{"id":1576,"date":"2021-07-29T15:34:20","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T14:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=1576"},"modified":"2022-01-09T09:30:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T09:30:51","slug":"leadership-and-unity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/august-2021\/leadership-and-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership and Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laurie Michaelis<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t respond particularly well to people trying to influence me. I tend to want to find my own way and I\u2019m not good at going along with a group. I was the ‘contrary’ child in our family although I didn\u2019t know what that meant at the time.<\/p>\n

Working on climate change, I often come across people who are trying to influence others \u2013 whether to agree with some point of view, change their lifestyles, or join a movement. And of course, an effective response to climate change would require some kind of collective action. Some years ago I got interested in the ways people make choices and take action together, rather than following a leader. It seemed to me that some of the cutting edge thinking in collective engagement and change was exemplified by long-standing Quaker practices. In 2002, I started the project that became the Quaker charity Living Witness (https:\/\/www.livingwitness.org.uk<\/a>), to support Meetings in developing shared approaches to sustainable living.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say Living Witness has been very successful \u2013 that may just be down to my poor organisation and leadership. Other Friends have set up a variety of climate-related initiatives, some of which are thriving. But despite the Yearly Meeting\u2019s 2011 commitment to become a ‘low carbon sustainable community’, we have not found unity in our understanding of what that might mean, or how it might be achieved.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yearly Meeting – Photo by Anne van Staveren<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since 2017 I\u2019ve been more involved with other organisations and movements that use Quaker-inspired structures and processes, like ‘consent-based’ decision making. I wondered what I could learn or offer. I don\u2019t think they do much better than Quakers with the search for unity in their climate action.<\/p>\n

In her 1994 Swarthmore Lecture, Being Together, Margaret Heathfield asks whether George Fox was right that: \u2018if we all \u201ctake heed to the promptings of love and Truth\u201d in our hearts, and live in the Light, we will all be united in our perception of the will of God.\u2019 She concludes that we cannot both follow the promptings in our own hearts and find unity \u2013 and that complex and difficult decisions usually require strong leadership by an individual or small group. But to me there are a couple of ingredients missing from her characterisation of the Quaker recipe for unity.<\/p>\n

First, Advices and Queries 1, which was adopted at that 1994 Yearly Meeting, speaks of the Light showing us our darkness and bringing us to new life. So there is an element of willingness to let go of something and be transformed. Second, to me the Quaker commitment to ‘answer that of God in every one’ suggests being willing to be guided by the promptings of love and truth in others\u2019 hearts too.<\/p>\n

Doing both of these well is probably dependent on spending quite a lot of time together, so that we can come to recognise when our own darkness is being mirrored, and absorb the ways God is speaking to us through each other. Something to look forward to, perhaps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Previous Article<\/a><\/td>\nNext Article<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Back to August 2021 Newsletter Main Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-Three<\/em> Newsletter \u2022 Number 508 \u2022 August 2021
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laurie Michaelis I don\u2019t respond particularly well to people trying to influence me. I tend to want to find my own way and I\u2019m not good at going along with a group. I was the ‘contrary’ child in our family although I didn\u2019t know what that meant at the time. Working on climate change, I … Continue reading Leadership and Unity<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":1556,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1658,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1576\/revisions\/1658"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}