One Quaker Take

Bonnie Tinker's Lessons

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

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

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

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

But you learn, you grow.

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

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

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

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

"Feed my sheep," indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being Alone...or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diverse Questions from Daniel Wilcox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motes and beams.

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

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

For Richard M.

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

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

Richard commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do some Quakers hate to talk about sin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It might help orient us.

peace and harmony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some queries

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

How does your religion enslave you? Others?

How does it set you free? Set others free?

Which do you think it was designed to do?

Which do you want it to do?

Neither?

Both?

gravity...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

more on convergence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

are you feeling excluded?

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

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

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

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

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

Can we forebear?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pray for me.

You can even hold me in the Light.

Just don't call me "Christo Centric."

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

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

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

convergence and beanism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

three questions....

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

I recently looked at a website about an upcoming conference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Through the Launching

2008-08-18T05:50:00.000-07:00

I started the countdown more than 400 days ago. I told myself, and others, that I was not going to have RR’s leaving for college sneak up on me. By being aware of the day’s passing, and how many more days remained before my oldest would be launched, I would make as much as I could of each of them.

Last Wednesday, the day before that “final” good-bye, I realized that keeping this count was a spiritual discipline. Watching those days disappear from the desktop of my computer that kept track of them I was prompted to say things to her that needed to be said, telling her things she needed to hear. My doing that prompted her, modeled for her and gave her permission to do the same; saying things she needed to say, telling me things I needed to hear.

In all those days we did not say everything that we needed to say to one another, or hear everything that we needed to hear. But we said a lot, and we heard a lot.

On that day before leaving her at college I knew that what I had said up to that point was all I would say for the time being.If I tried to say anything "profound," anything more than “I love you,” I would break down, break up, break apart.

When we reached that good-bye I knew we had said and heard enough, to get us, or at least me, through. And that’s a good thing because I could not have said, or heard, anything at that moment for the muting, deafening peel of the rolling thunder of emotion that surrounded us and shook the ground, solid ground it turned out, upon which we were standing.

On the plane, going home without her, I read an article that quoted the Chief Executive Officer of Campbell’s Soup. Reflecting on what had just happened in our family, I paraphrase him: one cannot talk one’s way through something one acted oneself into. One can only act oneself through such situations.

All the talking—or enough of it--has to be done, for me at least, before a moment of good-bye like that one. The time for talk is past; it’s time to act one’s way through it. In this particular situation, there will be time for more talking, later, but good-bye is a moment I have to just go through with it.

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.)