A few weeks ago, I awoke one morning with a message surfacing in my consciousness.  Feeling its power, I wrote down the words.

Let us not only acknowledge, but let us embrace the truth that there is no “going back to normal” in the aftermath of this pandemic.  Let us step back far enough to evaluate – globally, politically, and personally – the realities that have been starkly revealed while life as we’ve known it has been upended. Let us seize this opportunity to commit ourselves more fully to all that is required to create a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world. As educators, let us together re-envision all that we do, from the mission of our schools to the very nature of authentic teaching and learning. Let’s talk.

How might this “talk” happen?  What would it look like?

What has emerged for me in the intervening weeks is that Quakerism – its underlying assumptions and the practices that emanate from those assumptions – offers a way forward in this time.  For those of us  in Friends schools, this “way forward” is a natural outgrowth of our Quaker underpinnings. For those in other school settings, time-honored Friends’ practices are easily adaptable.

As those familiar with Quaker faith and practice will know, meeting for worship is a time in which participants sit together in meditative silence, reflecting inwardly on whatever comes up, and speaking aloud whatever one feels compelled to share.  Meeting is understood to hold the potential for both personal and collective transformation.  As each participant brings a different perspective to the gathered space, any “truth” that emerges out of the silence is multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and far more nuanced than any one individual could possibly uncover.  And at the core of the worship experience is the notion of “continuing revelation” – the conviction that as individuals search together for spiritual guidance, new insights and understandings come to light, reflecting the “inner light” that exists within each of us.

If ever in any of our lifetimes we have felt a global call for “continuing revelation,” it is now.  Our world is hungry for transformation, and the current crisis is not only providing us with opportunities for self- and societal reflection, but is actually demanding it.

A particular Quaker tool can facilitate a way forward in this process.  This is the centuries-old practice of posing queries – broad, open-ended questions for both individual and corporate discernment that are rooted in values, concerns, and aspirations.

Often within Friends’ communities, queries are posed in a “yes-no” format: “Do we recognize that we speak through our inaction as well as our action?”  Yes, we recognize this. Or no, we don’t.  Another example: “Do I share my own faith and spiritual journey, and encourage such sharing within my family?”  Again, the framing of this query invites simply a yes or no response.

The far more generative queries, however, are those that ask what, or how, or who and whom.

• What have we learned during this time of global lockdown?
• What have we lost?  What have we gained?
• How have we sustained ourselves?
• With whom have we connected, or reconnected?
• What do we hope for in the months ahead?

These are just a few examples of queries for this time.

Once we’ve emerged from the crisis of the moment – figuring out how to navigate, from one day to the next, the landscape into which we’ve been thrust – what might happen if we structured our broader conversation about the future around a regular and ongoing consideration of a series of well-considered and provocative queries, intentionally carving out time for this endeavor?   What might we learn if we approach from various angles each of a number of selected queries – focusing first on that query’s relevance for each of us personally, turning then to its significance in a broad societal/global context, and finally discerning how whatever has been gleaned through this process applies to our immediate professional, civic, or faith communities?   How might this exercise encourage out-of-the-box thinking, leading to bold and imaginative solutions that are long overdue, solutions that, in turn, will contribute to the healing of our world?

This is just a beginning.  A suggestion.

If any of this resonates, let’s talk.

Jane Fremon
May 5, 2020