Bonnie Tinker's Lessons

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

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

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

But you learn, you grow.

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

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

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

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

"Feed my sheep," indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being Alone...or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diverse Questions from Daniel Wilcox

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motes and beams.

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


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

For Richard M.

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

Richard commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do some Quakers hate to talk about sin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It might help orient us.

peace and harmony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some queries

How does your religion enslave you? Others?

How does it set you free? Set others free?

Which do you think it was designed to do?

Which do you want it to do?

Neither?

Both?