2BNew or New2B
By Kali
As encouragement to new Quakers with a mix of questions, doubts, and wonder, I think it’s like that for long-time Quakers, too! Imagine how new it must have felt for the first Quakers nearly 400 years ago. They had serious doubts about the religious thought of their day and felt it would be more practical to find God within people than in churches. They knew that would invite ridicule, but they were onto something. Since then, Friends have been stubbornly persistent in their communal search for a soulful religion shedding “essential” doctrines and traditions in favor of discerning the work of Spirit’s growth everywhere.
I experienced a long string of other religious traditions before choosing Memphis Friends Meeting as my spiritual home not long after I moved here in late 2018, and I still feel new. I had spent nearly 28 years serving in paid ministry positions starting as a choir director for a Baptist church, an adult education director for an Episcopal cathedral, a Methodist pastor, an artist-in-residence for various churches, institutions, and interfaith retreats, and helping with the founding and building of two ecumenical churches. Through it all I was focused mostly on the nexus of religion and the arts.
By 2011, I was utterly exhausted, and something inside of me yearned to separate from all the profusion of words, music, and art coming out of me, so I retired. I had no further desire for the outward expression or representation of religion and instead felt a deep hunger for the void of the inward journey that had gone neglected all those years.
I had known of the Quakers, but shrugged them off because I was, after all, about making beautiful noise. But with that behind me, the notion of a more contemplative tradition was like a bee sting I couldn’t ignore, so I went to my first Quaker meeting in Tacoma, Washington, and all the beautiful noise didn’t go away, it just expressed itself in the deeper recesses of my soul, with mostly just me as its audience.
There is so much to appreciate in symbols, stories, and hymns. I would never call it wrong religion. But just like the earliest Quakers, I wondered what was being passed over, what didn’t get a chance to sing inside of me that needed no outward voice. Perhaps the same song is driving your inner beauty. I hope it’s always new.