Ravens and Wildflowers
- windycooler
- Apr 14
- 2 min read
Look at the ravens, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more. Has anyone by fussing before the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? If fussing can’t even do that, why fuss at all? Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don’t fuss with their appearance—but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? ...don’t you think [God will] attend to you, take pride in you, do [God's] best for you?
Welcome! The above is a quote from The Message's translation of the Bible from Luke 12: 22-24. If you are interested in how your worshiping community can support all ministries—everyone's spiritual gifts—and honor all of our needs for right relationship, this is a community for you. This is especially for those of us who are struggling with mighty hurt in our Quaker communities because of what Marty Grundy, in her popular Pendle Hill pamphlet of the same name, called the Quaker tendency to make lawns of "tall poppies." We cut down those who stand out, especially for bringing forward a call to public ministry. Once we've been cut, sometimes many times, some of us become despairing. We start finding ways around our home communities while still speaking at them, wanting others to change their behavior but unwilling to risk continued vulnerability to them. We may have systems we have created that we are sure would fix everything if only they were used. I (Windy, the convener) have done this, anyway. Have you?
This project, the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry, is a project of spiritual labor with all of us, for all of us. It began as a two-year series of relatively informal cooperative projects between disparate Quaker organizations, including Friends General Conference, Quaker Leadership Center, Powell House (the retreat center for New York Yearly), and others. You can see some of the fruits of those partnerships, which included 13 public events and myriad essays and lectures, by following these links:
Strong and Courageous: A Panel on Quaker Public Ministry Where is this project going? With additional resources, it will grow into a cohort-based educational and support program for Quaker meetings and worshipping communities that are ready to take some focused first or second steps toward discerning and supporting ministry fully in their own context. For right now, we have some free events coming up. The first is a focus group on public ministry led by Lynette Davis on May 3rd. Our convener will be traveling this summer to 10 yearly meetings in the US with a message (and sometimes workshop) based on her doctoral work called The War for and Against Quakers: Right Relationship and Public Ministry in the Religious Society of Friends. You can also find her at the Publishers of the Truth Conference at Pendle Hill this May. For now, let us know if you want to be on our mailing list, join in the conversation here, and let's co-create the world we have been looking for with whatever we have.
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