The Gift of Queries

A Mentor’s Encouragement

In 2001, I was asked to serve on a new committee to revise the Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM), which was clerked by Jan Hoffman. I was new to the yearly meeting, having moved to Connecticut three years earlier from West Virginia. I lived further southwest than the other committee members, and it was a four-to-five-hour drive to more central NEYM meeting places. To reduce the amount of driving I had to do in one day, the committee’s clerk, Jan Hoffman, invited me to come to her home on Friday nights so we could travel together to the committee meetings, and then on the way home before driving the last two hours alone at the end of a long day.

Over the four years we rode together, Jan Hoffman and I got to know the routes from her home in Hadley to Amesbury, Massachusetts, and to Dover, New Hampshire, where the Revision Committee met most often. I think we only missed the turn off from I-495 to Route 2 once, when we were so engrossed in discussion we didn’t even notice until we hit I-90 15 miles later.

Those drives with Jan were a gift (she died in 2024). I had experienced a call to Quaker ministry a couple of years earlier, which I shared in the September 2008 issue of (Friends Journal “Engaging with a Monthly Meeting”).  Jan had so much wisdom, experience, and encouragement to share. She was very active in the ministry during the years of our shared drives, and I got to hear her reflections when she came back from different Quaker travels: Friends General Conference Gathering and Alaska Friends Conference are two of the visits I remember hearing about. Jan taught me the discipline of writing reports regularly to the committee supporting my ministry.

I started writing reports to my committee within a year of asking for some informal help from Hartford (Conn.) Meeting to discern how to be faithful—likely after hearing from Jan about the process she used with her own committee. I have 24 years of those reports now, and looking through them, I am reminded of the different individuals who served on my committee and freely offered their wisdom and mentoring, each helping to shape how the ministry emerged. Jan is mentioned in the reports, as I shared bits from the conversations from those years of our drives, including her process suggestions for moving forward with my own ministry. 

Over the last 20 years, the structure of my written reports also grew out of those drives. I started to incorporate a series of queries into my report in 2005. The report makes it clear the queries came from Jan. At the time, she was shifting the structure of her reports to center around queries rather than activities.

The queries were a gift. Over the past 20 years, I have regularly held these queries, listening for which ones are alive each time I write my report. I generally start with the first one, which we changed to “how is my soul”; that is the one query that appears in virtually every report. The reports are frequently rushed: I try to fit my writing of a report into a day or two before the committee meeting. I might jot down in my journal a list of things I want to include, and then open up a new Word document with the list of questions. From this list, I choose the ones that most speak to me. If I have the list from my journal, I see where each item fits, then I write the generally one to one-and-a-half-page report. As soon as I finish, I email the committee, trying to give them at least 24 hours to read and reflect.

When we gather (in person for the first 20 years and now on Zoom), we start with around five minutes of centering worship. Following worship, each of my committee members shares their own check in: updates on where they are, what they’re carrying, and what is present in their lives. And then we turn to the report: the committee might ask me to expand on something, offer queries that have arisen for them, share patterns they have noticed, or celebrate movement they feel. Together we sit with what we are hearing and what is next. 

I have recently compiled 25 years of reports into five documents, each covering five years. I haven’t had time to absorb what is there and have chosen rather to share a sampling of answers to different queries through the years, along with reflections on what I hear.

How Is My Soul?

October 2007: Harried. I feel like there have been too many times recently when I have chosen not to be present with someone, even in passing because of rushing to do something else. The fall is far too full. Leaving for Africa in two weeks. Three days a week in New Haven means 12-hour days, and then I’ve been wrapping up some of the other consulting, which takes another day or so. And I’m paying bills, working with the kids, etc. I chose not to go to quarterly meeting last weekend but rather to just stay home. 

February 2008: Much better. After our last meeting, actually the next day, I began taking an hour for silent worship in the mornings. I had been taking just a half hour, and taking that hour has made a world of difference. I feel much better; I’m much more calm; I’m much more even-tempered in how I respond to things.

June 2011: Tired. Working flat-out since I got back from Utah, struggling to get all of the ends tied up before heading south. Lilies are blooming; our first pesto of the year last night; and a few strawberries in the front yard. It’s been hard to write this report. A number of stories that I’ll tell you tonight.

May 2021: Superficial? Shallow? Disconnected? Feeling like I’m not in touch with my deeper self. Some good times in the morning; still very up-and-down about managing all of my work responsibilities. 

2026 Reflections: My spiritual life feels like more of a roller coast and at best a spiral, not at all a linear journey. Challenges recur, and new challenges show up to offer learning and growth opportunities. I sometimes touch “the hidden life, the hidden manna in the heart,” [from Isaac Penington in 1668, included in The Light Within and Selected Writings] and then lapse back into the burthens of the world that John Woolman spoke of.

What Is God Calling Forth in Me/Calling Me to Do?

February 2011: Not really sure here. Writing in my journal at night and other short essays/reflections in the morning. Applied for a job at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Struggling with not knowing how to explore what it means to live as part of the natural world. 

June 2011: Just trying to listen. Feeling like I’m continuing along the same path I’ve been on; haven’t heard that the path is to change, so I’ll just continue.  Getting ready to reach out to meetings in Maine [for travel in the ministry] and working on grant proposals for the hookworm and nutrition research.

October 2016: Keep writing. Keep working in the backyard. Explore couple enrichment; John and I are wondering if we are led to offer something at the meetinghouse. For our training, we had to design a 15-hour program; we designed an all day Saturday plus four evenings. This way there are no residential needs, and we can perhaps build a longer term “growth group” as other couples call their monthly groups.

January 2023: Still listening for Quaker possibilities. Last week, my supervisor asked if I am interested in taking the lead on the renewal grant for the technical assistance hub she leads, and as part of taking the lead on the renewal, I would be a co-director of the hub. I sat with that for several days, before deciding that I want to do it. Good conversation with John about all the reasons why: it acknowledges the reality of my role with the hub, allows me to take the lead on coordinating assistance to groups around the country, and I still wrestle with how hard it is to disentangle from Yale! John acknowledged that we are addicted to the ease that my work at Yale allows, in terms of paying the mortgage, etc. Thus my work responsibilities are still not easing up.

2026 Reflections: Writing shows up over and over in what I feel is being called forth. Over the last three years, since moving to our current home, I’ve been part of a writing group that meets weekly at a local café. Each week we choose a prompt for the following week, and then we bring in our writings to share with each other over breakfast. The regular experience has given me opportunities to play with different approaches, although I am always seeking to integrate a deeper wisdom in what comes out. 

How Have I Been Nourished? 

April 2006: Nourished by conversations with friends. Also nourished by continuing to reflect on my own needs, and to struggle with how best to feed my soul. While I continued to spend a half hour in focused-breathing meditation in the mornings, I found myself hungrier and hungrier for the space to hold things in worship on my own. And so I’m currently trying to spend a shorter period of time in breathing meditation in the evenings, and to spend the mornings more in listening worship.

February 2013: Good times with John and the kids, wonderfully rich workshop last weekend. For Christmas, I purchased a board game, The Transformation Game, and over the snowstorm weekend, I forced John and the kids to play it with me. It’s a fascinating re-creation of life, complete with insights, setbacks, pain, free will, awareness, and guardian angels.  You take a focus question (mine was how to develop a more centered relationship with my computer) and hold it as you walk through the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels, clearing your personal unconscious as you go. The kids didn’t share their focus questions, but they did stay through the two and a half to three hours the game took.  We laughed and made fun of it, but I’m really glad we did it.  

March 2016: Back to the yeast proofing [I had reported that my soul was bubbling like yeast], so many ways. Several good books that are more at the edge of spiritual/non-rational worldviews. Robes, which is written by a woman who said that over a year or so, periodically a group of little men in brown monks’ robes appeared in her kitchen and showed her images of the changes in the world over the next 500+ years, and Martin Prechtel’s Long Life, Honey in the Heart, which is about initiation rituals in Guatemala in the 1970s. Multiple experiences of continuing to work with [a naturopath friend] on energy healing, where I have had an image come up that I shared with her, and she was able to then do energy healing for me using that image. 

2026 Reflections: Over the last 25 years, I have been blessed to encounter and learn from a multitude of mentors: Quaker and otherwise. I have experimented with and been fed by a variety of prayer practices and approaches to the Divine. One of the greatest gifts of the companions I have had along the way has been their willingness to sit and listen with me, and then to challenge or affirm what I am hearing as they are moved. Having companions has encouraged me to listen more deeply and to be open to what I am hearing. It has sometimes felt self-indulgent to have others from my meeting sit with me so frequently. However, I have been reminded over and over that when a gift of ministry arises in an individual, it is for the benefit of the community and the wider world, and others are also nourished by spending time as companions. 

Encouragement: Take your leadings and calls seriously and hold them lightly. Listen for the support and anchoring you need, and hold gracefully what others are able to provide. Trust that the Spirit will provide the nourishment and support you need. Blessings on your journey.