Word gets around fast, although it does not always get around very well.
I have heard a couple of versions of why I am laying down the clerkship of the Committee on the Discipline that are not accurate.
The Committee spent a little more than a year looking for a way forward. A number of things--some of them very much my responsibility, some that cannot be laid anywhere near my feet--had us stalled. Finally, at a meeting this last April, we came together in a unity about that way forward.
The Committee had already come to unity on radical inclusiveness as the touchstone of the yearly meeting. It is the living out of our spirituality together in the manner of Friends, rather than any particular theological formulation, that gathered the members and attenders of North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and that kept them in fellowship despite huge theological diversity among us. The Committee did not see this as aspirational--we saw it as what it was true of us.
The Committee came to that conclusion the hard way. Dissatisfaction was almost immediately manifest upon our initial proposals for revisions of various sections of the Faith and Practice. We faced the fact--sometimes delivered like the handle of a rake stepped on--that Friends cared very much about, for instance, what words were used and not used to describe the Divine. This issue is emblematic that Friends' measure of satisfaction with the drafts was how well these expressed what their personal beliefs. The word "Christ" was central to some--totally un-acceptable to others, for example.
Those who have followed my blog have seen the dawn of my being stunned and perplexed by this "creedal" orientation in the yearly meeting and have watched the sun of my confusion travel across the sky of my consciousness to finally set in the West of radical inclusion. Like any such "day" it was new and not new, others lived it before me. It is the same day lived by Joel and Hannah Bean as they witnessed and then endured the divisions in the Society of Friends during the 19th Century and, eventually, set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the founding of this yearly meeting. The "united" meeting in San Jose was radical inclusiveness in the 1880's--where Hicksite, Orthodox, Conservative and Evangelical were welcome to worship in the manner of Friends.
With the help of a quotation from Catherine Whitmire (also familiar to those who have followed this blog) the Committee on the Discipline, as a whole, came to unity on this radical inclusiveness as the center of gravity from which our work should proceed, because it was the center of unity that gathered and held the yearly meeting together.
From that unity the Committee began to create a new process for developing drafts of sections and new vehicles of communication to increase participation of Friends in a process that, primarily, is a necessary corporate and individual re-centering in light, a conversation about where the Light has brought us since last Friends in this yearly meeting made their condition manifest in writing. The creation of a book of Faith and Practice is actually secondary to this conversation, made possible only by the conversation having taken place.
This process should not have the Committee on the Faith and Practice at its center. It should not be a discussion, a "negotiation," between "this" group of Friends and the Committee and then "that" group of Friends and the Committee with the Committee--in the end--trying to reconcile it all to the satisfaction of all.
The process should be, rather, that "this" and "that" group--and all Friends, as individuals and groups--should be talking about the issues involved and, as they do, coming to a unity that, through listening to the conversations, the Committee can express that unity or discern where unity is lacking.
That's just nutshell. Soon (by the end of August?) a series of documents will appear on the North Pacific Yearly Meeting website that will show all this in depth. Soon (by the end of August?) the new process will begin.
My point is not to describe all that. This post began as an explanation of why I am laying down the clerkship of the Committee. It is not, as has been reported to me, because the Committee is in chaos and I am stomping away in frustration, or because the process of revising the Faith and Practice is hopelessly mired. The opposite of both of those rumors is true.
I left that April meeting in Seattle and drove with two members of the Committee back to Portland. In between our conversations I began to feel a pull. Arriving home, the pull continued and in two weeks or so the message was clear: I was to lay down the clerkship of the Committee as soon as a new clerk emerged and leave the Committee altogether in August 2010, at the end of my current term.
My practice has made me able to clearly recognize the voice of the Shepard, to hear it and to sort out that it is the Shepard's voice and not the enticement of one wolf or another trying to lure me out onto my own so that I can victimize myself (again).
I hear you, God, I thought. It was a thought of resignation--in both senses of the term.
But I didn't want to.
It didn't seem fair.
No, it's not--by my way of seeing things--fair. Not at all.
I was clerk through a long and uncomfortable period. It was painful for the Committee to endure that long period of doubt and discernment, and it was painful to see and hear how Friends were responding to the work--these Friends not offered leadership up to the task by me as clerk of the Committee, not themselves, at times, operating in the manner of Friends.
Now, I thought, we have come through this. We have re-oriented the process and laid a new course for the next year. And we have "road tested" both the concept of radical inclusiveness and the new process at Annual Session.
Radical inclusiveness turns out, to Friends gathered in Missoula, to be the obvious and true description of who we are as a yearly meeting.
The new process appears to be made up of steps in the right direction to even the harshest of the Committee's critics among Friends.
I have been clerk through this hard period. I was blessed (which is to say "matured" and "made [more] perfect" and made "more fit for a particular purpose" or "grown") in getting through by the support of an elder committee to keep my discernment true. The Faith and Practice Committee itself didn't shy away from the hard questions and stayed faithful to the discernment. Both boldly characterized me as full of canal water when I was, and urged me forward when I seemed to have it right.
So, now the way is open into the future and I am so much better prepared to clerk through it.
So, lay it down?
This is fair?
No.
But, as one of my elders told me, at the darkest point in all this for me, it is not just the vision of radical inclusiveness that had to sustain me. He reminded me that what I was up to required a "radical obedience."
Oh, that.
That obedience thing.
So, it doesn't matter why I am led to lay this down. What matters is that I am.
And it matters that I obey.
10 comments:
Hi Timothy: sometimes we don't need the most deliberated explanation. If you feel the clear lead to step down, that's enough. I trust your discernment on this.
I feel myself saddened by the direction of the yearly meeting though. I couldn't agree to "radical inclusiveness" as an organizing principle. It's weird to realize there's a major liberal yearly meeting into whose boundaries I would clearly not fit (rather than just fit awkwardly).
Thank you, Martin. I know that was not an easy comment to post and I appreciate your doing it.
I hear you, too, Martin, although I am not sure I'd agree that you "...would clearly not fit."
It is often awkward, it is often a challenge, here, for some of us to see ourselves fitting in with others of us.
Both overtly Christian and Universalist (including non-theist), as well as gay and straight Friends have struggled to occupy this space together, and the transformations wrought in all by abiding with one another while straddling these (and other) apparent "fault lines," is not complete.
But complete or not it seems described by the testimonies and to be the outward manifestation of inward change (notwithstanding that not everyone involved would describe it that way).
And you know I am a fan of Acts 5, 34-39.
For me, personally, I live in the expectation that all Friends will again be united, living in the Light, low and humble, abiding with one another, coming out of the respective domains into which we have come divided, and receiving the benefit of fellowship in a diversity in the process of becoming a unity in the Spirit if not in our notions about things we can never know or understand.
When I said that to Max Carey he laughed and said that if I saw that expectation realized I would live a long life.
I don't expect to see it realized, but I expect that it will be.
Thanks again, for your comment.
I have not followed the backstory to this point, so I am rather confused by the narrative. Particularly, I cannot follow whether the FnP text revision is something well on its way toward finality or not. Particularly, I am having a hard time understanding the unwillingness (not just yours, but yours and collective) to move from crystallized testimony to actual articulated text. That will sound more definitive on my part than might seem warranted, and so be it. For if you have, as a group, as you say, threaded the needle, it deserves to see the light of day so that the rest of the world can see that light, and not only in an ephemeral way.
Your posting is a helpful and welcome goad to make sure that the Committee gets its work for this month completed. Thank you.
Please note, however, that the post of mine to which you respond was not a statement by the Committee on the Discipline/Faith and Practice, and it is not part of the "official" process of the discussion among Friends that will produce a revised Faith and Practice/Book of Discipline.
This post is about my personal experience as I have described it, with the work on the Faith and Practice as a context. It is akin to the experiences I have described in this blog with my dog or with the drunk man attempting to sell me a trinket. Those incidents formed the context for describing my experience with being led and changed by Christ. In those posts I was not attempting to make a thorough explanation of PTSD in dogs or charity toward those held in the power of substance abuse. I was only recounting the hand of God shaping me, the Light showing me changes that I needed to make. The post is a testimony/witness to my personal transformation, which--given the models of Friends arrayed before and around me--has a substantial distance to go.
The official Committee work to be completed by the end of August is to promote such understanding as was created at Annual Session in those able or inclined to participate in the Committee's interest groups and at the Coordinating Committee meeting.
Widening the circle of that understanding includes publishing the documents that the Committee submitted to Friends for review at the Annual Session just passed, as well as some other documents pertaining to new process that are alluded to in those.
Those will be posted on the North Pacific Yearly Meeting website, we expect, by the end of August.
These documents do not include a draft of the new Faith and Practice/Book of Discipline. There is no such draft, or part of a draft developed by the new process, yet. There are some drafts of some sections posted there that were developed by the process the Committee has laid down, now, along with some other documents that are back ground for the work.
That upon which the Committee has newly come to unity is, first, a foundation stone of unity upon which a conversation among Friends that is a precursor to a draft can take place and, second, a process by which that conversation can take place within the context of that foundational unity.
As an aside, the foundation of radical (root) inclusion is certainly an aspiration, but it is also the current reality of the unity of the yearly meeting and has been back as far in time as I can tell. It's not something new or "pie in the sky." Imperfect it may be, but radical inclusiveness is "coming and even now it has come" among us.
The materials you will find on the NPYM website by the end of August, in so far as they represent a "threading of the needle," have seen the light of day at Annual Session. The technical tasks to have these more generally available to Friends are currently being undertaken.
Thank you for your interest and for your post that will contribute to the holding this "outgoing" committee clerk accountable to the work of supporting and encouraging the discussion among the Friends of North Pacific Yearly Meeting through which the Spirit will move us all forward. It is such an ongoing discussion about our individual and corporate faiths and practices and the issues we face today that will be used for the continuing work of our spiritual transformation(s), of our perfection, our maturity, our developing suitability for our peculiar purposes.
Personally, it is also the process through which I expect all Friends will eventually leave our separate domains and become reconciled, again, into a single society.
Please pray for us.
In modeling inclusiveness let me add that you please hold us in the Light, as well.
;-}
In my response to Martin, above, I referred to Max Carey.
The late Mr. Carey was a very fine entertainer and deserved the title of "The Clown Prince of Baseball."
It was, however, with him that I had the conversation in which I said that I expected the Society of Friends, one day, to be united in a single society.
The person to whom I said that on that particular occasion was Max Carter, the chaplain at Guilford College, where my daughter goes to school.
Sorry.
I am a huge baseball fan.
Sometimes I just get mixed up.
I will be interested to see how your Yearly Meeting works out this very cutting edge perception of living out the Father's perfect love as I see it from a Christian standpoint. It strikes me that trying to express community with radical inclusiveness is really making you look down to the very basics of "community." Where most would say that it consists in those who are "like us" and draw their circles to exclude those deemed not "like us" in ways that seem very important, you are trying to express how to draw those circles to include them, I think by finding deeper likenesses, if only shared humanity and concern for each other. Definitely uncomfortable, but still drawing the circles described by Edwin Markham: He drew a circle that shut me out -- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.
I think you understand very well what this is about, thank you.
On that deeper level, where the deeper likeness is found, we are all in the same condition.
Some will call this our humanity and our concern for others.
As far as I can understand this condition: we all share an influence that works in and on all of us. Whatever any of us call it, whatever nature any of us ascribes to it, it pulls us along, out of our "selves" and into its image.
And thanks for reminding me of the Markham poem. It's a good piece.
Timothy,
I am sorry this comment is so belated, I somehow missed this post. First, thank you for sharing the description of following the leading to lay down being clerk of the committee. I appreciate it when other Friends put into words what it feels like when they have a leading, especially when it is difficult.
I also wanted to say that I disagree that "radically inclusive" is a good description of NPYM. I was surprised that you said this concept was accepted at yearly meeting. I assume this was during the workshop on Faith and Practice, which I had to miss because I was helping lead the workshop on University Friends Meeting's year of discernment.
I would say that in terms of religious beliefs, NPYM is quite diverse. Friends in NPYM are tolerant of that diversity to varying degrees. But tolerance of diversity is not the same as "radically inclusive," which to me would mean that Friends embrace the diversity in the yearly meeting.
I think that at best, being radically inclusive is something that NPYM could grow into. As an aspirational description, it is fine, but I do not think it accurately reflects the yearly meeting as it is now.
--Ashley
Hi Timothy
Perhaps it was not mere technical malfunction that led me to stumble upon this post this year, 3 years on.
I like Ashley's thought to keep testing "radical inclusion." I would characterize this year's movements most clearly as "radical engagement," at least as far as identity among bodies of Friends Yearly Meetings.
In particular, rather than make any decision right now about affiliation with FGC Friends at this year's Annual Session were strongly led to approach FGC, FUM, EFI all equally with inquiries as to possibilities for corresponding relationships or connections that might or might not ever translate into affiliation.
I say strong leading partly based on the large number of Friends who rose and gathered to map out work after the clear sense of the whole business session that this course speaks to our call.
I was seated near the clerk of NPYM M&O and saw enough to see her nod every time I heard a name and whispered "yes," "yes."
As for the Discipline Committee, I am holding it in the Light but that is neither here nor there as far as your leading to resign.
Hi Timothy
Perhaps it was not mere technical malfunction that led me to stumble upon this post this year, 3 years on.
I like Ashley's thought to keep testing "radical inclusion." I would characterize this year's movements most clearly as "radical engagement," at least as far as identity among bodies of Friends Yearly Meetings.
In particular, rather than make any decision right now about affiliation with FGC Friends at this year's Annual Session were strongly led to approach FGC, FUM, EFI all equally with inquiries as to possibilities for corresponding relationships or connections that might or might not ever translate into affiliation.
I say strong leading partly based on the large number of Friends who rose and gathered to map out work after the clear sense of the whole business session that this course speaks to our call.
I was seated near the clerk of NPYM M&O and saw enough to see her nod every time I heard a name and whispered "yes," "yes."
As for the Discipline Committee, I am holding it in the Light but that is neither here nor there as far as your leading to resign.
Post a Comment