On the Richmond young adult Friends conference

For those of you for whom an super-Quaker post is surprising or not very interesting, be forewarned: this is about to get very Quaker.

About a hundred young adult Friends gathered last weekend at the Earlham School of Religion (a Quaker seminary) in Richmond, Indiana for a conference titled Living as Friends, Listening Within. The theme was leadings and callings (discerning vocation and/or God's will for you) and the conference intentionally brought together Friends from across the branches of Quakerism, including independent western Friends, Conservative Friends, and Friends from meetings affiliated with Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, Evangelical Friends International. The conference was sponsored by FUM, FGC and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (For those of you wanting to know more about the branches, go here.)

The balancing of these two goals -- exploring leadings and callings, and fostering ecumenical fellowship among Friends -- was delicate and faithful and interesting to watch. The two goals often, but not always, functioned in tandem (sometimes quite well). In some ways the combination was very appropriate -- many Friends are feeling called to heal the divisions in Quakerism, though there are several ideas of what that means. Sometimes one or the other of the conference goals would take precedence. Even if we weren't working with it explicitly, it seemed like we were always aware of our diversity, of the relative unusualness of our gathering together.

Overall, it was a really beautiful weekend. The care, respect, tenderness and love the planning committee of young adult Friends have for each other was abundantly evident, and it set the tone for the weekend. The conference was well organized, responsibility and visibility was well shared, and several onion layers of support people (including a pastoral care team) were available, accessible and well used. There were lots of resources on Friends events, organizations, publications and communities. (I and some of the other editorial board members who were there talked about the Quaker Youth Book Project and distributed the Call for Submissions.)

You can read the epistle (a letter from a gathered body of Friends to Friends everywhere) to get a deeper idea of what the weekend was like.

Throughout the weekend two images were working on me, both having to do with ecumenical work among Friends. The first was this sense that I had finally waded deep enough into the water, far enough from my comfort zone of the shore, to find a deep, cool, gentle and tantalizing current of movement among Friends. I've had a sense of this current for awhile, I sort of knew it was there, but this weekend I finally went deep enough to feel it working on me and pulling me to new places. I don't know where it's taking me, but when I couldn't feel the bottom anymore I looked up to find I wasn't alone. Many other Friends, many of them young adults, are moving in the current too. This was really exciting and humbling.

The other image is not as positive. During several intense meetings for worship, which were often punctuated by song and by weeping -- and were quite moving -- I kept getting the sense that we were wanting to eat the fruit of Friends unity (or the bread, pick your metaphor ) without doing the careful work of cultivation.

The story of the Little Red Hen ("Will you help me grind my grain??") kept popping into my head, but also those Bible verses about being the branches and bearing fruit, and sitting under the vine and fig tree and being unafraid. Those are all plants that you cultivate. God is a gardener, and I think he calls us to that kind of intentional cultivation in partnership that good gardeners and farmers practice.

There are difficult conversations to be had, and we only brushed the surface this weekend because it's hard to do a lot in a weekend. Those conversations are about theology, God and Jesus, sexuality, queerness, racial diversity, welcoming and affirmation, continuing revelation and the Bible, our common history as Friends, the divisions in our history, and the myriad ways we have wounded one another.

At the risk of sounding like a naysayer (which I am not), I think intensely emotional meetings for worship, and songs about rising up to take our places, are not the work or are not all of the work of cultivating unity among Friends. They feed us and inspire us for the work, but they are not the entirety of the work and are not grounds for self-congratulation.

I think my fear -- and it's a fear, so I'll name it as that -- is that Friends will come away from this weekend high on ecumenical fellowship and not do anything, not let their experiences work on and transform them. That is not enough.

This is what I know. When you love someone or someones -- a partner, your family, a community, an organization -- there has to be a willingness to do the hard work. The first step is to know one another, which I think these conferences (at Richmond and Burlington, NJ last year) and other events and inter visitation of similar flavor, accomplish. They are just the beginning, and I am so grateful to Friends who open that door.

But then you do the hard work. In my opinion, the start of the hard work is to speak our own truths, and listen - listen - to others speak theirs. Friends, I think we're ready to do the hard work.

And in so many ways it is already being done. Models exist for us to look to: FWCC , the World Gathering, QUIP, convergent Friends, Quaker bloggers, Friends doing yearly meeting inter visitation, etc. etc.

And maybe after listening we will all go home to our individual meetings and churches and there will be renewal and deepening within the branches. Or maybe nothing will happen. Or maybe there will be increased communication and growth between the branches. Or perhaps whole new meetings and churches will emerge, and national and international bodies of Friends will be transformed and reorganized. I am so excited to tell cranky unprogrammed Friends (who say things like "I just don't know about those pastoral Friends....") about my friends from FUM and EFI meetings and churches and see their jaws drop.

Who knows what will happen. But we have to do the hard work first. And then we have to call others to the hard work.

When my own yearly meeting reunified in the 1950's, it was the young people (along with some supportive older folks) who lead it. They gathered together for years beforehand -- dated each other, married each other -- and when they gathered they often wore red or white roses to identify them as Hicksite or Orthodox. It was a way of saying "This is my tradition, in case you were wondering. Now let's meet as Friends."

Friends, where is your roses?

Something I have been working under and striving to articulate is a sense I have of the diversity of Friends as an incredible blessing, an incredible gift to us. The diversity of Christians (not to mention the diversity of the world at large) is so vast, some of the differences seemingly so deep -- I am so keenly aware of living in a deeply fractured and disconnected world -- and here we have the opportunity to hone tools of fellowship, communication, listening, and love in our own house.

Several of the keynote speakers reminded us that the world needs us, as Friends, that our message of an immanent God is powerful and transformative despite our small numbers.

More and more I believe that our diversity -- our theological, racial, geographic, gender identifying and sexual diversity - is one way that God prepares us for that work in the world.