What I find compelling and inspiring about the lives of … early Friends is their mutual and active desire to be accountable for the spiritual health, nurture, and behavior of members, attenders, and the meeting as a whole. I believe we need to get back to this accountability and to revitalize the culture of mutual spiritual nurturing and care within our faith community.

A Friends meeting is intended to be so much more than a loose association of individuals on separate and private spiritual journeys. Friends are called to be a faith community, seeking to know each other “in that which is Eternal” as we journey together. Ideally we acknowledge that our primary relationship is to God and to that of God in each other. We let go of the idea that we have only private lives and hold ourselves accountable to the authority of the Spirit in the life of the meeting. We grow in a sense of responsibility for each other and become part of a gathered community….

Questions we may ask:

To what extent are we willing to give priority to creating and maintaining right relationship with the Spirit and with each other?
Are we open to inspiration, which may call us to do that which is unfamiliar or extraordinary?
Can we go beyond what seems fair and right in an ordinary way? Must we repair what we have not broken?
Do we look first to changing ourselves, initiating actions of restoration and healing, especially when wrong is being done to us?

–Margery Mears Larrabee in Pendle Hill Pamphlet 392: Spirit-Led Eldering: Integral to our Faith and Practice