With a tender hand
Geoffrey Durham welcomes an absorbing and inspiring new book for elders and overseers and believes that it speaks to all of us
On the cover, it is subtitled ‘a resource book for eldership and oversight’. In her Epilogue, the author calls it ‘a toolkit for discernment’. I would go further than both. I have read Zélie Gross’s With a tender hand three times now, twice from cover to cover, once dipping at random over a period of weeks, and I want to say clearly that in my view she has written an essential maintenance manual for twenty-first century British Quakers. It is a fine companion to Quaker faith & practice.
I expect With a tender hand to become a regular source of inspiration for each of us: elders and overseers, yes – but also clerks and committee members and trustees and wardens and chaplains and the ones who hope one day to have time for a Quaker job and the ones who fear they never will. It covers the ground. I have found it endlessly absorbing.
A generous guide
If I have a fleeting concern it is that, at 432 pages, the book’s sheer size and scope may put readers off – or, worse, make them think they have to learn it by heart before they can become effective elders and overseers. I hope such anxieties are unfounded.
Quakerism is not a driving test and Zélie Gross has not written a spiritual Highway Code. Exactly the opposite: her book is a generous guide to caring for one another. Where there are two sides to a question, she details them both without judgement and supplies the resources necessary to take the next step. She recommends websites, suggests useful books we may not have heard of, quotes the words of Quakers who have been in the same predicament and occasionally – very occasionally – offers us the fruits of her own experience.
When I opened her book for the first time I did what I imagine you will do – I went straight to the index and looked up some of the issues and dilemmas that have given me trouble over the years. Thus, I quickly absorbed her insights into punctuality at Meeting (she helped me see the other side), Children’s Meetings (a crying need), unsuitable ministry (she makes at least two suggestions I hadn’t thought of), coping with misunderstandings (‘people will be difficult and conflict will happen’) and welcoming newcomers (‘listening is probably more important than talking’). In every case I found her approach to be forward-looking, wide-ranging and wise.
Fizz and variety
My little test over, I relaxed into the book. I found myself beguiled by its clarity and style. I was intrigued by the small text boxes that pepper its pages. There are speech bubbles containing snatches of conversation – some real, others invented – that explain appropriate behaviour in the case of the real ones and expose familiarly clunky comments in the case of the fictitious. Other boxes frame well-chosen quotations, relevant points and good practice. Bold and effective, these Post-it-like prompts help the reader understand some of the pressures that influence our behaviour, while allowing Zélie the freedom to include any number of opposing views without the constraint of a narrative context. Crucially, they give the book fizz and variety.
This is not to say there is anything dull about the rest of it. With a tender hand is a caring book about caring, a tender book about tenderness. I could give a hundred examples of the thoughtful and sometimes surprising range of its concerns, but just one must suffice for the moment: immediately following her chapter entitled ‘Addressing Need’, Zélie writes a perfectly pitched section called ‘Receiving Care’. How marvellous – and how Quakerly – that she gives as many insights and as much advice on our feelings around the taking of help as she does on our responses to the providing of it. She addresses our sense of selfishness when we care for ourselves and our unease when comfort is offered from outside. Do we allow someone we care for to care for us? How do we care for ourselves? It is a well-judged study in reciprocity, which lies at the centre of the book, and speaks volumes about its author’s loving approach to her theme.
Divisions
Underlying everything is the idea that many of the apparent divisions between elders and overseers are misleading. Likewise, the divisions among elders, overseers and clerks. And elders, overseers, clerks and the rest of us. I have come away from the book certain that we (perhaps I mean ‘I’?) should think harder about the care of our members.
The names we give our jobs are shades of meaning, not clearly defined roles. Zélie Gross’s inclusive attitude to the subject has made me think deeply about lines of demarcation that exist in my own Meeting. It alerted me to the need to blur them and keep on blurring them until we all become more accountable for the spiritual wellbeing and care of each other. I have no doubt that her book will have the same effect in Quaker groups across Britain and I welcome the change.
Reservations
So, do I have any reservations about the book? Well, yes, one or two, but they concern its incidental features rather than its substance. I understand that Quaker literature is used by discussion groups, and I’m conversant with our centuries-old habit of couching our encouragement in the form of queries, but I do feel uneasy when I turn over at the end of a chapter to find a page-and-a-half of questions intended to help me understand what I’ve just read. For me, it freezes inspiration on the page and gives the impression that, with Quakers, every day is a school day. I look forward to a return by writers, editors and publishers to their former practice of leaving the reflection and tuition to us.
I do hope, if I can say so without nagging, that this book will continue to be kept up to date. Quakerism moves fast and the internet much faster. This is a handbook. Inevitably, there will be a constant need to revise its information and advice, as well as the necessity, once a year at least, to renew web addresses and add fresh ones. The dedicated With a tender hand webpage on the Britain Yearly Meeting site (www.quaker.org.uk/tender-hand) is useful, but it isn’t an attractive document to find one’s way around. It is more reminiscent of a list of academic footnotes than a handy guide for interested activists and I trust it will be given the time and space to grow.
For all of us
I must end on a note of celebration. Until now advice for elders and overseers has been largely found in specialised booklets. They are an excellent resource, but the trouble with specialised booklets is that they are for a specialised audience. This book is for all of us. Whether you’re a birthright Quaker or in your first few months, I urge you to read it, because I believe we all need its advice, its wisdom and its care. But please don’t ask to borrow mine. I won’t be letting it out of my sight for long.
With a tender hand: A resource book for eldership and oversight by Zélie Gross, Quaker Books, 2015, ISBN: 9781907123719, £12.50.
