Showers of Blessings

Joy in the morning

2008-07-19T11:13:00.003-05:00

If there's any better way to start a Saturday morning then to hear that you're going to be the grandfather to twins come January, I don't know what it would be.

My face is frozen in a semi-permanent grin, and my brain is famished for words at the moment.

A radiant indifference to words

2008-07-15T18:22:00.004-05:00

From "Personal History: Altered State -- Pennsylvania, blackness, and the art of being foreign" by Andrea Lee in the June 30, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. The author is describing her experience as a fifth-grade student at Lansdowne Friends School when she and her classmates were called on to recite Psalm 19 at Thursday morning meeting for worship to the elders of the meeting and the rest of the school:

For a long time, things go without a hitch, but on the morning of Psalm 19 our class fails. First, the short, deep-voiced boy who is our bellwether stumbles over his verse and, purple-faced, shudders to a halt. And I, with gold ready to pour from my lips*, simply freeze. At Teacher's frenzied prompting, we burst into the chorus, about errors and secret faults.** But the words are a tripwire: somebody's helpless giggle becomes a rout. We double over, choking with uncontrollable laughter.

The beams of the meetinghouse ring with the echo of our debacle, and we wither under the sidelong smirks of the sixth grade. Still, after a minute, a curious transformation occurs. One by one, we are able to look up at the faces of the elders, which are not severe and condemning, nor yet smiling with the kind of amused indulgence with which grownups greet endearing childish mishaps. Nor do they display any desire to make this a character-building experience. Those old faces are simply present: alert; regarding us and the rest of the hall with a boundless, patient comprehension that raises us to their own dignified level. We let the silence flow back. And, gradually, something becomes clear: a kind of radiant indifference to words, mistaken or correct. What the elders, the Friends, pass on to us this morning is an inkling of how strong silence is. Essential; eternal. But common, in the best sense. Always there, if we can only listen for it. Inside or outside meeting.

* v 9-10: The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

** v 12Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

The Joy of Living

2008-07-14T18:58:00.011-05:00

Immediately after the Gathering, our family of four drove to Colorado to join the rest of Lovely Wife's family -- two brothers, sister, spouses, nieces & nephews [except one] and partners: a total of 18 people. This reunion was planned last fall when we all gathered in Minneapolis for Lovely Wife's mother Barbara's memorial meeting at Twin Cities Friends Meeting. We so enjoyed being together that we planned to meet again in the summer, at which time we would attend to distributing Barbara's ashes in the mountains.

Both Barbara and her husband, Bruce, were born in Iowa but fell in love with Colorado and the Rocky Mountains when Bruce performed civilian public service in Denver during the Second World War. Later, after retirement, they bought a house next door to their eldest daughter and her husband, the Inventor, in Gold Hill, Colorado, a little mountain town about 3000 feet and 30 minutes above Boulder. The house was spacious and beautiful, facing east and south overlooking the cities of Boulder and Denver and the plains beyond. There they helped raise Sister Holly's three sons and hosted many family get-togethers.

When Bruce died in 1995, we all met in Gold Hill and buried most of his ashes in the town cemetery where we had a sweet and spontaneous family ceremony at the graveside. It was a beautiful, sunny April morning and we stood in a circle as we said a few words and sang a few songs after which Lovely Wife played her fiddle and led us in a procession down the hill and to the road. We then went to the Boulder Meeting's memorial meeting later that afternoon.

Later that summer, five of us (one son, Sister Holly's husband and two of their teenage sons, and me) took most of the rest of Bruce's ashes to the top of Gannett Peak, the tallest mountain in Wyoming, in the Wind River Range, which Bruce had never made it to the top of despite several attempts.

For Barbara, we originally intended to take her ashes to Mount Audubon, a 13,233 foot mountain that can be walked up in 3-4 hours without technical assistance (ropes, ice axes, etc.). But on Wednesday, the entire group walked up two other nearby 14,000 foot peaks -- Gray's and Torrey's -- and we realized that a 13,000 peak is a challenge to climb, even as a walk-up, especially for us flatlanders who hadn't gotten used to the altitude yet. All but two of the 18 made it to the top of one of either Gray's or Torrey's (one climbed both), but afterwards none of us were sure that we had it in us to climb Audubon just a few days later. (Photo on left is from the top of Gray's.)

So we changed our plans and decided to release some of Barbara's and some of Bruce's remaining ashes at Loveland Pass, on the Continental Divide that we would pass on our drive to Gold Hill. We arrived at Loveland Pass at about 11 o'clock and walked from the road up about 100 feet to the top of a nearby ridge.

As we had done before, we set the two boxes with ashes on a rock and stood in a circle around them and held what amounted to a brief meeting for worship. Everyone had the opportunity to say some words, and when that was done we each took a handful of the ashes of each and released them to the wind, which was very strong and immediately scattered them in the air along both sides of the Divide. (The family at Loveland Pass is on the right.)

Lovely Wife then led the procession down from the ridge playing "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain" on her fiddle. I brought up the rear of the line. As I got to the parking lot, there was a family there sitting on some rocks, and one of the little girls was singing "She'll be coming 'round the mountain" to herself as I walked by.

On Friday, after arriving in Gold Hill, we planned another ceremony in the cemetery. Lovely Wife wanted there to be a bench at the gravesite, which is at the upper end of the hillside cemetery, so that visitors can rest and contemplate after making the climb.

The plan was then made to go out and find a large flat rock plus two smaller ones to make a simple, rustic bench. The Inventor and I scouted for the rocks about 10 miles from town at a place where he had scavenged some flat rocks years ago, and he identified the right one for the seat -- but it weighed upwards of 300 pounds and the two of us couldn't carry it the 200 yards to the road. So we went home and brought back a crew of six or seven men and a wheelbarrow, and together we carried it (and two smaller but heavy granite stones for the upright supports) to the car and brought them to the graveyard.

While we got the stones up the steep hill, we dug and found the box that contained the urn that held Bruce's ashes and pulled it out of the ground. The rest of the family joined us and once again we had a spontaneous ceremony. We poured most of Barbara's remaining ashes into the urn to be mixed with her husband's, and then we poured out tears and words of remembrance, gratitude, and love. After a while, we closed the urn, put it back into the ground, closed the box, and filled in the hole. One again, Lovely Wife played her fiddle as she led everyone down the hill back to the road.

Some of us men then re-climbed the hill and dug the holes and assembled the stone bench. As it happened, one end of the stone has two small, natural depressions exactly the size of the average human buttocks making it amazingly comfortable to sit on. By the end of the day, it was done and was deemed satisfactory by all.

Here's the view from the bench:

There was something very blessed and sweet about these two ceremonies. The pattern was set spontaneously thirteen years ago after Bruce's death, which Lovely Wife found surprising at the time because neither parent talked much about death (each had lost their same-sex parent while teenagers) and they were never "taught" what to do when a loved one dies. But somehow -- mainly through deep and abiding love -- they taught their children just what to do, and how to do it themselves without professional assistance. It was a blessing to be part of it.

Thirteen years ago, I sang a favorite song by Ewan McColl, "The Joy of Living", at Bruce's graveside and at the memorial meeting. Bruce, like Ewan, was a large, hearty man, and the song perfectly matched his spirit. This year, I just sang the fourth and final verse for Barbara on Loveland Pass:

Take me to some high place of heather, rock, and ling,
Scatter my dust and ashes, feed me to the wind.
There where I will be part of all you see,
The air you are breathing.
I'll be part of the curlew's cry and the soaring hawk,
The blue milk-wort and the sundew hung with diamonds.
I'll be riding the gentle breeze as it blows through your hair,
Reminding you how we shared,
In the joy of living.

(Listen to Ewan and Peggy Seeger sing the whole song here. Better get a hanky first.)

Why Quakers' historic testimony against music and other frivolous entertainments does not apply to singing from the Sacred Harp

2008-07-08T08:31:00.005-05:00

While catching up on the blogs while I've been away, I found this one from Martin Kelly discussing Thomas Clarkson's explanation of why early Quakers testified against music.

Martin quotes or paraphrases four reasons cited by Clarkson and correctly comments that the objections are valid concerns:

* People sometimes learn music just so they can show off and make others look talentless.
* Religious music can become a end to itself as people become focused on composition and playing (we've really decontextualized: much of the music played at orchestra halls is Masses; much of the music played at folk festival is church spirituals).
* Music can be a big time waster, both in its learning and its listening.
* Music can take us out into the world and lead to a self-gratification and fashion.

The point is that the early Quakers' concerns with music wasn't based on an ideological or theological construct, but was rather observations on concrete, practical effects of music on the spiritual life of individuals and meetings.

I'd reinforce Martin's observation that these concerns are valid and legitimate and that any Quaker involved in music should take them seriously. I'm therefore happy to report that Sacred Harp singing is not susceptible to these criticisms and may therefore be embraced by Quakers without fear for their souls.

* People sometimes learn music just so they can show off and make others look talentless. One beauty of Sacred Harp singing is that it is entirely group-oriented; there is simply no opportunity to show off as a soloist and a very strong social pressure not to do so even if you could. (There are some singers who succumb to the temptation to show off a bit as a leader, but in my experience this is uncommon.) The entire ethos of Sacred Harp singing is to experience the singing as part of the singing community as a whole. Ego satisfaction is therefore of minimal concern and is actively resisted.

* Religious music can become a end to itself as people become focused on composition and playing. While there are instances of Sacred Harp singing at folk festivals and other venues as a demonstration, and by formal choruses in a commercial setting, by and large Sacred Harp singers consider singing to be a form of worship (non-sectarian to be sure, but worship nonetheless) and is respected as such. This is especially true of conventions and day-long singings but also for many smaller, weekly and monthly singings.

* Music can be a big time waster, both in its learning and its listening. Another of the beauties of Sacred Harp singing is that it does not take a lot of time to learn the rudiments; most people can learn the minimum basic skills with an hour or two of instruction; from then on it's learning by doing. And even less time is spent in "listening" passively to it -- it's meant to be sung, and even singers who may listen to recordings of singings end up singing along. Some singers may be accused of spending more time singing (or writing about singing. . . .) than certain family members may thing they should, but the risk is low and easily remedied.

* Music can take us out into the world and lead to a self-gratification and fashion. Sacred Harp singers take a kind of ironic satisfaction in the unfashionable nature of our singing. Self-gratification may be a little more of a potential problem -- but again it isn't the individual "self" that is being glorified.

Martin also offers this quote from Clarkson:

Music at [the time of early Quakers] was principally in the hands of those, who made a livelihood of the art. Those who followed it as an accomplishment, or a recreation, were few and those followed it with moderation. But since those days, its progress has been immense. . . . Many of the middle classes, in imitation of the higher, have received it. . . . It is learned now, not as a source of occasional recreation, but as a complicated science, where perfection is insisted upon to make it worth of pursuit. p.76.

The early singing school teachers and shape-note tunebook writers would have agreed with this criticism. Their aim was to demystify the professionalization of music and to return it to the masses and therefore is consistent with the concern expressed in this criticism.

I am therefore more confident than ever that Sacred Harp singing has a place in modern Quakerism; in my personal experience, it has not only not led to the dangers cited by Clarkson but has led me back to Christ and a more authentic Quaker world view. Some of you know I've been "working" on an article discussing the many similarities (and some contrasts) between Quakerism and Sacred Harp singing, and when I finish it, I'll have more to say about it here.

Singing at the Gathering

2008-07-07T12:19:00.005-05:00

I started writing this from my dorm cot on the last night of this year’s FGC Gathering, and am finishing it from an apartment in the mountains near Keystone, Colorado. We (Lovely Wife and our two teenage children) drove the 1525 miles or so from Johnstown, PA, to here in one very long and one somewhat less long day. (I had a couple of manic hours where I though I could drive the final 7 hours through the night but a wiser head prevailed and we got a room in Kansas and slept from about 1 to 6 am.) We made it safely and timely, but it was at a cost to my sleep, and I am exhausted. So I've stayed home while the other 18 relatives (of Lovely Wife's family) are out on some kind of hiking adventure and I'm working on some writing projects.

The Gathering on the whole was a very positive and productive experience for me again this year, especially after the first two days when I was also exhausted from a long drive from Minnesota to Pennsylvania. Unlike last year, I did not take the time to post periodically during the week, but I have taken some notes that I hope will help my memory. I’ve decided to make several smaller posts and I’ll start with a report on the singing I did at the Gathering.

The fundamental lesson I learned is that singing is the only remedy for my depression that always works. I have known this for a long time, but haven't acted on it as diligently as I know I need to do. The singing I enjoyed was in three contexts.

For the first time in many years, I participated in the noon-time singing from Rise Up Singing, led this year by one of its co-producers, Annie Patterson. I've gotten a little tired of Rise Up Singing after many years singing from it for so many years, but since it was convenient for me to play with the small group that backed Annie up as she played guitar and led the singing, I gave it a go. The group had persons playing guitar, flute, tin whistle, clarinet, accordion, and violin in addition to my banjo. The instrumentalists were skilled and didn’t overpower the singing as sometimes happens and enhanced the singing experience.

And the singing was good -- high spirited, enthusiastic. The group numbered about a hundred most of the hour each day. For the songs that were easily sung by a group and that lent themselves to harmonies (e.g., This Land is Your Land, There is a Balm in Gilead, Goodnight Irene, Happy Wanderer, etc.) the singing was excellent with energy and joy.

But sometimes someone would select a song that they loved – for example, Thanksgiving Eve by Bob Franke, or Kate Wolf's Give Yourself to Love – that are beautiful songs, but are simply not good for large group singing, and it the energy would fall for a bit. Annie showed great equanimity and skill, however, in leading each one, knowing it was important to the person who chose the song.

The second important singing experience was with the Nightengales (which is how they spell it), a group of Northern and Illinois Yearly Meeting Friends who have been singing together for more than forty years. (I was introduced to them in 1980 and have sung with them often ever since.) We sang one night in a two-story, highly resonant lobby of a building and it was lovely. In recent years, they have sung exclusively a capella (which was not so much the case when I started singing with them), and it worked really well in that room, filling it with harmonies. The only downside was that, in such a large, resonant room, we had to sing slowly which depressed the energy in some of the songs, but overall it was excellent and beautiful. There were lots of tears which, as the Nightingale in Hans Christian Anderson's story tell the Emperor, are "the jewels that rejoice a singer’s heart."

Singing with Nightengales these days always carries a particular poignancy as our older singers become disabled or pass away, and many songs carry a particular memory of them. This year, we were mindful of one Friend in particular who we know is dying of ALS and who was not able to attend either NYM or the Gathering.

But as much as I enjoyed these singings, the afternoon shape note singing was the most satisfying singing at the Gathering this year. We were once again given an space outdoors under an overhang, and while it was adequate, it was not as satisfactory an outdoor venue as in the past two years. One difficulty was that it was outside rooms in which various groups were trying to meet, and it was across a short way from a dormitory where some people tried to nap during our afternoon singings. After being informed (politely, but pointedly) that our music was not as appreciated as we thought it might be, we decamped to a log cabin at the other end of campus where we didn't disturb anyone but the bears, birds and rabbits in the surrounding woods.

Each afternoon, we had five or six singers on each part with a particularly large number of altos. The range of experience was mixed, but there was always enough experienced singers on each part. (It not being a workshop, we weren't prepared to provide more than a bare minimum of instruction to new singers.)

I was touched by the number of singers who first learned to sing Sacred Harp in one of the workshops I’ve co-led over the years who came to each afternoon singing (a few of whom who have attended three of them!). I don’t know why I’m surprised that others have come to love this music as much as I do, but it is satisfying to know that I may have had been able to transmit the depth of love and joy I get from singing from the Sacred Harp to others, especially my Quaker Friends with whom I share a bond even more deeply than I do with other singers.

The quality of the singing was generally good, though it varied. Though there was some excellent singing each day, the last day (Friday July 4) was clearly the strongest. Perhaps because it was the last day, we had a larger than normal group of singers, and that larger number, the improved acoustics, and a week's experience of singing together made for a powerful singing. There were several times where I felt it was truly a covered singing.

During the quiet worship we entered after our last song of the day (and of the week), I spoke to one of the parallels I feel between Sacred Harp singing and Quakerism, and that is that the quality of our experiences vary from time to time, but that if we persist we will always get back to that unity that we have been looking for and which we have been promised.

Some parts of our singings during the week were kind of rough -- we just couldn't find the right pitch or tempo, or hear the other parts, and some songs sounded pretty awful. Maybe we were simply tired, or maybe we bit off a little more than we could chew, but whatever the reason, we went through some pretty rough and unsatisfying spots.

I then noted that this same thing happens in meetings for worship. Often we come to meeting with as open a heart as we can manage, but nothing happens; there's no real unity and we leave without any sense of joy or elevation.

The important thing in both cases is that we return and try again. We go on to the next song, maybe choosing a less-challenging one or take a break, but we keep going and soon we're back in the groove and we're singing beautifully and powerfully again.

And with worship the same thing. We keep at it, coming back week after week, doing what we can as individuals to improve -- paying better attention, preparing more thoroughly, centering more deeply -- the worship experience. After some time, usually not too long, we will experience a genuinely covered meeting that will be felt by all.

The important thing in both contexts is that we keep at it and eventually, as we pay more attention to the true leader of our worship and of our singing, we will be brought back into harmony and unity with each other and be witnesses to the power that is over all.

* * * *

I'm glad I attended Gathering this year; I had originally intended to skip Gathering this year and to attend Camp Fasola in Alabama this year for some advanced instruction and learning in the Sacred Harp. But when I learned that Camp Fasola was going to be aimed at adults for only three days and for youth for the rest of the week (a decision I support but wasn't aware of until later), I decided I didn't want to sacrifice Gathering for such a short time of singing. In retrospect, I did the right thing. There was a lot of enthusiasm expressed for another Singing from the Sacred Harp workshop at next year's Gathering, and I'm going to give that serious consideration over the next few weeks.

The company we keep

2008-05-05T14:03:00.003-05:00

This is from the on-line Slate magazine, writing to answer the question "What Orwell can teach Obama." It quotes George Orwell 's analysis of why so few working people were socialists, despite the fact that "[E]very thinking person knows that Socialism is a way out [of the world wide depression." A little to close to home, perhaps?:

One key to the movement's lack of popularity, Orwell argues, is its supporters. "As with the Christian religion," he writes, "the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." Then he wheels out the heavy rhetorical artillery. The typical socialist, according to Orwell, "is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism, or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler, and often with vegetarian leanings … with a social position he has no intention of forfeiting. . . . One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England."

A prayer of passwords

2008-04-22T10:20:00.001-05:00

From a list recently found in a drawer:

lovelife
incarnation
jerusalem
focus
innerlight
makepeace
livelove
peacenow
loveoneanother
rememberme
truelove
walkinlight
singforjoy

Meme book tag

2008-02-25T18:54:00.008-06:00

OK, Rich. I will continue the meme -- the first I've ever been tagged with -- but I just can't find it in myself to continue the tagging. Partly because so many of those bloggers I read regularly enough that I would consider tagging have already been tagged, and partly because I don't know how! Do you actually have to leave a comment on their blogs? I never kept chain letters going, either, but I still don't take responsiblity for when the truck ran over grandma and the puppy. . . . But it still seems a little much to me. Tag yourself.

The instructions are:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Actually, there are two books equidistant from where I sit. Here's the sixth, seventh, and eighth sentences from the first:

Three hundred women and some men came. A Declaration of Principles [sic]* was signed at the end of the meeting by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. It made use of the language and rhythm of the Declaration of Independence: When it course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that they have hitherto occupied . . . .

* The document was actually captioned A Declaration of Sentiments

From, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, discussing the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, an event that has an obvious Quaker connection.

Here's the other:

2. Load the paper in the machine. See "Loading Paper" on page 22.
3. Ensure that the proper paper source is selected.

From, Canon Office All-in One Pixma MP830 User's Guide.

My life in six words? Impossible!

2008-02-23T17:09:00.004-06:00

Lovely Wife and I took a walk this morning -- it's her birthday. We stopped in a little gift-bookstore and I fell in love with a little book I found there, Not Quite What I was Planning, published by the on-line magazine Smith. Inspired by (the possibly apocryphal ) Ernest Hemmingway's famous six-word story, "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn," the book is a collection of six-word memoirs submitted by what must have been thousands of readers and writers. They range from the cute to the funny to the poignant. Here are a few of my favorites:

Born, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence.

It's like forever, only much shorter.

Tequila. Amnesia. Coincidence? I think not.

It was embarrassing, so don't ask.

Followed white rabbit. Became black sheep.

Thank God I lived through Vietnam.

I'm ten, and have an attitude.

Never really finished anything, except cake.

Did I miss a deadline again?

Many risky mistakes, very few regrets.

Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished.

Thank god the suicide attempt failed.

Complacency

2008-02-21T10:24:00.003-06:00

John Punshon writes on page 61 of his Encounter with Silence: "Once adopted, Quaker worship can be dangrous. Its characteristic sin is complacency." I know I've also mused here on the difference between contentedness (which I think is a virtue) and complacency (which is not), but I can't find the link to that post at the moment.

Anyway, I was moved by the wisdom and truth in this monolog in the Arlo & Janis cartoon strip yesterday. (You can see it here.) Arlo is talking over the breakfast table to Janis in four panes:

We really are lucky when you think abou it!

We have food, a nice home, a kid in college! We have each other -- and our health!

Yes sir, we should look at the big picture.

Or would that be the little picture?

It reminds me of another paradoxical dichotomy I may have written about here before. When Paul Wellstone died in October 2002, a lot of us began to wear green buttons that quoted him: "Stand up! Keep fighting!"

I remember worshiping at Morningside Meeting in New York City shortly thereafter. I was wearing the green button and I was moved to say: "I would like another button for my other lapel, a red one, maybe, that reads: "Sit down! Stop fighting!"

The Christian life is in constant tension between being simultaneously prophet and peacemaker, and I need to have both reminders to keep that tension in its proper balance.

Quaker anarchism?

2008-02-18T15:18:00.006-06:00

My Friend Phil Grove posted the following comment on my post the other day:

Glad to see you writing again! About the 1640s -- I'm very curious about the fact that the anarchist Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, arose in England at about the same time as the Quakers, and that Winstanley later became a Quaker. It seems to me that Quakerism has an affinity with certain forms of anarchism, and that anarchism should be discussed more by Quakers. Are there other historical connections between Quakerism and anarchists?

I'm not qualified to give a definitive answer, especially about the Diggers, but I do have some observations and book knowledge of early Quakers that may be helpful.

First, it's best to be very cautious before using a term like "anarchism" which became popular in the 19th century to categorize someone in the 17th century. The Wikipedia entry on anarchism records the first use of the term as being by Royalists during the English Civil War to describe people like the Levellers, Diggers and Quakers who they perceived as fomenting social unrest. (Actually, the Wikipedia entry says "fomenting social disorder", but I would deny that at least for the Quakers: they were not promoting disorder but rather a gospel order that merely seemed disorderly to those vested in the current arrangement.) There is little doubt that these groups (and remember that labels don't denote terribly precise categories and were all given as terms of derision by their opponents) radically opposed the current regime, but that doesn't mean that they were in principal opposed to any human government or outwardly coercive authority.

It is especially hard to tag the anarchist badge on the Quakers. Fox more than once accepted that the biblical understanding that the magistrate had a God-given role to protect the innocent and punish evil doers. See his letter quoted here.

Most of Fox's criticism of the government was that it had perverted its Godly duty: it punished the righteous (like the Quakers) and protected the guilty (like their tormenters). So he wasn't against good government; he was against bad government, and they understood the distinction. Quakers were well-known for their active role in court proceedings and lobbying in Parliament which I take to be a confirmation of the legitimacy of government as an institution, if not an endorsement of its current occupant or policies.

Furthermore, while George Fox and the early Friends might fairly be called anarchists in their critique of the organized churches of their day, Fox and Margaret Fell showed a very practical and realistic understanding of the propensity for even the Children of Light to run beyond their guide and to confuse their ego (or libido) with the will of God. This is why they set up the system of monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings for discipline that enabled the movement to survive and thrive during the persecutions of 1660-1689. These meetings did not use coercive force or violence, of course, but they did function as an effective church government to maintain unity and peace among its members. Not all Friends approved of this kind of church government and some found it to stifle movings of the Spirit. But it is hard for me to imagine the Quaker movement having survived in any recognizable form without this structure. (Of course, when the structure lost its juice and became calcified, it led to the divisions among Friends in the 19th century, a disaster from which we have not yet recovered.)

Finally, the enthusiasm with which the Quakers joined William Penn in establishing Pennsylvania is hard to square with any kind of principled anarchism inherent to the Quaker experience, at least in the early years. Penn's basic philosophy, which I take to be consistent with Quaker thinking in general, was that "governments depend on men rather than men upon governments, because if the men are good, the government cannot be bad; or if it is, they will cure it; but if men are bad, government will never be good." (See here for more detail on Penn's Holy Experiment.) Penn's Experiment lasted about 75 years -- at least, that's how long Quakers participated in the Assembly. Whether you consider the Experiment a failure or merely a limited success, there is probably a lot of material from that era that would support a more anarchist-leaning critique of the legitimacy government and of Christians ever participating in it.

What I know about the Diggers leads me to think of them as being animated more by a radically egalitarian or communist (to use other anachronistic terms) spirit, not as anarchists opposed to any human government per se. For example, their concerted action in digging up the common lands for food production seems to me to have required a good deal of organization and discipline. (Perhaps their premature dissolution indicates that they didn't have enough of either.)

All that said, I think that Quakers have always carried an anti-authoritarian gene in their DNA -- the affinity you're probably talking about -- and they probably share this gene with others who would characterize themselves as anarchists, or who would be so characterized by their enemies.

I understand that there is likely be a degree of congruence and overlap between Quaker understanding of the liberty afforded them by the gospel and what is generally known as Christian anarchism, taking care not to confuse anarchism with antinominalism (or anarchism with anarchy). A church whose governor is an invisible but living spirit may appear to be anarchic, but to the religious anarchist that's only an illusion. (I would like to concede here that a deeply loving community can live peacefully and responsibly without external coercive based solely upon the reason and strength of its participants and doesn't need the assistance of a Living God to bind it together, but I'm not sure I believe that it's true [not that very many religious communities have done better over the years]).

On an almost completely different note, writing this reminded me of John Sayles' great short story, The Anarchist's Convention, which I believe I may have referred to before in this blog. I first heard it read by Jerry Stiller on NPR's Selected Shorts more than 15 years ago and I'd love to hear it again.

The life in your God

2008-02-18T11:45:00.005-06:00

What follows is my recollection of ministry I delivered yesterday at meeting, but it includes a report on ministry I gave a week earlier.

Last week, I was in Philadelphia on Friends-related business. As I was getting dressed on Saturday morning, I turned on the TV in the hotel because, from past experience, I knew there would be some old black-and-white classic movie of some sort on. Sure enough, there was an old Mae West comedy on. (I since have learned it was I'm no Angel). It was funny and sexy in Mae West's way, and I enjoyed especially the courtroom scene near the end. After the trial, very near the end of the movie, someone asks her, "What is it that keeps you so young? Is the the men in your life?"

Mae answers, "Honey, it isn't the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men."
Being in a long dry spiritual season, I was grateful for any bit of insight I could find, and at meeting later that morning I shared what I had seen. In the context of the meeting I was in and the query that guided our worship, I went on: What matters isn't really the Quakerism in your life, but the life in your Quakerism."

Almost immediately, I regreted putting it the way I did, and the reason why came up a few minutes later when another Friend, a noted Quaker historian and writer, admitted to sometimes making an idol out his Quakerism instead of worshiping the Living God. I am guilty of this same sin, and I appreciated his shedding light on it for me.

What I now wish I had said last week, and what I say to you today is this: It isn't the amount of God in your life that matters. It's the life in your God.

This way of putting it is particularly meaningful to me at the moment as I find myself more immersed than usual in secondary (and in some cases tertiary) sources about what it was that animated the Quaker movement in the 17th centrury and try to draw lessons on how it can animate us today. The irony, of course, is that everyone I'm reading and listening to is saying, "Don't rely on us; go to the Source yourself."

The groundhog stirs from his den

2008-02-13T10:23:00.005-06:00

Yes, it's been too long. I've missed writing here, but just haven't felt as if I've had anyting to say. A symptom of resurgent depression, I'm sure. But I've just begun co-leading Quakerism 101 again, preparing for which has been reenergizing, and had a surprisingly enjoyable and productive weekend at the Friends Journal board meeting that has lifted me above water a little. It looks nice, and I hope I stay bouyant for a while. Here's a couple of things I've been working on.

Over the New Year holiday, I greatly enjoyed reading David Halberstam's The Children, about the college students in Nashville, Tennessee, who led the civil rights demonstrations in that city and so many of whom became the leadership cadre of SNCC and other parts of the movement. (The book also briefly mentions Marion and the late Nelson Fuson of Nashville Friends Meeting, whose son Dan provided me with the first books of my Quaker library back in 1977.) Halberstam was a reporter for the Nashville Tennesseen during the early 1960s and was a witness to much of what he writes about. The book does a masterful job of introducing the reader to each of the dozen or so young people and the parts they played in the Nashville Movement, followed by a fascinating "where are they now" section reporting on their lives today. I was struck that to a person, each of them say today that their time in Nashville and in the years immediately following were the high points of their lives, despite many accomplishments that have followed.

I am an avid student of the civil rights movement and was familiar with the outline and many of the details of their story, but I had not before found such a detailed sketch of James Lawson, the teacher of those students, whose workshops in creative non-violence taught them so well and gave them the tools to be the leaders they became. He comes across in Halberstam's book as a great, though modest, man whose contribution to history should not be forgotten.

So I was delighted to learn today that James Lawson is going to be the the Sunday night speaker at the FGC Gathering this summer. Here's the description from FGC's website:

James Lawson will speak to the theme courageously faithful, drawing from a lifetime of experience with nonviolent resistance. Lawson’s actions have been informed by deep conviction since before he served prison time as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, unwilling to claim the deferments for which he was eligible. He studied Gandhian theory first as a college student and then again in India in the mid-1950s. He has long been proponent of non-violent resistance to racism and injustice, and has been a mentor to activists throughout the nation. Martin Luther King Jr. called Lawson the “leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” For 25 years, Lawson served as pastor of the largest Methodist church in Los Angeles, retiring in 1999. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt University. He has extensively studied Quaker theology, and says that every time he teaches about nonviolence, he teaches about Quakerism.

I had hoped not to be able to attend the Gathering because I was going to go to Camp Fasola which meets at the same time, but the format changed this year to include only a two-full day session for adults, the rest of the time being focused on young singers. Good for them, but I'm now thinking that it may not be worth missing the Gathering for only two or three days of camp. . . . And now with the chance to hear James Lawson, that's a pretty good draw, too. So maybe I'll see you there. (No Sacred Harp workshop this year, alas. But I'm keeping my afternoons free.)

While I'm thinking of books, I'm currently devouring Larry Ingle's First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism. It is the first biography of Fox that I've read -- are there others? -- and I'm captivated. It demystifies Fox on the one hand by painting him as the flesh-and-blood human being he undoubtedly was, but it also reinforces how extraordinary and unique he was -- "no man's copy" I believe Penn said about him. Ingle brings him alive so much that I've been thinking what a wonderful movie could be made about his life: He had a commanding physical and psychic presence that is hard to imagine. (I can imagine Bill Clinton playing him -- he has Fox's physical bulk and engaging charisma, though Fox was shorter. . . and differed in other ways, too.) Fox was constantly on the move (except when he was in prison) that would make lots of wonderfully dramatic scenes: his solitary climb up Pendle Hill and the vision he had there; his barefoot walk through the cold muck to denounce the bloody city of Lichfield; his nights spent in haystacks; his first visit to Swarthmoor Hall; etc. (Judi Dench playing Margaret Fell, perhaps?)

I also am appreciating getting a deeper feel for the religious, social, economic, and political tumult in which England was engulfed in the 17th century. I've often taught in Quakerism 101 that we should think of 17th century England as something like the 1960s in America as a time of tremendous upheaval and reordering of society, but it's becoming clearer to me that for all of what happend in the 1960s, the 1600s were even more dramatic. Perhaps the comparison should be to the entire 20th century. . . . At any rate, I highly recommend Ingle's book. It is readable, detailed, measured, and dramatic.

La Natividad: Year 2

2007-12-21T23:17:00.000-06:00

Last year, I wrote about participating in La Natividad, the Christmas show of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theater. This year, I am reprising my role as the Star of the East. The critics have been generous: "Brilliant!" "A leading role." "A rising star." "If you're wise, you'll go see it, too."

We're doing six shows this year -- all sold out before Dec. 1 -- after so many people were disappointed that they couldn't get into last year's. It is essentially the same show as last year, with the addition of one more stop on the Posada: Just after leaving the theater on our way to St. Paul's, José goes to the door of a neighbor of the theater to ask for shelter as the choir (and audience) sings the Posada song. She comes out and in her best old lady scolding voice says "No! No! I haven't any room" as a choir member sings (in English), "You cannot stay here, this is not an inn. There is no room, your story is thin. You will rob me, then you'll run away. You cannot stay here. Go away, go away, go away!"

The most touching part for me happens at St. Paul's when, through a nice bit of stagecraft, the masked José y Maria are replaced with a flesh-and-blood couple holding a real baby. The switcheroo can't be seen by the audience until the right moment when the adoring animals and wise men part, and when they realize what's happened and see the living actors and baby there's a spontaneous "ohhhh" that fills the church. I tear up every time. I realized tonight that this is what happens whenever we are able to break through the masquerade of religion and illusion and encounter the Living God on the other side.

We have one more show tomorrow (Dec. 22), and then we're done. I've gotten to know some of the other performers better, having so many more times to hang around together.

There are some very nice photos here. (This is to the Star Tribune's site and I don't know how long this link will work.)

I hope everyone reading this will have a happy Christmas.

His own soft hand shall wipe the tears. . . .

2007-12-18T23:21:00.000-06:00

On Oct. 17, Lovely Wife's mother, Barbara, died in her bed, here in our home, shortly before sunrise. She was a few days past her 86 1/2 birthday.

Her death was not unexpected, but we didn't expect it that Wednesday morning. This once vibrant, energetic, astute, intelligent woman had been in a steady state of physical and mental decline for perhaps 15 years, being confined to a wheelchair and bed for more than half that time. Although early on it looked as if she had Alzheimer's disease, her doctor eventually diagnosed her with Lewy's Body Disease, which has similar symptoms. The main difference, in her case, was that she never got the zombie-like, nobody's-at-home consciousness that most Alzheimer's patients develop. Right up to the end she was able to communicate fluently with her eyes, expressing delight, distress, humor, and other emotions, which made living with her and her disability much less burdensome than it might have otherwise been.

She had lived with us since Christmas 1999, meaning for most of our children's lives. They each had a special and loving relationship with here that was a blessing to everyone.

While Lovely Wife took on the main caregiving responsibilities, her sister visited several times a year to let us go to Yearly Meeting or FGC Gathering, professional conferences, and occasional weekends away. Her two brothers were also generous in their help. This, plus a thousand small favors from friends and neighbors over the years helped us feel connected and supported.

While Barbara's health had been in long slow decline for years, she was remarkably durable. She must have had a sturdy constitution, but we also think that her steady diet of applesauce and Spirutein (at least five bowls a day) had a lot to do with it. So did the social engagement she had to endure as we schlepped her to meeting, card games, concerts and plays, school events, and other parts of our busy social lives. Whatever it was, she just kept on kicking, though always in a long, slow slide.

Earlier this year, she did develop a pressure sore that was life-threatening, and in July began to get help from a hospice program. Having this extra help in our home was very welcome, but as these things go her supposedly un-healable and fatal sore began to get better, resulting in her being removed from hospice a week or so before her death.

I need to say that, for all of my sometimes petulant criticism of modern-day Quakers, our Meeting sure came through with what we needed, and we feel deeply grateful. One dear Friend, Elizabeth, happened by our home the morning Barbara died to pick up a book, and she stayed a while and was wonderfully helpful in practical ways. Always a steady presence, Elizabeth reminded us we needn't hurry to notify the police of the death and encouraged us to just sit for a while. So we did. And we sang a little, watching the sun shine on her face through the window and reflect off the blue blanket that covered her body. (Blue was always Barbara's color.) As we did, we noticed that Barbara's wrinkles seemed to smooth out and she became more beautiful and at peace. Elizabeth also helped me do a little electrical task in the basement before leaving. After she left, a neighbor brought over meat-and-cheese sandwiches and apple pie. Never underestimate the power of simple, practical help.

Once we set a date for the memorial meeting (a month out due to one brother being in Australia and needing time to make travel arrangements) a representative of Ministry and Counsel came over and helped us with planning details. It is amazing how many small decisions and things need to be done even for a very simple and straightforward Quaker memorial meeting, and it was helpful to be guided through them efficiently and without pressure.

The memorial meeting was held on a Saturday morning, and it couldn't have been more powerful. We were so grateful that such a large number of Friends from the meeting came to it -- about 70 -- considering that except for one Friend who knew here from the 1980s in Ann Arbor, my parents, and her immediate family, no one in the Meeting knew Barbara as a fully functioning person, but only as a disabled, non-verbal old woman. But the presence of so many Friends confirmed for us visibly the feeling we had had over the years that Barbara had, indeed, connected with others, that her beauty and light and grace shone through her diminishment and touched others in a deep place. We also understood and felt the love of those who recognized and honored Lovely Wife's extraordinary caregiving. The vocal ministry, which included messages from each of her four children and one grandchild, was rooted and strong.

It was also exciting to have a house full of relatives for a long weekend -- fourteen of us in all, in a house not built for that many. But it was cozy and informal and lively and exactly like Barbara would have wanted it to be. It seemed very quiet after everyone left.

Although Barbara usually loved music, and especially when Lovely Wife and I would sing to her, she was never very fond of Sacred Harp music. I could tell. Nevertheless, we invited 14 Quaker Sacred Harp singers over two nights after her death to sing, and it was wonderfully healing, to me at least. One of my favorite songs is Northfield (155), which is a simple but powerful fuging tune. The Cooper revision of the Sacred Harp has a verse (from Revelation 21:4) that I always like to sing to Northfield which is not in the Denson revision:

His own soft hand shall wipe the tears from every weeping eye,
And pains and groans and griefs and fears,
And Death itself shall die; and Death itself shall die.

I was also reminded of the wisdom of the line from Odem 340:

Give me the roses while I live,
Something to cheer me on,
Useless the flowers you may give,
After the soul is gone.

Help nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize

2007-12-12T15:22:00.001-06:00

Go here and sign the petition.

I am so angry.

2007-09-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

First, read this.

Then read this.

PSALM 5—A Paraphrase

HEAR MY PROTEST

Hear my words, Oh Lord, give ear to my groanings.
Listen to my protest.
For you are not a God who is friendly with oppressors,
nor do you support their devious ways,
nor are you influenced by their propaganda,
nor are you a cohort with gangsters.

One cannot believe anything they say,
nor have any confidence in their official pronouncements.
They talk of peace while they increase their production of arms.
They make gestures toward understanding at the Peace Conferences,
but in secret they prepare for war.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Punish them, Oh God,
bring to naught their machinations.

—Ernesto Cardenal (Managua)

. . . in whom I am well pleased.

2007-08-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

Fooling around this morning with the new iPhoto application (on the new computer. . . ) I was finally able to do things with the wedding pictures from May. This one is my favorite.

Bring out those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer

2007-08-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

I've been in a slump for a couple of weeks now, coincident with if not caused by the persistent heat and drought of this summer. I was pretty high during and after FGC Gathering, and then the excitement with Lovely Wife's return from Europe and her mother's return and changed condition kept thing exciting. (Mother-in-law is doing fine, by the way; she's getting good care and is not in any immediate danger or unusual discomfort.) And three trips to the country -- two to northern Minnesota and one to Wisconsin -- were welcomed and unburdensome.

But now I'm drooping, like the tomatoes and coneflowers, and the Minnesota Twins. And I'm dry, with little energy to do anything.

Last wekend, when I was up north at friends' cabin on Birch Lake, near Babbitt, Minnesota, I picked up and began to re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

What a delight.

I've read Tom Sawyer probably a dozen or more times in my life since the first time at age 11 -- at least four times aloud, to each of the children -- but I've managed Huck Finn only three times as I can remember, and have never attempted to read it aloud.

For one thing, the dialect is more pervasive and difficult than in Tom Sawyer, and it cannot be scanned -- you miss most of the jokes and half of the story if you don't read carefully, for one thing. For another, despite the author's Notice warning "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot," Huck Finn is a more obviously piece of social criticism and moral philosophy than its companion, and as such it begs to be read for more than the outward story.

But a fast read or not, I'm greatly enjoying it. I'd forgotten many of the details, and most of the jokes, and when I run across a new one it feels like a discovered treasure. I also think that just reading about floating down the river on a raft, mostly at night, fits with my energy level at the moment.

Huck himself is an amazing character, a true stranger in a strange land, someone who has not and simply cannot seem to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick world. His famous battle with his conscience has helped me understand better the distinction Quakers make between the infallible guidance of the pure Inward Light (which is represented by Huck's pure and innocent nature) and the potentially erroneous guidance of conscience which is susceptible to social conditioning. The most famous scene occurs when Huck falsely tells two slave chasers that the man he has on his raft is white, and that he has the small pox, effectively deterring them from checking for themselves and implicating him once and for all in Jim's flight.

I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on -- spose you'd done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I. I'd feel bad -- I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well then, says I, what's the use of you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that.

* * * *

Although it isn't keeping me out of this lazy funk, I am enjoying participating in a show called Hill of Zion. It is part of something called Manna Fest, which itself is a descendent of something called the Spiritual Fringe Festival, which was once part of the Minneapolis Fringe Festival, a 10-day long festival of dozens of small plays and shows held in several multiple venues around town. Fringe plays run the gamut in quality and subject matter and can be great fun or tremendous bore-fests, depending.

Manna Fest shows are all being held at Augsburg College, just a few blocks from here, and are all plays on religious or spiritual themes, serious and not. One, for example, is entitled Martin Luther -- The Musical; another, by my friend Elizabeth, is called Witnessing to a Murder, about her experience witnessing a woman be murdered years ago; another is entiteld Jesus at Guantanamo.

Hill of Zion has a narrator, two actors, and a square of about nine or ten Sacred Harp singers. The story line, if you can call it that, has a travelling spatula and kitchenware salesman stumbling drunkenly into the annual Hill of Zion singing in a chapel near a cemetary somewhere in Iowa. There, he meets an interrent singing teacher, and they engage in a dialog that is broken up every few minutes by the group singing a Sacred Harp song that has some bearing on the conversation. (For example, after the salesman tells the teacher that the caterwailing of the Sacred Harp singers is as good as a strong cup of black coffee in sobering him up, we sing Soar Away, with its lyrics, "I want a sober mind, and all-discerning eye. . . .) It is surprisingly coherent and subtle, given that the playwright is an amateur, but he got most of it just right, as do the actors.

There was some disagreement among some local singers as to whether it was OK to put on a performance like this, but enough of us agreed that it was a good way to expose others to the singing and possibly recruit new singers that it was OK. We have yet to have an audience that has equalled the number of performers, but we're having great fun, and I am enjoying seeing the two amateur actor-singers get into their roles, and in getting to know some singers better.

* * * *

Adding to the funk is the fact that the display in our 5 year-old iMac computer has gone out, and we are struggling to figure out whether to spend more than $600 to replace it, get a cheaper minotor to hook up to the otherwise servicable computer, or to get a new computer altogether. With today's announcement of the new iMac, there is considerable multi-generational lobbying for a new computer. Resistance is nominal with no visible cracks in the facade, but probably futile. We shall see.

We're OK

2007-08-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

Perhaps this is as good a way as any to let you all know that we are all OK and weren't hurt by the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi last evening. (The last person in my office who we knew might have been on it just called; he passed over it five minutes before it fell.) We live less than two miles from the bridge, though, and often bike or drive under it on the River Road, especially when we go to Twins' games, so it is not an entirely remote or abstract thing to us. But last night we were eating dinner at 6:05 with some friends and learned about the collapse about an hour later when a friend of Youngest Daughter called. We were just a little startled because three of us are planning to drive to northern Minnesota today and would have been crossing the bridge this evening almost exactly 24 hours after it collapsed.

Almost certainly, the death toll will rise from the seven confirmed (five, says the newspaper) as divers are able to get under the collapsed roadway sitting in the river. The Mississippi has been very low because of the terrible drought -- barely at the nine foot minimum necessary for barge traffic -- and it is likely that the roadway deck that looks like it's floating on the river is in fact resting on the river-bottom on its trusses, and there are probably some cars trapped under there. The real miracle is that there weren't more deaths or serious injuries, considering how some people fell 40 or more feet.

The mood in the city is one of shock, as far as I can tell. A woman on the radio last night said she went immediatly in to "do"-mode and I think that captures it. Everyone just seemed to take up whatever task at hand needed to be done, from swimming out to help people out of their cars to redirecting traffic away from the rush hour snarl. I was most impressed at how many people, many of them U of M students, came out and helped people get out of their cars, out of the water. Eventually, the number of volunteers (supplemented by curious gawkers, I suppose) became a problem, interfering with the professional ambulance and other first responder work. We resisted the temptation to bike down because of this.

Thanks to those of you who have already written or called asking; it's nice to know that there is a web of friends around the world who think of each other at times like this.

Photos from StarTribune

3d Annual Pearson Homestead Singing

2007-07-30T20:09:00.000-05:00

On Friday, four of us drove to our friends' homestead near Ogema, Wisconsin (about 180 miles east of here) for the 3d Annual Pearson Homestead Singing weekend.

I wrote about last year's singing here , and the first year's here. I'm glad I checked the previous years' reports, because I was about to begin this one with "What a weekend!" just as I did last year's. And reading about the beauty of the place, the joy of singing in the outdoor screened building, the mountains of delicious food, and the deep and interesting conversations driving there and back (and stopping for ice cream on the way home) tells me that I really may not have much left to say that would be new.

This year, we had 16 or 17 singers in all, a little fewer than past years. Most of them Quakers from the Twin Cities and Eastern Wisconsin, with a handful of singers from the Twin Cities and Madison singing groups to boot. Only one singer was entirely new to Sacred Harp, but she is an experienced and well-trained musician who understood perfectly how to read the shapes and how to sing, and so the singing school didn't last even a full hour and she was ready. We stopped singing separate parts shortly after lunch on Saturday.

We were showered with a blessing of basses [did I just coin a new aggregation term? In addition to a blessing of basses, may there be a treasure of trebles? an aggravation of altos? a trophy of tenors?]: six of the 16 were natural basses, and if we had each stayed in the bass section we would have blasted out all of the other parts. So, just like last year, I spent most of Saturday singing as the second alto, and just like last year I found it exhausting learning a new part, even to familiar songs. Later in the day when a versatile Twin Cities singer (herself normally a tenor) arrived and was able to replace me in the alto section, I went home to sing bass. That made five of us singing out of our regular sections in order to balance out the group -- two natural basses sang tenor; a tenor sang treble; and another tenor and I sang alto

Even with so many of us singing off part, the quality of the singing was extraordinary. The parts were balanced. The acoustics were amazing -- even though the walls are screened, the wood roof and floor provided enough resonance to make it easy to sing and be heard without straining. Once again, we roused an echo off the surrounding hills with David's Lamentation (#268), much to the delight of LeVerne. But we got it from other songs too, particularly later on Saturday.

After she retired from singing on Saturday evening, Elizabeth came back to the singers and urged us to go outside and walk around the hill behind the screened room to the camping area and listen to the singing from there. I did, the next morning, and was as stunned as she was. I don't know if it was the filtering effect of the trees between the hill and the singing, or the effect of the sound off the water of the lake, or what, but from this distance (which might have been 100 yards or so) the music was extraordinarily clear and beautiful. The edges were smoothed just a little to make the blend particularly pleasing. With the smaller number of Sunday morning singers (about 8 at the time) the articulation of the words was especially sharp and I could hear each word clearly. It was easy to imagine being on a ramble in the woods and hearing this sound come from who-knows-where and stopping dead in my tracks. You would have gotten no argument from me if you said it was an angel choir. Is this heaven? No, it's Sacred Harp singing

God also gave us three of those spectacular midwestern summer days he is so famous for. Radiantly warm -- mid-80's, I'd say -- but low humidity. Just warm enough to be happy to be in the shaded screened building, but comfortable enough to be happy sitting around the dinner table outdoors, or on the porch. Swimming was also just the right thing for later in the afternoon. Bright blue sky; puffy white clouds. An almost-full moon rising early in the evening. A night cool enough to appreciate having brought the sleeping bag.

On Saturday, especially in the afternoon and evening, we sang more challenging songs -- challenging to me who was unfamiliar with many of them (even after having returned home to the bass section), at least, and songs that don't get sung so often. We sang a whole string of Christmas songs and then Easter Anthem (#236). We sang Sawyer's Exit (#338) [to the tune of Rosin the Beau], Plenary (#162) [to the tune of Auld Lang Syne], the temperance hymn Oh, Come Away (#334) ["Heav'n's blessing on your plans, we pray! Ye come our sinking friends to save, And rescue from a drunkard's grave; We welcome you here!"], and two songs with words in them that don't come up in everyday conversation, The Last Words of Copernicus (#112) ["And thou refulgent orb of day in brighter flames arrayed. . ."] and Kingwood (#266) ("Unthinking man, remember this, Though fond of sublunary bliss, That you must groan and die"]. On Sunday we struggled through the sublime Rose of Sharon (#254) -- twice! (Though we didn't do it a lot, one of the nice things about an unofficial singing like this is that we can decide to sing a song over again, or work on a difficult part, if we want to without anyone getting all huffy about it. I understand and accept why we don't do this as a matter of course, but it is nice to have places where we can

Also on Saturday, Carol led a song in memory of our friend Minja Lausevic, a delightful woman and singer who died two weeks ago at the age of 41. It made me remember that it was two years ago that we remembered the similarly premature death of Elizabeth's partner, Lou Ann, and last year of Hibbard Thatcher.

On Sunday, we sang for an hour, then had meeting for worship, and then sang some more. We stopped at noon, and then ate our last dinner together. There was still lots of good food, and apparently lots of good conversation left, too, because we just sat around and talked and talked, with some nice long moments of silence, too. It was so peaceful and relaxing. I'd been reading the final Harry Potter book, and at one point I said, "I feel that, if I had a wand, I'd just wave it and have all these dishes wash themselves and put the food away. But wait! I have ten of them," and so began to finish up our time together.

I also greatly enjoyed the conversation I had on the way home with my friend, Frank. We've known each other for years, but only recently have had the opportunity to talk at length. (I had a similar pleasure driving his wife to yearly meeting in May.) We have a lot of common interests, and viewpoints as it turns out, and it made the long drive home seem effortless.

Of course, it was effortless for me -- Gerry did all the driving in his 25-year old VW Vanagon. Despite his giving us all of the necessary disclaimers befitting a vehicle of that age and era, the old thing drove flawlessly. (The four of us in the bus were in our 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, respectively; I don't know why, but I found that interesting.)

Now, back on the front porch with the full moon high over head, it is warm and the crickets are cricketing. It's time for bed. "I lay my body down to sleep, peace is the pillow for my head, while well-appointed angels keep a watchful station round my head." (Hebron, #566)

To be stuck inside of Amsterdam with the Minnesota blues again. . . .

2007-07-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

Lovely Wife was supposed to be home Monday afternoon from her conference followed by Quaker study course on European government in Brussels, where she's been for two weeks. Then came the e-mail that her flight turned around over England and returned to Amsterdam because of mechanical problems. She'll be home Tuesday afternoon.

Then the e-mail on Tuesday (today) that, no, she won't be able to be on that flight either, but to expect her around noon on Wednesday, to be followed later by her luggage (which is on a plane headed first to Detroit. . .).

This has been particularly hard for her, being away two additional days (so far) knowing that her mother has begun to receive hospice care in anticipation of the life-ending illness I wrote about earlier, but it has given her some alone time in what sounds like a very nice airport hotel (if that isn't an oxymoron) to do some writing and thinking about her mother and father, all at the expense of Northwestern and KLM airlines. And it sounds like the food is pretty good, too.

I do hope she's home tomorrow.

When forgiveness makes a headline

2007-07-17T07:33:00.000-05:00

Thank you to Peggy Senger Parsons for finding another example of the Gospel in action (post date: 7-15-07) , and for the most brilliant nutty proposal for a new national holiday, Scooter Libby Annual Pardon Day. A sign of a prophet is the ability to read the signs of the times and relate them to the Big Story.

Introduction to a Quaker wedding

2007-07-13T12:21:00.000-05:00

A couple in our meeting is getting married tomorrow morning. The woman attends our meeting with great regularity and takes an active part in it, though she has not applied for membership. The man also attends, with her, but more regularly worships at an ELCA Lutheran congregation near here. The wedding will be held in that that congregation's building, and it will includesome very Lutheran elements, including organ music, two hymns, an invocation and scripture reading by the pastor. I was asked to welcome the attenders and introduce the Quaker elements of the wedding.

Here is what I plan to say:

I've been asked to say a few words about a Quaker wedding because it is likely to be unfamiliar to many of you. Just as with all true worship, the aim of a Quaker meeting for worship is to experience the presence of God among the assembly of believers, to offer prayer, praise and thanksgiving, and to be taught.

Our Quaker forebears discovered and practiced a radically simple formof worship consisting of regularly meeting together in quiet contemplation without human direction or pre-arranged programming, confident that God is indeed present wherever two or three believers are and will teach them what they need to learn directly and inwardly, often without words at all. We continue to worship in the same way today.

Often, God’s spirit will move one or more of us to minister to the meeting; this ministry, at its best, comes from God, but through the Friend who is called to speak. Ministry may take the form of a vocal prayer, sharing of a personal experience or spiritual insight, a song, a reading of scripture or recital of poetry, or other form of expression. Our conviction and experience is that any worshiper may be called to minister. A message is usually brief. It is not expected to be polished or conventionally eloquent, but should be sincere and intended for the entire meeting.

Today’s wedding will take place in the midst of an otherwise ordinary meeting for worship after the manner of Friends, though with the special purpose of witnessing K and A make their marriage covenant with each other before God. After these opening words, a hymn, and an invocation by pastor B of this congregation, we will settle into a reverent silence. Each of us will then, in our own way, call the Living God to be among us, to witness the promises K and A will make, and to pray that they be given the strength necessary to keep them. When they feel the time is right, they will stand, take each other by the hand, and make their promises aloud in the presence of God and these their family and friends.

They will then sign the certificate of marriage, certifying in writing the promises they have just made. They will return to their seats, and the certificate will be read aloud to the meeting. You are invited to sign it as witnesses to these promises, after the meeting is over. This document is often displayed in a Quaker home as a daily reminder of this happy day and the promises that were made.

We will then continue in free, open worship. During this time, if any of you are moved to offer a message to K and A and the rest of the meeting, please stand if your are able (or raise your hand if you are not) and wait for a microphone to be brought to you so that you can be heard. Please try to leave adequate space after the message of a previous speaker before rising so that we have time to fully appreciate what was said.

When the time seems right, I will signal the transition to the final stage of the wedding by shaking the hand of a person next to me, and you are invited to do the same. We will then conclude with a hymn, after which K and A will leave the room with their families to form a receiving line over yonder. You are then invited to meet them and proceed for refreshments, signing the certificate before doing so.

At the doctor's

2007-07-11T20:08:00.000-05:00

We took my mother-in-law to see the doctor this morning, "we" being Lovely Wife's Elder Sister, and Elder Brother who flew in this morning on his way to a business meeting in Houston. The visit was to get advice and information about a pressure sore on Barbara's buttock that has gotten much larger and deeper.

The doctor wasn't Barbara's regular doctor, but his wife, and she was familiar with with our situation. She listened very attentively as we explained about Barbara's recent visit to Washington and her return last night and our concern with how the sore was getting worse.

Before doing anything else, God bless her, the doctor said, "The first thing you need to know is that this is is not your fault. It is what happens when you are elderly, immobile and incontinent, and it cannot be helped. It is not the result of bad care giving. The fact that this hasn't happened much sooner is because of the exceptionally good care you have given. I want you to understand that." She said this with such sincerity, and dare I say love, that it put us at ease and made us feel we were all in good hands.

She then examined the wound by very gently pulling back the dressing. She talked constantly to Barbara, apologizing for any pain caused by removing the dressing, noting a wince pressure was applied to a particular place. She quietly pointed out something or another to the pre-medical student who accompanied her, estimated the size of the wound, and then covered it up again.

She then explained the difficult truth. This sore is not going to heal. It will become infected, and that will be a "life-ending event" (the only euphemism used during the visit). It may not happen for some time, but it will happen. We cannot fix the wound, she said, but we can and will provide care to keep her comfortable and free from pain. We will get help in our home from a wound team in dressing the wound and keeping it clean, and from the hospice team who will visit and provide other services.

All of this was delivered in a perfectly sincere, respectful, sympathetic manner. she looked us in the eye. There was no question that she understood the import and gravity of the information she was giving us, or that she felt for us.

This confirmed what the hospice nurse in Washington had told us, and it now feels as if we've moved into some new stage of our lives, where the end isn't just theoretical any more but within sight, and approaching. It feels right somehow to be here, now. There is a kind of holiness about it.

****

We are now sitting on the front porch, the three of us, in the cool and dark of the evening. The birds have mostly stopped singing, and it’s either too cool or too early for crickets (maybe both). Barbara is sleeping in her chair, and there is a glass of good red wine nearby. The leaves of the trees are whispering in the breeze. Somewhere to the north a dog is barking, and to the south a train is crossing the bridge over the Mississippi. I feel so incredibly in love at the moment, not in love with something or someone, but simply in love. As one of my favorite Sacred Harp songs, Aiken, goes,

Within thy circling power I stand,
On every side I feel thy hand.
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God.