To encourage Quakers to embrace presencing, note that our spiritual practices are the definition of presencing.
Otto Scharmer is the founder of the Presencing Institute.
Our meetings for worship have us gathering together, sitting in expectant quiet, focusing on being present in the moment, trying to sense what the Spirit is telling us. Sensing together, i.e. co-sensing. Believing there is something beyond and within ourselves, the Spirit, or Source, that can lead us into the uncertain future. A journey we co-create.
Meeting for worship with attention to business
We use these same practices during our meetings to conduct business, which we refer to as meetings for worship with attention to business.
Queries
We use these same practices when we consider queries together. Most Quaker meetings have a set of questions (queries) related to spiritual and social life and practices. There are usually twelve sets of queries, with a different set considered by the meeting each month. Reading this description of the Advices and Queries, you can see this also describes co-sensing, co-creating, and presencing.
Advices and queries serve to engage our minds and hearts in a process which may provide openings to the leadings of the Spirit within us. These leadings may speak to our individual and corporate needs. The advices and queries reflect experiences from many lives as they contribute to the gathered wisdom of the group. They serve to guide us on our spiritual journeys by opening our hearts and minds to the possibility of new directions and insights.
The Whole Community
Quakers have four hundred years of experience with presencing.
The problem today is the predominately White Quaker meetings I’m familiar with have, for various reasons and in various ways, become less engaged with the communities outside the meeting. That has to change.
The collapse of our physical infrastructure and social systems is mirrored by the collapse of social roles and hierarchies. Every one of us will be increasingly confronted with the loss of much of what we once counted on, staring into an increasingly challenging, unknown future.
My challenge to Quakers is will we find ways to include every person in our community in the work that will be needed, so we can co-sense and co-create together? So many people have so many different skills and insights that we don’t, but which will be needed.
Quaker Presencing Case Study
I wrote an extensive case study of one of my experiences in using presencing outside the Quaker meetinghouse:
unflinching 