Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.
Qf&p Advices & Queries 28
Like many people, today’s #AdventWord feels appropriate. I finished client work yesterday and am now in full swing Christmas preparation. Today has been full of shopping, list-making and completing to-dos, and looking at the number of people in the various shops and places it’s a popular choice for this weekend.
But it’s important to ensure that rest happens too. With that in mind, I’ve ensured that there are empty days booked in over the next couple of weeks. Everyone needs to discover what is restful for them and accept that others may not share in that past time.
As we go into the new year I’m looking forward to taking up some responsibilities and relinquishing others. Guaranteeing that there is space in my life to listening for that divine guidance and being ready to respond.
‘Go’ today’s #AdventWord is one that shows action – and often is used as a one-word demand or instruction.
Getting out and talking to others in your neighbourhood or surrounding areas can be daunting but finding a way to interact with others can lead to new and often unexpected partnerships.
Barbara Hayes of Chichester Quaker meeting writes on the Quaker.org.uk blog about ‘Teaching business students about Quaker ethics‘. A programme of work which grew out of the New Economy leaflets and discussions at her local meeting.
The Quiet Company (a new name for Friends House Hospitality) reached out and partnered with London Pathways to use the restaurant kitchen to help ex-offenders learn baking and life skills in a project called Bake the Difference.
Meetings of all sizes across the country are working to support refugees and those who are struggling in today’s austerity climate. Working in partnership with others can bring in new skills, enthusiasm and connections to help the network grow. From running a special collection; offering the meeting house as a venue; hosting a public meeting; there are so many ways that each community can find to go out into their local areas and forge new connections.
By occupation he was a barber, and on moving into this district in 1937 from Swindon, he first took a shop in Wallington, and later one in a poor part of Croydon. Not all who went there did so for a shave or a haircut, but to enjoy its friendly atmosphere, and to talk to Percy. ‘I am sure,’ said a friend of his, ‘that as Percy rubbed oil into a customer’s hair, he blessed him.’ This would have been natural, since he desired all his actions to be sacramental.
Looking at your place of work – whether it is an office or a building that is open to the general public – how can you use the building to offer a blessing to those who come to it and help them to find what they seek?
Make the building and surrounds welcoming to people as they enter, giving them a clean and attractive space to work or to hire. Decide on a level of maintenance that is sustainable and affordable. Ask for feedback from hirers and users about the building. Ask yourself does it feel peaceful? Meeting Houses I’ve visited are often referred to as an oasis amid busy surroundings.
Have you ensured the building is as accessible as reasonably possible? Are your policies and procedures simple and transparent, so that you can be certain that everyone is treated equally?
When things go wrong and those policies and procedures have failed or need adjusting, do you have ways of dealing with the fall out in an equitable and calm fashion? Like all policies and procedures, a grievance policy is much better created when things are going well than from the middle of chaos.
These may seem like odd blessings – but the future managers, trustees, employees, and volunteers will thankful for those steps taken to make life easier in their now. Being able to work through problems, feeling supported and without the ‘blame culture’ so often found in other organisations is indeed a blessing.
Guaranteeing a fair and unbiased mediation where needed, to help restore and reconcile relationships, supporting firm boundaries where necessary are all part of making the building a healthy place to work. Finding ways to live out your values and demonstrate them to those you interact with can be tricky but is an important part of living a sacramental life, blessing those around you.
As a Quaker I appreciate the belief that everything is equally sacred. Therefore any Quaker business meeting uses the ‘Quaker Business Method’ and a (local, area or yearly) meeting’s business meeting is formally called, a ‘Meeting for Worship for Business’, we also have ‘Meeting for Worship for Marriage’.
The names and belief are a reminder to hold that stillness and connection we find in worship as we go about our daily lives. That’s hard – and I fail regularly but it is a great thing to attempt.
Yearly Meeting is the annual gathering of Quakers from across Britain, with visitors from further afield. The entire period – from the opening on the first night to the closing moments is considered to be one Meeting for Business. It is an amazing experience to worship and do business in a worshipful manner seeking the will of God in a room full of several hundred other Quakers. One I’m always grateful for!
Prayer is an exercise of the spirit, as thought is of the mind. To pray about anything is to use the powers of our spirit on it, just as to think clearly is to use our mental powers. For the best solution of every problem, the best carrying out of every action, both thought and prayer are necessary… To pray about any day’s work does not mean to ask success in it. It means, first to realise my own inability to do even a familiar job, as it truly should be done, unless I am in touch with eternity, unless I do it ‘unto God’, unless I have the Father with me. It means to see ‘my’ work as part of a whole, to see ‘myself’ as not mattering much, but my faith, the energy, will and striving, which I put into the work, as mattering a great deal. My faith is the point in me at which God comes into my work; through faith the work is given dignity and value. And if, through some weakness of mine, or fault of others, or just ‘unavoidable circumstances’, the work seems a failure, yet prayer is not wasted when it is unanswered, any more than love is wasted when it is unreturned.
Prayer is often a tricky topic for Quakers. Instead, we talk about ‘holding in the light’ and of finding ‘way forward’. Yet one of the things that makes a Quaker business meeting so very different from a secular business meeting is that it is grounded in prayer. The Quaker Business Method involves coming with heart and mind prepared, listening not only to those speaking, but to those holding the silence and trying to touch the divine, plus being willing to seek the best way forward without holding their own agenda.
Being an active part of this Quaker Business Method is the responsibility of all members, not just the clerk or elders. Accepting whatever you are called to today, that it might be different than on another day – whether it is holding the silence, listening for those prompts of love and truth, speaking only when you are responding to a leading, and listening for the meaning within unclear or hurtful words are all part of a spiritual discipline. These habits also work well in a work situation, especially when dealing with the general public I’ve found over the year.
Starting the workday, or a work task, by pausing and mentally transitioning from the previous activities is useful. Taking that moment to ask God to help you do this work with love, to see that of God in those you are interacting with and to live out those testimonies that you hold dear as you go through the work.
Through doing this I’ve found that even day-to-day tasks take on aspects of vocation rather than drudgery. It also helps me to maintain good boundaries, accepting that there is a time to stop and let someone else have a turn. Rather than feeling, I need to do everything. After all – I’ve already accepted I can’t do it all by asking for that help.
Much of the work of meetings for church affairs and committees will be undertaken by Friends especially appointed by the meeting or committee responsible for the work, most often on the recommendation of a nominations committee. The process of appointment starts when the meeting identifies the need for a task to be performed. It is good practice for a meeting to have a clear view of the tasks that need to be accomplished on its behalf and to fix the length of service required so that both the meeting and the Friend appointed understand the commitment.
Many of our gifts are latent. A particular appointment may enable one Friend to exercise unsuspected abilities. Other Friends may find themselves overburdened by being appointed to service beyond their capacity and experience. It requires great discernment to know the right moment to ask a particular Friend to undertake or lay down a particular task.
Today’s #AdventWord Learn made me muse about where and how I’ve collected the knowledge I have over the last twenty odd years of being involved with running meetings and meeting houses.
Ensuring that all those working within a meeting or other charity, either volunteers or employed have a chance to learn and grow in their roles is important. It also enriches the entire community and gives a chance for those latent gifts to be discovered and developed.
Clear understanding of the work that needs to be done, well written and comprehensive role or job descriptions are invaluable and the promise that support and further training is available ensures that people can offer service without concern.
Woodbrooke offers training for many Quaker roles, as well as spiritual development. Other professional training may be helpful or necessary. A wider pool of people can be found by looking locally for others groups to combine with.
In addition to more formal or required training, the opportunity to get together with others in similar roles is helpful. I’ve written about this in more detail in this post: K is for Knowledge & Knowhow. The importance of ensuring that people are supported while doing roles/jobs is written about here: Z is for Zen. Finally – the one bit of training that all meeting houses need to look into is around catering and kitchens, Quaker meetings are considered food businesses – I’ve written more about it here: K is for Kitchens.
Part of a series of art throughout London Underground
Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.
Turn – to change direction, or to hand over power or responsibility. Of course you can combine the two, deciding you need to change direction and to do so you need to hand over responsibilities or power. Alternatively you can discover that you now have new responsibilities and have to change direction to suit. I’m often called in when a charity has run into a problem and needs someone to untangle the systems or paperwork ready to hand on to the next volunteer.
Handing on of power regularly is of course the reason for the triennial appointment system, knowing that you are the clerk/treasurer/elder/overseer now but in a few years you’ll be something else. It also means that those coming into the system can see the testimony to equality being lived out, or where there are difficulties in handing on power – either because someone doesn’t want to relinquish or accept what is offered.
How do you ensure that all of your systems and procedures support the smooth handing on of power and responsibilities?
“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa
Gather is today’s #AdventWord – my first thought was of gathering in resources including money. I joke that my hobby is getting non-Quaker money into Quaker pockets – pointing out that there are more non-Quakers than Quakers by far. This makes some people uncomfortable, yet the work that it is supporting is Quaker work – if we are offering a fair service in exchange there isn’t a problem, and in my experience people are glad to use Quaker buildings knowing our reputation.
Recently I wrote an end-of-year feedback questionnaire for a client and included in the list of various ‘reasons you like using our building’ the answer, ‘knowing it supports Quaker work’. There was a clear majority of responses who chose this as an option.
On another occasion I had an enquiry from someone who wanted to hire a room in a local meeting house because they’d attended a conference at Friends House Euston and been so impressed with the various posters explaining Quaker values and work. They wanted to use their local meeting house to support that work as well.
Over the last thirty years I have an innumerable conversations with people using a Quaker building and expressing admiration for our fairness, transparency and willingness to share our buildings. I’ve also had some that feel that our testimony to equality shouldn’t include people they don’t like, or should include special treatment for them. All of which have given me the chance to consider and practice my own testimonies, while gathering in resources to support central or local Quaker work.
Today’s #AdventWord water has such symbolism and power. Over 70% of earth’s surface is covered in water, and all living organisms need water to live.
Water can be seen both positively or negatively: washing clean or depositing detritus as it slows; creating landscapes or weathering/destroying as it moves; supporting you as you float or dragging you down in a fast moving current. Whilst I usually love fountains, I was less pleased to see fountaining toilets in the basement of Muswell Hill after a heavy rain.
Buildings and their surrounding landscape can help reduce their water usage through, either by retrofitting aerators to taps, installing water butts outside etc. or during design and building/remodeling.
Careful paving choices, considering the surrounding area along with the creations of ponds or dry gardens depending on the environment also help.
Opened in 2014 Kingston Quaker Centre was built with sustainability in mind. It harvests rainwater from the roof – where water is directed to harvesting tanks which feed some of the toilet cisterns and is used in the garden, as well as dropping directly into planted areas. There is a monitor in the Library which shows statistics for energy usage and water saved by rainwater harvesting as well as the current status of the heating, cooling and ventilation systems.
Muswell Hill linked not only waterbutts to downpipes but also diverted one into a pond to ensure it remained topped up.
Taking care of water usage is just one part of the overall sustainability plan, but it is an important part. What are you doing in your local community to help take care of your water?
Today’s #AdventWord seemed very apt for a day full of conflict, concerns and deliberate falsehoods.
Working together to ensure that the structures, decisions, processes and policies of the charity as a whole reflects the ‘ever changing tides‘ of the members is an ongoing and essential task.
Confess makes me think of admitting that you’ve done something wrong, or perhaps something you’re uncertain about.
I liked this idea of public confession – but mainly because it means that people are examining their lives. Of course the other part is that by reading what others have confessed someone may realise it isn’t just them, which can be good to discover.
The end of the year is a good time for such examinations. Taking the time to have a look through what has happened this year, what goals and aspirations you started with back in January and where you are now.
You can’t confess if you never look back or acknowledge where you may have made mistakes. It makes you vulnerable, open to being hurt or rejected – but these are good things. Quaker Faith & Practice Advice & Queries 17 reminds us that we should “Think it possible that you may be mistaken”. Brene Brown researches shame and advocates being vulnerable as a way to remain healthy.
I’m always grateful to have today’s #AdventWord grace offered to me. I try to offer it to others.
I struggle with offering it to myself – but on a day which has turned out as today as done…. Where I’m getting to one of my morning ‘to-dos’ at 8pm tonight. Grace is all I can offer for myself and promise myself that I will try again tomorrow.
As a gardener I know that roots are important. They support, nourish and interact with the community in the soil. Today’s #AdventWord reminds me that it is vital that any charity, business, worshipping group or other organisation stays in contact with its roots.
Regular reviews of where you’ve come from and where you want to go are vital to ensure that you continue to grow, develop and stay connected as a community. While working with clients it can seem that the ‘business’ part of the charity is separate from the main aims of the charity, yet they must stay connected and reflect each other.
There must be a flow of information and inspiration from both sections, with transparency and integrity to guarantee policies and processes grow from and support the reason for the charities existence.
For example, I often say to people wanting to hire a building I manage, ‘This building’s primary purpose is to be a home for the local Quaker worshipping community”. Keeping that in mind means that everything else flows freely through the system. ‘Is this a good idea?’ can be compared to that statement – does it help Quakers use their building for worship, or any concerns that the meeting has discerned.
With this firmly in mind any suggestion with the defence ‘It will make more money’ when held against that purpose can be considered irrelevant. ‘It will help us maintain the building or move forward on a project’ means that the suggestion now has merit. ‘It is something that the meeting has discerned needs to happen’ now gives it the highest priority.
Roots only grow in fertile soil, so everyone involved in the decision making must ensure that they are nourished, supported and interact with the community around them. Not only the local worshipping or charity community, but the wider local community. Supporting trustees, employees and committee members is a responsibility for everyone within that community.
How can you work with your committee to gain the support you need?
Today’s #AdventWord comes on a Sabbath – a time of rest. Although as I opened up for Meeting for Worship, set up the chairs, took in the coffee and milk for the refreshments, did the washing up and am writing this post now… I’ve not managed to keep the day as purely for rest and contemplation. Yet, they were jobs that I felt needed doing – I decided they are ‘worth’ trading some of my free time. Deciding what is and isn’t worthy can be tricky.
There is, it sometimes seems, an excess of religious and social busyness these days, a round of committees and conferences and journeyings, of which the cost in ‘peaceable wisdom’ is not sufficiently counted. Sometimes we appear overmuch to count as merit our participation in these things… At least we ought to make sure that we sacrifice our leisure for something worthy. True leisureliness is a beautiful thing and may not lightly be given away. Indeed, it is one of the outstanding and most wonderful features of the life of Christ that, with all his work in preaching and healing and planning for the Kingdom, he leaves behind this sense of leisure, of time in which to pray and meditate, to stand and stare at the cornfields and fishing boats, and to listen to the confidences of neighbours and passers-by…
Most of us need from time to time the experience of something spacious or space-making, when Time ceases to be the enemy, goad-in-hand, and becomes our friend. To read good literature, gaze on natural beauty, to follow cultivated pursuits until our spirits are refreshed and expanded, will not unfit us for the up and doing of life, whether of personal or church affairs. Rather will it help us to separate the essential from the unessential, to know where we are really needed and get a sense of proportion. We shall find ourselves giving the effect of leisure even in the midst of a full and busy life. People do not pour their joys or sorrows into the ears of those with an eye on the clock.
Along with this passage, the last sentence of Advice & Queries 18 reminds us, ‘Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.’ That if we’re not careful we will be too busy doing the urgent, and miss out on doing the essential.
Especially if we are doing a job we love, we need to ensure that we are ensuring there are margins in our schedule and that we don’t burn out. Being able to do that, without feeling guilty that we’re not doing something more ‘worthy’ is essential. It is another part of ensuring our meetings, charities and any other organisation is sustainable.
How do you make that judgement about what is worth sacrificing your leisure for?
2.89 In all our meetings for church affairs we need to listen together to the Holy Spirit. We are not seeking a consensus; we are seeking the will of God. The unity of the meeting lies more in the unity of the search than in the decision which is reached. We must not be distressed if our listening involves waiting, perhaps in confusion, until we feel clear what God wants done.
London Yearly Meeting, 1984
Today’s #AdventWord Unity is one that sounds so simple and yet is so hard to live up to. Quakers have a phrase, ‘way will open’ which is often applied to decision making as well as creating plans. You can read quite a good secular explanation in an unexpected place. Way Opening & Decision Making: a blog post on Quaker decision making – combined with martial arts, not the most common of companions.
However, the article, in common with many others has one aspect wrong. Quakers aren’t seeking community consensus, instead as the quote above says instead we are waiting for the will of God to be revealed. This can come from the oddest of places, you’ll have two very different agendas and then through silent loving waiting, other ways are pieced together. A word here, a suggestion there and you find yourself in a completely different place.
As a clerk I help to create the agenda, and will write draft minutes – setting down all the factual background bits that need to be in the minutes for them to make sense in a hundred years or so and then collecting phrases that might come in useful.
“We agree to do xxxx”
“We don’t agree to do xxxx”
“We don’t accept the recommendation from the sub-committee and ask them to work with xxx and xxx to bring back an alternative at our next meeting”
Of course sometimes what emerges is something completely unexpected, but everyone there feels that the spirit is moving and it is quite astonishing how quickly things get agreed then.
My favourite quote about this is also from Qf&P, passage 2.92. It shows the power of this method and the unity that can be found by faithful listening.
The day was Friday, and we were mindful that within a few hours we
would be going in separate directions, never to be gathered under the
same circumstances again. As we met for worship that morning we were
faced with the decision, whether or not to approve the epistle. We had
laboured for several hours the day before, and it looked as though
preferences for wording and other concerns would make it impossible to
approve the final draft.
However, something happened which transformed the feeling of our
meeting… [A New England Friend] said something like ‘I know that the
blood of Christ and the Atonement are very important issues for some
Friends, and I don’t see anything in the epistle which addresses those
convictions…’
In the discussion that followed, [an] evangelical Friend expressed
his concern that the number of references to Christ might be difficult
for Friends not used to Christ-language. What had begun as an act of
loving concern for other Friends transformed the meeting into a unified
whole. The discussion had changed from persons wanting to ensure that
their concerns were heard to wanting to ensure that the concerns of
others were heard and that their needs were met. We had indeed
experienced the transforming power of God’s love.
Paul Anderson, Report of the World Gathering of Young Friends, 1985
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