But I can't help wondering whether our 'balance' is rather lightweight. I'm grateful to be in a fellowship that may have found that healthy balance. I once heard Pope Paul VI quoted as telling a group of Catholic women religious in South America that only a person who is genuinely free can truly choose submission-I think that's profoundly true. Too often in the religion industry, 'submission' is a heretical concept of asking some to minimize themselves so that others can enjoy more power or convenience. One fellowship in particular seemed quite totalitarian in its demands with caution and humility I'd say that the results were not necessarily healthy. (My father became an Eastern Orthodox Christian shortly before he died my mother remained estranged from the church until her death.) In my extended family, those who did get involved with the church, however, seemed to plunge in deeply. Much of my family, including my father and mother, rejected the church altogether. In general, my own family didn't do religious things half-way. The individuals were right to risk submitting to the discipline of the church in this matter of public witness, and the church lived up to the trust they showed it by being willing to apply its scrutiny, and then to commit itself to support the witness both financially and in court. When several members of First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, wanted the congregation to evaluate and oversee their refusal to pay military taxes (in a church that was in many ways the embodiment of law-abiding respectability!), I was impressed that this spirit of submission to the discipline of the community was still alive-even in our age of Western individualism.

I loved the process of asking meetings for business to issue traveling minutes before trips to other Friends meetings, especially those in other countries.

I read that even the weightiest of early Friends submitted their manuscripts to committees before publication early Friends ministers asked their meetings to approve their plans to travel in the ministry Friends whose conduct might harm our reputation as a church could expect to be visited and 'labored with.'īy 1974, when I first got involved with Canadian Quakers, our systems of boundaries and consequences were not quite what they were 300 years earlier, but I do remember the searching questions I was asked as part of Ottawa Meeting's processing of my membership request.

Right from my earliest days as a Quaker, I've been intrigued by our peculiar combination of anti-authoritarianism and love of good order.

Christians for the church calendar, is January 7- tomorrow!-on the Gregorian Calendar)

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