Clearness rapids

Roland Carn reflects, as a scientist, on his encounter with Quakerism

I came to Yearly Meeting, earlier this year, with an empty mind. Nothing in the Events Listing or the Agenda grabbed me as especially interesting, or relevant to where I am or what I am doing. As the Yearly Meeting unfolded, in worship, in business, in interest groups, and personal encounters, each ministry spoke to my condition. I found myself on a journey, white-water kayaking through spiritual rapids in a Meeting for Clearness.

Stories of the Light pushing for action, from Samuel (I Samuel 3) through Paul (I Corinthians 12:4-7 and Galatians 5:22-23), Gill Pennington, Jennifer Kavanagh and Craig Barnett, echoed my experience. I have been pushed, guided and called. Doors have opened for me and I have walked through – sometimes. In hindsight, I see the movement of the Spirit. Then, ‘in the moment’, it’s the trivial daily round, getting on with life. Confusion and uncertainty are always in the background.

Coming to the edge

I have pushed, too, only to be slapped back, disappointed and frustrated – that way is not for me, not now. Is this what George Fox meant when he said: ‘This I know experimentally?’ It is the practical scientist testing the hypothesis: ‘God calls’. 

I have known uncertainty and indecision. My life seems one, long confusion in a fog of vagueness. Even in the midst of people, I am lonely and frightened. I do not see the support, the upholding, the help, the encouragement or the appreciation. I’ve been to the edge and faced the empty blackness. The ministry, ‘When you come to the edge, take the next step. Either you will find earth under your feet or God will give you wings,’ renews my courage.

I cannot see the talents, skills and experience that make me who I am. In the ‘tide race’ of Yearly Meeting, I looked for my gifts. Against the great Pauline spiritual gifts, the homely gifts of others encouraged me.

I have the unsociable, unpopular, unwanted, uncomfortable gift of disruption. I ask questions, sometimes penetrating, always unwelcome, that pull people back to what is eternal. I disrupt their warm cosy group. A Friend, on the heels of this insight, told me of the gift of conflict, which compliments mine.

Differences strengthen

I urged a Friend to face an issue and encouraged him to take it forward. He was violently offended. We worked it through and became the better friends for the experience. I once watched Geoffrey Durham, at an Area Meeting retreat, tear a newspaper into pieces and show that it was still a whole. Yes, it was an illusion. Yes, it was not the truth. But it is an allegory for our conflicts. Tensions and disagreements tear us apart individually and corporately but we are one whole, and differences strengthen us.

I think in systems, mechanisms and how things work. I see consequences. I can make plans. I seek insight and the clarity that dispel my fog. I can make decisions in uncertainty. If I understood it, I might call this the gift of prophesy. It makes me adventurous. I go where no one wants to follow. 

‘Why don’t people understand me, why don’t I understand them?’ I asked in my child’s head. Now, a passion for the way we behave to each other is part of who I am. It led me into research psychology and to the limits of academic understanding. My passion evolved into my career in software systems, and morphed again into business life and became a concern for ethical behaviour in business. It was tested in a Clearness Meeting in my Area Meeting that encouraged me to continue into the Quakers and Business Group and in my own businesses. Now I work on small face-to-face encounters. They are where we do our business with that of God in each other. That is where I try to live out my faith in the world. 

Working with people is the ultimate frontier. Working with Quakers is a yet greater challenge. My gifts conflict with peace, social witness, spiritual concerns or the deepening of our worship. They disturb our calm serenity. They challenge our freedom from structure, ritual and formal discipline. Contemporary Quakers, in general, seem to have a deep antipathy to all things business, money and commerce. I hope one day to reconcile and so strengthen both Quakers and secular business. I am running out of time. Rapids end at waterfall’s abyss.

I believe my childhood concern for people’s behaviour is a concern, in the full Quaker sense. It is part of me. I am empowered and impelled to act. But a Clearness Meeting has never validated it. Corporate concerns are concerns of a whole Meeting or the Yearly Meeting. They are for the whole Society. Mine is a personal concern. 

I listened to ministry echoing my own dark times, doubts and discomforts. Friends ministered of their experience on clearness committees and how they themselves were tested. They spoke to me. Of the three other couples on our wedding clearness committee forty years ago, only one couple is still together. Friends in my Meeting are busy, committed, active Quakers. They have their own Quaker life to attend to. Can they see through my disruptiveness to discern the hand of God in my life? Are they grounded enough to engage with the face-to-face behaviour where I work?

But who am I to disrupt others? The business of working face-to-face with equality, integrity and community seems very far removed from the Quaker mainstream movements of peacebuilding in far away Africa, urgent political activism for climate change and economic justice or immediate relief for refugees and migrants.

Even stewardship of our Meeting houses is more exciting and satisfying. I am in, over my head, rushing towards the waterfall. Why could I never learn to swim like everyone else?

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