This Year’s Testimony: Community “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
One of the traditions we have at SF Friends is to focus on one of our Quaker testimonies (aka: the SPICES) for the year. To do this we use some queries to help guide our thinking and acting. Our testimony for this year is a Community - a particularly timely one considering the host of extraordinary challenges we’re all facing. Quaker schools have unique language and practices (Meeting for Worship, clerking, to name a few), so before we go too much further I thought it would be helpful to clarify or remind folks what the terms testimony and queries actually mean and how we use them. What is a Testimony? According to Quaker Jonathan Dale, “The word testimony is used by Quakers to describe a witness to the living truth within the human heart as it is acted out in everyday life… Testimony is a way of living not a creed. It is not a form of words but a mode of life based on the realization that there is that of God in everybody, that all human beings are equal, that all life is interconnected.” – Faith into action: Quaker social testimony, 2000 Quaker testimonies or values are taught both explicitly and implicitly at SFFS. Many of them are learned experientially; from their first days in kindergarten, children are introduced to sitting in silence, problem solving and decision making in a group, and to daily service and reflection. Traditionally, Quaker testimonies have the following characteristics: • A testimony is something we are called or led to—not something we choose to do on our own. It arises from a relationship with our Inner Light (in some classes they call that the “small, still voice” we listen for during Meeting for Worship, our “Inner Teacher”). • A testimony must be something you can testify to; a public behavior. • A testimony must be representative of our entire community (something that all Quakers - and in our case the SFFS community - generally agree upon). • A testimony must be “a cross to the conscience,” or something that calls on us to act outside our comfort zone.
What is a Query? “Since the late 1600s, Friends have used queries to reflect upon and assess their faith and practice. Rooted in the history of Friends, the queries reflect the Quaker way of life, reminding Friends of the ideals we seek to attain. Friends approach queries as a guide to self-examination, using them not as an outward set of rules, but as a framework within which we assess our convictions and examine, clarify, and consider... the direction of our lives and the life of the community.” – Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Faith and Practice, 1997 Quakers use queries for personal reflection, self-examination, or spirited discussion. At SF Friends queries help us animate our values and frame a concern we wish to explore within ourselves, our school, or our greater community. We post these simple questions in our classrooms, read queries to center reflection at Meeting for Worship, and use them to guide discourse in our discernment of a difficult issue or quandary. So now that we know what we’re talking about, for our Community testimony this year our queries are: • How am I taking care of myself so I can better help others in my communities? • How do we nurture and expand the diversity of our communities? • How am I called to action by my communities - great and small? Look for these to be lifted up throughout the school and throughout the year. Considering the host of current challenges we are all facing, it is clear that our community is being tested far greater than it ever has been, and as a result we need our community now more than ever. In community, Guybe