One Quaker Take

Teach Your Children Well

2009-12-23T15:12:00.000-08:00

Riffing off a post on another blog, again!

Chuck Fager (always a source of inspiration) got me wound up over what we tell our young people about the faith and practice of Friends.

(That's OK, I am trying to get around to a blog post that I know will wind him up.)

This was a hot topic around this old house last year when RR went to Guilford, enrolled in The Quaker Leadership Scholars Program and found herself face to face with all of which Chuck wrote, and more. That meant, of course I came face to face with it, too., because she was able to say that she was a Beanite Friend (she'd heard me and others in our yearly meeting call ourselves that) but she was kind of short on what could be said about that. I never tried to "teach" her much about it, before, because she didn't really want to know, before. And I couldn't have "taught" her, anyway. As Fox said, one can only lead others to Christ and leave them there--to be "taught" by the source.

Christ has come, George Fox said, to teach his people, himself. Christ did not leave a representative (or representatives) on earth to do that. Christ did not leave a book on earth to do that: everyone would be taught by the source--even if led to it by secondary authorities.

It's hard to run empires that way, of course, but Jesus wasn't about running empires. Some years later others would see the value--and they continue to see the value--in using a movement based, at least originally, on following Jesus as a pillar of supporting and running empires.

Quakers, originally, wanted to go back to that pre-Constantinian religion.

The core of the faith and practice of Friends--even since before they were called that--has always been the experience of transformation we undergo through our obedience to Christ/(The) (Holy) S/pirit, the transcendent reality, Goddess, the Great Kahuna or whatever. We are transformed--conformed--to a certain predictable condition.

The core didn't used to be so much, as it is in many Quaker corners, now, about where this transformation came from, why it happened or what it was about in the long run. Unknowable such things are and thus these are the source of great contention if emphasized.

The Light shows us what needs to change and we change--or we don't.

We all attach meanings about where that transformation comes from, how it happens and what it means for us and the world in the long run--but those are our own insignificant meanings and, it should come as no surprise, others have different meanings they have attached to this process. What with the fact that no one really knows (or can know) what it means, contention springing from such disagreements can interfere with the process, itself.

Much better to leave all with their own notions about that and live with them in the transformation--supporting and encouraging (edifying) one another as we live out our spirituality (our relationship with the divine).

That Light is available to every person, everywhere.

Don't look for it too high up or too far away. It's right here, right now: always.

Theology (unprovable notions about the source, nature and purpose of God--useful notions for getting tithes and taxes paid) is not an essential part of the faith and practice of most Friends in the my liberal neck of the woods, as it was of secondary importance originally (which is why George Keith became an Episcopalian). Such notions moved to the center of the Quaker mind later and, as the result we have been left with a torn up and divided fellowship in which to worship.

Even the demons knew who Jesus was, and believed he was just that (so it is written) and yet their sincere belief in those propositions about him could not save them.

Have our (myriad) cherished notions about creedal theology "saved" our Society? That's what worrying about "belief" gets you. Beliefs don't lead to change: obedience does.

Quakers became so concerned and so certain about who Jesus was (where he came from and what he was up to) in the 19th Century that they divided and diminished the Society disagreeing over the possibilities. Friend Hamm's book, "The Transformation of American Quakerism," explains it succinctly--from peculiar to pretty much identical to evangelical protestantism in about 100 years.

Whatever place there may have been for Quakers in the religious world, then, almost all decided to go somewhere else.

"Christian First, Quaker Second"--a sign of those (and our) times.

I believe all kinds of notional things but I try to keep my hand on the plow. I don't make decisions based on my notions. My morality is guided by God, not by my notions--or anyone else's notions-- about God.

So I let people believe whatever they want and support them in keeping their hand on the plow, too.

No one knows what being "saved" is, or whether "atonement" is any one of the many things we parse it to be in our imaginings, in our speculations. Lake of fire? Maybe, I dunno. And neither does anyone else.

All we can really know is our experience of The Light and the transformation it brings about in our lives.

None of us knows whether it's really going to be pre or post or any other kind of millenium and even if we did know/believe it wouldn't do us any good. All that will do us any good--in either or none of those cases--is that which we are becoming, not which we believe(d).

All we can really know is what we used to be and what we are being transformed into. All we can really know is Christ--by whatever name we know him/her/it.

The Sermon on the Mount is not about what I should believe--it's about what I should do or not do with my life.

Our protestant brothers and sisters have made one or another of the Bible(s) handed down to us by this or that editorial committee the ultimate source of truth for themselves and have placed a very high premium on conforming to "right belief" as they define it.

Our Catholic friends put such authority in a person who is the contemporary holder of place in a long line of a different kind of political succession/process and have placed a very high premium on "right action" as the current human being in control of that succession/process defines it.

Friends used to get in a lot of trouble for eschewing both of those points of view (along with the thrones and aspiring thrones they are so apt to support)--orienting themselves, instead, to the source of whatever artifacts of inspiration may be passed along by either of those "authorities," in such condition as they are passed along, with the spin of today put on the spin that was put on those same artifacts yesterday.

Now people wonder whether there wasn't just some kind of big misunderstanding 350 some years ago that got Mary Dyer hanged--because Quakers today are not so different from protestants and even Catholics, anymore. The peace testimony is optional in some domains of the Society, I hear. Even "Quakerism" can apparently support empire (powers, thrones...).

Go with what you know (and not with hearsay religion no matter how "sincerely" or "certainly" someone else knows it). That is, I believe, the essence of the faith and practice of Friends (you can look that up--it's back there with wearing it for as long as you can). So I'll go with my experience in The Light and the transformation toward the fruits of the spirit (which the testimonies paraphrase) that it has brought about in me. It's not been easy, or gentle, or comfortable at times but I hurt myself and others a whole lot less, now, than I did when I was sure about what the Bible said God was and what He (and it was a He) wanted.

Is it still enough for people to follow Christ even if they have never heard that word, or are not so concerned about the historical accuracy of this or that account of the recurring truths of human existence that are described in the Bible?

Is there still a place for this kind of faith and practice in the world, today?

Is there a place for this focusing on improving one's moral condition as part of a similarly inclined corporate body under the direct guidance of an empirically benevolent transcendent guide (albeit not one we can say a lot about except to express our wonder and gratitude) who has been changing people (who let themselves be changed) in the very same way for (probably) ever?

There is room for this kind of religion.

There has to be room for this kind of religion in a world dominated by religion that too often comes out of the the pit of human fear, out of our insecurity at being in fellowship with those against whom we cannot prevail in arguments about things none of us can ever know. There has to be room for this instead of "believing" in "religions" that we must lay down so we can fall back on our true faith in redemptive violence and in the necessity to coerce others into giving us what we imagine will meet our needs.

That's more or less what I told my 18 year old daughter a year or so, ago. It's what I could say.

I can see, once in while, that it's still rolling around inside her head and that, along with other things, appears to be leading her to Christ. I don't have much else, at least on this subject, to say to her.

more on Obama's speech...sort of

2009-12-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

My post on the President's speech in Oslo was one insignificant comment among millions that were made and I found one other that interested me.

The part of this that jumped out reminded me of something that may seem peripheral, but something that is at best a "lesser included" ramification of the major point. Mr. Obama said:

"… America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention — no matter how justified."

This is about integrity, now, not an American strong point. But we are Friends and walking one's walk, living out one's spirituality regardless of consequences is pretty big onions (at least aspirationally) in my Quaker neck of woods. We should talk about this when we see it--or don't see it--working out in the world.

Because the United States turned its back decades ago on integrity where nuclear weapons are concerned our President now faces an unsolvable problem in the Middle East. We are apparently worried about the collapse of our geo-political control (such as it remains) in the Middle East because of the danger that Pakistan's nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of the Al Qaeda. How can we leave if that possibility looms?

So, we are stuck in sin because we are afraid of the outcomes of righteousness in light of our previous sins?

Well, whose fault is that?

For 60 years we have sanctimoniously held on to nuclear weapons and conspired with those who also have them to guarantee the exceptional-ism of our possession.

(There are several layers of hypocrisy, here--including slogans like that of the Strategic Air Command--"Peace is our profession.")

This means that we created a premium on developing such weapons. North Korea, for example, didn't suffer invasion as Iraq did because that member of the "axis of evil" could give us a radioactive bloody nose that Saddam could not. In fact, Saddam getting the nuclear weapons was on of the most harped upon distractions from the reality of the blood for oil policy of the United States. The word is out--get nukes and no one, not even the United States, will mess with you. What a surprise that Iran got the message.

If the United States had worked for abolition of all nuclear weapons--including our own--and to implement President Eisenhower's "open skies" inspection system to guarantee a practical way to assure everyone that no one else had nukes would we be where we are now? Forget unilateral disarmament--what if we had been tireless champions of verifiable abolition of nuclear weapons for the past fifty years? What if that had been the policy of every US president since?

(Yes, I know, that would have conflicted with other US policies--but those are the very policies that have us in trouble, now, on so many fronts. And I use the word "fronts" consciously.)

If we had the courage to allow integrity to shape our policy would we be where we are now?

Perhaps nuclear weapons would still be sought by small countries fearing larger habitual enemies. Perhaps, however, not.

If every powerful nation had destroyed its nuclear weapons in concert with all others, in the context of an openness that would guarantee no secret program would make re-arming possible, would Pakistan have developed nuclear weapons that might, now, fall into the hands of terrorists?

We not only look stupid saying that we can handle nuclear weapons but other countries cannot, we have sown the seeds of what could prove, yet, to be our own destruction.

If Quakers don't have something to say about this who could?

And, next, should we talk about integrity and the military draft?

;-]

another comment too long to be a comment...

2009-12-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

My thanks to Bill Mounce for his edifying post on his blog. I encourage all to read it (and not just because what I have written below will make more sense if you do).

I actually agree with you, Bill. That which is called "blessed" is the product of obedience to God and to nothing else. A "salvation experience" is not enough. One must live out the sermon on the mount, as best one can, one's ability to do so improving over time with each small success in the way we treat others.

I am a Quaker. What any text says is the test of nothing beyond what it says. The Bible is not the highest authority--God is. The Bible is not the "word of God" it's words about God. The word of God came and comes to all of us--heeded or not, understood or not--directly from the source every day. So it says in John's gospel and so it proves to be, empirically, every day.

The question is not so much about one's theology, it's about one's transformation--spiritual (and therefore moral). It's about, as I say (and as you say), living it out. Theology has nothing to do with it and may even be a cumber to it getting done.

We are to be proved by the fruit, it is also written, represented in our lives and our moral transformation. That is not only "written" it's been tested in my own life and the lives of Friends for more than three centuries (and in the lives of others for much longer).

Evidence of being "saved"--transformed--will be apparent in the way we act--the fruits of the spirit manifest in our lives. You are correct that the fruit is pleasing to God when it is that fruit which results from obedience to God--not from affirmation of propositional "beliefs" based on interpretation or parsing of texts and the rationalizations on the "nuances" of those interpretations and parsings. If it's fruit from obedience to God then we know what it will look like. We also know what it looks like if it's fruit from deductive reasoning based on scriptural interpretation.

The Truth you point out, here (and it is true), would be just as true--and no less true--if there were no Greek Bible or even if that Greek Bible said the opposite. We know that because that Truth is sent to us constantly from it's source: the one who must be obeyed.

Queries:

Can we support and encourage others to aspire with their behavior to transformed lives in ways that do not accuse them, divide them from us (or others) and cause them to resist?

Does the form of our exhortation to others testify to our own meekness, mournfulness, poverty of spirit and to the purity of our own hearts in making those exhortations?

Do our actions show us to be (or are they contributing to our becoming) peacemakers?

Three Comments About Oslo Speech

2009-12-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

President Obama made a speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize and I have three things to say about what he said.

First, he said that no non-violent force could have stopped Hitler's army. Perhaps, not, once that army existed and was on the move. But an American policy of collaborative engagement with Europe after the First World War--rather than retreating behind our ocean frontier and leaving the League of Nations at the altar--might well have prevented that army from being created.

One of the problems with redemptive violence as a world view and a national policy is that one does things that cause the impetus to violence to build and build until--shock!--violence is inevitable. Pacifism is a long range strategy for security and must be pursued over the long haul.

Second, Mr. Obama called Al Qaeda evil. Mr. Obama's Bible, like mine, draws a distinction between people and the "power" called evil--our enemies are not flesh and blood but the powers that hold and control other human beings just as they sometimes hold and control us. When we drop death out of the sky on innocents with drones and such we are as much in the thrall of evil from the point of view of Al Qaeda (and in reality) as they were, our eyes (and in reality), when they flew airplanes into buildings. When we stop calling people evil, and affirm that evil is something they--we all--serve, at times, we change the paradigm into one that is more useful to building peace and a world community that is secure.

My third comment is about this "just war" thing. Not the first to serve this up, the President put at least as much irony as anyone else ever has into that sugar cone, and has created at least as big, and tasty, a brain freeze. Like the equally destructive human doctrine/notion of original sin, "just war" was invented by St Augustine. It is not a part of the Gospel or even the Bible, itself. The religious hand-maidens of imperial power had to contort scripture (and common sense) to put those "doctrines" of political control into the "constantinian" hands of their idolatrous masters. All wars ever fought were "just wars"--just ask anyone on either side of any one of them. The undeniable truth is that "just wars" are just war--period. Linking the concept of "justice" to any one of them, or either side in any one of them, is missing the mark.

Like traffic tickets, no one is ever to blame for a war or wrong for having been part of one--just ask them.

I know that the Obama administration is sliding along greased rails, here, and sees no other way out. So many opportunities for constructive engagement around community building with the people of the Middle East have been lost and wasted in the past while this country opted for manipulation and force as a means of "pursing our interests."

But if our interests are really security and peace (rather than something else) than we must--at least with one hand--start to do some of that kind of constructive engagement that will improve life for people in that part of the world, and we should gradually cut down on the manipulation and force while we increase the constructive collaboration.

Al Qaeda is a threat because the soil they work has been composted for decades by the poverty and injustice we have helped heaped upon it, poverty and injustice that has been in our "national interest." Until we start offering something better, or at least stop spreading more of the same, no one apt to being successfully courted by Al Qaeda is going to pay any attention to anything we have to say.

Blaspheming non-violence, identifying human beings as hapless as ourselves as being, rather than serving, one of the corrupt powers of this world and throwing the concept of "just war" around only makes it possible for the other side to rationalize their allegiance to evil, as we rationalize our own.

Thank you for conjuring the mirror, Mister President. Pray look into it.

Radically Inclusive Does Not Mean Totally Inclusive

2009-11-20T16:47:00.000-08:00

I hear people saying that the cumber of including non-theist Friends is that they say they aren't seeking the will of God. Since seeking the will of God is the center of "Quakerism," so this goes, people who do not acknowledge God cannot share in the center of our faith and practice (and, in a small and adroit further step, say that such people will ruin our ability to be in that center, as well).

(As I write that it strikes me as the logic of the Defense of Marriage Act and shows us the shortcoming of reasoning done badly. I digress...)

(And why didn't this arise earlier--at least to the extent it does now--re Buddhist Friends? Buddhism is a non-theist "religion." Trust me. I know this.)

(Also, I think, personally, that doing the will of God is the center of living out one's spirituality. It is not seeking the will of God or seeking an understanding of the will, character or purpose of God or any such other thing. I digress...again.)

How is it, I wonder, that people who say that they are not seeking the will of God in a meeting for worship for business can be sure that they aren't? Because their reason tells them they couldn't be doing that? Well, clear the decks and think that over for a moment in the context of people who say they are (or are not) "doing things" they are obviously doing.

"I am not angry, but..."

"I am not a judgmental person, but..."

"I don't hold a grudge, but..."

How do they know they aren't seeking the will of God?

How would they know if they were?

Are they making/jumping to conclusions based on "definitions" of God that very few of us would own? With all due respect, Dr. Dawkins does not get to define God and then dismiss us all as nut cases regardless of our spiritual experience. What makes him think that experiences he has had in his life were not the same ones that some of us characterize as spiritual or even "supernatural?"

When someone says "I don't believe in God" why do those of us who do take their word for it, or even care that they say this?

Have we taken so many steps (as a Society or as individuals) back toward propositional beliefs based on this or that reasoning from stories in the Bible that we have forgotten that it is how we live, and not what we believe, that saves us?

Have we given up on discerning and following the daily promptings we receive directly (from whatever we call the "source") that nudge us toward the love and charity that some of us express in the five (here today but called something else tomorrow) testimonies in the Liberal domain of the Society?

Does some propositional belief (like God doesn't want us to have same sex life partners or God demands that we all confess "Jesus Christ" by that name) cause us to ignore the promptings to love and live out our spirituality with those around us?

Not withstanding what they say they are up to, non-theist Friends seem to take part in doing business and other meeting process in a range of behavior not discern-ably different from the range of behavior as us "believers" in our meetings. And we are not sure whether we can include them just because they refuse to characterize as we do what we are all (more or less) doing in the same way?

I once heard a dharma talk on the radio during which the teacher said "...and then a thought bubbled out of my psyche..."

I snorted and said aloud "Huh! Nothing bubbled out of anywhere! You heard God talking to you."

And then I heard God talking to me: "Shut up and listen."

It was an edifying, helpful and skillful thing that was said and I might have rejected it or missed it altogether if I was hung up on "where" it came from.

Sure, I am a bit annoyed at times when people who never ask me what I mean by God (or people who classify me as "Christo-centric ") say that I believe in God because of some flaw in my character--some need to have a "God" to make up for some unwholesome hole in my humanity. But it's just as likely, you know, that a lack of a "belief" in God is based on the same human shortcomings in them that they decry in me.

If one can be kind to others, and respectful of them, and allow for all the same opportunity to go through the potluck (or any other) line or serve on a committee in a role consistent with their gifts then one can and should be included in my spiritual community (even if they say it isn't "spiritual" at all).

If one needs some work to be able to do those things then I say work with them--and abide with them. (It amounts to working and abiding with oneself, you know.)

But if they cannot do those things--and do not own that these are the things to which they aspire, to which they are being led (by whom or whatever)--then I don't care if they say they are seeking the will of God or not, whether they "believe" in God or not.

Call it what you will, it--just like all of us-- "is" and it "is becoming."

A question from a Friend...

2009-10-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

A Friend sent me a link and a question.

The link takes us here.

the question:

"if we acknowledge there is no unitary "self", what does quaker integrity mean?"

I wrote back to him:

I think it means that one doesn't give in to serving that imaginary "unitary self" that is the source of all the noise in our heads. If we acknowledge that it doesn't exist it means that we stop feeding and protecting that made-up self. It means that, in old timey Quaker talk, we nail that insatiable and permanently restless self firmly to the cross and live, instead, in the guidance of the Light.

The point, as Penington wrote describing the "sum and substance" of the religion of Quakers, is to beat down (such violent metaphors from such peaceable people) that unskillful self in us and to raise up instead "the seed" in us--until the one is defeated and the other...you get the picture.

Authentic.

It's why my experience taught me to try to avoid local newspapers and television news; it's all designed to scare me and make me mad and I am scared enough and mad enough, already. I need to "starve" or "beat down" or "crucify" or "make a space to hold" that scared, angry self until it disappears and doesn't make me do crazy things, anymore.

Tolle said that he got to a place one day in his life when he found himself muttering over and over "I cannot live with myself."

I? Myself? Two different things?

Maybe they are.

But the "myself" in this construct is really a conglomeration of "should be's" and "might happens" that our culture gave to me--"should be" and "might happen" to which I spent a good part of a lifetime applying my fears and--voila! I felt inadequate. So I listened all the more carefully, intently, to what Don Henley called "those voices in your head."

Strong stuff.

The "myself" in this sense is not really "my" self, at all--it's "their-self," it's the person everyone with something to sell me or some other way to use me wants me to be and wants me to think I really am.

How much suffering do all of us do because our culture has told us (to pick an example out of the air) "you are a boy/girl and that means you do what's on this blue/pink list and not what's on this other one." How crazy do we make ourselves--and one another--trying to force ourselves and everyone else to be those "selves?"

As we submit to and obey the Light, as our hearts are softened and changed, integrity arises and we lay such things down.

Since "myself" is a destructive phantasm--a reality that becomes clearer as the testimonies of community and equality (but simplicity and peace, too) develop in us--then what could integrity mean except to be faithful to ignoring its guidance and looking, instead, to the LIght?

Integrity demands (and always gets) a grounding in reality insofar as we know it. As we come to know reality better (as we "wake up," sometimes on a pillow, sometimes on the way to Damascus) then integrity dictates that we change our behavior to reflect the new grounding.

Wear it, it is written, for as long as you can.

Progress and the Journey

2009-09-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

As commonly happens, I read someone's blog and it started me thinking. Next thing I know I have too much to say to fit into a comment and what I want to say isn't really a response to what the blogger said, anyway.

So, in this way this blog post was inspired by, although is not a direct response to, a blog post that I would recommend to everyone.

I have not yet come to the wide-spread post-modern rejection of "progress" as a model for the human experience or human history. I can't say, one way or the other, whether things are headed in some pre-determined direction or, if it is, whether that was pre-determined by some super being or is a playing out of forces that are mutable or immutable. I just don't know.

Progress, however, in the sense of development (without a characterization of change as "good" or "bad" or "inevitable" or "evitable'), in the sense of progression--seems obvious to me.

While I don't know that "the world" or "history" is headed in a certain direction (how could I possibly know that?) I do know that my spiritual condition--my relationship with Christ and the ramifications of that for me and others--is developing in a predictable direction. That same process, heading in the same direction, is described by Friends (and others) historically and contemporaneously.

I find that maturity--sanctification--perfection--is usefully described and characterized as a journey. My experience also indicates that the destination, as an individual human condition, is also well described and understood in the literature. That condition is summed up in a lot of ways by different people, but each summation is a paraphrase or restatement of the others.

Some do use "journey" in the sense of a seeking something not yet glimpsed or even glimps-able, celebrating seeking as a permanent vocation that is based on the assumption that one will never "find." That is not a description of what I refer to, here. My journey is not a perpetual wandering with the idea of a destination being irrelevant to that up to which I am.

I cannot say, as I say, much about the "human condition" in the general sense, but I know that human beings do progress spiritually, in predictable directions, over familiar terrain. I know that because it is something I experience, something that others have described as what they have also experienced, and something I see people around me going through.

I cannot say that I know, in this same way, what I know "means" in the context of some one or the other larger thought-system about where things came from, how they were made, why they were made, the character of the God in charge, if indeed one is, or what that God may be up to. That's all notional, by my light, and not very important or useful to me.

But I do know there is progress in individual human lives, that it goes in predictable directions, toward predictable destinations.

Too long for an answer to a comment--to one of my own blog posts!

2009-09-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

This is a reply to Ashley's comment on one of my previous blog posts. I think it is the eighth comment, down, and as of this moment it's the last one. To understand the rest of the post you are now reading, and to be fair to Ashely (as what I write may be a straw man if I did not understand her well), one might want to read her comment before reading this.

Hello, Ashley

I am grateful for the comment, even though 'belated,' especially because your view appears to be different than mine, and from that of the relatively small number of Friends at the interest group at annual session in July. Perhaps those in attendance were not a cross section of the yearly meeting and may have been pre-disposed to the idea. Self selection sometimes brings together diversity of view and sometimes it does not.

It is also possible, however, that you and I don't really disagree and the underlying unity of the yearly meeting is radical inclusiveness--albeit an imperfect one.

You are right that there is an uneven "tolerance" of the diversity of belief in the yearly meeting in the sense that there are those who don't think that non-theists, atheists, deists, Buddhists, pagans, Jews, sexual minorities and so on "belong" in a Quaker meeting.

There are also people who do not believe that evangelicals (a category into which some small number of these will place anyone who uses the word "Christ" except as a swear word) are a part of "our tradition," and that what they call "Christo-centric" language is inappropriate among Friends because so much hurtful "baggage" is attached to it.

There are times both views get expressed openly and the uneven nature of the "tolerance" you cite is then apparent.

Friends have strongly held beliefs--strongly held beliefs that make up their personal "creeds" and strongly held beliefs about the beliefs that make up the personal "creeds" of others.

Because I am the clerk of the Committee on the Discipline/Faith and Practice I have both sought and been sought out during these last three and a half years by Friends to talk about these (and, oh! so many other) issues and how they should be addressed in the Faith and Practice.

I've yet to meet or talk to a Friend who has said that there are beliefs to which one must adhere to be a member of this yearly meeting. I have certainly, however, encountered many who have expressed with a great deal of certainty and determination that the language of their own personal creed (which they might regard to be "Quakerism") should be the one used in the Book of Discipline for North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and that their personal beliefs about the nature (or non-nature) of the D/divine should be its frame of reference.

There are no doubt Friends here, as elsewhere in the Society, who were first attracted by what they understood to be "Friends beliefs" (or, perhaps, the freedom from them). And there are no doubt some for whom propositional belief (or non-belief) is supremely important.

What has been opened to me, however, is that most Friends with whom I speak have remained Friends because they have been greatly edified (or "fed" or "nourished" or "enlightened" or "matured" or whatever) by the experience of being here, by doing the "Quaker Stuff" we all do, here. Whether they call it "Quaker process" or the "faith and practice of Friends" or "living out spirituality in the manner of Friends," this "Quaker way" (with waiting/silent worship as its center piece and its epitome) is what is central to most.

This would mean that "Quakerism" is not a set of beliefs but a set of traditions or practices that have been shown, through the years, to bring about a measure this edification, feeding, nourishing, enlightening, maturing or whatever. Over time and distance this particular orthopraxy has created a remarkably consistent (although not unique) outcome. Today we express it as simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality. As I have said before, other lists also skillfully describe these same human qualities.

It is not the beliefs that Friends might use to explain this experience but the experience itself about which we are radically inclusive--as Joel and Hannah Bean were, as George Fox and Margaret Fell were. We will include those who want to live out their spirituality in the manner of Friends--regardless of their beliefs. That is radical for a spiritual community in the sense that it is "extreme," and it's radical in the sense that it relates to the root from which everything else "Quaker" comes.

If someone wants to celebrate mass, pray bowing to Mecca, or chant vows, or sacrifice a chicken during meeting for worship we are not likely to go there. That's because it's not a part of the practice that has been shown to Friends, century in and century out, to give use the water of which we have had a taste, ourselves, and its ability to slake thirst we have seen in others. People who "believe" that which underlies those other practices are welcome, of course, to worship with us in the manner of Friends and we are glad to include them.

And we acknowledge that ours is not the only set of disciplines and practices that edifies, feeds, nourishes, enlightens, matures or whatever. It's one that works for us and, as replicating outcomes from any successful models depends on fidelity to that model, we go with doing it the way it's worked, before. (Not without change, of course. Isaac Penington did not participate in worship sharing, after all. But change must show that it enhances the work from the root: the outcomes sought and the experience that brings them about.)

The fact that many of us in the yearly meeting don't understand that it's the experience that comes out of the process/practice/discipline that keeps us here doesn't mean that it is not so. It just means that in this regard we are much like some people in business who don't know what it is that really makes them successful (until they stop doing it) or like fish who do not get the centrality of water to their existence.

It is certainly not propositional belief that is central to holding our community together. We are not held together by our gregarious charisma, our outgoing and easy-going personalities, our sense of fashion, our lack of annoying eccentricities or our potlucks. (OK, maybe the potlucks have something to do with it).

We are held together by the experience of Quaker practice, and it is not just some ecstatic "other worldly" "bliss out" kind of experience. It's an experience of change and growth we see in ourselves and those around us as time goes on, and it's all about relationships. First, of course, is our relationship with that which we sense moving among us (however we may characterize it), our spirituality. But also crucial are the relationships we have with those who, like us, are trying to live out their lives and spirituality in the manner of Friends.

The Kingdom of Heaven is described in the Gospels as being both "is" and "is becoming," a concept that Quakers have used before to describe what was "going on" with and around them, what was moving among them. In that same way I have described radical inclusiveness.

So, Ashley, I do and I do not agree with your take on radical inclusiveness as being an aspiration and not a reality in North Pacific Yearly Meeting--because it is both.

The "reality" is not to be proved, in my view, at some time in the future when everyone "blesses" and confesses the validity of all the beliefs held by every one in the yearly meeting.

The reality is proved, to me, right here and now by the way people who dearly hold to mutually exclusive and inconsistent beliefs meet together for worship, do business together, abide with one another through the child births and the death watches, the celebrations and the occasions for mourning--doing all of this living out of their spirituality in the manner of Friends.

It doesn't matter to me what anyone believes when we are doing the work of the building maintenance committee, or sitting next to one another in meeting for worship, or when you are on my porch with a hot dish in a time of illness, or when you gather with me to send my daughter off to college, or your son is raising money to go on a service trip, or we are putting together shared transportation to annual session, or figuring out infant care to allow young parents to attend a vigil. What matters is how we do those things together in obedience and humility so that through doing them together, we all grow in the Light.

You point with justification to the lack of perfection.

But notwithstanding all that, I suggest that radical inclusiveness describes both the current condition of North Pacific Yearly Meeting and that which holds us together in it.

Thank you, again, for your comment Ashley. I am sure I'll see you again soon.

Another comment too long to be a comment...

2009-09-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

This post was of interest because I dress in simple clothing--but not plain dress.

For work I wear black slacks of the dockers type, black shoes and socks with a tie that's black or gray (sometimes other solid colors) and a white shirt. I rarely wear a jacket, but if I do it's a sport jacket that is a shade of gray or brown. (I'm the only lawyer I know who doesn't own a suit.) Always the same. Makes deciding what to wear (and what to pack for business trips) easy.

I spend far less time deciding what to buy or what to wear on a specific day, than it takes me to get dressed.

It does get noticed, because I work among legal and social work professionals, and I do say, if asked, that it's a personal Quaker scruple. I will also, insofar as anyone is interested, talk about it. In that regard it's a witness.

Witness or not it is a testimony: an outward manifestation of an inward change done in my by Christ.

For casual, it's blue jeans (sometimes shorts) and t-shirts or long-sleeved shirts of solid dark colors (except for my "second string" white shirts--too gray to wear for work and too ragged to donate but too good to discard). I wear those same black shoes or sneakers or sandals (without socks even though I live in the Pacific NW...). Sometimes I go barefoot.

I am probably in a place similar to where the writer of the blog post to which I respond is on dress.

My understanding of plain dress was that it was originally something to which one was led because one had been dealt with concerning superfluity of dress and fashion--that one had stopped squandering one's time and money on things that were not necessary. Friend Woolman had a particular scruple, too, about cleanliness of clothing.

I have worn uniforms in my life--including those of the US Marine Corps, of a law firm, and judge in court. I do believe that clothes make the person and I do believe that is not a good thing, very often. Uniforms--even informal ones worn, say, by bank employees, intentionally instill a conformity and rigidity to limit one's ability to respond to people spontaneously and to dictate to others how they are to act toward the person wearing it. It's not about a witness to equality.

I have heard it said I wear a uniform, now, and I suppose I do, in a sense. But a uniform actually gets its name from uniform dress among a group of people, not one person's habit of dress. It's a uniform, in so far as it is one, of my own making and it's done with a conscious intention, consistent with the testimonies of simplicity and integrity.

It does influence my behavior, so it does "make the man" to some extent although it doesn't transform me so much as it reminds me of the transformation already done in me. It makes me grateful, at times, too, for that and all the rest that has come with it.

It does not, however, influence how others treat or respond to me.

So uniforms draw lines between and among people--conveying stereotypes and often moving us to respond to the uniform and not the person wearing it. The only way I'd wear one again, I think, is if I went back on the bench.

ps on the bench I prompted people to call me "judge" rather than "your honor." I knew, and they knew, that I was in the role, the job, of a judge. I don't think they could know,in the same way, from that robe I had on, whether I was honorable. That I had to earn--or not--day in and day out.

Some Questions

2009-09-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

I saw the writing of someone trying to sort out a number of things about "universalism" and it led me to wondering what the importance of such sorting was, what it meant to the writer to be working through it.

I also became curious about the writer's take on the nature and purpose of spirituality.

I wondered if the writer sees spirituality as being about developing/adopting a set of propositional beliefs, the acceptance or rejection of which gets a person something, or shows a person something about themselves or other people.

I wondered whether the writer saw these propositions/axioms about universalism, the nature of the divine/profane--about how the divine/profane works or doesn't work-- as the basis for reasoning about how to act toward others and live one's life.

Is spirituality about developing one's personal condition along some pre-determined path that is in some way inherent in the nature of things, of God?

Does such development, such transformation, turn us into the image of Christ/Buddha/Spirit/Light/the Big Kahuna?

If it is neither about developing a set of propositional beliefs, or developing a spiritual condition, what is it about?

If so, or not, do we think we need to know why or how that takes place or does not?

Is our spirituality a source of understanding about "how things are," what the nature of God (or no god) is, what God/no god's purpose is or is not?

If so, what is the value of that understanding? What do we do with it?

Does it make a difference if Jesus walked out of the tomb and a video camera would have captured his image in the process? If so, why?

Does it make any difference whether or not Mara tempted the Buddha?

Does it make a difference in how we live whether or not there is an afterlife?

What difference does it make in the way we live our lives if, as one universalist "take" has it, everyone is going home to God, in the end, or, as another has it, God gives everyone (regardless of their "religion") the chance to know and accept Christ (although not necessarily by that name), or as another has it, all religions are like a sacred GUI interface sitting on top of a divine DOS--that all religions are really "takes" on a common spirituality, the proverbial paths to the top of the same mountain? If one or the other of these, or none of them, is true, so what?

How do (or do not) (or should) the answers to any of these questions affect who we are, what we do, day to day, in living our lives, in relating to other people?

Can the answers to these questions be known?

If so, so what?

If not, so what?

Too Long For a Comment..

2009-08-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hear Friends talking about nontheism as though it is a species of atheism or agnosticism. And sometimes it is.

But I have also heard it said that nontheism is not necessarily such a negation of a Higher Power (internal or external), rather, it is sometimes an affirmation that this great "whether or not" is so unknowable as to be irrelevant to the human condition and a distraction from its unfolding or being unfolded within and among us.

I cannot know which it is in the sense that knowledge is discussed, in the blog post I have linked, above. I cannot really know many of the things I have read in the very interesting (distracting?) post and the string of following comments. I am in awe at the degree to which some of this writing has mastered the material involved and I certainly have my own sense of how such things go/are.

My failing is that in talking and writing about these things that I can never really know (and about which I can only extend the benefit the doubt in crediting others with this knowledge that eludes me) I end up discounting, dismissing and pushing other people away or stimulating them to push me away. See? I just did that, didn't I?

In a life that has not been short I have been around that barn far too many times.

What I can know is that there is something "going on," here, and that I am dealt with on a daily basis as part of it. Prove it? I can't. But I know that as I am able to submit I am conformed whatever is "going on" and I find my life more pleasant for me and for those around me. This is no small thing.

I know and appreciate (as do those who have known me for years) I am being changed and I recognize the drift of it. This transformation I am experiencing seems similar to the way the Quaker (and other) heroes mentioned in the post and comments to which I have linked, above, describe (and are described by others) as having been changed. Both the five testimonies current in the Liberal domain of the Society of Friends and the Eight Fold Path seem to capture that change, as well. Huxley describes it, too, in "The Perennial Philosophy," as does Rumi's poetry. It's elsewhere--it's everywhere. Everyone has heard it from other people--even if they have not stopped to hear it from the source of it--whatever that is.

For years I tried to get to such places as described in all this (and more) spiritual literature by reading it, parsing it, reasoning from it--I remained largely alienated from others and from myself, seeking "orthodoxy" rather than "orthopraxy." Imagine, what I do is more important than what I think is true. News flash.

Someone who contributed the the comments following the post to which I linked, above, once said it's not so much about "understanding" as it is about "standing under." My take on that is that it's not about figuring it all out and then living according to what I have figured out. It's living as I am led and from that I experience a developing concinnity with whatever it is that is "going on."

So, I don't know if there is a God (whatever someone using the word may mean by it), where S/he may or may not have come from, how S/he works, or why. I don't know about atonement, virgin birth, lakes of fire, unfolding lotus flowers or the brushing wings of butterflies wearing boulders away over incomprehensible periods of time.

And I have to say I don't think my believing in the reality or centrality of such things has ever done me or those around me much good. What matters is how I live out my life and in my experience "belief" about existence of a "God" has been of little help in that. And history seems to indicate to me that belief in a God and reasoning from the concept in which one believes has not been very helpful to a lot of people (or to those around them) in coming to grips with how to live out their lives.

I am part of a religious Society and a world that is badly fractured by contention over things that I can never really know and that I doubt anyone else can, either. So many people are trying to come to some kind of unity about these unknowable things and even trying to force such a unity on others or to police, within the group of which they are a part, a unity that is exclusive them--even though it alienates them from everyone else. Yeah, I know. Don't be yoked to unbelievers. The problem I have found in following that teaching is that I end up too often doing harmful things to those with whom I avoid being yoked--and there are other teachings exhorting me to avoid doing those things.

I don't think that this is all working out for us, as a religious Society or as a global society. Of course, I can't really know if it's supposed to. All I can know, as I say, is the guidance I am getting and that without knowing where it's coming from (God? My psyche? Mars?), or why it's coming, I have come to trust it--based on the outcomes.

As I have put it before--the one celled animal on the forest floor has no concept of the eco-system of which it is a part. It just knows to eat the leaves and, so long as it eats the leaves things work out for it and the system. Maybe there is such a system of which I am a part and maybe there is not. But I know what I am supposed to do and from the moral consensus humanity has developed and ignored across time and space so does everyone else. As the one celled animal is supposed to eat the leaves I am supposed to love and to be connected to others--even those afraid to love me back or who don't understand the interconnectedness. Those are the leaves, bitter and sweet, that I am to eat.

And eat those leaves I do, whether it means anything or not. To the measure of the ability developed and developing in me, I try to clean what's put on my plate each and every day. It's what I keep being told to do. It's all that makes sense, to me. I don't know any better.

It's Just Not Fair

2009-07-28T07:26:00.001-07:00

Word gets around fast, although it does not always get around very well.

I have heard a couple of versions of why I am laying down the clerkship of the Committee on the Discipline that are not accurate.

The Committee spent a little more than a year looking for a way forward. A number of things--some of them very much my responsibility, some that cannot be laid anywhere near my feet--had us stalled. Finally, at a meeting this last April, we came together in a unity about that way forward.

The Committee had already come to unity on radical inclusiveness as the touchstone of the yearly meeting. It is the living out of our spirituality together in the manner of Friends, rather than any particular theological formulation, that gathered the members and attenders of North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and that kept them in fellowship despite huge theological diversity among us. The Committee did not see this as aspirational--we saw it as what it was true of us.

The Committee came to that conclusion the hard way. Dissatisfaction was almost immediately manifest upon our initial proposals for revisions of various sections of the Faith and Practice. We faced the fact--sometimes delivered like the handle of a rake stepped on--that Friends cared very much about, for instance, what words were used and not used to describe the Divine. This issue is emblematic that Friends' measure of satisfaction with the drafts was how well these expressed what their personal beliefs. The word "Christ" was central to some--totally un-acceptable to others, for example.

Those who have followed my blog have seen the dawn of my being stunned and perplexed by this "creedal" orientation in the yearly meeting and have watched the sun of my confusion travel across the sky of my consciousness to finally set in the West of radical inclusion. Like any such "day" it was new and not new, others lived it before me. It is the same day lived by Joel and Hannah Bean as they witnessed and then endured the divisions in the Society of Friends during the 19th Century and, eventually, set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the founding of this yearly meeting. The "united" meeting in San Jose was radical inclusiveness in the 1880's--where Hicksite, Orthodox, Conservative and Evangelical were welcome to worship in the manner of Friends.

With the help of a quotation from Catherine Whitmire (also familiar to those who have followed this blog) the Committee on the Discipline, as a whole, came to unity on this radical inclusiveness as the center of gravity from which our work should proceed, because it was the center of unity that gathered and held the yearly meeting together.

From that unity the Committee began to create a new process for developing drafts of sections and new vehicles of communication to increase participation of Friends in a process that, primarily, is a necessary corporate and individual re-centering in light, a conversation about where the Light has brought us since last Friends in this yearly meeting made their condition manifest in writing. The creation of a book of Faith and Practice is actually secondary to this conversation, made possible only by the conversation having taken place.

This process should not have the Committee on the Faith and Practice at its center. It should not be a discussion, a "negotiation," between "this" group of Friends and the Committee and then "that" group of Friends and the Committee with the Committee--in the end--trying to reconcile it all to the satisfaction of all.

The process should be, rather, that "this" and "that" group--and all Friends, as individuals and groups--should be talking about the issues involved and, as they do, coming to a unity that, through listening to the conversations, the Committee can express that unity or discern where unity is lacking.

That's just nutshell. Soon (by the end of August?) a series of documents will appear on the North Pacific Yearly Meeting website that will show all this in depth. Soon (by the end of August?) the new process will begin.

My point is not to describe all that. This post began as an explanation of why I am laying down the clerkship of the Committee. It is not, as has been reported to me, because the Committee is in chaos and I am stomping away in frustration, or because the process of revising the Faith and Practice is hopelessly mired. The opposite of both of those rumors is true.

I left that April meeting in Seattle and drove with two members of the Committee back to Portland. In between our conversations I began to feel a pull. Arriving home, the pull continued and in two weeks or so the message was clear: I was to lay down the clerkship of the Committee as soon as a new clerk emerged and leave the Committee altogether in August 2010, at the end of my current term.

My practice has made me able to clearly recognize the voice of the Shepard, to hear it and to sort out that it is the Shepard's voice and not the enticement of one wolf or another trying to lure me out onto my own so that I can victimize myself (again).

I hear you, God, I thought. It was a thought of resignation--in both senses of the term.

But I didn't want to.

It didn't seem fair.

No, it's not--by my way of seeing things--fair. Not at all.

I was clerk through a long and uncomfortable period. It was painful for the Committee to endure that long period of doubt and discernment, and it was painful to see and hear how Friends were responding to the work--these Friends not offered leadership up to the task by me as clerk of the Committee, not themselves, at times, operating in the manner of Friends.

Now, I thought, we have come through this. We have re-oriented the process and laid a new course for the next year. And we have "road tested" both the concept of radical inclusiveness and the new process at Annual Session.

Radical inclusiveness turns out, to Friends gathered in Missoula, to be the obvious and true description of who we are as a yearly meeting.

The new process appears to be made up of steps in the right direction to even the harshest of the Committee's critics among Friends.

I have been clerk through this hard period. I was blessed (which is to say "matured" and "made [more] perfect" and made "more fit for a particular purpose" or "grown") in getting through by the support of an elder committee to keep my discernment true. The Faith and Practice Committee itself didn't shy away from the hard questions and stayed faithful to the discernment. Both boldly characterized me as full of canal water when I was, and urged me forward when I seemed to have it right.

So, now the way is open into the future and I am so much better prepared to clerk through it.

So, lay it down?

This is fair?

No.

But, as one of my elders told me, at the darkest point in all this for me, it is not just the vision of radical inclusiveness that had to sustain me. He reminded me that what I was up to required a "radical obedience."

Oh, that.

That obedience thing.

So, it doesn't matter why I am led to lay this down. What matters is that I am.

And it matters that I obey.

Bonnie Tinker's Lessons

2009-07-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

I didn't used to like the phrase "hold in the Light."

I used to think it was a cop-out, a politically correct way to say "pray for" without upsetting Friends who were resistant to the "Christ Talk" used by some (of us) other Friends.

When someone said "Is there anyone to be held in the Light?" I would say, when I thought there was, that I would like Friends to pray for so-and-so, or for me.

But you learn, you grow.

I came to think of holding someone in the Light as a comforting thing. Quaker theology holds, at least traditional Quaker theology holds, that it is encounters with the Light--Christ--that transform us, that conform us to the image of Christ. This is a scary process, at times, as the Light confronts us with those things about our lives that have to change and also gives us the wherewithal to make those changes. This is where the quaking came in, along with the tears and the moaning. It was as though, it was written by some, that which is described in the book of Revelation was happening in the hearts of Friends.

So, holding in the Light seemed to me like holding on to my dog in the bath, or my daughter's hand as she got a shot or her ears pierced. It was a warm, comforting thing done for the benefit of someone going through some thing difficult.

But Bonnie Tinker taught me a different take on "holding in the Light." Rather than comforting arms it was like "Get your butt into that Light. You and I both know you need to be changed in this regard and I'm going to stand here and make sure you stay there until the dross is burned off."

She was like the sheep dog, in way, getting me into the pen where I needed to be.

"Feed my sheep," indeed.

She never said it quite so bluntly (at least not to me) but when she was on the phone, as I wrote in my other blog, today, it made me apprehensive because I knew she was going to ask for time or money that I did not think that we had, for something I knew that we should support.

It was not a guilt trip she was laying on me. It was holding out a truth I knew and insisting that I look at it and, with integrity, act on it.

"...holds a fistful of rain tempting you to deny it."

I'm thinking that the difference between holding my daughter's hand when she wants to flee the doctor's office and having my heels nipped (in a loving way) to keep me going in the direction she and I both agreed I needed to go, were not so different.

Transformation is scary, it pulls me out of who I am, it calls upon me to lay down comfort and convenience and privilege--to pick up the cross, even the cross that, upon first blush, doesn't seem like it's really mine.

Community, of course, depends on strengthening the relationships with those upon whom my well being relies, whose well being depends on their relationship with me.

Bonnie alienated a lot of true-believing activists who took themselves as being of "like mind" to her because she wasn't about, and she implored against, shouting and politically overpowering those who were persecuting them. She understood that our enemies were not those shouting and spitting in our faces. Those people are captive of the powers--and it is the powers, especially the powers of retributive violence--that need to be overcome.

The only way we can set ourselves free from persecution is to set free those persecuting us. And the way to do that is to get into a place--we need to be transformed to the place--where we cannot do harm others and, no matter what they do to us, they cannot really harm us, either.

(Click on the "one quaker's take" link to read my other blog post about Bonnie, today).

Being Alone...or not.

2009-06-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

I spent some time this week with a young man who told me that he didn’t like to be alone. He said that when he’s alone his head gets filled with unpleasant memories; things he did that he should not have done, mistakes he made, things he wished never happened. It was uncomfortable for him, he said, and so he did everything he could to keep from being by himself.

I didn’t say anything to him then but the next day I had the occasion to be with him, again. I told him that everyone is like that, to some extent, which is why all of us have so many radios and televisions and computers, why we spend so much time with hobbies and working, why some people drink and use other drugs, why gossip and sports are such popular past times.

Quakers have addressed this phenomenon. Fox, Penington and others in the first generation saw this as Christ, or the Light, or the Spirit working in us—showing us the parts of our lives, as manifested in these uncomfortable thoughts, that need to be addressed.

If we paid attention to these, fearlessly and humbly holding these things so as to deal with them, repenting of them (such repentance going beyond mere remorse but also including a resolution to not repeat them and even to acknowledging the wrong doing to others and seeking reconciliation with them) then we would be changed, transformed spiritually, and moved along toward the maturity, the wholeness, the fitness for God’s purposes called “perfection" in the Quaker patois.

If we dismissed this discomfort—either by fleeing from the opportunity to experience it or by rationalizing our behavior ("He had it coming," or "Sure, it was wrong, but under the circumstances, what else could I do?")—then our hearts, as those of Pharaoh and those addressed by Isaiah and Jeremiah, would be hardened and it would be even more difficult for us to hear and heed the voice that was calling us.

Buddhist spiritual literature, and that of other traditions, contains similar writing. Things with which we are uncomfortable about our past should be “held” and “felt” and we can, in contemporary American Buddhist terms, become “softened” to them. This is part of the spiritual transformation sought and sometimes named “enlightenment.”

I don’t know that any of this sank in with this young man, who is not apparently spiritual in any way. Perhaps what I had to say will never be useful to him, perhaps someday, in the context of some other experience, it will come to mind. I cannot say that it will, or even that it was my intention that it should. It was just the right response to what he revealed to me about himself.

This was not a moment of intentional evangelism, although it has been interpreted as such by a Friend with whom I shared it. Perhaps it was, notwithstanding my lack of intention. I am reminded something George Fox wrote in his Journal. It is something to the effect that he never converted anyone to Christ. All he did was lead them to it and leave them there. Christ, he often is quoted to have said, has come to teach his people, himself.

So I don’t know what any of this will mean to him. What I hope, though, is that he will come to know that all of us share his discomfort at being alone to some degree or another, that when he is alone he is not really alone, at all, and that when he feels uncomfortable with things he has done he is not being punished—he is being changed.

Diverse Questions from Daniel Wilcox

2009-03-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

Note: this is a reply to a comment posted by Daniel Wilcox to my post of February 23, 2009 entitled "Why Do Some Quakers Hate to Talk About Sin?"

#1 I see you identify as a Beanite. Do you know where I can find a good biographical study of the Beans?

I do not not. I have found scraps here and there on the internet and in books such as that you mention, but in a phrase I read somewhere "The Beans await their biographer." (and I am not that person upon whom they wait)

Aside from such as I have gathered from these sources, I spent a week or so in the Swarthmore library with the Bean papers a couple of years ago and made a great many notes. I also spent a day in the Guilford College library with the collected minutes of the College Park Association. Much of what I have inferred from this stuff is probably wrong. There are sources I would like to look at--including the papers of Rufus Jones which I think probably contain many letters from Joel.

But, no, I cannot direct you to a biography. If someone else can I hope they will direct me to it, as well.

If you have read back through my postings over the years you know that central to my affinity with the Beans is their conviction that the divisions within the Society are to be lamented and removed. Our differences are gifts to one another, and in abiding together we learn from and are shaped by one another.

It is notions--propositional beliefs--that divide us one from the other and sap our strength as a people. It is the transformative experience and power that we share and, although that may seem lacking in the "other domains" of the Society, it is equally lacking in all. That lack, I think, is ameliorated when Friends worship and live in relationship with one another, rather than living and worshiping only with "like minded" Friends.

#2 Do you have a blog where you share your transformation from a Marine to one who opposes war?

I do not. It had to do with spending three years learning that everything I was taught growing up about such things was wrong because it didn't work and then a lot more years figuring out what was right. Years later, after sitting in meeting for worship for a year or so a lot of things became very clear to me.

When I was near the end of my time in the Marine Corps, and thinking of deserting in despair at being a part of all that, I met some Friends who--like Chuck Fager--were called to reach out in love, support and encouragment to those in the military. Big help to me even if I was not ready for the spiritual message that was behind (and very much not pushed at me) that which they provided me.

#3 Does it conflict with your faith in Jesus that most versions of Buddhism are atheistic?

Not at all.

Christianity and Buddhism are both imprecise labels and each of us applies our own "take" on them when someone uses the term--leading to a great deal of misunderstanding.

I am an empiricist in that I use that which changes me and don't pay much attention to things that do not. I am into the "what" rather than the "how" or the "why." I don't care about theological notions (lakes of fire, life after death, virgin births and such) that are not about how I am supposed to live (see the Sermon on the Mount) (see the Eightfold Path, for that matter).

I get direct guidance every day on how to live my life and I try (at least anymore) not to worry too much about where it comes from, the nature of the source of that guidance, or what that source is up to in providing me that guidance. It is hard enough to follow the guidance, let alone figure out what no person can ever really know. I can know what it tells me to do and do it. That changes my life (improves my condition and the condition of those around me). The other, I have observed in myself, turns into trying to change other people's lives--at least their propositional beliefs. Why try to change things about other people that don't matter? I am not big on propositional beliefs.

I do conceptualize in Christian terms and specifically the terms I find in Quaker writing because they seem to fit with my experience of this guidance. I think it's Christ, Light, Spirit and it appears to be doing that which early Friends said it does--shows us the problem areas in our lives and gives us the power to do something about them.

Atonement? Trinity? I don't know. And neither does anyone else. These are "rational" deductions (at least given the assumptions from which they proceed) pulled out of the air by people who are into the "hows" and the "whys" and too often led by these away from the "whats."

(Resurrection is different. I know from experience that if I ignore the guidance I am given because it seems too hard or no fun that I am "crucifying Christ," and locking it in the tomb of my heart from which it will emerge in no more than three days time to put it all in front of me again. As Marcus Borg asks, would a video camera in the garden have captured Jesus emerging from the tomb? I don't know. In light of my own walk, however, does that really matter? My experience with ignoring the Light, myself, in my own life, gets the point across to me.)

"My" Buddhism is practice, not belief. It is meditation that is modeled on Soto Zen and what Americans have developed as "mindfulness" practice. It means, more or less, just sitting and trying to stay in the moment for a period of time on as many days as I can muster the discipline to do it. I do listen to dharma talks (Zencast, etc.) and read various writings (from a lot of traditions), but I am not into the theology (even the non theology theology) of Buddhism.

Reincarnation, for example, is one of those "notions" of which I can never really know the truth (like life after death in heaven) and that doesn't really matter, anyway, if I am on the Eightfold Path, if you know what I mean (or conforming to the Beatitudes).

Karma is more complicated than I used to understand and, although I don't obviously care about how it plays into reincarnation, my experience is that our actions have far reaching affect on our own lives and those of others so we should be careful about the actions we take.

A Buddhist practice can sit on top of any spiritual conceptualization without "interfering" with it.

#3 If it is true that we as humans first need inner transformation, why is it that the Quakers who put the most focus on sin and repentance (such as California Yearly Meeting, as it used to be termed), show a contrary spirit when it comes to actions? When I was a member there, many members actually supported nuclear weapons, etc. I still don't understand that.

I don't either, but I don't think that approving of war necessarily invalidates a focus on sin and repentance. I think it just goes to the point of my original posting about the two takes on sin. If one thinks that sin is a body of actions we cannot help but accumulate because of our nature, and that the office of Christ is to get those "taken care of" for us, then it makes sense that we can, albeit with great regret and even sincere angst, do that which we are specifically told not to do because we cannot help it.

If one experiences sin as states of mind, from which the office of Christ is to help us withdraw or escape, then one is led to try to lay down those states of mind that come together to create nuclear weapons/war in general (including the wars in which we engage every day with ourselves and others in our lives) and to testify against them.

Unfortunately, Friends' testimony in regard to such things doesn't always get presented in those spiritual terms. Too often public testimony is expressed in worldly terms.

A petition to the Portland City Council in support of a condemnation of the war in Iraq, for example, is based on the fact that we were led into it by lies and deception and that the money spent there is better spent on classrooms and medical care at home. Yes, but Quakers would be opposed to that war even if there had been WMD's and even if there was plenty of money at home for education and health care.

We are opposed to war because we come from a place in which the occasion for it does not arise--we are committed to laying down the states of mind (greed, fear, pride, lust) that take people to war (and laying them down long before a situation is so far out of hand that someone can smugly turn around and sneer "What now, Mr. Pacifist?")

And I don't necessarily think the transformation comes "first" in the sense that we wait til God is finished with us before trying to get anything different done in the world, although I don't think real change can happen in the world without real change in people.

I do think that, like two children who start digging on opposite sides of a dirt pile, intent on meeting in the middle to create a tunnel, our outward conforming to the guidance of Christ and the inward working of Christ in us go together--magnify, build on, one another. I do not think that either, alone, gets through.

#Why do you think Quakers who talk about sin so often strongly support sinful actions, but Quakers who seldom talk about it, often are the most proactive in countering sin?

I don't think they necessarily are, although I do think they think they are. Joyce Meyer once said that the sins that have others stuck look easy to overcome while our own seems impossible. I know a number of Friends with that outlook who are still engaged in re-building the Gulf Coast, and who are as anti-war and who are mourning climate change.

My frustration is with Liberal Friends who often display a conceit about our own righteousness that is at least equal to that of those with bumper stickers that say "Christians aren't perfect, just saved."

Motes and beams.

I think that Friends who never utter the word "sin" or "repentance" are often as afraid, greedy, cruel, covetous, proud, angry and dismissive of the suffering of others as those whose conversation (and conceptualization) is riddled with those words. I think that such Friends can be as manipulative and coercive (albeit in a more passive aggressive way, perhaps) as those who go to war or approve of others going to war.

Thank you, Daniel, for the opportunity to answer your questions. It is the gift of an occasion to grow to be put to explanation.

For Richard M.

2009-03-04T04:15:00.000-08:00

note: this is an answer to a comment posted to a previous post. As I explained in a comment of my own to that post, so much was raised by Friends' comments there that I wanted to address all in an orderly fashion, so as to lose none and keep any strands of conversation that might arise separate from one another. I'm answering Richard M, here, and ask for patience in regard to the rest. I will get to you.

Richard commented:

"The biggest problem I have with this post is your equation of Protestantism with Calvinism. It is true that Calvinism is one major form of Protestantism but it is far from being identical with it. Protestantism represents all the groups that broke away from Catholicism and they broke away for many reasons. The Calvinists broke away because they adopted a more pessimistic view of the human condition than did the Catholics but others, among which were the Quakers, adopted a more optimistic view of the possibilities for human transformation than did the Catholics. And, in my own reading of Quaker history, there hasn't been any tendency for Quakers to become Calvinists. Quakers of all persuasions remain more theologically liberal than Catholics not, like the Calvinists, more conservative."

Richard, I can see the distinction you make between Protestants and Calvinists and will not quibble with you about that although I disagree with you. I think that Protestantism is Calvinism--that the notions that Calvin refined certainly existed before he came along but he put them into a "coherent" body that forms the ground upon which this strain of spirituality stands (and from which, at times, it deviates).

I don't think that the faith and practice of Friends, originally, was anything but a repudiation of--and not a mere deviation from-- that body of notions and forms.

I do, however, think I see a whole lot of "drift" among Friends over the years toward Calvinism/Protestantism.

I think, in fact, that all of the major schisms in the Society of Friends have, at bottom, notwithstanding any social or economic or spiritual reasons some in the Society at a particular place at a particular time wanted to establish Protestant/Calvinist notions as the Faith and Practice of Friends.

This is perhaps most obvious in the course of events in Iowa Yearly in the last half of the 19th Century that ended in some of its members "going over" to Iowa Conservative and a few others ending up in California--stripped of their certificates of ministry and disowned (although later re-instated so that their membership could be orderly transferred) for not "believing," among other things, that the Holy Spirit descends upon a person not at birth (as the book of John was commonly been held among Friends to say) but when they are "saved" as is pretty standard Protestant/Calvinist theology.

Of course these notions were part of the movement from the beginning--the people gathered to it had been steeped in them. George Keith tried and failed to establish them as the norm. It was said by some, though, that his manner, more than his ideas, limited his success. Barclay had a more subtle and long term success. My understanding is that as Friends moved from an "end times" to a "mean time" point of view, toward the end of Fox's life, there was quite a bit of editing of early writings that attempted to pull Quakers into the "mainstream."

The first Friends, however, notwithstanding that they carried Protestant/Calvinist notions as part of their spiritual DNA (did I just write that?) were dissatisfied with the result of the Protestant/Calvinist forms, which is why so many had laid down them down and sat in waiting worship until Fox came along and set them in motion (or Christ did so through Fox). These notions and forms were still there, of course, ready to re-appear and re-appear they did.

Again, as I originally wrote, I am not saying that's a bad thing and they shouldn't.

I am saying that some Friends, especially liberals, have trouble with the concept of "sin" because they see it in terms of Calvin/Protestantism; in its propositions and the deductions that proceed from them. Not believing (or perhaps experiencing) humans as born hopelessly wretched this is not helpful to them.

I am saying that the other view of sin--as states of mind (as opposed to a body of bad acts) upon which Christ (the Spirit, the Light) can "work with us" or "work on us"--revealing the need to change and providing the power in which we can stand to accomplish that--may be helpful to these Friends.

We can change (or be changed) this side of the grave; there is hope for our maturity and developing (or having developed) our fitness for a particular purpose. At least, there is solid evidence in the literature of Friends through the years to show that. The phrase "talking up sin" appears there as characterizing that which Friends rejected.

But there is also a "creep" in that same literature of the notion that we cannot change or be changed, along with other notions and forms that were talked up by Protestants and Calvinists--forms and notions away from which those in the movement that would become the Society of Friends walked purposefully. Steeple house, professors...

I have frequent contact and fellowship with Evangelical Friends and know for myself how much Calvinist/Protestant notions have been absorbed into the faith and practice of many Friends. This didn't happen over night. And again, I think it's fine. Not helpful to me but fine if it's helpful in the spiritual transformation (see the Sermon on the Mount) of those who hold to them.

As a Beanite I hope and expect the Society will again be the whole it was once, with such a diversity of belief as exists among us held, as similar diversity was held 300+ years ago, in a tension that was mutually edifying. I cannot deny, however, my own view that the "Protestantization" of the Society of Friends is a condition that complicates this Beanite vision.

As a Beanite I affiliate formally with no particular formal domain of the Society so as to be open to "correspondence" with those who are a part of any and all--even those not currently in correspondence with me. Although many even here do not know this, it's why North Pacific Yearly Meeting is not affiliated with any of the separate domains of the Society--at least for now.

We must all get home. None of us must be left behind.

Our differences are not be glossed over or ignored--but they are also not reason for us to be divided. Each of us has something for the Society, and the Society has something for each of us.

If seeing sins as a body of bad acts is helpful in developing that pure heart, that mourning condition, that peacemaking practice that's fine.

"Quakerism" is an empirical faith. It's what works that cooks.

Why do some Quakers hate to talk about sin?

2009-02-23T06:11:00.001-08:00

I cannot remember the last time I heard a Friend in my Yearly Meeting talk about sin except to say we don't talk about it or should not talk about it.

I have been thinking through a lot of things in light of a recent opening that the thrust of the Quaker movement was originally pretty much a rejection of Protestantism, and that the fragmenting of the movement--which began almost at the beginning and eventually undermined the Society of Friends by dividing it into separate domains --amounts to a re-introduction and acceptance the Protestant norms among Friends.

Quickly added, Friends (and everyone else) can certainly hold to Protestant thinking if they so choose--Protestantism and those who organize and conform their spiritual lives around its ideas are certainly within the ambit of the radical inclusiveness I am wont to talk up. I just find that confused thinking and action results, at times, when people are not clear about what that means.

If one says that someone's sins are forgiven that usually means that past wrong doings are laid to one side and no longer count against one. There may be outcomes from these which cannot be changed but when Jesus as advocate argues our case for everlasting life he will not have to address those charges. This comes from a Protestant belief in the nature of people--we are flawed by The Fall and we are pretty much doomed to fall short on things and, even though grace will, once in a while, allow us to come through in a good way, that's how it's going to be. Atonement and a lot of other bed-rock "fundamentals" of Protestant Christianity are based on this notion of people as hopeless wretches--only an undeserving elect of whom are going to do well in the end.

Our sins, then, are a body of deeds and we have no hope that we can stop amassing them.

George Fox--at least the early George Fox--and the likes of Penington and Naylor did not talk about sin in this way, at least not exclusively. They saw sin, rather, as the states of mind (conditions) (conditioning?) that give rise to the acts (of evil) that most people call, today, "sins."

One cannot do anything about past acts, but one can certainly do something about the continuing states of mind where those acts orginate. See, for example, Fox's Epistle #10. It's about escaping sin--not giving into "addicitions." Also, see the quotation from Penington at the top of this blog. They talked up that we can overcome sin in a way that would make Calvin spin (and did make English magistrates confiscate property).

Quakers were very much about a process of transformation that put an end to the evil deeds through a spiritual transformation that took, for example, away the occasion for all wars. This meant that people's states of mind would not include, any longer, that which moved them to war.

This drove the Protestant authorities nuts just to hear. People are too depraved for this kind of "progress," in the Protestant ideology.

And I think that's why it drives Liberal Friends nuts, today, to talk about sin: we tend to see it in the Protestant way instead of the Quaker way--the classical Quaker way. Not enough of us understand the difference to use that difference in a constructive and liberating way.

Liberal Friends, me among them, don't like the idea that we are are all worthless, helpless, hopeless spiritual worms condemned to doing evil with no hope of doing better this side of the grave. And we don't think it's helpful to constantly put ourselves down or to turn ourselves over to those authorities who cannot help but try to manipulate us into doing what they want us to do even though we know it's wrong and contrary to the openings Christ gives us and every other person on earth. Some of us seem to think that's vision of people as bumbling evil-doers is "Christian" but actually it's "Protestant."

Of course, Liberal Friends I know are not so big as Penington (see, again, above) was on "Quakerism" as a pursuit of transformation. Far too many of us are pretty darned self-satisfied and believe that the only transformation that needs to happen is that others need to vote for liberal Democrats, recycle more and listen to NPR. Oh, and lately, drive a Toyota Pious cheerfully across the earth in a socially responsible way that looks out for that of God in everyone.

Liberal Friends, I think, could benefit by thinking about the idea of sin as states of mind, rather than actions, because I think that leads to the conclusion that the eradication of these states of mind is not complete in us and we are supposed to be doing something about that.

I feel great sorrow, sometimes, when I hear Friends--myself included--speaking from greed or anger or lust or sloth or covetedness or pride (which did I leave out? It's a quiz! Can we even name--let along confront--the Seven Deadlies?) with no apparent sense that something is going on that needs to be changed.

Sometimes we look back at the 17th Century and are tempted to think that there was just some big misunderstanding and that's why Mary Dyer was hanged by the Protestants in Boston. But that's not true. Quaker ideas and practices threatened the foundation of the Protestant society from which it sprang. Only when Barclay and others gave the movement a firm shove back toward Protestantism did they allow us to affirm--rather than swear--in our quaint little way. Barclay assured people, for example that the Spirit would never contradict the Bible (and the Protestants heard him say the Spirit would never contradict their notion of what the Bible said or that it was truly the "word of God.")

But there is a huge leap from "Christ has come to teach his people himself" to "the mission of the Holy Spirit is to help us correctly understand scripture." Huge.

Quakers did not start out as Protestants--at least the brightest lights of movement did not. By 50 years later, of course, the cross currents were pulling many back to that shore. Those who wish to reside on that shore are welcome to do so. I live, in this regard, by Gamaliel's wisdom. But I think Liberal Friends could benefit it teasing out the difference between Protestantism and Quakerism.

It might help orient us.

peace and harmony

2009-01-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

Chuck Fager, a Quaker of renown, has recently posted about going to a "peace" conference and discovering that there was not much, by his light, going on there about "war"--about "large organized violent conflict."

It made me think about discussion going on in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, right now, in the process of our re-examination and revision of our book of Faith and Practice. This post is about that process, not about Chuck Fager's post. That post was the occasion for, but not the oject of, this one.

One idea brought up in the process has been re-claiming the label of "Harmony" for the testimony commonly called "Peace," these days. Without going into all this stuff about testimonies, suffice it to say that some Friends want to talk about the fact that when we think and talk about "peace" we have in mind these large organized violent conflicts and the external, political ways to stop and prevent them. We start to think about where we need to go (to give a piece of our minds--to "speak truth"--to some Congressman--"power"--or to a vigil or some other kind of demonstration), rather than the place from which we come (that place from which there is no occasion for war).

This political peace among nations, traditionally, was seen by Friends as a part of the overall harmony--the right relationship with God, with ourselves, with others and our environment--that the testimony speaks to. The political aspect, in some Friends' minds, has grown to define the testimony and, in doing so emphasizing political action as the way to achieve it. Some "peace minutes," for example, are difficult to distinguish from planks of the Democtratic Party platform. And that, some Friends of a more traditional "bent," is a real problem. Without a solid grounding in overall harmony the contentious political world can lead us into the roles and conduct that perpetuate, rather than threaten, the mores of our cultures of redemptive violence.

There was a time that the peace testimony had nothing to do with organizing to stop wars--it had to do with not participating in them. It did not have to do with external changes, changes to the world, that would make war obsolete, except insofar as that is the outcome resulting from internal changes in people--by attaining that perfection, that maturity, that transformation--that was one of the fundamental distinctions between Quakers and Protestants and that was foreseen by Friends in the context of the end times in which Friends believed they lived.

I think it's fine that the peace testimony has morphed to include stopping wars, rather than merely a refusal to lend our energies to fighting them, and that Friends no longer remain behind the hedge, eschewing political alliances with those outside the Society who share our concerns and scruples about large organized violent conflicts.

I've spent a lot of time (before and after being gathered to the Society) sitting in, holding candles and carrying signs. I still talk to people, and write to them, about my faith based opposition to war.

I support Friend Fager's work. I am a veteran (they once called me Sergeant Travis, USMC) and Christ working through people like Chuck when I was on active duty started me on the road to where I am now. (Far more Friends should support his work in North Carolina and should send him a check every year.)

The "lusts"--the compulsions of our hearts: our fears and our greeds, rooted in and supported by the "common sense" of our cultures of redemptive violence--are the origin of our wars. The military spending, for example, is a manifestation of these fears and greeds, but they are only a manifestation of them. Without the fears and greeds there are no such manifestations. Removing the fears and greeds is what will bring remove the manifestations, but working to remove the manifestations will not remove the fears and greeds.

That's what Friends traditionally believed. Whether we were talking about the struggles with those around us in the ongoing, quiet but desperate struggles for control of the emotional and other resources of our relationships, or with American government leaders who have had us engaged in a struggles with the likes of Adolf Hitler, the Vietcong or Al Qaeda for control of the world's resources, the faith and practice of Friends was what has been turned into a bromide, these days--"peace, let it begin with me."

Some Friends wonder, given the political context in which we pursue the testimony today, peace that begins with us (in so far as it does) can, in that context, stay with us. The query is: given the imperatives of the political process (that by definition and purpose mediates fears and greeds) how can those who participate remain in that place that takes away the occasion for all war?

Some Friends think Howard Brinton, in Friends for 300 Years, wrote about the harmony testimony, rather than the peace testimony for this reason. The political peace, the absence of war between nations, will come about when people become (or are transformed to be) capable of living in harmony with one another--not when our social, political and economic infrastructure removes this or that means of manifesting our greeds and fears. It is moving (or being moved) beyond the control of the spirits that use our greeds and fears to drive us to use this or that means of trying to eliminate our greeds and fears--not creating a world in which we are rendered "greed proof" and "fear proof" by this or that statute or compromise--that will end the large organized violent conflicts that rage around us.

Coming from, and staying in, that place will transform the world. It will not happen, Friends traditionally believed, the other way around.

My personal view, as a good Beanite Friend, is that there is a balance involved, here. Yes, individual spiritual transformation will influence the political structures in which we live. But the political structures in which we live can have an influence on our spiritual transformation, as well.

With an ear to the direct teachings of each of us from Christ, and our hands on the accumulated wisdom of our spiritual tradtions, the world will be remade. In the end, though, Penn was right when he said that a good system set up to govern people who are inclined to do evil will be perverted by them and that a bad system, governing people inclined to be good, will be made good by them.

Wear it as long as you can, Fox is reputed to have told Penn. The operative word is "can." When we have to lay it down because it's not who we are, any more, when we enter into that kind of harmony, that kind of right relationship, then we are a part of the Kingdom of which Jesus spoke. No matter what's going on around us, no matter where we go to confront and struggle with evil, we must remain, ourselves, in that Kingdom--the place that takes away the occasion for all war.

Some queries

2008-11-23T07:39:00.000-08:00

How does your religion enslave you? Others?

How does it set you free? Set others free?

Which do you think it was designed to do?

Which do you want it to do?

Neither?

Both?

gravity...

2008-10-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

I don't usually spend a lot of time accounting for gravity in my decision making. I go through my life doing this or that without wondering whether gravity is going to work. When I wad up a piece of paper and throw it across the room toward the wastebasket I don't have a plan "B" in mind, a plan for what I will do just in case that ball of paper goes up rather than down.

My faith is not like that. I don't go through life doing what love dictates without thinking about it. Despite the ambivalent conditioning I have received from my culture, and the clear revelation I have received from God, I have a plan "B"--just in case an initial approach of love doesn't work out. In fact, like many people, I have so often gone immediately to plan "B" without even trying plan "A:" approaching people and situations with love without thinking, as I approach them in regard to how objects will fall through space.

The epitome of this approach is United States foreign policy. We don't even try to use love as the basis of our foreign policy. We go with plan "B" from the get-go, backed up by out military and arsenal of nuclear weapons.

I talked to a man recently who is writing a biography of Elias Hicks. He told me that Hicks didn't believe that Jesus was born perfect, he was not really "God come to earth to take on human form." Jesus was born a man like I was, this historian/biographer said, and that in some way he attained holy perfection.

According to this man, Hicks wondered about what would be the big deal of the holiness of Jesus if he was born with it? What hope would that give to me? If, though, he was born in the same condition I was born in, and he attained perfection, that would be Good News, indeed.

So, when Jesus was at the river with John, when that white dove came down, and the words about my son with whom I am well pleased rang out, God was celebrating an event that never happened before. Moses couldn't do it, David couldn't do it. But Jesus, Jesus got it done (or it got done in Jesus).

Notwithstanding the notional dispute about the nature of the baby Jesus, when he stepped out of that river we know it is written that he always went with plan "A"--he faced every situation he encountered with love. He had no plan "B." If plan "A" doesn't seem to be working, the way I read the Bible, then we don't get what "working" means within the context of the Kingdom.

While I doubt I am ever going to be transformed to the point that I will never go to plan "B," I can see, looking back through time, that the work of Spirit done in me has developed my ability to--more and more although not always--at least give plan "A" a try before I go to plan "B."

I will probably never automatically act in every situation with the kind of faith in love that I have in gravity. But I am thankful for the work of the Spirit that has improved my ability to at least give love a try before I go to plan "B." I am also thankful for the now-proven promise of being given even more power to love, initially, in those situations where plan "B" would have been my approach.

more on convergence

2008-10-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Martin's blog and its comments and think this discussion is very important given who we are, where we are and when we are.

I appreciate the comment that 'convergence' will never please everyone and that one can be satisfied with that.

I aspire to be faithful to living such that, notwithstanding the obvious "reality" of that position, my walk does not manifest, validate or testify to its ultimate validity.

My aspiration--and I am confident that of anyone who might read these words--is to live in The Kingdom (if we want to use that language) even though sometimes I find myself in situations in which it seems to me I am the only inhabitant of that Kingdom (or realm or space, or relationship or community) within eyesight or earshot. I know that all of us know what I am talking about, here, and know that the way to increase the population of that Kingdom is to treat those who seem like aliens with the hospitality that erases the line between host and guest.

My oldest daughter no longer brings home things to tape to the refrigerator. Instead, she brings me books from her college classes. "Jesus for President" took up much of my airplane time over the past three days and showed me some "moves" I can use skillfully to reach out to those who are turned off by phrases like "the risen Christ working on us"--a phrase with which I personally resonate.

I do think that we all belong together and that in being together, abiding together, we will all converge; but not in some kind of grand compromise of some sort. This idea--of abiding in the Spirit with people who do not seem, to us, anxious to abide, at all, let alone in what seems to us to be the Spirit--is hardly new to Quaker faith and practice. Until 1827 or so it seems to me to have been the way of being religious together, it seems it was a basic part of "Quakerism"--of the faith and practice of Friends.

The phrase "straddling the divisions until they close beneath our feet" is constantly in my mind, not only in regard to Friends, not only in regard to Christians, but in regard to everyone, everywhere. But we will not get there, I don't think, if we are not together, if we are divided by language and notions of things we can never really know.

are you feeling excluded?

2008-10-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about how people feel excluded or included.

I wonder whether sometimes we feel excluded or threatened when someone expresses something with which we are not in unity when all they were doing was expressing their take on something and meant nothing ill toward us.

I know that sometimes things are said and done that are intended to exclude people but I wonder how good we are at discerning when that is what is going on and when something entirely innocent has happened?

Can we hear things with which we disagree without wanting to fight or flee?

Can we forebear?

Even if something is said or done to hurt us, or to chase us away, what is the skillful practice? What is the response we should make in such a situation to conform ourselves (and perhaps to situation) to the Light?

Can we resist the strong impulses that come up, impulses we know are not consistent with love of neighbor, love of enemy?

Maybe that's what I am going to say...

2008-10-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

I am off today to be a minor panelist at a conference here in Portland that is billed as "Christian-Buddhist Dialogue."

I feel very much in over my head but trust that God will give me the words to say in the brief time allotted to hear what I might say. I didn't seek this and did a lot of processing before saying I'd do it. I had the help of Friends in making my decision; in fact, the invitation came from Friends who were contacted by the conference organizers asking for someone to "represent us" in this dialogue.

I am, of course, not the best "representative" for our Christian "side." The Christian-Buddhist Dialogue is something that goes on inside my head every day; a Buddhist practice of meditation, listening to Dharma talks and reading Buddhist literature sits easy on top of my Christian walk.

Yeah, I know what some Christians (and even some Buddhists) would say about that but what other people think of me is sometimes none of my business. It's always the business of that Guide who is in constant contact with me and holding it all up to me. No mirror, indeed.

I don't say that every "religion" is "right" or "equally valid" except when I say it ironically: pretty much all, for example, seem to chime on in agreement about redemptive violence when the chips are down. They are all equally valid.

I don't find the word "religion" very helpful, frankly.

I find the phrase "our way of being religious together" or "living out our spirituality together" or "working out our salvation together" more helpful, more skillful, if you will, more descriptive of what perfects, matures, completes--transforms--makes me more fit for the purpose: love God with all your...

I know it's not about "notions"--those concepts about the origin, the nature and the intent of God that cannot be proved and that divide us, both inside and among the various spiritual traditions. It's about how one lives out one's life, how one's practice, one's walk, leads to a convergence with Christ, the Spirit, God, Goddess, the Divine, the transcendent, the ultimate concern, the Big Kahuna, the Great Perhaps, The Unknown God, _______ (the blank left for anyone to fill in as moved) .

Whether the Eight Fold Path (I hafta dig a spiritual tradition that deals in so many lists) or the Fruits of the Spirit--it's about what I am becoming.

Friends have always known that one could be "saved" without ever hearing the name of Jesus or holding a Bible. Fox, Penn, Woolman; far back Friends said that the Light was available to all and that those who heeded it and submitted to its guidance would be transformed, conformed, to it. Farther back the book of John--no doubt written in that name by Friends--said it.

Maybe this is what I am going to say, today. I'll know once I open my mouth.

Pray for me.

You can even hold me in the Light.

Just don't call me "Christo Centric."

The feeling, the knowledge, I experience every time that rock rolls away and unseals the tomb of my heart, the tomb into which I consign Christ when I crucify It so I can follow my many vanities, that's when I know I am a Christian. Confronted, again, with love and support in that metaphorical garden of ressurection, ready to go back to work with/on me, I know I am not anything "centric." The name does not belong to every spirit that tries to use it, but Christ by any name is not just something that is part of my life. I am, rather, part of Its life--whatever It is being called at the moment.

And I know that millions of others have (and have had) that same feeling, share that same knowledge and guidance, even though they would never in a million years or in forty days and forty nights describe that shared experience--the knowledge of that guidance--in those words.

"Straddling the divides, until they close beneath our feet"

convergence and beanism?

2008-10-08T04:44:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to do any of this. (Yeah? Then whose time is it?)

This morning I read a post about convergent Quakerism that surprised me a little.

It made me think about standing on the sidelines of the convergent movement, not sure if I really wanted to play and not sure if I was really welcome.

Notwithstanding indications of diversity, it has sounded to me, at times, from some people's mouths, very much like what was going on was about drawing people out of the the current domains of the Society and into a newly developing domain--more division based on some kind of similarity of belief striking Christian, even evangelical, chords.

Perhaps I was (and am) wrong about that, misreading or misinterpreting. Maybe there are personality things going on (it would not be the first time that I turned people off either with what I actually said about something or what they read into what I actually said. And it would not be the first time I did the same thing).

What was written in that post this morning struck me as a great explanation, frankly, of Beanite faith and practice. We belong together not, as some think this mislabeled "liberal" theology "teaches," because we are all "right" but because we are all necessary to one another's perfection. Division deprives us of the edification available through contact with those we exclude or from whom we flee in pursuit of doctrinal purity, of more "comfortable" fellowship.

Listening does not imply that one is easy or in unity with what another says. Sharing fellowship is not approval of everything someone else does. But both make one available to the work of the Holy Spirit that is often accomplished in fortuitous opportunities between and among unlikely people.

A Friend I know states her spiritual condition as "straddling the divides until they close beneath my feet."

Is convergence about the closing--as opposed to merely politely visiting across--those divides?

Is it about taking the change and the edification found in convergent fellowship back and entering into it, enlarging its space, where one has been planted?

Is it about not only bringing everyone along who will come, but also actively and patiently extending a hand of love and humility to those who hold back and even actively resist, waiting for those not yet ready, or unready to become ready, in the confident expectation that they will be along as they are made ready, because they will be made ready (but not by us)?

Is convergence about once again making the Society a place where people share a way of being religious, together, rather than a place of believing or not believing the same propositions, together?

Is it about a place of spiritual practice living in (and in conformance with, being conformed to) the Light, rather than a "safe" space where all encountered will share the same doctrines (even non theological doctrines) or agree that no one will talk about what they believe for fear of offending and riling up others; where, upon hearing things with which they are not in unity Friends will not become offended and riled up?

I don't know that there are answers to those questions, or if anyone has thought or wants to think about convergent Quakerism in those terms. I am just riffing, however, off of Greg's Gambles because he certainly seems to be speaking a language familiar to mine. If it is not the same then it certainly appears to rhyme with mine.

I do know that some of what I have written about Beanite faith and practice has made some "sad" who hold up convergence. I have been asked whether I would not do better if, rather than supporting and encouraging inclusiveness, I took my own Christian faith to meetings in North Pacific Yearly Meeting and talked it up with those I found there.

I don't know what to think about that question, but I know what I am led to do, consistently, every day, every time my hand goes to the work.

An old song says "Hold on loosely and don't let go."

Joel Bean, when asked why he and Hannah did not divide from their yearly meeting when it went so far to isolate and finally excluded them, responded “I was directed to His own perfect example. He never separated Himself from His people in all their opposition and enmity toward Him. He did not disown the Church of His Birthright, though it disowned Him." (letter to R.H. Thomas, 2nd Month 8, 1899).

Is convergence about an eventual "convergence" of all Friends?

Or is it another new domain of an already fractured Society?

Or is it neither of the above and I am just so far off of the farm I can no longer hear the rooster crowing? Oh, that's certainly not so--after all, even on my best days the sound of crowing reaches my ear/heart at least three times. ;-|

I'm thinking people probably have their own answers to those questions (including the answer that says those are stupid questions to ask), and that all those answers will not be the same. But I am wondering whether, really, anyone knows what convergence is really about (quite apart from what they want it to be about) or where it will go (quite apart from where they think it will go, or where they want it to go). We bring children into the world and, in the words of a modern prophet, even though we save, when their rainy days come we find them outside digging the lightening.

But if there are elements of united, independent and balanced spirituality in the convergence movement then Gamaliel's advice (Acts 5:34 et seq) is probably best to heed. In fact, it always is.

three questions....

2008-10-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

I recently looked at a website about an upcoming conference.

I am sure that this will be a very fine experience. I am not interested in commenting on it or the book that describes the phenomenon around which it is organized. I am interested in the three the questions, however, that the book asks about "The Great Emergence" of a new Christianity.

What is this thing? How did it come to be? Where is it going?”

These are the three questions that, when asked not about something like an emerging version of Christianity but, rather, about God, caused the destruction of unity of the Society of Friends as well the fracturing of the Christian movement since who knows what point how many thousand years ago.

No one knows what God is, nor can ever know.

Know one knows how God came to be, nor can ever know.

Know one knows where God is going, nor can ever know.

We can only know what God is leading us to do, moment to moment, and do it. Like the micro organisms eating the detritus on the forest floor we can never know the context in which what we do takes place. We can guess, we can speculate, we can convince ourselves and others that we know but, in the end all we can really know--and all that really matters--is that we go on eating the detritus we find on the forest floor.

Love your God with all year heart, and your neighbor as yourself. We don't know that from a book, or a sermon--we know that from eating the leaves. We can't prove it and will fail to live up to it if we try to in any other way than by doing it, but we know it.

Yet, all the doctrinal divisions that exist within the Society of Friends grow from asking and answering these questions: what is God? where did God come from? where is God going? These are the questions that Rachel Hicks referred to in her memoirs in 1880:

“And now, as I write this, after years of reflection and observation of the effect of promulgating opinions and doctrines not essential in themselves, especially on the mission of Christ in that prepared body, I am confirmed in the belief that it tends to unprofitable discussion and controversy, and often to alienation of love for one another…Had love of God abounded in the heart, it would have been seen that obedience to Him in all things was the plan of salvation ordained by Him from the foundation of the world, and we should then have remained a united people of great influence in gathering the nations to the peaceable kingdom of Him who was ushered into the world with the anthem, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men!”

Rachel Hicks
“Memoir”
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1880), p 39

Had love abounded in the heart it would have been seen that obedience to Him was not in the seizing of clerk's tables, not in the law suits over ownership of meeting houses, and not in the contemporary Society of Friends divided by the cherished notions of the domains of which this "society"' is currently composed.

Distracting from that love, leading us away from sharing and being transformed by it, are unanswerable yet continually discussed questions about what God is about, where God comes from, where God is going.

Early Quaker literature refers to questions like these, asked about the Divine, as "notions" and entreats Friends to eschew them as seeking knowledge that is both unnecessary and destructive.

The emphasis, instead, was to be on heeding the Light--obeying leadings and conforming to them--without any concern about how to explain it all, only about the transformations being brought about.

Fox and Woolman and others made plain that one can be transformed even without ever having heard the name of Jesus or having seen a Bible. Penn made that clear with what seemed like unending examples of people who were not Christians yet manifested the transformation that was the center of the Quaker faith and practice. These people were not persuaded of propositional "beliefs." Instead, the way they lived their lives was changed.

I think it's fine that people are interested in a new emerging Christianity. I don't think there is a thing wrong with people asking what this new Christianity is, where it came from, or where it is going.

I do know, however, that people who asked these kinds of questions about God--and then divided over the answers up with which they came (answers that were and never could be anything but a vain and speculative way to feed our pride)--reduced a small but great people, who had an impact of a magnitude beyond their numbers, to a marginalized and fragmented collection of separated domains more concerned about what each other believed than whether they were living out and being conformed to the leadings toward love and unity they receive daily from a source the nature of which, the coming into being of which, and the destination of which no one will ever be able to understand, explain or prove.

Questions like these feed that spirit of contention that Naylor's famous testimony eschews. It's the spirit of contention that animates "the world;" a world that once was being transformed by the way Friends lived out their religion together. It is the spirit that has now, because Friends have given themselves over to it and its notional, propositional "beliefs," in many ways conformed the Society to the world.

Many Friends today are concerned about the future of "Quakerism," what it should look like in the 21st Century. Some who fervently wish to re-invent it are re-laying foundations of exclusion and division, notions and propositional beliefs. Rather than a focus on living out their spirituality with those who are led and aspire to live the same way they focus on gathering those who share their beliefs.

But nothing is new that divides Friends (or the Creation) or keeps them divided. Nothing like that will restore the Society or the manifestation of the Spirit to which it once witnessed in the world.

What was new, long ago, was a faith and practice that brought people of very diverse belief together and, notwithstanding those differences of opinion (and theological belief) made it possible for them to be gathered into a fellowship and live out their religion of transformation together.

I sometimes think I know that the unity I describe will happen, again. If it does not happen through a re-emergence of a Quaker faith and practice like that upon which the movement was founded then it will happen through the operation of the Light in another people, at some other time, perhaps, in some other place.

But I can't really know that. All I can really know is that I am supposed to love God with everything I am and everything I have. That's my pile of leaves--and notwithstanding the shortcomings and lapses--I am making my way through it, becoming something different than I was, and having an influence I can never fully know, with each mouthful.