthy of Your Calling: Quakers and the Traveling Ministry, edited by Margery Post Abbott and Peggy Senger Parsons

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

Deltora Quest: Return to Del by Emily Rodda (At least I finished this one.)

The Gospels of Luke and John (Chris and I are taking turns reading a chapter a night out loud to each other. I learned of this as a practice from the one Emergent church gathering I went to in February. We like it.)

Eating Well for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton

What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry

Psalms, randomly

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton

Friends Bulletin, starring Joe Guada

Princeton Alumni Weekly (no, I didn't go there)

Via magazine (that comes with the AAA membership)

Undaunted Zeal: The Letters of Margaret Fell, edited by Elsa F. Glines

Rachel and Obadiah by Brinton Turkle

Final Harvest: Emily Dickenson's Poems, selected by Thomas H. Johnson

We have a great trailer - How's the movie?

Let me explain the concept of the "great trailer" a little better. The point was that sometimes, when you're in a movie theater, you see an ad for an upcoming move (called a trailer, I don't know why) and you think, "Wow! I really want to see that movie!" And then when you go to it, you find out that all the best scenes were actually in the trailer and the rest of the movie doesn't live up to them. But sometimes, you find out that the rest of the movie is even better.

Quakerism has some great scenes, some great lines of dialogue in our history. Is that it? Are those great moments in Quaker history over? Or is there more to the story? Of course, being the rabid Quaker that I am, I think the answer is yes, good things still to come! And here are some of the things pointed out to me by Peggy Parsons and Marge Abbott.

God's peace vs. conventional wisdom?

Gospel order does not mean a placid existence. It doesn't mean no conflict. In fact it probably means plenty of conflict with the world. But no conflict with God's will.

It doesn't mean success in traditional terms or on our own schedule. One example they gave is that of Susan B. Anthony, who died without seeing the fruit of her labor. But in fact, women can vote nowadays, and she's the only Quaker ever to appear on money. How many Quakers even aspire to that kind of success?

There was also a reference to John 14, which you'll have to look up for yourself, because I don't remember what it was about, I just wrote down the title and chapter of the book.

Here are the stages of transformation in God's ways:

• Know truth - understanding that there is something different, something better
  
• Turning - trying to get right with God, some backsliding is common
  
• Changed - accepting that we are unable to do as we did before, finding the peace
  
• Guidance - waiting for the leading to know what is our part of God's work
  
• ACT - without fear, with love

For more on this, I recommend Howard Brinton's Quaker Journals, Samuel Bownas's A Description of the Qualifications Necessary for a Gospel Minister and Brian Drayton's On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry.

They also talked about the dangers of transformation.

See above re: conflict with the world. Also, anything written about Tom Fox.

Another example given: Like the Beaver said to Lucy, Aslan is not safe, he's not a tame lion, but he is good. God is like that too.
(Side note: I did not see the Christian references in the Chronicles of Narnia until I went to college and someone pointed them out to me, almost point by point, despite the fact that I had read some of the books dozens of times. I personally take refuge in C.S. Lewis's assertions that they were fiction, not meant to be Christian allegory, thank you.)

Additional good lines:

Re: people who are indifferent to your efforts: God doesn't care that people are indifferent to God, God loves them anyway.

God creates us to be invincible, not conquerors. For a better explanation of this idea, read this on Peggy's blog.

Even a small oasis in the desert transforms a much larger area into usefulness. The desert doesn't have to all become a rainforest for people to get what they need. A series of oases is enough. This is parallel to Godliness in a barren, hostile world.

In the last 10 days

In the last ten days, I

quit my job (except I still have to work there until the end of the month)
got new brakes for my car
got my landlord to fix our water heater
took care of my children while my husband was away for the weekend
went to an all day Quaker workshop
hosted a dinner party for six people who'd never been to my house before plus my children but minus my usual beloved cohost
registered for FGC
attended my Monthly Meeting's Ministry and Oversight committee meeting
met with my clearness committee
started re-negotiating the financial aid offer at my son's school
worked my usual three days at the office and two at the preschool
performed the daily morning massacre of ants in my kitchen and/or bathroom
read half of Brian Drayton's On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry
(not all in that order)

plus, you know, the usual eating, cooking, laundry, dishes, bathroom cleaning, homework supervising, bottom wiping, etc.

Deep breaths. And again.

And in between, I escape to blogs, where previously I might have bought a silly magazine.

Does this all sound familiar? For me, this was a crazy, busy week and a half.

My two cents for the Modern Quaker Library

At the end of the year, our Ministry and Oversight Committee had some money left in its budget. We decided to use the funds to purchase some adult religious education materials. I lucked out with the task of ordering the books!

This is the list of books I ordered for the SFFM library in Twelfth Month 2005, along with my personal reasons for choosing these and not others. The main criteria was that it be written or published somewhat recently, since our Meeting's library is heavy on books that have been donated by people who are now very elderly or deceased. For example, we already had three copies of Howard Brinton's Quaker Journals

Creeds & Quakers: What’s Belief Got to Do With It? by Robert Griswold because he was the Brinton Visitor from North Pacific Yearly Meeting a few years ago and he came and spoke at our Meeting along with many others in Pacific Yearly Meeting. From Quakerbooks.org: "This [Pendle Hill] pamphlet's author asserts that Friends too often hold Quaker testimonies as ideals, as ends in themselves, rather than as fruits of the Spirit. Without spiritual grounding, testimonies become creeds."

Dear Friends and Sisters: 25 Short Biographies of Quaker Women by Gil Skidmore because we could use more stories of Quaker women and because when Gil commented on my blog Martin raved about her work.

A Description of The Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister by Samuel Bownas because it's still the best advice I've ever read about Quaker ministry.

Essays on Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson because it has changed so many people's relationship to Quakerism, including my own

The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg because it helped me to see that I could be an educated modern adult AND a Christian at the same time.

Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality by J. Brent Bill because the description said it would help explain the difference between Quaker silence and Zen, Catholic, etc. uses of silence and a Friend that I showed my list to said, "oh, I heard him speak once, he's good."

Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong, because I thought we ought to have something written in this century...

Living the Way: Quaker Spirituality and Community by Ursula Jane O’Shea because this is the description from Quakerbooks.org: "The author asks the questions "What is it about Quakers that has sustain this small religious group for 350 years?" She traces the life-cycle of the Religious Society of Friends and examines its current state of transition. She points to the singular aspects of Quaker spirituality and community life that have the power to revitalize modern Quakerism."

The Message (The Bible in Contemporary English) translated? by Eugene Peterson because a great number of my respected Friends have it but our Meeting didn't

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton, because it was recommended on the Quaker Ranter

Powers That Be by Walter Wink because it's a kind of distillation of his Powers trilogy. Everyone I know who's read his trilogy loved them, but I know I will probably never read all three books.

Quality and Depth of Worship and Ministry from Britain Yearly Meeting Committee on Eldership and Oversight because it asks this question: Dare we assess quality and depth? I thought this would be good for our M&O to read.

Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally by Marcus Borg because I liked his other book so much, Chris M. read and liked this one, Borg is going to be a speaker at FGC this year, and plus it's such a great title and topic.

Sara Mapps Douglass, Faithful Attender: View from the Back Bench by Margaret Hope Bacon with a foreword by Vanessa Julye because racism is still an issue in American and the Religious Society of Friends. Again, good to have something written in this century.

Silence and Speech: For Those New to Meeting for Worship by Richard Allen because a Friend in my Meeting was talking about writing something just like this recently

Walk Worthy of Your Calling by Margery Post Abbott & Peggy Senger Parsons because a Friend I respect said it was important and because these are two women involved in building Quaker bridges

Whispers of Faith: Young Friends share their experiences of Quakerism published by Quaker Press because we all need to hear more from young Friends and because it was edited in part by Claire of Spiritual Journeys

Wrestling with Our Faith Tradition by Lloyd Lee Wilson because we need all we can get from Lloyd Lee

You know, links like this take a very long time to post!

Intro to Quakerism for the Emergent Crowd

So a couple of days ago, I got an email from a Presbymergent friend. It was an invitation to folks who are what she calls hypenmergent to send a flyer to a major conference for people interested in the emerging church.

For those of you who are lost already, Presbymergent is a subset of hyphenmergent. The P word is for Presbyterians who are also emergent. Hyphenmergent covers all the people who are part of an existing denomination who also interested in or committed to the emerging conversation. Emergent is better described here on the Emergent Village website. If you're still too confused, then don't worry about it. But keep in mind that I consider convergent Friends to be the Quaker part of the emerging church conversation.

Basically, I am making a handout about Quakers for an audience who are mostly progressive Christians. Many of whom will have heard of Quakers but not really know much about us. Some of whom are already happily in a church community and some of whom are actively seeking a new church community. So I think it's worth sending 100 flyers or so.

A serious problem is that this conference is in New Mexico this coming week. (I would have liked to go, but it's the same weekend as the FWCC Section of the Americas annual meeting in Oregon, which I am committed to attending.) So I have to mail the flyers on Monday for them to have any hope of arriving in time to be put out on the hyphenmergent table in the "resource marketplace."

But I had a total of three days to make this flyer. I will have one day left by the time I post this. I can not make an exhaustive comparison (or even a coherent comparison) between the emerging church and convergent Friends. I want to give a hint of what we're about and point them to additional resources. I want to use stuff that I already had put together for other purposes.

Here is my current draft. It looks a little better in my Word document than in my blog, but it's going to be very basic formatting. I'm thinking straight black ink on white paper. It'll look more "Quakerly" and it may stand out from all the colored paper flyers on the same table. What do you think?


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curious about Quakers?

CONVERGENT FRIENDS

The Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, is one of the traditional Peace Churches, with a 350 year history of pacifism. Friends are also known for their commitment to social justice, the equality of men and women in worship and society, and plain living. Quakers have not always been able to resolve their own internal conflicts, leading to four (or six, depending on who’s counting) branches of Friends with a variety of practices and beliefs that don’t always get along.

Convergent Friends are seeking a deeper understanding of our Quaker heritage and a more authentic life in the kingdom of God on Earth, radically inclusive of all who seek to live this life.

Linguistically, the name alludes to an affinity for both Conservative Friends and the Emergent Church. Metaphorically, it suggests that Friends are moving closer together towards some common point on the horizon. The winds of the Spirit are blowing across all the branches of Friends, blowing us in the same direction. The convergence of Friends is a fuzzy, changing concept, not an example of pure mathematics or philosophy.

This term includes, among others, Friends from the politically liberal end of the evangelical branch, the Christian end of the unprogrammed branch, and the more outgoing end of the Conservative branch. It includes folks who aren’t sure what they believe about Jesus and Christ, but who aren’t afraid to wrestle with this question. It includes people who think that a lot of Quaker anachronisms are silly but who are willing to experiment to see which are spiritual disciplines that still hold life and power to transform us. Some of these people are communicating across vast distances of geography or institutional theology. Some of them are communicating across dinner tables, while consuming take-out pizza and home-made chocolate chip cookies.

Welcome to the conversation!

To find a Friends’ Meeting or Church near you, visit www.fwccamericas.org/meetingsearch.aspx and enter your zip code

For the latest in convergent Friends blogs, events and dialogue, visit www.QuakerQuaker.org, a collectively edited community of blogs and social media.

---------------other side of the paper-------------------

Some books by and about Quakers:

Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly (HarperCollins, 1996, originally published 1941)

The Journal of John Woolman (1720-1772), edited by Philips Moulton (Friends United Press, 1989 & 1971)

Through Flaming Sword: The Life and Legacy of George Fox by Arthur O. Roberts (Barclay Press, 2008, originally published in 1959)

A Plain Life: Walking My Belief by Scott Savage (Ballantine Books, 2000)

Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson (Quaker Press of FGC, 2001, originally published 1993)

Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire (Sorin Books, 2001)

Living the Way: Quaker Spirituality & Community by Ursula Jane O'Shea (Quaker Home Service, 2003)

Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality by J. Brent Bill (Paraclete Press, 2005)

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton (Quaker Press of FGC, 2006)

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I'm really interested in what other people think. Even if you're reading this after the deadline, let me know how I could do better the next time.

Opportunities, to do with children mostly

Darcy Drayton defined an Opportunity as a period of deep listening after the spiritual condition of another person or small, intimate group.

One of the opportunities of the day was a conversation over lunch with David L. I’ve met Dave before. We’ve had conversations before, often quite interesting and quite brief. On Saturday, we got to talk a little about the spiritual practice in my family of grace before dinner and of practicing praying out loud. Lately, when it’s my turn, I always choose to speak a prayer. In part because I want my children to have some concrete ideas of what to do in a moment of silence. Also in part because I think this is something I need to learn how to do at this phase of my spiritual journey.

Another Opportunity was a period of worship later in the evening, just before Brian and Darcy Drayton had to leave. The spoken ministry was fine. But the best part for me was that the children were all, not participating exactly, but present. The three of them were in a corner of a room, reading to themselves. They didn’t have to be shushed or managed. They were respectful and released from the obligation to act interested. I would like to find more opportunities for my children to be loosely present in worshipful settings like that.