Dear Friends,
It’s been over 40 years since we first met, and I think it’s time to tell you how much you have meant to me.
I had heard of you before that Sunday morning when I first showed up for worship, but I only had a vague sense of “Quaker.” I knew about the silence, of course, and the reputation that preceded you of being “good people though a little strange.” I decided to give you a try, mostly because I didn’t know where else to go. The church of my childhood didn’t fit any more; in fact, no church was a good fit then. At least, I thought, Quakers wouldn’t preach at me in words that no longer had much meaning.
So I came. I fell in love first with the quiet. It was peaceful in the old-style meetinghouse with the centuries-old benches all facing inward. As a mother of two lively preschoolers, the spacious silence was extraordinary! It drew me to return the next Sunday. And the next. I’ve never left.
Even if I didn’t always understand the Quaker idioms, sitting among people who thoughtfully spoke their own words was a gift for my hungry spirit. Having deconstructed my childhood religious language (God, Christ, prayer) so thoroughly, I needed fresh words, and you helped me find them.
The biggest gift of those first years was the way you accepted me, guarded and doubting as I was. I was a seeker who desperately wanted to be a finder, and you gave me space to explore. Through the years, I have discovered that Truth shows up in surprising ways when I am ready to receive it. It takes time, and I am grateful for your patience.
As I hung around with you, I slowly learned how a meeting functions. Since no one is paid at our meeting, everyone contributes something to make it work. I contributed what I could, first by teaching First-day school since I had children for whom I wanted a religious education. And as I taught, I learned. I learned about Quakerism, but I also relearned the Judeo-Christian tradition. Finding my way through my childhood Sunday school stories to the truths behind them, I found food for both me and the young ones. Jesus’s teachings spoke to us, and George Fox’s did, too.
The people of this meeting have provided a real school for my spirit. I learned to know you, dear Friends, through worship, through working together as we washed windows and weeded the garden, and through social time after worship. Through our conversations, I began to know this unique Friendly community and your individual strengths and stories. Wow—did you all intimidate me!
I was worshiping with someone who had taken out a mortgage to help integrate my city, and another who had gone to prison for refusing military conscription. There was the man who founded a university peace studies program and was imprisoned in China during World War II. His gentle wife had stood at the gates of the prison camp every day to beg for his release. There was the woman who started an antinuclear group after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the couple who operated the local overground railroad and drove Central American refugees into Canada. And there were the decades of support that the meeting gave to members who worked for peace in the Balkans and in the Middle East through the Alternatives to Violence Project.
Hanging around people whose lives bore such witness to foundational Quaker beliefs (called “testimonies,” I discovered) taught me a lot about courage and determined persistence. You taught me about remaining faithful, even if “it doesn’t seem to make a difference,” as a child asked the meeting one Sunday morning. The answer he received was, “Yes, I believe it makes a difference, even if we don’t know how.”
I learned what it means to be a Quaker through worshiping together, through the examples of your lives, and also through individual friendships. Bev’s blunt wisdom spoke to me; so did Jack’s enthusiastic embrace of fresh learning and Berta’s warm support of my spiritual seeking. What a gift to be surrounded by people older than I was who were still pilgrims on the journey, and were so generous to a beginner.
Friendship among Friends, I learned, means we offer loving care and support when times are difficult. Who brings meals or provides rides? Who checks in and sends notes? Who listens and helps to sort things out? We have shared the griefs of our individual lives and mourned together at losses within our community, including a couple of wonderful teenagers. We grieved when our country brought destruction to the world, and we grieved through 9/11. Sharing these painful times brought us both comfort and strength.
Part of our meeting’s strength is the chain of strong personalities that have shaped us, but this brings challenges, too. Strong personalities in long-term relationships are sometimes going to clash! Do you recall, Friends, how much we disagreed about air conditioning the worship room? And what about the carpet controversy? Do you remember our careful, long exploration of a same-sex marriage minute in the 1990s? We took so long that one gruffly stubborn-but-dearly-loved old member told me that we might as well bring it forward for approval. He knew we were ready, even if he didn’t agree! I learned a lot from him about being faithful and sticking with a family of Friends, even when we don’t agree. And he didn’t intimidate me any more.
In fact, tough times with you taught me to hold on and love anyway. I’ve been hurt a few times by someone’s angry words. It is probably good that our meeting isn’t located close to other meetings; if I wanted to remain Quaker, I had to stay. So I stayed, and I grew in understanding and forgiveness.
Then our meeting clerk died very suddenly, and you asked me to take it on. What on earth were you thinking? I’d grown up a lot as a Quaker, but I didn’t want this responsibility. I replied that I needed to think it over, but, after hanging up the phone, I wailed, “No!” Deep inside though, I already knew it was going to be mine to do.
At that time, I had journeyed with you, Friends, for about 20 years. I’d found new life in old words; “God” and “prayer” held meaning again. I had shared deeply and learned much through small spiritual formation groups. You had helped me find my way and had provided me with a spiritual foundation. Although, as a Quaker, I was a respected oddity in my wider spiritual circles, I was truly at home with you.
But I was shaking in my shoes when I clerked my first business meeting. What I felt as I began, however, was a wave of loving support coming from you. I’ve been a professional listener for about half a century, but meeting for worship for business offered a new and deeper listening. We attended to the Spirit’s movement among us through our disagreements. And sometimes, as we discerned our way, we waited without words, sitting silently together. I remember how often we needed that silence during those tumultuous years.
Our biggest challenge was whether we should build an addition to our meetinghouse. Is this where our money should go—or not? We weren’t in agreement about moving ahead at all! But, as we struggled through the hard stuff, vigorously presenting our individual ideas, we did listen to each other. And, slowly, slowly, one step at a time, we found a way forward. Do you remember how we formed a circle for a groundbreaking ritual, right on the site where our wonderful, spacious community room now stands? We stood together, and, even if we couldn’t see clearly into the future, we trusted our decision.
Business meeting was only part of clerking. Another responsibility of the clerk at that time was to close our meeting for worship every Sunday. I know that sitting on the front bench every Sunday, sensing the Light within each person present, deepened my love for you. Some Sundays I felt as though my arms were stretching around everyone gathered in the room with me, and tears came to my eyes because I loved you so much!
And now we’ve traveled through a pandemic together with all the changes it brought. Hybrid worship is an accepted reality. It’s still a challenge to find our way sometimes. We’re still outspoken and opinionated about everything from how we address the world’s brokenness to making decisions about our meetinghouse itself. But we trust the Spirit’s movement among us. How else could we have supported the start (or beginning) of a Friends school in the middle of a pandemic? There’s an invisible web that holds us together. I’m glad to be a member of this adventurous and faithful meeting.
I’m one of the older ones now. From that perspective, I’m closing with some advice: four lessons that everyone probably needs to learn for themselves anyway:
- Stick around. It gets better, and you help make it happen.
- Love anyway, and forgive. It’s the only way.
- Nurture each other tenderly, and listen to each other. We are all carriers of Truth.
- Know that the Spirit is present and will transform us as we are open.
Much love,
Nancy
Nancy Bieber seems to be a very nice person.