Dear friends,
Every year, I imagine that this time
around my summer will be a little less crazy. And every year, Yearly
Meeting season makes that an impossibility. This month, I spent most
of my days out of town, attending Quaker gatherings in New York,
Maryland and Ohio. These Yearly Meeting sessions have taken most of
my time and attention, leaving me feeling a bit disconnected from my
community in DC. The balance between local work and the wider
fellowship is delicate, and I anticipate that the coming month will
be a time for me to pivot and refocus on local concerns and more
sedentary work. Though it has been enriching to dive deeply into the
wider world of Friends, I am looking forward to being home for a
while.
My first trip out of town was to New
York Yearly Meeting, at the Silver Bay YMCA camp on Lake George
in upstate New York. Gathering on Lake George meant that when we were
not engaged in Yearly Meeting business, we were free to go kayaking
or sailing, or to go hiking in the surrounding woods. Though I had
attended Yearly Meeting sessions in a variety of beautiful locations,
this resort atmosphere was something new!
I felt particularly blessed that Faith
and I were able to be present with a number of other visiting
Friends, including Jon Watts and
Maggie Harrision, who are engaged in a sustained ministry of calling
Friends to spiritual
nakedness. Jon and Maggie really challenged New York Yearly
Meeting during an evening plenary session, urging Friends to set
aside the suffocating comfort of respectability and to dive boldly
into God's love. In one particularly intense moment, Maggie asked
Friends why the reports from New York Yearly Meeting's local
congregations rarely mentioned God. Isn't that what this is all
about? You could have heard a pin drop as Friends took in what
Maggie was saying. And then, someone yelled Amen!
After New York Yearly Meeting, Faith
and I drove down to Virginia for a wedding. I had a day back in DC
before I was on the road again, this time to Baltimore
Yearly Meeting - a fellowship of Quakers in Virginia,
Pennsylvania, DC and Maryland. BYM holds it annual gatherings at
Frostburg State University, out in the western panhandle of Maryland.
Getting there was easy, though, since I routinely travel out that way
en route to Ohio and points further west.
Baltimore Yearly Meeting felt familiar.
Because I live within the geographical territory of Baltimore Yearly
Meeting, I run into BYM Friends a lot - whether visiting their local
Meetings, attending their events, or welcoming them at Capitol Hill
Friends. Though I am not a member of BYM, visiting their annual
sessions did feel like something of a homecoming to me.
The theme of BYM's gathering this year
was "Spirit-led Social Action," and I had the opportunity
to speak with Friends about my experience of God's leading me to
participate in the Occupy movement when it first erupted in the fall
of 2011. I spoke as part of a two-person panel during BYM's
Tuesday-night plenary session, sharing what it felt like to be led by
the Holy Spirit into social witness that is outside my comfort zone.
I would never have chosen to become an organizer for the Occupy
movement on my own, but I am so grateful that I was obedient to the
promptings of Christ within!
Because I yielded to the quiet but
persistent nudges of God in my heart, I am now connected to a broader
community of those who are working for economic justice. I have met
so many amazing people who have changed my life for the better, and I
am hopeful that my presence has a positive influence. During the
plenary, I shared how God opens opportunities for me to bear witness
to Christ's love and power within the economic justice community.
Most crucially, I spoke about the spiritual dynamics of activism and
community organizing, and about the need to stay rooted in the Spirit
of God. There are so many other forces that would shake us from our
Foundation; if we do not take great care, it is easy to get caught up
in a spirit of chaos rather than the Spirit of love, order and peace
that Christ sends.
I hope that I was faithful in
communicating to Friends that our social witness must be, first and
foremost, a testimony to the love, life and power that we experience
in the Spirit of Jesus. Specific outcomes are important - sometimes
we are called to "win" - but the highest objective must
always be to remain faithful to the witness that God desires to bear through our lives. This takes great discernment, a practice that we
as Friends of Jesus can bring to these movements.
Following my visit to Baltimore Yearly
Meeting, I was only home for a few days before Faith and I were back
on the road. Once again, we drove out through western Maryland, but
this time our destination was Barnesville, Ohio - the gathering place
of Ohio Yearly Meeting.
After visiting so many gatherings this summer, it was a blessing to
finally come home to the Yearly Meeting where we are members.
Visiting among other bodies of Friends is wonderful, but there is a
particular joy that comes when we gather with our particular
covenanted community. Our care and responsibility for one another
guides and sustains me in a special way.
I was really struck this year by the
way in which my Yearly Meeting handles disagreement. We had several
opportunities to engage in prayerful discernment around hard issues
this year, and I felt like we were generally able to keep our
conversation grounded in prayer and loving concern for one another.
There is a sense in Ohio Yearly Meeting that our unity runs deeper
than opinions about particular issues. While outward agreement is
ultimately important, I am grateful to experience an inward,
spiritual unity that allows us to wrestle with disagreements in a
manner that ultimately draws us closer to God in Jesus Christ.
I envision Ohio Yearly Meeting as a
circle with Jesus Christ standing at the center. Individuals in our
Yearly Meeting stand at various points around the circle; we
emphasize different things, and there are places where we are not in
full agreement. There were several explicit points of
tension this year - including our relationship with Olney
Friends School; our testimony
against the consumption of alcoholic beverages; and our shared
understanding of human sexuality. Each of these are places where we
could fall into destructive division and mistrust. But God is
teaching us a better way.
As we gather around Jesus and draw
nearer to him, we come closer to one another. Submitting ourselves to
Christ's light, we find our individual perspectives relativized
(though not invalidated), and we are able to see how God is speaking
through those with whom we strongly disagree. There is a deep faith
present in Ohio Yearly Meeting that, if we wait together in the light
of the Holy Spirit, we will be shown the way forward together.
It is probably safe to assume that all
of us will be surprised by what "way forward" looks like. I
am learning that having a variety of perspectives in my community can be a sign of good health, despite the fact that, at first
glance, it may seem like chaos and disunity. We read in Scripture
that Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Yet, we know
that we ourselves do change, and that our individual human
viewpoints are often too limited to embrace the truth that Christ
desires to reveal to us.
When we come together as a community in
prayer, seeking after the Lord's will, I experience the Spirit
guiding us into greater understanding and unity as a body. We
continue to have our own individual perspectives, but they are
tempered and refined in the fire of Christ's light. When we hold our
disagreements in loving prayer, the Spirit intercedes within us and
binds us together in a deeper unity that surpasses opinions.
At the conclusion of our time together
in Barnesville, I felt hopeful for the future of Ohio Yearly Meeting.
I had a strong sense that Christ is at work in our midst, and that we
are being invited into the new (yet ancient) way of Jesus. God is
giving us an opportunity to embrace Jesus' example, laying down our
lives for one another and surrendering our need to be correct. I am
learning that the true meaning of strength is to bear the burdens of
others - not only physically, but spiritually.
I pray that my life will serve to
lighten the burden of those around me, that I may lay aside my own
need to be vindicated, remembering that Jesus
lay aside every honor and privilege that were rightfully his,
bearing the cross for his friends. Therefore
God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name that is above
every name. I pray that we in Ohio Yearly Meeting will find this
scripture fulfilled in our hearing, that through our shared
submission to Jesus we be brought into the fullness of his truth, unity
and love.
One last item before I close: You may
recall that this June I
was arrested by the US Capitol Police for accompanying my friend
Deborah
Harris to speak to Jamie
Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, during his visit to
the Senate Banking Committee. I did not expect to be arrested, much
less to be jailed for most of the day and accused of falsifying my
identity! It also came as a surprise when I learned that my arrest
could theoretically be punished by up to six months in prison. But I
give praise to God that my co-defendents and I accepted a deal on
Monday which will allow the charges against us to be dropped,
assuming we do not get re-arrested in the next six months!
I have no idea how prayer works, but it
is my experience that there is nothing more powerful than the
prayerful petitions of God's faithful people. I know for a fact that
I have a small army of prayer warriors who are interceding on my
behalf. Thank you so, so much. Your prayers are making a huge impact on my life. Please do not stop!
In the month ahead, please pray that I
be grounded more deeply in the Holy Spirit as I seek to be a faithful
worker in my roles with Friends United
Meeting, Capitol
Hill Friends and Occupy
Our Homes DC. I would also ask for you to pray specifically that
our community at Capitol Hill Friends be built up in Christ's power
this month. In recent weeks, several active members of our fellowship
have moved away to pursue educational opportunities; we need God's strength and guidance as we
continue to serve as a spiritual sanctuary in the midst of our city.
May the grace and peace of Jesus Christ
be with you all.
In his light and love,
Micah Bales
1 comment:
Micah!
This is Zac Dutton! I hope you are well.
I am inspired to share with you my own ideas about the concept of unity, because they are similar to yours. It seems to me that unity comes first. We cannot come to intellectual agreement until first we are in unity. This reflects your idea of "Deeper Unity." The worship, the prayer, the common experience of the divine need to be felt by all in a gathered way before we should even broach a subject! For, so to speak, how can we expect to follow God's will if we all aren't feeling tuned into his presence? You are on to something...I think.
Here's a link to my blog where I said that at the very end:
http://theliberalquaker.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/liberal-quakerism-as-mystical-quakerism-seeking-the-nameless-divine-with-thomas-kelly/
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