It was the fall of 1986, and I was a 17-year-old college freshman in an unfamiliar city far from home. My most beloved possession was my brand-new rather-plain maroon hardcover Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting, hot off the presses that year. I turned to its pages nearly every day. I underlined passages I found in the book, went back, double underlined, went back, put asterisks in the margins, went back, dogeared the pages, kept coming back and finding more and more richness and relevance for my burgeoning spiritual life.
I had discovered Friends at age 14 when a friend from school invited me to a Young Friends event. I was “convinced” almost instantly, but I soon went away to boarding school and didn’t have the ability to attend meeting for worship on a weekly basis. I attended Young Friends Midwinter and Sessions, and that was my first “home meeting,” but I yearned for more.
Then in the summer of 1986 I sublet an apartment in Somerville, worked in Harvard Square, and was finally able to attend weekly worship. Every Sunday, it felt like fireworks were exploding inside me as I experienced the living presence of God, and when at Sessions I saw that plain maroon book for sale, I snatched it up in hopes of discovering words that might be adequate to the experience I was having.
All that next year, as a college freshman, I pored over that book. I found new riches every time I opened it up. The short extracts led me toward longer writings of deep value. The history told me the story of my adopted people, my new identity. The prose, with such graceful turns of a phrase and breathtakingly right words to express the ineffable, guided me in my spiritual formation as a new Friend.
I’ve recently joined the Faith and Practice revision committee, which, it surprised me to realize, is starting its 20th year of work! Faith and Practice fills many roles within the Yearly Meeting, and in this new segment of the Yearly Meeting newsletter, we’ll be exploring some of them. We’ll ask questions like: “Why do we need a Faith and Practice anyway?” “Why is the revision process taking so long?” “How can each Friend be involved?” “Why does Faith and Practice matter?”
As I said, Faith and Practice offers many things for many different purposes. Speaking personally, the most important purpose Faith and Practice has had in my life was to guide me into my Quaker identity, as my first real teacher and mentor. Have you, perhaps, had an experience similar to mine? Or have you gifted a copy of Faith and Practice to a young person or a new attender? What has Faith and Practice meant to you? Please share your experiences with us at [email protected], and look for more in this series in the months ahead.