I once heard someone define culture as a kind of collection of answers to everyday problems. Not necessarily the best answers. Just good enough for us to function without having to analyze every decision. This morning, I put on clothes, ate breakfast, drove on the right side of the road, placed my order at the coffee shop in ounces and with English words. I didn't have to think very hard about any of it.
That's culture. But culture only takes us so far.
Sometimes we find ourselves in new places. Sometimes we don't know the answer (or even the language). Sometimes this not knowing is fun and creative—a welcome challenge. Sometimes it's not.
Yesterday's study in Illuminate considers Paul's discussion of eating food sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8). It's a question that used to have a clear answer for the Corinthians but that—as a result of freedom found in Christ—no longer does. They had to figure out what to do, and they didn't all just agree, probably at least in part because many of the believers came from different sub-cultures (a discussion for another time).
Kara Wenger suggests the tension was between license and legalism. As if we could blame the problem on those disrespectful kids who just want to get away with stuff and don't care about the rules. As if we could blame the problem on those stodgy, old traditionalists who are stuck in the past.
When it comes to real people, it's never quite that cut and dried. Unfortunately.
The benefit of culture is that it saves us time, makes it easier to function in a world where other people can't be avoided. It helps us to get along. The problem is that culture keeps moving. It is dynamic and fluid, subject to change without notice.
Kind of like people.
So what do we do?
Kara suggests we approach the question, whatever it is, through love—love of God and love for each other: "The church's goal should be to love." And she challenges us to remember that "how [we] treat one another through life's ups and downs . . . building each other up in love" is ultimately the only answer to whatever cultural question we face.
So what questions are you facing today? And in the face of those questions, how are you doing at loving one another?
Eric Muhr
Children and Quaker process
Sometimes we don't have language for the things we do. We just do them.
Clerking a Quaker meeting for business is one such task. Facilitating group discernment engages a variety of interpersonal skills, and—especially when the question under consideration is emotionally charged—it can get complicated. A friend of mine once asked how exactly one learns to be a clerk. I didn't have an answer. Another friend hazarded a response: "I guess it's just something you learn to do by listening."
We agreed it wasn't a very helpful response. Several others jumped into the discussion, trying to put into words this thing we've all experienced but didn't quite know how to explain. It got complicated.
Later, I did what I normally do after that kind of discussion. I started looking for resources. And I found one—a book for children—that was so simple and clear, I decided to offer it through the Barclay Press bookstore.
With support from Wellesley Monthly Meeting, Nancy Haines wrote and Anne Nydam illustrated a story about children who are deciding what to do with the money they raised in a hot dog sale, Approved!: A Story About Quaker Meeting for Business. The genius of this book is an eleven-word description of what it means to clerk a meeting for business: "She leads the meetings and helps us as we make decisions."
In the story, the children self-manage, coloring quietly if they don't have something to say, so they "can still be a part of our community." After a financial report, they try, as best they can, "to listen to God." They share a variety of ideas, recognizing that "sometimes we have to listen to God and to each other for a long time until we know what is best for our community." And when one of the children doesn't get what she wants, she admits that even though she "really wanted to give the money to help animals," she knows that the proposed minute "is right for our group."
There's a reminder at the end of the book that "children are quite capable of participating in Quaker process." Maybe because it's not actually complex at all. Just hard.
Eric Muhr
Take publishers, for instance
There's something unique about Quakers. It might be that we have a peculiar singularity of purpose that keeps us moving forward. It might be stubbornness. But the truth is that there's no good reason for the number and variety of Friends institutions in the world.
Take publishers, for instance.
The field of publishing is a place where the news is of budget cuts, reorganizations, mergers, and bankruptcies. Yet Quakers have more than a dozen publishing houses in the U.S. alone. I'm not sure the survival of so many presses is a mark of our success. But it says something — maybe even something good — about what kind of people we are. That we keep going when so many others are giving up. That we are survivors.
Last month, I attended my first meeting of Quakers Uniting in Publications, an international network of Quaker booksellers, authors, and publishers concerned with the ministry of the written word. And much of the talk was of a way forward, of what it might mean that we're still around when so many other religious publishers are being bought out or shut down. We listened in our times of gathered worship for what God might reveal about his place and purpose for us in the world.
So what did we hear?
Some spoke of budget concerns. Some spoke of the need to more creatively engage young Friends through technology. Some spoke of the places in which the world needs us now more than ever. Many of us didn't speak much, but we listened. And there was a shared sense that God continues to call people to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked and care for the sick, to visit the prisoner. And that God continues to use us as vessels through which that call can be carried to the people God calls.
Eric Muhr