Ministry for and to Different Conditions
October 25, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’ve just finished reading Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings, a book of epistles to Quaker meetings and gatherings “written originally out of a motion of love and with the intent that they might help some readers on their path towards the more abundant life that Christ promises and makes possible.”
The book is a wonderful source of spiritual nurture, for both readers and their meetings. Parts of this book spoke to me so deeply that I want to share them more widely here. I’m going to pass on more from this book in future posts.
For instance, in letter number four, titled: “As we reflect on our meetings’ spiritual condition,” Brian writes about “Ministry for and to different conditions” in ways I found very useful as I work with my own meeting to bring my ministries into the life of the meeting. The entire letter, and especially the last paragraph, are an appeal to our meetings to be more proactive in our nurture of ministry, which resonates with my own calling to have more “fire in the Spirit” in the nurture of ministry in our meetings.
I quote Brian in full (page 16–18):
The ministry of the meeting, which includes the words spoken and the silent ministry, and the words or deeds of service or prayer with individuals or groups at other times, is rooted in a listening, loving focus on the actual people gathered and on the One in whom they are gathered.
As you consider the meeting’s condition this year, Friends, listen for the conditions within the community in compassion and honesty. Three conditions that have come particucarly to mind in my exercise are these: the “young” members, of any age, who are new to Friends; the “established”; and the “well-grown in the truth.” Each of these condition has characteristics that may require particular kinds of service to help them forward, and it is good sometimes for a meeting to reflect on whether the ministry is offering what it can under God’s guidance.
In the “young,” that is, those new to Friends, there may be exploration, enthusiasm, receptivity, and a need and desire to learn the foundations of the Quaker path. They need guidance, but not only instruction. They have come to you in curiosity, perhaps, but under that is a restlessness or inquiry, and it is through the witness of your acts and life joined with words of explanation and welcome that they will be helped to see that among you they can find a living path. Inquirers need to feel our humility, but also where we are touched with fire and the Holy Spirit.
In “established Friends,” there is a growth of discipline and order, a maturing exploration of and use of gifts, and a habit of bearing responsibility for the life and support of the meeting. But in this period, there can be an engagement with contradictions and continued mysteries in the understanding of Quakerism. Faith and discoveries that were nourishing and inspiring in the first days among Friends may feel stale or insufficient for the demands now encountered. New resources and opportunities are needed if such active Freinds are to rediscover their spiritual childhood—the place of wonder and gratitude, openness and receptivity. Fire and the Spirit!
Those well grown in the truth have a tested understanding of the value of the diverse paths people can follow as well as the dangers of a mere celebration of diversity. They have an understanding of the pirtfalls and dangers of life in the Spirit, for individuals and meetings, and a sympathy for questioning and doubt. Their expeirence has brought a reliance on the workings of the Lord in many situations, and they have learned to wait and listen; they have seen (or others have seen in them) a growth in tenderness, courage, freedom, and discipline in love and truth. At this stage, though, there are fresh challenges that come from habits long established, the same problems and challenges returning over and over. They can read the indicators of the meeting’s long-term good or ill health and stability, its growth and depth; caring deeply, they can yet feel taken for granted and that their own seeking and spiritual thirst is not seen.
Fire and the Spirit—the baptism is needed at every stage!
People in each of these stages of their spiritual life offer ministry rooted in the questions and findings of that condition, but each stage also has its temptations and problems. In each stage there are times of dryness, or misplaced complacency, of frustration, and of hope. Everyone needs to receive nurture and love, in meeting and out, if their gifts and strengths are to be confirmed and to grow. All need exhortation or inspiration, instruction, reasurance, consolation, gratitude, and challenge—accompaniment in the Spirit as individuals trying to walk in the Light.
Vocal Ministry as a Calling
September 15, 2025 § 1 Comment
For years—for decades—I have been thinking and writing about and believing in the potential for vocal ministry as an ongoing calling rather than as an episodic prompting to speak that arises in the moment, and the kinds of support that such a calling should receive. Friends seem to have experienced vocal ministry this way, as a calling, for centuries until Friends in some quarters began laying down the practice of recording ministers in the early twentieth century.
In the meetings that no longer record gifts in ministry, and even in some that do, this sense of calling to vocal ministry seems to have left us, even though we recognize callings to other forms of ministry, like witness ministry for example, and even though vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker tradition. This is one of the most significant changes in all the history of Quaker religious culture, and it seems to have gone oddly unnoticed, at least in the Quaker circles I move in.
Meanwhile, although I’ve been basically obsessed with this matter for a long time, I have not felt such a calling myself—until recently. Now I do, and I want to share some of what that’s been like.
I think I see a couple of reasons for my new sense of calling.
First, I have been working for months on a Pendle Hill Pamphlet submission on the meeting’s role in supporting vocal ministry and on what I call a culture of eldership more broadly. It’s now in Pendle Hill’s hands. So I’ve been steeping myself in our faith and practice of vocal ministry for quite a while and, more importantly, I’ve been diving deep into my own belief and experience of ministry in general, and vocal ministry in particular. It’s been a classic case of how Friend Richard Foster describes study as a spiritual discipline: Spirit-led study can awaken, deepen, and transform your faith and practice.
Second, I’ve changed meetings, from Central Philadelphia Meeting, which is a large urban meeting with vocal ministry of varying degrees of “Spirit-led-ness”, to Princeton Meeting, a much smaller meeting with two meetings for worship. Friends in the earlier meeting, which I regularly attend, have often self-selected for more silence and less ministry than the later meeting often provides; completely silent meetings are not too uncommon. As for me, however, lately, for the first time in forty years as a Friend, I find myself speaking fairly often. I am usually one of only two or three ministers, as was the case last Sunday, for instance.
The discernment I’ve put into writing that essay on vocal ministry and its nurture has worked somehow, I think, with this surprising arising of my own ministry in practice, and awakened in me a sense of calling. I now do feel called to vocal ministry in the way I imagine ministers were in the elder days.
For a long time, I have felt a calling to a vocal ministry of teaching, keeping an ear open for opportunities to pass on our tradition. But this feels different. I do teach a bit in these new messages sometimes. But, even when that’s happening, it’s been secondary to messages of spiritual nurture. I can’t help but ladle out from our tradition or from the Bible, but I find myself trying primarily to quench spiritual thirst, rather than to pass on an element of our faith, practice, and experience.
How does this feel? It feels like I’m navigating a prophetic stream that is flowing inside of me, or through me. There is a sense of an abiding presence, of a continual inner river of movement or momentum, prompting these messages, rather than a sense of a discreet personal Presence, like Jesus Christ, say, of a specific point source, let alone one with a name, as I imagine ministers experienced it in the elder days. But this presence does not feel vague or amorphous. It feels palpable and immediate.
And it’s continuous. By that I mean that some mysterious underlying stream of influence seems to connect my messages over the weeks that separate them. It’s not a thematic connection or about the content; it’s not a feeling either; it’s something else, which I’m calling the spirit of the christ, by which I mean a spirit of anointing. For the Greek word christos means anointed. But I’ll leave that part of it for another post.
Last Sunday, all this was especially palpable. I am nervous about how often I’m speaking, nervous on my own behalf, since the experience is still very new and feels fraught with spiritual risk. But I’m also nervous on behalf of the meeting and the other worshippers. I worry that I’m developing a reputation, and that others might be getting nervous, too, about where this is going and what I’m up to, especially as I am a relative newcomer bringing a new sensibility to the meeting in other ways besides this vocal ministry. And this frequent speaker Steven Davison is the only me they’ve known; they don’t know that I used to be a much more infrequent speaker. So I’ve been trying to be especially diligent in my discernment and even schooling myself not to speak, though I know I’m not supposed to do that either.
But right away last Sunday, I could feel that stream moving in me. I renewed my resolve to say in the boat and not look for a landing, and that was going quite well until fairly close to the end of the hour. Then a Friend spoke who I believe also has a calling to vocal ministry, though I’m not sure she feels that way. And as has happened several times in recent weeks, her message triggered something, and I found myself crafting a message that grew directly out of hers and the images she used. The Stream would not let me coast past that dock. So I landed and spoke.
And I do craft; my messages aren’t spontaneous speaking. Last Sunday, all my study and consideration came up and out and through into my words. I am a writer and a crafter and a student, and all that feels natural and correct to me; all that is a spiritual discipline for me. My “craftiness” is another source of worry for me, true, but these are the pipes I’ve been given. So an odd feeling of confidence or grounded-ness shares space with my worry in this boat.
And the meeting? I think our meeting—at least the earlier meeting for worship—has at least two other Friends who have what looks to me like a calling. I’ve spoken to one of them about this, and she seems willing to entertain the idea, at least. It feels to me like she’s experimenting with it.
But the wider meeting? I serve on Worship and Ministry committee and I’ve brought the idea of a calling to vocal ministry up somewhat obliquely, and my sense is that some members of the committee were a little unsure what I was talking about and others were ready to consider it more. I’m only just getting used to it myself as a personal reality rather than just as a subject for more abstract or impersonal study, thought, and sharing. So I guess we’ll all grow into this together.
Meanwhile, I started writing this post because I wanted to share the ministry I brought last Sunday, and I ended trying to articulate my experience instead. So in the next post, I want to share the actual ministry I brought last Sunday.
Meetings and Ministry, Part 1 : Introduction
July 28, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’m starting a new series of posts that looks at how our meetings recognize gifts in ministry, how we help emerging ministers discern their calling, and how we support their ministries.
I’ve been away from this blog more or less for quite a while, but I think I’m back. I have been paying attention to publishing my poetry and more recently, I’ve been working on a couple of submissions to Pendle Hill. One of these is on the meeting’s role in supporting vocal ministry. At the same time, while thinking and praying and writing in a deep and sustained way about vocal ministry for many months, my own ministries are in an exciting and exercising period of engagement and transition.
In the middle of all this, I became aware of the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry, which I mentioned in my last post, and I participated in the development of “The Public Friends Recording Process,” which the Incubator’s convener Windy Cooler shepherded
Back in 1992, I had been part of a three-person team that updated New York Yearly Meeting’s process for recording gifts in ministry and soon after that, I served on the first clearness committee convened under the new guidelines to consider the recording of a Friend’s gifts. We did recommend recording to the Yearly Meeting and they approved it. So I have been carrying a concern for the recognition, discernment, and support of gifts in ministry for a long time.
All this focus and activity around our meetings and their support of our ministers and their ministries has reactivated my own call to a ministry focused on fostering greater attention in our meetings on these concerns. It has produced new openings that I want to share with you my readers and raised questions that I hope my readers will be led to answer, here in this blog, but also in your own meetings.
Much of this exploration will be personal, as many of these issues are front and center for me and my meeting right now. But some of it will be about our tradition, our faith and practice, our history and our experience.
In the next post, I want to start with the story of my own first call to ministry and how it has led to this moment.
Quaker-pocalypse—Advancement & Ministry
June 17, 2015 § 3 Comments
When a meeting recognizes the gifts of its members and helps its members mature into their spiritual lives, the meeting matures in its collective religious life. This manifests in deep meetings for worship, spirit-led discernment in meetings for business in worship, effective pastoral care, a loving and resilient fellowship, grounded and focused social witness, and well-managed property and finances.
Newcomers can sense this vitality, even though the sources of it may not be very visible. Even less visible, oftentimes, are the ministries that flourish in a meeting. But they, too, give a meeting a vitality that true seekers after the divine will recognize: here, they will say to themselves, God truly is at work.
Gifts of the spirit and gifts in ministry—almost the same thing. Ministries often arise from one’s gifts—but not always. Both are given by the Holy Spirit. Both are given to the community and to the world but entrusted to individuals.
Because the gifts of ministry are given to the community, the community has a responsibility for them. If meetings do not recognize emerging ministries, they throw the gift away. If meetings do not give ministers help with discerning their leadings, they may lose the gift. And if meetings do not give ministers the support and oversight they need to be faithful to their call, meetings trample on the gifts. These are sins against the spirit.
Because the gifts of ministry are entrusted to individual Friends, the ministers also have responsibilities. If Friends do not bring their gifts in ministry and their leadings to their meeting, they deny their meeting the grace of the spirit. If Friends do not seek help with discernment, they may misunderstand their call. And if Friends do not seek support for their ministry if they need it, the gift may be squandered, or lost, or tangled in the obstacles that arise.
Do our meetings welcome the gifts of ministry that are given to us in the Spirit? And do our meetings and members live the faith and practice of Quaker ministry as an essential aspect of our corporate and individual religious lives?
Queries for our meetings
Recognizing ministry. Does your meeting know the faith and practice of Quaker ministry? Do you teach it often enough so that all members and attenders, and especially newcomers, have a chance to learn it, as well? Does your meeting encourage members to share their leadings and ministries with the meeting, providing both opportunities to share, and an open and visible structure for welcoming leadings? Are your members thinking about the gifts they have as spirit-led? Would a member of your meeting who has a leading recognize it as such? Are they in the habit of thinking about the interests they have in witness or service activities or whatever, within the meeting or in their everyday lives, as possible leadings from the Spirit into Quaker ministry?
Discerning leadings. Does your meeting know how to conduct a clearness committee for discernment of leadings? Does your meeting understand the difference between a clearness committee for discernment and clearness committees for membership, marriage, and making personal decisions, in terms of how the people are chosen and how the committees are conducted? Or does your meeting have some other process for helping ministers with the discernment of their leadings?
Supporting ministry. Does your meeting have a structure and processes in place for supporting the leadings of your members? Would a Friend with a leading know where to go with their leading? Does your meeting know how to form a care committee for its ministers? Is your meeting prepared to provide oversight as well as support, ready, for instance, to help a Friend discover when they have run past their guide, or have stepped through the traces * , or when they have been released from their call? Does your meeting know how to write a minute for travel or service in ministry?
Releasing ministry. In the elder days, when a Friend traveled in the ministry, members of their meeting helped run their farm or their store in their absence. This was called releasing ministry. When your meeting writes a minute for travel or service, do you also inquire into what obstacles may hinder the minister’s ability answer the call and then see what you can do to remove these obstacles? Are you familiar with ReleasingMinistry.org, a new independent Quaker initiative to support Quaker ministry?
* “Step through the traces.” This is a phrase from the elder days of Quaker ministry and refers to a draught horse getting its legs tangled in the tackle—the traces—by which it pulls a wagon. Thus it means to get tangled up in the pursuit of your ministry, making mistakes, failing to walk in the paths of Christ’s leading.
Joys of the Quaker Way—The Calling
November 27, 2014 § 1 Comment
In this little series on the joys of the Quaker Way, I have been describing how much joy I have found in the practice of Quaker ministry, from the openings, the leadings, and the ministries that have unfolded since that first opening in Talva Chapin’s living room in 1990.
For me, this process has grown like a tree from that one seed. One opening or leading or ministry has led to another as I followed them up towards the Light.
Thus they all feel to me like one integral whole. The branch that aims toward the east seems to be going in a different direction than the one that aims toward the southwest. But they all spring out of the depths within me, from the Seed planted in the soil of my soul. And they all reach toward the same Light.
This decades-long reaching for the Light, this tree of many branches, this organic synthesis of many promptings of the spirit, produces in me a sense of calling.
- As an opening is momentary and specific and inward;
- as a leading is longer-lasting and still specific but more involved, and outward;
- as a ministry is longer-lasting still and broader yet and both inward and outward;
- so the calling is for the whole lifetime, and of the whole of my spiritual life, and transcendental.
By transcendental, I mean something very hard to express. It doesn’t feel particularly cosmic or absolute, however. It still feels personal and particular to me and to my religious environment. To continue with my metaphor, this transcendent presence is to my spiritual process in ministry much like the local ecosystem is to a tree. There is more to the spiritworld than this little valley where I grow, a whole world—a universe, I suppose.
And maybe some of the birds that come to nest in my tree come from that wider world. But this sense of calling is more intimate than it is cosmic. It is more about the bird than it is about wherever the bird may have came from.
Even so, there is something more to it than just me and my spiritual process and my religious environment. As my frequent readers know, this is my definition of G*d: the Mystery Reality behind or within or beyond our religious experience, whatever that experience is.
I have been recounting my own spiritual and religious experiences. I know that they are real because they have transformed me. I can describe them, up to a certain point. I can craft a clever metaphor. But beyond that point, beyond the images I might use to explain it to you or to myself, lies a Mystery, a transcendence to the Reality. And it calls.
Sometimes the calling actually has a voice and a message, a direct address. But even then, the Voice has never given me a name, as Jesus has to so many Friends I know. I have given it some names, because it does often feel quite personal, and thus, I want a name. And it invites me into a relationship, a covenantal one in which we each make promises, and so it needs a name. I need a name.
But the vast majority of the time, this calling is a sense of calling. This Presence is a sense of presence. This Reality remains a Mystery. All I know is that the ecosystem in which I grow as a spiritual being has soft, indistinct boundaries that lie, for the most part, beyond my ken.
I like to think that the evolutionary processes that carry me and my little ecosystem forward are one with the wider spiritual unfolding of the planet and of the human race. But I can only speculate about that. And I do; it’s fun. I get joy from speculation.
But the deeper joy, the greater joy, the more transforming joy, comes from growing in this little valley called the Quaker way and from trying to make my life an answer to this calling from the Light toward the Light in the Light.
Joys of the Quaker Way: One More Branching—Quakers & Capitalism
November 22, 2014 § 4 Comments
One more branching—Quakers and capitalism
Prologue
So I have laid out the general outline of my joyful experience in unfolding of ministry as a Friend. This has followed a pattern:
Openings, the flaring of bright moments of insight that come as gifts of the Holy Spirit, which I experience as moments of joy that are sometimes quite sublime. Furthermore, some of these openings have led to . . .
Leadings, specific tasks laid upon me by G*d that, even when they have become a burden, and sometimes they have, still in their pursuit I have found fulfillment, a sustained joy in knowing what I am to do and joy in the doing of it. And then, blessing upon blessing, sometimes these leadings have given birth to . . .
Ministries, calls to service that are broader in scope, deeper in demand, and longer lasting than individual leadings—and even more fulfilling, more full of the joy of service to the community and to G*d.
There is one more layer to this onion—what I call my calling. But I have one more branch in my personal story to tell, another instance in which a leading and the study it required uncovered a new door into service, a new opening that led to a new leading and then to a new ministry.
The opening. I was rummaging through Pendle Hill’s library—i forget what I was looking for—when I “happened upon” the book of proceedings of the first Friends World Conference, held in London in 1920. This book was in amongst other books related to the other world gatherings. I knew nothing about this first gathering, or any of them, for that matter, so I sat down to read for a while. And here was a new discovery: the Eight Principles of a Just Social Order and accounts of the debates that it evoked at the Conference, plus hints about an even more intense debate at the 1918 London Yearly Meeting sessions.
London Yearly Meeting (now Britain Yearly Meeting) had convened a Committee on War and the Social Order in 1915 whose charge was to explore the causes of the Great War. It came back to London Yearly Meeting with its final report in 1918, with a thoroughly-thought out critique and the Eight Principles. The Committee blamed the industrial system—capitalism—in part for the war and the first draft of the Eight Principles, which had been watered down in the final draft after they had been sent to the quarterly meetings for consideration, were quite critical of the economic-industrial system of the time. Meanwhile, the Friends receiving the report were captains of industry in the very system being criticized. In a sense, these Friends were criticizing themselves.
The leading. I was hooked. I now wanted to learn everything I could about Quaker attitudes toward the capitalist system, given especially the tremendous wealth of British Friends through the centuries. Soon, I felt led to write a history of Quaker economics—a history of Quaker contributions to capitalist culture, Quaker economic attitudes, and an economic history of the movement. The resulting research and writing became the unfinished book published in installments as the first posts of this blog (available as pdf files from the link in the sidebar to the left labeled Quakers & Capitalism).
It felt so natural. I had already been studying biblical economics for years. Also I worked at the time as the marketing communications person for a high-end speakers bureau that represented many of the most important thought leaders in the business world and many of the world’s first-tier economists. it was my job to know what these people were thinking and writing and saying, and then present it to the business speakers market. So i was learning how the system worked from the inside, while I was simultaneously learning how Jesus had reformed the economic instructions of Torah.
And I discovered that the history itself, of Quakers and capitalism, was not only fascinating but also virtually unknown to Friends. As I like to put it, the industrial revolution would have taken place without Quakers—but it didn’t. Friends developed most of the foundational, indispensable industries, businesses, infrastructure, and financing of the British industrial revolution, and they became fabulously wealthy as a result. Yet almost no Friends I have ever met know much about it. Every time I give a presentation on this material, it blows my audience members’ minds.
The ministry. Then, following the pattern I was used to now, the leading to write this book led to a ministry of teaching about not only our economic history and our contributions to capitalist culture, but also a prophetic ministry of awakening to economic testimony.
We stand in a similar relation to the capitalist system as we do to the prison system—we helped create something that has become a monster. And not only are we nearly oblivious of this relationship; we are weirdly neurotic about it. Our amnesia in this area is very strange for a community so obsessed with its own history, and so proud of it. i feel that the collective consciousness of modern Quakerism is neurotic about money and economics.
My ministry is to explore why this is so and to call Friends to “stand still in the light” until the shadow we live under in this matter burns away, and we come up through the flaming sword into a new relation to money and our economic system, until we are open to G*d’s wish for us regarding the economic system we helped launch.
Meanwhile, however, the openings, the leading to write the book, the ministry of writing and teaching about Quakerism and capitalism—all this has been a ceaseless cascade of passion, discovery—and joy. I thank G*d for it.
Joys of the Quaker Way—Leading #2 Leads to New Openings and Ministry #4
November 1, 2014 § 3 Comments
In the course of writing How Long Will the Land Mourn, I ran across a book on the ecology of Palestine and the agricultural practices of the ancient Israelites, which included a description of their agricultural technologies, which were first-of-a-kind revolutionary. This knowledge blew my mind and it connected with some of my previous study to ignite a new ministry founded on a series of ecstatic new openings.
I had already studied the relationship between the religion of ancient Israel in the tribal period and Canaanite religion and mythology. The Canaanites were the indigenous people of Palestine, who spoke and wrote a language very close to ancient Hebrew, but whose religion was a classic Mesopotamian pantheistic “fertility” religion that was focused in its mythos and practice on agriculture, rather than the mostly pastoral tradition that the ancient Israelites brought with them. And it involved a rich religious relationship with the land.
Something clicked when I understood the rudiments of ancient Palestine’s geology, geography, weather, soils, and ecologies. I saw how Canaanite religion had this “earth science” embedded in its DNA. I saw how, under the leadership genius of Moses, an Egyptian court-trained “magician”, the ancient Israelites had adopted and adapted this sacred knowledge of the land to make possible their occupation of the highlands of Palestine as primitive agriculturists. For the highlands of Palestine had been unoccupied for 500 years before the Israelites came—it was just too hard to farm until he showed them how. I saw how this religious “earth science” became part of the DNA of the religion of the Israelites when they finally settled in Israel. I had a glimpse of the very roots of the Judao-Christian tradition—our tradition—in the ecology of the Holy Land.
This launched me into a more thorough and focused study of the origins of ancient Israel and of ecological language in Hebrew scripture. At some point, I began to see this substrate of religious ideas and practice in the gospels, as well, not just in Hebrew scripture. So I refocused my study of the gospels on how Jesus used the landscape of Palestine and what I call spiritual ecology in his own spiritual practice. My questions were these: where did Jesus go in his spiritual practice, what did he do there, and why? The baptism, the testing in the wilderness, the call and teaching of the disciples, the transfiguration, much of his public ministry, many of his “miracles”, the agony in Gethsemane, the ascension—all of these events took place outdoors, mostly in wild places. But not in random places. I believe Jesus chose these places for religious-ecological reasons.
The arc of this learning and understanding and writing has been the most exciting series of openings I have ever had. A lot of it is speculation and I still have a lot of research to do, or redo. But the joy of it has been unparalleled.
This was the breakthrough I had been looking for when I returned to the study of the gospel of Jesus searching the good news about earthcare. But I found, not teachings—I had been looking for teachings—but practice. It was Jesus’ practice that is profoundly revolutionary for us today as earthcare ministers. Jesus had a spiritual relationship with the landscape of his homeland, with the land itself. He modeled for us a form of
- spiritual-religious ecology,
- a land-based spirituality, and
- a religious culture of place.
And he did this because he knew that the land, and especially the wilderness and mountains, were the places in which he was most likely to encounter his Father. Because this had always been the tradition of his people, since even before Moses. Because the Father himself was intimately engaged with the land. A mythologist would probably say that Yahweh was a rain god, among other things—or rather, Elohim was, the other important name for God in ancient Hebrew. But that gets us into an exciting but complex tangent.
Out of these openings, which I plan to share in this blog at some point, grew a fourth ministry, a calling to bring Friends and Christians everywhere back to the model Jesus gave us—to reengage spiritually with our own landscapes, to make the places we live in integral to our religious lives, to develop a new religious culture of place, as he did himself.
This sounds like paganism to some people, I suspect. But there’s a big difference between finding the places where divine revelation is most likely to occur and worshipping in that place—and worshipping the place itself.
Also, for Quakers, the “outwardness” of such a practice is rather foreign to the “inwardness” of traditional Quakerism. Anyone who’s been in a meeting for worship outdoors in a forest knows how difficult it is to center down when the bugs are biting (sooner or later, the gnats always find you), when the seating is primitive and uncomfortable, and when the world around you is so beautifully distracting and often, noisy. Furthermore, at least in my experience, communion with the divine outdoors, especially in the wilderness, invites a much more active participation than just sitting.
I would love to know how Jesus dealt with these things as he and Peter, James, and John centered down before the transfiguration on the mountain; how they centered in prayer on Gethsemane, even “falling asleep” there. Maybe Palestine has fewer bugs.
Anyway, this is my fourth ministry now: writing and speaking and exploring bioregional Quakerism, spiritual reinhabitation of our landbases, spiritual ecology, land-based spirituality, and a Quaker culture of place.
Joys of the Quaker Way—Leading Leads to Leading
October 31, 2014 § 1 Comment
The first leading spends itself
I spent several years researching and then writing my book on Christian earth stewardship, which I early on entitled How Long Will the Land Mourn, from Jeremiah 12:5. I synthesized the messages of the books I read into what I call the 9-plus principles of Christian earth stewardship *(see below). Then I analyzed the assumptions I saw at work behind the principles and their strengths and weaknesses. The final section of the book is a detailed critique of the principles, and finally, concrete calls for action for each principle based on what we would be doing as congregations if we took real responsibility for these principles and did in our practice what we said we believed in our faith.
The book is virtually complete. But I turned away from it because, near the end, when my critique was fully developed, I decided that Christian earth stewardship was a dead end as a religious ideology that could really ignite and sustain Christian earthcare. I still believe that if even a handful of congregations started living according to these principles, an ecological revolution could begin.
But they won’t. That’s the problem.
There are a number of reasons for this. But one of the most compelling is that earth stewardship as it has been articulated so far is not part of the gospel of Jesus. Ninety percent of earth stewardship theology is based on Hebrew Scripture or, to a lesser extent, the letters of Paul. Jesus barely gets mentioned.
What Christian earth stewardship does, essentially, is make ecological destruction another sin, along with all the others, but one that Jesus never talks about. Jesus has almost nothing to say about the environment and land use. And if Jesus isn’t saying anything, why should we listen? If Jesus isn’t interested, then why should we be? I think this is one of the basic problems for Christians in the pews, for ministers in the pulpits, for professors in the seminaries—the silence of Jesus on earthcare.
Meanwhile, Christian earth stewardship is a patent failure. It’s been around since just after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, and in the fifty years since, it has gained almost no traction. Oh, it might find its way into a sermon around Earth Day. There are courses in some seminaries. Some denominations, including ours, have greened some buildings. But show me one congregation that has any idea where the water comes from that they pour into their babies’ eyes with their baptismal rites, or that knows the working conditions of the vineyard workers or the chemicals used in the viticulture of the wine they celebrate the eucharist with. Are they using herbicides on their church property? Are they growing gardens on their church property? And this is just the easy stuff. You get the idea.
My first leading had led to a dead end.
And yet—there had been so much joy along the way. So many openings, so much immersion in the joy of learning, so much pleasure in thinking creatively about scripture, so much joy in the writing. And I felt I stood at the threshold of something new, if only I would just turn in some other direction. So I sat with it.
The second leading arises
Eventually, it came to me. Because I felt that earth stewardship had to be an integral part of the gospel of Jesus or Christians would never pay much attention to it, I decided that I would start over and begin studying the gospel message itself, on its own terms, without an agenda. If I found something, great; if not, then I would lay the thing down.
I went back to the libraries and started reading commentaries on the gospels. I did not study Paul. I wanted the gospel of Jesus, not the gospel of Paul, and I do believe there is a huge difference. The main one being that jesus radically reformed Torah, but he didn’t throw it out. And as I would learn, this difference makes all the difference in the world, especially when it comes to earthcare. Paul Hellenized the gospel, he urbanized the gospel, and he spiritualized the gospel. What I found was deeply Jewish, grounded in the agrarian economy that Torah was designed for, and eminently concrete, the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Then I hit pay dirt! I took a year-long course in The Prophetic Tradition from the School of the Spirit, and on its reading list was a book that changed my life: The Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder. Yoder has a chapter on the Jubiliee in the gospel of Luke.
This was it! The gospel of Jesus was at its core economic—it was about relieving the sufferings of the poor. Jesus may have nothing to say about land use, but he was all about land tenure—who gets to own the land. This was a side door into earthcare, admittedly, but the power of the gospel’s economic message overwhelmed my initial intent.
I redoubled my study, teaching myself everything I could learn about the economics of Torah and the Jubilee in particular. Then I returned to the study of the gospels. And there it was: every where I turned in the gospels, I found what I call the economics of redemption in the common-wealth of God. Virtually all the famous sayings of Jesus were about economics, in language, in legal intent, in their implications for living in the “kingdom”, if only you knew how to recognize the “technical” legal, or covenantal, language involved. Half of the parables were about economics. Half of the miracles were about economics, especially the healings.
So I started writing a second book. G*d had given me a second major leading. And this one had a much wider scope. This was virtually a new reading of the gospel of Jesus, because it touched upon every aspect of Jesus’ teachings and life. Eventually, there would be chapters on economics, community (sociology), politics, public health, spirituality, and apocalyptic. And all along the way, there were in fact, implications for earthcare. Especially in the area of spirituality, that is, how Jesus conducted his own spiritual life. But more about this in a subsequent posting.
Well, I had thought the joys of research, prayerful thought, and spirit-led writing had been deep and plentiful when studying earth stewardship! This was years of the same, but much more exciting. One near-ecstatic opening after another.
I gave a number of presentations and led some Bible studies on this material, and that, too, was not only very fulfilling for me, but never failed to excite my listeners. Because this stuff is hidden. We were never taught it. But there it is, all over the place. And once you see it, you think, Oh my God, why have we never been told this? It awakens a new respect for Jesus and his gospel in even the least interested people.
Though it does sometimes exercise folks who are very attached to the Jesus they already have. I have learned not to mess with other peoples’ Jesus, if I can help it, but to try to add a new dimension to the traditional gospel, one that I do believe, however, is integral to his teaching and mission.
So the first leading, which had yielded years of immersive, continuous, and occasionally ecstatic, religious joy, now had led me into another leading, with even more to be joyous about and grateful for.
* The Nine-plus Principles of Christian Earth Stewardship
God and creation
1. “The earth is the Lord’s”: God is the sovereign proprietor of creation, not humans.
2. “Behold, it was utterly good”: God’s creation is inherently good.
3. “They worshipped the creature rather than the Creator”: We rightly worship the transcendent Creator, not the creation.
4. “And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands”: Creation glorifies God—therefore so should we in our care for creation.
Humans and creation
5. “Have dominion over every living thing—to work it and take care of it”: We are given dominion over creation, but only in trust as stewards.
5.5 “You have made them a little lower than the gods”: Among the creatures, we humans enjoy the privilege—and responsibility—of God’s special favor.
God and humans vis a vis creation
6. “I am establishing my covenant with you”: Covenant is the rightful context for our earth stewardship.
7. “…therefore the land mourns”: Responsible earth stewardship calls for social justice.
8. “Do not defile the land where you live”: Harming creation is a sin.
9. “The creation waits with eager longing”: The promise of salvation also offers the prophetic promise of a new covenant and a new creation.
Joys of the Quaker Way—Ministry Unfolds Into Ministry
October 29, 2014 § Leave a comment
Petal by petal, the blossoming
This is how my spiritual life as a Friend had unfolded so far:
- My original opening about creation, the cosmic Christ, and ecological destruction as eco-crucifixion became a leading to write a book of biblical eco-theology.
- This leading led me in turn to understand my more general concern for earthcare in terms of Quaker ministry. My spiritual life had looped back, from general concern for earthcare to specific leading to write about earth stewardship, back to my “concern”, now understood as an earthcare ministry, in the terms of the Quaker tradition of open ministry.
- Furthermore, my leading to write this book matured into a broader ministry of writing, in which this core creative impulse of my life was fused with my core identity as a religious person. God became for me my Muse.
So now I had one opening, one leading, and two ministries.
The birth of a third ministry around Quaker ministry
Because I felt led to write a work of biblical theology, and because I had been hostile to the Bible for so long; and because I now understood this undertaking as a religious calling, I felt I needed religious oversight. Not just support in my ministry, but discipline, accountability to my Guide and to my religious community for my faithfulness in the work.
So I asked my meeting for an oversight committee. They were unable to meet my needs.
I met twice with the Ministry and Counsel committee. The first time, no one seemed to understand what I was doing or what I was asking for. The second time, some members did finally understand, but they did not understand why I would ask for such a thing. “We don’t want to tell you what to think,” one member said. Also: “When you take it to a publisher, you will get the feedback you need from your editor.”
I didn’t want them to tell me what to think. I wanted them to tell me when what I was thinking and saying and writing was out of the Life—that is, born of my ego, or my unconscious hostility to the Christian tradition, or from any source other than the Holy Spirit. And an editor could only give me the world’s advice; God would have nothing to do with it, only the market. And it would have been too late by the time an editor saw my work anyway.
They did not understand how afraid I was. I felt a religious calling. I knew I had stuff inside me that would try to stop or distort or even corrupt the work I felt called to do. To fall into such a state of unfaithfulness would have been the most horrible outcome for me. I have no direct experience of G*d as judge, in the traditional sense of sin, judgment, and salvation; that has always seemed perverse to me. Nevertheless, I did feel under judgment. I did fear failing G*d my Muse. I wanted some protection from myself. And I had a firm commitment to the role of the Quaker community in the discernment and support and yes, oversight, of ministry.
My meeting did not understand what I was doing as ministry. I suspect that they did not understand the faith and practice of Quaker ministry very much at all, but at least they did not know how to apply it to an actual case of a Friend called into ministry.
Thus was born in me a third ministry: to recall, revive, and reform the faith and practice of ministry among Friends. Now, for more than twenty years I have labored to learn the Quaker tradition of ministry; to represent it wherever I worship, especially in meeting for worship with a care for the life of the meeting; to work toward reforming our structures and processes in accordance with this tradition; and, of course, to write about it.
Ministry and earthcare
Moreover, this new ministry has looped back to connect to the original earthcare ministry and the original leading to write about earthcare. I have come to believe that, for earthcare to truly take hold as a leading for the Society of Friends as a communion of worshipping communities, we must relearn and re-embody our tradition of ministry. We must know what it means to be called by G*d, as individuals, and as communities. And we must have eco-ministers, more Friends called to the ministry of earthcare who are mature in the faith and practice of ministry and who are getting the discernment and support they need from their meetings.
For all this to take place, we must relearn the faith and practice of Quaker ministry, so that all our members and attenders are accustomed to think of their work in the world as a calling. So that we all are listening always to hear that call. So that we are living lives that leave us free to answer the call. So that our meetings know how to give our ministers, whatever their call—for not all are called to eco-ministry—the discernment, support, and yes, oversight, that they need to be faithful in their call. And we need meetings that expect that G*d will call them as a community as well, activating us as meetings to protect the gift of creation.
Unfolding summarized—so far
So now, from one opening, I have had one clear leading and now have three ministries:
- The opening: the Logos, the Word, the cosmic Christ in creation, and ecocide as decide; G*d as the Soul of the Earth.
- The leading: to write a book of biblically-based earth stewardship; G*d as Caller.
- The first ministry: to awaken Friends to a concern for earthcare; G*d as Creator/Sustainer.
- The second ministry: writing in general as ministry; G*d as Muse.
- The third ministry: to recover the faith and practice of Quaker ministry among Friends; G*d as Guide and Teacher.
But G*d was not done with me. G*d had more unfolding in store. G*d had more faces to reveal.
Joys of the Quaker Way—Leading Unfolds into Ministry
October 26, 2014 § 1 Comment
That first leading was to write a book of biblically based eco-theology, about which I knew almost nothing. So I launched into a study of Christian earth stewardship and I followed the trails of biblical references in those books, studying the passages they referred to on their own in Bible commentaries, and then following the trails that this study opened me to.
To kickstart the project, I wrangled the money to go to Pendle Hill for a term in the winter of 1991, and I loved it so much that I wrangled the money to stay for another term. At Pendle Hill, especially in the Quakerism classes I took with Bill Taber and conversations we had, I learned to pursue this leading and the written ministry it led to in the context of the faith and practice of Quaker ministry.
I had been writing already for some time. Even before I became a Quaker, my writing life and my spiritual life had been closely tied, though I was mostly writing fiction and poetry. Then, as a Friend, I wrote the first draft of New York Yearly Meeting’s new Faith and Practice section on earth stewardship and a bunch of other short essays. But I had not yet come to think of this writing in the context of the faith and practice of Quaker ministry in the focused way I found at Pendle Hill.
Now I had a clear direction and I had a framework for understanding what I was doing as part of an ancient tradition.
A few years later, just when I thought I was ready to start writing the book, I heard about and applied for Earlham School of Religion’s Patrick D. Henry Scholarship for Christian Writers. They accepted my proposal and I went to Earlham for a term to begin writing the book.
The scholarship included the tuition for their course on Writing as Ministry plus a residency in D. Elton Trueblood’s library there, a beautiful brick one-story cottage with a huge fireplace and windows all around, a wide ledge above bookcases on all the walls below the windows, and several huge library hall-sized oak tables. For the first time, I could lay all my books and my notes out where I could get at them.
It was heaven. It was pure joy. I spent two months in an ecstatic creative outpouring of material. Only the first term at Pendle Hill had been such a sustained immersion in joyful surrender to G*d’s wish for me.
Thus began in earnest my calling to a ministry of religious writing. Two decades now of Quaker and biblical writing, guided, when I am in the Life, by the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
My leading had unfolded into ministry. And it has been full of joy, a sustained undercurrent of fulfillment spiced with moments of near-ecstacy when an opening comes from the study, or the words are pouring out of me feeling pure and unbidden for minutes on end, or even days, as it was at Earlham and has been at times since.
Through the Flaming Sword 