Paying Attention to Gifts

There's an idea that's been floating around among Quakers I know, which is often referred to as "naming a person's gifts".

For whatever reason, I find myself always suspicious of "quakerspeak" - where quakers use a special Quaker term for something when an ordinary word or phrase would do. I guess I like to speak plainly. I find it useful to translate in my head between this phrase, "naming a person's gifts", to something like "paying attention to a person's gifts". I think "gifts" is a bit of a strange word in this context, but here I think it's actually very useful to notice the connection between gifts as in "giving presents" and "this person is gifted / talented".

I received a gift from one friend when he mentioned that focusing on results is often not a good way to become closer to God. More than once, when I was focused on a good idea, this friend's gift to me has been to see the other side of a situation, the side that I had not paid attention to and that was important to understand before moving forward. I am thankful for his ability to share good ideas.

I received a gift from another friend when she welcomed me to Philadelphia by giving me, as a young person who had never had an office job, the chance to get some office experience as an intern with her organization. Finding somewhere for a person to help out, and giving them a chance to "learn by doing" and in turn give something back, is definitely a gift. I am grateful that I got the chance to spend four months doing this internship at the American Friends Service Committee.

... Quaker Quest

One of the deep strengths of Quaker Quest (QQ) is that it takes the idea of Quakerism as a deeply personal religion and puts it into practice.

One of the central ideas that helped bring Quakerism into being was the idea that each of us has access to the divine light (or, may make communion with God) and that God may speak and act through any of us. This applies to Quakers, folks who are just interested in learning about Quakerism, and everybody else.

Quaker Quest puts this into practice by asking seekers to listen to several different Quakers and to share from their own experience and their own sense of the divine.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Quaker Quest group, which just started recently, decided to plan a day for Quakers to learn about QQ and explore the possibility of running a QQ program at their meeting. The plan originally called for several wonderful and highly respected Quakers to give speeches which, altogether, would take up most of the morning. The question came up, what would it be like to be in the audience listening to these speeches for a few hours? It has been said that God works in mysterious ways. I believe that the divine also sometimes works in ways that are rather mundane and plain. For many people, listening to a priest give a speech for a couple of hours is rather boring, and they get antsy, stop paying attention, get up and leave if there's a chance, maybe forget almost everything that was said. The same thing can happen if it's a few "important" Quakers giving speeches for a couple hours.

At our Quaker Quest (QQ) planning group meeting, we felt it would be wise to give people a chance to actively participate in the session. I think that the fact that the audience might become bored was what brought the idea up, but to me it also served as a reminder that each of the participants has the ability to share something deep and powerfully beneficial to our group, and that making sure they are included at all steps along the way is important. I believe this is true not only at QQ seekers' sessions and at our Friends meetings, but at QQ info sessions for Quakers.

Sometimes god works in profoundly un-spectacular ways.

... Torn Loyalties

I went to see the presentation of the Jesus for President tour. One of the deep messages of the presentation was to point to the problem that happens when you have loyalty to God and to your country. The speaker, Shane Claiborne, encouraged us to follow God... and to be loyal to our country only if Jesus/God/God's love/God's teachings would approve. By the same token, Quakerism, deeply rooted in divine love, should only get our energy because (and only to the extent that...) we have the opportunity to deepen God's love through it. And not because it is some special thing with any meaning independent of "that which is eternal" or God.

...Faithfulness

One Friend has said that she felt it was necessary to devote a certain loyalty to Quakerism, and not to direct her energy to too many places in a way that would prevent forming a really deep relationship with one community... and that the sort of long term commitment she was talking about was kind of like marriage. This seems to describe the feelings of many folks these days - we are yearning for the sort of deep relationship with a place and with a community, that is only possible with long-term faithfulness, as it were.

... Why I (heart) Quakers

I am so happy to share in community with Quakers (a group I grew up with) because I believe that, at our core, we are more than “peace and silence”, but a community that makes sincere effort to put divine love and kindness before anything else.

... About Quakerly Confusion

O Great Mystery, Let Us Be Your Hands and Your Voice

If you've heard me talk about Quakers, chances are good you've heard me talk about Quaker inaction. Occasionally we Quakers get caught up in procedure, nitpicking, and perfectionism; sometimes these things get in the way of moving ahead with really good work. With all of the wonderful ideas we're interested in, it can be hard to keep focused. I can just imagine Quakers standing in the way of work on age-diversity in our Quaker communities on account of the fact that the folks working on age diversity are not working on racial diversity at the same time. (The average age of members in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is a little too close for comfort to the average life expectancy worldwide. On the other hand, the proportion of white people in meetings around here is fairly close to the proportion in 1600s England, when Quakerism began.)

I think it's important to realize that our ideas need not be astounding and awesome for us to try them out; we don't need to plan for every contingency before giving things a go.

Or, to paraphrase one Friend's joking comment on the state of Quakerism : we aren't sure if we can bring Palestinians and Israelis together to talk about peace unless the parties first agree to be environmentally friendly and welcoming to gays.

... About Young Adult Friends relationship to Quakerism

I wrote the following in response to this Quaker blog discussion on Young Adult Friends and "age segregation":

One YAF said of FGC Gathering that if her community is everyone at the gathering (instead of, say, a subset of the 18-35 group), her community ends up being nowhere - I guess you just can't connect to 1500 people all at once.

My suspicion is that the same sort of power dynamic that resulted in the really positive comments I have heard about some women's gatherings or women's business meetings (that is, women's ideas and voices wouldn't be overpowered by men's), is occurring now between young adults and older adults in Quakerism.

We as young adults in Quakerism are grossly outnumbered. Older adults don't know how to (and can't be expected to) create the kinds of events and spaces that will draw young adults into this community in equal proportions to older age groups. Our few voices are being drowned out, to some extent. This is despite the fact that, on the whole, our older adults want nothing more than to create a kind of Quakerism that will nurture us YAFs as part of the community.

Let's not let our desire to be a part of the wider Quaker world defeat our efforts to create space where young adults can have a strong Quaker experience in the ways that work best for our generation.