Category: Meeting Community

One of the members of our Quaker Meeting shared a message the other day during After Thoughts: “We are all the arms of God.”

That was it.

As many of you know, Rhonda Ashurst and I have been writing blogs for Reno Friends Meeting for some time, as well as editing blogs from other folks in the Meeting. I started the RFM Blog in 2014 as a way to share ideas about Quakerism, explore difficult topics, and seed the zeitgeist with Quakerly principles and testimonies. Rhonda joined me in 2019, writing blogs and bringing her wisdom to the table to help shape and edit submissions. We’ve been led by spirit, but also by our editing and writing experience and the journalistic principle of keeping it fresh: to that end, we’ve published a new blog nearly every month for ten years. We are proud of the collection of Quaker blogs we’ve shared, but we are also tired. So we are reshaping the RFM blog.

Over time, Rhonda and I found that the best blogs emerged when one of us (or someone else in the Meeting) felt a strong leading to take on a particular topic. These blogs were easy to write – they flowed from our hearts with an urgency we couldn’t always explain. They also seemed to tap into something deeper; they were blogs we felt we needed to write, something that had to be said and shared. They were the blogs that most often seemed to move our audience.

This is the second of my blogs on The Book of Joy by The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. The first was essentially a book review (https://www.renofriends.org/the-book-of-joy/#more-5464). This second blog is about my experiences of cultivating joy using the practices in the book over the last six months.

We all have something to say about loss, because all of us have experienced it – yearning for what used to be, but is no more. And perhaps, as our years pass, we wrestle with the issue of loss even more, having chewed some of the gristle of life, as it were, not just the low-hanging fruit.

In the past few years, several members and attenders of our Quaker Meeting lost someone important to them – either through death or illness or into the obscurity of dementia. Others had moved, or lost or changed jobs, which entailed other losses.

Quaker Meetings often attract seekers, those who yearn for the mystery and comfort of a spiritual life but who haven’t yet found their spiritual home. There is something about the open silence of unprogammed Silent Worship – the heart of Quakerism – that seekers find welcoming, even liberating. There is no sermon, no lectionary, no spiritual music, so each person can experience the silence in whatever way helps her or him feel and understand the mystery of God.

Throughout the United States, there will be people missing from Thanksgiving tables this year. The pandemic has taken an astonishing toll, and there is scarcely a family that hasn’t lost someone. Along with those who died of Covid, there have been increased deaths from many other causes during the pandemic years, thanks to loneliness and stress. When we gather in a few weeks to offer thanks for the bounty of life, there will be empty seats in many homes.

Reno Friends recently gathered on Zoom in the sacred space of a Worship Sharing to tell each other what we all believed was most important about our Meeting. The pandemic spun us away from one another, and yet – through the efforts of many – we kept our community alive and busy by holding meetings, spiritual discussions, brown bag lunches, and even a Christmas party, all online. We learned to use Zoom, and figured out (through herculean efforts by our tech team) how to hold hybrid worship: in-person and online at the same time. We met outside for a holiday cookie-exchange, and even worshipped from the relative quiet of our shady garden on summer days.

It is Nominating season again, the time of year when our Quaker community tries to identify those who will serve as clerks and leaders of the Meeting in the coming year. Which raises an interesting question: What does it mean to be a leader in a Quaker Meeting?     Technically, there are no leaders in unprogrammed Quaker Meetings, such as Reno Friends. Everyone is equal, and no one is in charge. But if there are no leaders, how does a Meeting organize to get its work done? How do Quakers determine how to worship, how to manage their programming and finances, or how to grow?