November Bla

There was a book of poems about the months of the year that we used to read to the kids when they were little. The poem for November ended:

Rough November
Tough November
I have had enough November.

It's been November here for over a month now. Southern Ontario skipped the pretty part of fall and plunged right into the chill, the wind, the rain, the sleet, and the relentless gloom.

I find myself thinking about leaving our meeting.

Maybe it's because of November.

Numbers are down at our meeting. Last Sunday, there were only two children there (both mine), and maybe a dozen adult members, and I had to take the children's program because it was the coordinator's week off.

Since we moved into the new building over the summer, I have gotten the meeting to arrange the chairs into concentric squares instead of a single circle, because the square arrangement allows for more rows, and the open corners allow people to move into the middle rows; whereas a circle is a closed, unaccommodating shape. But Sunday, they had arranged the chairs in a circle again. So when my children came back from the children's program, they didn't see chairs available to them, so they didn't even want to come in the room. Someone had also decided to leave most of the lights off -- maybe to save electricity -- which meant with the late afternoon gloom, the room was in semi-darkness. Hardly welcoming to a child.

Or maybe it was just too close to Halloween.

I'm tired of explaining again and again that we've moved to a bigger place to make the meeting more open to newcomers, that we need to leave many chairs empty, and that we need to break up the "circle" idea. At the first opportunity, back it goes.

And then I feel weary of it all.

My efforts over the past several months to start up learning programs (at the request of several members) have also all fizzled. We had managed to run a study group for about 10 weeks last spring, and it was great while it lasted. Then I got the meeting started on after-meeting discussions into the late spring and summer, which lasted about two months. Time constraints had conspired against these efforts, I was told. Now I'm trying to get the group up on a team blog for an exchange of thoughts, ideas, readings, etc., but I'm not meeting with much success.

People seem to think it is "just one more thing that I have to do."

I continue to go to meeting because there are a few Friends that I learn from and several that I care about. Moreover, I kind of feel as if things will start to fall apart if I leave. Maybe that's a puffed-up sense of my own importance, but I do a lot to keep things going. As well, we have three new people out to meeting, all of them young (under 25). So I feel a responsibility to stay.

And yet, I'm restless for something with a bit more umph, some edge and drive.

Yes, there is a sort of spiritual laziness that we can associate with Friends. Being Quaker consists of being very nice, supporting good causes in pro-active ways, and being at Meeting on Sunday, whether you have anything to offer to the meeting in the way of spiritual health, depth, learning, or vocal ministry, or not. We tend to limit Quakerism to what we already are and already think. We do what we've always done. We leave the spiritual leadership to someone else and just hope it comes on Sunday.

But then, what religions are so different? The churches-of-the-holy-hootenanny make a lot more noise, but are they any less spiritually lazy? Anybody can shout Halleluiah. Anybody can play follow the leader, repeat what the leader says, think what the leader thinks. Drink-box religions aren't much different: just stick in the straw and suck it all in. You don't even need to read the label or question what's inside. They do all the packaging for you. And the mainstream churches work at being earnest, at playing "let's pretend" about their traditions and beliefs, when they just don't believe them anymore. Maybe it looks like the people are making spiritual effort, but I suspect there's not much going on there.

At least when (unprogrammed) Quakers do nothing, they have the decency to make it look like doing nothing.

And all churches have difficulty with change. Even changing the colour of the hymnbook or the choir robes is enough to send a quarter of a congregation packing. And churches that introduce that handshake thing or the kiss of peace, well, they can kiss their congregations good-bye.

So if I left Quakers, where would I go? Is there a religion that is not encumbered by silly poor gospels and by the people who adhere to them? Is there a religion where people don't flee from learning, hiding behind rituals or dogmas, quotes or preachers?

I suspect that creative, forward-thinking religion is very rare. And it's scary too -- too many deep, difficult questions to probe. Who really wants to rip off their layers of protective skin to stand naked in the November winds of unanswerable questions? Not many, I suspect.

American author Annie Dillard says if we had any real faith, we'd wear hardhats to church/meeting -- after all, we are calling on or getting in touch with the very forces of the universe. The universe might come crashing down on our heads.

Imagine church pews or Quaker benches equipped with seatbelts.

So yes, I'm thinking again about leaving and wondering if there is any place to go.

Or maybe it's just November.

If it's November, then that isn't so good, because there's at least another month of it to go.