> Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 12:03:04 -0600 (CST)
> From: Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Religious quiz [was: Libertarian quiz]
> On Sun, 5 Nov 2000, Gord Sellar wrote:
>> At 8:57 PM -0400 05/11/2000, Julia Thompson wrote:
>>> Well, the person who sent me the URL in the first place got Orthodox
>>> Quaker, Liberal Quaker and Mainline to Liberal Protestant, in that order.
>>>
>>> Not that I know what the Quaker stuff means -- I've only been to 1 Quaker
>>> meeting. Nothing like any other religious gathering I'd ever been to
>>> before.
it is an acquired taste - and varies quite a bit from Meeting to
Meeting. (we've had a problem, particularly in the United States, in
recent years of a high rate of Convincement ('conversion'). while
people are very welcome to become Friends it does complicate things
when most members of a Meeting only recently came to Friends. a lot of
Friends these days do not know much of our history, or enough about
our testimonies and processes. but we've been through this before.)
>> Were you sowing your oats? *grin*
<chuckle> if i had a quarter for everytime i've heard that..... (i
saw Woody Allen's "Sleeper" with two other Friends, and we were the
only Quakers in the theatre, in a town with only a hundred or so of
us. we roared with laughter at the line "I was so meek I was beat-up
by Quakers", but no one else in the theatre got it.)
>> Okay, sorry, couldn't resist.
not-a-worry. we've not contested their use of the name, and it has
provided us with a bit of leverage over them when they got too violent
or disrespectful in their advertising. it is nice to be able to get
the attention of a corporate entity without having to make a big
public hullabaloo.
>> But I am curious, since I know almost
>> nothing about Quakers except their support of the abolition of slavery
we were also deeply involved in starting the women's rights movement.
gender equality has been a testament of ours ever since the 1600's.
we're also real big on non-violence - not so much on the 'no violence'
end of things, but on correcting the causes of violence..... and we
really really like to plan ahead.
>> -- and I know NOTHING of Liberal Quakers. So do tell, what was the
>> meeting like?!
> We just sat on chairs & couches in a circle and people spoke up as they
> were moved to. When a time went by (can't remember how long) and no one
> had anything to contribute, the meeting broke up.
the circle aspect is a recent innovation, and not one shared by all
Quakers. the length of time was probably about an hour - but i've been
in Meetings for Worship that lasted for more than three hours. people
are supposed to speak only when 'moved by the Spirit' (sort of a
synonym for God), but whether a particular message is actually
'Spirit-led' is often unclear. (i've heard some incredibly banal
things said, but some of the most 'obviously not Spirit-led' messages
turned out to be of significant value to someone else....and sometimes
led to messages that clearly were Spirit-led. many of us would say
that God is often subtle, and frequently ironic.)
> It was the most
> unstructured religious thing I'd ever been to.
<chuckle> which is not to say that it is unstructured.... we happily
make lots of noise about being unstructured, but anyone who is
involved with Friends for a length of time comes to realize that there
is still a lot of structure there.
(our decision-making is often characterized as 'consensus', but it is
actually 'Spirit-led'. this means that we try to discern 'the will of
God' in making a decision, and that God can be speaking through anyone
who is participating in the decision....including through someone who
is _wrong_ on the issue. consequently one person can stand in the way
of a decision, and the Meeting, or even just the Clerk, can go ahead
and make a decision despite the objections of a majority of members
and attenders. we've developed a lot of structure to try to avoid
either extreme and to discern when to not avoid those extremes.)
cheers,
christopher
_______________
Christopher Gwyn
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
