Sense of the Meeting-Sense of the Parking Lot
by Jan Greene, New York Yearly Meeting

Some years ago, I had the experience of attending, for a period of time, a Meeting that was in the midst of a controversy over a related organization which was housed in the Meeting House. A number of the older Friends were active in this worthy organization. However, many of the newer members were disturbed by the fact that Meeting programs were limited by inadequate space and limited money, caused, they felt, by this organization. The situation was never acknowledged in any official gathering. However, it was frequently discussed outside with others who agreed on the issue. After several years of listening, I stated at a Meeting for Business that I thought the Meeting needed to address the conflict and the feelings about this organization. The response was dramatic. There was a long, fraught silence. Friends sat motionless. Then the Meeting went on as if nothing at all had happened! There was an interesting follow-up. Before this meeting, I had listened at length to many Friends' frustrations about the situation. Afterward, no one ever again spoke to me about the organization and the Meetings' relationship to it.

I really didn't understand the dynamics of what had happened until later. I was reading about conflict management in church communities in order to understand how to be present for several meetings in our Yearly Meeting that are having difficulties with unresolved conflicts. I learned that all communities have conflict norms: powerful, unwritten rules about the ways members of the community are allowed to respond to any conflict. And all communities have sanctions, or punishments, for those who break the norms. I had come up against a common conflict norm in Quaker Meetings-the "sense of the parking lot." This norm states that one may not identify a conflict in an official meeting, but that one may talk about it in the parking lot with others who agree. When I broke the norm, I was punished by being eliminated from all discussions about the situation.

Many of our meetings have difficulty with conflict management. They need to be helped to understand and accept the fact that any meeting that is a vital, active, spiritual community is going to have conflict. They need to work at reacting to that conflict in healthy ways that will lead to growth and a deepening sense of community. Ignoring a conflict and hoping that it will go away doesn't work. Allowing a person who is behaving in a manner that is destructive to the worshipping community to continue to be abusive is not loving to the individual or to the community. Having a "sense of the meeting" that differs from the "sense of the parking lot" is not part of a wholesome spiritual community.

I would like to urge meetings to take the time to identify and examine their conflict norms and sanctions during a time that they aren't dealing with a specific problem. (If Friends answer quickly that they aren't aware of any, ask them what would happen if the Clerk of the Meeting and the Clerk of Ministry and Counsel had a fist-fight in the Meeting parking lot over a disagreement. How would they react? Very quickly, one norm and its sanction will be identified.) After norms are identified, Friends can identify which ones are helpful to conflict management and should be maintained, which ones are not helpful and should be discarded, and what norms should replace them.

What would our meetings be like if we did address our difficulties with conflict and risked enough to become engaged with each other and with the world around us?

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