I recently spent almost a week in western Massachusetts at a gathering called Quaker Spring. Quaker Spring was conceived as an entirely unprogrammed gathering, where our whole agenda would be Spirit-led, each day’s program being composed in the morning by a small steering group, aptly named the listening committee. The concept of the gathering is to listen together to how Christ is leading us, and how we might best respond as a gathered community.
This year, I found the community part a bit complicated. Normally, Quaker Spring is held on the campus of the Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio. Rooted in that location, it has tended to attract a pretty wide range of Friends, both geographically and theologically. This broadness of background and experience has been a real strength, giving us a lot of perspectives from which to approach our shared quest to be faithful listeners and followers of Christ Jesus.
In 2011, Quaker Spring migrated for the first time to New England. We hoped that trying out a new location would draw in a lot of new Friends who might not otherwise travel all the way to Ohio. I was unable to attend that year, but I heard from many that the gathering was truly blessed. This year was my very first time in New England, except for a few visits to the city of Boston, and I was looking forward to getting an introduction to that part of the country.
I got a bit more of an introduction than I bargained for. While I’m not sure about the exact statistics, anecdotally I’d say that this year upwards of 80% of us were from New England Yearly Meeting. This introduced a dynamic that I had not experienced at Quaker Spring before. Informal conversations would often turn to committee work going on in New England Yearly Meeting, and many times the themes that emerged in our larger assemblies spoke most directly to the concerns of liberal Friends in the Northeast. Given the composition of the gathering, this was completely normal and understandable. But I found this pattern challenging.
At other Quaker Spring gatherings, I had always felt like I was part of a motley crew of spiritual misfits, finding our way together. I might not have been normal, but nobody was! This year, however, I often felt out of place. I knew many of those in attendance, including quite a few whom I consider personal friends, and yet I felt isolated, marginal and unneeded. Superfluous was the word that came most easily to me at one point, when trying to express how I was feeling. While I was genuinely glad for the opportunity that this gathering provided for so many Friends from the Northeastern US to gather and listen to Christ together, something was holding me back from participating fully.
Having had this experience, I was touched to read a blog post from another Quaker Spring participant, Joanna Hoyt, describing her own struggle to fit in – not just at Quaker Spring, but in the Religious Society of Friends in general. She reflects on the questions that had been occupying her thoughts: Who are my people? Where do I belong? Where am I accepted? What practices can I accept? After her experience at Quaker Spring, she concludes that these may not be the right questions at all. Instead, she feels drawn into the living experience of God in community, showing love and listening deeply to others.
I feel grateful for Joanna’s reflections. They help me to clarify at least part of what I was struggling with during my time at Quaker Spring. The question I was asking myself at Quaker Spring this year – Is this my people? – was not the real question. Rather, the deeper question was: With whom is God calling me to dwell?
This feeling of being superfluous, of being out of place at Quaker Spring, was accompanied by an intense drawing to return home to Washington, DC. I could feel it, deep in my bones, that the work God has for me is found in the daily relationships and spiritual community that I am developing in my neighborhood, city and region. I have no doubt that God used this year’s Quaker Spring to advance his purposes in the lives of many, but I was being called elsewhere.
So, it seems I got the question wrong, too. Rather than wondering who my people are, there might be different, more edifying questions to consider: Who am I called to serve? Who is God sending me to dwell with? How is God placing me in relationship with others, and how can I open myself to being changed by those relationships? Rather than agonizing over who my people are, perhaps a better question is, Whose people am I?
Micah, thank you for this, and especially for the queries at the end. Particularly “How is God placing me in relationship with others, and how can I open myself to being changed by those relationships?’ I will use that one. I feel fairly clear most of the time about the question of who I am called to dwell with and to serve, but I have been getting stuck on the question “To whom am I accountable?” , largely because I wanted a clear and institutionalized answer. But in fact I do know that if I am open enough to the people God sends my way–and they are many and varied–I do tend to receive the challenges, the hard questions and the examples that I need in order to keep faithful.
I hadn’t really thought about the overwhelming New Englandiness of this QS gathering and how that might isolate Friends from elsewhere. (I’m in NY now but I came from NEYM, and I was too preoccupied with feeling odd-one-out as a meetingless Quaker…) And I hear you about your primary call being to presence in your local community, not at gatherings like QS. But I am very grateful for your presence at last week’s gathering. We didn’t get a chance to talk, but you said and sang things, both in worship and in small group settings, that helped me sink down and open into the Presence.
Thanks for this encouragement, Joanna.
I’m sorry that this gathering did not speak to your condition. It was a refreshing time for me, perhaps because of my hopes and expectations going into it. I was hoping to be a “fish out of water” in some ways, and was. For me, it’s helpful sometimes to be the non-dominant perspective in a group. Also, I was not expecting that this group would create its own, stand-alone Quaker community. I have experienced enough Quaker gatherings that I usually feel better about a group when that is NOT the expectation — there is one Quaker gathering I’ve attended often where some of the regular attenders have told me they feel disaffected with their local meetings and that they have made this annual gathering their primary spiritual community and that in fact makes me uncomfortable. It doesn’t allow for much in the way of accountability and knowing each other deeply in that day-to-day way. Interacting only in very charged environments, in my experience, can allow for limited knowledge of each other, whereas I really need my faith community to know my rough patches as well as the parts of me I show when I’m well-polished.
I also have the experience in the past of being well-used in a group where I don’t feel the messages speak to me personally, so I can lean on those experiences when I’m in a meeting for worship or a plenary that doesn’t seem to address my own needs. I cherish the opportunity to be in prayer for those for whom that experience is speaking deeply.
Your discomfort at QS was evident, but nonetheless I was grateful for your presence. Two things you said that week particularly ministered to me, and for that I am grateful. It seemed that despite your feeling like “other,” you were busy and surrounded by people most of the week, so we did not have a chance for conversation. I am sorry that none of those conversations with other participants helped you feel more comfortable there at QS. I hope that we get a chance to be in community together again, in a setting where you feel more comfortable. I think having a chance to talk would be a sweet experience.
Meanwhile, I offer up prayers for your corner of DC and that you may feel God’s loving presence there.
Kathleen
Excellent questions, Micah. Shalomhouse.us is looking for new members to live in their intentional community of peacemakers house in Philadelphia. Perhaps an avenue to check out/explore while you’re asking these types of questions (I think you’d be a great addition).
Thanks, Art. My wife and I are pretty solidly rooted in DC at this point, but I’m glad to have Shalom House on my radar screen! Are you part of this community?
I don’t live at the house, but I am part of Circle of Hope BIC church, so we’re tight like that.
Micah, thank you for this reflection on your time at QuakerSpring. I have not (yet?) felt led to attend, but I am always interested to hear how Spirit is moving in that gathering.
This past week, at the FGC Gathering, Aimee M and I were talking about what a gift it can be for our communities for us to have had the experience of feeling like an outsider. Once you know how that feels, it is easier to see it in others and either to welcome them in—or to stay with them in that place of discomfort, if that is what is called for in the moment.
Hi, Ashley. Thanks for commenting.
The overall purpose of this post was not to be a lament that I didn’t feel comfortable at Quaker Spring. I’m used to feeling discomfort in my life, both among and beyond Friends. And, as you say, discomfort can be a good thing.
Instead, this is a post about how I am wrestling with what it means to be called to a specific ministry with a particular people – increasingly, in a very specific geographical/social context. This post is about how surprising it can be to find that communities you love and feel connected to are not, for the moment at least, where you are called to be doing ministry.
Or, at least, it’s not where you think you are called to do ministry. Remember, you never really know why you are there!
I think your intent is to be encouraging, but it involved some fairly painful discernment to figure out that I needed to leave Quaker Spring early. When I did yield to this leading, I (and other elders with whom I had been co-laboring) felt a very clear confirmation from the Holy Spirit that I needed to get back to DC. I do hope that the Lord’s purposes were served while I was present with Friends.