oh so habituous

Quaker Thoughts, part two. The Business Meeting.

Last week at the Friends' Meeting was their monthly business meeting, which they conduct during the worship service, after twenty minutes of silent worshipful preparation. If that sounds strange to you, it sounded strange to me too; who would ever want to take care of business in a time usually set aside for worship?

In the Quaker tradition, monthly Meetings for Business are an essential part of the worshiping community, and as nearly all of the Friends we have met have found time to tell us (from the time we started going there, not just last week, when we finally went to a Meeting for Business for the first time), this practice is an essential part of what it means to be Quaker. In fact, it is, I am told, the only practice that remains ubiquitous throughout the vast diversity of Quaker groups. So we of course felt that we would need to go at least once to see what it was all about. Also, at home before the service last week, and since then as well, I have been reading bits and pieces of the book published by the North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Faith and Practice. This has helped a lot in developing an understanding of how the community understands itself, and I have been reading especially about the monthly Meeting for Business, in order to form some thoughts of my own about it.

I think all I want to do here is to quote for you a couple paragraphs from the book Faith and Practice, and offer just a few thoughts. But first of all I should say, if it isn't immediately clear, that the Meeting for Business is just that, and it covers all the practical matters of running a community with a shared set of resources and, hopefully, a shared sense of unity and purpose in the use of these resources. In fact, the achievement of a genuine sense of unity transcending any selfish desires in order that the Meeting may be truly responsive to the Spirit in all of its affairs is why they do business the way they do. Or at least, I think that is more than fair to say! (One thing I am always conscious of here is the way a person can idealize something new because it answers some of the difficult questions/conflicts in the old -- and only after awhile do the questions/conflicts in the new come out and "threaten" the ideal...)

So here are some passages, which I have chosen not because they explain what the Meeting for Business is all about, but because they address directly and practically problems that all decision-making bodies face, and do this in a way that anyone can certainly understand. At least when I read this, I feel very aware of the kinds of experiences and conflicts they are trying to avoid.

Friends are urged to seek Divine guidance at all times, be mutually forbearing, and be concerned for the good of the Meeting as a whole rather than to press a personal preference. Time should be allowed for deliberate and prayerful consideration of the matter in hand. Everyone must want to reach a decision and be open to new understanding. Friends should come to each Meeting for Business expecting that their minds will be changed. It is important that all memebers be heard if they feel concerned to express a point of view. They should speak briefly and to the point, express their own view, avoid refuting statements made by others and give each other credit for purity of motive. When someone has already stated a position satisfactorily Friends need offer only a word or two expressing agreement.
Before speaking, Friends should seek recognition from the Clerk; they should not speak to individuals, and should be hesitant about speaking more than once unless they have new light on an issue. Each vocal contribution should be something which adds to the ideas already presented. (p.75)

This for me addresses many of those problems which I and others face in decision-making settings, including big things such as factionalism and scapegoating, as well as the more subtle difficulties of stubbornness, pointed attacks/criticisms, distracting and unnecessary speech, domination of a single individual, or exclusion of any individual, and just that simple self-indulgence we cater to when we repeat and relish a good point we may have made. I know I suffer from all of these things in my speech (even when I am talking to myself! :) ) and so it was a pleasure to witness a meeting or people attempting to let their community be managed by these kinds of rules for business.

It makes me wonder, coming from a Calvinist background (where we like to manage things as if the Kingdom of Heaven depends on it), why we don't, to the best of my knowledge, have a particularly prayerful or spiritual understanding of conducting this business itself. Is it because of the extreme emphasis on the law, so that there is less need for the dunamis of the Spirit to have a say, less of an idea that the Spirit may have something new to say to any particular context? Calvinists, or neo-Calvinists, or whatever name fits best, are definitely strong thinkers, but when it comes to management of a community or society, well, let's just say I'd rather have lived in Penn's City of Brotherly Love than in Calvin's Zurich! (And that isn't meant to be estranging: wouldn't most Calvinists today also prefer to have been Calvinist in Philadelphia...?)