Last Sunday’s Meeting for Worship was very powerful for me. I went into the Meeting hoping to hold the Meeting in the Light, for there is healing that needs to be done within our Meeting. There are people who have been hurt in the past; and those who feel they should not have stepped aside when they did. There are those, like me, who cannot be at peace with what happened and want the Meeting to find true unity. This is what I brought with me to the Meeting, and what I held up to God.
The 2nd Query about Meeting for Business in our Faith & Practice was read shortly after the silence settled and before the children left for First Day School. Usually this Query, in my experience, sparks nothing within the Meeting for Worship. But this Sunday, it was different.
The first person who rose to speak spoke about a desire for unity in understanding, giving examples of Native American decision-making processes. The next person rose to tell an illustrative story about a previous conflict in the Meeting that had been very divisive, with half of the Meetings for and half against. The irony was the subject matter seemed trivial; it was about how high a rhododendron plant should be allowed to grow. Then a new attender who seems destined to become a member rose and spoke that, if he’d been responsible for making that decision, he would have focused on what was best for the plant and tried to take the “human-ness” out of the equation altogether. This reminded us to remove ourselves from the center.
Somewhere in the midst of these messages, my thoughts wandered. I wondered why the frequency of my vocal ministry had decreased so drastically. For my first few year of attendance, I spoke very frequently, about once a month. But in the last year or so, I’d only spoken maybe 3 times. I wondered what had changed. Were my original messages not Spirit-led? Maybe I was becoming better at discernment. My thoughts jumped from this subject back to the conflict at the Meeting.
And then I got a message, one I thought was just meant for me: “No matter how much you dislike someone, you are still called to answer that of God in them.”
The message kept coming back, but I was still worried maybe it was from me and not from God and didn’t want to stand up… especially because I couldn’t see how this message related to any of the previous ones. (In retrospect, it seems obvious; but at the time, I couldn’t see it.)
Finally, an old member of the Meeting who is a bit senile but very lovable stood up and told of a problem she was having at the group home she lived in. There was a particularly difficult woman who lived there who no one would sit with at meals. The staff had paired Lila up with this woman, forcing her to share meals with her. And she was struggling, because this woman was so angry and spent so much time screaming and she just didn’t know what to do.
By this time, the hour was nearly up. I got one more nudge, and the sense that if I didn’t stand up and deliver this message, that He would just stop talking to me. This was the third time I’d gotten the nudge to stand up and speak, complete with heart racing and feeling like my body was shaking. Finally, I got the message, and I stood and delivered His ministry, that:
We are all called to do something very difficult. We are called to answer that of God in every person, especially those people we don’t like. Though we may not be able to immediately recognize that of God in them, it is there… somewhere.
This turned out to be exactly what Lila needed to hear. She came up to me after and gave me a big hug. And as much as I also needed to hear this message, what I really needed to hear was that nudge from God telling me to stand up and speak. I’ve been so cautious since I stood up once and delivered a message I knew, deep down, wasn’t Spirit-Led. And I realized that the way I’d been thinking about discernment was wrong. I was assuming that it was better to not stand when you’re not certain than to stand and speak when you’re not sure. But reflecting on it later, it became clear to me that I was being too hesitant and that I hadn’t been standing when He was calling me to. If one stands in Meeting for Worship and delivers an ego-led message, what’s the harm? Usually it just disrupts Meeting for a few minutes, and then we return to our worship. But if one doesn’t stand when the Spirit is urging one to, one is disobeying God. One is saying to God, “No, I don’t want to speak,” or, “No, I don’t think that message needs to be shared.”
Friends, as important as discernment is, I urge us all not to use it as an excuse to disobey God. If any of us receives a message that is to be shared, don’t hesitate.