Too long for an answer to a comment--to one of my own blog posts!

This is a reply to Ashley's comment on one of my previous blog posts. I think it is the eighth comment, down, and as of this moment it's the last one. To understand the rest of the post you are now reading, and to be fair to Ashely (as what I write may be a straw man if I did not understand her well), one might want to read her comment before reading this.


Hello, Ashley

I am grateful for the comment, even though 'belated,' especially because your view appears to be different than mine, and from that of the relatively small number of Friends at the interest group at annual session in July. Perhaps those in attendance were not a cross section of the yearly meeting and may have been pre-disposed to the idea. Self selection sometimes brings together diversity of view and sometimes it does not.

It is also possible, however, that you and I don't really disagree and the underlying unity of the yearly meeting is radical inclusiveness--albeit an imperfect one.

You are right that there is an uneven "tolerance" of the diversity of belief in the yearly meeting in the sense that there are those who don't think that non-theists, atheists, deists, Buddhists, pagans, Jews, sexual minorities and so on "belong" in a Quaker meeting.

There are also people who do not believe that evangelicals (a category into which some small number of these will place anyone who uses the word "Christ" except as a swear word) are a part of "our tradition," and that what they call "Christo-centric" language is inappropriate among Friends because so much hurtful "baggage" is attached to it.

There are times both views get expressed openly and the uneven nature of the "tolerance" you cite is then apparent.

Friends have strongly held beliefs--strongly held beliefs that make up their personal "creeds" and strongly held beliefs about the beliefs that make up the personal "creeds" of others.

Because I am the clerk of the Committee on the Discipline/Faith and Practice I have both sought and been sought out during these last three and a half years by Friends to talk about these (and, oh! so many other) issues and how they should be addressed in the Faith and Practice.

I've yet to meet or talk to a Friend who has said that there are beliefs to which one must adhere to be a member of this yearly meeting. I have certainly, however, encountered many who have expressed with a great deal of certainty and determination that the language of their own personal creed (which they might regard to be "Quakerism") should be the one used in the Book of Discipline for North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and that their personal beliefs about the nature (or non-nature) of the D/divine should be its frame of reference.

There are no doubt Friends here, as elsewhere in the Society, who were first attracted by what they understood to be "Friends beliefs" (or, perhaps, the freedom from them). And there are no doubt some for whom propositional belief (or non-belief) is supremely important.

What has been opened to me, however, is that most Friends with whom I speak have remained Friends because they have been greatly edified (or "fed" or "nourished" or "enlightened" or "matured" or whatever) by the experience of being here, by doing the "Quaker Stuff" we all do, here. Whether they call it "Quaker process" or the "faith and practice of Friends" or "living out spirituality in the manner of Friends," this "Quaker way" (with waiting/silent worship as its center piece and its epitome) is what is central to most.

This would mean that "Quakerism" is not a set of beliefs but a set of traditions or practices that have been shown, through the years, to bring about a measure this edification, feeding, nourishing, enlightening, maturing or whatever. Over time and distance this particular orthopraxy has created a remarkably consistent (although not unique) outcome. Today we express it as simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality. As I have said before, other lists also skillfully describe these same human qualities.

It is not the beliefs that Friends might use to explain this experience but the experience itself about which we are radically inclusive--as Joel and Hannah Bean were, as George Fox and Margaret Fell were. We will include those who want to live out their spirituality in the manner of Friends--regardless of their beliefs. That is radical for a spiritual community in the sense that it is "extreme," and it's radical in the sense that it relates to the root from which everything else "Quaker" comes.

If someone wants to celebrate mass, pray bowing to Mecca, or chant vows, or sacrifice a chicken during meeting for worship we are not likely to go there. That's because it's not a part of the practice that has been shown to Friends, century in and century out, to give use the water of which we have had a taste, ourselves, and its ability to slake thirst we have seen in others. People who "believe" that which underlies those other practices are welcome, of course, to worship with us in the manner of Friends and we are glad to include them.

And we acknowledge that ours is not the only set of disciplines and practices that edifies, feeds, nourishes, enlightens, matures or whatever. It's one that works for us and, as replicating outcomes from any successful models depends on fidelity to that model, we go with doing it the way it's worked, before. (Not without change, of course. Isaac Penington did not participate in worship sharing, after all. But change must show that it enhances the work from the root: the outcomes sought and the experience that brings them about.)

The fact that many of us in the yearly meeting don't understand that it's the experience that comes out of the process/practice/discipline that keeps us here doesn't mean that it is not so. It just means that in this regard we are much like some people in business who don't know what it is that really makes them successful (until they stop doing it) or like fish who do not get the centrality of water to their existence.

It is certainly not propositional belief that is central to holding our community together. We are not held together by our gregarious charisma, our outgoing and easy-going personalities, our sense of fashion, our lack of annoying eccentricities or our potlucks. (OK, maybe the potlucks have something to do with it).

We are held together by the experience of Quaker practice, and it is not just some ecstatic "other worldly" "bliss out" kind of experience. It's an experience of change and growth we see in ourselves and those around us as time goes on, and it's all about relationships. First, of course, is our relationship with that which we sense moving among us (however we may characterize it), our spirituality. But also crucial are the relationships we have with those who, like us, are trying to live out their lives and spirituality in the manner of Friends.

The Kingdom of Heaven is described in the Gospels as being both "is" and "is becoming," a concept that Quakers have used before to describe what was "going on" with and around them, what was moving among them. In that same way I have described radical inclusiveness.

So, Ashley, I do and I do not agree with your take on radical inclusiveness as being an aspiration and not a reality in North Pacific Yearly Meeting--because it is both.

The "reality" is not to be proved, in my view, at some time in the future when everyone "blesses" and confesses the validity of all the beliefs held by every one in the yearly meeting.

The reality is proved, to me, right here and now by the way people who dearly hold to mutually exclusive and inconsistent beliefs meet together for worship, do business together, abide with one another through the child births and the death watches, the celebrations and the occasions for mourning--doing all of this living out of their spirituality in the manner of Friends.

It doesn't matter to me what anyone believes when we are doing the work of the building maintenance committee, or sitting next to one another in meeting for worship, or when you are on my porch with a hot dish in a time of illness, or when you gather with me to send my daughter off to college, or your son is raising money to go on a service trip, or we are putting together shared transportation to annual session, or figuring out infant care to allow young parents to attend a vigil. What matters is how we do those things together in obedience and humility so that through doing them together, we all grow in the Light.

You point with justification to the lack of perfection.

But notwithstanding all that, I suggest that radical inclusiveness describes both the current condition of North Pacific Yearly Meeting and that which holds us together in it.

Thank you, again, for your comment Ashley. I am sure I'll see you again soon.