Margaret Jones and I have both been concerned and distressed about the way our Meeting is conducting business, including the way that Ministry and Oversight itself seems to be functioning.

At our Meetings for Business, we'll typically have a long moment of silence at the beginning, and then we get down to business. We have members very knowledgeable about the rules and procedures traditionally followed in Friends' Meetings for Business; and some of them occasionally chide us for not following them particularly well. But the problem goes deeper.

Friends sometimes meet for worship sharing. The expectation for such sessions is that we will speak, and listen, not directly to God, but to each other. There have been various rules suggested, as to how best to do this. The significant difference between worship sharing and ordinary conversation, however, is not just these formalities, but the object: that we can speak and hear each other from the depths of the Spirit within each person.

This, I believe, is the state we need to sustain if we're truly to follow the Spirit in Meeting business. The forms of Quaker Process are not what's missing; it's that inward state of openness to God's intentions and promptings.

And this isn't just something to be invoked at the beginning of a Business Meeting, but an orientation we need to sustain throughout the proceedings. "Talking to the Clerk, not each other" may be helpful, but it is not a substitute for this orientation. Whatever we're led to do needs to be tested against this-- not any other-- standard.

Whatever we pass, decide, agree on-- or how efficiently we settle anything-- is less important than doing it in this way.

If you don't see why this is a problem, please consider. We.... [put thy own Meeting's latest discords here!]