The gift that keeps on giving

This was my reply to a post in Friendly Letter about recorded ministry.  Many think Friends don't have ministers but that's a modern development. We used to have them.  They weren't pastors but they did serve the meeting. The meeting had authority over them, rather than they over the meeting. They were servant-leaders to use a modern term.  But now Friends think we never had them, that they represent hierarchy (false), that they think they're better than the rest (judgment), that we don't need them (have you seen our decline in worship attendance?).  Early Quaker worship was dynamic because of the silence and the incredible preaching.  It almost died out nationally if it weren't for the revival movement breathing life into many pockets of Quakerism.  If it weren't for Rufus Jones and his emphasis on mysticism, liberal Quakers would have probably moved to a pastoral form of worship.  But we didn't. Today, most of our meeting houses are empty.  The preaching, if it exists, is more like group therapy, a process group, intellectual sharing, or worse, to quote the late John Punshon, Daffodil ministry. On my way to meeting I saw the daffodils, and it made me think of . . . . . or  I was listening to NPR on my way to meeting this morning and I heard ________ and it made me think ___________.  Intellectual. Heady.

We. need. to. nurture. gifts. in ministry.  And if meetings won't do it, it's time to open up the doors to unused meeting houses, and create meetings that will allow a diversity of people, men, women, people of color, LGBTQI Friends to exercise their gifts and not keep the stagnant status-quo through the façade of "equality." #startnewmeetings

Here's my story.

I was called to ministry when I was 16 and attending small West Knoxville Friends Meeting in Tennessee. I had a diverse clearness committee who met with me and affirmed the calling. Their advice to me was to “wait on the Lord.” But there was nothing to follow that. No setting up of a committee to hold me accountable, to help me not outrun my guide, to make sure I stay in service to the meeting, (The function of the Elders we used to have in our Society). One Friend cornered me at the end of worship when I was walking out the door to my car. He said “Maybe you’d be happier somewhere else. We don’t have ministers among Quakers.” I was well-read and knew better, and he frustrated me with that comment, but I held on to my faith that God knew what God was doing. I went on deputations a few times with Guilford students preaching at evangelical Quaker churches. Max Carter left a note in my box “Thee has a gift. Be faithful.” When I came out as gay at Guilford to New Garden Meeting and they knew I was called to ministry and they recorded ministers,  I still got zero support for either. “We have never been in the business of asking people their sexual orientation and aren’t in it now” they wrote to me in my membership acceptance letter. No reference to being called to ministry. 

Then I went to Earlham. When I went to ESR, while I still had my wits about me, I was encouraged by universalist Quakers, Christian Friends and Brethren alike. But here’s the thing: the burden was too much to bear. The Christ-centered meetings loved my preaching but would not tolerate the fact I am gay. From 16 to 25 years old I had to reconcile being gay with my call to ministry — alone. I battled all sorts of behavioral, psychological and spiritual demons.  So much doubt that I tried to just fend off on my own. When I looked down deeply into the depths of my soul, I hated and feared what I saw staring back at me. I never really dealt with the self-loathing for being gay or the fear of God and hell that had crept in from evangelical Quaker and other Christian sources.  I still got questions from liberal Friends who accepted my LGBT identity asking what the ESR education was for? I’m gay, after all. Think about it: Unprogrammed Friends don’t have ministers and evangelical Friends don’t have gays. smdh. #boxes. I ultimately had to leave ESR with my head down, defeated. My demons caught up with me. 

I returned to West Knoxville Friends. They, of course, embraced me. It was my relationship with my partner that would lead to them to decide to have a celebration of commitment (took them 10 years to get there). When I got a teaching post in Baltimore City, they wrote a letter of introduction stating two things: whichever meeting we chose would need to nurture my call to ministry (no mention of recording but they recognized the gift still there) and finish the procedure for marrying Russell and me. 

When we arrived in Baltimore, Russell (my partner) and I visited local meetings and I gave my letter to each one. Gunpowder responded to recognizing the gift in vocal ministry but did not touch the relationship. Stony Run ignored the call to ministry but said they’d take on the commitment. Homewood never responded to either. Oddly after two years at Stony Run, we felt led to go to Homewood, home to Friends who were instrumental in removing the recording process at the yearly meeting level. But it’s where we felt led to establish roots. 

My clearness committee membership did warn me saying “we don’t have the elders to guide you in your call to ministry.” I kept on about needing support for my call to ministry (I never asked for or mentioned recording, but that's where they got hung up, and yet they had a support committee for a Friend with a social concern on population control).  They were easy with supporting social concerns but no ministry concerns.  Finally, the meeting created a committee to meet with me and we had a meeting where they listened to me talk about my call to ministry. One friend, who I now like, dismissed all sorts of things I said when I talked about how I hear God. What it's like to be led to speak in worship was dismissed as sounding like "divination or channeling" he said. Friends all kept on about hierarchy and being equal. I was being interrogated, not listened to or heard, and I was on the defensive. 

In my experience unprogrammed convinced Friends import Protestant and Catholic understandings of ministry and few knowledgeable Friends are around to explain what Quaker ministry is (at least historically). They. Are. Ignorant. Many are willfully ignorant.  They have no interest in reading about a history that is different from their misconceptions.  Willful ignorance is the definition of stupid. But in my case, I stuck with Friends, because when it comes down to it, God wanted me with Friends, and it's not just about me and I thought that's what God wanted. Eventually the meeting married Russell and me, and we created good memories together, as a community.  I just let the whole ministry thing drop.

After my partner died two years later, my demons (addictions, attachments) got ahold of me and my call to ministry diminished. My faith in Christ faded. My belief in God dropped. My attendance at meeting reduced. I tried going to the Episcopal Church for a while, but came back to Friends.  I returned to "alternative practices." My faith in Christ slowly disappeared. 

I've fallen into the non-theist camp of Friends (of all places).  It's an accurate description of where I am but I'm uncomfortable with any label other than Quaker.  I joke about being a Quagan, or a Quitch, and am open about my non-theism, and yet sub categories and more labels can create confusion and misunderstanding. Quaker faith is not based in belief.  Quaker faith is based in experience, through testing, through wrestling with our tradition, and doing so in community.  So while I do not now believe in Deity, or deities, that is to say, while I do not believe in a conscious being with human characteristics who manipulates reality and interacts with people, I do believe in the omnipresent Light.  I have experienced a still small voice which tells me to do something (in my mind), though my history is one of ignoring it and  dealing with the repercussions. "Ah, I guess that voice was right."  And that voice can split through my conscience. It cuts through learned beliefs and mores.  It has changed my views when my conscience at one point told me those views were ok. I know multitudes of people who have experienced this same light, that shines on places they didn't know existed, and points to things they didn't know they had avoided, hid, locked away. It is the Grace of Amazing Grace because it helps the blind see. It shows a solution to a problem or false belief or way.  It brings peace and serenity, if it is continually followed (one's work with the Light today does not buy tomorrow).  I'm not at all convinced that this Light is divine or supernatural.  That's mostly because I look at what humanity believed 8,000 years ago and what we believe now about the natural order and hold the possibility that 8,000 years from now, or fewer, science will come to explain this phenomenon of the Light.  Our science of the future may include what is now the purview of religion.  But for now it does not, and so I hold a religious belief, based on experience, of the Light Within.  

Now, here is where I depart again from my former  Christian faith, at least for now.  I believed as Early Friends did, that Jesus was the Light of the world, who enlightened everyone who came into the world.  I believed that the Light, though of Christ, was within all people regardless of what name they called it, if anything.  All people, including the atheist or the non-theist, have access to it.  Early Friends preached about an inward gospel (that the Light shines inwardly, reproves, instructs, teaches, guides, soothes and is available to all) and the outward Gospel (what is read in the Bible). The outward Gospel was not necessary for one to be in unity with God, but was beneficial.  The inward Gospel was crucial.  I find it hard, with all of the great women and men in history before and after Jesus, that the Light emanated from Jesus of Nazareth, but not Krishna, the Buddha, Esther, Muhammed, Moses, Elizabeth, Elijah... you get the point.  I'll accept it came through  all of them, but I think we have no way of knowing from where the Light comes, we only know our experience of it.  That being said, it may be beneficial to accept a teaching about its origins.  I still draw on Biblical teachings to make a point or relay a concept. It's what I know, so it's even the case for me.

In the 12-step programs, surrender is an action that one must take daily, or even several times a day. It doesn't matter one's higher power, one just has to submit to it.  Surrender is grace.  It's accepting one's limits and allowing the Light (God, Love, the Spirit)  to break through, to help us turn from our addictions and attachments (we all have them) and to show us the way forward.  Surrender moves the ego aside, allows Wisdom to enter, and leads to discernment and transformation. Yielding to the Light brings clarity and shows the way forward. Being obedient to the Teacher, brings order in chaos.

Sounds like Quakerism, huh?  Samuel Bownas, in his A description necessary for the qualifications of a Gospel Minister, wrote at length about surrender, obedience and knowing things experientially before preaching.  Quakers abhorred the "professors" who knew only the outward Gospel but did not know it inwardly.  Preaching in Quaker meetings was not about what one thought about a subject, or pondering an idea, or processing feelings.  Friends did that in community, in conversation, through visitation, through business and commerce, and even through business meeting. But preaching in Quaker meeting was to be a prophetic thing,  Spirit-led, after a thorough discernment and surrender to the Light.  The result of Quaker preaching was a deepening of the worship; of guiding Friends to the same process. It led to inspiration, clarity, hope, grace, and in everything directed Friends to love God, neighbor (including the oppressor) and self.

John Punshon took me aside at FGC Summer Gathering one year.  He noticed how often I was speaking in meeting for worship.  In his British accent he put his hand on my back and smiled. "KD, when thee speaks people listen. Don't speak so much." 😂 I was eldered in the best sense of the world.  Here was someone giving me the eldering that I craved, that I needed, in order to know if I'm being faithful or not; if I'm speaking from the creature or from the Light.  Looking back, there were others in FLGBTQC and at Guilford and Earlham who tried to elder me, some successfully.  I was often defensive because I was afraid that the Christians judged my sexuality and the liberals judged the content of what I was saying because it was Christocentric.  

But after the death of my partner in 2004, when I was thoroughly broken and again after the dissolution of my subsequent relationship, during a dark period of attachments to hurts, habits and hang-ups,  I was made tender.  After attempts at starting new worship groups or attending the Episcopal Church, I came back to Homewood and there was no judgment, only love.  I saw everything differently.  I had come home but was in the midst of trouble and saw no way out.  It was Friends who encouraged me into a path of recovery.  It was Friends who visited me when I was not in my right mind. It was Friends who showed up to my home unexpectedly because they were led to do so and I was in crisis.  

And ten years later, I still speak in meeting, and more often than not.  I'm an extravert so I have to watch it. I have an ego, I have to watch that even closer.  I'm in a community that loves me, though, and the feedback I get when I speak is usually positive though sometimes I'm told I go on too long. 🤷  I've been told that the "gift" that Max Carter pointed out in 1992 is still there.  I don't get into airy notions about the origins of that gift, or if God is still there "wanting" me to preach (let's face it, that's what vocal ministry can be).  I know that I have to go through that process of surrender before speaking, of delivering what words are given to me, and not get in my head about theology or Christology.  

Being a recorded minister was a fancy I held as a youth and young adult, but I had given up when moving into Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 2000.   All I ever wanted was Friends to help me in the gift that other Friends had recognized and encouraged.  But those Friends were few, and I fell into a way.  I do believe that those called to service, to ministry must be cared for.  There is a certain weight that is given to us that needs care.  A gift in ministry without elders can go a few directions: 1)  the Friend can grow lonely and that loneliness can turn in on itself (spiritual malaise or crisis of faith). 2)  If the Friend is smart, they will find a Quaker community that will care for them or leave the Society and go elsewhere.  That's not uncommon, unfortunately.  3)It can also lead to other grave consequences, a certain fatalism.  I have met a number of LGBT people who were called to ministry in their denominations but were rejected for various reasons, and they turned to drugs, sex and alcohol.  The gift is like a vine. It must be tended to carefully or it can choke the tree.  It must be watered and nourished or it will fade.

This may seem like a sad story, and I blame no one,  but I confess to wondering what it would have been like if early on Friends had reached out to care for a kid coming out of the closet, who loved Jesus, and wanted to serve his religious society. But they didn’t. And so, I became willful, self-centered, self-pitying, and resentful. When I didn't find the care among Quakers, I turned to gay clubs, and fell into a way.  Wonderfully, now Quakers are a  huge part of the solution.  My part is to show up to meeting, meditate and pray at home, stay clear of the theology trap, and surrender.