Visitation among Friends: FGConnections, Summer 2004
Lessons to Travel By
By Deborah Fisch
Deborah Fisch, coordinator of FGC Traveling Ministries
Program.
After almost six years of working for FGC I have made over 150 trips to meetings and gatherings of Friends in the United States and Canada. For a self-proclaimed introvert who had not traveled much outside of the Midwest, and who has no internal compass whatsoever, that means I’ve had some interesting adventures and learning opportunites. I have seen both oceans for the first time and traveled out of the US for the first time. This year I had my first freshly picked orange, which comes close to the bliss of eating freshly picked and cooked corn on the cob! I have seen alligators, eagles, moose and bear. I have seen swamps and deserts. As much as I revel in the joy of experiencing the beauties of God’s creation first hand, traveling among Friends, staying in their homes, and attending meetings for worship and business have given me more, as it has given me many opportunities to learn and grow in the Spirit.
One lesson that has presented itself has been the opportunity to develop patience. (I’m still having the opportunities. I’m not sure we ever develop enough patience.) Most of my travel is via airlines and I quickly learned it did no good if I let delays due to weather or aircraft maintenance make me angry or upset. It didn’t get me where I wanted to be any sooner and it made it much more difficult for me to get settled when I arrived. Instead, I have for the most part, learned to take a big breath and look at delays as opportunities to become more gathered, to rest, and to be gentle with others. And every once in a while I am given the opportunity to help someone else find that calm space as they also experience the same delays.
Also, I have had the opportunity to learn to live more simply. Early on, I contacted lots of experienced Friends for advice about traveling with more ease of mind and spirit. I learned many things that have benefited me not only in travel, but in life in general. They include: don’t take more than you need and you probably don’t need as much as you think you do; remember you have to carry everything you take; check the weather where you are going; layer; allow time for making errors; carry your family with you (in pictures and prayers); seek to be faithful not successful; pray and ask others to pray for your safe travel and faithful service; remember to breathe.
I have had opportunity to learn that I do better work and do a better job of staying centered when I travel with a Friend who has gifts of eldering. The traveling companion/elder makes it possible for me to stay centered on the work that I am being called to do. They are a prayerful presence and help both those traveling in the ministry and those in the meetings stay focused. They serve as someone I can test leadings with and who can help me work through fears and discouragements. I have learned by my own experience that Jesus and later, early Friends, really knew what they were doing when they sent folks out in pairs.
Another thing I have had opportunity to learn in my travels is that no matter how different F/friends and their meetings might seem at first glance, if we pay attention we will find we do carry common experiences of the Spirit that bind us together as a faith community. Some meetings I’ve visited have been grand in size and 300 years old and others have been rented rooms in businesses or even hospitals and are only 10 or 20 years old. Some meetings have hundreds of members and others have had less than a dozen. Some Friends live in abundance (either as individuals or as meetings) and others scrape to make ends meet. And yet we are all seekers. True, we seek in different ways and with different senses of urgency, but we are still all seeking. It is part of what draws us together. And though we may have different words for what we seek, here, in my heart language is what I have found as I’ve traveled. We seek love. We seek connections with God, each other, and the world. We seek a feeling in our hearts and in our communities that we have purpose. We seek beloved community. We are hungry for connections with each other on all those levels, and we are hungry for a deeper sense of connection with God.
The things we, as individuals hunger for in the Spirit, are the same things rising up for Friends and throughout Friends General Conference and even perhaps the wider world of Friends. We have concerns about growth (some meetings are growing too fast and others are dying); about how to teach our youth about our faith tradition and keep them involved as they grow older; we have concerns about our meeting properties. We have questions about the times we live in and how we as Friends might be called to witness to those times. We struggle with individualism and at the same time a growing need for accountability within the community of faith. As it becomes more challenging to live in the world we also become more aware of our need for deeper spiritual connections with each other. In many of our meetings we have stopped sharing about our spiritual journeys, and yet we hunger for ways to make those connections with each other.
Traveling among Friends has verified for me that God is at work calling us to be a faithful people. We can begin to do this by seeking connections with the Divine. Through each other, breath by breath, step by step, and one day at a time we risk walking that path that brings us into the deep and abiding love of Christ and teaches us to walk in a manner that will take away the occasion for war.
