Pages tagged "Discernment"

Friends have expressed strong concerns about the use and abuse of alcohol for more than three hundred years. . . Yet many contemporary Friends find such [concerns] anachronistic at best. . . Early Quakers found excessive drinking especially pernicious because it interfered with one’s ability to discern the divine will. . . [They also] considered intemperance a social and political issue as well as a spiritual/personal one. . . In the final analysis, however, there is probably no argument that would convince a moderate drinker that the occasional drinking of alcohol is always invariably wrong in any absolute sense. But Friends have generally tried to apply higher standards to their behavior. . . The traditional Friends testimony on alcohol has long offered a good reason why we should be willing to give up something that may in and of itself be of little consequence to ourselves. We should do so because of the example we are providing for others.

Friends worship in silence; it is not necessary to speak in Meeting for Worship. If we are led to speak, it is our custom not to speak more than once during an hour-long Meeting. Business Meeting is also a form of Meeting for Worship. If you have already spoken to a particular item of business, please give those who have not done so a chance to speak. When considering whether to speak a second time during a Meeting for Business, please do not repeat yourself: it is appropriate to rise and speak again only if you have something new to add.  

When reaching decisions in a Meeting for Business, Friends shun consensus (a secular decision, usually comprising the common acceptable part of the opinions brought by those present). Rather, Friends seek the unity which is the result of spiritual discernment of God’s leading for the group, often an unexpected decision transcending the opinions brought by those present.

Dear Editor: Thanks to Friend Kirby Urner for throwing light on the sometimes troubled relations between Meetings, their Nominating Committees, and their Peace and Social Concerns Committees (“Sticking Out Like Sore Thumbs,” July/August 2015). My Meeting has felt this tension, and I’ve talked to other Meetings that have as well.

“I abused my power,” James Nayler wrote to the Quakers. The year was 1659. Nayler was forty-one years old. He had just spent two years in prison.

for E.D.