Eileen Flanagan

Thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts on Quakers and Prayer on my Facebook profile. I used many of your suggestions during my talk at Church of the Redeemer, which seemed to go well. I won’t try to recount everything I said here, but I will share a few things I figured out along the way. 

After the usual disclaimer about how hard it is to generalize about Quakers, I started with “that of God in everyone” and the Quaker belief that we are all always connected to God and can feel that connection at any time and in any place, though we are not always attentive to it. Prayer, I suggested, is any attempt to pay attention to the Divine. It may take the form of speaking to God from our heart, like Mary Pennington in the wonderful story Marshall Massey posted. Singing or reciting a prayer may also kindle that connection for us, though I shared Bill Taber’s warning that we should use words “only when we are profoundly and alertly awake.” For unprogrammed Friends, silence is a common way we become alert to our connection, though silence by itself is not automatically worship. 

Prayer can take place in a house of worship, in a home, or in a kayak, which is one of my favorite places for it since a wonderful meeting for worship last summer when my family was visiting a Friend in the Adirondacks. My son seemed unusually centered as his kayak drifted around a pristine lake where we were the only humans and where our connection to each other and the Divine felt as supportive and fluid as the water beneath us. I shared a few other experiences of worship as well, such as one time when a message I gave spoke in an unexpected way to a visitor and another when a message I had judged as trite spoke profoundly to a dear friend (an experience that made me more humble about judging other people’s messages).

Although I had explained at the outset the diversity of our theology and practice, the questions still focused on issues for which it’s hard to give a pithy answer: So are Quakers Christian? Do you read the Bible? How do you educate children in your meetings? Although these questions were not unexpected, they were striking given that at least two-thirds of these Main Line Episcopalians raised their hands when I asked how many had been associated with a Friends school. One man came up to thank me afterwards, saying that his child had gone to a Quaker school for ten years, and he never could figure out what Quakers believed. He said he had learned more during my forty-minute talk than in those ten years. As a former School Committee member for my children’s Quaker school, I wonder how many of our families would say the same. Given that many in my audience seemed to resonate with my message, I am wondering today how we can share what is alive and meaningful in our form of prayer, both in our schools and in the wider world.

Running into an old friend and her daughterLast week was a whirlwind—and not just because snow continued to blow through Philadelphia. I hopped on a plane Wednesday (a day early because of the forecast) and headed down to Durham, North Carolina, where I delivered three talks in three days, visited with several old friends, met a bunch of new interesting folks, and didn’t get quite enough sleep. Back home now and way behind on email, I’m reflecting on the wonder and longevity of human connections.

Even just in publicizing the talk I gave at The Regulator Bookshop, I rekindled connections with three old college professors, two of whom took me out to a wonderful French dinner while I was in Durham. Thirty years after I was a college freshman, it was heartening to know I was remembered by my freshman Arabic teacher and to reminisce about how her enthusiasm for her subject had fueling my interest in other cultures. I was touched that my senior thesis advisor, who couldn’t make my talk, bought a copy of my book and left it at the bookstore to be signed. It reminded me that one of the great things about Duke University is that excellent teachers are really accessible to undergraduates. (I doubt if any of my teachers from graduate school—save the one who visited my hut in Botswana—would remember me, let alone go out of their way to reconnect.)

I also got to see four college classmates, only one of whom I was really close to at the time, but all of whom I liked very much. It’s fun to get to know people now whom I previously knew primarily as the friends of a friend. Our conversation ranged from memories to current lives, sometimes helping me make connections I hadn’t before. For example, one friend heard me cough and remembered how I had coughed for months after I got mono my sophomore year, something I don’t remember at all but which I find interesting considering how I struggle with a persistent cough today. (Friends from my meeting may be alarmed to realize I’ve been coughing like this for at least 29 years and didn’t realize it!) These conversations somehow tie the person I was and person I am into more of a coherent whole.

I also had coffee with a writer I met in Philadelphia when she was promoting her book. We discovered many things in common in our own writing and spiritual journeys. As we were parting, we discovered that we were in graduate school at the same place and at the same time, so that in addition to the Philadelphia mother/writer/friend who had introduced us, we knew a whole host of people in common, including the author whose book I reviewed in my last post and a man I had lost touch with who is now living in Durham. Though I didn’t get to see him, we had a nice phone chat in which we discovered a common interest in spirituality, something we never discussed when we dated over twenty years ago.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I got to visit Durham Friends Meeting—the first meeting I ever worshipped in after graduating from a Quaker high school. I was a college freshman, newly in spiritual crisis after leaving the Catholic church on Ash Wednesday, and I felt the urge to go to meeting at the end of a backpacking trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. For some reason, several fellow hikers decided to come with me, and I remember having the sense of having invaded this small, but warm community. How funny to be back Saturday night, in Durham Meeting’s beautiful new building, leading a workshop on discernment that was also attended by the writer from my graduate school and the college friend I was staying with, who said she had always been curious about Quakers.

Coming home I’m trying to weave all these threads together somehow and appreciating the richness of connections in my life.

You all know I like to talk about books—especially good books I’m reading and books by friends. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora is an award-winning study of how the Atlantic slave trade worked to transform human beings into commodities. Author Stephanie Smallwood takes the records of the Royal African Company and the correspondence between its employees and digs out their unintentional hints as to what enslaved Africans actually experienced during this process. It’s not only a first rate piece of historical research, it’s well written and compelling, which as a former graduate student I have to say is not always the case with academic books. (Confession, Stephanie is a good friend, which is why I picked up the book, but not why I couldn’t put it down.)

I won’t try to recount here all the things I learned about the slave trade, but there was one piece that has really stuck with me. Smallwood explains what is known about the spiritual beliefs of people from the Gold Coast and extrapolates the struggles they must have had dealing with death away from their communities and especially at sea, where there is no earth in which to bury people and no kin to carry out the rituals necessary to transport them to the realm of the ancestors. “In essence, a fully realized death could not be accomplished alone. Nor was it something one could attain at sea.” This understanding makes it all the more haunting when we read a captain’s account of the steady death toll on his ship the James during one Atlantic crossing. Although I knew that at least 20 per cent of Africans died during the Middle Passage, Smallwood’s analysis adds another level to that horror: “For the collective of African captives remaining aboard the James, the death of one of their number left them with the burden of a tormented soul, trapped here among them because its migration to join the ancestors had been thwarted.” As if being ripped from your homeland and chained together in crowded, disease-ridden conditions without enough food wasn’t horrible enough.

So why read something this depressing? There are lots of reasons, but for one, it’s increased my wonder at the human spirit and people’s ability to find new forms of meaning, even when every sense of self has been stripped from them. Last night, I got to hear jazz violinist John Blake and his band perform at our children’s school for Family Black History Night. In between pieces, he explained the historical context of old spirituals and the double meanings in them, as well as in many blues songs. Their performance brought down the house. Thinking about the extraordinary expressions of culture and spirituality that developed among people of African descent in the Americas, I’m all the more moved having read Smallwood’s account of the multitude of ways in which slave traders tried to strip Africans of their humanity. It’s hard to hold both in tension—the depths to which human beings can sink and the incredible resiliency of the human spirit—but I think it’s important that we do. Both are part of us all.

It’s been two years since my meeting granted me a minute of religious service, and since my anchor committee is meeting tomorrow night, it seems like a good time to reflect on what having a minute has meant. First, for the non-Quakers—or for those Friends whose meetings don’t engage in this practice—let me explain a few terms in that first sentence. 

A Quaker congregation (in my branch of Quakerism) is called a monthly meeting (Robin M explains the many ways we use the word meeting) because, although we gather to worship every week, we meet once a month to conduct business in a spirit of worship. (Some Quakers use the term “church,” but I won’t try to explain all the variety within Quakerism here.) A minute of religious service is a way for a monthly meeting to recognize and support the ongoing calling of a member. Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting wrote this helpful explanation of this practice.  An anchor committee (also sometimes called a support committee) is appointed by the meeting to oversee and support the ministry on behalf of the meeting. Here’s a copy of my actual minute from two years ago: 

Chestnut Hill Meeting recognizes that our member Eileen Flanagan carries an ongoing concern for helping people to trust God and to listen to God’s guidance. For a number of years Eileen has faithfully served Friends in and beyond our meeting as well as persons of other faith backgrounds by facilitating retreats and workshops and by communicating with a wider audience in print and on-line.

Now as way opens for Eileen to engage in these activities more frequently, publicly, and intentionally, we unite in support of her leading to help Friends experience discernment directly in their lives and their meetings and develop the faith to follow the guidance they receive; and to introduce this elemental aspect of Quaker faith and practice to the world beyond the Society of Friends. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve the Society of Friends and to share Quaker experience with those outside the Society of Friends by supporting Eileen’s work. Having received the blessing of her ministry among us, we will support her call to a wider ministry with prayer and the grounding and testing of ongoing oversight. We commend Eileen to all, in the hope that she will be kindly received wherever she serves.

The wording of the minute, though slightly cumbersome, still feels right. I feel my leading has included both writing and speaking and has been with both Quakers and non-Quakers. If there’s been any change in focus since the minute was written it would be more speaking and less facilitating, though that might be a temporary change because of the book’s release. I’ve also been speaking a lot lately about letting go of fear, rather than discernment specifically, but I feel they are closely connected. Both fall under the umbrella of trusting God. When I go to Durham in less than two weeks, I’ll be giving one talk on the book, one of living with stress at a Duke conference, and one on discerning leadings for Durham Friends Meeting. It somehow seems to all go together.

The most difficult part, in terms of having a minute, has been in trying to figure out the appropriate role for my anchor committee, which is made up of busy working mothers. I am not the only person with a minute in my meeting who has wondered how to have committee meetings that go deep, without burdening people’s time, knowing that committees that meet more often and for longer periods often reach a deeper level of sharing. The hope of this system is that our work is on behalf of the wider community and somehow enriches it, but it’s hard to know how to foster this. For some Quakers, whose work brings them away from their meetings many weekends, the committee can serve as a bridge to help the community know what the individual is up to. Although I've been away more than in past years, I am still at worship most Sundays and in the newsletter many months, so I don't feel that need. In fact, I have felt very supported by my meeting as a whole in the months since the book came out, so it's hard to know exactly what my anchor committee should be doing. One role is to help in discernment about which opportunities to say yes to, but for that, we would really need to meet more often than quarterly. The other need I feel is for people to challenge me in ways that will help me grow in this work. As I mentioned a few posts ago, two Friends played this role after my Pendle Hill talk, and it felt helpful. Again, this requires asking other people for their time, which is hard for me when my own feels so tight.

One possibility that seems to be germinating is to move to a system of a mutual support committee, where a few people with minutes serve as support for each other, joined by a few others from the meeting. The hope is that such a committee would meet more regularly than our individual committees have been able to and that, because we are doing similar work, we will be especially able to foster each other's growth and faithfulness. We're just beginning to test this possibility, however. If anyone in another meeting has thoughts about structures of support, I'd be glad to hear them.

Yesterday, after running into a woman whose husband is in remission from brain cancer, I realized how many reminders I’ve been getting lately of life’s fragility. A member of our meeting has entered hospice after many months of treatment for brain cancer. Another member’s ALS has progressed to the point where, for the first time on Sunday, I couldn’t understand something she said. A good friend, who is my age, just got diagnosed with breast cancer (which is mercifully easier to treat than ALS or brain cancer), and the father of one of my son’s classmates died suddenly of a heart attack on Monday. Another friend’s father-in-law also died this week, all of which prompted me to remember to include our health in the things we thank God for at prayer-time each night.

An awareness of life’s fragility can make us fearful and paranoid (When am I due for a mammogram?), but it can also prompt us to appreciate the present. The meeting member with brain cancer continually posts things on the Internet about trusting God and experiencing peace. The member with ALS made us all get up and dance in our places after worship on Sunday in order to advertise the Brazilian dance party she will be leading from her wheelchair next month. I suspect I’m not the only one who has been moved by these two members’ example.

I finally got through most of The Science of Fear, which I mentioned a few posts ago. It is really a well-written, thought-provoking book. While there were many parts that confirmed things I already believed—(George Bush manipulated people’s fear to lead us into a war that’s not making us safer.)—there were other parts that challenged my beliefs, particularly the author’s assertion that environmentalists manipulate statistics and fear just as much as other groups. He put my fear that my children are being exposed to all kinds of toxic chemicals into the context of childhood mortality rates before we had chlorine in the water, arguing his conclusion that “There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be Alive” in terms of actual risk. Although he may err on the side of underestimating the threat of climate change, he offers a helpful perspective, when so much media is designed to prey on parental insecurity. I found the book just one more reminder that I don’t want to live in fear or encourage the fears of others, despite the real and constant fragility of life. 

So on Saturday, I’m planning to drive my Toyota, full of children, in a snow storm, to take my first snowboarding lesson at age 47. Do I trust God, or what?