by Paul Christiansen
Western Quakers seem tired to me.
Those of us on committees feel it most clearly, I think, especially people on Nominating like me: a sense of how important our Society’s work is, and a sense of the limited energy we have for it. There are fewer of us to carry on larger tasks; our strongest and wisest have been carrying us for a long time, and when they lay down their burdens, the work is not taken up again with such vigor or skill. Some have life left, but it seems that many feel stretched, weary. Not enough coffee and too many cups.
The Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests, as many may remember, were full of fire: the fire of youth. Dr. King began at twenty-six and died at thirty-nine. Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer and all the others organized, of course; they had been at their work a long time, too, and were good at it. But without young people, the protests of the ‘60s would have been not a roar, but a cough.
Now Friends find themselves facing similar problems: staggering inequality and injustice, perpetual war, planet-wide crises. Yet we’re tired.
So where are Quaker youth?
There are a few of us, scattered thinly in meetings. Twenty or thirty Young Adult Friends gather once a year at North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session. While there, we’ve sometimes discussed this and related issues. I live with six other young Friends in a house in Seattle; I’m the only one who goes anywhere on Sundays.
Meetings must have young people to keep young people, which is why my housemates attend Annual Session and almost nothing else; it’s where our F(f)riends are. A group of one or three will most likely wither, six or seven can make a go of it, twenty will last. In absence of six or twenty, many simply drift away.
One place that has that twenty is the Western Young Friends New Year’s Gathering, which has alternated between Oregon and California for decades. It is entirely run by young people, which adds a vital sense of ownership that’s quite attractive to youth who feel unwelcome elsewhere in the Society.
Mark that: there is a feeling common among Quakers under thirty, or even forty, that Friends over forty have been in charge so long that there’s no way for us young people to contribute. When my fellow youth attend their home meetings, they are usually still thought of as children; when they go elsewhere they are outsiders. It is not intentional exclusion, but long memories and unspoken traditions shut people out— also true among younger Friends, I admit. Quakerism, a Friend said, is “Like a game of Mao,” Mao being a game in which the rules are never explained, and new players learn the rules when they’re punished for breaking them. It is a game designed to frustrate; the Society of Friends can be similarly hostile.
When young Friends are welcomed to participate, we often wind up as the token young person on a committee. This can exhaust and deaden, for committees are not designed for action or vitality; Quaker tradition moves slowly. Tradition guides, but tradition grows comfortable, and change grows hard. When we young folks try to act, we’re told “We don’t do it that way,” and we’re never told why. Older Friends must talk with us about Quaker traditions and history, or we won’t learn them; only by trusting and supporting us in our ideas can we become part of the life of the meeting.
But then, Quakers don’t even talk openly about worship.
In my home meeting, many of the children are uncomfortable in silent worship; when I asked them about it, I found that some had no idea what was going on. Even college-age Quakers can treat silence as an awkward if customary chore. Several tell me that silent meeting makes no sense or holds no appeal. If Meeting for Worship is a such a problem for young people, the trouble runs deep. It’s not that we were raised wrong. Quaker parents seem to raise excellent non-Quaker kids. This is fine for everyone except Quakers; good for society but not the Religious Society. Do we want to be Shakers, relying on conversion alone? With “Mao”-like silence about the traditions, that won’t end well. If Quakers as a group have something to offer the world, if silent worship has meaning, then all of us need to talk about it.
Just as Quaker practice needs to be demystified for young people, Meeting for Worship needs to be remystified. The silence is only deep if people know there is depth in it; otherwise the silence that centers becomes the silence that baffles— or bores. Being Quaker hinges not on keeping quiet, but on knowing when to speak, what to say, and how to listen.
Friends’ unspoken ban on proselytizing— and it is a ban— has cause, since we all know what comes of religious bullying. But to speak truth to others, especially to children, is not proselytizing. It is witness and integrity. So I beg you, speak the truth in your hearts to the rising generation… and ask us about the truth in ours.
Years ago, on the last day of NPYM’s annual session, we gathered in worship, and the kids came in for the last fifteen minutes. And when they had joined the silence, I was moved by the Spirit to stand and say, “Now we are whole.”
It’s still true. If Friends feel weary, it is because Friends are less than whole; our next generation feels cut off. The world’s changes for good come from the unity of wise old eyes and fiery young blood— and no good change can come at all until we are whole.
Look to the youth. Speak the truth in your hearts. Listen to what we say in return. Trust our passion. Give us a reason to believe. That is our hope. That is our future. That is our way.
Paul Christiansen is a member of Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue, WA. He is active in NPYM’s Young Adult Friends and Eastside’s children’s program. His blog: generousgrasp.wordpress.com.
I think this article eloquently addresses a concern that I have been increasingly encountering in my discussions with other young friends. While naming the problem is important, what steps can be taken in light of this understanding? How can we begin to make older friends aware of this issue?
Good question, Will. Ideas, anyone? I’ll also pass this along to the author.
Hi, Will —
Well, personally I started out trying to raise awareness by writing this article. Feel free to use it as you like to raise awareness.
My next suggestion for young people of all ages is to speak out, respectfully but firmly. Conversation between equals is the rock that we have to build on.
Next, talk to people even younger, so that we don’t have the same problem in a few years.
Lastly — and I admit this is really tenuous at the moment, but I think it’s really going to be the key — we need something to really believe in. Call it a cause. What that cause may be… well, that we need to work out. But I suspect we need something to act on, a rallying cry.
Paul, thank you dearly for these thoughts. As a 29-year-old birthright Friend finding my way in my adopted Meeting in Portland, it’s a difficult line to walk between identifying as a Friend and as a Young Adult Friend. There are many rumblings lately about the generation gap between twentysomething Quakers and fiftysomething Quakers. What I had previously been given to understand is that there aren’t a whole lot of active Friends in their 20s – this is the time in our lives when we’re branching out, moving around, finding a partner, and when we start to settle down and have babies, we suddenly realize that we want to raise them with some sort of spiritual grounding.
What I see happening at Multnomah Meeting, though, is a groundswell of people our age exploring Quakerism and connecting with the YAF group. A few of us grew up Quaker but many of us are trying Friends on for size. When I go to Meeting on Sundays, I see maybe ten YAFs. Our monthly potlucks, however, have around twenty attenders on average. There is a centeredness to these gatherings, but they are far from a traditional Meeting for Worship. What do we get out of that that we don’t get out of Meeting? Will we, too, move into a space as we grow older of taking that energy into Meeting? Are we evolving into our own Meeting?
I care deeply about the traditions of Quakerism, and I grew up learning about them, not only in my home Meeting and in my Young Friends group but also at Westtown and at Guilford. I want to know that we as the younger generation of Friends are moving forward while holding those traditions dear, while being grounded in the faith of Friends. I hope that we are doing it with joy for each other and for those of the older generation who can usher us through our life’s transitions, and for whom I hope we can do the same.
Paul,
Friend, you speak my mind. The game of Quaker Mao is exceptionally discouraging for 50-somethings like me, a convinced attender for the past 5 years. While I see value in Quaker Process, it gives rise to passive-aggressive aspects within the “old guard” that stymie decision-making progress. Thankfully, it is the deep wonder of expectant waiting in Silent Worship that keeps me, a military brat accustomed to being a hard-headed newcomer, engaged in stirring change to perforate those unidentified edges that encircle “traditions.”
Hi Lauren!
Austin meeting sounds similar to what’s going on in Multnomah; we have at least 10 birthright, under 35 Friends in our meeting and probably 15 others that are attenders. Some are seriously considering membership, some are not. But we have potlucks that are great and we go out for pints from time to time.
I find much of the so-called “life of the meeting” completely irrelevant. I serve on committees and participate and always go to meeting, but the “issues” of our peace and social concerns committee (primarily Colombia and death penalty) do not speak to my condidtion. I am an activist by profession, training, family heritage and ministry, and am working now to have my ministry in reproductive and sexual health and justice education and work taken under the care of the meeting, and I hope that will help me stay on my path but also provide some openings for the meeting itself to do new work. I believe the great challenge facing meetings is relevance, both internally and externally. Meetings are loath to “lay down” committees or work that are no longer fruitful, but I find that when nominating can’t come up with a single person to be on peace and social concerns, perhaps the problem is not that “young adult friends aren’t invested in the life of the meeting” but rather the work of the committee itself has faded into obsolescence. Quakers have a valuable, unique, and vital message and approach badly needed in this world and if the “old guard” aren’t interested in working with young friends it will be their loss. I don’t plan on going anywhere (unitarianism, ugh) and I have the wherewithall to stand in my meeting and demand change. I hope other adult young friends realize the power they have in their youth and energy.
The challenge as I see it, however, is to work *with* the “old guard” and not against it. Hence my title. Youthful energy without some experience behind it can fizzle out in a hurry after frustrations or reinventions of the wheel. And creating any kind of adversarial relationship against the older Friends just replicates our problem, only going the other way! It’s worth remembering that while Quakerism may be opaque to younger eyes, youth culture can be similarly opaque to the generations that came before. Wiser, I think, to have the conversation, and trust that the leading of the Spirit will make itself known.
[...] I’m going to take up the invitation offered by young Friend Paul Christiansen, in a comment to his article in the Western Friend, “Younger Blood, Older Eyes.” [...]
I took up Paul’s invitation to “have the conversation” and started a comment on this article, and it kept getting longer. So I finally put it into a blog post, and you can find it at:
http://afriendlyletter.com/index.php/hard-core-quaker/the-gospel-according-to-yafs-are-friends-tired-plus-fix-it-with-the-seven-ups/
Well, I have a slightly different view from the one that Paul lays down in this piece. I’ve been a member of my yearly meeting’s RE committee for nearly nine years. This summer also falls on the six-year anniversary of when I took a position that found a great deal of the yearly meeting turned against me. I opposed someone being nominated to the FUM General Board…a YAF no less.
My reason for that was misquoted/taken out of context and fairly greatly misunderstood by many people. That’s because it was hard to “quantify” it in words because it was a spiritual leading that I was asked to justify/quantify in concrete terms! Taking such a position won me some enemies in the yearly meeting, with some opposing me being allowed to do all sorts of things. By the spring of 2007, I was dealing with that pain and the pain of good, old-fashioned politics working its way into my local meeting because certain people were bothered by the fact that I have difficulty sitting still due to neurological problems.
I had a seizure and ran my car into a stone wall, killing a friend and nearly killing me. Interim Meeting of my yearly meeting was about a week later and people heard that I had one foot in the grave; this news spread to others at FGC Gathering shortly after that. By a great miracle, I survived and was even able to attend my yearly meeting’s annual session. I ran into a lot of people who were thrilled to see that I was alive and well (some of whom I’d locked horns with in the days leading up to my accident). But one YAF walked up to me and asked me why I bothered coming to yearly meeting because nobody wants me there.
Now, I’m facing another test of my patience. Certain people are trying to prevent me from attending worship, including business meeting because they feel that my occasionally intense way of conveying ideas (something I compare to the image of a old southern preacher or politician) is aggressive and counter to Friends’ views on non-violence; when asked what they’d do about George Fox’s manner of speech, those same people have said they’d prevent him from attending worship too!
The problem isn’t generational, it’s the basic human behavior of cliquishness, territorial aggression, and fear of those who are different. You’ve had that everywhere you’ve gone and you’ll have it everywhere you go.
Chuck Fager’s 7-point plan says it all. I hope everyone will read his blog post.
I’ve posted a response to Chuck Fager’s response over at his blog.
Joshua — there are probably lots of divisions and cliques in Quakerism; I’m just talking about the one I’m in the best position to address.
Paul: I know that was your intent. My point was that the issue you raise is with an intrinsic human behavior and not with Quakerism.
Well, maybe we can fix that too.
Paul– I can’t find your comment on my blog, and I suspect I may have some technical issues there. Can you send it to me in an email too, so I can work with it? Thanks, and sorry about that.
Chuck — I would love to, but I can’t find your email address on your blog, either. I’ll try reposting the response, however.
[...] to a piece in the Western Friend by YAF Paul Christiansen of Seattle’s Salmon Bay Meeting, “Younger Blood, Older Eyes”. In it I noted a voiced concern about some YAFs feeling left out and shut out by OFFs (”Old [...]
Hi Paul, after discovering zombies and bad code on my blog, which disabled Comments as well as doing otgher mischief, I think it’s back on track, and there’s more conversation including our emails, at this post: http://www.afriendlyletter.com/hard-core-quaker/are-friends-tired-more-conversation-with-yafs/
Thank you, Paul, for a thoughtful article and to everyone else for thoughtful comments, Our year as Resident Friends in Auckland (Aotearoa/New Zealand Yearly Meeting) and our current experience as RFs in Melbourne (Victoria Regional Meeting of Australia Yearly Meeting) suggest the mystery of where is the next generation of Quakers is extant here as well as in the western US.. I hear of an actice community of YAFs on line and I know about the great JF camps at NPYM, but wonder how we will get them into our face-to-face Meetings. Paul, your analysis resonates with me, though I treasure the traditions. I do remember “lying low” my first several years as a convinced Friend while i just avsorbed the ‘culture” by osmosis.. We need to do more Quakerism 101 and Quaker Quest and just be more open about who we are and what we are doing and WHY. Your comment about being “on fire” for a “cause” also resonates, I want us to be a ‘big tent” and “inclusive” but still believe we need to be BELIEVERS able to articulate what we believe and demonstrate it with our lives, not pussyfooting about tradistion, style and fearful that our language may offend someone. Let us speak out, respecting our differences, listening for the deep roots of our commonalities and above all, letting our lives speak. Thank you all for being who you are and in my/our tent of Quakerism in its variety and its vitality whether on line or face to face or both. Blessings, Lesley Laing, South Mountain FM NPYM and Friends House Local Meeting, VRM AYM (Melbourne)
I read Paul’s article, Chuck Fager’s response to it, the article by Stephen Willis Dotson, and read the letter that was submitted by Paul for the group Rising Light Action in Western Friend. I can’t say I’ve had the same experiences that Paul described, though I’ve only really attended 2 Meetings; Reno Monthly Meeting (nearly 10 years ago) and now Honolulu Monthly Meeting, (the last 3 years in Honolulu a 90%+ attendance for Sunday Worship, a 100% attendance for Business Meeting). In both Meetings I’ve been treated with acceptance & respect, not a “token” young person, though I can see it having had similar experiences in other non-Quaker groups where the composition is mostly older people. There are a lack of young adults that attend Meeting for Worship (in Honolulu thats changing a little, as there are finally enough Young Adult Friends for me to plan our first ever Young Adult Friends only outing). In Honolulu, I regularly volunteer with House & Grounds workdays, teach about once a month for First Day School, rebuilt and maintain their website (sitting on all committees that go with them), and currently co-Clerk Peace Committee (I was asked to Clerk it solely at first but declined) and again, people there have been very welcoming and treated me with respect. My Membership application letter was read out loud this past Sunday, I’ll be surprised if I don’t become a Member, though who knows, anything can happen. I sympathize with those who’ve had these experiences though.