the collective will, revealed?

 clerking

in Quaker pedagogy,

the “clerk” is a powerful concept,

a position that is antithetical

to the self as individual will,

asserting itself on the world,

rather a clerk, at its best,

should be the self as collective will

finding its voice,

Friends believe that the Divine expresses itself all the time,

that our challenge is to hear it, to listen to it,

to give ourselves to the revelation that struggles to be realized,

rarely does the revelation come to us full-blown,

like Athena from the head of Zeus,

instead, what is out there is only glimpsed,

maybe only by some of us at first,

the clerk needs to focus the group on what is being revealed,

so that collectively our limited perspectives can add together,

the elephant then might reveal itself,

a clerk can lead,

but everyone in the meeting must follow only

if the shape revealing itself makes sense to each open heart,

a clerk succeeds only 

if the group succeeds 

in finding the way forward.

by Henry H. Walker

January 12, ‘22