Quaker practice grew out of a movement of seekers, who sat in a circle in silence literally turning to God waiting and expecting revelation and guidance. Quakers continue to meet for worship, often sitting in a circle, waiting and expecting messages for ourselves as individuals and as a people. We have taken on other forms of worship and celebration, but we are still grounded in this practice of seeking direct divine guidance and yielding to it.
The second structure was the Spiritual Companions. They gave each other attention, tended to healing, andexchanged feedback to grow in our spiritual lives. Companions are both committed to the spiritual experiment with their lives, which bolsters and tempers each other’s ministry, and Quaker ministry grew.
As Quakers followed an Inward Guide, discerning what was inspired versus what arose from our egos or distresses turned out to be critical. Other sects turned to religious hierarchy for control. But a formative, uniquely- Quaker insight was the role of community to test and record discernment. In their experience, that which is eternal is universal. So local monthly meetings were formed for individuals to testify to revelation guiding their faith and practice. The meeting tested their discernment by whether Friends sensed the life and power of the Spirit in their testimony. If so, it was recorded with their name in the meeting minutes. If it were true for everyone, they recorded a corporate testimony and shared it with other meetings.
Sandra Cronk pointed out that we should not embark on Quaker practice lightly. If you choose to yield to the Inward Guide, you must yield. To refuse to yield plants a dis-ease within. Inward Guidance usually feels either petty or overwhelming because truth is not usually packaged to our size. Quaker practice is to yield and be changed by truths regardless of whether they are comfortable, fit well, or suit us.
In addition, many factors disrupt, challenge, and diminish the vibrancy of Quaker communities today: Population increase and mobility disrupts community. Speed disrupts the ability to stop, listen, digest, and discern. Toxicity of industrial life exhausts us. Sleep deprivation intoxicates and numbs us. Computerization proliferates indirect relationships, which obscure sources of ecological and social ills, and their potential remedies.
Doing what’s true and loving in every relationship and every moment in the face of these challenges may lead to prosperity or suffering. Regardless of the outcome, doing so liberates and satisfies the soul. This is how early Friends looked into the eyes of their persecutors and said they wished their persecutors could know the joy and freedom they feel, doing their best to live in the life and power of the Spirit in every aspect of their lives. George Fox’s letter to ministers from prison in Cornwall conveys this bold nature of Quaker practice. We recommend reading the full text of Fox’s famous letter to ministers in 1656, which continues to challenge to us today.
Friends,
In the power of life and wisdom, and dread of the Lord God of life, and heaven, and earth, dwell; that in the wisdom of God over all ye may be preserved, and be a terror to all the adversaries of God, and a dread, answering that of God in them all, spreading the Truth abroad, awakening the witness, confounding deceit, gathering up out of transgression into the life, the covenant of light and peace with God.
Let all nations hear the word by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God and go through the world and be valiant for the Truth upon earth; tread and trample all that is contrary under.
Keep in the wisdom of God that spreads over all the earth, the wisdom of the creation that is pure. Live in it; that is the word of the Lord God to you all, do not abuse it; and keep down and low; and take heed of false joys that will change.
Bring all into the worship of God. Plough up the fallow ground... And none are ploughed up but he who comes to the principle of God in him which he hath transgressed. Then he doth service to God; then the planting and the watering and the increase from God cometh. So the ministers of the Spirit must minister to the Spirit that is transgressed and in prison, which hath been in captivity in every one; whereby with the same Spirit people must be led out of captivity up to God, the Father of spirits, and do service to him and have unity with him, with the Scriptures and with one another. And this is the word of the Lord God to you all, and a charge to you all in the presence of the living God: be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.
~ George Fox, 1656
Three Key Quaker Roles: Minister, Steward, and Witness
One approach that has helped us embody Quaker practice is to consider how to carry out these three key roles that we take on as Quakers: minister, steward, and witness. As everyone is a Child of God with direct access to the Divine, Quakers expect each of us to be a minister and take responsibility for the spiritual work of the Religious Society of Friends. In that spiritual work, as ministers tend our inward lives; the stewards tend our outward lives; and the witnesses tend our public lives.
A Friend once blurted out, “But Meeting shouldn’t take over my entire life!” Then I saw the realization across her face as she said, “Oh,” acknowledging the reality that that is the intent. We give over our entire lives to the Spirit to become a pattern that bears witness to God manifest in all life and every relationship: changing, transforming, empowering us and our beloved community. It’s not something we dabble in, it’s a whole-body experience, a life-changing commitment.
As Quakers, we experience the Spirit in the direct relationships among people and with nature in the fabric of life, and so our spiritual lives grow in relationship with others and the natural world. The meeting is not just the people attending on a particular day. Every member has a unique experience of the Spirit, plays a unique part in forming who “we” are as a community, and may be the source of the insight we need. The quality of our growth in our primary roles grows in relationship to others, and determines the quality and maturity of the body of the Meeting as a whole.
Quakers also recognize the role of elder, one who tends and nurtures the meeting community as ‘a whole body’. Elders offer attention and feedback that nurtures the individuals and the meeting as a whole. But one cannot take on the role of elder. It’s a role someone grows into when others turn to and rely on that particular person.
Quakerism is not an idea or notion we imagine being true. It’s a practice in ourselves and in a community that humbles and changes us, which takes time, patience, consistency, and openness even in the face of challenges. Our roles as a minister, steward, and witness change us. They temper, humble, and liberate us.
Being a Minister
As a minister, we tend to our inward lives. We tend the inward life in oneself, others, and the community both in the easy, glorious, all-is-well times and in the hard, broken times of inadequacy and failing. A minister opens to the Spirit, seeks revelation, celebrates life, offers gratitude, and heals to become whole, reintegrating the broken parts of us as people and as a community.
We invest in our own spiritual lives and experience through the gifts of solitude, stillness, and contemplative prayer that we carry with us into our everyday lives, experiencing our daily lives as praying without ceasing. Ministers study religious texts and learn the language of the inner landscape, in Bill Taber’s words. We engage in the tendering and tempering of spiritual companions, to grow in our own spiritual understanding and expression. And as we grow, we arrive to meeting for worship, fresh and prepared, expecting spiritual revelation in worship and offering vocal ministry.
As ministers, we also offer spiritual support, feedback, hospitality, counsel, and testimony to others, being present and allow others to see our example in the richness of our lives and in how we find the Spirit where we are broken and human. Ministers model and encourage spiritual life and companionship within the meeting community.
Being a Steward
As a steward, we tend to our outward lives. Quakers shape our outward lives to reflect the inward experience. As stewards, we live faithfully, both in that we trust direct, mystical experience of the divine, and in that seek integrity by yielding to spiritual guidance. We submit every element of our lives to spiritual scrutiny, especially in caring for the temporal needs of ourselves, our families, the meeting, our wider communities and society, and the natural world in which we live.
Stewards also develop our capacity for discernment, the ability to comprehend the inner nature and relationship of things, especially when obscure, that leads to keen insight and judgment. To do so, we learn to test discernment. The primary tests are: a sense of the Spirit; persistence in silence; simplicity; seemingly trivial or impossible, not willfulness or desired; integrity in honesty, authenticity, and consistency; documentation in texts of other spiritual communities; writing or expression; reflection and feedback from others; and fruits of the Spirit, such as , joy, peace, strength, compassion, beauty, truth, equality, and liberty.
Being a Witness
As a witness, we tend to our public lives. Witness for Quakers takes several forms. We let our life speak through the fruits of faithful living. We become examples of God manifest in human form that witness to the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, strength, compassion, beauty, truth, equality, and liberty. We testify in our meeting community to the insight and directions of our spiritual experiment. We season our testimony with spiritual companions, before asking the monthly meeting for reflection and feedback.
This opens our experiment with spiritual life and guidance to others. Others then call on us to ask us if something is loving, true, right, and just, because they see us test every element of our own lives, and so find us reliable, insightful witnesses.
Testify in the larger community and society to the Spirit in human affairs, to what is loving, true, and just that is essential for a religious society. Quaker practice is not an individual practice of individual enlightenment, but of beloved community and society.
Document in public record of how the Spirit is manifest in a religious society over generations. We seek a beloved society in which we order every relationship with others and the natural world in accord with the Spirit. So we enter our insights and practices into public record, through writing, art, song, curriculum, law, and court record.
Both the unearned sufferings and developmental advantages of Quaker practice carry obligations and opportunities to witness to the Spirit in our communities and larger society.