QuakerSpeak | Am I Good Enough to be a Quaker? @Quakerspeak | Uploaded March 2021 | Updated October 2024, 11 hours ago.
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Filming and Editing by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
Music: "Ghost Byzantine" by Blue Dot Sessions
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Transcript:
Sometimes sitting in worship can be excruciatingly uncomfortable. The way I describe it (and this came to me many, many years ago sitting in worship): I feel like all the other Quaker’s minds are like old Irishsetter dogs; they come into worship, they circle in front of the fire for a couple of times, and they settle into the silence. And my brain is like a chihuahua with the mailman stepping onto the front porch — just yapping yapping yapping yapping yapping. I later learned about the monkey mind of Buddhism but just constant.. constant chatter, so it’s sometimes very, very challenging and also a gift.
Am I Good Enough to be a Quaker?
I’m Mary Linda McKinney; I live in Nashville, Tennessee; and I’m a longtime member of Nashville Friends Meeting although for the last three years I’ve been on sojourn with a number of other faith communities.
So what does it mean to me to be a bad Quaker? And I actually think I have to step back from that and say what does it mean to be a good Quaker? So I think there are two answers to that: one is cultural and one is spiritual, and I’m bad at being a cultural Quaker. I think I’m good at being a spiritual Quaker.
A Distinction Between Culture and Spirit
I have severe ADD. I always march to my own drummer and my drummer doesn’t play the type of music that anybody around me ever wants to hear. I’m pretty much a misfit in any community that I’m around, and that includes Quakers. I don’t make small talk; I’m blunt but not in the good Quakerly kind of ways of being blunt. Culture is very uncomfortable for me sometimes. But spiritually to be a good Quaker is to seek the will of God as an individual and corporally with others, and from that perspective I feel like I’m a good Quaker because I do want to live my life letting God’s will flow through me and I want to do that in community with others.
Showing Up As You Are
I think God always meets us where we are, and over the decade that I have been a Friend I have been in so many different states of being and meeting for worship was both a comfort to me and a challenge for me but I was being as good a Friend as I knew how to be or was able to be, and being there as my authentic self was what I had to offer to God at the point. So I’ll say that I think when we show up that’s all God requires of us.
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The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
QuakerSpeak is a bi-weekly video series. New video every other THURSDAY!
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
http://fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
Music: "Ghost Byzantine" by Blue Dot Sessions
___
Transcript:
Sometimes sitting in worship can be excruciatingly uncomfortable. The way I describe it (and this came to me many, many years ago sitting in worship): I feel like all the other Quaker’s minds are like old Irishsetter dogs; they come into worship, they circle in front of the fire for a couple of times, and they settle into the silence. And my brain is like a chihuahua with the mailman stepping onto the front porch — just yapping yapping yapping yapping yapping. I later learned about the monkey mind of Buddhism but just constant.. constant chatter, so it’s sometimes very, very challenging and also a gift.
Am I Good Enough to be a Quaker?
I’m Mary Linda McKinney; I live in Nashville, Tennessee; and I’m a longtime member of Nashville Friends Meeting although for the last three years I’ve been on sojourn with a number of other faith communities.
So what does it mean to me to be a bad Quaker? And I actually think I have to step back from that and say what does it mean to be a good Quaker? So I think there are two answers to that: one is cultural and one is spiritual, and I’m bad at being a cultural Quaker. I think I’m good at being a spiritual Quaker.
A Distinction Between Culture and Spirit
I have severe ADD. I always march to my own drummer and my drummer doesn’t play the type of music that anybody around me ever wants to hear. I’m pretty much a misfit in any community that I’m around, and that includes Quakers. I don’t make small talk; I’m blunt but not in the good Quakerly kind of ways of being blunt. Culture is very uncomfortable for me sometimes. But spiritually to be a good Quaker is to seek the will of God as an individual and corporally with others, and from that perspective I feel like I’m a good Quaker because I do want to live my life letting God’s will flow through me and I want to do that in community with others.
Showing Up As You Are
I think God always meets us where we are, and over the decade that I have been a Friend I have been in so many different states of being and meeting for worship was both a comfort to me and a challenge for me but I was being as good a Friend as I knew how to be or was able to be, and being there as my authentic self was what I had to offer to God at the point. So I’ll say that I think when we show up that’s all God requires of us.
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
