Quakers Speaking

Modern day Quakers have a lot to talk about it, and now they’re doing just that on YouTube.

The last day of 2013 I posted an afterthought that included a link to a video teaser about QuakerSpeak. The trailer announced that QuakerSpeak “seeks to give viewers worldwide an experience that is entertaining, informative, inspiring, challenging, inviting, unifying and collaborative,” so it’s no surprise that it’s made possible through a collaboration of Friends Journal, Quaker Voluntary Service and Friends General Conference, and is directed by Quaker songwriter Jon Watts.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing what this team would put together, and I’m impressed with the first three of the weekly interviews. Appropriately, the first video is titled “How Quakerism Began.”  In fewer than five minutes, Guildford College professor Max Carter summarizes the beginnings of Quakerism in 1640. Max’s mini-history lesson reminds us that Quakerism emerged out of the chaos in England that was trying to address disparities in English society.

Any concerns I had that George Fox, one of the founders of Quakerism, wouldn’t approve of QuakerSpeak if he were here today were squelched by Max’s portrait of this man. At age19, Fox left the Church of England seeking a direct spiritual experience. After his own mystical encounter with the Divine, Fox shared his message of relying on the inner teacher instead of outward leaders. In Fox’s day, spiritual and religious messages were spread by word of mouth, one by one, two by two, or occasionally when a charismatic speaker gathered a curious crowd. Perhaps YouTube is the 21^st Century equivalent.

After that first offering of QuakerSpeak, I was delighted with the second video of Traci Hjelt Sullivan’s “The Faithfulness Lecture.” Traci shares from her own experience of being faithful, especially to a leading to speak in worship.

If you access the videos through the QuakerSpeak website, you’ll find a transcript of the video, additional resources about the topic, queries, and a place to add your own comments. With Traci’s “The Faithfulness Lecture,” the site offered links to information about Quaker weddings as well as how to find the nearest Friends meeting. And the questions following Traci’s video have stimulated my own thoughts about being faithful to a leading:

1. What are some of the most daunting leadings that you’ve gotten? What was your reaction to receiving a nudge that would take some courage?

2. What are some excuses that you come up with when you are feeling resistant to the leadings of the Spirit?

3. What are some tools that you have developed or could develop as a reminder to “live up to the Light that thou hast?”

Last week, former Earlham College teacher Trayce Peterson talked about how to support young people find their voices and speak truth in her segment, “Student Activism as Prophetic Ministry.”  Her message is particularly relevant on the heels of Max Carter’s discussion about the young George Fox finding his voice and speaking truth in the 1600s.

I hope you’ll become a regular viewer. QuakerSpeak makes it easy; you can “subscribe” for free and receive e-mail notices when each video is available. I can’t wait to see which Quaker speaks next.

Enoughness

It was Day One of my writing program’s Fall Residency, and I was feeling my usual doubts about whether I’ve got the right stuff to be pursuing an MFA in writing. I’d signed up for a nonfiction workshop with eleven other students and knew that the next morning I’d receive critiques from them and my teacher, Ana Maria Spagna, of a chapter of my memoir. I’d also attended the first session of my other course, a Directed Reading in Literary Journalism taught by Larry Cheek, and was wondering how I’d get through the list of nine books and handful of articles on the syllabus for the semester.  And that was just the morning. 

After lunch, I plunged into the afternoon line-up of three, hour-long workshops by guest faculty. As often happens at the residency, I wanted to be two places at once for the last hour of that day. I had to choose between a session about “Working with Editors” led by freelance journalist Michelle Nijhuis (her earlier talk about nonfiction story ideas had been terrific) or an hour with David Oates

Writer and Teacher, David Oates

for the first of his three sessions about “The Writing Life.” As much as I craved to learn more about editor-writer relationships from Michelle, a contributing editor for High Country News, I opted for the group meeting with David. 

The view from the outdoor workshop spot

David writes nonfiction, poetry and fiction about the paradoxes of nature and culture. That, as well as the knowledge that his session was to meet outside, intrigued me, but what drew me even more was the word “joy” in the workshop blurb.  David began by quoting Adrienne Rich who used to ask her students, “Are you in it for the long haul?” By 4:30 on that first day, I was wondering the same thing, or at least was feeling uncertain of the how of making it through the next nine days, not to mention the slog a writing life can sometimes be.

I learned over dinner one evening that David has spent time around Quakers, so it’s no surprise that questions sprinkled his talk, and his writing prompts resembled queries. How to persevere as writers was the question David set out to help us answer in Part 1 of his series. He urged us to “keep sight of where the pleasure is in this arduous, solitary pursuit, and let that radiate in everything you do.” Then he asked us to write in response to these queries (I mean writing prompts):

What was the last moment of pleasure you can recall in writing?  Can you reconstruct what it consisted of?

Think about your writing life generally.  Jot some notes to yourself about your typical moment of “Ah” or “Aha”—when you know you have a potential story/poem/essay.  What is the pleasure there?

Where else (or when else) do you get a glow of satisfaction, or a burst of pleasure, in your writing process?  Is there any pattern about where or how this “writing pleasure” happens?

After the rigors and stimulation of the first day of the residency, I felt my shoulders relax and my forehead unwrinkle. I smiled to myself as I let my fingers tap across my keyboard thoughts about the times words sing and come together in ways I don’t expect.  I wrote of my pleasure in the repeated experience that writing leads me to understandings I don’t access in any other way. 

Next, David turned to an exploration of how the writing life is full of paradoxes, too. One of the contradictions for writers is the challenge to, as he described it, “write from your gut, write from your heart,” and also write for the reader.  “Follow your lead and persevere,” he advised. “Be grounded in your process as a writer so that your writing isn’t dependent on what others think.” He urged us to put our work out in the world and let it find its readers. “Take pleasure in that,” he said, “pleasure in whatever audiences receive your writing.”

Which leads to another puzzle for writers: defining success. “What I want in my writing life is enoughness,” David said.  “It’s ok to not be famous and fabulously successful.”  Instead, he seeks contentment in his writing life. “Have incredibly high standards, and be easily pleased,” he counseled.

Writing to David Oates’s prompts helped me make it through the residency’s incredibly high standards and pleasures and reminded me of the rewards of the writing life. In the coming weeks I’ll likely encounter more tests of my personal definition of enoughness; there undoubtedly will be rejection letters; failures as I try new writing techniques; the juggle of my school nurse job, course work, and my own creative writing.  But today, in the midst of a pile of dirty laundry, handouts and notes to file, and the beginnings of a schedule for upcoming reading, writing, and critique assignments, I know the joy of being a writer.  I light a candle and enter into silence before I begin to write. While this may be solitary work, I know I have the support of my MFA writing community and my writing groups here. And I have readers like you.  More than enough.

Questions

Andreanna Moya Photography

I remember a few things about a Bible study I attended thirty-five years ago.  I sat on a hard, wooden pew in the sanctuary of an inner-city Lutheran church. The minister, a lanky, shaggy-aired, pipe-smoking man who I respected deeply, paced up and down the aisles; his blue eyes rested on each of us as he taught. I can’t recall what verse or chapter we were studying; I don’t remember the points the minister made. What I do remember is raising my hand and asking a question about the text’s meaning, then feeling a churn in my stomach when the reverend’s eyes flashed disapproval. My suggestion that the Bible’s prescriptions might be open to interpretation, might need examination in current times, hung in the silent air.

Definitive answers had long been a comfort to me.  I listened, without questioning, for years to the wisdom of my parents, teachers, and ministers. I welcomed the certainty that there was an explanation, a logic, a right answer, for the many parts of life I didn’t understand. Eventually, though, somewhere around the time my Lutheran pastor frowned at my questions, such conviction began to feel stifling rather than reassuring.

This memory returned to me at last month’s spring gathering of Friends as we considered “Ways of Belonging Among Quakers.”  At the opening plenary session, four people shared stories of how they came to find a spiritual home among Quakers.  Later, in small worship-sharing groups, we considered queries about how we each came to Quakerism and what has kept us here. 

Queries. Questions.  That’s what has kept me among Friends for over thirty years.  Not only is it acceptable to ask questions, it’s expected.  We use open-ended questions that invite us to speak from our own experiences and that guide us to explore how God is leading us now, individually and collectively. 

So now, I sit in the silence—sometimes on a hard, wooden bench, but usually on a couch in a friend’s living room or on a folding chair at a Quaker gathering, at other times on a rocky beach or deep in a pine forest—and ask questions. And now, it’s the questions that sustain me through life’s mysteries.