Report from Iowa Yearly Meeting - 2001

IOWA YEARLY MEETING COLLECTION ON CLERKING

Deb spoke about her first Quaker Meeting . "A silence - a living silence overcame me. This living silence is a way of finding inner and outer unity." If we are not birthright Quakers, we tend to be more familiar with secular means of doing business than that done at Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business. Bill Deutsch quoted George Fox, reminding us that "We're not to attend to business like people about town."

In older rural meetings, people learned by example and oral tradition. In urban meetings there may be no oral tradition. Minuting in the face of the Meeting (a practice we began at Penn Valley about 2 years ago - of writing minutes as-we-go) is a tool for staying attentive to the piece of business we're on.

The Clerk keeping centered helps keep the Meeting centered. Our trust in God, in process and expectation makes it our responsibility to listen to each other.

At Iowa Yearly Meeting there is often a sense of centering not only personally but as a community. We were interested in how this can be taught. Many of our meetings are primarily attended by persons who came to Quaker ways relatively late in life. Being refugees, we tend to seek only freedom. This can result in a very individualistic approach. It was asked "how can we help people to love discipline so that God can lead us?" Jon Fisch, Clerk of FCNL, spoke of their gatherings. Over 200 people attend - all with political agendas. He said he tells them, "We're here to seek the Truth together. Have the discipline to go sit down if someone has said what you were going to say."

The past and present Clerks were asked, "How can the experience of being a Clerk make you a better participant/member?" One said, "The hardest thing about being Clerk is setting aside my own opinion about what should happen. What I think is not important. What we think is important." As participants we need to say what we are given and then set aside what we think, and listen to what others feel and think. Inexperienced Quakers come back time after time with their own point of view. We need to share and then just sit with it, remembering to let that of God in the other be foremost. We need to be faithful to the piece (of Truth) we're given and let go of outcome.

In the discussion, several persons spoke: Pendle Hill Pamphlets, The Testimony of integrity and Beyond Consensus were recommended. We need to learn to bring Spirit forward in how we live today - not just slowing down at IYM or our Monthly Meetings, but in our lives.

Deb Fisch pointed out that many of us tend to think of surrender as bad. But there is a surrender that comes from a place of strength, a place of choice. We need to leave our stuff at the door. She said when she became Clerk, Bill Deutsch had told her "when you have a lot to do, take more time in the worship before you start. Hold the Meeting and help the Meeting get centered in the grace of God." This is true in Meeting for Business and in our lives as well.

The Clerk is the servant of the Meeting, not a chairperson of a board that needs a director. You can't be a good head without a good body. The Clerk's job is to be the servant of the voice of God - you're there to listen for the voice of God. We are apt to forget the worship part. We don't need the voice of Cod on every decision - what doesn't can be sent to committees.

The Clerk needs to bring it back to the Spirit of Worship. The Member's job is to channel the Truth into the room and the Clerk discerns from that. Because the Member's job is so important, Jon Fisch said if someone calls and says to him "Do I really need to be at the Meeting (of FCNL)?" he says, the answer is "Yes! You have to be there!"

Bill Deutsch closed with a quote from the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting Epistle:

We are reminded that the purpose of any Meeting for Business is to come into the presence of God; decisions that emerge from the unity experienced in that presence are by-products.