SUMMER 2003
ear Friends,
It is wonderful to see so many new faces in the quarter. What an exciting time! Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, we have had more visitors and our meetings now have more new members and attenders. Although our numbers are small, our increase has reminded me of George Fox’s vision of “a great people gathered.”
In Fox’s vision, this was more than just an image of a crowd; for him it was a great number gathered in or under Christ as a hen gathers her chicks. It was a vision of a people gathered by the divine hand. If we are not yet gathered (and how often are we?), it is not at all due to divine inactivity. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Mt. 23:37).
Our numbers are growing, as is our sense of community, but we are nevertheless an extremely small and overtaxed group. We try to do so much, and all of it is good, but due to our size and internal problems inhibiting true community, we remain challenged. If Friends are not yet gathered, and if we are not yet a great people, it may be because we have not allowed it. Perhaps we need to get rid of something, to let go, so that we can be swept together into one. There may be a dozen reasons. We may each have our theories. Surely God is in our midst, and the Spirit blows through us, though we are not always aware. I want to hold on to Fox’s vision and make it my own.
I am well aware that if the community is not gathered, it may also be because I am not willing to be gathered into this community. I seek to be aware of my own occasional participation in the politics of exclusion, blame, or isolationism. To be gathered requires more than awareness and good listening, as important as they are; it requires consent, a “yes” to God and to being gathered. It requires a willingness and readiness to relate in community with others who may be just as afraid, or just as doubtful, overcommitted, hungry, or vulnerable as I. And I need to acknowledge that each is gifted in some way with what the community needs. To be gathered requires that I bring both my gifts and my brokenness—all of me—to the table. Naturally, this requires openness and vulnerability, a willingness and readiness to be moved or changed internally. This means, I believe, that for each of us, being gathered requires openness to ourselves and to the image of God within each of us, letting go of self-images and patterns which constrict or hamper our being and our relating. To not do so is to become static or frozen.
Aware of God’s presence, and open to being moved and changed internally and in relation, may we one day be gathered like chicks under the Divine wing. Perhaps then Fox’s vision will become a reality.
Thank you, Friends, for all you are teaching me and for all you are opening in me. I am grateful for the opportunities you have given me to serve. I pray you will have a glorious and blest summer.
Deep, deep peace
—MichaelRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
