Two days at Willamette Quarterly Meeting.  Within the context of this Practice it will be my second to the last.  Next Spring will be the last; there will be one more business meeting, in February.

 

My oldest was off with the Junior Friends the whole time—growing into that which she has been set toward.  My youngest was the MC of the “talent night” program.  She sang a duet with an older woman who traditionally sang with her husband before he passed a couple of years ago.  Now my daughter and this woman are a “regular” act, not only at Quarterly but also at Annual Session.  It makes me cry to hear them—separated by sixty some years—singing together.  My oldest actually introduced my reading of “The Cremation of Sam McGee”—and she had a very sweet patter to it.  I am leaving two beautiful children well begun, although I am not sure that there is any credit to be taken by anyone.  I have always thanked God for loaning them to me, for entrusting them to my care.  

 

I am involved, as clerk of Ministry and Oversight, in an effort to rebirth and re invent the Quarterly, to move it back toward the traditional discipline (practice) of Friends while adapting that practice (discipline) to modern conditions.  The essence is to move away from the foray (drift?) of the past few years (decades?) into the forms and models of non profit “corporationalism” (is “steering committee” a concept consistent with Friends practice/discipline?  I mean, really?).

 

Power is devolving into fewer and fewer hands in many parts of the Quaker Movement, at least the unprogrammed part of the Quaker Movement and not because anyone is power hungry.  It’s just because fewer and fewer people “have the time” to participate to the extent necessary to make Quakerism work.  (Whose time is it, anyway?  What’s it for?) Participation in the life of the meeting—a discipline which changes us and conforms us to the image of the Spirit/Master/Teacher/Christ—is under appreciated and it shows in the condition of Friends and of the Quarterly.

 

But I am not alone in recognizing this and in having a desire to rekindle awareness.  But I do have a limited time, now.  The work the Spirit has called me to do in this regard must be carried on, within the context of this Practice, by others in ten months.  

 

But it is not my work.  It is our work.  I have pulled something together but have only been able to do that because it is the work of the Spirit.  The grave yards of the world are full of “indispensable” people.  I shall be one—if not in a year then after that—and I should not be rushing things because of that knowledge.  The Spirit works on its own time, and in its own way—through us—to implement its own plan.