Master Quaker - Short Version

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A Master Quaker is someone who aspires to or has mastered the craft of Quakerism; the practical business or working with personal relationships and through them mending the world, in short answering that of God. Master Quakers are responsible for this ethical environment. One cannot do it alone they need to work together sharing their craft and supporting each other. Master Quakers deliberately develop their personal skills and knowledge. They wrestle with their own demons and nurture their own angels. They strengthen their own discernment of God both in their spiritual experience and in their understanding of the world.

Seeking and achieving mastery of personal relationships is not confined to Quakers. There are many master manipulators out there who use their abilities for good and for bad. I see them as people to be learned from and in some cases to be guarded against lest our own vulnerabilities come to be exploited unscrupulously.

I see no difference in principle between a young Master Quaker and an older Master Quaker. I do see Master Quakers passing through earlier stages of apprenticeship and journeyman to achieve mastery of their Quaker craft. Maturing in the craft can start at any age. As in other fields, having mastered the basics, and become a master craftsman, one can go on to specialise in none or more aspects of the craft or combine one craft with another.

How can one learn to design and build better relationships? Better because everyone reading this will have learned more or less effective ways to make a relationship with someone else. The idea here is to improve existing relationships, to make more good relationships and so have a richer and better quality of life.

Master Quakers deploy their craft in the conduct of worship, business meetings, decision-making and discernment and in sharing and working with individuals. They bring their craft to bear on the content and substance of informal conversations and formal discussions. They focus on the personal relationships, the spiritual experience and the moral aspects of their encounters. They plan and manage their own relationships and help others to do the same. They share their insights with each other they seek opportunities to learn in informal exchanges, training sessions, well-founded texts and so on. They use others as examples, patterns and mentors and themselves serve as examples, patterns and mentors to others.

Through writings and other means they contribute to the development of tangible resources for improving relationships – guides, articles, handbooks, course materials, books, presentations, films, websites, journals and so on.

They organise and take part in the delivery of craft resources to other Master Quakers, attenders and where possible members of the public.

Master Quakers play a crucial role in building, operating and maintaining the ethical community of their own and related meetings. They play the role of the health care system for the personal relationships of their meeting and for the other people they encounter, in family life, in their careers and their lifestyle. There are three parts to this: building new relationships, maintaining and developing existing relationships and repairing worn or broken relationships. The

The Master Quaker Restorer is the most difficult and the least recognised of these. Quaker Restoration means detecting when relationships are under strain (ideally before the players are aware of it themselves), diagnosing the underlying cause (using whatever tools and knowledge are available and consulting as necessary), devising a course of treatment and executing it with the help of others. As in medicine we are dealing with real human relationships, in the real world with real hurt and real joy. This can only be undertaken in an environment of integrity (honesty, trust, openness), deep caring and tested moral commitment – an ethical, Spirit-based community.

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