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.

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.

A few nights ago, I joined a group of Friends interested in learning how teleseminars and webinars could aid their work. First, Sarah O’Doherty showed us the kind of online classes she offers in her healing practice. Then, Ginny Christensen shared how Friends Council on Education is bringing those involved with Quaker schools together from all over the country without the expense or carbon cost of travel. (There is a place on their site to register for new webinars or to listen to old ones.) Then we all had a fabulous dinner at the home of Laura Melly—who has fostered the life of many Friends institutions and communities, partly through her ability to bring people together—and talked about the exciting possibilities of this technology and our desire to see ourselves and the various groups we support catch up to the 21^st century.

I left the evening very excited about the prospect of expanding the number of people I can teach without stretching my family any more or increasing my carbon footprint. I think of the people reading this blog—from the Pacific Northwest, to Winnipeg, to Australia—and imagine some of those folks getting to actually talk to each other (if they wanted. Some may enjoy being anonymous.) I know Friends who are doing a lot of traveling to educate people about climate change, a vexing contradiction, and can see how excited they might be to trade in the Greyhound for a teleseminar. Of course, something is lost when people aren’t in the same room, but Ginny and Sarah both felt that their gatherings were deep and meaningful. I was particularly struck at the kind of work Sarah can do online, since it is probably more comparable to mine than Ginny’s. One (or maybe it was both) of them said they even have silent worship over the phone or computer lines. Sarah said that from doing energy healing, she was clear that distance didn't matter when it came to energy/spiritual work. I'm still taking that in and imagining the possibilities.