'On the revision committee we are listening for the spirit: prayerful, joyful, creative and bold.' Photo: The Angels appearing to the Shepherds, William Blake, 1809. (detail)
Shepherds’ delight: Rosie Carnall makes a link with the Book of Discipline Revision Committee
‘In accepting the invitation the shepherds have an experience that transforms them.’
Once, when I was an Area Meeting clerk and tired after a Meeting, I put the television on and spent a happy decompression hour watching One Man and His Dog. Green fields, distant humans, and clever dogs herding sheep – it was very soothing. I’ve felt connection with sheepdogs before; that part of me that relaxes when everyone has arrived. Only later did I make the link between clerking and shepherding.
As a Quaker clerk, I’m listening for the signals that guide me to guide the Meeting. Sometimes it seems like we all want to go in different directions but, if I listen well, I can help us to reach the same place in the end. And when it’s one of those Meetings where the light is clear, but the day is not too hot, and the community unites easily and moves together as one, well, it’s simply joyful.
That joy is something I experience as a co-clerk for the Book of Discipline Revision Committee. ‘We encourage the revision committee to be prayerful, joyful, creative and bold,’ said the Yearly Meeting minute. As a new committee, we’re coming together as a community of people united by a common task, entrusted with a precious responsibility.
In that way, I wonder whether we are like the shepherds in the Christmas story. Their role is as a humble and practical group of ordinary people getting on with the task at hand. We on the revision committee can certainly relate to that. In the Christmas story the shepherds are given an invitation, in accepting it they have an experience that transforms them, and they return full of joy and praise to tell others about it.
I don’t know how diverse a group of shepherds outside of Bethlehem would have been – perhaps not very? They were likely all men, although probably with a range of ages. I guess they must have all been from the same area. They all had the same occupation. Our committee community is diverse in these ways and more, coming together to share our different experiences, understandings and knowledge.
We are new to our task, but have guidance on how to approach our work, can learn from how it’s been done before, and have a long history to draw on as we move forward. And, like the shepherds in the Christmas story doubtless were, we are mindful of our responsibility as stewards for the common good. Those sheep they were looking after wouldn’t have just been their sheep, but the sheep that their families and friends depended on. And yet, when the heavens opened and the angels sang, the shepherds took up the invitation.
On the revision committee we are listening for the spirit: prayerful, joyful, creative and bold. We seek the way to express again our Quaker understanding of our faith, rooted as it is in Christianity, and how to reflect the expressions of new light that, as Quakers, we continue to find in the unfolding mystery around us.
