What Kind of Quaker Am I?

I have been asking myself this question as I reflect on my time talking with, listening to, and learning from Friends throughout my life. That has been especially so during the past year of working with Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) as their program assistant for Quaker outreach, as I have gathered with Friends from across the country, members of varied religious denominations, and people young and old. In these spaces I have felt seen, nurtured, and stretched beyond what I could have imagined a year ago. Throughout this time, a yearning for a clearer understanding of what my spiritual path looks like has come up again and again. At the center of those reflections, I hear this question: what kind of Quaker am I?

I am a Quaker who wishes there was a better way to describe my history with this religion. When I was growing up, my parents always seemed steadfast in their practice of Quakerism and the value that faith brought to their lives. But calling myself a birthright Quaker never sat well with me. What does it mean to be born into a faith tradition rather than discovering it later in life? Even my parents’ introductions were through two very different paths: my father’s from a long family history, and my mother’s through a deepening spiritual journey that spanned decades after stepping away from her own family’s dedication to the Presbyterian clergy. To this day, their stories and lives shape my own, but I still struggle to understand the right I have to this religion, having come into it simply by being born of Quaker parents. Does that lineage make me a good Quaker, a bad Quaker, a Quaker at all?

I am a Quaker who had the freedom to question religion. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had the space—a gift in and of itself—to step away from the spiritual community both of my parents felt at home in. As a teenager when I was asked if I believed in God, I frequently responded, “I do not know,” and that was an opening for me to really look at the usefulness of religions that have also done so much harm to this Earth and the people, animals, and plants living on it. At that age, I did not have the patience to wait for the answers to come to me in expectant worship, so I chose to step away from my family’s meetinghouse and listen for Spirit in other spaces.

I am a Quaker who is trying to build a spiritual home. I have seen others explore where they feel a divine presence and follow those leadings back to an organized tradition or community, but none of them has felt like my own to settle into. There have been moments in my life where that sense of connection to something greater is tangible in the air around me: sometimes in meetings for worship with Friends but also frequently in other spaces not constrained to strictly religious containers. I feel this call in conversations that follow no set agenda and devolve, or evolve, into a vulnerable space to share truths with another person and listen to that person’s truth in turn. I can sense that Presence when I am close to trees or watching the sun set, streaking across the sky in orange, yellow, and pink at the end of a long day. I do not have a clear picture of how these moments translate into a spiritual or religious practice, and I am not sure if they will become that for me. All I do know is that in these moments and many others, I am pushed closer to understanding something so central, so natural, and so eternal about our existence on this Earth.

I am a Quaker who believes we all have the power to be a friend to those around us and a friend to ourselves. In high school I learned about the many religions and faith traditions that are practiced within our global community, and this inspired my admissions essay to Earlham College, in which I wrote about the theory of our reality, of our individual and collective existences. Those ideas were and continue to be a result of feeling an innate connection between family, religion, and the experience of how we are in relation to everyone and everything around us. It has been a response to the awareness circling within and around me about how I want to show up in this wild world—a world where rainbows almost miraculously appear out of midair and also where whole populations are being forced from their homes and native land. My words can barely hold the frustrations, the fears, and the possibility—still—for a better future.

I am a Quaker who brings a book to meeting for worship. My mind and body struggle to sit still in those prescribed moments of quiet while my mind races with thoughts and feelings as I try to settle in with those around me. I am someone easily distracted by the sounds of those coming in late, of children’s whispers to their parents, and of the ambulances that almost incessantly drive by Friends Meeting of Washington (D.C.) on Sunday mornings. Sometimes the book does not even leave my bag, but I bring it just the same. Instead I look at the stories on the faces of the Friends who sit around me. I listen deeply to the sounds of life moving all around us. These stories lead me to more questions about what maker brings about our social fabric. What Divine Being—God, Spirit, Light, or whatever term you use to associate with our human understanding of that wholly interconnected Power—paints a picture of people sitting in complete silence as the answer to the worries of this world?

I am a Quaker who questions the peace testimony. I struggle to find a clear answer to the vast and complex racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia, and more that harm the friends I know and those I will never have the opportunity to meet. In those silent moments when the word peace is brought to our center and I remember that our world revolves around systems that don’t value peace, I don’t just feel anger, I become angrier. Anger somehow seeps into my thoughts, feelings, and subconsciousness. I am probably trying to run and hide from that calm and loving Light that cures all illnesses and heals all wounds. I struggle to know what cost I should be willing to pay if the cost of simply living is already so high these days. What is the cost of freedom, of liberation, of peace?

I am a Quaker who works for a Quaker organization, an organization with a long Quaker history that has its own life and spirit within this world. I have been welcomed into this network of insightful and caring colleagues, and it has been an opportunity to deepen my understanding of what faith in action really looks like: what being a “professional Quaker” really looks like. I have been learning the ways a job can transcend the division many try to wedge between their professional and personal lives. I will be honest: It is hard work, and I usually take wrong turns as I try to navigate the details of political discourse, spiritual grounding, and religious differences that come when you truly include everyone into the conversations that matter. Some days I can feel Spirit walking alongside me, directing me to lead with love and patience, but other days that Presence is harder to find.

I am a Quaker who doesn’t care whether I use an upper- or lowercase F for “friends.” Why can’t we all be friends? Why can’t we all love our neighbors with no exceptions and appreciate the strengths that our differences can bring to the communities we share? In the moments when the people around me—colleagues, family, friends, or Friends—succeed, I will cheer them on. In the moments when they fall, I will help them get back up when they are ready to keep going. In the moments when they harm me—being human they will—I will lay my boundary down and walk alongside it with them for the love of us both. In the moments when they harm someone else, I will stand beside the harmed, the wronged, and trust in their power to decide the line that they want to walk with that person and believe in their power to light their own path and find their way home.

I am a Quaker who doesn’t know if I am a Quaker, who doesn’t know if a predominantly White community within the United States—one that I grew up within and continue to work, live, and benefit from—is where my Spirit feels wholly awake and aware of the sacredness of this world. I struggle with the knowledge that although our global faith community is racially and theologically diverse, my interactions with North American Quakerism are saturated by the Whiteness that many seek to remove from the narrative of power in this country. I struggle with how I can authentically show up as myself, confusion and all, within this community; whether the dreams and centuries of work dedicated to creating a peaceful world are worth the deafening cost of our Quaker silence; and whether I am not only a Quaker but a person who feels comfortable continuing to uphold the values and more importantly the realities of the Religious Society of Friends.

I don’t know.

Do you know what kind of Quaker you are?