The following are excerpts from the Quaker Volunteer Service and Witness Network Newsletter, which may be found on their Web site: http://www.uic.edu/~conant/qvstc
Newsletter #1, spring 1997
Queries for Friends dedicated to service and witness:
* What's the wrong spiritual place behind burnout?
* How do we "stop" ourselves?
* What is going on spiritually when we cannot stop ourselves?
* How do we know when the Spirit of God is driving us versus when we’re in a compulsive place and out of synch with the Divine Spirit?
Newsletter #2, June 1998
QVSWN News
Update
by Mary Lord
The past several months have given me ample proof that God wants the Quaker Volunteer Service network to become reality and to succeed. In my own life this has led to a career change. Over the summer, my Board and I decided to move ACCESS, the non-profit information service on international affairs that I have headed for the last 12 years, into a university setting. I also decided to phase out my role in it.
Second, as I described the Spirit-filled Burlington QVSTW conference to Friends, I felt a strong leading to change my professional work and devote at least 1/3 time to help make the QVS network a reality. I shared this leading of the Spirit with a support committee from my local Meeting. They shared my sense of clearness about the leading and shared my belief that it was important for my work to be approved and supported by my local Meeting.
As a result, this fall Adelphi Monthly Meeting and Baltimore Yearly Meeting approved my traveling in the ministry on QVS and Quaker peacemaking. BYM also agreed to accept funds donated to support my work as a released Friend and to provide oversight of my work. Sufficient funds have been received to get me well started on a part-time basis. Way has opened swiftly.
The response of Friends to the news of the Burlington conference and to my request to be released by my yearly meeting also underscores how ready Friends are to have an active, healthy QVS network. The response has been very positive wherever I have talked about the emerging QVSTW network: in private conversations at the Friends General Conference Gathering in July, at the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions in August, at the Friends Committee on National Legislation Annual Meeting in November, and at the American Friends Service Committee Corporation and Board meetings also in November.
I was especially pleased with the enthusiastic interest and encouragement from Friends attending the AFSC Corporation and board meeting in November. The relationship between QVS and AFSC is important to us all. I feel confident that the QVS network can develop a healthy, supportive relationship with AFSC.
If my experience is any guide, God wants us to succeed and will help us if we seek God's vision. The Religious Society of Friends in its many branches also wants us to succeed. Friends and Friend's organizations will respond with enthusiasm and help if we proceed in good order. This help and support may not make our work easy. The task is still difficult. But, the help and support of the Spirit and the encouragement of Friends makes success possible. The soil is ready. The environment is nurturing. Let us see what we can grow.
Editor's note: Mary Lord is available to work with local QVSTW projects. She has experience as an organizational development consultant. Mary also gives talks and leads workshops on spiritual discernment, on conflict resolution and peacemaking, and on other topics.
Newsletter #3, July 1999
The Spiritual Benefits of Oversight
By Marti Matthews
The spiritual path of Quakers is unique in the world. We share many principles in common with other religions and spiritual traditions, but we combine these principles into an unusual practice. One example is the subject of "obedience." Most spiritual disciplines utilize some form of obedience as an important practice for growth in the spiritual life to help our egos find a right perspective of the total scheme of things and our place and contribution in it. Practices of "obedience" are the reins on the horse that enable us to fit into a larger context, a relationship, to mature into "belonging" and "being with."
The practices of obedience are clearly exterior in most spiritual paths. By respecting the instructions of a superior, a guru, a teacher, a spiritual director, elders, a priest or minister, the individual learns to "listen" to something outside of one's limited reasoning and subjective view.
The Quaker insights that "Christ has come to teach his people himself" and that each individual has access to the Divine Spirit support the growth of strong individuals. What would keep Friends from becoming radical libertarians - individualists who cannot find their place in the larger Whole?
The first twenty years of our group history were a kind of rejoicing in the rediscovery of the guiding Inward Principle, the ground that is the basis for any spiritual life. But this awareness alone left people with the temptation for mistakes in discernment, perhaps confusing human reason with Higher Guidance, confusing our desires for God's. After only twenty years of experimenting with the insight of the equality of inward leadings, individual excesses led Friends into danger and the necessity for some group methods to keep individuality in balance. While God speaks within each individual, each individual is not alone God.
Thus evolved the unique and beautiful Quaker group processes of discernment. Through our processes, the individual Light is not violated by exterior authority but is complemented by the guidance of the group, which often uses trenchant questions to help the individual discern the wisdom or lack of it in decisions.
After discerning with the help of the group whether our "leadings" seem truly from God, we then use our tradition of "oversight" as we try to continue doing our work under Divine guidance. It is a sign of spiritual maturing when Friends ask for oversight as they begin difficult or responsible tasks. The desire for oversight arises from taking our work seriously: if we think something is worth doing, we want to be accountable so that we maintain ourselves in the attitude of servants and follow our Guide, even while we're leading others. We voluntarily subject ourselves to the ongoing observation and input of others.
We seek this ongoing spiritual help as individuals or as groups of Friends. A monthly meeting or church may give oversight to an individual or a group; a yearly meeting may give oversight to an individual, to a monthly meeting or church, or to a group of Friends working together on a project. The yearly meeting is by its nature accountable to the meetings and churches that compose it, as membership in the Religious Society of Friends is basically in the monthly meetings and churches.
"Accountable" is a synonym for "oversight." We voluntary set up or abide by our systems of reporting to each other and accepting spiritual probing in order to keep ourselves honest. Outrunning our Guide is so easy for the creative rational mind and the excitable enthusiastic ego. Reporting to others in a state of seriousness as we do our leadings helps us stay one with the Divine Spirit which first prompts us to our work. Accountability and oversight are helps in our work so that we will not find ourselves out on a limb, alone, separated from the Source that led us to begin our work, that Greater Power that sustains us all.
How You Can Help; Staying in Touch
Comments are welcome. You can reach us through the email discussion group on the list serve, or feel welcome to contact the steering committee members:
Mary Lord, clerk
Adelphi Friends Meeting
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
2623 Holman Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 588-0626
mlord@igc.org
Curt Ankeny
Arba Friends Meeting
Indiana Yearly Meeting, FUM
601 Century Drive
Fountain City, IN 47341
(765) 847-2268
cankeny@juno.com
David Finke
57th Street Meeting
Illinois Yearly Meeting
sojourning at 1106 Maplewood
Columbia MD 65203
(573) 499-0178
dfinke@mail.COIN.missouri.edu
Judy Jager
Northside Friends Meeting
Illinois Yearly Meeting
1002 Florence
Evanston, IL 60202
(847) 864-8173
miler123@aol.com
Anthony Manousos
Whitleaf Meeting and Whittier First
Friends Church
FUM and Pacific Yearly Meeting
5238 Andalucia Court
Whittier, CA
(562) 690-5670
amanousos@aol.com
Chris Parker
Friends Meeting at Cambridge
New England Yearly Meeting
33 Ossipee Rd
Somerville, MA 02144
(617) 628-3674
afscnero@igc.org
Victor Vaughen
West Knoxville Friends Meeting and
University Friends Worship Group
Southern Appalachian YM & Association
1136 Harrogate Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37923
(423) 690-9245
Vicvaughen@aol.com
If you use the electronic medium of communication, the National Conference on Quaker Volunteer Service, Training and Witness has a webpage at http://www.uic.edu: 80/~conant/qvstw
There is also a Quaker Volunteer Service email discussion group. To subscribe, send a message to listproc@list.serve.com saying:
subscribe qvstc YOURNAME
The list is maintained by Roger Conant, and when you register you will receive information about how to use it.
Financial donations are welcomed. Send to Kenneth Ives, 401 E. 32nd St., Apt. 1002, Chicago IL 60616, made out to "IYM Special QVS fund."
The newsletter for the Quaker Volunteer Service and Witness Network (formerly the Quaker Volunteer Service, Training, and Witness network) is put out on an as-needed basis.
If you have an article or announcement to submit, please contact editor
Marti Matthews
746 N. Taylor,
Oak Park, IL 60302
(708) 445-1570
Martim1234@aol.com.
" If you wish to subscribe, please notify
Chris Parker
3 Ossipee Rd,
Somerville, MA 02144,
617-628-3674,
afscnero@igc.org.
A subscription donation of $5-$10 is appreciated, but not required. Make checks out to "IYM Special QVS fund."