Published: Oct. 2, 2020
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Dear Editor,
I am forwarding to you a message to share with Western Friend readers. I have already shared this message, as led by the Holy Spirit, with both my home meeting and with the leadership of Intermountain Yearly Meeting.
Carlos Valentin III
Dear Pima Monthly Meeting Email List Participants,
The message I share this morning came to me as a seed earlier today, during a period of silent waiting (the state in which I generally try to wash dishes); it continued to develop until it unfurled into the Advice and Queries italicized below. After a period of further reflection and prayer, the Holy Spirit has called me to share it with Pima Meeting, as one would share a message of vocal ministry during a meeting for worship. With its sharing comes the reminder to Friends that, as Friends, God calls us to sit with "vocal" ministries (including virtual ones), to reflect and hold them in the Light (rather than voicing a knee-jerk response or reaction, be said reaction vocal or written).
Advice:
Complacency is the fruit of willful ignorance; in turn, complacency, allowed to fester, will bloom a slick of complicity, from which wafts the inevitable, deathly stench of inaction, and with that inertia, the rot of collaboration, as soft as it is poisonous -- collaboration requiring not even the lifting of a finger. All that it needs to flourish is the silence of selfish and unexamined comfort with the status quo.
Queries:
In a recent podcast in which they addressed the self-worth of members of disenfranchised communities, queer activist Jeffrey Marsh reflected that larger society is generally willing to treat people of the fringe as useful, but not necessarily as worthy of being full members of society. Likewise, our historic Testimonies of Community and Equality are borne of the simple fact that, in God's eyes, we are all valuable as reflections of Her/His/Their holy Light. With that in mind:
Do we Friends uncompromisingly challenge the complacency manifest in the systemic classism, misogyny, racism and queerphobia of the wider world, within our own Religious Society?
Do we Friends treat all who worship with us -- all who consider themselves to be a part of our community (both members and attenders) -- as worthy of being included fully, not only for their gifts of service, but by the merit of their ongoing presence, by merit of the Light they have been led to share within our Religious Society?
When, not only in our local Quaker communities, but in the wider Quaker world (e.g. IMYM, AHYM, FGC, et cetera), have Friends treated each other as useful, for the sharing of resources of time and energy, while at the same time ignoring each other's intrinsic worthiness as blessings of mutual presence in each other's lives -- by the Divinely Simple virtue of being God's children, whom She has brought together in Beloved Community?
In Christ's Light,
Carlos Valentin III
(they/them/theirs)
P.S. Friends are welcome to do with this message of virtual "vocal ministry" what they will; however, if you feel the urge to discuss its contents, please remember that it was forwarded as a ministry borne of worship, not as the thesis of a secular debate.
from Carlos Valentin III, Pima Monthly Meeting, Tucson, AZ (9/28/2020)