The Need for Intimacy in Quaker Worship

I wrote this piece for The Canadian Friend Summer Youth Issue, which is being mailed to Friends across Canada and beyond this week. 

Do we know our fellow worshippers? Do we know the people with whom we are filling Christ's request for His presence in the Book of Matthew chapter 18? Christ says in 18:20, " For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them"

The Canadian Friend Summer Issue Cover

Often our monthly meetings do not function as a close caring group of Friends. I attended a large meeting for well over a year and one day during worship I looked around the room to count the names of people who were there. Even though I attended regularly and was active in organizing the Young Adult Friends, I was embarrassed that I only knew half of the names of the people gathered that day. After attending another Meeting regularly for six months, I was called by a member of the Outreach committee and was asked if I was still attending worship. Even though I have a more positive experience with this particular monthly meeting and had knew most of the community, I had never met the caller. Furthermore when I asked the clerk of the meeting if she could point out the person, she could not recall who this woman was.

Recently, I read an article in Friends Journal recommending that the Religious Society of Friends talk about having a testimony of intimacy. I agree with the need to talk about intimacy in our community, but this Friend referred only to sexual intimacy.

I utterly reject using intimacy to mean only romantic relationships. By relegating this word to just mean one kind of relationships, to mean just one of its definitions, we are losing a valuable aspect of our community. When worshipping together was considered a criminal act, early Quakers know what being intimate with each other meant. Then during our Society's isolationist period - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - when Quakers lived in their own communities away from others, they knew each other and set up ways to monitor each other. This is why we have traveling minutes and marriage certificates. Both of these traditions were introduce partly as ways to watch over people to make sure that our collective faith stayed pure. Friends were definitely involved with each other in an intimate manner.

I am definitely not arguing that we go back to our isolationist period, but our spiritual ancestors definitely knew who they worship with every First Day. Do we? Can you name everyone in Meeting on Sunday? If so, do you know what their recent struggles and triumphs are?

Quakers do not believe in outward forms of sacraments. Rather, we believe in sharing the holy communion inwardly with each other. Through waiting worship should be offering each other the proverbial bread and wine. It is a communal experience. If it isn't, why do we gather each week? Why pay for the upkeep of our Meeting Houses? Instead we could just stay at home and mediate alone. Sharing God's body with fellow worshippers each Sunday is an intimate act. Do we treat each meeting for worship as a sacred time? Do we come to meeting for worship expecting to be changed through this weekly time for sharing inward sacraments with each other?

One of my favorite meeting for worships happened in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy that hit the eastern coast of the US last October. The Sunday after Sandy hit, the Meeting House was still without electricity. Yet we gathered on a rather cold morning. We huddled together around the fireplace for an hour of waiting worship. Our bodies were touching as well as our souls as we gathered in God's presence. That day, I felt a part of this worshipping community in a whole new way.

By the next Sunday, the electricity to the Meeting House was restored and we returned to our usual seating pattern spread throughout the room, with two or three on a pew, instead of a dozen. The only people who sat close together were couples and families. Months later I still miss the intimacy I felt that one cold Sunday morning as we huddle together simultaneously seeking the warmth of the fire and the Holy Spirit.

How can we reclaim intimacy within our faith community, before we just become strangers who gather together for personal time of mediation?

Bringing the Good News about the Current State of Quakerism

This summer, I preached three times at the church where I was interning. Part of sermon writing is to bring the good news at the end of the sermon that let people know that Christ loves them and to point out the good in our world that sometimes look like anything but good.

Over the past few months, I have read blog posts about how Quakerism is dying, no one is supporting Young Adult Friends' ministry, etc... I think these points do have a point, but I don't see it as that as the only point. I have seen several instances of Young Adult Friends being supported by the wider community and I believe that we are growing.

Here is some of the good news:

• New York YM Young Adult Friends Field Secretary Gabi just wrote a post about her travels among Young Adults Friends in New York and New Jersey in the past six months. She has been busy attending to the needs of Young Adults there.

• Christina has been carrying a leading since 2002 about a Quaker yearlong service program. She followed the leading and others joined her along the way. She was supportive by Friends all over and by her home meeting.  In August her leading came into reality when seven Young Adult Friends arrived in Atlanta to begin a yearlong internship with Quaker Voluntary Service. The leading is still growing. Houses will open in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon next August too. And it will not stop there... People are energized about bringing this explicitly Quaker program to their community and our dream (Currently I serve on the board) is to keep growing a network of houses. 

• In Portland, two Evangelical Friends churches and an unprogrammed meeting have joined together to support the new QVS house there. That is amazing and exciting to see the branches working together!

• Another Young Adult Friend, Ana, followed a leading to create a Quaker summer camp in the Intermountain Yearly Meeting region. She worked for several summers at different Quaker summer camps and visited others. She and her partner, Ariel, have shared their vision with Friends across the Southwest. The camp, Mountain Friends Camp, has been going three years now and it keeps growing each summer. 

• An unprogrammed Young Adult Friend, Zachary, was led into Navy chaplaincy. He is currently serving in the Navy under the care of an Evangelical Friends church, who have taken him in and supported him in his ministry. Next month he will speak at a Convergent Friends gathering in the Northwest, A Nursery of Truth. I wish I could go. Hopefully others can go!

• Friends General Conference just started the New Meetings Project. The coordinator, Brent, has found that more than 70 Friends worship groups/meetings/church have started in the last ten years. That translates to one new group starting roughly every seven weeks. I have been to several of these new groups and they have a great sense of community.

• I am a big proponent of online outreach, but two of these new meetings, West Philadelphia Worship Group and Silver River Meeting, do not have an online presence. They grow because of the community they have created. They see each other throughout the week in between meetings for worship and are deeply connected to each other lives. How can we grow to know each other outside of worship? 

Lastly, God loves us for the imperfect human beings we are.

These are just a few examples I know of and why I have not lost all hope in my faith community.

Yes, there is a lot to be sad about with Friends today, but I don't see it as just doom and gloom. I am having conversations with Friends all over about a whole range of topics and I am excited. Yes we have a lot of divisions, but amazing conversations and projects are starting!

Where do you see hope in the world of Friends today?

Helping to Grow: Gardening and Youth Ministry

In February I applied to Princeton Theological Seminary for a Masters in Youth Ministry. Additionally over the last few months I have applied for several jobs working with youth and young adults in a variety of settings. For more than eight years, I have been active in youth ministries starting when I was still a teen myself. I did not even see that work as youth ministry until a couple years ago. Now youth ministry is part of my life's calling. Also in the last several years I have become more interested in gardening. As Spring begins, I am reflecting on the connections I see between these two activities.

In the fall of 2007, while living in Greensboro, NC, I started to see the connections between gardening and youth ministry. I spent most of my time there working with children and teens or on a farm or in a garden. As I look back on my time in Greensboro I see this period as crucial to my development as a youth leader. While living in Greensboro I volunteered with youth groups from two Friends meetings, worked in an after-school program at a Friends School, and spent one weekend a month serving as an adult presence at retreats for a yearly meeting Young Friends program. In addition I worked on a local farm a couple hours a week, usually getting paid in vegetables, and volunteered in a couple area schools' gardens. That fall I did not earn a lot of money, but I loved my time there because all my work involved helping with the growth of living creatures (both plants and youth). By the time I left, I would tell people that if I combined all of my activities, I would be helping to grow organic children.

In my mind, youth ministry and gardening have a lot of similarities. First, I watch for growth and I try to sense what I should do to nurture the growth, whether I need more or less of this or that. A tricky balance exists in giving too much or too little freedom to youth. I want to allow space for them to explore and learn, but I also need to set boundaries for safety. It is the same way with watering a garden; Too much or too little water can harm a garden's growth. The balance is important for the growth of both healthy youth and plants.

Second, both youth work and gardening require preparation. I plan out my garden plot and in youth work I plan the activities I lead. To work with teens, I realize I need to be ready and think on my feet, because my plans could easily fall flat and I need to be quick to act while seeming very confident, so I always have back up plans too. For my gardens, I need to plan where I put my plants to maximize the space but still allow the plants to thrive.

Third, I have seen the lasting impacts of both activities. At harvest time in the garden, I am able to eat what I have grown and I try to share the bounty with friends. In youth work, I have witnessed some of the teens I have worked with growing into adulthood and go off to college.

Lastly I have found that sometimes all I can do is to plant seeds and hope they will grow. For example in my last job leading workcamps (service projects) in Washington DC, usually I would only work with a group for a very brief period of time, like less than a week, and the groups would come from over the US, so I would only work with the group once. Often I felt frustrated about not being able to build a stronger connection with the groups, so we could have deeper meaningful reflections about the service work we had participated in together. In the end, I would sustain myself through imagining that the week of service planted a seed in each participant that would germinate much later into a newfound passion or life learning. I know, like in a garden, that not every seed will sprout, but some will. That hope helped to keep me going in my job for two and half years.

These two activities will continue to be integral in my life and I look forward to the lessons and joys they both bring.