community

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...

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

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

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

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....

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

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.