The Community Testimony: a diatribe

Cheers to Friends Journal!! Friends Journal (FJ) is the magazine for Contemporary Liberal Quakerism—you should buy a subscription to it because the magazine is under financial duress, yet recently the articles have all been excellent (http://www.friendsjournal.org/).

I was in conversation about a possible article that discusses Pendle Hill--as FJ is preparing for an issue that celebrates this hallowed institution of Contemporary Liberal Quakerism (http://pendlehill.org/). Here is a slightly polished version of what I said a possible excerpt of the final submission might be. I thought this blog might be a good place to share what I would have written, and then I'd like to expand on it based on some more recent experiences. The initial excerpt is about my participation in the Young Adult Leadership Development Program at Pendle Hill.

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When I signed up to participate in the Young Adult Leadership Development (YALD) Program, I wanted an experience with which I could refashion my existence. The program found me at a time when my life had suddenly stopped, yet again. The friends I made at Haverford College, where I received my undergraduate education, had almost all left (being years ahead of me). Two years remained until my own studies would come to a close at Haverford. Thus, I was two years removed from participation in the Young Friends Program of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. My soul yet remained harangued from the loss of a community as profoundly felt as this one. My sense of self was dispersed into a thousand directions.

When I came to YALD, I was looking to recreate a community that couldn't be recreated. A false endeavor: To replace a group of people who had been as unitary as I felt isolated. My frustration grew consistently larger, as I tried repeatedly (and with a greater sense of urgency each time) to ignore my deep inner loneliness. This loneliness, I am only now realizing, extends through life. The more and more we resist our inner loneliness, the more it grows to consume us: “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you,’” (Line 70, Gospel of Thomas). For a long time I avoided what was within me—choosing not to allow all my inner beauty to flower how it may—and preferring to manage my existence in fear. Joining the YALD program was yet another manifestation of my desperate efforts to avoid the darkness. Thus it is no surprise that almost immediately after arrival, I became dissatisfied.

“These are not the right people,” I would think to myself. “These people don’t understand me, and I could never connect with them!” And I directed frustrated at Pendle Hill itself—an institution, which seemed to lack, “any substantive sense of community.” We were being asked to model devotional Quaker living, and yet we didn’t even conduct business meeting! Pendle Hill seemed a place where bureaucracy flourished over the life of the Spirit. Such scathing thoughts shown through my actions and my words as I continued in the program, only worsening overtime. They were a product of my unceasing dissatisfaction, which nothing and no one could cure but me. I projected my inner pain onto the Pendle Hill community. Yet rather than reject me or push me out of their dialogue, those whose I attention I could grab listened and they embraced this pain of mine, as I expressed it in the only way I knew.

Looking back onto the YALD program and onto my participation in the Pendle Hill community, I am nostalgic. The community was suffused with inspiration, struggle and depth. Indeed, I was consistently challenged to bring myself forth in the many painful ways I needed in order to discover how I might be saved—and not by anyone other than me (if you listen long enough, you’ll discover His voice right there inside your own heart).

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This message has sources in previous ways of thinking in which I thought that my constant seeking of community—beautiful and powerful community—was a pathological attempt to recreate what had passed (to bring Young Friends back into my life). Modern society was getting in the way—and thinking emerged such as “buck up, sonny!” Indeed, life is hard, but it is also wasted when not taken to its fullest advantage. Every day offers a chance for more clarity—and this clarity has arrived with a newer interpretation of the same passage from the Gospel of Thomas (see above). This time, I mean to say that no one can live to their fullest power, articulation and beauty without the support of a community just as powerful, clearly formed and beautiful. This is always our first task.

In fact, Young Friends was the closest articulation of the community for which I yearn, for which my whole being yearns. I expect that inside all people, there is a similar yearning reflected by our consistent loneliness. It is that community, whose form is described perfectly by Starhawk. I think I have referenced this quote before, but now I do so with a slightly different intent. She says:

Somewhere there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open and receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free. (Starhawk 1997:92-96)

In the West we are obsessed with freedom as autonomy—as separation and liberation from. But there is another way to think about freedom. Freedom is the deeply felt unity and connection with others who celebrate our beings not as an ethical code, but as an ingrained mode. There is a place, I believe, where the people around us share love, pain, frustration and happiness as gifts and who expect these in return. There is a place where celebration of all beauty is the ground of our ethics. There is a place where Jesus-like people act out of love not because they are supposed to, but because such a way of life is just the way (no more complicated). In other words, somewhere the beloved community does exist. And it can exist here on this Earth in this time, as well. It doesn’t need to be related to Jesus, but it does need to embody his life’s example.

So I ask a simple question. Where do these communities exist in Contemporary Liberal Quakerism? The Young Adult Friends movement in the larger Liberal Quaker community is an effort to bring about the beloved community (even if within one particular demographic location). But when I look around and try to find this quality of community in local meetings or at yearly meetings or at Friends General Conference, I am at a loss.

There is a lot of work to do, but it can’t get done if we don’t have a strong foundation based on the bonds of friendship, spiritual companionship, love, and appreciation. I am not talking Kumbaya-holding-hands-la-la-la. There is a lot of struggle in community too, and conflicts emerge, and pain and loss are cornerstones of experience. Part of the reason why we have built community poorly (because we have as against Starhawk’s criteria) is that we haven’t developed well-oiled mechanisms for managing conflict. This is key for community to flourish.

And above, when I spoke about the priority we have placed on bureaucracy over Spirit, I didn’t mean it quite as black-and-white as it is written. Yet I wonder how it is that most Yearly Meetings can exist without more than a few paid staffers, while another Yearly Meeting (Philadelphia in particular) can support a staff whose budget is larger than that of Friends General Conference (an organization that associates every Liberal Yearly Meeting in the country). I don’t mean to imply that Yearly Meeting staffers, Quarterly coordinators and local meeting secretaries don’t do a good service. We need somebody to push the paper in this age of the nonprofit (perhaps). Yet sometimes the nonprofit-esque institutions into which our Yearly Meetings and inter-Yearly Meeting organizations have turned, forget their purpose.

We flail about trying to discern what to do, whilst not realizing that there has really only ever been one thing to do. The goal, friends, is to bring about the beloved community, to Herald the coming of Christ and the rise of the Kingdom of God, to find in each other what Starhawk enjoins us all to discover. No matter the language we use, I am speaking about the same ‘ole thing. We are working, in whatever are our particular projects, on bringing to this world the peace (in its robust sense) for which all yearn. And there is much to do, but none of it can be done without powerful, well articulated and beautiful community. What does not give life to this project is already dead. What structures that do not bring us closer to Spirit, that do not help us come closer to each other are already dead.

For now,

Zachary

Bibliography

Starhawk. 1997. Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics. 15th ed. Beacon Press.