In Quaker theology the divine is within each of us. It is through what we call “waiting worship” that we wait upon the divine to speak to our corporate whole — the divine within each of us, together made whole — in the waiting space. Our waiting worship is a space of corporate discernment, religious creativity, and right relationship.
We are exploring how Quaker practice can help us effectively grapple with the realities of abuse in our own families and communities.
The Listening Project
Windy Cooler gathered Quakers from diverse backgrounds committed to spirit-led discernment on what our communities are called to do about abuse among us. They confidentially listened in waiting worship to the lived testimony of Friends and together created a tool for Quaker meetings everywhere.
Why are we listeners offering “discernment” around the presence of abuse instead of offering policy solutions to an abuse problem as we understand it?
Certainly some brave Friends have, for many decades, attempted just this kind of policy solution. And indeed there are policy solutions that exist in some meetings and in the world around us. The question we are asking is: have these solutions met our needs? Are we really aware of what our needs are? Are we living in that life and power?
Acknowledgements
We want to speak out of the silence, with gratitude, the contributions to the corporate whole of three Friends in particular: Judy Brutz, Windy Cooler, Sarah Allen. and Margaret Webb.
Windy created the Listening Project. After carrying this concern for many years, she remains an elder supporting this effort, while she moves forward with a leading on how Quakers support public ministry.
Margaret is the former pastor at New Garden Friends in North Carolina. Margaret is the co-author, with Windy Cooler, of the discernment model that grounded the Listening Project and that Windy has used with Quaker communities in crisis for three years.
Sarah has contributed the query that is the grounding for this project, for which she has transformed the famous words of our founder George Fox on the topic of war.
Judy contributed to research on the topic of intimate violence in Quaker community, having two peer reviewed articles appear in the Journal of Marriage and Family in the mid-80s. Her research concluded that Quakers have the same rates of violence in the home as any other community.