One Quaker Take

on the law...

2008-06-22T08:57:00.001-07:00

I was cleaning out the garage yesterday and realized that The Law/the law alone cannot save me, even if I keep it with complete faithfulness. But it can save others from me.

What about Jeremiah?

2008-05-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

We are at the beach with Rachael and HYM (Her Young Man). He is the kind of high school senior you hope your daughter brings home. He is Jewish and his faith and practice is central to his life and is as much a source of orientation and wonder to him as mine is to me.

We talk.

He took a pamphlet from an evangelical crew that had its pitch set up near the shore and later in the evening he asked me what I thought about the language "...His people rejected Him..."

I understood immediately what he was getting at. I said, though, that I didn't think that was an instruction to Christian antiSemetism. It was, I said, the archetype of the hero betrayed by his own, about the establishment throwing off internal threats to itself. It's what has happened everywhere to prophets, throughout history. It wasn't, I said, what charged people up for the pogroms.

This morning, though, I'm not so sure. I still believe that I am right in what was intended by that language--there is such language throughout the New Testament. The example that comes to me most readily is that about a prophet having no honor in his own country. It does not say that a prophet has no honor among the Jews and, although he had no "honor" in that location where it is written he uttered those words, he had plenty among other parts of the Jewish people.

The difference between last night and this morning, though, is that I am not so sure that this kind of language--notwithstanding what I think it meant when it was used--hasn't been read exactly as HYM thought, to create a case for discrimination based on the idea that the Jews killed Jesus.

Of course, Christians kill Jesus every day or rather, we kill Christ. How many times has the Easter story played itself out in my life when, on one dark "Friday" or another, I decided to stifle the voice trying to lead me away from this or that temptation and locked it in the tomb of my heart? Each time, of course, within three days (or less), out it came, again, seeking me and, with or without my humble nod in its direction, picked up right where it left off with me (OK, maybe a couple of steps back from where it left off with me).

The very statement "The Jews killed Jesus" kills Christ.

I don't know what happened all those years ago. The record is at best unclear and not free from various agendas. I don't trust the direction I can parse out of Book or hear from those who argue from it (I admire the law but am fearful of the excesses to which the mentality of those of us who do are prone), as much as I do the Spirit that gave rise to it. That Spirit, readily available to me, rarely occupies me with judgments long ago that have nothing to do with anything I did (although sometimes, if I lock it in the tomb...).

But whoever did the killing, it wasn't everyone around at the time called a Jew and it certainly wasn't anyone around now called anything. And the story is that he had to die, if one is centered in the propositional beliefs of the Christian ideology.

This is not a message for HYM, of course, it's a message for me. It reduces itself to something basic to Christianity, to all spirituality.

In Christ there is no Greek or Jew, no man or woman.

"There's a Light that shining in the Turk and the Jew,
There's a Light that shining, Friend, in me and in you."

We are not, as I am led to understand, supposed to be doing groups. So why does it matter the group from which killers come? If Islam is the enemy then so is Christianity. The killer is in all of us--as individual souls--and seems to come out most valiantly and most hideously when it seeks to kill killers, to be sarcastic with the sarcastic, to lie about liars.

"But you can't kill the devil with a gun or a sword."

But here is this blessing of a wonderful young man who, from the perspective of the other end of the stick, can see things in familiar words that I never saw, notwithstanding all the times I have read them. I am anxious for him to wake up so we can talk about this, some more, at breakfast; so I can tell him that this morning I appreciate as well as I understood last night what he was trying to tell me.

Who killed Jeremiah? Does it matter?

Who's doing the killing right now? How are they doing it? How am I involved?

community

2008-05-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

Community is those upon whom our well being depends, those whose actions shape our lives, and whose lives we shape, in return. The condition of our community, its ability to provide for our well being, is determined by the extent to which we realize the other testimonies in our shared life. The way in which we live out simplicity, harmony, integrity and equality is the way in which our community will provide for us, and will shape our lives.

From into my face to the face of God...

2008-03-26T05:33:00.001-07:00

I heard a chaplain whose ministry is at a VA hospital talking about how he gets a notice on his computer screen each time a member of the US military is killed in Iraq. It shows the name, the home town, where the person died and how, among other details. He says it's a moving experience and that it has had a profound impact on him.

It reminded me of being a young Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps, in 1967-68. I was working in the Casualty Reporting Section at Fleet Marine Force Pacific Headquarters. It was my job, each morning, to go down to the Communications Center and pick up a stack of messages. These pieces of paper documented the death or wounding of a Marine in Southeast Asia. Once I got this stack of papers up to the office my fellow Marines and I took information from each message and did various kinds of processing.

The dead all got their own, separate message, three pages, stapled together. The wounded were listed on a single sheet, like a roster.

Over time, I saw names that I recognized from boot camp, and one day I say my older brother's name on the roster of wounded--although he was not in the Marine Corps and I knew him to be safely in Austin, Texas, working at my dad's all-you-could-eat buffet. But it was his name, first, last, middle. I looked at it for a good long time. I cut out that entry and put it under the clear plastic cover on top of my desk blotter.

After a time I could not do that job, any more, and had to be transferred. That daily routine began the process that moved me from Goldwater Republican to Kennedy Democrat and on and on right up to the present, in which I am a 60 year old non-partisan member of the Religious Society of Friends.

I'm not much on making people do anything. I would entreat all, however, to make a practice of taking a few moments to read the details, in so far as one can, given the state of our current media, each time one comes across an account of a soldier who has died. I wouldn't limit it to US soldiers in Iraq, either. I cannot help but think that one will be edified, if simultaneously unnerved, by doing this practice.

And I think it is a spiritual practice. I could tell from that chaplain's voice that it was a spiritual practice, a discipline, for him. Although I didn't know it at the time, my carrying those messages and processing the information in them was a spiritual practice for me. As surely as any regimen of prayer or mediation, any participation in the life of the meeting or contemplation of scripture, that daily observance, that acknowledgment of the fact of what was happening to real people, of the reality of death in war and the result of that for so many people, changed my condition. I was changed in a way that only my getting into sync with, being conformed to, the Spirit could possibly have transformed me.

Radical Inclusiveness -- Beanite Tradition -- Part Two

2008-03-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

I saw a comment on another blog recently that differentiated radical inclusion in civil society from that in a religious community. Membership or association with the religious community is voluntary, it was said, whereas one is in civil society with no alternative but to stay. That is why, as I understand the argument, civil society owes all in it a radical inclusiveness whereas a religious community does not.

Makes sense.

I wonder, though, if all would agree that our membership in or association with the spiritual communities of which we are a part was the product of our voluntary choice. Would some of us say that we were led to that community, quite contrary to our inclinations or plans? Is there some will at work, quite apart from our own, that has us where we are, where it/It wants us to be? Could it really be, as I have thought sometimes, that all who wash up on the beach of our monthly meeting, no matter how unlikely that seems given what they look like, do so because, whether they stay long or not, they all have something for us, and we have something for all lthem?

This comes to a brutal impasse when the following question frames any situation: Should someone stay, or be allowed to stay, in a spiritual community if, as a corporate body, it believes that s/he is not living by its rules (or beliefs)? Should they leave? Should they be excluded?

Joel and Hannah Bean, both enrolled ministers in a yearly meeting, witnessed against changes that were made in the faith and practice of that yearly meeting. The yearly meeting had been inundated with new members who had little background in or grasp of that yearly meetings' Gospel Order. These newcomers became part of the monthly meetings in this yearly meeting in the wake a great wave of revival that passed through their part of the country. When the agents of revival moved on they left those they “revived” to find local spiritual communities to call home. Many, thus, came to a Quaker meeting for the first time.

Those Friends who were members of the yearly meeting before its numbers were increased by the “revived” were unable to maintain its faith and practice, its Gospel Order; the right order traditional to their Orthodox Yearly Meeting. To cope with the number of the “revived” the yearly meeting came to adopt a faith and practice comfortable to the “revived,” one that seemed practical to deal with so many new members with so much to learn about Quaker tradition. Most of these new members, in so far as they had experience with a religious community, had an expectation that it should look like a Protestant Christian church.

As the meetings and the yearly meeting were conformed to that model, and away from the Orthodox Quaker faith and practice, many of those there before the revival became uneasy. The new members' expectations were changing the faith and practice of the yearly meeting more than that faith and practice was integrating the new members into Quaker faith and practice. Unable to move the yearly meeting back to its former faith and practice, many of these pre-revival Friends left and found a different yearly meeting of which to become a part.

Joel and Hannah Bean did not leave, however, at least not initially. They chose to remain in fellowship with those rejecting the Orthodox faith and practice, albeit urging Friends, new and old, to return to it.

As to why they did not choose to leave their yearly meeting and find a spiritual home more comfortable to and conforming with their yearly meeting’s former faith and practice Joel wrote:

“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.”

Joel Bean
Letter to R. H. Thomas 2nd Month 8, 1899
Among the Bean papers at Swarthmore Library

In the end they were separated from their yearly meeting, although not by their own choice.

It seems to me that Joel and Hannah Bean tried to live out a testimony in the tradition of Friends:

Question: But if I do not presently see that service in a thing that the rest of my brethren [sic] agree in? In this case what is my duty, and theirs?

Answer. It is thy duty to wait upon God in silence and in patience, and as thou abide in the simplicity of Truth thou wilt receive an understanding with the rest of they brethren [sic] about the thing doubted. And it is their duty, whilst thou behavest thyself in meekness, to bear with thee, and carry themselves tenderly and lovingly towards thee.

"True Spiritual Liberty," William Penn, 1681
(condensed by Lewis Benson), Tract Association of Friends

Some contemporary Friends probably would not use this "Christo-centric" language but all can translate this instruction easily into words with which they are comfortable and through which they can appreciate both the truth and Truth they contain.

I have not found explicit reference to this testimony in the literature or papers of the Beans. It does not appear to me that the Beans or the members of the yearly meeting who found their continued presence so vexing actually lived out this testimony as faithfully as Friends inclined to "come down" on one side or the other (or both) of this situation today might wish they had.

From what I can tell, silence and sometimes patience did not always characterize the Beans' “abiding in the simplicity of Truth.” Some his Joel's writing seemed to be in the tone, volume and practice of a Jeremiah or Hosea.

It is also not possible to say that those with whom the Beans tried to abide always bore with them and or carried themselves tenderly or lovingly toward them. Perhaps the proviso of condition on their duty to do so (“whilst thou behavest thyself in meekness”) provided them a justification for the apparent lack of tenderness or love in, first, removing the Beans from the list of enrolled ministers after they moved to California and then, later, disowning them.

(To be fair, it is unclear whether this disowning, which took place years later, was due to the same animosity that led to their names being removed from the rolls of ministers or whether it was due to a simple “clearing of the rolls” of names of Friends not seen at meeting for a long time. Meetings then, as now, paid assessments for members on their rolls. It appears that some who came to unity with this disowning of the Beans may have done so for the former reason and others, for solely the latter. In any case, the disowning was later reversed).

All this digression aside, I want to recommend this formula described by Penn for dealing with disagreement within the meeting. I think it is the formula that at least guided if it did not perfectly describe the abiding strategy/testimony the Beans. Their (imperfect) example is one to consider when Friends find sharp differences between their own faith and practice and that of their yearly meeting. It is also one for the yearly meeting to consider when it finds Friends holding to faiths and practices that differ from that of the established corporate unity. Perhaps a more universal use of this mode of dealing with conflict among Friends might prevent future lamentations like this one:

“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

Again, whether her language resonates with us, or not, we can all certainly translate it into spiritual (or non spiritual) terms that makes her message, and the Truth and truth of it, clear. Throughout the history of the Society there have been many occasions, and today there remain many occasions, where differences among the various faiths and practices of Friends have pulled them out of right relationship with one another, to their own personal detriment and to the detriment of the Society as a whole. It will be for someone else to explain the benefit of all this division and schism. It is for me to entreat Friends (and friends) to consider another testimony from long ago.

For you may be sure that separation neither restores any to love the Truth, neither gathers any to God, but rather scattereth and driveth away some that was gathered in love to Truth by the painful and faithful labourers that was truly sent of the Lord.

William Dewsbury to Edward Nightingale
Quoted in Braithewaite’s “Second Period” p 477

Again, we can each of us translate this parochial language so as to see in it a plea for the all inclusive unity/love that is at least one of the aspirations of probably every spiritual tradition, including that and those we in the Society of Friends call our own.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting seems to still be a "united" yearly meeting, as was its predecessor College Park Association of Friends, founded in 1889. The circle of fellowship is wider and the inclusiveness is more radical, although it is perhaps no more radical, in our own time, than the Association was 120 years ago.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting also remains an "independent" yearly meeting, not affiliated with any of the other domains of the Society of Friends. In theory this could mean that it is in fellowship with all of those other domains and yet neither the yearly meeting, or those that occupy those other domains would probably agree with that latter statement or be open to such fellowship.

Perhaps, in the future, there will be such a thing as "interdependent" yearly meetings, consciously and expressly in fellowship with all other yearly meetings. But that will happen only if all yearly meetings in the Society similarly, consciously and expressly, become "interdependent" in this same way. To be affiliated with any fewer than all other yearly meetings would seem to be to still endorse the division of the Society and to acknowledge that we can never be Rachel Hicks' "...united people of great influence in gathering the nations to the peaceable kingdom..."

"From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered...Here the Lord opened unto me, and let me see a great people in white raiment by a river side, coming to the Lord...:

George Fox
Journal, Chapter Six

Radical Inclusiveness -- Beanite Tradition -- Part One

2008-03-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Just to emphasize, at the outset, that this is One Quaker Take and not an "official" statement adopted by North Pacific Yearly Meeting...

North Pacific Yearly Meeting traces its genesis back to Joel and Hannah Bean. For reasons too complicated to relate, here, they began a worshipping group that invited all Friends to fellowship, regardless of where they held membership in the Society of Friends. When they did that, in 1889, it was a radical move because it followed on the better part of a hundred years of schism and division that left the Society of Friends divided and in disarray and it was a direct and intentional response to that division and disarray.

The group was characterized as "united" (in the sense that Friends from all domains of the Society were welcome) and "independent" (in the sense that it was not affiliated with any of the then existing domains of the Society). My understanding is that the Beans preferred "united" and that seems consistent with some of Joel's earlier writing encouraging re-gathering Friends.

Updating our Faith and Practice here in North Pacific Yearly Meeting we have looked back on this beginning, and the intervening development of that group into Pacific, and Inter-mountain Yearly Meetings, as well as into our own.

Although there is not a general knowledge or understanding of the history of all of this among us, the term "independent" is still used by many to characterize North Pacific Yearly Meeting. This term became more important recently with discussion among Friends here about affiliation with Friends General Conference.

The term "united" is far less well known or important to Friends in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, even though, it occurs to me, it may be the more important, as it seems to have been for the Beans, for an understanding, by us and by those who see us from the "outside," the basis of our unity as a yearly meeting.

As radically inclusive as it was a hundred and twenty years or so ago, a "united" group in which any Christian Friend is welcome is far less radical today.

My own survey and analysis of our yearly meeting, and my experience as a member, makes apparent to me that we are a "united" meeting in the sense that Friends are in fellowship here whose spiritual orientation is Christian (we'd probably say "Christo-centric"), something spiritual other than Christian, and even orientations the holder s of which would not characterize as spiritual, at all.

That is radical inclusiveness, indeed.

And it causes us some issues.

First among those is the fascinating phenomenon that in a group where no one would claim that there is a creed or set of beliefs that one must embrace to belong some of us have become insistent, at times, that certain terminology (and the beliefs they reflect) must be or not be used in the Faith and Practice.

Another of these issues is, given such a radical inclusiveness, where are the limits? While it is likely (although not certain) than none would say that one can believe anything and share in the unity of North Pacific Yearly Meeting none can say, either, what is beyond the pale.

Struggling with this first issue has brought many of us to understand that the Faith and Practice must have an "and/also" orientation. Friends must see themselves in the book and must accept that they will also see things that are not descriptive of them but are descriptive of others in the yearly meeting. This is how it will be in a "united" meeting based on a radical inclusiveness. Understanding the nature of this inclusiveness is essential to getting a Faith and Practice written without dividing us. Sometimes, as one Friend put it, Quakers just have to get over "themselves."

The second issue will not be resolved in the writing of the Faith and Practice, nor can it be. The last time, for example, the Faith and Practice was revised the issue of taking same sex marriages under the care of meetings in North Pacific Yearly Meeting was, in hindsight, only moving within the pale. Such things are not worked out by writing minutes; they are worked out in the hearts and lives of this Community of Friends and only then manifested in minutes and in the Faith and Practice.

This means that it will likely always be unclear what one would have to do (although it may be more clear that it would be what one would have to do, as opposed to what one would have to believe) in order to be "disowned" or be deemed a "heretic" here in this liberal (or the Liberal liberal) yearly meeting . (No, there is no process for disownment or for declaring someone a heretic included in our Faith and Practice nor, to my knowledge, in the faith and practice of any among us, although, as I say, it might seem from some of what some of us say sometimes that there might be).

It is important that these issues be "named" among Friends within North Pacific Yearly Meeting as they are crucial to our understanding of the internal, mutual "enculturation" process that defines us and in protecting and nurturing that process. This is a spiritual community built more on a way of being religious together than it is built on a set of specific beliefs. That means it is a highly participatory spirituality that becomes a husk if that participation flags.

This yearly meeting did not become what it is, what it is struggling to become, through some decision that was made, somewhere, sometime by some group of people. It is what it is because there is something at work among us. (Please don't ask for a definition of that "something" because it seems to me that trying to define it stops its work.) This is leading us in ways we cannot comprehend or appreciate until it becomes a-borning. We cannot see what has moved to and is moving toward Bethlehem to be born. We can only see that it did and still is.

I realize, by the way, that some in the broader Society of Friends might claim that this which is at work among us is not really of God or the Spirit. I can only acknowledge their concern, ask their prayers and refer them to Gamaliel's advice in Acts 5:38-40.

It is incumbent upon us to say what we know, in so far as we know it, which means, at a minimum, making clear to the Society of Friends as a whole what is the latitude and longitude of North Pacific Yearly Meeting. That is part of what writing a Faith and Practice is about.

We know that there are Friends who shake their heads in wonder at what we are and what we do, but we also know that there are Friends who see their own reflection in our condition. We know that these others in the Society will be supported and encouraged by us, as we have been supported and encouraged all along by them.

It takes a long time to write a Faith and Practice because it involves individual Friends sharing their developing faiths and practices with one another, and learning from and teaching one another and, above all, developing the love and appreciation they have for one another and for their way of being religious together, for the radically inclusive community they create together by living it out.

Men, Women and the Illusions Thereof

2008-02-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

A recent blog-post caught my eye. The gist of it is that war is the cause of the gender conflicts in human society.

An interesting take, for certain, and I appreciate the perspective that patriarchy has not been a benefit to men.

Most men have received little of the perceived "benefits" of what are commonly defined as the rewards of patriarchy. These benefits--like the differences between men and women--turn out to be self (and other) destructive illusions. Men who have been "relieved" of the drudgery of child rearing, for example, find themselves alienated from their children; men who are able to control their wives find hostility and passive aggression seeping out everywhere in their relationships.

I don't think that the problem between men and women is war. I think that's a manifestation of the problem. My experience is the problem is that regardless of sex, we are all made crazy trying to live up to--and force others to live up to--concepts of male and female that are unattainable because they clash with who we are.

All those traits we think differentiate men and women don't, really. Empathy, rationality, nurturing, etc--they are all on a continuum in everyone and as we kill off or repress those tendencies that aren't consistent with what our cultural conditioning says is appropriate for someone with our secondary sex characteristics we just kill off and repress ourselves. And insofar as we try to make others--children, spouses--conform to those notions we do the same to them. No good comes of that.

People will fight, in the military and the domestic spheres, until they are transformed by the Spirit to conform to the Spirit and thus are reconciled to on another. Then, in the military and the domestic spheres, they will be at peace, in harmony with themselves and with others.

That's long been the faith and practice of Friends. Some may prefer to leave the "by the Spirit to the Spirit" out of that equation, these days, but the test is the same: is your life increasingly changing such that characteristics like harmony, simplicity, equality, community and integrity (or the eight-fold path) describe you more each day? If so, keep going. If not, consider your direction and how to change it.

In so far as things external to our own condition "make" us fight with one another it is those illusionary things we are trying to be, and not to be, that give evil that ability to control us. There is nothing inherent in evil that gives it that kind of power.

But I don't believe in God....

2007-12-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

How can one be seeking the will of God if one does not believe in It?

Wrestle with that until your hip is out of joint.

There are all kinds of voices that we hear and just because they are spiritual doesn't mean they are from God/the divine/whatever. Mara/the Devil/Id screams at us every day, urgently.

The key is what I hear in the words of a contemporary prophet, that were written, as I heard the tale, before he was baptized in Pat Boone's swimming pool:

"I cannot think for you,

you will have to decide,

Whether Judas Iscariot,

Had God on his side."

I used to think that if the voice was speaking to me about me then it was God, but if it spoke to me about others it was not. But that doesn't say much for Amos or Ezekiel, does it?

I heard a dharma talk once in which the speaker said that a thought bubbled up out of his psyche and I thought, "Ha! It did no such thing, it was the voice of God you heard." But in coming to that conclusion I almost missed the voice of God in his words because I could not get beyond his attribution of them.

Whether someone "believes" in God or not it is my experience that "God" believes in all of us enough to speak through all of us, to each of us, at times.

What is the fruit of the words?

Even if I am an atheist and deny that God speaks to or through me, where does my ministry take me or take others? (Don't have a ministry? Really? How many moles do you have on the back of your neck?)

It's a religious society--not an ideological movement. Perhaps the "ism" on the end of Quaker misleads some of us most comfortable with Christian symbols into the kind of "Christianism" with which evil can do so much work.

It doesn't matter the package, I am thinking/knowing, so much as whether, under the ribbons and bows (or the dirt and grime), one finds that which the Christian tradition describes in Galatians 5:22.

Whether I/we am/are inclined at the moment to "work" to escape rebirth (polishing that mirror, are we?) or seeking everlasting life, our "success" is described in that passage, our failure described in the passage above it.

We live between two lists (whether we think they come from one God or another or from our "reason and experience" as human beings)-- both speak to and through us. Turn down the one, said Mr. Penington, and turn up the other. OK, OK, he said to beat down the one...but "beating" is so violent and we never beat even an egg or our cross town rivals...

In the words of that same contemporary prophet I quoted above:

"Tie yourself to a tree with roots,

'cause you aint goin' nowhere."

culture wars

2007-12-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

I came across this blog.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/religion_kills.php

It's a rant of sorts about a 14 year old boy who refused medical treatment, based on his religious beliefs, and died.

"Religion is child abuse. It strips kids of the critical reasoning abilities that can save their lives. His crazy aunt killed him as surely as if she had beat him to death with a baseball bat." (His aunt is a Jehova's Witness)

Comments to this included:

"The judge is an accessory to murder."

"...the Judge is culpable and should be tried himself..."

"The parent have just killed their own child, it is child abuse."

"No matter what, that aunt deserves to be burned at the stake. I'll hold judgement on the judge - it could be he was protecting civil liberties and isn't exactly a fundie. I don't have enough information. But if he's a fundie who thinks the kid was "righteous" to do this and Jeebus will protect him, then he should exit the judicial system most rickytick."

"I will not let my son be infected by the disease that is religion.
It ruins the mind. What that woman did is child abuse.
And the judge is an coward."

"All religions at one point stop people from thinking rationally (or they want people not to think)."

"Speaking of religion killing, in light of recent events in the Sudan, I have renamed my ball python (formerly "Snakers") Mohammed. Cruel stupidity should always have consequences. Let the backlash begin."

"...whether or not some unprovable sky pixie will smile upon him if he forgoes medical care."

"I don't need some holier then thou preacher that molests little boys telling ME how to live MY life."

I was troubled when I read all this. I would probably like and get along well with most of those who wrote comments in response to the posting in this "science blog." Yet, look at what they think about religion and religious people. Tbere is no understandng or recognition that religious people could be anything except fundamentalists, Jehovah's Witnesses and the like.

So how does it come to be that these people don't know that there are religious people in the world who are not creationists, who are not against stem cell research and are not demanding that science pass religious screenings?

And Shouldn't we be concerned about that?

I think so.

First, it's not fun to be treated poorly because someone thinks that we are something that threatens them. My daughter is heading off for college this next fall. How will it be with her if some people on campus (say some professor in a biology or chemistry class), hearing that she is a Quaker, will treat her with contempt, assuming that she is something she is not, that she poses a threat to them?

Second, the fact that people think that religion is about this kind of thing keeps them from exploring their own spirituality.

It's probably not appropriate to use the word too much but the "popular" sense that fundamentalism as exemplified by the religious right is "religion" is a result of blasphemy. The characterization of God presented by the likes of Jerry Fallwell et. al. (e.g., God punishes American with hurricanes because of gays and abortions), is patently absurd and transparently political. Yet, many believe that this is "religion" and they want no part of it.

We in the liberal domain of the Religious Society of Friends do not evangelize and it would not serve us well to do that. Yet, I wonder, how can we project a different face of religion to the world beyond our hedge?

There have been times when the Society was concerned about presenting the truth about itself to the outside world because it felt threatened. This is less important to me (although, as I write, above, I am also concerned about it). More important, I think, is the fact that so many people are deprived of the opportunity to benefit from the Light.

There is no doubt that there is a "culture war" going on. We are not exempt from this struggle and it would not serve us well to be thought of by each side as a manifestation of the (distorted view they have of the) other. Perhaps we are among those who will step forward to promote our "peculiar" testimonies in this situation.

Aside from the view of religion expressed in this blog, I am troubled by the nastiness of the tone. I am certain that the point of view of the so called christian right cannot prevail--it is divisive and promotes alienation. It is an attempt to fight against evil with evil means of manipulation, control and oppression--not to mention suppression of truth in favor of myth. In dividing its own house (all of us) it will inherit the wind.

We cannot expect to divide the house and receive any other legacy.

Tie your camel...

2007-10-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

I heard a Sufi talk about trusting Allah but tying one's camel.

Some people think that they have to do everything, that only their actions make things happen, that there is no God. These people become frantic and eventually frustrated. There is no one to trust--or blame--other than ourselves.

Others think that God makes everything happen and our efforts are of no avail, one way or the other. These people become lazy and resigned to the repitition of what has always happened and to caprice. God is responsible for everything. Nothing is required of us.

The third way is to realize that we do what we can and if the result is not as we wish we trust Allah to know what should be.

We are not responsible--there are so many different people doing so many different things and all these different actions interact so as to bring about a result.

Our actions are not without consequence, nor are they determinative. We need to act, to throw the weight we have on to one side or the other of the balance. In this way our actions become a kind of prayer. And, once we have acted, once we have prayed, then we need to trust God with the outcome.

Staying Together

2007-09-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

"Only a strong authoritarian control could have prevented the separations (of the Society of Friends)..."

So says a Quaker blogger explaining why he doesn't "bemoan" the fractured nature of the Society, today.
http://www.quakerranter.org/the_quaker_time_capsule

I disagree. No strong authoritarian control could have prevented the separations. It was, rather, strong authoritarian control, or the aspiration to it, that actually caused the separations.

Another force, one more often associated, albeit mistakenly, with the Society, by both those inside and out of it, would have prevented these divisions: Love. Whether we call it love or charity or compassion--these divisions came to be and remain because of an absence of this fruit of the spirit, the absence of manifestation/testimony to this transformation of Friends from worldly to spirit.

The fact that these divisions occurred, and are maintained today, are a testimony that we are not what we claim(ed) to be; a people living in the power of the spirit. We are, rather, a worldly people, as stuck on ourselves and separate from and set against our neighbors as any other people on the earth.

I go farther with this. We are not only divided within the Society, we are spiritually separted from people outside it, and we are apparently as satisfied with that division as we are with the internal divisions.

"For you may be sure that separation neither restores any to love the Truth, neither gathers any to God, but rather scattereth and driveth away some that was gathered in love to Truth by the painful and faithful labourers that was truly sent of the Lord."

William Dewsbury to Edward Nightingale
Quoted in Braithewaite's "Second Period" p 477

"Question: But if I do not presently see that service in a thing that the rest of my brethren [sic] agree in? In this case what is my duty, and theirs?

"Answer. It is thy duty to wait upon God in silence and in patience, and as thou abide in the simplicity of Truth thou wilt receive an understanding with the rest of thy brethren [sic] about the thing doubted. And it is their duty, whilst thou behavest thyself in meekness, to bear with thee, and carry themselves tenderly and lovingly towards thee.

True Spiritual Liberty, William Penn, 1681
(condensed by Lewis Benson), Tract Association of Friends

"Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and
bearing one with another, and forgiving one another,
and not laying accusations one against another, and
helping one another up with a tender hand."

Isaac Penington,
1667

"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 from Hannah Bean to P. Doncaster
January 4, 1900

"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

"In a true community we will not choose our companions,
for our choices are so often limited by self-serving
motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us
by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our
settled view of self and world. In fact, we might
define true community as the place where the person
you least want to live with always lives."

Parker J. Palmer (1977)
Faith and Practice (10.19)
London Yearly Meeting

"We cannot love each other into wholeness unless we know each other well and have that knowledge anchored in God's love and truth."

Sandra Cronk
Gospel Order, p 31
Pendle Hill Pamphlet

"That which God aimed at in a covenant was to keep him and his people together."

Isaac Penington
Works, Vol II, p 36

(Quotations prove nothing. They only amplify my view and indicate to me that I am not the only person who is led to this understanding of right order.)

...it [a Society that] has taken its stand on a half truth...

2007-08-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

Rufus Jones to Joel Bean October 25, 1893

"It is hardly necessary for me to say that you have not in any degree lost your place in the hearts of your friends because it has been your lot to suffer persecution, but rather, as I believe, have strengthened it by simply and fearlessly saying what seemed right to you to satisfy the deep convictions of your own hearts. The right of soul privacy seems to me an established principle of Quakerism, that a man shall not be forced to suffer for what at any given time he may be thinking to be truth. We find that the most saintly men have reached the great truths from which they fearlessly uttered by rising from error to glimpses of truth and so on to half truths and finally to the truth. Taken at any early stage of their pursuit of the truth and forced to declare their thought conscientiously they would have fallen under condemnation, but granted what I have called soul privacy have reached convictions which they could victoriously declare and stand upon. Hopeless as the present state of our Society is I have faith in its future for I believe it is feeling for the truth, and though it has taken its stand on a half truth just now and things are in a crude state, yet God is so wise and so able to bring all things up to better, that I believe he will not forsake a people which has been so faithful in the past and which has possibilities of almost unlimited usefulness in the future."

Dropping in at Swarthmore...

2007-08-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have been working the last couple of days at the Friends historical library at Swarthmore, doing research on Joel Bean. They have his papers all boxed and cataloged.

I had a couple of specific questions in which I was interested, and I have learned some things that move me toward answers to those, but I was also curious to read some of the "manuscripts" with titles like "The Light," and "Saul and David," and so on. Turns out that most of these are handwritten notes for sermons or other kinds of talks. It's good that he had good penmanship. It's been very interesting and edifying.

I was especially taken with a composition book in which he wrote, in longhand and rhyming couplets, about his childhood for the benefit of his daughters. It's very sweet and interesting. I wonder how much reality was sacrificed for the sake of the rhyme scheme. For example:

"When Joseph John Gurney went over our State,
He traveled our road, and drew up to our Gate,
We were called to his carriage; my brother and I
A text book received, by Elizabeth Fry;
He wrote his name in it, then pausing to say,
A few words by love prompted, he went on his way."(p 5)

Lots of interesting information. What will I do with it?

A Gathered Meeting?

2007-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

My FCG workshop this morning touched on the idea of a "gathered" meeting--that special meeting from which Friends leave feeling that they have been a part of a unity, joined together in what happened in a special and spiritual way. "Covered" is another adjective that people use to describe such a meeting.

Or, perhaps it would be better to say how they describe their experience of such a meeting. Someone in the workshop said that she had the experience of having felt a meeting to be "gathered" and someone else in attendance didn't feel it was anything like that.

That made me think of the Tuesday night meeting for worship/plenary here at the Friends General Conference Gathering. Two young friends spoke in a meeting for worship "format." Precocious would be an understatement from my point of view. I don't usually like the large scale meetings of the plenary style that we have at FGC (or even NPYM annual session, for that matter) because they seem disjointed and what happens often does not meet my own needs or my expectation of and for a meeting for worship.

This large meeting, however, was an exception to that experience.

At least, it was for me.

The next day a friend asked me how I viewed the experience and I said it was very powerful and edifying. He said that he thought so, too, but that he had heard some comments indicating that some in attendance didn't think it was very good. They thought that the "format" of meeting for worship was not appropriate for the message.

I mentioned this in the workshop this morning, agreeing with the woman whose experience was that sometimes one leaves a meeting thinking it was a powerful experience while others didn't see it that way.

Another woman in the workshop said that she thought that there might have been some personal blocks and barriers that people had to receiving the messages last Tuesday night as I had received them; they may not have been able to hear because of an aversion to overtly Christian language, or they may not have been able to hear important things from people so young (19 and 25).

I have been thinking, since, of the barriers that keep me from entering into a unity, at times, with people because of factors like this.

A later and unrelated conversation I heard about this Tuesday night plenary was that young people, the high school and the adult young friends, were not represented very heavily in the meeting. They were annoyed that there was a dance, jointly sponsored by the two groups, that was going on at the same time, and that the young people would have chosen the dance over hearing from their peers.

Aside from the scheduling problem--if one had the expectation that this plenary was at least partly for the young people--I think one has to accept realities about reaching people. Jesus left the temple to reach the tax collectors and the other outcasts of his time. If people wanted these young people to reach the young people in attendance at the Gathering--given how separate the young people's Gathering is form the Gathering in general (a topic about which much could be said)--then an effort should have been made to take these speakers to them. (Perhaps that was actually done and the people of whom I heard that complained about the young people not showing up didn't know that there was another time, another place that the connection was made).

We all have unrealistic expectations of others, especially "others." Whether we think that the modes of communication that reach us should reach everyone (or that people should know what reaches us and approach us that way if they expect us to respond), or we think that people should prioritize their time to suit our values or our expectations of them, we often fail to see ourselves in the shortcomings we perceive in them.

More On Non Theism

2007-07-04T17:28:00.000-07:00

The Friends General Conference Gathering here in Wisconsin has given me enough to write about for months. I have a journal full of things from my work shop on language in the Society of Friends, from the Bible Half Hour, and from lunch conversations with my partner (I'm just tired of saying "my wife." Partner doesn't quite work but it will do until I figure out something more apt). And I have learned much from the fact of the non-conversations with my children, one in the high school and the other in the middle school program. They have disappeared but for the one mandatory daily check in and the non-scheduled phone call, such as the one I made to my oldest who was on the St Croix River during the tornado alert yesterday. Their absence is a different and instructive experience. Those in the nest are emptying it, right before my eyes.

Did I say tornado alert? I did. What does a boy from Oregon think about a tornado alert? An awful lot when he is in the interior hall way of a college class room building and his oldest child is on a river, somewhere, and his youngest is without a cell phone and in an unknown location. Tornado? My partner was somewhere not answering her cell phone so I just left her a message to call me from Oz if that's where she was. Turned out she was not. She was in a gymnasium watching my youngest play a game called "wink" with the rest of the middle school kids. Wink is an FGC game, apparently. Wink is...well, don't ask.

But before the tornado alert (which obviously had a big impression on me) I was at a session billed as a theist and non theist in a "non debate," "non dialog" kind of exchange of some kind. Two more such sessions will be held and I'll be there for both. These are both inclusive people and there is no hint of someone not belonging. In fact, the theist Friend wanted to do this in response to the now infamous review of "Godless for God's Sake."

The theist representative put forth a metaphor of the Society of Friends as being a "gathered community," sort of like a bus full of draftees on the way to boot camp. All were put on that bus by a force beyond their control. Some will like some of the others on the bus, and some will like others of the some on the bus. But all are on the same bus and all belong.

During the question period I asked the non theist Friend (with whom I have had a cyber relationship for quite some time and with whom I finally came face-to-face yesterday) whether he owned this metaphor.

My understanding of his answer is that he did not. As a non theist the idea of gathering implies to him a power or force that is working on these who share this bus-space and that, of course, gets us into theism. His preference, it seems, was to refer to the Society as "assembled" as opposed to "gathered," and the distinction is telling. People, in this sense, assemble themselves. People assemble themselves as Friends, he seemed to me to be saying, because they are drawn by the history and the ideas associated with the Society, not by some "force" or "power" pulling them in. It was an intellectual attraction, rather than a sensed calling.

On my way to my personal morning Bible reading this morning, at 4:30 AM, it came to me that this is actually the way that I first came to a Quaker meeting. When my partner told me, around the first birthday of my oldest, that she would grow up in a spiritual community it was the idea of a spiritual community--not the feeling of being gathered into one, that motivated her. She let me choose which community and I said "Quaker" because of some support work Quakers had done with me twenty some years earlier when I was in the Marine Corps, and because of the odd book I had encountered, since then, about Friends. (Quaker ideas. No call from God).

My sense of Truth, of God, is very much experiential, now, and very slightly intellectual. I hear IT telling me what to do and listen for IT. It's nothing I figure out or deduce from what my notions are of God and IT works. But that's not where I started. I started with a few notions about what Quakerism was and, over a long number of meetings and other experiences with the "space the words come from" began to experience Truth as that "person" (thanks to Doug Gwyn for the metaphor) that must be obeyed.

This is not to say that non theists or anyone else who comes to the Society will, in the end, express the experience of God as I do, as a theistic "force." It's just to say that I came through the same door and hung out with the same orientation for a long time, thinking of the testimonies as "values" and trying to reason from those to figure out what I should do in and with life. I am sure that this is not what all non theists see themselves doing, and I am sure there are plenty who self-identify as theists who approach things that way.

But the point is that "other" and "self" are entwined around one another, even as they emerge as "distinct" entities. But, hey, that's been the point of the Bible Half Hour...

Sojourn Among Non Theist Friends

2007-06-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

My electronic sojourn among non theist Friends has shown me several things, two things chief among them. First, some of these Friends have endured much hurt at the hands of theists within the Society and, second, that I am to have no part in perpetuating any such hurtful treatment (and am to speak out against it).

I have no doubt that there is plenty of blame, if blame is what we are looking for, to go around, here. The non theist can be as condescending and patronizing as the theist can be condemning and hostile. Each can carry themselves (ourselves) with an arrogance sure (if not designed) to inflame the other. The same is true, of course, among all of the "domains" within the Society.

While I have learned a lot in an extended correspondence I still do not understand how the lack of God--or the lack of relevance of God--fits in with a spiritual tradition that has been based on "leadings" and "openings" from God, where business is done seeking unity in the will of God. In the words of Jimmy Buffet, like the jitterbug, it plumb eludes me.

This is because I am guided by direct communication with God, through listening, hearing and obeying--by being shown the way and given the strength to aspire to follow it, by getting conformed day by day to the likeness of that which guides me. I am not guided by values and thinking and believing--by "figuring out" what's right and wrong. I am guided by what I am told.

And it is not helpful to hear or read that I am deluded and too weak to face life without the crutch of belief in an old bearded man in the sky who grants wishes, or in a cosmic vending machine into which I can insert the spiritual coin of prayer and expect to get a new bike. It is especially difficult to hear such things from people who tell me how much hurt they have suffered from the likes of me.

What is clear to me, however, is that God sent me among these people and sent them to me. I am not, as I first thought, a couple of years back when non theist Friends starting popping up in my life, supposed to be "winning them over" or changing their outlook. I am, rather, led to interact with them, to try to understand them and to be understood, to gain and provide perspective; to abide with them.

This is an extension of the opening I was given some years back when I realized that the people who come to my meeting--even those who only briefly wash up on our spiritual beach--have something for us, and we have something for them. There is something going on, here, and the fact that what that might be is not apparent to me does not change the fact that I have very clear instructions about how to deal with it. Jesus, it is written, illustrated this with an example of the apostate Samaritans--the people who worshiped the wrong way, on the wrong mountain.

The "other" is not to be taken, like Athaliah, from the temple and put to death at the city gates, "old covenant" style. That I have been led away from high places and from the poles, myself, does not mean that I should be destroying them. or those who worship them, or worship there.

I do get around among Friends and I know some of the history of our Society. In fact, while there are no doubt many who know more than I do, I have read and studied more than most.

I thus know that we are a peculiar people, in all the senses that word is used. We are a house that has divided itself many times and sometimes pulled itself back together. While the tide seems constantly to be running toward division and schism, with many of us distinguishing ourselves from one another, there have always been others among us who see and promote a tenuous and precious commonality, if not unity.

Whether all who call themselves Friends really are, or whether we all "belong" or can be "yoked" together, we all have a clear mandate from whichever well we draw our spiritual water. While we may not, any of us, have lived up to the aspiration consistently, the fact is that we all proclaim that our spiritual center--whether we see it as a common center or not--exhorts us, requires us, to love one another, to suffer long with one another. We are less inclined to share the opening that we should all be sticking together, as well.

We are all works in progress, wherever we are going. What I am led to do, how I am led to relate to others--inside and outside the Society--seems to me to be indicating that we are all meant to get there together. That is entirely notional, of course. But what is not notional is how I am told to act, what I am told to do. And I mean "told" literally, not as a metaphor for what I have figured out.

I am told to maintain fellowship with Non Theist Friends and with Evangelical Friends and Conservative Friends and syncretic Friends and Buddhist Friends and Wiccan Friends and Friends who are outside of the Society and Friends who do not look like Friends, at all. I am not led to be like them, perhaps, or to be conformed to them. Nor, apparently, are they led to be like me. But perhaps--again, this is notional--perhaps we are all being led in different ways to become what none of us is, or ever has been, or can even see becoming. Notional.

It may be that I mistake the destination to which this Light leads me. But insofar as I go where it leads me (and not where I "figure out," given my "values" or what the Bible "says" that I should go) I know I will be going where I am supposed to be going, and doing what I am supposed to do.

The one celled organisms on the forest floor have no idea what part their eating/processing of the leaves does for the constantly developing and evolving eco system of which they are a part. They don't need to know what their part is. They just need, like all of the other components of that system, to keep doing what they are led to do. Just eat the leaves that are in front of you, I hear, just eat the leaves.

Just love God, with all my heart, and love my neighbor as myself. Neighbor is an inclusive term, encompassing even people unlike me, people I don't even particularly like, certainly including people who do not like me. An inclusive term, neighbor is; like Friend.

2007-04-16T05:34:00.001-07:00

I have been left with the understanding of the balance between the inward and the outward, and to see that the lack of such balance has, at times, led me off into the deep weeds on either side of The Way.

It is by holding the Inward Light of the Spirit in one hand, and the outward historical Christ in the other that I have been and still am being transformed into the likeness of both.

This is not growth from contradiction. It is from the interplay of two vehicles of revelation, each a manifestation of the same revelation.

Although they reveal the same thing, neither of them, alone, in my experience, has been sufficient to set off of keep the process in motion. I have laid aside the Teachings, at times, and found myself adrift with scant orientation, at war with my intention and less able to connect with those around me. The same result has obtained at others times in my life when I have laid aside an active spiritual practice based on listening and tried to be guided strictly by the Teachings.

Joel Bean spoke to this condition, and his legacy as I understand it matches my vision.

“Our Society has had opportunity to learn, by sorrowful lessons, the danger of exalting too exclusively our Christ within, on the one hand, and Christ without, on the other. We have need ever to guard alike against that refined and emasculated spirituality which undervalues the Bible and the outward means of grace, and even the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God, and that no less fatal outwardness and superficiality which would substitute profession and prescription, and ritual, for saving faith and all the soul-renewing and life-transforming verities of Christian experience, realized through the imparted energy of the Spirit of Christ within.” (Joel Bean, address to the Annual Meeting of Friends’ First-Day School Association in Philadelphia, 1880).

The Society of Friends has been divided because Friends have been unable to maintain the balance that existed in the beginning. Over time people were born or came into the Movement who became or were oriented more toward one pole than the other, who saw the element they favored, their own spiritual partiality, among Friends and identified with it. They did not see, or perhaps did not value, the other element, that the other orientation was just as much a part of Friends faith and practice. Nor, over time, could they abide its presence.

Although reasons such as geography and family connection left Friends on one side or the other of various divisions who did not "fit in" (laying the groundwork in some cases for further division) the general drift of the realignment of the Movement into the domains that exist today has been to separate those whose primary orientation is the Bible and those who place such emphasis on the Inward Light (in the many ways they conceive of it). Gross generalization, to be sure, but a useful one.

It seems difficult for the two--the Spirit and the Bible--to reign together. Perhaps, better stated, it is difficult for Friends to allow them to do so. It is a condition that often excludes comfort and certainty--and requires great charity toward others, at least in the short term. And we do value comfort and certainty. And we do seem to run low, at times of conflict, on charity.

In my brief "sojourning" among the domains into which the Movement is divided, today, I find much of what God has made me in all. But where the divide is the sharpest, where the balance is the most one way or the other--I find significant parts of the condition into which I am being brought are missing or in short supply. This is especially true of compassion or loving kindness for those "across the divide" or outside the circle.

It is among Friends (and other people) who seem to have access to and can draw upon both the inward and the outward that I feel the most unity.

But I cannot, at least not any longer, bring myself to accept these divisions and to reconcile myself to being apart from those who are on one "side" or the other, nor, at least any longer, to be at war--for the sake of peace and unity, of course--with them. I see my way, now, as to abide with all, striving for the humility and the meekness that so often eludes me and yet which I know is to only way we can all come and be together. Providence has placed me in the Liberal domain of the Society of Friends and from that ground I work, here I do my best to bloom. But Providence has placed others in the other domains of the Movement to do the same and, as the song says, they have skies as blue and hopes and dreams as high as mine.

I sometimes find myself annoyed with Friends on one side or the other--and especially annoyed with myself--when the lack of such necessary meekness and humilty as results in harmony manifests itself in hurtful and divisive ways toward the "other". When that happens, anymore, I instantly am brought to recall the words of Rachel Hicks:

"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

2007-04-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

When I read a non-theist blogger say that he would be sad if Christian Friends left Liberal "Quakerism" I wonder what in the world he could be talking about.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting is both independent and inclusive, accepting and validating--at least for the moment half of Joel and Hannah Bean's legacy survives, here.

It challenges me to hear non-theist Friends from far away telling me that there will always be a place for me by the fire of the Liberal domain of the Friends Movement. I wonder if they realize how patronizing that sounds, how marginalized that pat on the head makes me feel. No doubt they have felt equal marginaliztion at the hands of people who have said that only "Christians" can be Friends. I would hope they would learned from the pain inflicted upon themselves about not inflicting it on others. Perhaps those who have not will.

I am a universalist Christian whose has close f/Friends who are all over the "left wing" map of the Movement. We get along fine, out here in the upper left hand corner of the map.

But, in some places it appears that I am just humored, now. Tolerated. Laughed at behind my back because of the "need" I have for the "crutch" of belief in a power beyond myself and my own "reason."

I am certain that Non-theism and syncretic styles have moved in and taken over, as revivalistic "evangelism" took over Iowa Yearly in the late 19th Century and made Joel and Hanna Bean unwelcome. I will follow their example and remain in my own spiritual tradition, regardless of how the furniture gets changed around by people who have moved in and taken to remodeling the place to suit the image of themselves that they think they see in the faith and practice of Friends. I wonder about the replacement of Truth with "your truth and my truth" and "The Great Perhaps" but I am confident that it won't last.

But, as it is written, after all: Acts 5:38

As it is also written: "Question: But if I do not presently see that service in a thing that the rest of my brethren [sic] agree in? In this case what is my duty, and theirs?

"Answer. It is thy duty to wait upon God in silence and in patience, and as thou abide in the simplicity of Truth thou wilt receive an understanding with the rest of they brethren [sic] about the thing doubted. And it is their duty, whilst thou behavest thyself in meekness, to bear with thee, and carry themselves tenderly and lovingly towards thee."

"True Spiritual Liberty," William Penn, 1681
(condensed by Lewis Benson), Tract Association of Friends

...creating a bigger fire

2007-03-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

If I feel drawn to tell another what to believe then I am denying that which I claim--I know--is fundamental. I am denying the validity of the inward witness.

This is not to say that someone cannot be caught up in something contrary to Truth, and that I cannot discern when that happens, to me or to someone else. It just means that when someone is in error I cannot do more than to deal with them tenderly and refer them, or myself, back to the source, the Truth, as it is operating in and on them, or in and on me.

To confront and contend will only cause them, and do I ever know this experientially, to cling tighter to their pride, as I assault it with my own, until we both are so out of harmony, so out of the life and the power, that there are two souls, and not just one, disoriented in the weeds.

Universal Language -- Community as a Case Study

2007-03-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

i continue to think about this idea that the vaguenesses and ambiguities of the common phrases used by Friends sets us up for both passing "like two ships in the night" or colliding like two ships each of which thinks it's on a parallel course with the other.

The word "Community" is one I've been thinking about since I read Lloyd Lee Wilson's writing about it.

Community can mean a gathered group--people who are brought (or come) together for the long term and for an increasingly intense and intimate relationship with one another (and with God). They learn together, support and forgive one another, are joined by a shared experience that is shaping them in a common way, through a common process, integrating them to something larger than they are.

Community can also mean a group of people who share an interest or concern of some kind, though, and whose relationship does not extend beyond that. The idea is not so much to grow together as to grow along side one another in regard to that shared concern or interest. People are not so much interested in one another as whole beings, or in growing toward one another or like one another as they are in one or a few aspects of one another's lives--the shared interest or concern.

The phrase "Yankee fans for peace!"--a sign I reccall seeing on a march in the late sixties--illustrates. It justaposes two of these latter types of community, and shows the lmitations the members place on the commitment to a shared interest. Being a Yankee fan I do not expect those who share that interest (and lately a concern) with me to be growing along with me in the sense that I expect with those with whom I am involved in the Friends Movement. We are not developing and shaping an all-encompassing mutual identity.

We share some memories and experiences, some hopes, an orientation. We can educate one another and mutually re-inforce one another and add to the richness of our mutual involvement in our shared interest but our relationship does not, and it is not intended to, mutually transform and conform us.

It certainly may heighten our tolerance of one another and even contribute to an improvement of our relationships with one another, perhaps preventing confllict that might arise from interests and concerns we have about other things that we do not hold in common. It's a good thing that a Republican and Democrat, for example, can sit next to one another and talk about Thurman Munson and Billy Martin, telling stories and rehashing shared memories in a friendly way, but it is unlikely that it will reconcile them to one another in a shared political outlook or to influence their ideas about child rearing, personal transportation or the "right" sharing of world's resources.

I am learning that Friends conceive of their participation in the Movement as membership in both types of community. Almost all Friends share a common interest in worship (both programmed and unprogrammed), in that experience and discipline (although if asked to talk about what that experience means or what it accomplishes one will find a range of answers that are not consistent with one another). As involvement with one another grows from that, if it does, I see it developing from "shared interest" toward "integration." There is a continuum, often progressing from that based on what is a shared spiritual orientatoin into something less obviously so.

The fact is that for some the worhip community becomes the neighborly community, the social community, the recreational community, the support community, even the economic community--all beginning with that initial shared spiritual interest or concern which has expanded and taken more and more aspects of its members lives under its care (and, yes, control) as the members become more like one another, more conformed to that which they all hear and to which they respond and are conformed. This is a community in which seekers become finders--either of something that is recovered or of something new.

For other Friends, however, the value of community is that it is a group of people who are protecting and guarding a space in which participants are able to explore, develop and express an individual spirituality, to hear and heed diverse voices--free from any limits or barriers. it's a safe space, the community is--and it is an interest and concern for that safety alone that holds this community together. it is an alternative space--alternative to the conventional political, social and even spiritual spaces available in our culture--but it is not a defined alternative space, at least not beyond the design that no one has the authority to place any limits or requirements on anyone who wants to occupy the space beyond ensuring the degree of toleration that is necessary to empower individuals to pursue their mutual interest in and concern for unfettered (and quite possibly perpetua)l seeking.

Obviously people can construct arguments that celebrate and justify both kinds of community. And they do. The literature of the Movement that concerns itself with Universalism (epitomized perhaps by John Punshon, Ralph Hetherington and Pink Dandelion) is there for all to read. I have my own take on this but I am not, at this moment, being its champion. I am sure that even those who don't know me can tell, for what I have written, here, where I am on this.

My intention, here, is just to point out what is becoming increasingly clear to me: if we do not keep in mind that Friends often have two entirely different things in mind when they use the same word (or phrase) we become vulnerable to conflict based on misunderstanding. Of course, it's also true that as we come into a greater awareness of the fact that we mean different things by the same words we become vulnerable to conflict based on understanding.

I am carrying all this around as I attend an FWCC regional gathering here in Portland, this weekend. I do not have any great opening about all this and I probably never will have. But I know as I move around in the Friends Movement I have a greater awareness that there are so many different things that are being said using the same words. I think that's different from people using a lot of different words to describe the same thing. Both lead to confusion--both require a good deal of sorting out. I do know, though, that although it may be true in one sense that the vagueness and the ambiguity holds us together, it is equally true, in another, that it tears us apart.

Universal Language of Friends

2007-03-02T06:33:00.002-08:00

Been away for a while, putting together a presentation on "Universalism in the Religious Society of Friends" for a "Quakerism 101" series. One of the fruits of doing the research for this was the development of an idea I've been working with for a while now; that we have a Quaker language but there are many different meanings associated with the familiar words and phrases. These different meanings sometimes get us thinking that we understand what one another is saying when, in fact, we are talking about two different things. I created a list...

The Universal Language of Friends -- and the diversity of its meaning

The Light

-The means by which we find understanding
-That which convinces and perfects

Testimony

-That which we have become
-That which we believe
-core values

Community

-People with whom our lives are intertwined
-People with whom we share certain interests

Truth

-That which is to be obeyed
-That which we have figured out

That of God in everyone

-That which is God
-That which belongs to God
-That which knows God

Continuing revelation

-A constant restatement of the same Truth over time
-A constant unfolding of new meaning

Waiting

-Passing time until something happens
-Maintaining awareness for cues

Notions

-all theology and doctrine
-Informed opinion (information and belief as opposed to personal,
experiential knowledge)
-Faith

Creed

-Affirmation of a statement of belief
-A formula for salvation/an incantation
-Shared methodology
-Tradition

Seeker

-One who seeking something new
-One seeking to restore primitive Christianity
-One who seeks perpetually

Convincement

-Persuaded that Quakerism is the path
-Accept/surrender to the working of the Spirit on one’s personality

If anyone wants to make some suggestions for further meanings to these, or has suggestions about other terms that could be included feel free to let me know.

a query re creeds

2007-01-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

The following query has been posted in the Non Theist discussion
group.

> QUERY: Why are you interested in the question of Quakers and
>creeds? What > does it mean to you to be a member of a noncreedal
> religion? Is noncreedality a central concern in your life as
Friend?

I have developed my answer to it, a little, and post that, here.

I am interested in the question of creeds within the Religious
Society of Friends because I have to question whether, in
actuality, we truly lack a creed. I think we have at least a
fistful of them, among us.

Some within the Quaker Movement have written creeds and
acknowledge them as such.

It also seems to me that the phrase "that of God in everyone" is a
creed for the majority of Friends, although certainly not all.

It also seems to me that what Pink Dandelion calls the "behavioral
creed" (usually referred to, on this side of the pond as "Quaker
process") is very much a creed among Liberals. We are very liberal
in regard to belief but we are very creedal/conservative in regard
to how we behave and function as Friends. This creed is breaking
down on the "left" wing of Liberal Friends, however, where the only
recognized authority is the authority of the individual. Thus,
individualism is fast becoming the creed that may well end up in
a split on the Liberal edge of the Movement. Imagine, some else
being farther "out there" than Beanites like me.

This creed of the individual, as opposed to that of the community
(in the traditional--gathered-- as opposed to modern--sharing
mutual interests--sense of the word,) in the Liberal-Liberal Quaker
world is characterized by a hyper tolerance allowing one to make
up any religion one wants to have (and in so doing combining
elements of different faith traditions and defining words and
concepts in idiosyncratic ways that vary from common usage and
understandings) and demanding that everyone respect it as being
just as good a t/Truth as any other. "Quaker," according to this
view, is like an array of seasonings; whatever suits one's own
tastes can be sprinkled on any dish that one pours from a can or
concocts for oneself out of whatever one has brought home from the
spiritual supermaket. (is sarcasm a testimony? satire? is there
a difference?)

I think this is manifest in the tension between the post script
(although certainly not the letter, itself, Spirit forbid) from
the Balby elders, which is a creed among Liberal Friends, and the
beliefs expressed in Fox's letter to the Governor of Barbados, which
arises to the level of a creed among Evangelicals.

Creeds? I think we got 'em. And I think they cause as much
trouble among as as those who originally hoped to eschew them
knew they would.

on pulling the rug out...

2006-11-30T07:50:00.003-08:00

I do think that we are "pulling the rug" out from under so called "universalist" Friends by talking about our spiritual experience and how it is consistent with and confirms that of classical Friends faitih and practice. I don't think that telling them about what universalism origiinally meant in the Quaker literature is unfair, however. It's all in how we do it.

People such Friends met in Liberal Quakerism may well have taught them that their modern view of universalism--as opposed to the classical universalism of the Quaker Movement--is what Quakerism is about. That doesn't mean much to me except that we need to keep that in mind as we humbly, compassionately, tell them about our experience, where it has taken us, and how it conforms to and confirms the experience of very many people in very many times and places.

Unlike many Liberal Friends, who seem to think that the purpose of spirituality is to validate them in their own worldly political and ideological values, who are attracted to Liberal Quakerism because it allows them the comfort of believing that the condition in which they washed up on this beach is just fine and that it's the rest of the world needs changing (to recycle, to drive a hybrid car, to vote for John Kerry), my experience is that having the rug pulled out from under me is what's been happening to me through my Quaker faith and practice for years, now. It's also the experience I find in the testimony of Quaker literature, especially the journals.

But I have to remember--we all do--that we don't "convert" or teach anyone. Convincement--which means that one realizes the need to be changed--is the product of the Spirit, not of human evangelists. Christ/The Light (etc) does that. All I can do is testify to the change in my own condition and humbly point the way to others. Fox used to say that all he did was take people to Christ and leave them there.

Many Liberal Friends will resist anything that calls them to change. We are a church, after all, not a sect. The true church, of course, is not visible, and it's not made up of just Friends. And not all who call themselves Friends are members of it. But there are very many more people who will someday be a part of it than are there, now. All of them, along the way, are going to have the rug pulled out from under them more than once.

Hang in there, Baby!!!

2006-11-29T05:56:00.000-08:00

Again, this began as a comment to Mark Wutka's post of November 26, 2006. Samuel Caldwell Revisited It got so far out of hand that I didn't think it fair to post it there.

Oh, Mark, do I know what this is about and do I share you condition!

The Quaker Movement is no longer like a sect (if ever it really was), members of which have a clear shared understanding and a dedication to living out that understanding in the company of those who share it. We are now a church (in one sense of the word), embracing the looser, more tepid and more out to lunch as well as the real and not so real saints.

I often long for secthood. But given where the divisions and schisms have taken the Movement I am less inclined than ever to think that good. In fact, I go the opposite way. Put us all back together and give us the strength to bear with one another as we stay together and move ... but I digress.

And it is with me, as it appears to be with you, around the "drift" in the meaning of words and phrases that this longing to separate or become ill often develops. I hear people use the word "universalism" and wonder if they have ever read--or been instructed about--what that concept meant when it was talked up by Penington and Fox and Woolman and Barclay. Conscience, liberty, seeker...get thee to a dictionary! No, actually, don't do that. That is is the problem. If one is going to plead for the legitiimacy of these things as part of the Quaker Movement then one should use them as they are used in Quaker literature.

And you are right about mistaking the fruit for the point of what we are about. The testimonies are not a starting point, a set of values. They are the result of a transformation that has taken place. No transformation, no simplicity (or harmony, or equality, or community or integrity). No cross, no crown.

I am glald, however, that we in North Pacific Yearly Meeting still use the word "unity" and eschew "consensus" although I am not comfortable that everyone understands the distinction. After all, how can one be seeking the will of God (or Spirit, or spirit, or Light, or the Transcendent Reality, or the Big Kahuna) if one doesn't believe in such a being/presence/reality/whatever? Another digression must be suppressed, at this point.

The simple gospel of the Quaker Movement is that there is a Light (Christ, if you will--or won't--it doesn't matter) that shines into the lives of all people. All people can recognize it and heed it (quite apart from their knowing anything about the historical Jesus). If they do heed it then they will be transformed to conform to its own likeness. This is not often mentioned, let alone affirmed among us Liberals, today (is it among Evangellicals? Conservatives?). Sometimes I have been told that I am adopting a "creed" when I talk about this--by people who have no understanding of where "non-creedalism" came from or what it really means in the Quaker literature. George Fox probably had no problem with what was in the creeds of his day--he just understood the danger of creeds!

Sigh.

This is a very siimple gospel and it bears repeating over and again to people who do not grasp it. The repeating does not teach it, but points the way to the experience of it. It's all one can do. And we have to keep doing it. But with entreaty, not contention. That's the big snare for me. Just bring it to mind where, if you are in the power, you'll only be helping them recognize and come to grips with what is already there. Nudge. Remind. Support. Encourage.

I am often discouraged about the state of things it the Quaker Movement. But as I was reading this morning, intending to get to responding to you later in the morning, I found a nice piece of encouragement. It's in John Punshon's "Portrait in Gray," on page 150.

It has to do with "gay Friends" as that term came to be used in the late 18th Century. It meant one who did not observe simplicity of dress as that term was then used, but who dressed as the fashion of the day dictated (see how the words drift? What does "gay Friend" mean in the Quaker Movement, today?)

An American travelling minister, William Savery was at meeting in Norwich. He was was so taken a back by the number of "gay" Friends in the meeting that he stood up and ministered about the "marks of wealth and grandeur" that were "too obvious" in the meeting.

In Punshon's telling, his preaching had effect. Betsy Gurney (wearing purple boots laced with scarlet) sat listening defiant but troubled. Later, turned to plainness, she would would become known as Elizabeth Fry and would occupy an important place in the Movement.

I do not tell this story as an endorsement of Elizabeth Fry, or in any way to make a comment about "gay Friends" today. (My daughters have god mothers who are a lesbiann couple, and Unitarians, at that!).

I tell this story as a reminder that when we entreat others we do not know what impact it is having (on others as well as on ourselves). We may not know how it adds or detracts weight from one side or the other of someone's scale, out there. We only know that we are called to do the entreating. We are not called to give up the field to people who want our minutes to sound llike those of the Democratic Party Central Committee.

This is overly long for a comment. Hope for all these words I was actually clear. I understand where you are coming from, Mark, and I actually know that you agree with what I am saying, here.

This is just an elaborate way of saying "I feel your pain, hang in there, Baby."