Friends and Clerking: FGConnections, Spring 2004
With Hearts and Minds Prepared
By Trudy Rogers
Friends are advised to “come to any meeting for worship with hearts and minds prepared.” (Britain YM, Quaker Faith and Practice, #1.02) This applies at least as much to meetings for worship with attention to business as to our open meetings for worship. For me this means being prepared to listen deeply and lovingly to the nudges and insights from within and from the messages others share. I try to remind myself to listen especially carefully when I find myself becoming annoyed with what someone is saying. Truly, we never know who will share a message or insight that is important in the process of moving forward the issue at hand.
We need to come to our meetings for worship with attention to business with an open heart and mind, prepared to listen deeply to each other and within ourselves for the Spirit’s guidance for the meeting. As Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Faith and Practice (#3.05) says,
The right conduct of our meetings for church affairs depends upon all coming to them in an active, seeking spirit, not with minds already made up on a particular course of action, determined to push this through at all costs. But open minds are not empty minds, nor uncritically receptive: the service of the meeting calls for knowledge of facts, often painstakingly acquired, and the ability to estimate their relevance and importance.
I have found that working with a committee that meets only two or three times a year makes prior preparation critically important. This means assembling relevant information about an agenda item, including recent practice or guiding minutes, and facts that might be relevant to implementing this item. Being able to report these things to the committee when the item is introduced allows the group to focus the consideration and discernment on how we are led on this matter. It is very helpful to have two or three people consider each proposal and season it before it is presented to the committee for its consideration.
It is also important to come to each item on the agenda from a centered place, without having made up one’s mind, aware of the issues involved but open to new insights. Particularly when serving as clerk of the committee, openness to the insights and discernment of the members is required. Patience and flexibility are also very helpful. We cannot know when an issue might give rise to the unexpected question that requires deeper exploration, and may change the direction of our consideration. Perhaps we can accept Pat Loring’s interpretation that having “some silent pauses and unexpected questions [gives] the Spirit an opportunity to move.” Otherwise it may be “possible to have such tight control of the process that God never has a chance to get a word in edgewise.” (Listening Spirituality, Volume 2, p. 183)
Even when we try very hard to be prepared, open, patient and flexible, we sometimes have to work through a lot of stuff and revisit the matter several times before Way Opens and the right path is clear. After all, if we are about God’s work we can expect to be doing our bit within God’s timeframe which may be rather different than our own.
