The Messiness of Quaker Community (and why I still have hope)

One of the hallmarks of Quakerism is our way of doing business. Ever skeptical of the evils of hierarchy, we opt for a slow, Spirit-led model. Most Quakers participate in something called “A Meeting for Worship for the Conduct of Business.” It typically follows a Sunday morning service, once a month. It is where we talk about our budget and things like whether should we put a new roof on the Meetinghouse. It is also the place where we decide on collective action. My Quaker community took thirteen years to hold the conversation around the full inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community in our Meeting.

It is a radically different way of making decisions as a community. Other faith communities base their actions on majority votes or entrusting important decisions to a board of elders. In Quakerism, no votes are cast, and our board of elders role is to simply tend to the “health of the Meeting.” Mostly, they handle confidential matters and are the group that pays attention to trends or needs emerging in the community.

Throughout my 13 years in Quakerism, I’ve been to countless business meetings. They can be long, and emotionally draining. The work is slow and requires one to be patient. Hardly a month goes by where a business meeting doesn’t have some kind of “drama.”

By “drama” I mean, any struggle to move forward that is often because an individual feels strongly in one way about the thing we are discerning. Sometimes these folks speak with frustration or anger. Sometimes they share their disappointment with another person or committee, and we all collectively become aware of relational tension in our communities. Sometimes people storm out. Sometimes people break down and cry.

Coming into Quakerism, I had heard about these radical ways of working/communicating with one another. I thought I’d get to see this remarkable and counter-cultural way of being a community together and feel inspired. But, honestly, more often I leave these meetings feeling like I need to do damage control. The relationships that seem fractured, I want to mend. The deep sighs I hear after something is FINALLY passed tell me that the whole process just felt tedious, rather than life-giving, and I worry that folks feel less drawn to our collective work together as a result.

I often think about Quakers of old, and how, at any point, they were able to collectively decide to do things like oppose slavery and participate in the Underground Railroad. I wonder how we ever collectively decided to oppose the Vietnam War and to encourage conscientious objection. These issues that we seem to be known for, feel like a thing of the past for us Quakers.

I think an element of this is that we struggle to know how to move forward as a group once our business meetings become “tense.” I think we all worry about the sustainability of our communities, and the conflicts that emerge worry us (clearly they worry me). We wonder, “What if so and so leaves our community because of this?” And, even if we do arrive at a decision, after hours or months of discernment, any energy or momentum that we had going into it has gone. People are frustrated and uninspired, and a handful of people who still have a sliver of stamina try, with hardly any support, to actually implement the thing we just struggled to decide on.

I sure don’t seem to have much hope for this process, do I? I can see how you’d think that. But, I still think Quakerism is right to structure ourselves this way, to lean into the collaborative way of decision-making, even if it is arduous. I just think we need to be having more candid conversations about how to be present for these meetings.

One of the folks in my Quaker Meeting has a great line, “Get Curious, Not Furious.” I don’t often experience anger, but I often experience tremendous anxiety during business meetings. I don’t have a smooth moto for this yet (maybe you can help me?) but I do know that I’ve needed to do personal work with my therapist to learn ways of being present in Quaker business meetings and not feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. I’ve had to learn how to hear another person’s emotional intensity and not feel like I am responsible for the way they feel. Curiosity can still be my first move. Questions like, “I wonder why this person is reacting so strongly to this?” help me de-personalize things people are saying aloud.

But, I also think that we need to be more prepared to accept the reality that sometimes the collective IS ready to move forward and that even if a couple of our Friends are still angry/worried, they can still belong with us (if they’d like to be). But, I don’t think we have great mechanisms in place to help a dissenting person still feel seen and heard beyond letting emotionally charged things settle long enough that we just forget about it.

I think we are capable of old-time Quaker prophetic action in the world, but I think before we can get there, we cannot be afraid of these necessary, and candid conversations. I think we need frequent reminders that the work of being in a community with one another is hard. That we can struggle together without it all coming apart. I think we should “sell” being a part of Quakerism as a sort of practice in being in relationship with other humans…something I think is becoming harder and harder as we become more isolated. I think communities like ours can be places of reacquainting ourselves with village life, of experimentation that leads to personal and communal growth.

I am proud of my Quaker community because, over the last year, we have brought down some of those scary conversations that we put away in the attic. I’ll admit to being afraid that if we open those boxes again, whatever monster we stuffed in there will come out ten times as angry as it went in. But, what has seemed to help soothe the panic about that is being honest about our worries.

Before a conversation about membership, I told my meeting, “I am afraid of having this conversation because I think it has the potential to go off the rails.” I didn’t say this to be manipulative, or to keep someone from speaking their Truth. I said it because it was true for me, and it allowed my community to know that I love them and that I cared about the people who were harmed because of this conversation in the past. It allowed us to reopen the box, and still see the scary things that were put away there years ago…but it also allowed the fear that gripped me, and us, to lose some of its power on us. It was no longer something we worried about in our guts, something that we feared ever poking again.

At the end of these meetings, I felt hope. I could feel the relief in the room. We were actually getting closer, even though we still heard people speak with passion. I think these types of conversations will allow us to approach our decision-making times with more compassion, and more trust that we can still do courageous things.

I am curious what you think about all of this. Leave a comment below. I’d love to start a conversation.