Wednesday, July 13, 2016

PHP 281-300

             Foreword—I spent more than half of 2013 at Pendle Hill in Wallingford,     PA, and fell in love with many things about it. My latest passion is with their     pamphlets.  Here I have, after reading them, set down the most impressive     excerpts of each, with rare paraphrasing and additions of my own [in brackets].  Most of all I am impressed with the timelessness of these pamphlets, the old-    est of which go back more than 80 years.


281. A Quaker Theology of Pastoral Care: The Art of the Everyday (by 
        Zoe White; 1988)
       About the Author—Zoe White was born in 1951 and grew up in North     London [in the Church of England].  She joined the Society of Friends in 1982.   Zoe graduated from St. Andrews University, Scotland with a Masters in Theo-    logy in 1983.  She graduated from Earlham School of Religion with a Masters     of Divinity in 1987.  She worked for Quaker home service & is currently wor-    king for the Quaker Council for current affairs in Brussels.
       Introduction—This pamphlet emerged as a result of studies & expe-    rience in the area of pastoral care during the years of study at Earlham, [and is  concerned with exploring] a theological basis which provides the foundation for  pastoral care for several reasons. Having clarity about theological roots will     help inform the self-understanding of the one caring & provide nourishment       to prevent burn-out.  It will help inform a vision for pastoral care. It can help       ensure that the caring work is grounded in assumptions consistent with    Friend’s practice.
       Pastoral care must not be primarily a problem-solving endeavor and  must not hand over responsibility unilaterally to a team of experts.  We hope for  healing and the solution of problems.  In pastoral care, this will not happen     because we have set out to accomplish it.  It will happen as a by-product of the  process of deepening and sharing our vision of God [and in community].
            Theology is what happens when I allow God’s Word of creation to speak  through me in life’s daily events; it happens when [I bring] disciplines of art, self   opening & deep self-knowing into the service of love. I approach pastoral care     as the Art of Everyday. Pastoral care is the work of mediating God’s love to     others & the world. It happens [through everyone] & through many aspects of     life in the faith community. Pastoral care also happens through conversation,     through the Elders & Overseers' watchful guidance, & through spoken ministry.
       It calls for presence, fellowship, communion, & commitment, & it recon-    ciles and heals.  It is a work of [all] the people, for [all] the people; it is a work   of faith. I will start by reflecting on my 10-week Hospital Chaplaincy Training     Program.  The course was designed so that roughly half of the student’s time     was spent “on the floors” with patients. This model encourages much reflection  on experience and self-critical analysis of our interactions.
       [Journal Entries]—This is my 3rd day. The beeper in my pocket feels  like a time bomb. I feel totally overwhelmed and helpless. Did I absorb their     panic, or am I just seeing my own panic reflected in them?      How do I     cope? This work forces me to cross boundaries. In crisis, our theological dif-   ferences fade into insignificance; only shared humanity counts. This work     brings me back into direct relationship with Jesus Christ. 
       Jesus saw this pain and hopelessness and yet continued to believe in     the Vision of God. Many times over the past few days I have watched science     & technology come to a screaming halt by the bedside of a dead or dying per-    son. Death is no respecter of intellects or theologies. White, middle-class,     theological agendas have kept me from, rather than connected me with, my     experiences of God,  the world and other people, my need for repentance and     forgiveness. 
       Last night I prayed by Frances’ bedside, encouraging her to let go.  [Frances died just before daybreak].  I asked her Aunt Mary if she would like     me to say prayers; as I read the Prayers for the Dead, she packs her niece’s    few belongings. 2 weeks ago, Frances told me about the gold cross around     her neck, a gift from her husband.  She was 55 & told me she wanted to live      to see the trees again. I take a walk outside. The world is new, startlingly bright   and clear.  Something like rage stirs within me as I begin to feel the depths of     my own impotence.
       [Reflections on Theology]—How have my experiences with death  &/ or illness informed my thinking about my theology & pastoral care?     Beside Frances’ bed, I made a resolve that I became aware of only much later.  I made an agreement with God that [my theology surrounding death] has to be  able to stand with me by Frances’ bedside, with a 55 year-old woman who     wanted to live, [or] it is probably not worth very much. Pastoral care’s work in-    volves the human person and is organic in nature. In pastoral care, as I seek to  enter the mystery of another’s life, so I encounter my own life’s depths, my own  sometimes painful faith & suffering questions. 
       Any theology has to be able to reflect this organic process with all the     vitality & uncertainty of the moment. [It will of necessity be always incomplete  and never systematic. To be adequate as a foundation for pastoral care, a     theology must be able to speak with a personal voice from the depths of per-    sonal experience.  Systematic theologies can become alienated from the per-    son of the writer.  A theology which is not held in tension with the stories of     people’s lives may become a liability in healing a world and people in crisis.      Rather than advocating an anti-intellectual stance, I am seeking to redress an     imbalance in theology between affective and speculative modes of thinking &  being.  Pastoral care demands a theology which reflects whole personhood.
       [Pastoral Theology at its Best]—Pastoral theology is at its best to the  degree its intellectual rigor is informed by body knowledge and intuition.      [Beverly Harrison writes]: “Feeling is the basic bodily ingredient that mediates     our connection to the world … Failure to live deeply in ‘our bodies, ourselves,’     destroys the possibility of moral relations between us”; failure destroys the     possibility of a practical pastoral theology.  Our bodies need to be finely attuned,  watching for signs of life, signs of hope and hazards.  [In pastoral care], our     bodies act like barometers, picking up vital signs as keenly as do monitors by     the patient’s bedside.
       My theology will be revealed to the extent that I believe my theological  task to be one of artistry, [and myself] an artist of the Spirit. To practice theology  as the art of the everyday, I must believe myself to be the bearer and receiver  of this Truth. The task is delicate and demanding, requiring trust. I must be     prepared to watch for images, to hold them with care and sensitivity. I must     treat no thought as irrelevant, but rather find my way to the heart of it.  Maria     Rilke writes: “The future must enter into you long before it happens … Just wait  for the birth … for the hour of new clarity.”
       [Art of the Everyday: Example and Discipline]—I received Marilyn     Monroe’s image, which seemed to be impressed onto a large rock or boulder. I  played with the image, & eventually I emerged with a short poem: “I saw the     face of Marilyn Monroe/ Impressed on rock,/ Not carved or painted,/ But pro-    jected from some distant shock./ Cast there for life,/ Like the resurrection on     the shroud,/ It was the face of a star screaming.”  I understand that we are     never wounded [or healed] in isolation from one another or from the world. 
       Without relinquishing my self to Spirit, the Spirit won’t be free to move  through me; my art won’t live & my love won’t touch others. Slowly, I came to     realize that I would only learn the truths necessary for this work through human  interaction and engagement.  My primary resource would not come in the form  of a kit or system. It would come from my faith experience and my willingness to  be vulnerable.
       The practice of any art demands a discipline, and theological artistry is     no exception. Matthew Fox writes:  “It is very important that we recover a spiri-    tuality of discipline … creativity requires hard work.”  There is the discipline of     journal writing, which represents an honest and courageous attempt to draw     close to one’s experience and to the Inner Guide.  [The theological content     that emerges is important, as is] the discipline and practice of writing, which   develops some practical skills which are crucial for the work of caring.
       Listening—In journal writing, I hope to be able to listen for the unloving  voices which sabotage my attempts to love myself & others. I try to encourage  & nurture those other more generous voices which are expressions of Spirit     which seek me out. The journal is where I engage the process of revelation &     the emergence of meaning in the world. In listening to another or to my deep-    est self, I am involved in the process of the evolution of knowledge. 
       Jack L. Seymour wrote: “Communication is a complex operation  understanding all the linguistic symbols used, the context within which they are  used, & how they are shaped by the other person’s actions.” The interpretive  process involves understanding the other in terms of his or her own self-    understanding. The act of setting aside my agenda is a loving act & a faithful     response to the command to love my neighbor. To the extent that we can listen  well to ourselves & others, so we are able to move closer to God who calls us  into being.
       Story-telling—As I write in my journal, I tell my story. Paul W. Pruyser  writes: “Modern pastoral theology requires in its practice a personal language     that can capture experiences, events outlooks, struggles, attitudes, feelings,     hopes.”  Through the stories of Biblical lives, God is manifested through the     personal and social, the relational and political. Here, I find a truthful theology.     Story-telling is basic to pastoral care, because in telling our stories we name     that which is “home” for us, our proper place, which is crucial. It is upon this     developed sense of our own personal “belonging” that our spiritual authority,     integrity and credibility ultimate rest.  We must be prepared to speak of the     places we have found and called “home” as we are to speak of the process of  seeking.
       In journal writing, we build the place of belonging, we tell the story of the  searching and finding which we share with others. Early Quaker’s “home” was  represented by their collective vision of a just society.  Friends’ journal writing  both informed & reflected this vision. Discovery of their common “home” moti-    vated their witness & testimony to the world. Pastoral care happens in the     context of a community which listens to, writes & speaks its stories, [which     provide the symbols & common language for our Art of the Everyday]. I believe  one’s work in the journal [can] represent an art-full theology which will be a     primary resource for our care for others.
             Our shared work of pastoral care, and the artistry which is to inform it,     depends upon our ability to relinquish and open ourselves to listen, create, and  share our stories. We must be at home in the messiness [and incompleteness]  of being human in relation to God. [We must speak personally in language     which  conveys existential realities even as it analyzes or solves them. A theo-    logy of  creation and of artistry is one of playfulness, color, spontaneity and     surprise. It is  only by being faithful, [creative] artists of the Spirit that we can     avoid becoming  victims of the guilt, fear and fatalism which give rise to so     much pain and misery.  [Using] the process of artistry is a radical act of cou-    rage, defiance, [& love],  which will cause us to be able to look death squarely  in the face knowing beyond  all doubt that it does not have the last word.

http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets    


282.  Batter My Heart (by Gracia Fay Ellwood; 1988)
       About the Author—Gracia Bouwman Ellwood was born into a devout     Dutch Calvinist family in Washington.  Having experienced from an early age     the confusing effects of a conception of God both life-giving & life-destructive,  she has long desired understanding, the healing of hurts, and union with God.   She and her family joined Friends in the early 1980s.  The present essay has  its origin in pain.  [It will cause pain] as it seeks to do surgery [on an old Bibli-    cal view]. Ultimately it is good news, of recovery and liberation.  Gracia has     written many books and articles and teaches Religious Studies at California     State University at Long Beach.

       [Excerpt from “Batter my Heart” by John Donne]  Batter my heart, 3-    person’d God/ . . . and bend your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me     new./  Except you enthrall mee, never shall [I] be free,/ nor ever chast, except     you ravish me.
            The image of the outraged divine patriarch is unacceptable because it     encourages tendencies to violence in human husbands/fathers. [There is a]     complex pattern of mutual creation between human mind that projects God in     its own image and the figure of God which takes on a life of his own and be-    comes a model that shapes its own shapers.      Gracia Fay Ellwood 
       The surprise is that after I face my monster, I find myself riding my     monster; the energy that worked against me is the energy that works for me;     my monster has become my ally, & my vehicle of joy… The risk [of following a     leading] no longer held me back because I have learned my only real safety     lies in following my Inward Guide… What helps me go through the hard times     is the knowledge that deep in my soul, I rest in God.      Charlotte Fardelmann 
       [Introduction]—All who read the Bible as Holy Scriptures are selective  in their use of it, but Friends are more self-consciously so than most.  [Since     the final authority is the Light within], Friends find it comparatively easy to     learn from the Bible’s wealth without struggling with “difficult” passages that     affirm violence.  An important source of the evils of hierarchy, oppression and     violence is the Bible, the very source that has often inspired its readers to    oppose them.  The Bible has done much to shape Western culture as a whole.    Its effect has been ambivalent, tending to put out the fires of violence and      oppression by day while relighting them by night. 
       [“Jealous God”]—The divine name Yahweh (YHWH) [has sometimes  been interpreted as “jealous,” and] has usually been rendered “the LORD” in  our familiar Bibles.  The term is appropriate to the overall picture of Yahweh     presented in the Hebrew scriptures. [While] there are divine traits traditionally     associated with femaleness, and gender-neutral images, in most instances     Yahweh is a patriarchal being, and the revelation of his will to Israel is man-    centered with women being auxiliary to his purposes. 
       In form the 10 Commandments are modeled upon the suzerainty treaty,  a treaty imposed on subject people.  The erotic image or dimension may rea-    sonably be seen as implicit; it becomes explicit in the symbolism of the pro-    phet Hosea.  It is very likely in reaction to a sexual relationship between     Canaanite deities that Hosea and the prophets after him developed instead a    Sacred Marriage between Yahweh and Israel.  The relationship is turbulent,   with times of happy union and times of alienation.  The extended image of   Yahweh as husband—[first sending an oppressor after being enraged at   betrayal, then sending a judge/champion to rescue them]—fits disquietingly    well into the syndrome of battering husband and battered wife.
       [Yahweh/ Battering Husbands and Battered Wives]—Yahweh, as a     masculine Deity who shows possessiveness, domination and violence, was     necessarily made in the image of his patriarchal worshipers.  Israel, as wife, is     the personified recipient of ambivalent feelings of desire for & revulsion against  that seem to characterize patriarchal males everywhere.  Here I am referring to  one-sided battering with most of the physical and psychological power being in  the husband’s hands. 
       The battering relationship's key trait is inequality, a shared presumption   of the husband’s dominance.  The wife finds her raison d’étre in the marriage     & is responsible for its success; any unhappiness means she failed. Yahweh   would be comparable to the] husbands that never give a flickering indication       that they ever do wrong.  The 2 sides of charmer and beater alternate in a 3-     stage cycle: tensions builds with minor violence; lose of control & violent phy-     sical assault; fury is exhausted, reparations are made.  Some batterers do not    have a 3rd stage.  [In the Bible,] there is restored intimacy after she [Israel rather than he acknowledges wrongdoing, while Yahweh feels upwellings of  warmth, tenderness, [and longing to be reunited].
       [Divine Jealousy]—After Israel is accused by the prophets of disobe-    dience to her lord, violent retaliation is threatened, including sadistic tortures.      The period of reconciliation follows, including extravagant promises.  Over-    whelming jealousy and possessiveness characterize most batterers.  It starts     as “loving attention and devotion”; only later does it begin to suffocate. Batter-    ers will be jealous of male friends, acquaintances, even female friends. The    batterer accuses his wife of being ready to have an affair with every man she    encounters.  
       Not all instances of Yahweh’s jealousy fit the batterer image.  There is  evidence that in the content of the erotic metaphor, Yahweh’s jealousy is of this  irrational sort.  Usually battered wives describe themselves as in fact innocent.   In the Bible there are confessions of guilt (Lamentations 1:18-19), and protes-    tations of innocence (Psalm 44: 11, 17, 20).  The [punishing,] violent attacks     of Assyria and Babylon fell upon Baal-worshipper alike.  The situation is too     complex for the metaphor to fit satisfactorily, for we have not a single woman,  but a people, some “guilty,” some “innocent.”   
       [Forms of Abuse and Sexual Assault]—The abuse which the battering  husband inflicts takes several forms in addition to physical attack: economic     deprivation; social isolation; sexual assault.  The husband is usually the chief     breadwinner; even if she has her own income, he will control it so that she is in  the position of supplicant.  The economic relationship between Yahweh as     husband and Israel as wife falls into this extreme category.  The husband insists  on the right to pass on his wife’s friends.  Knowing he is capable of violence     toward her friends, the wife will loosen her ties with them in order to protect     them. When these maneuvers have their full effect, she is overcome by feelings  of helplessness, having become his captive.  Captivity is a very prominent fac-    tor in Yahweh’s relationship to Israel; Yahweh incites others to imprison her. 
       Battered women are often told that they are being sexually provocative  to other men. Unusual, “kinky” practices are often forced upon her; she often     does not know from one time to the next whether sexual relations will be     pleasurable or a dreadful ordeal.  Yahweh punishes Israel by means of rape     in a series of grim passages.  [Threats of stripping her naked and of gang     rape appear in  several passages].
       [Child Abuse/Sexual Attitude]—Some men who batter their wives also  abuse their children, [anywhere from ⅓ to slightly over ½].  The extended image  of adultery and wife-battering in Hosea very early includes the children, who are  initially rejected because the husband (Hosea, symbolizing Yahweh) believes  they are not his.  [The children of Samaria mentioned in Hosea 13:16] are not   symbols only but real human beings, victims of Yahweh’s violence against Sa-    maria as their mother.  This horror is presented as justice.  
       What of Gomer, Hosea’s wife?  Did she actually commit adultery?  Was  she happy to be pursued and reclaimed by a man who was tenderly loving one  day and talking gang-rape and evisceration another?  Ezekiel also includes  child battering in his imagery of wife-abuse, as Yahweh incites the rapists to kill  their children.  Clearly the issue is that the children are his property, and he kills  them to increase the torture to their mother.
     The battering husband is deeply ambivalent about female sexuality.  He  desires intimacy with her, [but not the vulnerability that goes with it.]  He reacts  to her like a toddler to his enormously powerful mother.  It is difficult for him to  see how dangerous his tantrums have become.  There are texts that show     that Yahweh as husband is not only enraged with Israel because of her ac-    tions but harbors this hostility toward her very female-ness.  Defilement was     mortally dangerous, a quasi-physical contagion.  For many ancients this was     equally true of the shed blood of murder & the blood of the menstrual or post-    partum woman.  [In many biblical passages, it is clear that something essen-    tial to female sexuality is part of what needs to be “cleansed” and done away     with in order to assuage the fury of the divine batterer.
       [Interpreting the Prophetic Metaphor]—Some may hesitate to accept  the language of battering to describe Yahweh’s violent judgment, implying as it  does that the divine “husband” is a destructive, pathologically disturbed indi-    vidual and the human “wife” an innocent victim, because it seems to do away     with the reality of human guilt.  [We are actually] applying the prophetic critique  to the prophets themselves.  Feminists will see marital possessiveness as a     dehumanizing outgrowth of patriarchy, while mystics in many traditions will     call any form of possessiveness a deluded attempt to put the finite for the     Infinite. 
       Few would deny that abusing the poor [calls for outrage]. What is unac-    ceptable & abhorrent is imaging these social evils as the acts of the rebellious     child or insubordinate wife, justly incurring the husband’s and father’s violence.  The prophets have turned the natural image upside down when they metapho-    rically blame 2 oppressed classes. Because they supplied images of wrathful     God & sinful Israel before the event, because they gave a meaningful explana    tion, they made endurable the unendurable; the images kept Israel & its con-    cept of God alive. 
       But the poor fit of these and similar images was suspected early.  This  awareness was reflected in the book of Job and verses like Genesis 18:25.      Finally and most crucially, the image of the outraged divine patriarch is unac-    ceptable because it encourages tendencies to violence in human husbands/     fathers.  Peter Berger and Sallie McFague have shown the complex pattern     of mutual creation between human mind that projects God in its own image     and the figure of God which takes on a life of his own and becomes a model  that shapes its own shapers.
     [Wisdom as Female]—We should note that in the book Proverbs and  the apocryphal wisdom literature there is a reversal of the unbalanced erotic     image: a dominant female figure, Wisdom [with her] shadow side, the Loose     Woman, an evil seductress who draws unwary males down to Sheol.  Since     Proverbs and Sirach recommend rods and whips for children and slaves, God  as Lady is no more trustworthy a liberator than God as Lord.  
       The sacred Marriage appears explicitly as the union of Christ and  Christian (i.e. Church) and as the Lamb and the Holy City in Revelation.  Paul     [hearkens back to the images of “divine jealousy,” patriarchal marriage, and     lustful wives.  [In Paul’s world of Greek culture, there is still the powerful patri-    arch, ruling with absolute authority over wife, children, and slaves].  The basic     model in the epistles is that of the celestial husband who [takes his] polluted  bride, redeems and cleanses her and accepts her in marriage. 
       Revelation has nothing good to say about any flesh-and-blood woman.   One notable thing about the 144,000 men who were redeemed from the earth,  is that they “were not defiled with women; for they are virgins.”  [On the other     hand] we have a glorious archetypal Woman adorned with sun and stars who     gives birth to a male child destined to rule the nations.  There is another, the     Whore, who is the victim of violence from God.  From Wisdom Literature, we     have the Madonna/Whore figure split between 2 figures, the Bride and the  Harlot. 
       The Harlot, representing Rome, is a highly sexualized figure. [She is     brutally slain] in a gruesome scene of gang-rape, torture & murder; her com-    panions in fornication aren't punished. The Bride is not only without percepti-    ble sexuality but is barely imaged at all. It is likewise hard to visualize the     bridegroom, who presented as a lamb. [As the Bride & Harlot were split into     separate figures], the Lamb & the Conqueror become separate.  Even though     we have the mildest of bridegrooms marrying the purest of brides, the impact   of  the images once more gives divine sanction to the patriarch’s benevolent/     violent ambivalence toward the female. The choice of imagery for evil and for    the righting of wrongs encourages fear of and violence toward women, espe-    cially the prostitute.   
       [Quaker Approach to Biblical Themes]—[The violent, abusive imagery  so far surveyed] stands condemned by Friends’ testimonies, which arise from  the Light Within and the conviction that it is borne by all. The teaching of     George Fox is that the Spirit which inspired the writers of Scripture must be     realized and active within us. Themes of compassion for & empowerment    of the oppressed were taken up and developed by the historians, the prophets    & the psalmists, [not without oppressive imagery of women and children, but it   is there, nonetheless].  
       Besides Exodus is the Song of Songs, the “Paradise Regained” of the  Hebrew Scriptures. The equality of the lovers provides a critique of the male     dominant & violent Sacred Marriage. [Freedom & not possessiveness is the     hallmark of the lovers’ relationship]. He shows no revulsion or ambivalence in     regards to her sexuality. [They suffer under a repressive patriarchal society],     but these evils are rejected. There is little, if any, suggestion of violence. As     long as the relationship remains mutual respect rather than dominant submis-    sion, the one-sided battering of the patriarchal Sacred Marriage can’t deve-    lop, & their chances for happiness are much better. 
       [It stands in contrast to the oppressive Sacred Marriage imagery, & yet]  it also has been sacred Scripture for Jews & Christians for millennia; the spiri-    tual meanings of divine/human union found in it are part of its history & total     significance. It shows up the disease at the roots of the other Scriptural erotic     imagery, & remains a life-giving alternative model; [it is a much healthier model  than the patriarchal model, as sociological studies show].       
       Historically, Friends have wisely focused on gender-neutral images of  the Divine (e.g. Light, Seed, Spirit).  Can we continue to use male images     for God in the old manner without implicitly supporting patriarchy? Can     we use any hierarchal images for God or any images of submission for     humanity, without in some way fostering oppression?  I see no way we    can do so and remain loyal to our testimonies.  [Any] images, [male or fe-    male,] of inflexible hierarchy are equally unacceptable.  
       To use non-hierarchical male and female imagery can be a different  matter, one which has its own problems.  The primary one is the deep resis-    tance people have to using explicit female imagery for God at all; it seems    ridiculous, or unreal.  [Giving God female “powers” is worse than a purely    macho God. And a balanced, fluid switching back and forth will seem awk-   ward, and] make many uneasy, but it is bound to stretch our consciousness    and break the power of the model.  We can speak to God all day long as    Friend, Love, Beloved, or simply  Thou—without being troubled  by questions     of gender. 
       What becomes of those persons who have derived their identity as  Christians or Jews from a commitment to the Bible as sacred Scripture,     yet are courageous enough to acknowledge this death-dealing theme that  pervades it?  The Bible need not be summarily discarded: indeed it is very     unwise to try to cut ourselves off from our roots in this manner, to lose the  history of our forebears who proclaimed liberty. 
       A breakdown of total worldview into meaninglessness is likely to happen  to many if we proceed firmly toward the dethroning of that long-term idol, the  Lord.  Taken as a whole, Friends have been much less stunted spiritually by the  idolatry of maleness than most groups and individuals in our culture.  But we  have not come through whole and sound, nor have we brought in the Kingdom,  or rather the Peace of God into our own midst.
       [Quaker Approach to Battered Women & Hierarchies]—Battered  women may be among meeting attenders or members. We need to be aware     of the signs, & to emphatically not dismiss or disbelieve on the grounds that    her spouse/lover is mild-mannered, sensitive, or involved in humanitarian     causes. Woman & children should be in a safe place before negotiations     begin. Therapy should come from a professional knowledgeable about batte-     ring. The need for volunteer workers, shelters & safe houses exceeds the  supply virtually everywhere.
       Doing away with every vestige of mastery-submission patterns among  ourselves, & opposing them in the world at large seems to be not possible [E.g.]  In adult-child relations control appears necessary for a lengthy period of time.  We can oppose all permanent human hierarchies of profession, class, race, &  sex by refusing them submission or even recognition. We must “call no man     master” on earth, & emphatically not in heaven.  “No long do I call you servants  ... I have called you Friends.” (John 15:15). 
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283. Sink Down to The Seed (by Charlotte Fardelmann; 1989)
       About the Author—Charlotte Lyman Fardelmann, a professional jour-    nalist and photographer, was a major contributor to Living Simply, 1981, and     wrote Islands Down East: A Visitor’s Guide, 1984.  She is a member of Dover     Friends Meeting in DoverNH.  While working on Islands Down EastChar-    lotte experienced a leading to explore her own inward landscape.  This pam-    phlet shares a 4-year journey, including her year at Pendle Hill, a Quaker cen-    ter for study and contemplation, and how it affected her afterwards.

       Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine  own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God    sows in thy heart and let that be in thee, and grow in thee, and breathe in thee,  and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows   that and loves that and owns that, and will bring to the inheritance of life, which  is his portion.      Isaac Penington
       Desperation—This journey begins in trouble.  Perhaps all journeys     emerge out of the pain and chaos of troubled times when one is thrown off     balance enough to be open to something new.  [I had Islands Down East to     write] when writer’s block hit me.  Canceling family plans and [skipping com-    mittee meetings] only freed up more time to accomplish nothing.  I put myself     [under pressure and could not find God].  My feeling is that this is precisely the  point God likes to see.  We are ready to let something die.  Only then can     something else be born.
       I stood up in my Meeting for Worship and told God and the assembled  group about my condition.  My answer came in the silence.  I was to slog along  on my book until it was finished, and then “do something else.”  My writer’s     block was broken and words flowed from my finger tips.  I took a 4-month sab-    batical  to figure out what the “something else” was.  [The time in between     one lifestyle  & the next is] an uncomfortable time.  [During this time I found     metaphors in  the events of my life that seem to indicate a new vehicle for my     way forward,  training for a new lifestyle, and other changes to bring out a new    me. 
       At first I signed up for a week at Pendle Hill.  I wrote in my journal:  “I am  feeling nervous about my week at Pendle Hill, sort of like I made an appoint-    ment with God.”  Sometimes the anxiety grows so large that people may be-    lieve they are going to die.  What is dying is a part of themselves, a way of life     that they do not need any longer.  There were humbling experiences where I     had strong ego involvement.  There was a teacher who heard my inward jour-    ney and reflected it back to me in a way I knew was authentic.  She said:   “Trust you are being led.  You don’t have to choose everything.  In fact you      may find it’s hard to get away from being led.”    
       [After getting home from my week’s sojourn], I found two levels of inner  knowledge.  [One level said]: “one term (3 months) is my limit.”  But one journal  entry (my deeper wisdom) says, “I am going to Pendle Hill for 9 months.”  I had  a vision of a corridor with many windows and a large round room.  Outside the  windows and inside the room was filled with white light.  The message came:   “Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give unto you.  Not as the world giveth,  give I unto you.” (John 14:27)
       God Grabs me by the Gut—The big beautiful trees at Pendle Hill were  golden, orange, & raspberry as we arrived for Fall Term. It was a show, a final     display of brilliance before the season of “letting go.” [The whole atmosphere     was very welcoming]. People of all ages from many countries gather [at meal-    times], all seekers on the path joking & laughing one minute & switching to     intense conversation with ease. [At the same time that I felt warmed & wel-    comed] I also felt disoriented. It was unsettling not to have one’s usual under-    pinnings available. [Disinterest in my photographs & articles led me to muse]:    “Íf I’m not a journalist/ Photographer, who am I?”   
       Into that void, bits of myself began to be uncovered and emerge.  Pen-    dle Hill offered students a place of safety, a place of acceptance, a place where  one could become vulnerable.  At Pendle Hill one was held in prayer.  Difficult  times [e.g. accepting love, discarding old, inner tapes, job transition, divorce,  abuse] were seen as lessons from which we grow.  The Meetingroom was     simplicity itself, with benches facing in on four sides.  The quality of the Spirit     there could be very nourishing; most attended meeting, although only half     were Quaker.  For me meeting for worship was a time of being melted, of     sitting in the Spirit and being worked on deep down.  [A central message at    this time was]: “Rest in the Lord; you are my Child.”
       Work is an integral part of life at Pendle Hill; [physical labor] helped keep  people grounded in reality.  There is also pain, anger, hurt, guilt, & every other    feeling.  It’s all grist for the mill, the grindstone of community, where peoples’    rough places are made smooth.  [Of the many classes offered], I did not intend  to take “Traveling in Ministry,” yet something moved deep inside me during the  introductory class; little did I know I would be traveling in the ministry a year     later.  My superficial mind didn’t know that but my deeper wisdom guided me.      In the classes, which opened with silent worship, the highest authority is not  the teacher, but corporate revelation. 
       Students met with a [spiritual] consultant once a week for an hour; I also  kept, & still keep, a journal. [It wasn’t all seriousness; there was also lighthear-    ted fun]. I kept getting intuitive glimpses that something was coming. [I had a     spiritual, mystical initiation that took place over a 2-week period, & included a     2-day retreat at a little campus hermitage]. I wrote down the important experi-    ences of my life & the lessons they had taught me. “I feel my gut is like a mag-    net & God is a big magnet … the force is so strong I will never be able to pull     away.”
       I began to get “assignments in the night.” 7 times I got up and went to  the pottery shed to make a sculpture.  There were 7:  “God Grabbing Me by     the Gut”; “Dark Night of the Soul”; “The Pillory”; “Facing My Monster”; “Re-    birth”; “Stripping”; [“Baby in God’s Arms].  I put them in a circle with the Baby     in the middle.   Another thing I noticed as “baby kicks.”  One teacher explained  this could be symbolic of giving birth to a new part of myself.  “Mystical exper-    iences are a sign of reality; it is the reality that is important, not the mystical     experience.”  It was the safety net of being companioned by people with spi-    ritual wisdom that allowed me to risk the perilous journey into the dark and  uncharted waters of my inward landscape.   
       Transformation—Things began to build during the 2-week period be-    tween the new moon & the full moon. During this period my heart had a lot of     generalized fear, a vague anxiety. From my room I could hear the train whistle     every hour as the train started over the trestle that bridged the Crum Creek.     The train’s rumbling scared me to the core of my being. The night of the full     moon, one of my classes scheduled a sleep-out under the moon. This full     moon was called “Moon of the Deer’s Sorrow”; it was a time of letting go.     [After listening to the train whistle nearly all night long] I’d had enough. I deci-    ded to face my monster. I headed toward the train trestle. 
       (Looking back at this night, I realize my judgment was not sound be-    cause I was in a deeply-inward state of mind.  I walked down to the trestle and  out onto a little platform halfway across where I could stand; it was the twilight    hour before dawn.  I recited “The Lord is my Shepherd” and “Amazing Grace”   while I waited.  Finally I spotted the train light at Wallingford Station. The     noise was deafening and the Light became brighter and brighter as the train    approached.  I knew my job was to keep my eyes on the Light and not flinch     or turn away; this took enormous determination, but I managed to “stare down   the Light until the train passed.  The light penetrated my being Through my    eyes and connected with a light deep within myself. In that holy instant I was  transformed.
       Looking back after several years, I have come to the realization that  train was a symbol for me of the power of God while the train light symbolized     the Light of Christ, the eternal living Christ. All that change was my recog-    nition & acceptance of this love & life & truth & power that is God & an ac-    knowledgement that I would forever after live my life out of that recognition. I     had crossed over to a new country; a new Charlotte was born. 
       Time Management & Inner Peace—I asked God, “What’s different     now?” The answer came: “You’re mine.” I [now] was part of a larger whole in     which my role was asking God where I might best fit into [God’s] overall     design. The work was fundamental, as in changing my use of time. Winter     Term I received the inward message that I should not take too many courses     because I was to have an “Inner Course,” called “Time Management & Inner     Peace”; it would involve obedience. The idea that I might be led to inner     peace was appealing, as it was inner anxiety and chaos that led me to Pendle     Hill.  [Even now I had inner pressure from my “inner driver.”] 
       I became sick with a long-term flu.  It was evident that God and I could  use this time for prayer.  When we refuse to listen to the still small voice and     to our friends, we have to listen to our bodies.  [My] inward message was:     “Slow down.  I’ll help you slow down.  Just ask me before you make any     appointments or take on any new task.” I objected, but friends thought it was  good idea.  [“Centering breaks” became an important part of my day.]  
       Isaac Penington wrote: “Be not hasty, be not forward in judgment, keep  back to the life.  A few steps fetched in the life & power of God are much safer     and sweeter than a hasty progress in the hasty forward spirit.”  [I took “Quiet     Days” with God].  I do my most important chores the day before and let the rest  go until the day after. I continued this discipline back in New Hampshire; it is     always rewarding.  Almost all my creative ideas come on my quiet day; the     efficiency afterwards makes up for the “lost time.”  There is a sense of right  priorities and clear focus, something to which I am being led.      
       Coming Home—When it came time to leave Pendle Hill I did not want     to go home.  My fear was that as soon as I went home, I would spring back     to my old ways like a rubber band that had been stretched.  While my inner    “seedling”  felt fragile, I don’t think it really was.  The question is how to stay    open to God’s  Spirit, how to connect once more with that life and power that    one has  experienced.
       I listen with more trust to the inward guide.  The nudges and pulls are a  little clearer.  My attempts to follow the leadings are more frequent and often     more daring.  [I direct my skills of journalist and photographer inward rather     than outward.  One cannot research spiritual realms and stay in the observer     role. Recognizing, understanding, and responding to other people doing a     process  like mine  eventually led me into become a teacher.
       I’m less competitive and more cooperative since my time at Pendle Hill.   I’ve discovered that who I am does not depend on what I produce; that is not     how I am valued.  The projects on which I now work tend to be cooperative     ventures shared with other people.  I met a woman and asked her if she would  like to be my “spiritual friend”; we meet and share our spiritual journeys and our  lives as a whole.  My journal is my companion, a place to cry, to heal, to pray,  to record inspiring bits of reading or ideas.  Most important is prayer, meeting  for worship, my Quiet Day, and occasional longer personal retreats.
       I developed a slide show: “Stand Still in the Light: A Spiritual Journey at  Pendle Hill.”  With my “traveling ministry,” I became part of a broad intercon-    necting network among Friends.  My leading was putting me out where I felt     most uncomfortable.  When God leads us along perilous roads, God also pro-    vides us with support, often in the form of love and help from real live people.
       On hindsight I have figured out that God leads us into our weakness in  order to bring us to wholeness.  The surprise is that after I face my monster, I     find myself riding my monster; the energy that worked against me is the energy  that works for me; my monster has become my ally, and my vehicle of joy. The  surprise gift was that my fear was taken away.  I suspect that it was by the     grace of God because it was not a gradual process.  The risk [of following a     leading] no longer held me back because I have learned my only real safety     lies in following my Inward Guide.   What helps me go through the hard times     is the knowledge that deep in my soul, I rest in God.  At the core of my being,  where I used to have anxiety, there is inner peace. 
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284. Thomas Kelly as I Remember Him (by T. Canby Jones; 1988)
       About the Author—T. Canby Jones was born in Japan to Quaker mis-    sionary parents.  He graduated from Westtown SchoolPA in 1938, and      Haverford CollegePA in 1942, where he found love for God through his     friendship with philosophy teacher Thomas R. Kelly. He worked with American     Friends Service Committee in Norway & the US.  He received B.D. & Ph. D.     degrees from Yale. He wrote George Fox’s Attitude Toward War, 1972 & 1984,  The Power of the Lord is Over All, 1989. He has traveled widely in national &  international ministry among Friends of all persuasions.

            Are we people whose lives can only be explained by saying, the     Eternal Life and Love are breaking through into time, at these points?         Do we hunger for the same sort of miracle in our lives which transformed  that of Thomas Kelly? 
       [Introduction]—Thomas Kelly died at 48, on what he called “the grea-    test day of my life.”  [His writing project about a life of total commitment to God  was about to take off, & he was looking forward to the Friends World Commit-    tee for Consultation in Washington, D.C].  Tom Kelly’s death came with unbe-    lievable shock to me.  I knew Tom Kelly had become a fully radiant Child of     Light he was always calling us to be.  If Thomas Kelly could be this much alive    on the [other side of] death, how much more the Lord Jesus!  At Haverford     Meetinghouse, HaverfordPA, the memorial worship for Thomas Kelly turned     into a triumph of praise. It was life out of death. Kelly once said to Rufus Jones:   “I’m just going to make my life a miracle!”  It was only in the last 3 years of Tom  Kelly’s life that the miracle came to full expression, [as he lived] a “God-intoxi-   cated life.”
       His Message—“Deep within us all there is an inner sanctuary of the  soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice … a dynamic center, a     creative Life that presses to birth within us. It's a Light Within which illumines     the face of God & casts new shadows & glories upon the face of men.” Kelly      reminds us that we are not initiators in this process, for “the Hound of Heaven”    is baying on our tracks. Thomas Kelly affirms: we can learn to live our lives on   2 levels at once. 
       The surface has earthly responsibilities, but way down deep in the cen-    ter we can live in “continuously renewed immediacy of divine Presence.” The  1st attempts at “stayed-ness upon God” are awkward & painful. But it is worth it  because we have begun to live. [Eventually there will be] periods of “dawning  simultaneity” [of living inward & outward]. We will then look out upon the events  in the world “through the sheen of the Inward Light, & react toward men spon-   taneously & joyously from this Inward Center.”  
       A Life of Prayer Without Ceasing—A major call in Tom Kelly’s mes-    sage is the call to a life of constant prayer, what Teresa of Avila and John of     the Cross called “the Prayer of the Quiet” or the “Prayer of Simple Regard.”      With the inward eye we constantly look at the Lord; nothing is said, or  even  thought.  
       Thomas Kelly also speaks of the prayer of inward offering up [i.e.] of  everything and everyone around you, the prayer of inward song—“Inner exul-    tation, inner glorification of the wonders of God fill the deeper levels of mind     … as a background of deep-running joy and peace; as a dancing, singing tor-    rent of happiness, which you must hide lest men think you … filled with new     wine.”—and the prayer of inward listening.  It not only requires regular times of  private personal prayer in the silence of all flesh but develops into constant   inner communion in which we can hear and obey God’s faintest whisper.      

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       “Creative, Spirit-filled lives do not arise until God is attended to, till his  internal teaching … becomes a warm experience. Thomas Kelly also simplifies  intercessory prayer, which he calls the prayer of inward carrying.  “These are  not a chance group of people; they are your special burden and privilege]: You    quietly hold them high before God in inward prayer, giving them to Him, vica-    riously offering your life & strength to become their life and strength.” Finally,  there is infused prayer. “There come times when one’s prayer is given to one,  as it were from beyond oneself, laid upon us, as if initiated by God. It is as if      we were being prayed through by a living Spirit…”
       Call/Gateway to Holy Obedience—The heart of Thomas Kelly’s mes-    sage is found in holy obedience, which stems from life lived at the center, and  constant awareness of God’s presence.  “There are plenty to follow our Lord     halfway, but not the other half; it touches them too closely to disown them-    selves.  It is just this astonishing life which is willing to follow Him the other half  that I would propose to you… Only now & then comes [someone] willing to go     the other half, to follow God’s faintest whisper. [Then] God breaks through,     miracles are wrought, [The world very much needs] such committed lives …     The life that intends to be wholly obedient, wholly submissive, wholly listening,     is astonishing in its completeness; its simplicity that of a trusting child.”   
       “It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God,  to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by God’s presence, to be invaded     without warning, wholly uprooted… In awful solemnity the Holy One is over all &  in all… Blessed death [comes], death of one’s alienating will.”  Active holy     obedience involves: “flaming vision”; be in the world and in prayer at the same  time; no self-recrimination for slips; “relax and learn to live in a passive voice.”
       Fruits of Holy Obedience—5 fruits of holy obedience are: humility,     holiness, entrance into suffering, simplicity, & joy. Humility is “holy blindedness,”  by which a soul sees naught of self, personal degradation, or personal emi-    nence, but only the Holy Will working. Such single-minded humility makes us     bold, fills us with courage, enables us to take absurd risks because of the faith  which now burns within us. In Thomas Kelly’s holiness, “God inflames the soul  with a burning craving for absolute purity. One burns for complete innocency &  holiness of personal life… The blinding purity of God in Christ, how captiva-    ting, how alluring, how compelling it is!” 
       Entrance into suffering is accepting the discipline in which pain becomes  a sacrament, carrying “the [anguish and glory of] the Cross as lived suffering.      God has planted the Cross along the road of holy obedience… God loves the     miracle of willingness to welcome suffering & to know it for what it is—the final     seal of God’s gracious love.”  The [4th] fruit of holy obedience is simplicity of the  “trusting child”; [it bring the last fruit], radiant joy. “Each of us can live such a life  of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration & confidence, on one  condition—that is if we really want to …We have not counted this Holy Thing  within us to be the most precious thing in the world.  We haven't surrendered    all else.”  
       Thomas Kelly has also discovered that: “Lives immersed drowned in     God are drowned in love, & know one another in God, & know one another in     love … 2, 3, 10 people may be in living touch with one another through God     who underlies their separate lives.  Their strength becomes our strength and    our joy becomes theirs.  Daily and hourly the cosmic Sacrament is enacted,   the Bread and wine are divided amongst us by a heavenly Ministrant; the sub-     stance of His body becomes our life; the substance of His blood flows in our       veins.” 

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     [Thomas Kelly Queries]
     Do you really want to live every moment of your lives in God’s  Presence?        Does every breath you draw breathe a prayer, a praise to     God?        Do you sing and dance within yourself to be God’s and only     God’s, walking every moment in holy obedience?        Is love steadfastly     directed toward God, in our minds, all day long?        Do we intersperse     our work with gentle prayers and praises to God?             Do we live in the  steady peace of God, a peace down at the very depths of our souls,     already a victor of the world and our weaknesses?        Are you a miracle     of radiant eternity lived in the midst of time? Am I such a miracle?        Are  we people whose lives can only be explained by saying, the Eternal Life  and Love are breaking through into time, at these points?
       The Story of His Life—Thomas Raymond Kelly was borne 4 June,     1893 near LondonderryOhio, the 2nd child of Carlton Weden Kelly and Madora  Elizabeth Kersey.  [Tom was at different moments], a “jolly, happy, unaffected  youth,” and quite serious when situations called for it.  Since the Kelly parents  were so active in Londonderry Meeting, little Tom, sister Mary and playmates  often played “church.” 
       His father died in September 1897.  His mother moved to Wilmington,  hoping to find employment where her children could be well-educated.  With his  mother gone to work or committee meetings, he felt bereft of home life.  Two of  Thomas Kelly’s elderly counselors were Friends named Denson Barrett and  Jacob Hunt. 
       At Wilmington College, Tom Kelly majored in Chemistry; Thomas was an  active evangelical Christian. He helped establish a Young Friends Movement at  Wilmington YM. He received a scholarship for a graduate year at Haverford     CollegePA. At Haverford he came under the spell of Rufus Jones, Philosophy  Professor. Thomas found him to be a lifelong friend & spiritual guide. Rufus     Jones helped find him a job teaching English & science at Pickering College,     New Market, OH. He committed himself to be a Missionary to the Friends Mis-    sion work in Japan.  
       Hartford Seminary (1916)/YMCA Britain (1917)/ PH. D.—[In order to     train for the Quaker ministry], he entered Hartford Theological Seminary in  September 1916.  [He “goofed off” his first years at seminary]. At Hartford,     Thomas Kelly was introduced to the home of Herbert Macy, Congregational     minister in nearby Newington; the Macy household soon became Tom Kelly’s     home-away-from-home; he became engaged to Laci Macy, who with her “keen  practical mind … provided an admirable balance for Thomas Kelly … who     needed the kind of stabilization that only a wife could give.” 
       When the US entered WW I, Thomas entered civilian service through     the YMCA, doing canteen and counseling work in Blackpool.  [Thomas Kelly’s     Quaker practices and pacifist stance made him very unpopular with camp     administrators].  The YMCA sacked Thomas Kelly and all those who held simi-    lar beliefs.  Back at Hartford, College teaching now became his primary voca-    tional goal. He took a job teaching philosophy at Wilmington College.  Tom     found his students weak and the atmosphere of small-town Wilmington     oppressive.
       Back in New England, Thomas Kelly pursued the PH. D. and served as  pastor of a nondenominational church in Wilson CT.  He diligently studied Her-    mann Lotze, a 19th-century German realist philosopher.  On the first attempt of  oral defense of his thesis, he mind blanked.  On his second chance he passed  with the expected brilliance.  He had a choice between teaching philosophy at  Earlham, or going to Germany for 15 months to help close out the Quaker Child  Feeding program and establish a Berlin Friends Center in its place.  He went  to Germany & also helped with the decision to establish an independent Ger-    man Yearly Meeting of Friends. 

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       The first years at Earlham were happy ones.  Tom loved his Teaching.   But the strictures of evangelical Quakerism in Indiana began to weigh upon     Thomas Kelly’s spirit.  The cosmic and mystical vision of limitless faith he had     gained especially in Germany now chafed for broader fields of expression.  He  wrote: “The meaning of the universal presence of the Inner Light, the Logos, in  every man, the essential Christ in all people, glowed out suddenly, I saw that  something of the God-life, God-character …was planted in everyone at the core  of one’s being. [There is] a kinship with all who are led by the Light toward the  Light.”
       Additional Study at Harvard/Return to Earlham—Thomas Kelly grew    disillusioned with the lack of response to this vision among Earlham colleagues  & Friends in the mid-west. He studied at Harvard in 1930.  A small fellowship,  borrowed money, supply preaching, & filling in for a Wellesly professor allowed  him to spend 2 years studying. Kelly found each day of study with Clarence I.  Lewis & Alfred North Whitehead exploded new horizons, brought freshness to     his writing style, & made him determined to seek a 2nd Ph. D. degree, this one  from Harvard.  Eventually he was forced to return to Earlham.
       Back at Earlham he became even more ferociously committed to the life  of a scholar.  He spent that summer studying Émile Meyerson.  He had to plead  with Harvard to let him stand for a Ph. D.  Thomas resented his days back at  Earlham.  [His zealous efforts to finish] his Harvard thesis [took a severe toll on  his health].  In the summer of 1934 he accepted an invitation to give a series of  lectures at Pendle Hill.  Spiritually he was approaching the low point of his life.  In early 1934 he was invited to teach at the Univ. of HI
       In December 1934 Thomas Kelly suffered a nervous breakdown.  His     strength returned in mid-March & he was able to complete his Ph. D. thesis by  May and send it off to Harvard. Whitehead thought that Kelly’s true interest lay  religion. In Hawaii Thomas Kelly was disillusioned with the lackadaisical atti-    tude of many of the University faculty toward scholarship.  While there he    developed massive files & syllabi on Chinese & Indian thought; he helped      revive Honolulu Friends Meeting.  There were health problems for both Lael  and Thomas.  President Comfort of Haverford College offered him a teaching  post in Philosophy; Thomas Kelly’s spirit soared.
       Haverford 1936-1938/New Man/1st Meeting—Back in Philadelphia he  was soon appointed to Yearly Meeting Committees. He delighted in his stu-    dents’ abilities, & added Chinese & Indian thought to the curriculum. He pub-    lished his Harvard thesis with his own money & went to Harvard in the autumn   of 1937 to make oral defense of it. His mind blanked again & the examining   committee  informed him that he would never be permitted to come up for the    degree again.”  Thomas Kelly was on the point of suicide, and friends had to        persuade him that with all his other accomplishments the Harvard failure  made no difference to them or to Haverford.
       In late 1937 “the cliffs caved in and filled up a chasm.” The inward war-    fare ended, the scholarly & spiritually minded person inside Thomas Kelly be-    came “of twain one new man.” This cataclysmic event of late 1937 was a life-    changing one.  He knew 1st- hand what it meant “to be drowned in the over-    whelming seas of the love of God.” Friends could see the “fire” of the Holy     Spirit in his eyes, hear it in his laughter. [He was deeply affected by the incre-    dible suffering and sin of a world poised on the verge of world war and by     “Galilean glories”.  
       He preached 3 lectures at Coulter Street Meeting in GermantownPA.     He said in part: “God can be found. There is a last rock for your soul, a resting     place of absolute peace and joy & power & radiance & security. There is a Di-      vine Center into which your life can slip … a Center where you live with God &  out of which your life can slip.”

4

       I 1st came to know Thomas Kelly 4 or 5 months after his experience of     inner healing.  He was the leader of a weekend retreat at Albert Bailey’s family  farm.  What I remember most is what I did not like.  To insist that we had to     disown ourselves, endure pain, carry a cross, and lose our lives to them; that     made no sense.  It was also one of the most important lessons I learned      through my beloved teacher, Thomas Kelly. 
       Plowed Down to the Depths—During his experience in Nazi Germany,  he goes on record on how he was “opened up” into a new “childlike dedication  to God.”  “Last winter … I was much shaken by the experiences of the Pre-    sence—something I did not seek, but that sought me.  Even in the midst of a     people torn with fear of being overheard and sudden arrest, Thomas Kelly     came to a sense of inward joy and peace.  “I seem at last to have been given     peace.  “One thing I have learned or feel, so overwhelmingly keenly, is the     real pain of suffering with people … Some here have found all the power of      Apostolic days in the early Church.  Something of the wonder of the Aposto-     lic power and serenity and peace in suffering is taking place here, and I have    found life’s dimension opened up amazingly.  I have been plowed to depths     I’ve never known before.”
       Kelly and Heschel—[Thomas Kelly met Abraham J. Heschel, “a mystic  who would be profoundly at home in a Quaker meeting”] on a limousine ride to  a railway station.  They wrote to each other after the encounter.  From Thomas  Kelly I learned the fervent love of God.  From Abraham Heschel I learned the  meaning of the compassionate anger of God; this Jew and this Quaker were  spiritual friends. 
       Back at Haverford 1938-41/His Life a Miracle—My first Sunday as a  Haverford freshman I attended Haverford Friends Meeting.  Rufus Jones     commented on Psalm 90.  Thomas Kelly spoke on the latter part of Psalm 73     with power and fervor.  I asked Thomas Kelly whether it might be possible to     have a religious discussion group; Tom was overjoyed at the prospect.  Our     sessions consisted of Tom reading aloud his favorite passages while we sat  silently and contemplatively drinking it all in. 
       He brought out Letters by a Modern Mystic, by Frank Laubach, a con-    temporary and an American.  [Hearing his story of] loneliness and then an  overwhelming revelation of the love and presence of God, [we heard] a direct     challenge to us to hunger after God with all the energy of our souls.  Thomas     Kelly told us of his vision that we should become a band of itinerant preacher,     like George Fox.  We became active in service projects, like helping with a     Sunday School, Young Friends Movement, and Friends World Committee     Meetings.   Messages from our group began to be heard in mid-week and  Sunday meetings at Haverford. 
       The new depth & power in Thomas Kelly’s life meant both greater bles-    sing & greater difficulties for him as he faithfully called all persons to the Light  within them. [His new simplicity] was very disturbing to the sophisticated, critical  & sometimes cynical Haverford student of that day. He was fully accepted by  his fellow faculty, even though his depth of fervor did not speak to the condi-    tion of some of them. He poured himself with new energy into his committee  work with the American Friends Service Committee. 
        In his religious ministry at this period he struggled to rid himself of the     “learned phrase,” “the scholarly allusion,” to speak the simple language of the     heart. [Except for “Tom Kelly’s” boys, most students required to attend] the     Thursday morning meeting for worship intensely disliked or were deeply dis-    turbed by Thomas Kelly’s calls to live radiant lives for God. 
       He also learned that one has to endure times of spiritual aridity and  apparent abandonment by the Holy Spirit.  We must “learn not to clamor     perpetually for height but walk in shadows and valleys and dry places, for     months & years together; so must group worshipers learn that worship is fully     valid when there are no thrills, no special sense of covering … I’m persuaded     that a deep sifting of religion leads us down to the will, steadfastly oriented     toward the will of God.  In that steadfastness of the will one walks serene and  unperturbed praying only, ‘Thy will be done.”  

5

       Opposition, ridicule or periods of spiritual dryness were all suffered     during Thomas Kelly’s last 3 years by an optimism born of joy.  Thomas Kelly     preached at the lobsterman’s Nazarene church.  The love of God that shone     forth from Thomas Kelly was what those dear people called, “the love of  Christ.” 
       In October 1940 there was interest in publishing his lectures or manu-    scripts, and the beginnings of a book called The Light Within.  He wrote a brief  message called Children of Light which says in part:  “We must humbly bear the  message of the Light. Many see it from afar & long for it with all their being.     Amidst the darkness of this time the day star can arise in astounding power &     overcome the darkness within & without … It is given to us to be message     bearers of the day that can dawn in apostolic power if we be wholly committed  to the Light … Radiant in that radiance we may confidently expect the kindling     of the Light in all men, until all Men’s footsteps are lighted by that Light, which is  within them … It is a great message which is given to us, that the Light over-       comes the darkness. But to give the message we must also be the message."
       After Thomas Kelly’s death, Douglas Steere with some help from “the      gang” accomplished a vicarious service of love by bringing into print the book     which we agreed to call A Testament of Devotion.  The book is a testimony to     the miracle Thomas Kelly knew in his life.  It continues to speak to the spiritual     need of thousands, more than 40 years after his death.  Are we people whose  lives can only be explained by saying, the Eternal Life and Love are brea-    king through into time, at these points?  Do we hunger for the same sort     of miracle in our lives which transformed that of Thomas Kelly?  If we do  so with all the energy of our souls, it will also happen in us.

6

       About the Author—John Punshon was born in the east end of London    in 1935. He was educated at Brasenose CollegeOxford, where he became a     convinced Friend. Besides journalist, teacher & lawyer, he has been Quaker     Studies Tutor at Woodbrooke, the Quaker center in Birmingham. He has been     Preparative Meeting Clerk & Elder. This pamphlet arises out of John Punshon’s  conviction that to establish mutual respect & tolerance among faiths based on  what the faith is rather than an outside interpretation of it is to establish world  peace.  He also wrote Alternative Christianity (Pamphlet 245).
       Dear Friend/My Own Bias—I cannot minister as I feel called, because I  know the words that come naturally to me are often unacceptable to you.  You     feel that true Quaker thought and experience leads to your position and not     mine.  I want to engage in an exploration of faith with you, because I have come  to feel that our difference go beyond personal preferences and reflect a deep  collective crisis of identity for unprogrammed Quakerism.
       My early experiences of Christianity were all positive, [from a little coun   try church and a strict evangelical Anglican church; I went to a universalist     church in my adolescence].  The Anglican vicar’s faith was on the surface, and  he showed little sense of mystery, or awareness that religion operated at many  different levels.  The universalist minister, on the other hand, used Christian     terms that said one thing but meant another.  He side-stepped the surface     meanings of Bible passages by explaining what its “deeper meaning” was.  I     was both dying of thirst on the surface of religion and drowning beneath it.    Social gospel is more appealing that personal salvation.
       Objections to Christianity—My Christianity involves the Trinity, incar-    nation, resurrection and atonement of Christ, church membership, Sermon on     the Mount, and parables of the Kingdom; covenant, salvation and redemption     are metaphysical realities.  We are the 1st people to have access to a greatly     expanded understanding of the universe.  Christian anthropomorphism as an     explanation of the forces, powers and processes of the universe is naïve; it is     too crude to be true.  Christianity says we are all sinners; it offers a cure for a     pathological condition which most people seem not to suffering from.  The     main reason against the credibility of my own faith is that we are changing the     way and the substance of what we think about.  If Universalism is true, Christ is  not the Savior of the world. My faith is then false and the sooner I recognize     that fact the better. 
       An Approach to Universalism—The most noticeable thing about you     universalists is that you use words that imply you have something new which at  the same time has roots deep in the past. You have a deep sense of solidarity,  or “unity with the creation.” Some look forward to a combination of the best &  richest features of the great world faiths, others see mystical experience of     religious consciousness as the great common ground among the faiths. Those  things are not unique to you; many of us who follow Christ or Islam have the     same sentiments. 
       Universalists say that it is possible to have a wider range of experiences  and relationship with ultimate reality than the Christian tradition could ever per-    mit.  They see that no religion has a monopoly of truth and there is truth to be     found in all religions.  For Christians, religion is the working out in life the belief  that in Jesus Christ there is the definitive self-disclosure or revelation of God.   For you, religious commitment is based on the unfettered search for religious  truth; religion's substance is in the spiritual process rather than the content.      Traditional believers are irritated with your answers to faith questions because     they do not realize that your faith is not a defective variant of theirs; it is a diffe-    rent kind of religion. 
       A Different Issue—The conception of religion as personal process is at  variance with the way the world seems to me to be. Fundamentalism flourishes  where [religious minorities try to maintain integrity amidst] a different dominant   faith.  [My route to] mutual toleration and harmony, is by taking other faiths at    their own estimation of themselves, not by our interpretation of them].  It is the     differences and the challenges they present that we stand the best chance of     widening our own understanding and also where we find the opportunity of     overcoming destructive narrow-mindedness.  [Dialogues and solutions about     how a minority’s beliefs can be implemented in the culture of the majority faith     have little to do with universalism.]  The battle of tolerance takes place within     orthodoxy, which stands between liberalism and fundamentalism. That is where  the action is.
       A Critique of Universalism—As part of its working definition Universa-    lism denies exclusive claims to truth in every religion, because while all reli-    gions can be partially true, none can be wholly true; [that includes Universa-    lism]. One cannot simply assert that there is truth in all religions as if that were     all. Without a working definition of what truth is, one can hardly know what     aspect of a religion is true. Many Quakers opt for a common mystical experi-    ence which is seen to lie beneath the surface diversity of the great world reli-    gious systems. 
       [Many contemporary Friends, following the “Quakerism is Universalism”  line of reasoning say] “Christian faith is really too restrictive a basis for mem-   bership of the Society of Friends, so we must accept all who share our values    regardless of our beliefs and traditions.”  A unilateral universalist reconstruction  of Quakerism can only take place by ignoring the position of the non-universa-    list majority in the Society of Friends.  I'm not ready to make this kind of break.   [More and more], the substance of Quaker belief is summarized in a series of  saws and maxims.  They work like trump cards, [ending all chance of further  arguments].   
       Some Saws and Maxims—The seeker is the ace of trumps. “Quaker-    ism began among the 17th century Seekers” who rejected doctrines in favor of     experience.  That is not how Quakerism began.  The notions card says that     since Quakers refused to discuss things like sin, salvation and atonement, i.e.     notions, we have no need of theology or Bible.  The early Quakers had a pre-    cise theology and knew the Bible backwards.  The new Light card is from 1931    London Yearly Meeting (“Be open to new light from whatever quarter it may     come).”   The personal testimony is all card, [from George Fox’s] “But what     canst thou say?” is used to minimize corporate commitment and elevate since-    rity of a conviction over its truth.
       The utterances of the Quakers of old had a context, they were part of a  terminology, they were derived from a coherent & consistent theological frame-    work.  Compared with this rich dialogue growing out of experience, I find one-    line summaries of a profound faith trivial and depressing.  Anyone seeking to     say that Christianity is a part of our testimony may now be told that they might     be happier elsewhere.  [In my own meeting] I am highly inhibited in saying     anything specifically religious at all in case I tread on somebody’s toes.  The  one thing out of the question [in 1st-Day School] is explicit Christian teaching. 
       The following points would likely be raised in any discussion of this is-    sue. 1st, there is “that of God in every one.”  Unless you know what is meant by  “that” and “God” it isn't much help.  2nd, there are values; Friends share many    common values.  I don’t know about you, but I go to meeting to worship God,   not to have values.  [It is too broad of a characteristic & includes too many to    define Quakerism]. 
       Then, there is the individualist move.  It is customary to say in some     quarters that the Society of Friends has never made any unalterable statements  of belief.  Many deduce from this that no gathering or body may make any     authoritative statement about what Quakerism is.  Universalists sometimes     argue from these principles that the Society cannot deny membership to non-    Christians.  This is a set of assumption about the nature of the Society of     Friends which is open to question.  It's highly arguable whether doctrine will     support those who reckon that it's continuing revelation that is leading Quaker-    ism toward Universalism.    
       [The conditions for continuing revelation] rested on conversion to a faith  in the triune God of the Christian revelation.  Continuous revelation is cumula-    tive, not selective.  It teaches us to believe more deeply, not more narrowly.      You ought to either accept the tradition or face the fact that it may be human     preference and not divine guidance that causes Quakers to change their col-    lective minds. 
       The Problem Stated—The majority Programmed Quakers ask: Why is  it so hard to talk about Christ?  The absence of an institutional requirement  for novelty to prove itself over time has led the unprogrammed tradition to     open itself to outside influences without being clear about what effect they     would have on it.   I have seen the rapid growth of the opinion that it is this     syncretism above all other things which is the defining characteristic of Qua-   kerism. If you worship the Spirit that was in Jesus, but not Jesus, & that you    follow him only as a great moral teacher, I don’t see how your position can be    the foundation for a community. Your position seems incompatible with the    Quaker tradition & what it says about Christ. The argument against Univer-    salism being an essential feature of Quakerism, is that it ignores the fact that     most Quakers are Evangelicals, not Universalists.    
       [Your interpretation of] George Fox’s assertion about Christ [is that] Fox  was describing an experience of God, but it was not an experience of the pre-    existent, incarnate, risen Lord.  Fox’s letter to the Governor of Barbados is     doctrine and very similar to the Apostles’ Creed; it cannot be denied, [so it is     ignored in the Disciplines].  [From your standpoint] Fox was either using theo-    logical notions [to describe his experience] or he meant something quite diffe-    rent that he lacked the means to express. 
       The Influence of Cultural Relavitism—Cultural relativism asserts that  truth is defined not by reference to facts, but to what a given culture under-    stands; truth is culture-specific. We can judge the past by the present; we can-    not use the past to judge the present.  Not only is Fox’s claim not authoritative,  but it cannot be now.  Any assertion that we share a common faith with Fox and  Penn is a philosophical impossibility.  Cultural relativism raises as many ques-   tions as it solves.  Universalism and pantheism were real options for Fox in the  17th century, and he turned them down.  He was not as culture-bound as you  might think.
       Scientific Method and Quaker Faith/Conclusion—Some Friends use  the thought of Teilhard de Chardin to show ways in which the symbolic system  of Christianity might be utilized to take faith (and Quakerism) beyond Christian  exclusivism.  Teilhard’s ideas can be combined with Jungian explanations of     human personality.  Science provides us with models of reality and not immu-    table truths.  Some Friends find it difficult to sustain traditional understanding     of God in the face of these things.  I find a willingness among Friends to adopt     contemporary philosophy of science as a basis for religion.  Christianity must     be abandoned because it relies on revelation, for which this world view has     no place.  [Is current secular orthodoxy preferable to traditional religious     orthodoxy?]  I do not think [this method] can support a theology in the way     Universalists variously claim.   
       1st, I do not think that philosophical & scientific knowledge dovetail into  one another the way Teilhard thought they did.  2nd, there is a tendency among  Friends to adopt interesting ideas in the field of scientific enquiry and then use  them as if they were authoritative and immutable.  I do not think the philosophy  of science will provide an adequate foundation for religion if Christianity is to be  abandoned because it is considered to be outdated.  
       3rd, I don’t see the logical connection between adopting such ideas and  a preference for Universalism against Christianity.  These arguments give no     reason for preferring one against the other; they challenge both.  Unless we     believe in other sources of truth than the human understanding, we shall find     ourselves treading what history shows to be a very dangerous path.  There is     no reason why we should be apprehensive [about discussing our differences     openly], provided we don’t let our emotions stand in the way of our judgment,  or put our own desires in the place of our quest for truth. 
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286. War Taxes: Experiences of Philadelphia YM Quakers through
   the American Revolution (by Elaine J. Crauderueff; 1989)
           About the Author—Elaine J. Crauderueff has worked for Friends in     several capacities involving teaching and curriculum.  She is also an active     member of the war Tax Concerns Support Committee.  This pamphlet is a     result of work done for a master’s thesis in religious studies at Villanova Uni-    versity in 1986 titled “War Taxes: The experiences of Philadelphia YM Qua-    kers 1681-1800.”
     [Introduction]—In the winter of 1979, I began an unplanned spiritual  journey.  I was working on a flyer about governmental budget priorities.  I read     “The Moral Equivalent of Disarmament,” which said in part: “How much longer     can the church continue quoting to the government its carefully researched     figures on military expenditures and social needs [while] serving up the dollars    to fund the berserk priorities? Our bluff has been called.” 
       During my spiritual journey I came to a quiet and very firm clarity that I     could not pay war taxes.  I explained to the IRS what I was doing with the     money I wasn’t sending to them. Every year since then, my husband Mike and I  have resisted war taxes in a variety of ways that have seemed right for us to     make our witness.  The results have not been dramatic, at least in terms of     affecting the federal budget.  We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it.  We  have come to know that it is the least we can do to witness to God’s love and  power.
      War taxes were an issue for Philadelphia YM Friends right from the start.   Quakers controlled the PA Assembly & were influential in New Jersey until the     French and Indian War.  Compromise became a tool for political survival.  The     Crown asked for military requisitions.  In 1693, the legislators vote for a small     tax for military defense in order to get “approval for their laws.”  Objections         were made before the funds were allocated; rarely were religious objections     mentioned.  Money “for the King or Queen’s use” was the norm from 1693-      1756. The 2nd type of response was to raise a war tax. 
       A few refused to pay for war in any form.  [Others were offered or sought  ways of side-stepping the issue by paying for war indirectly].  English Friends     were not concerned about how the government used their taxes, believing that  to be Caesar’s responsibility.  Several attempts were made to convince Phila-    delphia Friends to conform to the tax-paying ways of English Friends.  Eliza-    beth Redford was the notable exception and was eldered by her meeting.  In  the 1st half of the 1700s, Philadelphia YM advocated obedience.
       Philadelphia YM in an epistle wrote:  “When at any time it hath pleased  God to suffer the rulers that hath been over us to Impose any thing against out  Allegience to God, we have Patiently suffered under them until the Lord     [opened] their Understandings and mollify their Hearts towards us.”  A few     Friends felt that their allegiance to God was violated by the war tax of 1711;     some refused and were jailed.  Friends generally paid the war tax during this  period. [How willing they were] is not clear from the surviving sources.
       In 1722 Philadelphia YM included the war tax issue at its sessions; the    lack of unity, yet growing concern was clear. [1736 Meetings called for obedi-    ence in] “the payment of Duties to the Crown.” In 1739, the YM asked Friends     to be “vigilant in keeping the peaceable Principles professed … & in no manner  to joyn with [those] making warlike preparations offensive or defensive.” As-   semblyman James Logan said: “All Civil Government … is founded on Force.”   If Quakers could not be pacifists & participate in politics, they should get out of  politics.
       The End of the “Holy Experiment”—When the legislators continued to  approve war sums, with the normal equivocations, they were moving headlong  into a confrontation with an emerging & growing spiritual revitalization in the     Philadelphia YM. John Woolman, John Churchman & others addressed the     Assembly as follows: “we shall at all times heartily & freely contribute … for     benevolent purposes … [but] we apprehend that many among us will be under  the necessity of suffering, rather than consenting to the payment of a tax for  [war] purposes.” 
       The Assembly responded with great indignation.  They compared their  1755 bill with the 1711 war tax bill, even though in their bill they were spending  money on war directly (The Crown spent the money in the 1711 bill).  A Phila-    delphia YM committee wrote a radical interpretation of the Peace Testimony.      Friends were increasingly alarmed at the legislators’ behavior, and as a body     and as individuals labored with its members in the Legislature to get their     resignations; 6 resigned from these efforts.  “The Epistle of Tender Love and  Caution,” at the end of 1755, was the 1st YM statement by a committee, en-   dorsing individual and corporate war tax resistance.   
       Friends Reaction to the War Tax—The actions that Philadelphia YM &  individuals took on war taxes  during the French & Indian War reveal an evol-    ving understanding of the Peace Testimony to be more dynamic. John Wool-    man wrote: “I could not see that [the example of upright-hearted men who     paid such taxes] was sufficient reason for me to do so. [Danger to the so-    ciety would result if “by small degrees there might be an approach toward       that of fighting, till we came so near that the distinction would be little else but    the name of a peaceable people.” Joshua Evans wrote: “it Opened very clear    to me … that to hire men to do what I could not for conscience sake do        myself was very Inconsistent. I refused to defray war expences (tho my part    might appear as a drop in the  Ocean yet it is made up  of drops).” 
       Assemblyman James Pemberton resigned from the Assembly that had     become a war Assembly.  His brother Israel advocated war tax resistance; this  embarrassed London Quakers.  James Pemberton noted: “A number of us re-    fuse taxes; most not only comply with it but censure those who do not.”  There     was a fear that the other religious liberties Friends had enjoyed would be sa-   crificed if the tax issue were pursued.  There were indications that there was     support throughout the YM for war tax resisters but not endorsement.  The     resisters asked: What are the consequences to other Friends, to non-    Friends, and to oneself when taxes are paid for war?  They each made     clear decisions against paying war taxes, and yet asked individuals not to     accept their answers but to ask the Spirit of Christ for personal guidance. 
       The Revolutionary War Period/Taking a Stand: Amending the  DisciplineDuring the Revolutionary War period Friends in America faced the  war tax issue directly, and the meeting’s control over individual behavior was  vastly expanded to include clothing, furniture, marriage, fighting, and military  assistance.  Members could be eldered and disowned for violating Society     discipline.  How would individual Friends respond to war taxes and formal  Advice?      What would result in taking a radical position on the war tax  issue? 
       The war tax issue [was especially difficult, because] it was “difficult to     separate in a time of war the support due to the usual demands & needs of the  State from those directly & obviously for war purposes.” The use of Continental  Currency was an issue that highlights the daily dilemmas confronting Friends    who were conscientiously opposed to supporting war. It “was considered a co-   vert means of taxation to finance the prosecution of war.” The YM decided to    allow for each person to determine individually what was right action,  & to     “abide in true love and Charity” [with those of opposing view]. [John Cowgill  of  Duck Creek & Thomas Watson of Buckingham suffered ostracizing, boycott,  public ridicule, jail, & court martial for faithfulness to their religious duty].     
       By 1776 the war tax issue was a yearly meeting concern.  Friends in     New Jersey felt it their duty to refuse to pay.  Meeting for Sufferings note that     this may result in an increase in refusers.  At the 1776 Fall YM Friends conclu-    ded that:  “Such who make Religious Profession with us … and [they or their     family or servants] pay any Fine, Penalty, or Tax, in lieu of their personal     services for carrying on the War do thereby violate our Christian Testimony,    and by so doing manifest that they are not in Religious Fellowship with us.” 
       The Meeting for Sufferings again considered the tax issue just prior to  the 1778 YM.  Chester Quarter asked: At what point should a Friend refuse     to support what in peacetime would clearly be acceptable, but in war     might actually or implicitly support the war effort? The YM wrote the [tax     resister’s intent to] maintain the Peace Testimony “hath remarkably tended to     unite us in deep sympathy with the seed of Life in their hearts, … [all mem-    bers should] avoid complying with the injunctions & requisitions made for the    purpose of carrying on War, which may produce uneasiness to themselves or   tend to increase the sufferings of their Brethren.” 
       In 1780, the YM recommended: “according to the Advices given forth     by this Meeting at sundry Times, … the Members of our religious Society be    again exhorted to attend the Monitions of divine Grace, and carefully guard     against suppressing them in either themselves or others.” 
     After the war, the government carried a huge war debt.  Most Friends     paid the taxes for defraying the war debt.  Gloucester and Salem Meetings    queried:  What should this Meeting do about those Friends who have a     “religious scruple” that forbids paying taxes to defray the war debt,     [and who have] suffered Distraint of their Goods, when “the greater part    of the Society pay the same Taxes?      Should these accounts be forwar-    ded as Suffering to the Meeting for Sufferings?   
       The YM affirmed that those Friends should keep careful accounts of     their losses and forward them to the Meeting for Sufferings.  The strong Minute  from 1776 was not changed for well over 100 years.  Compliance, though, was  low and the practice of disownment over the tax issue did not lead to large     numbers of disownments.  It can be accurately said that Philadelphia YM en-    dorsed and supported war tax resistance as a matter of enforceable discipline  during the American Revolution.
       Friends Witnessing—The stated Discipline of the Religious Society of   Friends reflects the actual practice of the Society only to the extent that indivi-    duals choose to follow it.  Some Friends followed it, but not nearly all.  Since     some Friends had political agendas, their neighbors assumed that all Friends     motives were partisan.  The total of recorded sufferings in Pennsylvania from     property being seized was over £38,000.  Some Friends were elected tax col-    lectors against their will in order to inflict a fine for noncompliance. 
       Anthony Benezet and B. Mason wrote a tract entitled, in part, Reasons  why we ought not to pay Taxes to support War.  They refuted the usual Scrip-    tural arguments and concluded with: “how then can we do that by proxy under     the Character of a tax, which we cannot do in Person or with a Fine? … let us     not through fear of suffering give out Money for the worst of purposes.” Sam-    uel Allinson wrote Reasons against War, and paying Taxes for its Support, and  discerned criteria for determining rightly led action:  “Whenever an act strikes    the mind with a religious fear that the performance of it will not be holding the    light of the Gospel of Peace, or be a stumbling block to others it ought carefully  to be avoided … that may be a cross today which was not before.”
       Enforcing the Discipline—The possibility of being read out of meeting    for paying war taxes irked Friends who had patriotic leanings. Isaac Sharpless  wrote: The integrity of Quaker testimony against war was at stake, & gathering    up all their reserve of strength & shutting their hearts against the pleadings for     mercy … they cleared the Society of open complicity with war. There was a lot  of variation in the severity of dealings with deviators.
       Isaac Grey published Serious Address to Such of the People Called     Quakers … as profess Scruples … concerning Obedience to Civil Authority in     1778.  Grey accurately explained that “no precedent for censure or condem-    nation can be found in the history or proceedings of Friends.  Why should     there be pain and separation when “love & union might be preserved?”      His Meeting labored with and eventually testified against him.  Almost all who     participated in the military were disowned; less than half who paid war taxes     were disowned.  A total of 239 Friends in Philadelphia were disowned for     paying war taxes or fines.    
       The War Ends and the Witness Continues—Some Friends who par-   ticipated in the war effort and had been disowned or left on their own began to  reconsider.  They began asking to be reunited with their meetings.  Friends         continued to suffer persecutions for nearly a decade after the war ended.  A     Quarterly and Yearly Meeting “Taxpaying was titely tried by a Large Commite     and to pay refused.”  After decades, Joshua Evans was still not defeated by     the apparent ineffectiveness of his witness.  Once he determined that paying     for war was wrong, he could not do regardless of changing circumstances, in-    cluding not paying a Duty on imported articles because:  “I could see no mate-    rial differences between paying by Tax or Duty [for war].”
       Thoughts for the Present—Philadelphia YM continues to deal with the  religious concern of war tax refusal; they have evolved detailed administrative     policies to support employees who refuse war taxes.  The historical witness of     Philadelphia YM Friends is inspiring, inconsistent, and at times, embarrassing.   However their struggle encourages us today to be both more patient and     challenging with one another.  What does Peace Testimony mean to indivi-    duals & the Society of Friends as a body today?  [An especially meaning-    ful part is: “That the spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable,  so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it.”  Is  there nothing that we now believe to always be true?  
     While I confess still to desire the strength of a unified Quaker witness, I know that the Spirit of Christ makes the future results of all spiritual journeys, others and my own, unknowable.  Just when I am comfortable accepting our diversity, John Woolman’s words call out:  “To conform a little to a wrong way strengthens the hands of such who carry wrong customs to their utmost extent; the more a person appears virtuous and heavenly-minded, the more powerfully does his conformity operate in favour of evildoers.”  History can be used to strengthen either side of the war tax argument.  Friends [need to be] mindful that war tax resistance is not a matter of doctrine, but the result of an individually changed heart, a matter between each Friend and God. 
            QueriesWhat obligation do Friends have “to beware lest by our  example we lead others wrong?”      Do you respect the feelings of others  on issues, even when you differ with them?        What are the ways you     Meeting responds to the war tax issue?        Is your Meeting open to war     tax resisters & war tax payers?        How are you challenged by the diver-    sity of opinion and action of Friends through the American Revolution?       Are there Quaker beliefs or practices for which you would be willing to     lose property or be jailed?        How does the Spirit of Christ help you to  discern what is right for you on this and other issues of conscience?     
 
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287. Milestone 70 (by Carol R. Murphy; 1989)
            About the Author—She was born in BostonMass., Dec. 1916 (died  1994).  After a childhood of home schooling in rural Massachusetts, the family     moved to the Philadelphia area; Carol attended Quaker schools. In 1928 the     family became convinced Friends. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 &  earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American University in 1941. She     began her association with Pendle Hill in 1947. In this, her 17th [and final]  pamphlet, the author explores the texture of her own daily life. 

            The only child of a poet father & a musician mother, I grew up a bookish  youngster with few playmates. My abilities [and later vocation] ran in the groove  of reading, thinking and observing rather than participating.  
            December 7-18, 198612/7: Today I “cracked” a new book I bought for  myself, a biography of Alan Watts by Monica Furlong.  How could Watts, a     Buddhist non-believer in the self have so much ego?  Furlong explains him as     
“trickster” type[:] he was often naughty, but achieved good anyway. Possibly     the denial of self is a cover-up for egoism. The best we can do is be aware of  this ego-awareness and discount it as possible. 
       12/9: Among my Christmas letters, I still correspond with a woman a few  years older than myself, whom I met through my pamphlet writing. She felt iso-    lated in rural area, and wanted spiritual and psychological growth. I exchanged  sympathetic comments and gave her the name of a religiously oriented coun-    selor; she went into the guidance counseling field ; we have exchanged visits.   I don’t seem to fall in love with people so much as with pursuits, temporary  vehicles for some value or latent ability which I need to enrich my life.  
       12/16: The movie Yentl defies our usual sexual boundary lines, & is a  meditation on the intellectual woman as displaced person. My path is that of a  Quaker celibate, which is marginal in my very married & suburban Meeting.
            12/18: I am interested to note that Isaac Bashevis Singer has touched  on androgynous themes in at least 2 stories, one about a transvestite youth     whose outburst of heterosexual passion leads to his accidental death, & the     other about a saintly young Hasid who has a marriage ceremony for his ani-    mus & anima aspects.  
            Christmas Day & December 27-29—Christmas: Nowadays we think of  time as linear, but on special occasions we experience it as circular. [We con-    nect past Christmases with this one when we get out decorations from storage.  There was the Christmas when my mother was in the hospital, eerily echoed 11  years later when I was in the same hospital a few days before Christmas.        
            12/27: The Library in America led me to recall with gratitude my experi-    ence with libraries in the past, from the sturdy little Carnegie library in Rock-    port, MA, to the great Library of Congress. Libraries were life-savers for my     mother & me during the lonely war years. In Gloucester, MA, I found Thomas     Kelly’s Testament of Devotion, which spoke to the condition of my early     religious search. 
            12/28: I finished reading a life of Teilhard de Chardin today, [& saw] re-    semblances between Teilhard & Alan Watts. Both died suddenly when they felt  their lives no longer had anywhere to go. It’s hard not to find egotism in the use  of their women as the men pressed onward & upward to some abstract vision.  Does one want to adopt the “my fulfillment 1st” attitude of today?     

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            12/29: Elizabeth Vining’s and May Sarton’s idea of making special re-    cords of their 70th year gave me the idea of doing the same as a follower, not     an imitator.  I must acknowledge that I’m not personally touched by ritual.      Rituals have to begin in childhood to speak to the deep unconscious be
yond      the level of conscious beliefs.  There are non-religious rituals in our com-    munities and our sports.  Baseball is its own universe with its own “scared”     history.  
       January 1987—1/1/87: As with Christmas, the coming of a new year  cycles back to memories of previous years.  A year or so ago I was dismayed     at having a library “dumped in my lap.” Now, after a workshop for Friends     meeting librarians, I have climbed a rung in the ladder of capability.  On the     other hand, my 2 remaining aunts died within months of each other. [Their     approaching deaths were] the occasion of many emergency telephone calls    and an occasional journey of 200 miles through New York area  traffic.  I       thought of sheltered living for myself, but I’m not ready for such  a drastic cut-    ting of my few ties to real community. 
       1/2: A wet & stormy day, good for dismantling the little Christmas tree     built of styrofoam balls stuck with toothpicks. I reviewed the cards I received.
            1/11: In May Sarton’s, The Magnificent Spinster, the central point is the  validity of a life of many friendships but no marriage. It is a relief to read of very  kind people in an unkind & lonely world, yet one perversely wishes for some     vinegar in this blandness. F(f)riends have played a large part in Daisy New-    man’s life; my parents were relatively friendless. They lived on a small inheri-    tance rather than looking for contacts that would connect them with the intel-    ligentsia to which they should have belonged.  
            1/15: Today the train was delayed & bumped along in a desultory way.  Over the loudspeaker a voice explained “The less than relentless pace” of the     train was due to something wrong with the rear cars. “Thank you for your pati-    ence, ladies & gentlemen, & please include SEPTA in your prayers.”     
            1/18: [On my] list of “authentic” persons or endeavors motivated by  religious faith and a spirit of love and dedication, [I include]: Mother Teresa; the  AFSC; and Steve Angell of the FCNL.       
            1/30: On this gloomy, snow-covered day it was good to hear a familiar  mewing call and spot a yellow-bellied sapsucker in the maple tree.  There are     now mockingbirds and house finches, but a decrease of the warblers, and the  varieties of sparrows and thrushes that used to come.  
            February 8 & 15—2/8: In meeting this morning I thought of a new area     of psyche to add to Freud’s id, ego & superego. I propose the 4th area would be  the “meta-ego” or “extra-ego”—that which directs the person away from self-    consciousness or satisfaction of needs ([e.g.] esthetic sense of beauty, ab-   
sorption in creation, or meditative mysticism, [including] the Inward Light of     the Quakers).       
            2/15: Isak Dinesen’s stories are dreamlike & archetypal. They bewil-    der the relentlessly factual minds of my conventional, middle-classed senior     citizens group. [Here], I plead for recognition of a truth not communicated by     “facts” alone. New Age literature [misses the connection] with earth,hile]     scientists & engineers miss the sense of the non-measureable’s reality.  
       March—3/11: A new Papal pronouncement against artificial insemina-    tion and fertilization [reminds] me of how traditional religion is still often ruled     by fear of humankind’s increasing power to manage our biological fate.  We     do have to understand and cooperate with nature to guide it to a higher pur-    pose.  A church open to feminine understanding would be a better guide than     negative pronouncements by celibate patriarchs.  
            3/12: [A Vietnam veteran & officer said] he felt he had no right to pass     moral judgment on [his government’s de-personalizing the enemy]; he was     merely following his government’s orders (and speaking like a “good German”).   2 vital resolutions are: never depersonalize any person or group of persons;     never abdicate one’s right of moral judgment to anyone else—least of all to a     government. 

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            3/15: [My writing style does not] present the picture of an industrious  writer dedicating the morning hours to writing; it takes me several years to put     down in longhand at odd moments enough ideas to work with. I could use a     helpful other to defrost the fridge, gather the laundry, service the car and pay     the bills on time. [I am tempted to stay at home and worship in solitude and    
nature]. Yet there is a need for sharing with others in Whittier’s “silence multi-    plied by the  still forms on either side.”  
       3/20: A rift seems to be opening up between 2 kinds of Quaker commit-    tee members. The younger people who should be taking over the [tasks the el-    derly are doing] are at work all day & can only come in the evenings. Must we     devise a way of compensating people for taking a day away from work?     Is our yuppie culture too frenetic for religious endeavor to survive?  
            3/24: I would agree [with Henry Cadbury] that Jesus spoke to the needs  of the non-mystic; we can’t confine the religious life to contemplatives only.     Cadbury & I would be outside the pale, “buses” rather than “trolleys” [i.e.] self-    powered & self-steering, [rather than the mystical], always in contact with gui-    ding rail & empowering wire.  
            3/27: Yearly Meeting time again. Faces have changed, some have  vanished forever, [but the places, the events, & the process are much the     same]. Minutes are proposed, nearly approved, then fall before nitpicking of  those who wish to assert themselves; some have a valid stop in mind.  
            April—4/12:  Our meeting fell into one of its periodic & frustrating de-    bates about a troublesome visitor to our worship. It became apparent that we     are trying to use rational argument or moral reproach to influence someone     who is disturbed at a deeper level than reason or moral finger-pointing can     reach. We are neither saints nor psychiatrists; hence our helplessness is     manifest. 
            4/21: I now have undertaken the task of sending cards from the meeting  to members 75 years old or older. Some of these are still very active in meeting  affairs. A meeting has to reach those who share a common interest in spiritual  search & expression, beyond ordinary sociability.  
            4/27: Is the country a mere abstraction or is it all of us protecting     our social cohesion?      What is the relationship between reticence and     truthfulness? You destroy a person when you destroy her deepest  relationship.  
            4/28: In college my extracurricular life took place at home, where we     maintained our family activities of quiet study and reading aloud in the evening.   [50 years later], as I peruse the student’s biographies, I’m in awe of their many  accomplishments, while I remain a little gray church mouse.  My contribution is  both oddball and somewhat “square.” Most of us are nice while our lives are  nice; but when under threat we can readily turn mean.  
            May—5/8: [Revelations in the Iran/Contra affair are] a reminder that the  apparently folksy & non-aggressive are fascinated by the dark & unscrupulous.  It is there they find a buried shadow side & become vulnerable to it. Hence the  political teaching: we must deal with our own evil before riding forth to do battle  with other “evil empires.”     
            5/22: [I read an] account of the Fitzgerald & Kennedy families, & noted     with interest that [John F. Kennedy’s] mother went to Wellesley, as did my     mother, & Joe Kennedy went to Harvard as did my father. Both Mother & Father  quietly dropped the dogmatic side of their rather fitful Catholic upbringing, while  keeping its poetic & mystical elements. Eventually Quaker writings brought     them into the Society of Friends.        
            5/24: Our Quarterly Meeting got a pep talk that implied that Christ-cen-    tered evangelism is a more powerful outreach than liberal do-gooding. When     our meeting joined the Sanctuary movement, we followed the Jews &  Unitarians.  

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            5/27: In pastoral counseling, the non-directive counselor’s act of accep-    tance & empowering attention is the Christ of the situation. [Carl Rogers began  in] a hard-working, rural, religious background, went through youthful missio-    nary idealism, lost his childhood faith during graduate studies & replaced it with  scientific humanism.  Experience in counseling swung him back toward faith in  relationships & an openness to “New Age” thought. I expect this sort of evolu-   
tionary spiral wasn’t uncommon in his generation. Younger persons have dif-   ferent backgrounds, with more urban, broken homes, & religion either defen-    sive or absent.       
       5/29: I have been preparing to straighten out the tangled subdivisions  of the Quakerism books in the meeting library. I need to make logical sense out  of the varieties of books by and about Quakers. [In the process] I get bogged     down in the odd lacunae of our haphazard card catalog. I have the affection     for this odd library that one might have for an eccentric old aunt.  
       June—6/5-7: [At Swarthmore College’s 50th reunion, I] hung around in     the background while everybody else greeted old friends & exchanged shared     experiences. I looked, as Elizabeth Vining has done, for a “congenial mouse,”     [which I found in] A. J. Muste’s daughter. [Another reminded me of Michael Po-    lanyi, a philosopher & physicist who combined religious & scientific wisdom in     his book Personal Knowledge. As someone sought the help of our library’s     resources on Quaker devotional writings, a figure of speech occurred to me     that we should all respect each others’ religious roots & appreciate our flowers.  We all departed amid raindrops, reminiscent of one classmate’s message like-    ning us to raindrops merging & disappearing in the ground of daily living.  
            6/20-6/23: Reading & discussion of possible Pendle Hill pamphlets can     stimulate my mind for days.  [In committee we considered “opposing” manu-    scripts; one declared sacraments scriptural, the other that they were not. One     wishes they had the courage to acknowledge their different spiritual needs.      Suburban families plan their sociability around homes and couples, singles     being odd people left out. I don’t seem to need [to be included right now]. I be-    long to a number of groups of poetry lovers, librarians, and editors.  
            Barry Schwartz, in The Battle for Human Nature, believes that “economic  man” of a free market has combined with B. F. Skinner’s “operant conditioning,”  to push society to conceive of everything, including people & relationships, as  commodities. It’s easier to describe the symptoms of this degenerative disease  than to prescribe a remedy. [However you arrive at it], you need a deep gut  feeling that some values are worth sacrificing for.  
            6/30: I revisited places at Haverford College that seemed haunted by     people and activities of Friends General Conference on Religion and Psych-    ology.  Now I am with a different group of mostly middle-aged women, [going     through workshop, banquets, retiring and incoming officers].  At reunion time     the weather was perfect.  At the end of June it had deteriorated into the usual     Delaware Valley steam bath.  
            July—7/8: There is drama in baseball, & more to it than wins or losses;  there is a strange ebb & flow of fortune that is the central mystery of human     affairs. How much of the final score is due to faith & how much to the quality of  the team? Like the practitioner of meditation, the player must find the perfect  mean between trying too hard & not trying enough; baseball can symbolize  life.     
       7/9: I was reading about the fragility of natural ecological systems & how  National Parks are destabilizing them in a well-intentioned effort to preserve  them. I was also noting tough, enduring weeds that manage to persist in the  web of railroad tracks near 30th St. Station. We might learn something from     studying the survival value of these unglamorous plants. The future may lie  with them.  

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           7/11: A long line of shredded bark on the trunk of the old cucumber tree  by the front entrance showed that it had been struck by lightning in a storm 2     nights ago.  I then saw half hidden in a bush a nest with the quivering, upthrust  necks of 3 nestlings within.  [Other wildlife has moved on], but I still see a     rabbit nibbling the grass in the mornings.
            7/15: The journal of a quiet life runs trivia.  My trivia combines a beau-    tifully cool and inviting day with the fact that I waited for a repair man who  never came. 
            7/16: Now I am connected to the world again. I felt helpless without a  phone [as I do without a car].  Once introduced, technology shapes society so  as to make itself indispensable. Ecologists now teach that to change one factor  is to transform the whole.  The mystics knew that we are of a seamless web,  what Eastern philosophers call Indra’s net.  
            7/18: I was shown a new baby.  I have never had the longing to have a     baby, nor would I wish to have the care of one. I am glad that I have known and  played with a few babies in my lifetime.  
            7/24: I read the delicate comedy of a Barbara Pym novel while my body  melted in the 90° heat of a service station. Perhaps it was only in observing the  trivia of parish doings that she could glimpse the unrealized promise of com-   
munity offered by the reticent English parishioners.  I returned home and read     Scott Peck’s The Different Drum, about generating true community, [at the     cost of commitment and possible martyrdom].  I wondered about us Quakers,    balanced between tepidity and transformation.  Perhaps our quiet insistence on  Light-gathered consensus and meditation will keep a gentle revolution going.  
       August 7 & 31—8/7: I’m reading Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn,  about 4 lonely single people about to retire from their boring jobs, quietly     withering away from loneliness. These people, 2 men & 2 women, find it hard     to break out of their British reserve to need or be needed by others. This gray,     depressing unconnectedness is from a society which has forgotten the art of     community. Even my sending birthday cards may serve as connection in this  world of encapsulated loners.  
       8/31: 2 TV programs in-a-row told of 2 different vanishing species    California condors & the celibate Shakers. Celibacy has little survival value     today; one hopes those who go into spiritual life won’t forget the value of  sublimation in directing energy toward hallowing our lives.  
      September—9/1: This Constitutional year is a good time to think about   the myths which people create to engender a sense of nationhood. How true     are these myths, these pictures, & are they necessary? We can’t embody  these aspirations until we accept the shadow side & go on from there.  
            9/12: I’ve attended a peace rally outside the National Guard Armory in  nearby Media against the covert war against Nicaragua. We listened to peptalks  that told us what we wanted to hear.       
          9/18: Is it farfetched to liken how we think about major purchases to  certain prayers? The approach to a purchase requires definition of what one     wants & this is shaped by what is available & affordable. For typing, I needed     something more than an electric typewriter, but less than full processing. With     a portable machine with enough memory & correction ability, I shall do these     tasks more cheerfully.  
            October—10/3: As I was preparing a program of the poetry of Vachel     Lindsay, I thought of the unexpected discovery that an elderly member of our     meeting knew Lindsay’s sister. He had followed Lindsay’s walking trip along the  Santa Fe trail in the 1940’s, taken pictures of an Old West little changed from  Lindsay’s day, and had met people who knew Lindsay and were bitter about the  causes of his suicide. 

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            10/12: I have survived the annual convulsion of our meeting known as  the Jumble Sale [and its boxes of dull, worthless, & heavy books].   
            10/18: The new typewriter’s memory rattled off the card set of a mem-    ber’s book. The book’s author is opposed to the “supernatural” element in reli-    gion & would put religion on a naturalistic basis. Yet a purely naturalistic religi-    on is one-sided. Religion speaks to what is more fundamental than nature. The  proper expression of its truths is in stories & parables. 
            10/25: Someone in worship today gave a brief summary of the natura-    listic interpretation of religion. [I saw loving-kindness demonstrated by mem-    bers who followed a troubled youth who left in the middle of worship]. Before I     could gather these thoughts, the meeting finished. Sometimes the balance 
of    the meeting tips toward rational-academic tendencies, sometimes towards   religious. “Secular” meetings need a religious few as “leavening,” & “religi-   ous” meetings need a few good agnostics as burrs under the saddle. As a    religiously-minded intellectual, I hope to remain as a bridge between the 2     tendencies in the meeting’s life.  
       10/31: I have been asked to lead an adult forum in January; already     ideas are coming together around the topic.  It occurs to me that this is the op-    posite of that kind of meditation which clears the mind of thoughts, becoming     a still mirror for the Light to shine on. I love the idea of meditation, but can’t     empty my mind. I seem to have found my native element in the mental sea of     rich coral growths and growing associations. So be it.  
            November 4 & 26—11/4: In Visiting Committee I found the context of     those birthday cards I sent out.  Visits are paid to the old and infirm & a [dis-    crete] eye is kept on the membership. The older women do it, & it is the ba-    lance to the more academic side of our meeting. [We “do not wish to intrude,”]     but have we not lost that sense the earlier Friends had of being spo
ken   through that gave them the authority to speak to someone’s condition     in a “religious opportunity?”        
       11/26: A feast day like Thanksgiving is an embarrassment to a family-    less person like myself. I was invited to dinner with a neighboring couple whose  children live far away and had no one else available except myself.  The 3 of us  shared the meal and a peaceful meal by the fireplace.  
            December 1-6—12/1: My display of library books sparked lively con-    versation at our coffee hour. One more scholarly member wondered: where is     the next generation of dynamic Quakers coming from? Last evening,     Douglas Gwyn spoke in measured, worshipful tones of Fox’s illumined life,     ending with James Nayler’s dying words. [During the following silent worship,     there was inspired vocal ministry & song]. We need the warm enthusiasm &     the cool disillusion embodied in these scholars to find our way between the  skeptical & the religious.  
            12/6: This morning an architect showed slides during his talk on archi-    tecture’s spiritual values. A succession of slides showed buildings in their set-    tings, from plain Vermont barns to Chartres Cathedral, including how the     rafters intersect under our meetinghouse’s porch roof. In brief glimpses of     beauty we “see into the life of things” [Wordsworth]. My past year has been     kind to me & I wouldn’t mind cloning it for several years. It ends hopefully     with the Reagan-Gorbachev summit. I have recorded a reflection of what
 has    been going on in my mind & as trivial as it may seem, my life is still interes-    ting. My message to the Angel of Death is: Don’t interrupt me!

6



288. Improvisation & Spiritual Disciplines: Continuing the Divine-      
   Human Duet (by Carol Conti-Etin; 1989)
       About the Author—Carol Conti-Entin found and joined Friends in Ann     ArborMichigan.  She has music degrees from Univ. of MIUniv. of Madison     and has taught at Lawrence University and the Symphony School of America,     as well as performing; she earned a degree in computer science in Maryland
       Introduction—When I attended my 1st meeting for worship, just before  my college studies got under way, I was relieved to find a form of worship which  seemed more natural to me than the Protestant church services of my child-    hood.  What unfolds seems to this former musician to be an improvisation on a  God-given theme.  One’s spiritual journey could be described as an improvisa-    tory duet with the Inner Guide.  
       The Inner Guide will gladly propose the variation appropriate to the life’s  theme.  [One description of an improvised duet is that one hears and one an-    swers throughout the piece].  [It can be like listening to music one is not pre-    pared to understand]. [Perhaps] something similar happened to the disciples     as they watched Jesus perform.  Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough     to hear & answer the Inner Guide’s next gesture and allow the duet to continue.
       Sabbath Observance—What is there in the concept of sabbath     which might be worth preserving? The word 1st occurs in connection     Yahweh’s provision of food to the Israelites during the Exodus.  From the very     1st, observing a sabbath has required trusting in Yahweh to provide what one     most needs, in the right quantity & when one needs it. [That includes one day a  week for] abstinence from work. Yahweh also insisted on sabbath-benefit     coverage not only for people & animals, but also for the environment, especially  the fields, which were to lie fallow. Each 50th year, the fields lay fallow, liberty  was proclaimed & property restored to its original owner.
       How did sabbath observance come to be mired in petty regulations?  [It  may be that others control time [and do not allow for sabbath rest].  For most of  us the lack of time is our own doing.  George Fox warned against:  “Drawing     your minds into your business, and clogging them with it; so that ye can hardly  do anything to the service of God but there will be crying ‘my business, my     business.”  [I have come up with creative solutions to work] just half time.      There still remains the temptation to take on more than my duet partner asks     of me.  Sabbath keeping came to be overregulated because it is so easy to     assign an extremely low priority to its observance and so difficult to trust that  turning over one’s anxieties to God is not only safe but more productive.  
       The author of the last section of Isaiah promised that those who brought  glory to the sabbath by not doing as they pleased would delight themselves in     Yahweh & ride on the heights of the earth. To delight ourselves in Yahweh must  be the essence of sabbath keeping, whenever & for however long it's observed.  Jesus, in rejecting the inflexibility of certain regulations, did not abandon the  underlying concept.  
       Sabbath & holy days typically found him in a synagogue of the temple,  and he withdrew from everyone after intensive periods of teaching and healing.   [To really] enter into sabbath observance, we must believe that it is possible to  enjoy God’s company and must long to do exactly that.  Why not offer your  duet partner [the Spirit] a daily time together and a much long, minimally     distracted “jam session” once a week? Then, listen to the new music that  comes of it.  
       Bible ReadingThe “Word of God is not the words contained within  the pages of the Bible but rather the logos as described at the beginning of the  4th gospel.  George Fox corrected a Nottingham priest who declared Scriptural  authority.  It was not that, George said, “but the Holy Spirit, by which the holy  men of God gave forth the Scriptures.  I had no slight esteem of the Holy     Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that spirit by which     they were given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterward found was  agreeable to them.” 
       How can one read the Scriptures, if one finds them irrelevant or  hurtful?  [The hurt I suffered was] solely of having lived my days on this earth     as a female. From the slight wounding I have received has sprung an aware-    ness of others’ more severe pain.  Should anyone who finds the Bible unin-    viting begin or resume a program of Bible reading? Not unless the Inner  Guide proposes such study. 
       After a decade of dormancy, I once again longed for an immediacy of  relationship with the immanent God.  The contents of the Bible have become     very precious to me because I have been in the company of that spirit by which  they were given forth.  There will come a moment when what someone else has  experienced and recorded resonates with what you have experienced.  Even-    tually it helps to read the entire Bible so that the passages which have come  alive will have a context.  [By the third reading of the Bible] I had seen similari-    ties between my own rocky spiritual journey & those of so many forthright peo-    ple in the Bible; far fewer passages seemed foreign.   
       I also found that all the English translations whetted my appetite for  studying the original languages, [the many] meanings for key words, & how     grammar, syntax, & vocabulary affected the perception of an event. [When I     read a passage, & before I apply it to today & myself, I need to as best I can     wear the sandals of the person or persons in the story, feel what they feel. This  will avoid reading in things that are not there, & overlooking crucial things that  are. Paint the scene; study it in a group; when a passage invites you to linger,  meditate on it. 
       Journal Keeping—William Penn wrote: “Thou didst omit to take up  Christ’s holy yoke, to bear thy daily cross; thou wast careless of thy affections &  kept no journal or check upon thy actions; but declinedst to audit accounts in  thy conscience with Christ thy light.” My early attempts at journal keeping had  been immensely frustrating ones. [I could not tolerate inconsistencies of feeling  from one week to the next, nor could I record anything unpolished]. 
       Months passed between entries. To learn how the individual bits of gui-    dance I had received fit together, I would have to ponder them in writing.  My     Inner Guide let me know that I had to write down [just] a short phrase of     thanks; this led to longer written ponderings]. [In comparing reflection to    music, the writing process is similar to composing music, & oral reflection is     similar to improvising it. My suspicion is that the more one both improvises &    composes, the thinner becomes the wall which separates them.  Also, recor-    ding a perception is like performing a piece, rather than merely reflecting on a   perception or “listening to a piece].” 
       When I was avoiding journal keeping, I wrote on slips of paper any     passage I wanted to spend time with; I also jotted certain insights in note form.   Among the things daily notes of thanks taught me were how reluctant I was to  give God credit for human invention and how often I belittled or overlooked the  talents I had been given and the small pleasures I had experienced.  [I also     briefly listed traits that were blocking my spiritual journey].  These 2 miniature     journal entries together occupying just one line of narrow-ruled notebook paper  per day, have helped me so much, that they continue to occupy a key section of  my journal.  If journal contents have as their deepest hope the development of a  compassionate nature, they will in time leave narcissism behind. 
       Another portion of the journal may record dreams, those in which God  offers immediate guidance & those which are requests for attention from one’s  subconscious. Dream aspects you are reluctant to record may portray your duet  partner’s latest efforts to lead you to a fuller integration of your total personality.  Unanswered questions may well become regular features in your journal, as     well as heartfelt emotions. The form is less important than the spirit which gives  it life; as long as a journal reflects a desire for transformation, it will serve well.
       Tithing—[There is a difference between tithing & the tithes George Fox  railed against]: “The Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians [once] cried     tithes were anti-christian … Then they all got into steeple-houses & tithes,     [saying they were the law of God]. They imprisoned & persecuted Friends     because we would not give them tithes, [seizing many goods, & making many  widows & orphans of the ones who died in prison]. 
       The earliest responses of tithing from Abraham and Jacob were done  out of gratitude for the blessings they received; tithing was intended to be a     joyful activity.  14 years ago I was startled to hear my duet partner asking me to  do precisely that.  Did I in fact own any or all of my income?  Tithing seemed  to occupy a natural place within the Quaker testimony of simplicity.  I discovered  that learning what to give away, what to keep, what to acquire and what to do  without was a vital part of the process of hearing and answering. 
       Physical objects turned out to be the least of my possessions. What the  Inner Guide said next was, “Tithe your time.”  The next possession was my     self-will.  But what would surrendering my self-will entail?  I was told to     put my instrument on the shelf and leave it there for an entire year.  I disco-    vered that I was no less a musician just because I had ceased practicing and     performing. Perhaps tithing is analogous to the warm-up exercise a musician     performs in order to place the body more fully at the service of the music.      [Tithing places me] more fully at God’s disposal; [God’s love then flows] through  me unselfishly to others.   
       Praying—There is quite a difference between reciting a prayer written  by someone else and praying spontaneously.  What expressed thoughts     hinder our spiritual growth, and how may we cultivate only those forms     of prayer which help us mature?  Prayer is an attempt to get ourselves into     that active cooperation with God where we may discern what is authentic and     be ready to carry it out.  Whenever we have earnestly desired to feel connec-    ted to the creator and creation we have been praying.
     It is important to pray to God in the 2nd person.  When praying in the 3rd   person, there is no longer an intimate connection.  And when duty has become  burdensome, when Boss’s yoke is no longer easy, then I know that I am the one  producing the source of friction.  [When the Spirit asks]: “Do you love me more  than these?” only when I can again answer “Yes” can I again lovingly feed  God’s  lamb.
       Any attempt on our parts, no matter how feeble to reverse a spiritual  downtrend is more than matched by God’s joyous welcome back. Non-verbal     forms of prayer span an entire spectrum from subtle feelings of gratitude to     concrete actions. If we count all the [subtle] prayers that are converted into     action, praying without ceasing comes to seem less exotic & far more attain-    able. Persistence in prayer is an automatic by-product of deep desire, not the     result of strenuous, self-propelled efforts. May our prayer become as natural     and indispensable as breathing. And may we experience the all-sufficiency of  the one with whom we are communing as we pray.


289. To Meet at the Source: Hindus & Quakers (by Martha Dart; 
        1989)
       About the Author—Martha Dart is a member of Claremont MM (CA)  and Pacific YM, and has been active in both for many years. She and her hus-    band have served as resident directors, Brinton Visitors and Friends in the     Orient in India.  Martha and Leonard have spent considerable time in India     over the Past 22 years, [some 4½ years in the form of] full years, several     summers, and 6 months in 1984.  Martha spent her time there “proceeding as  way opened.”  She became interested in similarities between Hindu and  Quaker thought.

      We all know the fruits of the Spirit, and recognize the beauty of holiness  in our own ancestral tree … The flowers of unselfish living may be found gro-    wing in other men’s gardens and … rich fruits of the Spirit may be tasted from  other men’s trees.      Marjorie Sykes     
       [Introduction]—[I have felt a deep sense of the Presence of God in: an  old California Mission; a large Hindu temple; the ruins of an ancient Sri Lanka     Buddhist Monastery; & an old Quaker meetinghouse in England. In India, the     spiritual dimension of life is felt in the atmosphere. The worship of God has     come down through the centuries there, & is still part of daily life today. I could  feel the peace & a kind of vibrant joy [in their worship]. 
       I will introduce some of the people most deeply involved in the Hindu-    Christian dialogue.  Dom Bede Griffith is a Benedictine monk who came to  India more than 30 years ago and helped found a monastery and a Christian     ashram.  Henri Le Saux became known as Swami Abhishiktananda.  He     shared the ashram with Bede Griffith and spent time as a hermit. He has been     trying to show how Hinduism and Christianity illuminate each other.  Sister     Vandana, an Indian Catholic sister, is a member of the Order of the Sacred     Heart. She spends 6 months of each year near the holy city of Rishikesh with a  saintly Hindu guru.  Raymond Pannikar born in Spain of a Catholic mother &  a Hindu father, grew up familiar with both Hindu and Christian scriptures.  He  wants Hindu philosophy to find place in Christian tradition.
       I expect that in reality all of these approaches are beyond dialogue.      From ancient times men and women have searched for God and for Truth.      Studying the Upanishads along with the inspirations of the Bible and early     Quakers, one finds that the Spirit has sent similar insights down through the     ages.  The Eternal Principle was incarnated in Jesus; early Quakers called it  the light of Christ.  The Upanishads called it Brahman.  
       Early Quakers believed that the Light was universal and that it was “the  true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.  Fox says: “Take  heed of judging the measure of others … there are diversities of gifts, but one  Spirit and Unity therein to all … Several ways … hath God to bring his people  our, yet all are but one in the end.” In the Meenakshi Temple at Madurai, an     observer will see large numbers of individuals, each immersed in their own puja  (worship).  
       [When we see the variety of worship & aspects of God], we might won-    der how Hinduism could have any similarity to Quaker thought and practice.      Gerald Kenway Hibbert said: “Every religious system has its ‘Quakers’—those     who turn from the outward, legal, and institutional and focus their attention on     the Divine that is within; [there is fellowship between Friends & other mystics].”  In my reading I found similarities between Hindu and Quaker thought, although  similarity is not equivalent to identity. The Pure Principle, the Light, Unity, Si-    lence, Simplicity and Guidance can be mutually appreciated.
       THE PURE PRINCIPLEThe sense of [divine] Presence was demon-    strated to us in India by Dr. Ghosh, a retired physician, whom we met while he  was directing the building of a new stretch of road around a landslide. He was     obviously loved and respected by the workers, and had a radiance in his     expression. He had decided to help his people in as many ways as he could:  farming; village industries; orphanages; prisoner rehabilitation; general health.  
       Dr. Ghosh said: “What we worship, we become.”  The Upanishads say:   “Let one … keep the mind pure, for what a man thinks that he becomes: this is  the mystery of Eternity” (Maitri), and “There is a Spirit which is pure and which  is beyond old age and death [and suffering]. This is Atman, the Spirit in Man”  (Chandogya). [Although Dr. Ghosh and his wife worshiped God differently than  Quakers], the essence of their worship transcended all outward manifestations.   John Woolman wrote: “There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human  mind, which in different places and in different ages hath had different names     . . .  It is deep and inward, confined to no form of religion nor excluded from  any,  where the heart stands in perfect sincerity.”
       THE LIGHT—The Pure Principle has led both Quakers and Hindus to     the experience of the Light, expressed by Fox’s Epistles and the Upanishads.   “There is a Light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond  the heavens … This is the Light that shines in our hearts” (Chandogya Upani-    shad).  “Each man, woman, and child who sets himself to obey the promptings  of truth and love is making use of the Inner Light, by whatever name” (Fox).     The Inner Light as a symbol evolved in Vedic times (1500 B.C. – 500 B.C.).      By the time of the Upanishads, the Divine Spirit was given the name of Light    and interiorized.
       Light as a feature of heightened awareness is common to mystical ex-    periences of all religions. [Friends throughout Quaker history report “visions of  light,” experienced when awake.  Howard Brinton includes them in “Dreams of     Quaker Journalists.”  Thomas Kelly writes: “It is an overwhelming experience to  fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being  by God’s presence … Then is the soul swept into a Loving Center of ineffable  sweetness, where calm and unspeakable and ravishing joy steal over one.”     Damaris Parker-Rhodes said that the Power of Christ appeared to her as “the  Incarnated Light streaming from the incredible Light and Energy Centre (which  is the Love of God) that pours into every creature and into creation as its real   life … The power of the spirit is becoming more available because the earth       has need for it.”
       UNITY—Swami Chidananda, an orthodox Hindu says: “Jesus dwelt in     the awareness of saying ‘I & my Father are one’—the fundamental truth of the     oneness of the life of the Vedas … [&] the Upanishads.” Whenever individuals     respond to the Light, they have unity with each other [in] “the fellowship of the     Light.” John’s gospel says: “In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was     with God, & the Word was God. The Vedas say: “In the beginning was [Brah-    man]; With whom was the Word; And the word was the Supreme Brahman.”
       Gradually Cosmic Power was no longer identified with ritual but with At-    man. In the last book of Rig Veda, Atman means “breath” or “life.” In the Upa-   nishads, Atman means “self” or “soul.” Abhishiktananda says that both John     and the Upanishads consist of “a succession of intuitions, each leading to the     next by some mysterious and secret inner connection beyond the reach of con-   ceptual logic, a sequence of piercing insights each drawing us more deeply    into the abyss of the Godhead.”
       There are 2 main streams of thought in Hinduism: Advaita [“not 2”] and  Bhakti [relationship of 2]. Bhakti literature shows deep devotion.  Thomas     Kelly’s writing is especially close to the Bhakti tradition.  He says: “Deep within  us all there is an inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Centera    speaking Voice … to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our     hearts, pressing upon our time-worn lives, warming us with intimation of an     astounding destiny,  calling us home unto Itself.”
       SILENCE—“Out of the silence will come the vision and the voice.” We  Friends are used to cherishing the background of silence in our meeting for     worship and are accustomed to a particular procedure involving silence. Most     meetings for worship we attended in South India were deep ones [in spite of the  noise].  One had to go below the distractions to find inner silence.  A back-    ground of silence and peace can be felt in India.  One of the main aspects of     Indian spirituality is power of silence as a means of communication. Sister     Vandana spoke of the deep impact made on her by those gurus who taught by  silent discourse.  Eventually seekers feel a special Presence with themselves,  outpouring from the Source in silence; they feel a serenity of spirit.
       SIMPLICITY—We had an experience of “reentry” once when we re-    turned to the United States. [Compared to what we had become use to, there  was an overabundance of “all the comforts of home”]. In a small tea stall in     India, we had a restful, comfortable, and simple experience, with only the bare  minimum of “creaturely comforts,” & an abundance of simplicity.  A westerner     is apt to confuse Indian simplicity with poverty.  [There is real poverty], but there  is also much that appears to be poverty to western eyes which is really only     the absence of those things that we in the West feel are necessary to our well-    being.
       We were entertained by a college physics professor dressed in a cloth     wound around the waist and women in simple, colorful cotton saris.  We ate a     vegetarian meal off of banana leaves that were recycled afterwards. We dis-    cussed Indian classical music and Sanskrit epics.  Simplicity is the way of life     in India. With more time spent enjoying simple comforts, and less energy     spent on self-indulgence, the resulting serenity of spirit is one of the aspects     of Indian life that we miss most on returning to the US
       [Thomas Kelly has this to say about simplicity]: “Walk and talk and work  & laugh with your friends. Behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer     and inward worship … There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than     one level at once. [We may deal with everyday] external affairs on one level     [while] at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration … and a     gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.” Tukaram, 16th century poet, says:     “When thou art plunged in hurrying activity,/ Then, then preeminently,/ Thou     must remember God/  Then, in the midst of busy work, Keep thou thy secret  heart fixed firm on him.”
       GUIDANCE—Doesn’t this all lead to guidance, the experience of being  led? Kuni & Laurie Baker had been following the Spirit’s leading ever since their  honeymoon in the Himalayas, where they saved the life of a baby, & stayed     there for 16 years, starting with a tiny tea house & expanding into a hospital that  Laurie built. Another Friend was led to share with Dr. Sanjeeva Raj, a person  they were only slightly acquainted with, about demonstrating cyclone-proof  housing. Sanjeeva Raj guided us to the place where the project was finally     started.
       Gurdial Mallik spent his life—long before he became a Hindu Quaker as  well as after—following the leading of the Spirit.  [He went to a strange home     without knowing why, saved a young woman from hanging herself, and helped  her get the necessary nurse’s training in spite of her high-caste family’s  opposition].
       William Edmundson (1627-1712) [had conflicting concerns, one for  going back to his shop to prevent it being robbed, the other to go on to Clough  for some unknown service]. “I cried to Lord … and his word answered me     that that which drew me back should preserve my shop … When I came into     the house I found Anne Gould in despair … [she] revived for joy and glad-    ness, and got up … the tender woman was helped over her trouble.”  He     found out later that robbers tried to rob his shop but the shop window had  fallen down and awakened people and the robbers had run away. 
       Sister Vandana was about to spend her sabbatical year in the US, when  she felt led by God to spend time sitting at the feet of a saintly Hindu guru in the  holy city of Rishikesh. She gained experiential knowledge of Hindu traditions  that she shared in the dialogue that goes to the Source. [As for Quakers],     Alastair Heron says: “To the extent that, as individuals & as meetings, our lives,  our decisions & our actions are no longer consciously & single-minded intended  to be based on the guidance of the Spirit of God, we have squandered our  inheritance.”
       IS OUR GOD TOO SMALL?—This living Presence that one feels in     places of worship the world over is the same Spirit that guides us in the living of  our lives, the same Pure Principle.  It is in the silence that we most deeply feel  the Presence of God and open ourselves to God’s leading. We learn from India  that leading a more simple life gives us more time to spend in silence and more  serenity of spirit to respond to it.
            God is beyond—and beyond—and beyond—beyond creed, beyond the  limitations of our reason and textbooks, beyond in the dimension within. We     Friends might ask ourselves: Is our God too small? It is all the more important  for the religions of the world to illuminate each other so that our combined Light  can lead us and help us find ways to deal with the oppression [of people and  the earth].  [World religions are] “fellow wayfarers engaged in common search.” 
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290. Quaker Money (by S. Francis Nicholson; 1990) 
            About the Author—S. Francis Nicholson was a born to an Indiana     family in 1900; he graduated from Westtown School, Earlham College, and     Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He worked 41 years at     Provident Trust Co. (Provident National Bank). His personal concern has     been the care and management of Quaker funds. For 60 years, he has held    financial management responsibilities for individuals and organizations [e.g].  Fiduciary Corporation of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (FCPYM).
            INTRODUCTION—My hope is that Friends will contemplate Francis  Nicholson’s common-sense approach sufficiently to see the Quaker sense be-    neath it. Serious researchers will discover that this common sense is very un-    common. I hope readers will find a stimulating mix of Quaker sense of life and     an experienced, competent, professional voice. I studied economics & religion     and became curious about Quakers. I got caught up in the mysteries of an     economic system that had failed, and in doing something about the ethics of  our society. 
            Then came Francis Nicholson, who offered me a job in the Provident     Bank and thus gave me a chance to see Quakers at work in the real world. I     worked in minor ways with prominent Quakers on their financial matters. I was     impressed with how they honored the minor details of work with care and     respect for others. Francis showed me that conscience can be applied to the     routine tasks of making a living. We had long discussions about the American     Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the role of pacifists in times of war. I     later realized I was enrolled in a random course in Friends’ testimonies. We     would go spend leisure time at his home. 
            There was an appealing integrity in this Quaker’s life at work, home, &  play. Nicholson’s reflections come from a long, involved life that has held toge-    ther the sacred & secular. Avoiding the trap of false dichotomies between God     & Mammon is a challenge to all people of conscience. The breadth of his con-    cern reveals a Quaker sense of the whole of life. I hope we will all take a look      at how we look at money. I trust that we will appreciate his witness of compe-   tence not in conflict with conscience, but joined to it in service of Truth.       Andrew R. Towl
            Where does Quaker Money come from and Where does it Go?—My  personal reflections are in response to certain questions including the one     above. [I will present the others in turn as headings]. We like to think that most  Quaker money comes from constructive, useful work or from honest trade     practices. In earlier times many operated their own farms, businesses, or     financial activities [on both sides of the Atlantic]. In this 20th century there is     more dependence on salaries, which may result in comfortable living but not in  large capital buildup.
            In the last ½ of the 20th century, appreciation in land & security value, &  inheritances have been the basis for many large gifts & bequests to Friends     meetings & activities. Quaker activities have often received support from non-    Quakers with the belief that funds would be handled & disbursed with care &     sensitivity. Gifts, grants, & bequests have been made for purposes revolving  around meetinghouses, education, social & missionary concerns. 
            Many meetings have received moderate bequests of funds to care for     their properties. I question the desirability of capital funds being established to     meet ordinary meeting expenses; individual members should be involved in     fulfilling this responsibility. I believe that capital funds for foreign missions     have been modest in amount. Educational purposes account for a large por-    tion of Quaker gifts & bequests. Friends want attention in schools not only to     academic standards but to attitudes of teachers & students that reflect the     worthwhile values inherent in Friends testimonies. Comparison [with the     spending in other schools] isn’t wrong, but I fear their having too much overt     or subtle influence on decisions that [tend toward enrollment by high-income  families].

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            The extent of Quaker education seems large in relation to the few Qua-    kers there are in this country & the world. A few students become Friends as a  result of their school experience. Pendle Hill is an unusual special-purpose     school that has received gifts for endowment recently. Will adequate funds be  available in an inflationary age or a recession?      How should trust funds  for “poor” children be applied?      Should a program be dependent on     subsidies & scholarships?      Can an environment of Quaker values be     maintained? The large amounts of money required for publication come from  sales, individual gifts, Friends meetings, and endowments.
            For social concerns, efforts have been made to improve conditions for  prisoners, mentally ill persons, black people, coal workers, native Americans,     Japanese-Americans, and others. Since 1917, AFSC has channeled the efforts  and money of Friends and non-Friends toward many areas of need and the     problems of injustice. Many older social action committees are no longer able     to function; some have been consolidated with the Fiduciary Corporation of  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. 
            Beginning around 1970, continuing care retirement communities were  established near Philadelphia; subsequent creation of such communities has     occurred in other areas and there are current plans for still more. The concern     for ill persons has led many Friends to be physicians and has resulted in the     establishment of hospitals and well-equipped old-age facilities. Quaker em-    ployees have pension funds, considered by them as a contractual right. There     can be a relationship between all the activities mentioned above and the spiri-    tual values of life. Whatever the total value controlled by Quakers, what matters  is that we try to understand the meaning of money and property with respect to  human welfare & try for the best insight as to how to meet our responsibilities. 
            What is the Meaning of Money?—Money is among the best and most  necessary tools ever invented. It is a medium of exchange, measuring/storing  value, borrowing & lending, debt /tax payment, investment, inheritance transfer,  and charity. The value of money is completely dependent on people’s lives and  activities being interrelated. On the bad side of money, it provides a temptation  to activate many of the worst human instincts. Economic, political, and social  pressures cause money to be created in excessive amounts, creates inflation  and injustices. [Quakers struggle with] evaluating the need for money while  realizing that final solutions require changes in the hearts of people. [Money is  neither a cure-all nor] the root of all evil. 
            In a time of high money rates no one likes idle money, & the use of credit  cards proliferates. The money system has become [increasingly &] fantastically  more complex & hopefully more efficient [with more use of electronic trans-    actions]. Increased “security” has become another human need for which peo-    ple pay much money to various government agencies or private insurance     companies. I see problems ahead in rising insurance costs, in their effect on     various costs, & inflation. There’s also the Social Security trust fund’s depen-    dence on bonds issued to finance federal deficits. Security may properly be     sought to the extent that money can buy it sensibly and prudently; security     shouldn’t become an obsession. Using money to buy security can be cost  ineffective. 
            The money cost of security goes far beyond insurance premiums.     There is police and fire protection, federal law-enforcement, the CIA and the     military establishment. Many Quakers would agree that the CIA and the military  provide neither an effective nor a moral basis for feeling secure. It is worthwhile  & less costly to try to prevent mistakes and misdeeds through things like edu-   cation rather than to deal with them after they occur.

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            It is interesting and regrettable that money, instead of being looked on     as a useful tool, is widely regarded as a separate commodity and its owner-    ship as an end in itself. There are too many institutions, government and pri-    vate programs whose principal commodity is money. Security markets have    expanded beyond their useful & normal actions to an excess in accommoda-    ting speculation. My endeavor is to concentrate on the sound value charac-    teristics of securities more than on their speculative possibilities. 
            The free-market money system works well most of the time, but there      are too many exceptions in which executives & directors are paid excessively or  merger manipulators receive outrageous fees. Fees should be above average  when problems are difficult & well below average for minor problems. I believe  that there should be questions about any extremes that develop in an economy  [e.g.] athletes, musicians, politicians, surgeons, lawyers. The goal of social and  economic stability can sidetracked by too much distortion of business practices,  especially those involving money. People are compensated by a sense of:  congenial association with co-workers; uplifting creative experiences; gratifica-    tion of productive usefulness; pride in performance.
            In the supermarket, I see many relatively fixed prices—some of them  fair & others obviously above the cost of production. Except for monopoly con-    trol, compulsory price fixing rarely succeeds. Perhaps the early Quaker con-    cern for fair pricing [could be applied to current prices or compensation     received]. [The desire for ever-increasing amounts of money in families]     seems characteristic of real life. Few people set a cap on the amount they     want, even though their needs are amply provided for. Social problems arise     from extreme mal-distribution of wealth beyond the limits of social morality;  there are widely different opinions as to what is “too much.” 
            It should be realized that even generous givers may be alienated by     solicitations that appear to be too frequent, costly, or impersonal. It would be     ideal if meeting members took the initiative with their contributions without any     need for solicitation. There should be a contrarian on each board or committee  to raise spending questions. Those who work for it may understand the value  of money better than others who receive it without personal effort. 
            When someone wins a $50 million lottery, I wonder how many had the     thought that the lifework of 50 people had been transferred to one and how     wrong that was. Sound money should have stable value that changes within     very narrow limits. Part of the blame for inflation rests on ordinary people who  speculate, borrow excessively, spend beyond our means, and “learn to live  with” inflation that destroys 4% to 5% of the value of money and wages each  year, greatly affecting the less privileged in our society. The value of Quaker  funds has been maintained by holding common stocks or real estate  properties. 
            What is the Motivation for Quaker Gifts and Bequests?—The     amount of any single contribution depends on the depth of the concern and     the degree of conviction that the gift will be efficiently applied to accomplish its    purpose. Gifts should seldom be influenced by expectations of thanks or gra-    titude from Friends meetings or other organizations. Donors should thank or-    ganizations for carrying out the purpose of their concern. 
            Some Quakers are concerned to foster a feeling of stewardship, so that  resources are administered responsibly. They think of resources as belonging   to a kind of trust. I believe it is wrong to encourage the “dues” concept in     meeting by announcing precisely what each member costs the meeting; ave-   rages can lead to distorted reasoning. Giving from a sense of duty is not an    ideal attitude, but it is not wrong. It is impractical to expect all gifts to be based     on strong, carefully thought-out concerns.

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            I have mixed feelings about fundraising. I sometimes question the costs  of solicitation, pressure methods, and playing games with the giving process;     employers matching the gifts of their employees is acceptable. Many donors     seem to act in the belief that Quaker procedures provide careful handling of     money and good judgment in applying funds in ways consistent with Friends’     ideals. Each donor can learn from personal experience whether he or she be-    lieves “it is better to give than to receive.”
            It is interesting that the IRS’s rules are needed to bring out our best in-    stincts for charitable giving; tax-savings can be substantial. There may be an     advantage to making lifetime gifts in place of bequests. Friends are increa-    singly motivated to arrange for deferred giving plans. If there is no pooled fund  or if gifts of real estate are contemplated, a unitrust can be the best way to  proceed for amounts greater than $25,000 for donors 65 years old or older.  There can be a further major tax advantage if pooled life-income funds or  unitrusts are given low-cost securities or low-cost real estate. 
            Donors should not give money and property that are likely to be needed  later for support of themselves or their families. Quakers are motivated by a     wide variety of ideas about taxes; some conscientiously refuse “war taxes”;     some minimize income; some conscientiously pay. Is paying taxes a volun-    tary act, or a transfer of money that does not really belong to the tax-    payer? Since taxes have to be paid, is there any reason for not being gra-    cious in the way the obligation is recognized? There may be more money  available for the real concerns of giving if tax matters are prudently planned. 
            What are the Fiduciary or Trust Aspects of Quaker Gift & Be-     quests?—Meetings & other Quaker organizations generally delegate respon-    sibilities for endowments to committees & trustees. My own experience has     been with FCPYM, an independent group created by PYM to handle its own     capital funds & the funds of other Quaker organizations in the Philadelphia     area; several funds have been accepted from distant areas. FCPYM manages    a very large amount of investments for over 100 different Quaker groups; it is     trustee for an increasing number of trusts. Different funds are allocated units  in a single large “consolidated” investment fund. 
            Any trustee for Quaker funds is obligated to maintain accurate accounts,  separating principal & income & disclosing how much is available for each fund  purpose. Trustees should avoid conflict of interest & to avoid using trust assets  or income for ulterior purposes inconsistent with the trust’s purposes. Quaker  trustees & project managers should accept a high standard of trust responsibi-    lity & carry out the donor’s directions. Trustees shouldn’t condone wasteful    practices just because ample moneys are available. A fiduciary should apply      funds in ways close to the [now-outdated] purpose of a fund, & verify that   funds are being properly used by the designated organization. Income should   seldom  be converted to principal; funds are expected to be used for charity. 
            It is unwise to burden managers with many separate capital funds to     manage. Records of each fund’s value should be kept after they are combined.  Perpetual trusts should be avoided in favor of some time limitation, even though  it be a long time. Donors should allow for restrictions on fund use to be waived  or modified in times of crisis. The option of spending of 3 to 5% of the principal  after the donor’s death, at the trustee’s discretion could be authorized. The  donor should trust their fiduciary & not use a lot of narrow restrictions. 
            Using “desire” or “wish,” rather than directives will avoid future problems  with bequests that no longer serve their designated function. Trusts shouldn’t     be set up to accumulate substantial income. No one can leave more to society    than one owns at ones death. Trusts should be supported by a document of     wishes and directions. Additions to existing funds are simple; new, separate     funds require more elaboration. The Society of Friends [concern] is to chan-    nel money to right purpose but not let it become the dominant goal. Spiritual     life is not always nurtured by riches.

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            What Understanding Should a Quaker Investor or Trustee have  about Business Principles and the General Economy?—Expertise in fund     management requires: understanding money, investment, and economic pro-    cess relationship; understanding investment analysis; knowledge of security  markets; combining preceding understandings with clear thinking. 
            I define economics simply as: A social science that deals with the own-    ership of money and property; with the production, financing, transportation,     and ultimate use of goods and services intended to meet the real or imagined     needs of people. An economic system’s parts are interrelated; it must operate     with some degree of efficiency to meet needs and improve quality of life. A    Quaker investor’s concern is about efficient production of useful goods and     services. There is a temptation in seeking capital gains, to lapse into an     attitude of gambling, questionable ethics, and business dangers.
             Some buyers emphasize growth stocks, which can result in substantial  loss, if predicted growth doesn’t continue. Some investors buy stock in long     established, “blue chip” stock; returns are good as long as the stock isn’t     bought at high prices. Some investors are easily influenced by what others     seem to be doing, when the best business judgments are often contrary to     what others are thinking. An investor should think primarily of real value in     relation to price.  Emphasis on low price-earnings ratios is generally rewarding    from a business standpoint.
            Present-day business [practices and market “gimmicks”] threaten the  legitimate purpose of security markets. I believe that investment decisions     should always be subject to [a close] relationship between real value and mar-    ket value. There should be caution not to carry on excessive trading, which     can be costly & take away the recognition of securities as real investments,     rather than just pieces of paper. A manager should try to cope with the dilem-   ma of deciding between conservative, fixed-rate bonds & profitable, variable,     risky  stock investments.
            Enormous amounts are involved daily in buying & selling foreign cur-    rencies, partly for constructive purposes, & partly to speculate on short-term     changes in value. The instability from political, military, & social pressures     cause deficits, cheapens money & encourages global speculation. Quaker     funds have investments in other countries. Investing is dominated by profes-    sional managers of pension trusts, mutual funds & other institutions. An indivi-    dual investor is at no disadvantage if decisions are made based on sound     value & on a long-term basis. 
            What Ethical Principles are Important with Regard to Money  Investments, and Business?—In considering the moral aspects of money,     investments & business, I will mention several areas Quakers have focused on:  Integrity (e.g. honesty, truthfulness, justice); Creative Achievement (actual     accomplishments, efficient production of useful goods and services); Simplicity  of Life Style (less consumption of materials, time, energy, and money, and less  strain on the environment, less waste); Stewardship (looking upon their money  as a kind of trust to be administered responsibly for the good of others and  themselves).
            Investments—They are like people in that they are seldom 100% good  or bad. I focus on production of useful goods & services, carried on with inte-    grity, efficiency, and right relations between employers, employees, customers,  and community. I give credit for the creation of needed jobs and a genuine     interest in the community’s and the world’s welfare. I have made many deci-    sions to sell or avoid investments in companies substantially involved with     intoxicants,  tobacco, gambling, excess speculation, and military contracts.

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            Involvement of 20% or more in questionable products or practices is  usually deemed substantial. 10 to 20% involvement in seriously wrong things     or ways may be enough to not invest. Questionable involvement of less than     10% is approached as being overshadowed by the good. I caution against de-   cisions dependent on precise mathematical figuring. Scrutiny of the [more  subjective] plus and minus factors is necessary.
            South Africa (1% involvement there is not enough for an adverse      judgment; using coercion is not an appropriate trustee action, or in keeping     with the Quaker message); The General Economy (excessive competition,     greed, and injustice make it a questionable system; Quakers can work to     change things ); Excesses and Ethics (normal and proper activities like ex-    pansion, borrowing, competition, salaries can be carried past healthy limits;      obsession with growth leads to an excess of merger, conglomerates and     dangerous speculation. Is the business growth I seek an ethical goal? Do I     value and seek economic stability enough?
            Lending and Borrowing—I believe there are limits to the total amount     of debt that can be supported by a regional, national, or world economy. The     1980’s have produced an unbelievable burden of debt in government and     business. There is something ethically wrong [with business expansion and     ownership based on] the excessive use of loan money. Tax deductions for loan  interest may partly cause excessive amounts of loans. 
            Money Coercion—I’m one of those Quakers who regard widespread     boycotts & embargoes against countries as warfare or violence inconsistent     with the Quaker contribution toward mediation, persuasion, & conflict reconcil-    iation. I believe those who behave ethically in business may achieve success     in both business & ethics. If both can’t be attained, more peace of mind     arises from success in ethics. I believe that waste, excessive borrowing,     speculation, inflation, & economic coercion are more serious evils than is     generally recognized. If events in the investment world are viewed in a com-    monsense relation to soundness & high quality of life & environment, useful        business & ethical distinctions can be made between the good & the ques-     tionable in handling money.    

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291. Prayer in the Contemporary World (by Douglas V. Steere; 
        1990)
       About the Author—Professor emeritus of philosophy at Haverford Col-    lege where he taught from 1928-64, Douglas Steere is a noted author of:     Prayer and Worship, On Beginning from Within, and Work & Contemplation.      He has carried out many missions in EuropeAfrica, the Middle EastIndia    Japan for the American Friends Service Committee.  He writes:  “I have     always believed that interior prayer is to religion what original research is to     science.”  These 30  personal prayers were written at the end of Vatican     Council II (1966).

      [Prayer: Qualities, Functions, Method]
      O God, we thank thee for the honest doubts and criticism of those who  blister our clumsy efforts at prayer with their fiercely honest attacks.  May that     which is phony and specious and egocentric in our prayers be seared away by  these helpful blasts. Cleanse, cauterize, and cut away that which separates us  from Thee and from our fellows, and give us Thyself and the open way into the  hearts of those with whom we live.
       What is being attacked in the charges against prayer [as being     superstitious, autosuggestion, & pietistic]? Are they being leveled against  high prayer or on low forms of prayer that masquerade [as prayer]?     [Prayers warding off danger or compelling success are superstitious. Autosug-    gestion & self-centering is a logical place to start in prayer; true prayer does     not end there & seldom does]. The case against prayer [will] cleanse true     prayer of its shadows & compel it to show its truest face.
       O God, rouse my dispersed spirit from its stupefied torpor.  Wake the     sleeper in me and kindle such a fire in my heart that I shall never be content     with anything short of Thee.  Re-light in me the flame of a steady life of prayer.    O God, keep open, keep open, my mind, my heart, my soul.
       Simeone Weil became an apostle of France's spiritual life after World  War II.  At the heart of her insights is her definition of prayer as attention.     Prayer is awakeness, attention, intense inward openness.  Sin is anything     that destroys this attention.  Prayer is naturally attention to the highest thing I   know.  God can  only disclose the Divine whispers to those who are attending.
     O God from whom I came, how prone I am to think that I am self-initiated and self-propelled and self-sufficient.  As I gather myself in prayer, may I ever begin by recalling what is going on, what it is costing, and why I have forgotten.  My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. 
       When I pray, the most important thing of all is that I shall come into a  deep inward realization of what is really taking place in the cosmos.  God is the  lover besieging the soul of every man and woman that comes into this world.   This redemptive love can reconcile any separation, any dissonance, any mal-    formation.  “I came from God. I belong to God. I return to God.”
       O God, I come to you not alone but in the midst of this tattered company  [of distractions].  This is the kind of being I am, Lord, and the kind of compa-    nions I flock with, and the kind of world I inhabit.  Give us your blessing, O  friend of my soul, and draw us into the tendering warmth of your presence. 
       When I settle down to pray, I am always aware of distractions, [outer  noises and inner, spiritual distractions].  If one resents these distractions, fights  them, resists them, and tries to drive them out of one’s mind, one is lost.  I     acknowledge them as part of my world and my life, and then gently move on in  to greet and be greeted by the Giver of Love.  It is the hallowing of the husk of  my life that the Lord desires.
       O God who hast carried us when we knew it not, and who faithfully     seeks us when we are yet afar off, lay on us a ministry of intercession for     others, [and thus bring] us down into the very matrix of  Thy yearning for souls     and make us members of the great chain of redemptive love that girdles our     world for its healing. 
       When I touch the heart of prayer, I touch the lives of others, for in some  mysterious way, we are all interconnected in the life of God.  When I pray for     another, my intention of bringing the soul of my friend, or of some situation in     the world, or of warding off some threatening disaster is [purified], lifted out of     its frame and used.  Brothering, [sistering] the souls of [all] is the most social     act there is.  There is no richer area for exploration. 

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       O God, help me to want what I really want to do and strip from me the  reservations and hesitations which [block my service to you].  Kindle in me such  a flame that I shall be swept into thy service.  Snip the leash that I am always  retying and draw me into the self-spending life of thy human servants.
       The tragedy of postponed obedience is a tragedy in the life of each of  us.  Prayer is a great quickener of the heart; nothing can draw me more readily  toward swiftness, fervor, and agility than a season of prayer.  There is such a  strange disequilibrium in the human heart between what it really wants to do     and what its surface wants may twist it into performing; in prayer the deep want  is restored, [and we become available]. 
     O God my inward teacher, my kindler and sustainer, my hidden com-    panion and the love of my life, forbid me from settling for a life of uncollected     dispersion.  Quicken my inward ears that I may hear the pulses of the divine     whisper and live as one who walks through the dream of life as one awake. 
       Planned, [self-conscious] prayer is only a means to an end, which is a      more continual state of prayerfullness or openness that goes on through the   day and through the night.  This is what is meant by those like Frank Laubach   and Thomas Kelly who talk of praying continually. [When “God’s whisper”] is       in eclipse, the knowledge that it has been buoys me up and gives me faith        that it will be again.  Isaac Penington said: “There is that near you  which will  guide you. O wait for it and mind that you keep to it.”
       [God Speaks …]
       O My [Creator, I do not ask for wounds for I have many already.  But I     have not listened to find what, on such occasions, you have had to tell.  Open     my inward ears and bring me up out of the basement of over-activity and     preoccupation into the chamber where I may hear thy word and respond to it.   
       The basement [where we cannot hear “Jesus knocking”] is so expres-    sive  of the human condition as we know it today, that it seems for many to take  shattering experiences to rouse them to what is going on.  W.H. Auden writes:    “It is where we are wounded that God speaks to us.”  For some of us it is only     in the depths of suffering that we seem open enough to listen to what God has  to say  to us. 
       O God, whose hand is upon me in times of strength & prosperity & in  times of weakness & brokenness, may my senses’ threshold be lowered until I  may bid thee  cross & enter & give me guidance. Lay upon me the burden of     the world’s need & the world’s suffering that I may be ready to see & minister     to it with all [my strength].
       In Bernard of Clairvaux’s (12th century) On Consideration, he guides a  fellow Cistercian brother on how to bear the prosperity & power that became his  as Pope Eugenius III. Bernard points out that his friend would be tempted to let  the busyness of duties blot out his time for consideration (listening for deep     wisdom).  Those who have power & authority are not removed from God’s  communication if they do not cut themselves off.
       Oh God, if I resist Thee or draw beyond the sweep of today’s wave of     thy compassion, O keep sweeping ever higher, O Lord, until I am no longer     reluctant to accept thy invitation to move into the deeps of thy ocean and into     the new to which thou has bidden me.
       There are times when we come to the plateaus and when we do not  seem to be able to get beyond.  Certain things need to die before others can     be born.  [Sometimes we have to step back from our chosen path, “rest on a     bench,” and wait for a new wave of release to come and restore our creativity].    Plateaus need not be permanent or final if we are open for a disclosure of  God’s further landscape.
       O God who has spoken to us through the Bible and other great books,  help us to have the appetite and the capacity for discernment that will lead us     to expose ourselves to books and find in them the word that is meant for us at     that moment.  Speak thy word to us as we read, and give us grace as a listen-    er who listens and hears.

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       Meeting with a book which has a message in for us may be decisive in     speaking to our condition.  [A book may inspire someone to lead a life that may  in turn inspire others].  Often the decisive book has been the Bible as was the  case with Augustine and Francis of Assisi.  Books & the written word are often     God’s vehicles for speaking to us if we are prepared inwardly and are ready to     listen to and ask for their message to us.
       O God whose burning life flows in our veins, may we in the blaze of thy  grace be open for all that thou givest us by night as well as by day and be     attentive to find in them the message of thy surging life for our instruction. May  we be made more open for their instruction.
       There are times when God speaks to us in a dream; the Bible has many  such stories; [they speak to us of where to go and where not to go].  [Carl     speaks along with the Gospels and the Pauline teaching, saying] that unless     the unconscious has embraced the new way of life, it can never be more than a  veneer.  A dream ignored is like an unopened letter that has been neglected.     
       O God, we thank thee for the gift of friendship and for the mutual kind-    lithat such a gift may bring.  Lift the level of our friendships and make us wil-    ling to be the kind of a friend in which this tie may be a thin point in the mem-    brane  through which thy word may touch us both.
       God often speaks to us through a friend.  Friends can shield us against  God’s true invitations because they have made the same compromises, or they  can be emissaries of God in that they confirm in us the deepest longings we     have already had and give us courage to respond to them.  Rufus Jones was     inspired by and along with John Wilhelm Rowntree to rekindle the Society of      Friends life for the service of the world.
     O God, how little we realize that the poor in my generation may be able to  open my own poverty and encourage me to rejoin the human race.  O living     God, pour through the newly opened arteries of our common life and wipe out     all distinctions as we speak to one another’s need.
       Is it conceivable that Jesus saw that the way to touch any society  was at its Achilles heel, by serving the group whom it wanted to hide from  its sight?  It reaches to the quick of that society, touches it, and opens it to its  own condition.  Can we discover a mutual ministry to one another when     this bloodstream of our common humanity is restored?  Yes God does  speak to us in the poor.   
       [Unlimited Liability …]
       O God, I accept myself, the unacceptable, because thou hast accepted  the acceptable, and without further fuss or feathers I mean to get on with this  unattractive roommate and with thy help spend him in thy service.
     The responsibility to accept all has a difficult catch in; [it includes self-    acceptance]. It is a perfect act of love to God to accept ourselves & to put this  scarred & wearisome fellow into God’s hands & get on with the work to be     done. Unlimited liability may have to begin by laying aside self-hate or the wish  to be someone else as a disobedient act & a taking back of myself, which I  acknowledge, accept & seek to put at the Lord’s disposal.
       O God, we thank thee for using the family to reveal the way in which Thy  love is poured out upon us even when we do not respond. Lay on each of us     the needs of the others in our families, & grant the constancy of affection so     that when we fail, the other family member will know that we cared & that we     cherish them [always].
       In the family the unlimited liability is never relinquished. How swiftly the     family discloses the gaps between what we mean & what we say & what we     say & what we do; how often is forgiveness & a fresh start necessary?     The notion of each being liable without limits to help the others come through   to what they are meant to be is an assignment beyond any we may have     reckoned with [in considering the duties called for in a Christian family].
       O God who gives and gives and never counts the cost, sweep away our  webs of calculation and give us that abandon which thy son Jesus Christ has     disclosed to us.  Frame what we do with a sense of meaning that in all our work  we may know that we are a living part of thy continuing creation.

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       All work must have some frame of meaning or it destroys its human     instruments.  When in addition there is a sense of real calling, there is scarce-    ly a limit to what can be carried and to the effort which men and women will     put forth.  John Ruysbroek writes:  “The love of Jesus is both avid and gener-    ous.  All that he is and all that he has he gives; and all that I am and all that I  have, he takes.”
       O God who wakens the sleepers and who opens the eyes of the heart in  frail and highly conventional people like myself, give courage and wisdom that I,  too may become one of those who when I am needed am “There.”
       When it comes to the gospel ethic's application to my own commu-    nity, it is so much easier to wring our hands & demand a boycott & a blockade    over social injustice in South Africa. In my community as the Gospel ethic     begins to dawn on me, all kinds of new, alarming, and highly unpopular in-    sights begin to lift above the parapet.  [Will we be like disciples and be]     “absurdly happy, entirely fearless, and always in trouble?”
       O God whose Holy Scriptures teach us that “for him that is joined to all  living things there is hope,” so join us to all the living that we may be children     of  hope and ever rekindle this hope in the hearts of our own nation.
       It is not easy to see how to reconcile the state’s claims upon my loyalty,  & the unlimited liability I as a Christian bear for all.  Christian duty does not     stop at this nation’s frontier; boundaries are always moving outward.  The     moral capital of every state is continually running down. It can only be re-    stored by the tender consciences of its vigilant citizens.  Carl Schurz declared:   "My country: when right to be kept right; when wrong to be set right.” 
       O God, give me a hearing heart that I may dare to hear the needs of my  world and be shown ways in which even I, in all my weakness and frailty, may  minister to them.
       The world is suffering today from too few people who “hear with their  hearts”; it is suffering from a drying up of compassion.  The human spirit tends    to withdraw and to feel hopeless about the sufferings and needs of human         beings in distant places.  Individual faithfulness to my world has not been dis-    carded in God’s plan. 
       O God of all creation, enlarge my heart & the hearts of my fellows with  such tenderness for all creation that we shall dare to speak up for all our fellow  creatures & for the precious natural world that sustains them.
       John Woolman writes:  My heart was often tender and contrite, and uni-    versal love for my fellow creatures increased in me.”  The loving Creator of all of  us lays on you and on me unlimited liability for all creation and for our fellow  creatures everywhere.
       [Ecumenism …]
       O God in whose eyes our separations from each other and our compe-    titive depreciations of each other are clouds of darkness that help to hide from     us thy true face, help us to know what these blockages are, and to see them  for the clouds that shut us out not only from our brother but from thee. 
       [The invisible, limiting lines which ecumenism is supposed to overcome  and] dissolve can be of very different sorts and dissolving them can be along     very different lines. Each of us has our list of reservation to coming closer to     other denominational groups from whom we feel separated.  The ability to pin-    point these barriers and to face them in God’s presence is an important 1st   step in ecumenism.
       O God use thy sharpest sickle on the weeds of denominational pride,     and possessiveness that are forever springing up anew in my heart and in the     heart of our society.  Give us a vision of thy passionate love for us all and of     the task still [before us].  [Help us] set out together to answer thy beckoning     invitation. 
       [When the Asian and African subjects of missions] meet the witness to  Christ in 50 different versions, [complete with exclusive truth & jealous regard     for the progress of others], it is not only confusing; it also belittles the whole     witness.  Denominational imperialism continues to flourish in less obvious but     equally powerful ways. The uncommitted world will not be touched until there     appears a whole new level of charity towards each other on the part of the  Christian Church’s branches.
       O God, we thank thee to be alive in a day when the walls are crumbling  and the gates are being opened and the charity and affection of men who serve  thee are increasing.  Kindle a flame in me, O Lord, that I may not obstruct but  may help to inflame the heart of the world with this new ecumenical spirit. 

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       Roman Catholic & Protestant approaches to each other are new phe-    nomena in the US. [In the Hitler period in Europe the walls became paper thin     as the screws of totalitarian government tightened. The Catholics found     strength in the Bible & the Protestants found strength in the Catholic liturgy].     The ecumenical miracle of Vatican Council II was prepared for by common    suffering, common charity, and common admiration and affection.
       O God, thrust out my boundaries of human compassion & caring. Take     away my hesitations & reservations.  Quicken me until I may “walk gladly over     the world, answering to that of God in every one.”
       What was the church really meant for?  The Church is not a shelter     for the saved; it is not a Noah’s ark to bring specially selected pairs through     the wreck of the world to salvation.  It is more the sprig of olive, symbolizing   that there is a future for humankind.  The love of God knows no bounds. It    reaches out to Roman Catholics, non-Roman Catholic Christians, the world re-   ligions and the latent church. 
       O God, my love is provincial and thy love so limitless; sweep away my  frontiers. Let me move with great openness to understand my brother and     sister, and to be open to the witness that thy Holy Spirit may have for me  through their witness, as I share with them what is most holy to me. 
       [Some limit ecumenism to] those who acknowledge Christ as the true  window to the redemptive love of God.  Great Roman Catholic scholars suggest  that God has never left himself without a witness [in the world religions].  Some  even suggest that the Holy Spirit may be speaking to present day Christianity  through the Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, and Islamic religions.  The passionate love  of God is truly all-embracing. 
       O God, we who think we are thy appointed emissaries & spokesperson  for thy ways with men, forgive us our brashness and [lead us] to humility and to  great openness to thy secret working everywhere.      
       A generation ago, secularism was regarded as the sworn enemy-rival of  the Christian religion.  [But secularism often embodied] ethical principles that  implemented our concern for the worth and dignity of all on a scale beyond     anything people of religion had ever dreamed possible.  [The exportable traits     of western legal, political, & labor practices] are deeply impregnated with spiri-    tual principles of the infinite worth of all, and of the liability we each bear for the  well-being of the other.
       O God, who knowest the true heart of each of us, help us to withhold  judgment & to listen with the inward ear to our atheist brother’s [& sister’s]     words & what they are really trying to say. [Grant us] the conviction that no one  is beyond  thy reach or caring, that is it only when we bring them with us that  we can see thy face.
       In Robert Ingersoll’s “44 Lectures on Atheism,” he is attacking not so  much God as the social infidelities that Christians have practiced in God’s     name.  [There is an atheism] which simply ignores God rooted deeply in us     all.  What is the hidden God saying to me through the witness of those  who deny him?
       [Worshiper …]
       O God, for the freedom to worship and the appointed occasions to join  with my fellows to celebrate thy infinite goodness and care, with all my heart, I  give thee thanks.
       When I join others in the worship of God, I come in my best, to bring my  gift to God in thanks, for God, Jesus Christ, the company of saints, the church,  & for all that God has done for me. Celebration with others springs from deep  roots in us, for those things that are most precious to us we want to share with  others. The common discovery that there is a God who cares, that Christ is  alive in the hearts of all today, draws us to corporate worship.
            O God, how can I ever thank you for the rhythm of the spiritual life in  which private & corporate prayer truly support each other. Nurture both in me &  help me always to be faithful to the one without neglecting the other.
            There is a time to be alone and a time to be with others.  There is a  dimension in corporate worship, in praying together, which is not present in the  solitariness of private prayer.  In corporate prayer, Christ seems to gather the  worshipping community and to draw each person from one’s separate solitari-    ness into the household of faith.  The corporate worshiper belongs not to self  alone but to the whole company of the servants of God.

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292. On Hallowing One’s Diminishments (by John R. Yungblut; 
        1990)    
            About the Author—After serving the Episcopal Church for 20 years, he  became a member of the Religious Society of Friends in 1960. He was director  of Quaker House, a civil rights and peace program in Atlanta, from 1960-1968.  From 1968-1972 he was the International Student House's director in Wa-   shington, D.C. He & his wife taught at Pendle Hill. This is his 5th PH pamphlet.
             Introduction—After an attack of diverticulosis, & a 50 mile drive for     emergency surgery, [I was left with only 15% of my large intestine]. It hasn’t     been a severe handicap. It is extraordinary how the body adjusts to trauma &     [makes do] with what remains. 2 years later [I experienced the slow onset of]     Parkinson’s disease, a nerve disorder. There is no known cure for this dege-    nerative disease. I was put on the drug Sinemet to retard the onset of symp-    toms; the dosage necessary has increased over the past half a dozen years.     [I also developed arthritis, which made exercise difficult; the exercise to slow     the advance of the Parkinson’s aggravated the arthritis].
             The tremor is now in both arms and hands and speech has begun to be  affected. There is more unsteadiness in walking; stiffness is increasing. I have  requested a “Clearness Committee” to advise me regarding the wisdom of reti-    ring from public appearance before I place too great a burden on my audiences  to hear and follow. I went through an inwardly-staged protest: denial; disbelief;     anger; rebellion, challenge, despair; depression.
             On Diminishments as Companions—A phrase from Teilhard de     Chardin’s Divine Milieu came to my rescue; one I hadn’t intended to store     away, 
but that stayed with me. This is a form of synchronicity in which the un-    conscious plays a role. The Divine Milieu speaks of [making one’s activities     divine], in the 1st half of life, & of “hallowing diminishments in the 2nd half.     [Making one’s gifts divine would be to connect them to] the giver of all good     things, God. 
            Teilhard writes: “God, in all that is most living & incarnate in Him, isn’t    far away. He  awaits us every instant in our action, in the moment’s work. He     is at the tip of my pen, my spade, my brush, my needle—of my heart & my     thought.” I looked up “hallowing” in the dictionary. It was a new & most encou-     raging idea to me— that one’s diminishments could be “made holy,” “conse-     crated,” “respected greatly,” even “venerated.”
           I saw that the 1st step for me in learning to “hallow” diminishments was   a deep-going, positive acceptance. I must learn to do something creative with     it. I practiced imaging diminishments as if they were the gift of companionship   for me on my way to the great diminishment, death. Parkinson’s stiffening   could be undergone as if it were a kind of “rigor amortis”—a stiffening by love,    as part of the process by which I shall ultimately die into God. As companions   they can be treated with playfulness and humor.
             [I encouraged a stranger by affirming the wisdom of a decision he made;  he encouraged me with a confident prediction of long life. I chuckle every time I  think of that moment]. There seems to be something unique in which laughter  enables the psyche to let go of the tensions that aggravate pain. [I joke about  my constant trembling and discernment of vocal ministry, which the Holy Spirit  often indicates by quaking and outer trembling]. When one is trembling all the  time, how does one discern the prompting of the Spirit?
           The Diminishments that are like Little Deaths—Teilhard writes: “Ex-   
ternal ... diminishments are all our bits of ill fortune ... barriers that block our     way, the wall that hems us in, the stone which throws us from our path ... invi-    sible microbes that [infect] the body, little words that infects the mind ... Hu-    manly speaking, internal ... diminishments form the blackest residue & the     most despairingly useless years of our life ... Natural failings, physical de-    fects,   intellectual or moral limitations [ruthlessly limit] the field of our activities,  enjoyment, & vision.” These aren’t so much diminishments as deprivations     from the start. 
            I can think of nothing as beautiful to witness as the selfless devotion of     a family member who has borne the burden of caring for a retarded or severely  handicapped family member. Then, there is the marvelous way in which some  individuals turns a handicap into an ingenious charm that enhances rather than  detracts from the personality. The handicapped individual’s selfless ministry to  the afflicted is a boon to all. Teilhard again writes: “[Or we may] impotently     standby & watch inner collapse, rebellion, & tyranny [of some dis-ease of our  body], & no friendly influence can come to our help.”
            The Diminishment of Bereavement—In the case of natural disasters,    the afflicted may be helpless to hallow their diminishments, so consumed are     they with survival and emergencies. Hallowing may have to be done by re-    sponders bringing relief. Bereavement so caused by sudden accident often     seems a greater tragedy than a protracted death through illness of the loved     one. Sudden death is [mainly] a diminishment borne by the survivors. There is  the “unreality” of the loss; there is grieving and “letting go” to be done.
             If the death was a suicide there is the additional weight of guilt & 2nd-    guessing. How might I have prevented this tragedy? What was I blind to?     Why did I fail to see the warnings? It is like a sudden, unprepared-for psychic  amputation. The relative psyche’s wholeness, enjoyed before, is shattered. Can  such a diminishment [as suicide be hallowed]? Yes. 1st, commit the loved  one into God's keeping, knowing that with God all things are well. 2nd, embrace  forgiveness & live into the forgiven life. 3rd, transfer energy of lost relationship  to some [service] of some other need. 4th, from the 1st 3, one becomes sensi-    tive to & available for the suffering of others."
             Bereavement can take the form the death of a dear one, unwilled     separation from a partner through divorce or abandonment. In the end it is a     matter of “letting go”: of some measure of dependency; & of taking care of     the other by entrusting them into God’s keeping. How can one hallow the     diminishment from the loss of a loved one? [Forgiveness of the other & of     self], asking for strength beyond oneself to forgive one’s self for sins of omis-    sion. Another possibility is a “new affection,” possibly a new person, an art form  or cause or conversion experience. Hallowing such a diminishment demands  both “letting go,” & embracing with enthusiasm something that has been found,  or given by grace. Our inner nature abhors a vacuum just as surely Nature  herself.
            When the work of mourning has been gone through, the diminishment  accepted, one is ready for renewal of the creative urge. Paul Tournier writes:     the greater the grief, the greater the creative energy to which it gives rise ... I     can truly say that I have a great grief and that I am a happy man.” For Tournier,  writing the book Creative Suffering was a part of his work of mourning; Alan     Paton wrote For you Departed & C. S. Lewis wrote A Grief Remembered for the  same purpose. 
            For those who have not this gift, the work and the memorial will have to  take other forms, like a journal in which the process of imagination can be very  therapeutic. Someone could be trusted to listen as you pour out your grief.     Nothing can altogether relieve the pain that must be borne in solitude. Tournier  used to mediate with his wife; they would share afterward the thoughts that     came during meditation. He describes how this practice of 50 years served him  in his grief work after her death: “In the past I often skipped my daily meditation,  but since my wife’s death, I have not missed a single day—as if my rendezvous  with God were also a rendezvous with her.”
            Misfortune is versatile and performs its devastating vivisection on the     psyche in the other ways: loss of job; loss of status in one’s vocation; moving     from a beloved place. One may be rudely wrenched from the comfort & secu-    rity of the familiar and plunged into a strange and threatening environment.     These occasions too, demand “letting go” and an output of creative energy in     creating a new job or a new home in an alien environment. Against such     [misfortunes] one would do well to cultivate a certain detachment early in life.
            Some Blessings that Accompany Aging—[In retirement] there is  always diminishment one experiences in loss of persona, [along with loss of     work]. There is the gift of extra time. Tournier suggests that one should begin     early to prepare for old age’s onset, to explore undeveloped gifts. Tournier     perceives that the old have the real job of “the restoration to our impersonal     society of the human warmth, the soul it has lost.” He realized & interpreted for  others that there was the dimension of love, poetry & of the spiritual life.” If one  is to hallow the diminishment of loss of persona, it is necessary to build a 2nd  career or to fill one’s life with interesting, new self-appointed work. Each of us  must continue to exercise his or her gifts when the career of our middle years  must end.
            Tournier suggests there is a liberation from immediate interests, an  opportunity to pursue the deeper interests of the heart and mind. He writes:         “One can be successful on into old age through warmheartedness, readiness to  welcome all comers, kindness and disinterestedness. One must put fallow skills  to use and put as much energy and imagination in this new work as in the pur-    suit of the previous profession. One finds that one is able, as never before, to     find pleasure in the achievements of others, to take vicarious delight in the     achievements of others because they feel like one’s own in this spirit which is     an experience of kinship with all things.
             [One can pass one’s prime in other things, but for the penitent it is pos-    sible to continue to grow as long as one lives. As one grows older, one per-    ceives the love of God for one’s self and the poignance of the fact that is has     been largely unrequited. Penitence with the promise of forgiveness can bring     change, love, and obedience. This makes possible a 2nd innocence that carries  with it the blessing of higher consciousness. It is well to see that, in struggling  against all the diminishments in our life, one is struggling against an angel [like  Jacob], and not to let it go until one has received the distinctive blessing of that  particular angel. Even if one goes away limping badly, the diminishment will  have been hallowed by this blessing.
            Hallowing the Great Diminishment, Death—Teilhard writes: “Death is  the sum and consummation of all our diminishments; it is evil itself—purely  physical evil and moral evil too. We must overcome death by finding God in it.     At the 1st approach of the diminishments, we cannot hope to find God except     by loathing what is coming ... and doing our best to avoid it ... At some moment  or other we feel the grip of the forces of diminishment, against which we 
were    fighting, gradually gaining victory over the forces of life, [vanquishing] us. God,   without sparing us partial or final death, transfigures it by integrating it  into a    better plan ... God must hollow us out & empty us, if he is to penetrate into    us and assimilate us in Him ... Death’s fatal power to decompose & dissolve   will be harnessed to the most divine operations of life ... [to] become pleni-   tude and unity with God ...
             Grant that I may willingly consent to this last phase of communion …  [when I shall possess You by diminishing in You ... When I suddenly awaken to  the fact that I am ill or growing old, ... and when I feel I am losing hold of myself  and am absolutely passive ... grant that I know it is you penetrating me and     bearing me away ... At one moment the dominant note is constructive human     effort, and at another mystical annihilation.” On Easter Day 1955, Teilhard died  after attending Mass, a string concert with friends, and in the midst of serving  them tea, just as he wished. He was conscious to the last moment unafraid, in  communion with God.
             Hallowing Diminishments through the Practice of Contemplative  Prayer—[Part of] learning to hallow diminishments is faithful practice of 
con-   templative prayer. Bereavement plunges one into the depths of loneliness; it     can be transmuted into solitude. Solitude is a gift of time without distraction, a     time to keep company with one’s soul. Here the Holy Spirit can help one har-    ness one’s own cross and carry it without too much strain.
             Contemplation ultimately defies definition, a gentle art unique with the     artist. Meditative prayer is different; it engages discursive reason, and takes the  form of praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession and petition. Contempla-    tion is a state of consciousness in which the body has been quieted so that it     can be in the service of Spirit. There are a great variety of techniques to attain     this 1st step on “the way in” to the altered state of consciousness. Quieting the  mind is next. One can repeat a mantra; one can let go of one restless image     after another. It is doubtful any act of will can accomplish the final transition     into contemplation; cooperation with the Spirit taking us there is necessary. We  know that contemplation is the field where lies the pearl of great price; we per-    sist in digging for it, [for even a glimpse of it].
            We must bear in mind that those of the Eastern religions use the word     meditation for what we have long designated in the West as contemplation.     Eastern meditation & Western contemplation are both described as: darkness,  void, nothingness, emptiness. Each attempt to go into the silence, the dark-    ness, involves “letting go.” One lets go of all on-going life-efforts, of one’s     waning gifts and talents, a committing of them into the care of the giver of all     good things, and a re-dedication of what creativity remains. Contempla
tion is      a practice in dying; it is a way of knowing one’s self under the aspect of the     eternal. “Whoever knows one’s self as part of the All knows one’s self and the      All.” When one finally lets go of the diminishment, one is aware that nothing    has been lost and all is well. The diminishment has been hallowed.  


293.  The Ministry of Presence: Without Agenda in South Africa (by    
        Avis Crowe; Dyckman Vermilye; 1990)
       ABOUT THE AUTHORS—Avis Crowe is Methodist by birth and Quaker  by convincement.  [After beginning a career in theater, television, and the arts],  Avis shifted gears in her late 30s and began her spiritual journey in earnest at  Koinonia Partners in Georgia.  Avis and Dyck met and married at Pendle Hill in  1984.  Spiritual guidance, through group work and writing, has increasingly  become the focus of Avis’s work.
       Dyckman Vermilye is a Quaker by convincement and joined the Society  when his interest group moved to Monthly Meeting status in the early 1950s.      His Quaker life remained dormant for 30 years until he went to Pendle Hill as a  student.  He spent a year learning New Testament Greek as Friend-in-Resi-     dence at Woodbrooke.

       I am done with great things, & big things, great institutions and big suc-    cess, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the  crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water  which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride.      William James.
       I. DECISION—Live in South Africa? A peculiar, even foolish choice.  It  was a natural outgrowth of our experience of recent years.  The Spirit was busy  planting seeds in each of us for such a journey. 
       DyckAs a student at Pendle Hill I was grappling with the “what next”  question.  Africa became a theme from which I could not escape as a student.     Zimbabwe couple came as Friends-in-Residence. There was a force working  in me that I was unable to ignore. HarareZimbabwe became a ground of  healing and growth.
       Avis—During Dyck’s student year, I was winding up nearly 2 years as a  volunteer at Koinonia Partners in AmericusGeorgia, where they primarily built  houses and sold them at no interest to the rural poor, mostly black.  They run a  farm, an international mail order business and a resident volunteer program.   [They were so busy, they seemed to no longer have time for their neighbors]. I  fantasized about just living among the neighbors.
       In my “class” was a young family from SowetoSouth Africa. I learn     about “disposable people,” married couples forced to live separately.  South     Africa began to have names that belonged to real people with families, and    dreams for the future.  [The woman half of a couple from Cape Western     Monthly Meeting, Capetown, urged people to come and help].  Mary said     quite distinctly, “people like Avis and Dick.”[I]had no serious thought of going,     but Dyck suggested we travel to Zimbabwe on our honeymoon.  A poster in     an Anglican Cathedral read: “Be ready at any moment to give up what you are   for what you might become.”
       [We went] from Zimbabwe to Durban and then to Johannesburg where  we stayed in the meetinghouse.  We went to Capetown & stayed with Richard     and Hilary Rosenthal who had sojourned at Pendle Hill. 
       Hilary told me about her work in a family service agency, the pain and  frustration of trying to live authentic lives as white South Africans, beneficiaries    of a system they were trying to change.  [We returned to Pendle Hill for 2 more  years, then retired].  Rather than join those who turned their backs on South     Africans.  I wanted to go & stand beside them, to say “Yes” with my presence. 
       We had to allow for the possibility that we might not be useful or wanted,  that we could create problems for people who might feel responsible for us, that  we might even put people in jeopardy.  We did not engage in a formal clearness  process; to do so never occurred to us; we just trusted that clearness would     come naturally.  One by one, the anticipated obstacles were removed, and the  pieces fell into place. 
       Dyck—Richard made a rough budget of basic expenses [which made it  clear] that my retirement income would probably be adequate to cover all costs.  The risks to personal safety & health were matters to which I had given con-    siderable attention before going to Zimbabwe. [In spite of violent incidents], I     felt more secure there than I had on several occasions in US inner city neigh-    borhoods; I also received excellent medical care there.
       Avis—I realized that our probable safety & the quality of lifestyle & me-    dical care we could expect were the privilege of being white. I found that truth     uncomfortable, but was willing to live with the reality. The decision had made     itself. We were going to South Africa. We had felt a leading, spent time discer-    ning the rightness of it & had acted on it. We didn’t know how long we would  stay, nor did we know or care about what we would do.
     II. THE WRONG QUESTION—Henri Nouwen asks: What greater mini-    stry can be practiced than one which reflects that presence? [And an-    swers: “A ‘pastoral presence’ is more important than any plan or project.  More  than anything, people want you to share their lives.” This ministry was an affir-    mation of what we wanted to be about in South Africa. “But what will you do?”  was the 1st question people asked us; for us it was the wrong question. Our     experiences had led us to believing to be with people is more important than  to do for them. 
       We had no particular timetable, and were content to slip into the meeting  and community as unobtrusively as possible, and simply let happen what     would.  We wrote:  “We will be eager to learn from you and to contribute in any  ways that seem appropriate or possible out of the resources that we bring with  us.”  We didn’t carry any answers with us. We want to save people from igno-    rance and poverty, [when] too often, it is we who are drowning in a poverty of  spirit.  We have much to learn from people all over the world.
       Avis—I visited several sites where the Early Learning Resources Unit  was helping mothers learn to play creatively with their children, using whatever  limited resources & discards they could find & their imaginations.
       Now and then we did find ourselves tripping over the impulse to show     people how to do things, and to suggest a “better way.” Henri Nouwen wrote:     “The 1st thing is to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen     to their stories and tell your own, and show them by words, gestures and ac-    tions that you love them.”  The irony is that we found plenty to do. What we     did arose out of who we were, of knowing & becoming known, of sharing sto-    ries and journeys with one another.  The doing was never primary for us; the    relationships were.
       III. TRAVELING IN THE SPIRIT—Once the word was out that we would  soon be on our way to South Africa, most people were supportive and wished  us well. 
       Avis--When a Pendle Hill Board member expressed gratitude that we  could make such a journey & that we would carry the love & concern of many     Friends, I realized the possible communal dimension of our decision.  We de-    parted knowing we were being held in the Light by many Friends and were  carrying their love and concern to the people of South Africa
       [For lettering writing] we made arrangements with Avis’ mother to copy     & distribute a periodic newsletter for us. We tried to capture some of the fla-    vor & texture of life in South Africa & introduced the people we encountered.  We wrote  separate accounts: the 2-in-1 letters provided a wider canvas than    a joint report  would have; we avoided political/social analysis. We didn't think     [of it as “writing  epistles,” but] we may have stepped into the stream of Qua-      ker tradition in this way. We don’t know how many people heard our informal   reports [beyond those we distributed them to]. We felt we were traveling in the   Spirit, that our decision was right & Spirit-led.
       IV. CAPETOWN MEETING: Spiritual Home and Opportunity for     Ministry—Cape Western MM was our gateway to the country and its people.     [We were supported, nurtured, and nurturers for the 1½ years we were there].   Their reception of us was reserved.  By becoming sojourning members, we     hoped to declare our commitment to the meeting.  We attended the Peace     Work Committee, & Ministry and Oversight meetings.  We started our Pendle     Hill practice of inviting people from the meeting to simply drop in during the     afternoon of the 1st Sunday of every month; there was no business to conduct,    no issue to resolve.
       Avis—During one of these afternoons, Scotty Morton shared her terror  at [having a rifle pointed at her] at a squatters’ camp outside Cape Town; I     shared one woman’s pain and anxiety for a fleeting moment.  We sensed a     hunger in the meeting for sharing & deepening the spiritual foundations of the     work they were doing.  We convened a weekly discussion group to explore the  origins of Quaker thought and testimonies. 
       Dyck—There was interest in bible study in the meeting, and I was de-    lighted to start up a weekly group.  I also began to write a newsletter for local  and distant members and attenders. 
       Avis—I got the Woodbrooke’s study program Gifts & Discoveries    started at the meeting; almost the entire meeting participated; the bonds be-    tween the people of the meeting deepened.  I also led retreats & weekly     prayer meetings.  [During one of the latter, Rommel invited the leaders of 2    sometimes violent factions to meet on the neutral ground of the meeting to       work out their difference].  One of the groups never showed and the hour   passed without incident; the Wednesday group is still meeting. 
       Dyck—None of what we did was arduous. Relating to people in various  ways outside the meeting & facilitating activities that people wanted but hadn’t  time to organize, we could contribute to the meeting’s spiritual life.
       Neither of us had thought ourselves “ministers” before.  Time is not per-    haps, a direct contribution to the struggle for justice and peace in South Africa,  but its relationship to that goal made the effort worthwhile. 
       V. ENGAGEMENT—Early in our sojourn we also moved around in the     larger community.  We made contact with the Black Sash & the South African     Institute for Race Relations. We wanted to move slowly to wait for the things     that seemed right to emerge naturally without [succumbing to] the “ought/     should’ syndrome—either our own or somebody else’s. We became involved     with Siseko, a small brick-making cooperative; we felt the grief when its pro-    ject manager was shot to death as a suspected African National Congress     guerilla.           
       Dyck—I tried to become an “enabler,” working several mornings a week;  I helped them open a bank account.  I tried not to do things for them, but to     stand side by side with them as they learned.  I tried to slip into their rhythm,     to respect their needs and capabilities, and to step back & allow them to be    to be  who they were, even if it meant less efficiency and slower progress. 
       Avis—[I became involved with the Philani Nutrition Clinics; the Govern-    ment provided minimal infrastructure].  From the beginning Philani was special  to me.  My own wish was simply to come and be there, “[babysitting].”  I was     asked to help with the typing backlog of staff-meeting minutes and project     reports.  I didn’t go to the clinics very often, [because of] my reticence as an     “outsider,” but each time I went was deeply satisfying.  The clinic embraced     life, demonstrated life, and taught by example that life in all its noise and dis-     tress can be a celebration, even in the face of want, cruelty, disinterest.
       The South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) is respected  internationally for its biannual report of Apartheid statistics [and its craft shops].   It was a natural place for me to share my interests in crafts and put in some of  my time.  I also processed applications to their scholarship fund.  There was a  branch of Koinonia in Cape Town, started by a radical Dutch Reformed domi-    neer, to bring mixed-race groups together in a comfortable, non-threatening  setting. 
       Dyck—I had been invited to be guest speaker and to lead the group in a  discussion of conflict resolution.  I assumed too much willingness on the part of  blacks and coloreds to explore institutional violence in their lives.  The people  were clearly glad we were with them, and far more forgiving of our discomfort  than we were.  [Dyck was able to meet with a high Dutch Reformed Church of-   ficial, and to set up a series of what turned out to be very challenging mee-    tings].  My own roots are in Holland.  The Reformed Church was part of my        history until my great-grandfather became an Episcopalian priest.  
       I eagerly accepted an invitation to meet the Director.  His responses  made me feel that I was being kept at arms’ length and that an open exchange  was not possible.  I could see what pain must be his if he felt his belief system  was being challenged.  I wrote a 10-page critique of a Synod report, and he     responded angrily.  In our last meeting, he said he found it difficult to remain     angry with me sitting across the desk from him.  He expressed surprise at how  few Quakers there were in Southern Africa.  We parted cordially, in spite of not  reaching any satisfactory conclusions.
       I may have played the role of prophetic witness in my relationship with     this churchman as defined by Abraham Heschel: “A prophet is one who holds     God & the human person together at one time & at all times through profound     love, powerful dissent, painful rebuke, and unwavering love.  I do not know if     my words or my behavior have remained with him.  I am comfortable not kno-    wing.  Herbert Louckes:  “An act of love that fails is as much a part of divine      life as an act that succeeds, for love is measured by its own fullness, not by     its reception.”  Our own belief in the value of presence was affirmed over and    over again in the very basic and simple tasks we preformed and in our    encounters. 
       VI. THE BIG ISSUE—[The weighty, difficult questions about South     Africa are the wrong questions].  William James wrote:  I am done with great     things, and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those     tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the crannies of the world like  so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water which, if you give them  time,    will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride.  Rommel Roberts, [a     full-time, colored peace-worker] said: “What most people lose sight of is the     need for grass-roots work.  Teaching mothers how to play with children is      linked to the liberation of an entire country.”  Our own bent [led us to make      “small” contributions].
       VII. INVITATION—We were granted a 6-month extension, [and could  have gotten more 6-month extensions], but we chose not to live with that chro-    nic uncertainty. We sense that our time in South Africa was drawing to a     close and that it was right to leave.  Also, we were brought face to face with         the paradox that one of the ways we could “help” South Africa was to be-        come involved in our own country.  Part of the work of Koinonia, Ben en-    courages [and facilitates]  South Africans, particularly white South Africans, to      travel abroad.
       But traffic must be 2-way.  It is important that we not engage in shun-    ning—either as nations or as individuals.  [What is needed is to] simply go     with open heart and mind and the knowledge that the Spirit is working in    you and in those you will meet.  We need to set aside our American compul-    sion for speed, for instant diagnoses and quick fixes, for whirlwind entran-   ces and exits.  Those opting for early retirement, or younger people on sab-    batical or before graduate school might consider South Africa
             There is no guarantee that just because the desire is there, permission  will follow; the government is careful about those to whom they grant visas.      [Ours were granted because we had friends in the country], and because Qua-    kers have a long history in the country.  Friends also enjoy an unusual freedom  from government harassment as a direct result of their compassionate work     with Afrikaner women and children during the Anglo-Boer War.  The important     thing is to go without preconceived expectations of what you might do there,     or how helpful you might be.  Go as a loving concerned person, “walking     cheerfully over the earth.”  A Friendly presence can be a blessing in places     like South Africa, for both the host country and the sojourner. 
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294. Women of Power and Presence: The Spiritual Formation of 4 
        Quaker Women Ministers (by Maureen Graham; 1990)
       About the Author—Maureen Graham is currently completing her     training as a pastoral counselor in Claremont, CA. She joined Friends in St.     Andrews, Scotland, the land of her birth. She received Earlham School of     Religion’s Master’s of Ministry degree in 1986. Maureen has a long-standing    concern for the spiritual and psychological empowerment of women. Standing     in a tradition of Quaker women ministers—women who knew the transfor-        ming power of the living God—Maureen seeks to embody that knowledge in    her own life and work.
       [Introduction]—In 1784 Rebecca Jones, Quaker minister from Phila-    delphia, ministered to the men of London YM saying that, in Christ, male and     female were one. In 1842’s England, Elizabeth Fry talked to the Secretary of     State about a new female prison, and women’s position in penal colonies. In     1853 Lucretia Coffin Mott presided over an unruly New York Women’s Rights     Convention with poise and authority. In 1860, Rachel Hicks, a Hicksite minister,  traveled the Midwest exhorting Friends to live obedient to the divine light within.
       What is it about the religious experience of these women that al-    lowed them to overcome social attitudes & practices which encouraged  passivity & subordination?      What can their lives say to those of us     who stand in their tradition & seek to be faithful ministers in our time?     The religious experience took place within an inner space created by the prac-   tice of Quaker spirituality with its strong emphasis on waiting in silence. 
       In the space created by such silence she was led to inner examination.     She learned to experience the Presence & Voice of God within her. She found     she was given the power to make changes in her life & her self. She found that  she could speak & act with integrity by the inner authority her practice esta-    blished. A community of peers then provided the outer space for women to  move into an active life of religious leadership. 
       The role of minister gave women Quakers the possibility of claiming an  autonomous identity & following a challenging career relatively free from social  & family constraints, but within an often hostile environment. [Differences in     each woman’s life] shaped their experience & actions in different ways. The     tensions in these women’s lives reflect the tensions of interpretation & direc-    tion within the Society of Friends as it responded to social and cultural change.
      REBECCA JONES 1739-1817—Rebecca Jones was brought up in Phi-    ladelphia by her single mother “in the way of the Church of England.” “But I  loved vanity and folly, and to keep unprofitable company … I often promised     to amend for I greatly feared to die. But alas! though I made covenant, I soon     forgot it … thus added sin to rebellion for some time.”  Catherine Peyton [came]  “to speak so pertinently to my situation … that I cried out to the bitterness of my  heart, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me do to be saved?’  “I was greatly polluted   lay wallowing in the filthiness of the flesh, without any succor from temporal  connections, and a stranger to the Lord’s family … I was again encouraged by  the renewal of divine favor to enter into a solemn covenant with that gracious  Being against whom I had so highly rebelled … in this day of my humiliation.”
       A choice is required between world’s way & religion’s way. A choice is     made involving a yield to God. The yielding is followed by despair & suffering     which focused for Rebecca on her sense of unworthiness & uncleanness. The     movement is from unworthiness, inadequacy & uncleanness to purification &     acceptance. She described herself as a branch from the wild olive, grafted onto  a good olive tree. She gained an identity & a morally upright, religiously devout  family among whom were some of the most prominent & well-respected of the  city. 
       Inner conflict's resolution was accompanied by new certainty & inner  security which released energy & power, but also led to outer conflict. [Her      mother’s desire that] Rebecca teach dance, music, & embroidery [conflicted]     with Quaker’s avoiding frivolities like dancing & singing. “The more [I turned] my  back on those things which … I greatly delighted in, the more strength in-        creased”;  she was thus able to stand up to family & friends.
       In meeting she often felt that she was being required to rise and speak,  yet she was afraid of “marring the Lord’s work.”  [It took much suffering, but     finally] “I stood up in much fear and trembling and expressed a few sentences     very brokenly. I returned home with the promised reward of peace.” To stand    up & speak was known to be the 1st step toward becoming a “public” friend.    Her frequent warnings to herself against self-exaltation suggests that she felt    [how attractive] the prospect was.  Such a challenging, demanding life was   also  frightening.
       She resolved her dilemma by experiencing it as a submission to God;     she wasn’t claiming any power for herself. As she grew more confident in the     minister role, Rebecca became an active leader in her meetings, monthly &     yearly. She journeyed in ministry to Great Britain & Ireland from 1784-1788;     the journey was an experience of deep dependence on the guiding, sustai-    ning power of God.
       She was able to move forward because God is there. She “took up the  cross” through submission to the Spirit’s work & absolute trust in the inner     Voice. [She gained] access to an inner power which overcomes fears, doubts     & external opposition, which distinguishes right from wrong, which comforts &     sustains. She learned to act as moral agent in control of her own life. She saw  herself as  weak & dependent; strength belonged to God. 
       Divinity authority & power are located within the woman minister. There  is amazing potential for the woman to claim dynamic power, agency & authority;  Rebecca doesn’t make this step. Her self & God is firmly divided & often in     opposition to one another. When the men of London YM suggested setting up a  Women’s Meeting would give the body 2 heads, Rebecca replied that [Christ  was the one head], & in Christ male & female are one.
       Rebecca Jones was part of a Friends’ network who traveled together,  advised, & supported each other in their ministry. [They led] the Quietist     reformation of the 18th century. They attempted to renew the life of the Spirit, &  rid Friends of worldliness. Rebecca’s story is similar to those of the 20 women  ministers of the 18th century whose journals were published in 1875.  Her story  was held up as a model to Quaker women of the 19th century.
       RACHEL HICKS 1789-1878—Rachel was a Quietist minister, a religious  leader within the Hicksite branch of Friends. She witnessed the bitter infighting  among Friends, the suffering of the Civil War, and the decline of Friends’ Mee-    tings She saw her role as that of a faithful standard-bearer “inciting the people     to the Divine Light within” and to the path of simple obedience.  Raised strictly     as a Friend, Rachel was guarded from the youthful misbehavior that plagued     Rachel.  [She writes of an 8 year-old memory: “I lay for several hours bemoa-    ning my condition, until He who sees the heart was pleased to forgive, and     speak comfortably to my soul … I have a great fear of offending Him from  whom I could not hide my most secret thoughts.”
       Her parents [taught] her a fear of dying unprepared. She feared wrong-    doing & punishment, [rather than Rebecca’s fear of unworthiness]. [She took     the side opposite her father in the Hicksite-Orthodox split], & said, “Never has     [God] given me to see that … to obey His will inwardly revealed as the only     way to the Kingdom of Heaven is to be given up.” At 19, she heard a voice: “If     faithful … thou wilt … speak in my name to assemblies of people, & travel     extensively.” She wrote: “This was an unexpected, unwelcome, [and impossi-    ble] message.”
       She then lost her sense of God’s presence. For 20 years Rachel strug-    gled with the call to minister, until the certainty of eternal damnation would be     hers compelled her to rise and speak.  “After I made a surrender … I oft felt His  peace to flow in my heart as a river.” In Rachel Hicks’ journal “Thy will be done”  is written on nearly every page; she was given many crosses to bear, [many  deaths in the family, and journeys in the ministry].
       If Rebecca Jones worried about worthiness, Rachel Hicks worried about  obedience and wrath of God. Her problem was a wayward will, and the solution  was submission to the will of God. Rachel’s ability to survive suffering and the     subsequent return of life and power confirmed her faith in God and increased     her strength and courage.  60 years after Rebecca Jones, Rachel Hicks was     one of a dying breed of traditional traveling ministers, a lone prophet and part of  the faithful remnant calling people back to faithful obedience.
      Rachel discovered the same guiding & sustaining presence that Rebec-    ca discovered.  For Rachel, [the “preparation” for] speaking was always parti-    cularly difficult.  “[None] can realize the humiliation of the creature [in] becoming  an empty vessel, nor the wonder and admiration that fills the heart, when in this  emptiness a Scripture passage, or a sentence arises in the mind with a com-    mand, “Rise and utter it, and I will be with thee … words & matter have flowed     as fast as I could give utterance.”  For Rachel, [in her relationship with the Word  of God], it is a question of ability and competence. The voice is not hers but     God’s.  Power and presence depend upon total surrender of self-will. Yet, de-    spite her disclaimers, the Voice of God she speaks comes from deep within her  and allows her to act with the power and presence of mature agency. 
       ELIZABETH GURNEY FRY 1780-1845—[Compared to the 1st 2 women  mentioned], the intensity of the inner conflict between self and God has soft-    ened. [Her family background] contributed to a sense of inner worth. Her fa-    mily were “gay” Friends who did not require strict adherence to the discipline     of plain dress and speech. Elizabeth’s childhood was clouded by fears—of     the dark, of the sea, and of death. She was often sick, and felt inferior to her     elder sisters.  She struggled with frivolity as being a waste of time, not as be-    ing a sin. She writes: “I don’t feel any real religion … I am a bubble, without   reason, without beauty of mind or person; I am a fool.” An American “plain”     Quaker made such an impression on her that she felt there is a God and    thought she may have to become a “plain” Quaker. This path was confirmed  few months later.
       Elizabeth was self-critical, yet her writing lacks intense shame or guilt. In  fact: “It is wicked to despair of myself, it is the way to make me what I desire not  to be.”  The path of a Quaker minister is one she feels able to consider. It is an  alluring possibility rather than a terrifying demand.  Elizabeth’s identity as a     Quaker emerged and was strengthened as she stood up to external pressure.   She adopted the plain dress and she started a Sunday- school project for poor  children on the family estate.  She writes:  “When I have followed … this Voice,  yet I never have failed to feel content in doing so; even to be amply rewarded  … The only true standard I can have to direct myself by is that which experi-    ence proves to give me the most happiness, by enabling me to be virtuous.”
            She was recognized as a minister in 1811 at the age of 31; this work  didn’t  satisfy her need for purpose & fulfillment. When she found her work in     Newgate  prison, she found “a peace & prosperity … that I seldom remem-    ber to have done before. Each crisis was a new test of faith & trust. Her     [favorite] text was “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” She learned to      reach that place where God’s loving presence would carry her through. This     ability enabled her to face the violence of prisoners & the obstructive autho-    rity of prison governors & politicians.
       [Compared to the 1st 2 women mentioned], Elizabeth’s self & God are  closer together—they belong to the same loving family. She was dependent on  her Father, but not at the expense of her self or powers which her Father     wished her to use well. Elizabeth’s beliefs maintained human nature’s sinful-   ness. A life of usefulness & active service then became a duty, a responsibility,    & a way of showing love. Feeling undeserving set limits to her ability to act      authoritatively in the world & prevented her from challenging authority struc-   tures. She chose the path of caring for the poor & imprisoned—a path which      met with approval. She wrote: “Far be it from me … to persuade women to for-   sake their right province.  My only desire is that they  should fill that province  well.” 
            LUCRETIA MOTT 1793-1880—Lucretia Mott fully lived into the radical     power & agency that Quaker practice offers women. [As part of] the indepen-    dent, close-knit community of Quaker whalers on Nantucket, she had a sense     of self-worth & identity, & models of strong independent women. [When faced     with injustice], she proclaimed, “The injustice … was apparent; I resolved to     claim for myself all that a fair Creator had bestowed.”
            Her husband’s (James Mott) support was crucial to her work & ministry.  The spiritual crisis which sharpened & deepened Lucretia’s religious experi-    ence & identity was after her little son's death. She [didn’t] believe that her God   could ever command acts of injustice & suffering. Suffering was from  ignor-    ance of God’s natural laws, not divine test or punishment. As she struggled   with these issues & with grief, she experienced a deepened sense of God’s    presence & loving power. She felt Spirit moving within her, propelling her to    speak. The foundation for Lucretia’s activism was religious experience.    [When she spoke, it was] only as the Spirit gave her words.
       Lucretia feels able to concentrate herself to ministry, without need for  external authority; she aligns her work with God. Self & God have a mutual,     non-hierarchical relationship. The disappearance of the split between self &     God is mirrored in harmony between divine & natural, & in equality between    men & women. There isn’t just a knowledge of ethical principles, but a felt     ethical presence & power guiding & pushing toward action. How was     Lucretia, [how can we] overcome inner separation of self & God? 1st,     strong belief in self. 2nd, [the Hicksite-Orthodox split] forced the Society to   divide along theological grounds. Lucretia was free to develop understanding   of Inner Light outside traditional Christian theology; she was able to reject the     doctrine of human depravity.
       Elizabeth Fry was unable to claim divine power for herself and was only  able to assert human equality on grounds of all people being sinners before     God. [While Elizabeth claimed] women’s power and authority only within the     women’s sphere, Lucretia claimed it within the male sphere as well. When self     and God are allied, the self can claim an inner authority, an inner truth, from     which to oppose both secular and religious authority.
       Lucretia’s struggle centered around an outer conflict between self-God  and structures of injustice.  “Too many of our sex are insensible of their wrongs,  and incapable of fully appreciating the blessings of freedom.” Opposition and  accusations from the authorities within the yearly meeting hurt her deeply. She  stayed with the Quaker fold even though few could follow her radical under-    standing and experience of the Quaker faith. The power of her ministry  and     leadership was widely respected.
       Lucretia’s path was discovery of a moral agency. Her path led to suf-    fering and often went against her wishes for security and comfort. The life of  moral agency did not require self-mortification and denial.  Willingness has re-    placed submission.  The will of God is an inner divine force for truth and righ-    teousness with which we can choose to align our lives and our actions, to em-    body power and presence in our work for love and justice.
       This examination of the psychological and spiritual development of 4  Quaker women ministers has shown a process of psychological growth through  inner and outer conflict to resolution in a life of active engagement.  Important  parts of the process for these women included: defining identity in relation to  family; discovering a public voice to speak the truth; claiming a vocation which  gave meaning to their own experience.
      The extent to which these women claimed their own dynamic power de-    pended on their understanding of the relationship between self and God. Their  understanding and experience of this relationship depended upon their child-    hood experience, social & historical location, & theological discourse. The     amount of power & authority they located in God or self shaped their relation-    ship to external authority. 
       The personal journeys of these 4 women & the conflicts they encoun-    tered mirrored those of corporate religious bodies of which they were part.  Rebecca’s witness grew out of discipline & withdrawal from the world, like     other 18th century Friends. The lives of Rachel Hicks, Elizabeth Fry & Lucre-    tia Mott reflect different answers to the tensions & conflicts present within     Quaker theology & practice which divided Quaker communities in the 19th     century. They represent, respectively, Conservative, Evangelical, and Liberal  emphases which emerged in the 19th century.
            As a Quaker woman, I am proud to stand in such a tradition. I am chal-    lenged to look within, to find Truth in my own experience, to live life [from my     depths].  I am challenged to act with power and presence in my world —doing     justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with my God. 
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295. Inward Light and the New Creation: A Theological meditation 
        upon the Center and Circumference of Quakerism (by R. Melvin 
        Keiser; 1991)
            About the Author—R. Melvin Keiser is Professor of Religious Studies at  Guilford College, Greensboro, NC. Born in Philadelphia, educated at Westtown  School, Earlham College, Yale Divinity, Harvard, Duke University. He works in  adult education in the NCYM. He has written essays on religion & schooling in     various periodicals and several religious books. He is a member of Friendship    Friends Meeting in Greensboro.
            Introduction/ The New Creation's NatureQuakerism's center is the     Inward Light, its circumference the New Creation. From this underlying cen-    ter & circumference flows early Friends’ way of being in the world, the peculiar     nature of their spirituality, theology, ethics. I want to share not only what I see,     but also the perspective from which I am looking. The Inward Light and New     Creation spirituality I see in early Friends can help with contemporary issues.     That spirituality affirms that God and world are inseparable because we relate     both to divine presence and to interrelations with the world with: radical indivi-    duality & radical relatedness; presence of God and urge to transform society;  theological thought and ethical action.
            To discover and open to the Light at our center is to dwell within the total  world as originally created. “World” here is the created context of our being.     James Nayler writes: “As man beholds the seed growing, so he comes to see     the new creation, and what he lost in the [F]all, is restored by the power of the     [W]ord, the son of God ... so comes man to be reconciled to his maker in the     eternal unity ...” Beneath our surface life the world, the New Creation exists in     our depths as originally created; it was obscured in the Fall, not obliterated.     The Light opens us to our depths; we come in touch with the original matrix of  our being.
             Even though the New Creation was not a watchword of early Quakers,  its meaning permeates their experience and thought. [For George Fox, the     significance of “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condi-    tion” is revealed in his vision of returning to Eden through the angel’s flaming     sword: “All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me     than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and     innocency, and righteousness, being renewed into the image of God by Christ  Jesus ..." 
            And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to God in the power     and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before     he fell, in which the admirable works of the creation, and virtues thereof, may     be known ... Great things did the Lord lead me into, & wonderful depths were     opened unto me ... People in subjection to the spirit of God ... may receive the     Word of wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in     the Eternal Being.”
            Fox is given a knowledge into the heart of the world, understanding the  nature and virtues, the power and excellence of all creatures. Fundamental to     Fox’s spirituality then is this intimate indwelling of the New Creation. The New     Creation is our present ordinary world but as experienced in depth, illumined     by the divine Light. [We tend to fragment the world into self, world, spirit, na-    ture, mind, body]. In the depths, the Light draws us down to dwell beyond these  fragmenting dichotomies.
            Spirituality of the New Creation—Our spirituality doesn’t come from  our initiating but rather [from silence], from letting go of control. This silent de-    scent into ripeness is an opening to the Light-centered New Creation. The     manner of our spirituality of Light & New Creation is therefore neither procla-    mation of the Word nor celebration of Action, but is waiting. Quaker spiritua-    lity descends in silent waiting into the depths of the world. 
            From there, from the divine mystery, arises the Spirit’s leading & our     own spirit with a felt sense of divine presence. Spirit is not an abstraction from     space and time, but is always experienced in the here and now, in this cir-    cumstance by this embodied self that I am. While returning ever-again to the     [formless] source [of all forms], we are always being drawn forth by the Spirit     to create the forms of our personal, communal, and cultural lives.
            Young Fox moves from dichotomizing spirit and world, to reducing spirit  to world, to affirming the spirituality of the world as divine creation. While out-    wardly the world is objects in space and time, inwardly it is evil, the corrupting     and destructive forces in the self. In waiting he finds an affirmation emerging     that the world is in truth the creation of God, the place in which our spirit may     grow in relation to the divine Spirit within.
            Theology of the New Creation—The spirituality of Light and the New  Creation provides the foundation for early Friends’ theological expressions of     creation, sin and redemption. Creation is the context of conversion; conversion  is opening to the Light; reconciliation with God by opening to the Light in the     depths brings us into unity with the depths of the totality of being, with the New  Creation. Early Friends speak of convincement because they are brought to  stillness where they can be awakened to what is already present.
            The New Creation is neither past or future; it is the present context of  our being. The stress falls on divine and human presence in the present. The     Quaker doctrine of creation is based on a lived sensitivity to and unity with the     world [deep inside us, a world filled with divine presence]. Sin is the 
barrier    that veils our eyes from the depths of Light and New Creation. To “give up self    to die by the Cross” is to open to the uncontrollable divine depths within self     and world. The knowing of life in Eden is not head knowledge but a tasting,    feeling, indwelling knowing of the divine presence in the original  creation.
             Early Friends are reviving the doctrine that there is still “original righ-    teousness”; Fox believes it is only obscured. The redeemed, [righteous] life is  to dwell in unity with God and world knowing the true nature of creatures     through a felt unity with them in God, and to act in accord with that unity.     There is a minor Christian tradition that speaks of the world being made unfi-    nished; our responsibility is to complete it. Perfection is affirmed by Fox as he   is brought up into the image of God in which Adam was originally created.      This is a dynamic perfection involving growth. The measure of light we have    may vary from time to time; perfection lies not in completeness but in the    fittingness of our response to it.
            Social Testimonies in the Matrix of the New Creation—Dwelling in  the New Creation explains our radical communalism. The Light is the Creator     Spirit connecting us one to another in deeply knit worship or group decision &    bringing us into “unity with the creation.” Friends’ ethics are shaped by re-    lation to God & by our relations to the matrix of being, the New Creation.     “That life & power which takes away occasion for war” comes from living in     the power of “the covenant of peace [of the original creation], before wars &    strife [in the fall].”
             Simplicity as a Quaker testimony also springs from these depths.     Speech, dress, and comportment should manifest inwardness of the life of the     Spirit rather than pride. So also with equality, which is established in the original  creation. To deal justly and live simply is to dwell in and to exhibit the fitting     relations of New Creation. Within his creation-based educational concern, Fox     makes education available for all regardless of class or sex.
             Women Speaking in the New Creation/ Quaker Spirituality: A Life     Deepening—In 1666, Margaret Fell published Women’s Speaking Justified,     Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures, All such as Speak by the Spirit and     Power of the Lord Jesus. For her, thinking while connected to the Light and the  matrix of being is rigorous, specific, complex, and comprehensive. Her argu-    ment is that sexual equality existed in the original creation and that when we     open to the Light within, we are restored to living in the New Creation. 
            She argues from Genesis 1:27-29. She says, “Here God joyns [Man &     Woman] together in God’s own image, & makes no such distinctions & differ-    ences as men do.” Not only did God not subordinate woman to man in the     creation, but has never done so. The Spirit has poured out upon women as     well as men. Jesus confirms sexual equality in the original creation by quoting    the above Genesis passage. Fell said: “The Church of Christ is a Woman ...     Those that speak against the power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord     speaking in a Woman, simply by reason of her Sex ...such speak against     Christ & his Church.”
            She takes on St. Paul’s injunction for women not to speak in the church.  She says we have misunderstood his intentions. Paul subordinates women to     men where they live in a fallen condition as in the unruly Corinth church. Where  people have opened to the Light they no longer live under the law in the fall but  live in the Spirit, in Christ’s oneness—“Christ in the Male & in the Female is     one.” In her thinking God is present in each historical period performing a dis-    tinct divine action. The periods are connected with each other through God’s  presence.
            Every moment offers the possibility of opening to the Light & being situ-    ated in the divine matrix of the world. [Every moment that has been or will be is  present in every other moment]. The universal is present in every particular.     Intellect and passion are inseparable. Theology and ethics are inseparable.     The Protestantism that Fell and other early Friends attacked used exclusive     thinking, excluding people before Jesus from salvation, excluding Christians     from present righteousness. In her metaphoric inclusiveness, she embraces     the adventure of the uncertain moment of encounter with the Light interwoven     with creation.
             Quaker spirituality, manifest in Margaret Fell’s theological-ethical argu-    ment for sexual equality in church leadership, is shaped by her and early     Friends’ discovery of living from the Light and living in the New Creation. Spi-    ritual maturing in the New Creation is learning a new language, a new form of     life. It is learning to be at home in the silence of being and to speak its lan-    guage of Light—of the depth and the love and the fullness of being in the world.    
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296. The Testimony of Integrity in the Religious Society of Friends   
        (by Wilmer A. Cooper; 1991)
       About the Author—Wilmer Cooper grew up among Conservative     Friends in eastern Ohio. He is a graduate of Olney Friends School and Wil-    mington College.  He did Civilian Public Service during WWII, and was on     Friends Council on National Legislation in the 50’s.  He was the founding dean  of the Earlham School of Religion, served as dean for 18 years, & as Profes-    sor of Quaker Studies for 8 years.  This essay is an expansion of addresses     given on the subject before several Friends groups.
       [Introduction]—Elfrida Vipont Foulds told my Quakerism class of how  the subject of George Fox’s message “went cold on her.” She thought of doing  research, visiting Pendle Hill or the Westmoreland countryside. Then it oc-    curred to her to go to George Fox’s birthplace at Fenny Drayton in the English     Midlands. She walked in the village & sat in the village church of Fox’s day. In    her mind’s eye she saw young George sitting with his family, pondering why    he & his family came week after week, making solemn affirmations [which     others ignored the rest of the week]. Inconsistency troubled George Fox, & he   continued to ask questions about the meaning of life.
       [Suddenly Elfrida Foulds realized] the Fox felt the need for integrity in     daily life. He had to say “yes” or “no” & mean it, without quibbling. Elfrida Foulds  pointed out that Fox continually tested what integrity meant. Churches weren’t  buildings, but the fellowship of believers in worship. At Woodbrooke, a Quaker  study center in Birmingham, England, I was challenged to answer the questions  What is a Quaker? What is Quakerism? in 25 words or less. As I have strug-    gled with this question then & since, it occurs to me that perhaps the word “in-    tegrity” comes as close as any word to answering these questions; “integrity” is   the essential Quaker testimony & undergirds all other Friends’ testimonies in     their faith & practice. Integrity must find its root in Quaker history.  
       The Meaning of the Quaker Testimonies—A unique Religious Society  of Friends’ characteristic are Quaker testimonies. Testimonies grow out of     inward religious experience & are intended to give outward expression to the     Spirit of God’s or the Light of Christ’s leading within. Friends believed in this     leading, but they soon experienced common leadings of the Spirit which be-    came formalized into testimonies. They believed they must be convinced of the  testimony’s “truth” each time they were called on to enact it in their lives. John  Punshon said that inwardly they are our guide to our Creator’s nature, our     inspiration’s source. They are our guide to life, a sign of divine love for creation,  the means of prophetic witness, taking their meaning from our highest reality.  
       There is no definitive list of Quaker Testimonies, which have differed     throughout Friends’ history. Many of the early ones had to do with social beha-    vior. Friends observed certain principles of worship and ministry as a testimony  to the truth; worship is essentially spiritual not ceremonial (John 4:24). From     this arose testimonies against the outward observance of the sacraments,     against “hireling ministry,” and against creeds in churches. The most proble-    matic and controversial of the early Quaker testimonies was against music     and the arts.  If one was truly moved by Spirit of God to sing in meeting for     worship, that was accepted but that did not include instrumental music. Art     represented reality rather than being a firsthand experience of it.
       Under-girding all of today’s Quaker testimonies is the concern that our  outward lives bear witness to truth discerned inwardly. It is in this framework of  thought that the Testimony of Integrity needs to become the common deno-    minator of all the other Quaker testimonies. George Fox said: “Let your lives     speak.” Doing this is an outward sacrament of an inward leading of the Spirit.     Another descriptive saying of Friends is that “Quakerism is a way of life,” which  suggests that testimonies are moral & ethical fruit of the Spirit’s inward leading. 
       Values & testimonies differ. Values are projected ideals or goals which     are rationally determine; testimonies are derived from religious faith & experi-    ence fashioned out of a life of prayer, devotion & worship, joined with spiritual   discernment & commitment. Testimonies seem a more appropriate emphasis    for Quakers [than rational values]. Cecil Hinshaw wrote:  “The essence of   early Quakerism is precisely in a demand for complete integrity of the indi-   vidual in his relation to God, other people, and himself … George Fox cannot     be understood apart from a recognition that the driving force in this life at this      time was for complete integrity.”
       Quakers as “Publishers of Truth”—The Testimony of Integrity is     grounded in the early Quaker understanding of “Truth.” Their later greetings to    one another would be “How is Truth prospering in thy parts? George Fox     wrote: “I was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by     which they might be led into all Truth, & so up to Christ & God … to know the     Spirit of Truth in the inward parts, & to be led thereby.” Fox’s Truth must be the  kind of truth that lays hold of us in a very personal way, & that [insists on] a re-    sponse of action. 
       It was truth to be obeyed according to God’s will as revealed in the life,     teachings & ministry of Jesus. The Hebrew word for truth, emeth, is sometimes  translated “faithfulness.” This was a characteristic of truth which was under-    stood & proclaimed by early Friends. The ground of religious certainty for     Friends was rooted in the gospel tradition & their belief in the faithfulness, de-    pendability & trustworthiness of God, experienced firsthand.
       Plainness and Self-Denial—The early commitment of Friends to a life-    style of “plainness & self-denial,” & avoidance of the “vain & empty customs” of  the world was nurtured by the Puritan culture & ethic of their time. They were  also convinced inwardly that their outward life must be liberated from the fa-    shions of the day to follow the simple, unencumbered life of their Lord. Both     William Penn & George Fox gave advice along these lines. Early Friends were  committed to “acting truth” in their daily lives. They were quite specific about     what would keep them divinely focused & what would deflect their attention     from it. [They avoided frivolity & were careful with their time, honest in their     dealings, truthful in speech, unadorned in dress & furnishings. A double stan-    dard was to be avoided at all cost & nothing was “to divert the mind from the    witness of God in the heart.”
       The Quaker Practice of Integrity—The Testimony of Integrity can be     articulated and practiced 4 ways: truth-telling; authenticity and veracity; obe-    dience or faithfulness to conscience; wholeness. Truth-telling is the most ob-    vious place to begin to live out Integrity.  Friends’ concern was that followers     of Christ should be known for telling the truth all the time. They believed in a     single standard of truth & honesty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though not a Quaker,     held that “the very existence of oaths is proof that there are such things as lies.”
       Authenticity & veracity calls us to be truly who we are & not be 2-faced  and try to be something we aren't. The opposite of integrity of course is hypo-    crisy. We are all tempted to become pretenders of virtue and piety. The ten-    dency to misrepresent ourselves is a common shortcoming we all have.  [We  aren't always aware] we are violating our integrity when we respond this way.
       Obedience and faithfulness [connected with the Light Within] is the seat  of religious authority, & the touchstone of our faith.  This kind of truth is groun-    ded in living faith and experience of the present moment, not in dogma, creeds,  abstract philosophical ideas or theological affirmations.  The testimonies are a    living witness to the inward leading of the Spirit of God in our lives.
       “Integrity” comes from integritas, which refers to a state or quality of     being complete, that is, a condition of wholeness or unity.  Integrity creates a     sense of togetherness and belonging when applied to persons in community.       Individualism dominates much of our behavior in western society, and it af-     fects the Religious Society of Friends as well. We need to recover the Testi-    mony of Integrity to balance this other attitude and to have a sense of respon-     sibility and accountability toward one another. The fact that Friends came to       share similar leadings finally resulted in the common expressions and prac-     tices which we call testimonies. Among the best-known corporate leadings of       Friends are their concern for Native American Indians [in Pennsylvania’s    beginnings], prison reform, treatment of the insane, education of their children   in “all things civil and useful.”
       From the end of the 17th century Friends worked for the civil and religi-    ous liberties of people; this commitment to good government for the purpose     of advancing human liberty has continued down to this day. Quaker involve-    ment in the world of business, commerce and industry has in the past often     reflected the corporate philanthropic concerns of Friends. [Another corporate     concern and witness] has been their remarkable involvement in relief and     rehabilitation work on behalf of victims of war, disasters, and economic depri-    vation.
       Although the religious and social customs of Friends have changed, their  corporate witness in such matters has made it possible for the individual lea-    dings to be tested by the members of the Meeting community. There is a re-    surgence of Friends affirmation of women’s gifts and a growing concern to     avoid sexist language.  Likewise there is a developing awareness of the lives     of gays and lesbians so that they can be liberated from prejudice.
      [New] concerns constantly surface to claim Friends’ attention in response  to the inward spiritual leadings of truth. Only by responding with a corporate     sense of integrity to these emerging concerns can we expect to remain rele-       vant.  Integrity in its root meaning and search for wholeness leads to an even    deeper sense of community than we have described so far. We need to asso-    ciate integrity with salvation.  The word “salvation” comes from a Latin word    meaning “health” or “wholeness.”  Olive Wyon writes, “integration is not an end  to itself; it  is a means to an end, and the end is God.”
     The Lack of Integrity in Daily Life/ The Clarion Call to Integrity &  Veracity—As we look around us, we are overwhelmed by a culture which has     few compunctions about lying, cheating & stealing. Drugs & drug dealing in the  world today represents widespread disregard for integrity in personal conduct  & human relationships. Another example is the insider trading & fraud in the     money centers of the world. How can colleges & universities become bulwarks  for freedom and truth in our society when they, more often than they want to     admit, become involved in unfair competition and misrepresentation of the truth  in athletics and in seeking grants.
       Widespread use of lies, dirty tricks, and cover-ups in order to bypass     legal and democratic procedures in the interest of acquisition of power and     influence undercuts integrity.  [As individuals] in the marketplace, we are not     only victims of cheating and deception, but we inadvertently or unknowingly     become allied with the untruthfulness that goes on. We also need to ask our-    selves about our sense of integrity and fidelity in family relationships. Where is  our moral conscience when violent behavior touches us where it hurts     the most, in our personal and family relationships?        Is it not true that    we are in about as much danger of being destroyed by our own moral    sickness and culpability, as a society, as we are in danger of annihila-   tion by a nuclear explosion?
            Friends in the past set very high standards for themselves, since they  were committed to what Friends called “Christian perfection.”  William describes  Quakerism as “a religion of veracity, rooted in spiritual inwardness … a return     to something more like the original gospel truth … than had ever been known     in England.”  We need to learn to model our Testimony of Integrity in our per-      sonal, professional and vocational lives. We need to learn to teach our chil-    dren these testimonies. We need to learn to live the way we want the world to     become, rather than the way the world is now. Friends would do well to     undergird all of their outward testimonies with the Testimony of Integrity,     which must begin in the sanctuary of our own souls. 


297. Gospel Order: A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Com-
        munity (by Sandra Lee Cronk; 1991)
       About the Author—Sandra Cronk is a spiritual nurturer, teacher, and     historian of religions.  For 10 years, she taught Quaker faith and thought, spi-    ritual life studies, and religious community at Pendle Hill.  This paper was writ-    ten to address an issue relating to the religious life and thought of the Society     of Friends, and to explore what it means to belong to a community of     commitment.  

       Therefore keep your meetings, and dwell in the power of truth, and know  it in one another, and be one in the light, that you may be kept in peace & love     in the power of God, that you may know the mystery of the gospel.  All that ever  you do, do in love; do nothing in strife, but in love…”  George Fox
       [Queries to Consider before and during Admonition:]
       Is the thing, or things which thou hast against him, fully so, as thou  apprehendest?
       Hast thou seen evil in him, or to break forth from him?
       Hast thou pitied him, mourned over him, cried to the Lord for him,     and in tender love and meekness of spirit, laid the thing before him?
            Hast thou any hardness of spirit or hard reasonings against him?    Isaac Penington
       Introduction—Participation in the faith community may be a witness to  God’s new order of love, peace, & justice coming to birth in the world; it pro-    vides avenues through which God’s presence may touch our lives. “Gospel     order” is the term which has been used [collectively for] the Friends’  under-    standing of church-community, [beginning with George Fox]; Shakers also  used the term. [Great national revivals asked]: How can we manifest faithfully  our new commitment to God? Coming out of [a 17th-century] revival, Friends  sought an on-going life of faithfulness. In our own era, the renewal which has  touched many people personally has led them to ask what it means to be part  of a faith community which lives as witness to God’s new order.
       Definition—Early Friends expected & experienced the in-breaking of  God’s new order in their lives. The Light revealed the ways they had previously  turned from God. It led them to Christ, their Inward Teacher & Guide. They felt     that ultimately this order would affect all of creation. Early Friends used “gos-    pel order,” most often used to describe the communal/church & societal di-       mensions of this new order. “Gospel” does not refer primarily to the intel-    lectual content of faith or a religious message. [Put together with “order,” the    phrase means] the characteristics of daily living which flow from the actual life,  power, & reality of a relationship with God. 
       George Fox wrote of this relationship as a covenantal relationship.  In  Scripture covenant means an agreement between 2 parties, and signifies a     relationship of abiding trust and fidelity with God.  God’s covenant with Noah,     and with all life on earth forms a significant element in the development of some  contemporary theologies concerning the environment.  The recognition that     Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions acknowledge a mutual covenantal     relationship with God has inspired interfaith dialog.  The covenant from Mt. Si-    nai is law and the framework through which the living bond with God may be  expressed in everyday life. 
       It is in this covenantal tradition that Christians have understood their  relationship with Christ as a new covenant.  For early Friends the new covenant  was Christ Jesus and their living relationship with Christ, not merely a code of  behavior.  At the heart of Quaker faith is the understanding that one cannot live  God’s new order alone.  A community is necessary to embody a new pattern of  living.  Early Friends stressed that God’s new gospel order was present when     people lived out of the fullness of the living relationship with Christ.  To live in  the gospel is the way to experience the empowerment that allows one to em-    body peace, holiness, and righteousness.  Gospel order entailed an ordered  way of life that had concrete expressions in virtually all areas of living. 
       The Patterns and Structure of Gospel Order—The content of gospel     order is in: the inward life of worship and discernment; the interior functioning of  the church-community; the social testimony of Friends.  1st, without basic pat-    terns of listening and responding to God, the rest of gospel order would not be  possible.  2nd, George Fox said of the meeting-community: “Therefore keep     your meetings, and dwell in the power of truth, and know it in one another, and    be one in the light, that you may be kept in peace and love in the power of     God, that you may know the mystery of the gospel.  All that ever you do, do in  love; do nothing in strife, but in love…”  
       George Fox urged the community to care for all those with special  needs.  Gospel order affected marriage, family, and home as well as the mee-    ting. The wedding itself consisted in the exchange of promises between the     man and woman.  The community witnessed the promises, a sign of its sup-    port and an indication that the wedding was a corporate act as well as a per-   sonal one.  Friends experienced Christ’s ordering work in the patterns of home  life.   
       3rd was prophetic witness to the larger society.  The witness was through  testimonies like: plain speech; simple or plain dress; refusal to go to war, take  an oath, or pay tithes.  For the 1st generation of Friends the testimonies were a  prophetic challenge to what they perceived as a vain, unrighteous order around  them.  Friends refused to participate in the existing social structure when it was  unfaithful [or seemed to usurp the power of] God.  
       The larger spiritual, socio-economic and political witness to that new  order coming into the world faded over the centuries.  It will be impossible to     reclaim the depth of faithful community life without special attention to the holi-    stic challenge to all areas of life, including the social, political and economic     dimensions of society.  The call to be  gathered into gospel order is a witness  to importance of the church-community, the people of God.
       Reclaiming the Importance of the Church—Friends might rightly be     called a high church group in terms of the importance it places on church-    community. Church, in this sense, has become very weak in today’s American     society.  “Americhristianity” refers to religious communities so acculturated to     the society that they end up blessing American society’s general goals and     norms. Church as gospel order has disappeared from our theological under-    standings. Our individualistic framework means that we tend to see religious     life in a bipolar way. The bipolar model of religious life sees both the inward     life & the work of social concerns in individualistic ways.   
      In the Early Friends’ model of being gathered into gospel order, the in-    ward life, the work of social concerns, and the life of the meeting-community     are fused together into an integrated whole.  Both the meeting for worship     and the witness to peace and social justice for Early Friends grew out of living     gospel order.  That new [gospel] order was already present, at least in the     form of a seed ready to grow to maturity.
       The frustration and sense of incompleteness which many feel in trying     to deepen their prayer and worship lives or to make a more serious commit-    ment to the work of social justice may find a solution through answering God’s     call to be gathered into gospel order as a church-community.  The process of     mutual accountability was not a way of checking to see whether Friends lived    up to certain petty points of lifestyle, but a way to give each other the     strength to be a people who listened to God and lived God’s new order. 
      The Prophetic & Priestly Dimensions of Gospel Order—The charac-    teristic ways Christ enters into relationship with people are called the “offices” of  Christ; George Fox speaks mostly about prophet & priest-king. Christ as pro-    phet reveals our unfaithfulness & sin; leads us to righteousness, reconciliation,  & unity; & empowers us to act faithfully when led by God. Mediated modes of     worship were rejected as unfaithful to trust in God’s direct work in our midst.     Ministers were not pastoral overseers, but rather prophetic voices of God’s  Word.  
       Testimonies of plain speech, non-payments of tithes, & rejection of oaths  were all prophetic challenges to the fallen social order. Contemporary Friends  have overemphasized reclaiming the prophetic element to the exclusion of a  faithful response to Christ as priest-king as well.  The priestly function of Christ  is manifested among Friends in the everyday life of the community living in     gospel order.  Early Friends’ apocalyptic struggle with the forces of evil & un-    righteousness, [suffering imprisonment and/or death], was named the Lamb’s     War. The church, as the body of Christ in the world, lived Christ’s prophetic and  suffering servant work as a single witness.
      The Process of Mutual Accountability—Historically, mutual accounta-    bility provided an internal dynamic to keep gospel order strong within the Qua-    ker community. Abuses in handling church discipline in the past & our indivi-    dualistic society's influence have caused a negative reaction to this phrase. The  core of the accountability procedure used by Friends came from Jesus’ [admo-    nition] instructions in Matthew 18. The procedure is 1st, talking to the person in  private, then with witnesses present, before the church, & finally if no repen-    tance is forthcoming, disownment. Accountability isn't just concerned with     members meeting the group’s outward behavior expectations, but about nurtu-    ring the deeper relationship of trust, caring & responsiveness.   
        In the gospel order, those gathered into the church-community have a  covenant with God.  Matthew 18 embodies accountability [without resorting to]  an impersonal, legalistic framework.  On the prophetic side, accountability is a  method of mutual admonition.  While contemporary Friends have trouble with  this quality, early Friends recognized that admonition is an essential ingredient  in the way God works with us.  Those who have followed Matthew 18 know that  to speak to another who has committed a wrong is to make oneself open and  vulnerable to one’s own part in the situation, perhaps even revealing a misin-    terpretation of the situation.
       [Isaac Penington’s Queries to Consider before and during Admonition:]
       Is the thing, or things which thou hast against him, fully so, as thou  apprehendest?
       Hast thou seen evil in him, or to break forth from him?
       Hast thou pitied him, mourned over him, cried to the Lord for him,     and in tender love and meekness of spirit, laid the thing before him?
       Hast thou any hardness of spirit or hard reasonings against him?
       Friends saw mutual admonition as part of a larger process of spiritual  guidance and nurture that went beyond the specific advice in Matthew 18,     [beyond telling others when they were wrong.  It is admonishing a person to be  courageous in adversity or to undertake a much needed ministry or service.   A  prophetic word at the right moment may be just what is needed to introduce us  to God’s call, or to help us close the “life-gap” between our awareness of God’s  call and our day-to-day behavior.  The prophetic aspect of the process of mutual  accountability is the commitment to help each other listen and respond to God’s  call both as individuals and as a community of committed Friends so that we  may live faithfully in God’s new order. 
       [The whole of Matthew chapter 18] is about more than prophetic admo-    nition.  It assumes people will fall.  The heart of faithful living is to learn how to     love on the other side of hurt and betrayal.  This the way of God’s forgiving love  which restores relationships after there is a break or fall.  The Footwashing at  Marlborough is about forgiveness and reconciliation, servanthood and spiritual  cleansing.  It is about Richard Barnard and Isaac Baily.  Barnard was a consci-    entious elder of the Meeting who refused to pay war taxes.  Baily was a con-    tentious member of the meeting who was a strong supporter of the Revolutio-    nary War. 
      They had a dispute over a waterway, which Baily dammed. Barnard     carefully followed Matthew 18 in seeking a solution with his neighbor. [Richard     Barnard felt burdened by the lack of water to his property], & by the broken     relationship with Isaac. Richard asked God for direction & guidance; the answer  came. Richard felt that God was calling him to wash the Isaac’s feet. After re-      sisting the call for a time, he was willing to surrender his notions & be obedi-    ent. He carried out the call to wash Isaac’s feet after some resistance on Isaac’s  part. Isaac dug away the dam & went to visit Richard. The friendship between     the 2 men remained deep & vibrant for the remainder of their lives. These    neighboring Friends experienced Christ’s power of forgiveness & reconcili-    ation as a living reality in their lives. Richard’s gift of sacrificial love made    reconciliation possible with his neighbor. 
       Disownment, once widely practiced by Friends, is now used infre-    quently.  Some contemporary people find this aspect of the accountability pro-    cess discomforting.  Forgiveness cannot be forced; a forced change of be-    havior is no change at all.  If after working through all the avenues of caring   outlined in Matthew 18, the meeting felt it had no choice but to recognize that   the relationship of love and trust with the recalcitrant person was non-existent    [i.e. disownment]. Disownment wasn't understood as the intention to cut one    off from relationship with the community.  It was the recognition that a  fun-    damental covenantal commitment was already  severed. 
       The possibility of disownment among Friends prevented the accounta-   bility process from being a matter of cheap grace. When there is repentance     & change of behavior, the meeting welcomes the person back into the com-    munity. For the process of mutual accountability to work with integrity, it is ne-    cessary for all community members to live in a relationship of love, trust, &     caring. We cannot admonish each other unless we listen together for the way     God is truly leading each of us as individuals & together as a community.      Both the prophetic & priestly dimensions of mutual accountability require a     covenantal relationship with God and each other.   
       Elders: Overseers of Gospel Order—Living faithfully in gospel order  was such a significant part of Quaker faith that a separate ministry of elders     developed to oversee this aspect of Friends life.  Vocal ministers stressed di-    rect, unmediated communication with Christ who was the inward teacher and      guide. The elders, while participating in the unmediated work of Christ, also  understood Christ to work in priestly and mediated ways. 
         Elders had oversight over worship and the spiritual life of the meeting,  daily life of the meeting-community, and the practice of accountability.  One of     the elders’ primary responsibilities was care of the listening process.  The el-    ders rarely spoke in meeting for worship.  They helped create an inward space  for Christ to enter. Their attitude of deep listening helped the meeting as a     whole to center down in worship. 
       In joint meetings of vocal ministers and elders, inexperienced ministers     could grow in the ability to discern the movement of the Spirit under the tute-    lage of experienced ministers and elders.  The elders functioned as spiritual     nurturers. In Quakerism, the spiritual guidance process is more communal than  other Christian traditions.  As the Friends movement matured, a whole culture    of listening developed.  Elders were responsible for keeping these avenues of     listening spiritually alive and thus exercised a prophetic function.  As overseers  of community relationships, elders exercised a priestly function of ministry.    
       While God was this healing work's author, the meeting was the locus     receiving God’s love and practicing the art of loving others.  The incarnated     love  helped them understand God’s love.  The elders were expected to see      that the inward life of Friends was translated in faithful daily living.  As Friends  communities developed in the mid- and late 18th century, the task of caring     for those with special needs began to be separated from the work of the     elders and given to that of the overseers.  Together the elders and overseers     were responsible for seeing that love and caring took practical form in the    daily life of the meeting. 
       The final part of the elders’ work was overseeing the area of accounta-    bility. Elders could arbitrate or mediate in disputes, at the request of the par-    ties involved. Elders watched to see if individual Friends & the whole meeting  walked faithfully in gospel order. For 1st generation Friends, faithfulness to tes-    timonies was one way to call society-at-large to accountability before God for      its unjust social, political, economic, & religious structures. [Over the centu    ries] the wider prophetic aspect of gospel order tended to fade & hasn't been     reclaimed. The prophetic oversight of the meeting’s accountability work had      & has far-reaching potential.  The eldering ministry was the church’s way of     nurturing the meeting-community as an expression of God’s presence in     the world.    
       Knowing God’s Will—Through the eldering ministry, we are challenged  to understand Quaker modes of knowing God’s guiding presence in the midst of  daily life. [For vocal ministry], decisions about where to travel, what meetings to  attend, which house to visit, what message to give, were all determined by in-    ward listening to God. They spoke to meetings & individuals as God led them,     not as they humanly analyzed the situation. Elders used this mode of knowing     too, with mediated modes of knowing used to find out about Friends in their  care. 
       [The use of mediated & unmediated modes of knowing in worship is the  source of the debate between programmed & unprogrammed meetings about]  whether to it is right to use the human mind to analyze the congregation's        needs & plan a response or more appropriate to wait upon the Lord in silence &  speak spontaneously. [The programmed meeting’s pastor has duties of both     vocal ministry and eldering]. Unprogrammed meetings often struggle with these  issues independently of any discussion of the pastoral tradition. Understanding  the way in which elders held as important both mediated & unmediated ways of  knowing can help us do the same.
       Tradition—While recognizing the danger of too much reliance on tra-    dition, friends still saw it as a reflection of the living history of the church-    community.  The [minutes or] or record of the meeting’s discernment over the    years became part of the church’s living tradition.  To insist that the commu-       nity re-evaluate every principle it had come to know through its relationship   with God, on every occasion that demanded a decision seemed to make no    sense. [On the other hand], in-breaking of the Spirit was necessary to prevent   tradition from becoming an idol. 
       [The later] traditional patterns of gospel order were stultifying to some  people.  There was little room for the development of new patterns.  Many     meetings discontinued the use of elders and many aspects of church discipline  the elders had come to represent.  Today most meetings must wrestle with the  problems that come from lack of corporate discipline.  If we forget that God’s  new order must take some shape and form in daily life, we risk upholding an  airy faith unrelated to flesh-and-blood lives.
       CONCLUSION—The elder was the caretaker of the living tradition which  gave shape to gospel order.  Gospel order is a rich, multi-valent concept and  experience in Quaker faith.  It unites the inward life of prayer and worship, the  daily life of caring and accountability in the meeting, and prophetic witness in  the world.  Reclaiming the fullness of early Friends’ understanding of gospel     order enables us to hear God’s call to deeper faithfulness today. [Deeper faith-    fulness calls for deeper listening].  Without this deep listening to the Inward     Teacher, any “order” runs the risk of becoming form without power. 
       The historical expressions of gospel order help us to come to grips with  the areas of our lives where we slide easily and unthinkingly into the uncaring,     unjust, exploitative structures around us.  Looking at the historical expressions  of gospel order raises provocative questions for the faith community regard     to the nature of corporate commitment and the role of structure in faithful living.   Communities of commitment need to see what forms the patterns of faithful-    ness and the ministry of caring oversight will take today. 
      QueriesWhat does it mean today to be a committed people in co-    venantal relationship with Christ?        What does it mean to practice mu-    tual accountability that keeps this relationship alive?        Do our lives  with each other in our meetings and homes reflect fidelity, love, & trust?        Can we participate corporately in God’s new order so that our love     speaks to a world dying from environmental destruction, violence, ha-    tred, & systems of economic exploitation & injustice?
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298. The Psalms Speak (by George Terhune Peck; 1991)
           About the Author—This pamphlet grew out of a Pendle Hill course     taught in 1989. George & his wife, Annie have been members of Stamford-    Greenwich (CT), & were founding members of Brunswick Meeting (ME). They    spent a term at Pendle Hill and George has written several pamphlets. He is  active on the Board.
       [Introduction]—Psalms have spoken to many people in the 2,400     years or so since they passed from oral to written tradition. Can we still hear     them? Prayer and meditation can help a true seeker find a way back to the     psalms, to history, and perhaps a spiritual home. To read the psalms, one     may try a more meditative reading. The psalms for me sing of the wisdom of     lived experience, being known by God, surviving suffering and grief, risking     honest hate, anger, and making penance, seeking refuge, befriending crea-    tion, singing praises.
            Intimacy with God (See Psalm 139)—In approaching God (vv.1-2), the  psalmist sees God 1st in the distance; then God comes closer (vv.3-5). How  does the psalmist of #139, & how do we respond to such closeness? [The  psalmist responds with: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I  can’t attain to it” (v.6). Later, the psalmist considers the temptation to escape     God’s presence, & all the possible hiding places, even in darkness (vv.7-12).     How is it that we & the psalmist, find again & again & everywhere, God     presence? Once having experienced that presence & peace, it isn’t hard to    
set aside time each day for a moment of collection.
       God has “grabbed us by the gut,” to use a modern translation. God  knows our bodies by virtue of having created them from nothing (vv.13-16). Do  we accept the universal life force behind all creation? God knows us down  to the bottom of our secret selves. Our existence is known in the mind of God,  before conception & after death. When in our thoughts we come close to God,  we approach infinity. [Awake or asleep, we are still with God] (vv. 17-18).  The  psalmist ends in a simple prayer (vv. 23-24), asking to be searched, known,  and led.
            Hebrew poets use parallelism: the same idea is repeated in different  words, or one idea & its opposite are repeated. In Psalm 1, follow the godly     worshiper as he or she walks, stands, sits, & finally comes to rejoice in cre-    ation’s ordered harmony. The psalm has almost no adjectives or adverbs;  herein lies its power. Power comes through descriptive use of similes & meta-    phors. This psalm is in 2 parts: the godly, whose simile is a tree planted by 
a     river; the ungodly, whose simile is wind-blown chaff. The angry judgmental      God of Psalm 2 seems incompatible with the biblical message of love, & so a  stumbling block emerges for understanding the psalms.
       Hatred (Psalm 137, 139:21-22)—It would surprising if poetry composed  nearly 3,000 years ago didn’t contain elements that I don’t want to take in at all    —much less mediate on. [If we are meant to embrace all of Holy Writ], how can  we understand the psalm passages of hate? (139:21-22). The psalmists are  at war, passionately involved in the war between good & evil. I have shared the  dismay of the singers at the Babylonian exile, their grief, longing, & loyalty to  God. Then to be asked to sing (137:1-5). 
       Described by a Jewish scholar as “a dreadful call to vengeance, 137:8-9  tell half the story of the West Bank, the other half being explained by the holy     war preached by Mohammed. According to the bulk of Christian teaching, evil     isn’t a power set over against God, but an aberration. Grief can lead to hate, but  honest recognition of hate can lead back to grief & the capacity for forgiveness  & reconciliation; [God & us forgiving God’s children, which are all people]. Hu-    manity at its fullest potential recognizes the aberration of evil, finds the song of  redemption and sings it, even in captivity.
            Suffering (Psalms 13 & 22)—Suffering is the alternative to hate once  there is grief from injustice. Laments or complaints form an important dimension  in the psalms and scholars have classified ⅓ or more of the Psalms as laments.  They can rarely be tied to a specific sickness or historical event. Laments por-    tray the universal sufferings of humanity then & now & everywhere. Of course,  many of us refuse to admit suffering in any form. 
       In this century a new way of looking at suffering has grown up; it is seen  as a normal part of the human condition. We are learning to bring our weak-   nesses into the Light, discharge our negative feelings about them, allowing     them to be embraced and strengthened in the Light. [Expressing aggressions    and tensions toward inanimate objects is one way of] dumping our garbage     of our personal conflicts. Carl Jung’s treatment led people to raise the stresses    [of inner polarity] to the conscious level and then, when they had lost their     sting, to cast them out, [in order] “to help patients find their structural base  again.”
       The typical lament of the psalmist follows a progression from complaint  (naming tension), through petition (therapy), to praise (release) [e.g. Psalm 13]  The 4 different but similar complaints in vv. 1-2 form a fine example of repeti-    tive parallelism by asking how long 4 specific negative conditions will last 4     times. Then there is the petition in vv. 3-4, a request for Light and for aware-    ness. The psalmist ends with a declaration of trust and joy in vv. 5-6, “be-    cause he hath dealt bountifully with me.”
             Psalm 22 deals with complaints of psychic & physical illness. The “bulls  of Bashan” in vv. 11-13 used to strike me as funny, because their slavering     seemed as exotic as a lion’s roaring. Sickness can be physical too, as in vv. 14,  15, 17. Both the black humor & the wild complaint can lead us to not take pain     personally. As the pain ceases to dominate us, we can turn to God in thanks, as  in vv. 24-25: “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted  ... My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation.”
            Grief (Psalm 130)—When the separation of death occurs, few escape  grief. In vv. 1-2, the psalmist speaks from out of the depths. Grief seems to me  like suffocation; time stands still; deadness presses down on life. It is like being  drowned. Our culture doesn’t encourage accepting grief & the full-throated roar  of pain. [I have witnessed such expression in an Italian mountain town. It lasted  the entire day, & the next day] the cathedral bell tolled once a minute all day    reminding all how grief drags down time. The next day the widow was herself  again. Her grief was purged.
           Verses 3-4 make it also a penitential psalm. The psalmist makes no claim  of self-justification and casts himself or herself on the love of a forgiving God.     Trust has taken the place of argument in verses 5-6. The psalmist is impatient,  longing to escape from the weight of grief and the gloom of night. Grief is never  an isolated experience. In each individual grief, the community, relives and  releases its grief, as in verses 7-8.
            Refuge (Psalm 91)—How wonderful it is to be able to seek & find re-    fuge, safety & comfort in God. [I am reminded that Martin Luther, who never     backed down, wrote “A Mighty Fortress is Our God].” He may have drawn     inspiration from Psalm 91, especially verses 1-4. [I think of verses 5-7 when] I     remember in 1945 when I expected to be sent at dawn to the firing squad as a  spy. I trusted in God to be delivered—by death or otherwise as God willed.     What promises of protection [there are in verses 9-13]! 
       Do I really believe in God’s promises of protection? [There are re-    markable instances of being spared throughout history], yet few if any would  lay claim to a faith that would protect us from all diminishments. God’s pro-    mise is found in verses 14-16, made to you & I. Most scholars believe that     the psalmist hoped to live to a ripe old age. [I believe personally that] the im-    portant promise is that life isn’t confined to any particular time & space. So  to me “long life” means eternal life.
            [Refuge (Psalms 121; 24; 46)]—The center of refuge and of greatest  holiness was a special place in ancient Israel, Mt. Zion in northeastern Jeru-    salem. The scribes indicated that Psalms 120-134 were pilgrimage songs. To     many of them, Mt. Zion is a symbol: the “city of our God.” “I will lift up mine     eyes unto the hills,” starts Psalm 121: 1-4. I still find peace and inspiration in     the hills. God shows untiring care for each individual and by a natural transi-    tion, for the whole community of “Israel” in verses 5-9. 
       I cherish especially that watchfulness that blesses my “going out and  coming in.” A moment of holiness is dramatically captured in Psalm 24, which     opens with “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof ... (vv.1-6). What     follows (vv.7-10) can be a dialogue between the priests and pilgrims. The     community as a whole rejoices in God as a refuge. And then there is Psalm     46:10-11, with its verse “Be still and know I am God ... the God of Jacob is our  refuge.”
             Befriending Creation (Psalms 19; 104)—For everyone who carries  concern for heaven & earth, the psalms are a meditational inspiration, a fresh     liturgy, a spiritual base for social concerns (Ps. 19:1-6): “The heavens declare     God’s glory ... In them hath God set a tabernacle for the sun ... there is nothing  hid from the heat thereof.” The psalmist celebrates the rationality and inter-    relatedness of all phenomena, “the seamless web of creation.”
             Often the stars would speak to me and so I came to know their lan-    guage.  As a schoolboy, I lay down on the football field. I looked up at the     stars and the milky way, shining with incredible clarity. To me they declared     the glory of God and so did the black spaces in between, for I could barely     grasp their immensity. This cosmos was home to me & in it I felt the 
presence    of God. Some environmentalists have accused the “hierarchical nature of  Judeo-Christian theology [of removing] human beings from the natural world     and placing them in control of it  ... We need to see ourselves humbly, as part     of the earth, going beyond “stewardship.
       Christianity is the religion of Europe, whose people, animals, plants, in-    sects, & germs altered if not obliterated non-European ecologies [& cultures]. I  don’t think scripture teaches that a true steward could be an exploiter. In 19:7-    10, the psalmist is talking about natural law, both in the ecological & social     dimension. Newton was describing expectable regularities in the physical world  while Hobbs & Grotius were doing the same for human relations. 
       We often depart from the enjoyment of serenity and peace, [prompting  the questions & concerns of verses 12-13. European settlement of continents     show them to be] very bad stewards, having no concern or awareness for the     consequences of their actions. Will future generations look back on us and     our treatment of the environment with repugnance? “Let the words of my     mouth,/ the meditations of my heart/ [my actions with nature]/ be acceptable in  thy sight,/ O Lord, my strength and my redeemer (verse 14, with [addition].
            Of similar significance to environmentalists is Psalm 104, which contains  extended reflections on Genesis 1 & 2. Does or should Adam rule all nature?  Is Eve an afterthought? In vv. 1-3, the 1st creation is light. God as creator was  & is still a central religious experience, but God’s clothes have changed. To one  who worships in the One Creator’s presence, human creativity is only a pale  deeply treasured reflection of the divine.
             The psalmist centers on God in verses 5-23: “Who laid the foundations  of the earth,/ that it shouldn’t be removed forever ... Thou hast set a bound that  waters may not pass over;/ that they turn not again to cover the earth He sen-    deth the springs into the valleys/ which run among the hills ... He watereth the     hills from his chambers; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works ... The     high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies. He ap-    pointed the moon for seasons;/ the sun knoweth his going down ... The sun     ariseth ... & [the animals lay down in their dens./ Man goeth forth unto his work  & to his labor until the evening.” 
       Should we Christian be less respectful & less humble in creative  evolution’s presence [than these early worshipers of God]? Earlier com-    mentators attributed the prominent position of water in the psalmist’s world to     Palestine’s dryness, but present-day residents of wet climates have learned     to prize water just as highly. Like the psalmist, we are inclined to be most  grateful for the gifts which the Creator gives us from our fields. 
       [On the other hand, our unparalleled manipulation of nature, thus tea-    ring] the seamless web of creation, presents the main threat to the balance of     nature. In verses 24; 27-29; 31-34, we recognize God’s works, that God pro-    vides for all of us, & we end our meditation with praise & thanks: “O Lord, how    manifold are thy works!/ in wisdom hast thou made them all;/ the earth is full     of thy riches ... [Whatever] thou givest them they gather ... The glory of the     Lord shall endure forever;/ the Lord shall rejoice in his works ... My medita-    tion of him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord.”
            Praise (Psalms 42; 100; 23)—Praise is the most frequent and strongest  theme in the psalms. The soul [seeks intimacy], survives suffering and grief,     risks hate, makes penance, seeks refuge [from God, then with God], befriends  nature, loves and is loved by God, sings praises. One does not have to slog     through [all the above] in order to earn the blessing of God’s love. God’s grace  just comes—unexpected, unplanned, and unsought. Then it is sought again     often in the silence of worship. The problem is that we forget, and succumb to     the temptation to believe in a reality other than God, [an external “reality”] of  sickness, poverty, or death.
            Most often psalmists express God’s love in God’s “name,” “law,” “house,”  “mercies,” “goodness,” & “lovingkindness.” The burning affectus of Augustine,  the daily companionship of humble Francis with God’s love, the [tendering] &  tenderness of early Quakers in God’s love. Jewish and Christian devotion is full  of desire, as in Psalm 42:1-3. It is not possible to give out love or joy and have  less, for these are gifts that feed upon themselves and grow ever stronger.     “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands./ Serve the Lord with gladness     ... For the Lord is good;/ his mercy is everlasting;/ and his truth endureth to all     generations.” [From Psalm 100].
             In Psalm 23 there is no striving, no petition, but only the simple & direct  statement of fact. The psalmist rests in the assurance of a loving presence right  now. In reading these familiar verses, we may be tempted to slide over them as  though they were merely a well-worn formula. “The Lord is my shepherd” con-   veys caring simply and beautifully. [God’s love] isn't the reason most of us think  we shall not want (vv. 1-3) 
       [We work and] spend a [lot] of time trying to keep it that way. May I, and  others, sometimes reach the faith that the psalmist states as a fact and so find  my soul restored. “Yea, though I walk through/ the valley of the shadow of     death,/ I will fear no evil;/ for thou art with me” (v. 4), as an affirmation has  brought solace to the survivors at a funeral service. 
       God is our host and hostess and lays the table for friendship in verse 5.  While we may start out as enemies or strangers, we become friends, children of  God in common by the end of the main course. The psalm ends as we are     gathered in our cosmic home in verse 6: “Surely goodness and mercy shall     follow me/ all the days of my life:/ and I will dwell in the house of the Lord  forever. Amen.
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299. Vistas from Inner Stillness (by Richard L. Walker; 1991)
            ABOUT THE AUTHOR—Dick Walker is a convinced Friend & presently  a member of Wider Quaker Fellowship. He lives in Northern AZ & is a research  astronomer & article publisher about binary stars & satellites. This pamphlet is  an attempt of self-expression, to describe & share common denominators in  human experiences.
            [Introduction]—[I have come to believe that the restlessness that  causes us to feel there is more to the universe than we sense with our own     senses or with instruments is caused by a collective consciousness in the uni-    verse; we are part and one with all elements in creation. At a point in inner     stillness, from an awareness until then obscure, a power flows through me     that frees my eyes & mind for what may truly be a glimpse into reality. “Be still  & know I am God. (Psalm 46: 10). Chuang Tzu wrote: “To a mind that is still the  whole universe surrenders.” I am moved to write this monograph in an effort to  relate a few personal experiences in my life that have created an awareness in  me, which I sense is “A Knowing of God.”
            THE SOUNDS OF LIVING—When I was a boy we lived on the edge of  [an Iowa] town; our home was bordered on 2 sides by lush green fields of corn.  Stifling heat made sleep impossible; we would sleep outside, hoping for a     breeze of salvation. The stillness of the night held the marvel of the stars for  me. Late one night as I lay very still, I heard the corn [& the grass] grow.
            [Years later my friend] Mary Campbell said: “The signal is always there,  but you have to block out external sensations to hear it… That’s what the Light  is like too, a far distant signal that only seems weak; yet it is clear & distinct     when we listen with all we have.” Common denominators in our experiences     permitted Mary & me to bridge the inexpressible & find understanding of events  that were important to us.
            [Here I am reaching out with my experience and feelings] to others who  are kind, receptive and seeking answers]. I have been blessed with glimpses of  the multiple facets of this world. My experiences all arrived from deep inside     me, [from a stillness that grew inside me], at a time when I was transfixed in a     state of silent awe of the power and beauty of nature. To seek God we must     create a god with us in an image we can accept. The greatest truth of my life  was an awareness that we are all one and one of the same.
            CRYSTALS AND THE BREATH OF GOD—I studied a small depression  on a sample of cassiterite, filled with tiny sparkly crystals. Studying the fairyland  of light and reflections transported me back in time to my first experience with  crystals. When I was 13 in school, the principal sent us out onto the playground  in winter. About the sun and in the sky were great circles of light and from the  sun grew shafts of light that formed a large cross whose arms arced across the  heavens to meet at the cardinal points of the great circle; the cross and circle  displayed the colors of a faded rainbow. At the cardinal points were 4 more  circles; at their open, [outside] cardinal points were arched cusps of yellow,  orange, and red light; the sky began to move.
            As the circles became more distinct, mock suns formed with focusing  brightness within the smaller circles and then crosses emanated from the     “suns”. It was a symphony of light. Principal Meeker said: “There are clouds of 
   6-sided ice crystals higher than we normally see clouds. They are aligned in    different patterns high up in the stratosphere. It’s called a perihelion, a great     solar complex. [A short time later it began to snow]. I looked at the first snow-    flakes; they were 6-sided crystals.
       How can one view such majesty, such beauty and not feel that  everything about us is governed by laws, greater than physical laws?     Laws that we can only hope to feel. Feelings consume me now as I write, and     in the meditation and in our Quaker silence I can sense them radiating from   the very atoms inside me, atoms which are ordering themselves inside me.     They are the same ordered atoms, the same vibrating oscillators that stopped    a mid-western city in the 1950s. The sensations, ideas and motivating forces   within us that we call consciousness are the same as those which order the    universal spheres in their orbits. Celestial consciousness is a source we all     touch; we are all tapping it. It is the Good, the Light, the Spirit, an essence    that I add to nature of God. There is no self, no individual, no separation of ego  in blissful stillness.
        THE EYE OF GOD—Herbert Young quotes his father’s answer to an     atheist: “How can anyone of reason & ordinary intelligence not have seen    a power beyond chance in the wonders of nature, in delicate & gorgeous     flowers, in beautiful trees, in the variety of animals, & in man’s own abili-    ties? I climbed a 12,000 ft. mountain near my home. At 10,000 ft I turned north  & began a steeper climb to the peak. I stood knee-deep in flowers: Indian paint  brush, orange, red, and yellow, & creations of lacy blues and violets, mountain  daisies, groundsels. In between the flowers were baby pine trees, green with    tips of light yellow-green.
       [Higher up on the mountain] fired had raged & all about me were burnt     stalks of trees all white and dry. I looked back toward the flowers and faced     miles of volcanic cinder cones struggling for recognition toward the sky god,  and above them, cumuli cast shadows on the quilt work of the earth. I could     see across the southern tip of Nevada into California, and in the north I could  see the notch in the horizon we call the Grand Canyon.
             At this altitude the sky was an inky blue, & scattered throughout it were  cloudbursts. The air also has the half the oxygen content found at sea level; the  mind struggles to exist. In that struggle vistas occurred at an accelerated pace.  I climbed further into the sky & when I crested a saddle of the mountain I met  the most beautiful cloud in the universe. It towered & grew, & billowed all white  & grey, pink against the Turrellian blue sky above the mountain. 
       The cloud towered grander than the mountain. It was the grandest in the  universe. It lived & grew before me & its radiance & strength infused me with     energy. It became a living entity that changed before me in a mocking display  of greatness. I was truly in a state of being present, & I became flush with a     crushing humility. A fly landed on my hand. His eyes were hexagonal lenses,     red and brown and black and shiny and dull and clear and opaque. In that eye     was a vista that rivaled the panorama before me, above me and about me.
            Reality exists somewhere between the shadows & reflections of one’s  thoughts. It takes a lifetime to realize that thoughts can never be distinguished     in the shadows of reality. Molecules of still air on my cheek lifted a pale from    
my eyes. Are sensations of the soul, feelings, & sensed paradoxes the     way in which reality is revealed to us? The mountain & the cloud grew ever     larger, grander, & more beautiful with each quantum lift of the veil.
       Between the voids the structure of galactic clustering appears like a     shaped, 3-D lace work, and at each node of that intrinsic beauty a galaxy con-    taining billions of stars glows with a singular beauty. When we become still and  journey within ourselves, letting other dimensions emerge, limited and limiting  thoughts may also cease.
            THE KITE—Something inside me was in preparation for a spiritual les-    son that was to manifest itself. I drove to a cinder cone west of my home, high     in the Arizona mountains. There, 1½ miles closer to the stars, I flew a kite. To     fly that kite at night was a drive within to meet something I sensed was on the     edge of consciousness. I ran backwards, held the kite to the sky, & let go. It     pulled & tugged before me like a child being born. It had a life then & in an     instant it was gone from sight, racing toward the stars. Without a visible im-    age, the principal senses & resulting logic were cut off & feelings were sub-    stituted. I centered on the kite, became one with it.
            Suddenly the tugging stopped & was replaced with a steady, firm pull &     the nature of that pull told me I was doing more than flying a kite. The pull was     gentle, one of kindness, a sweet, peaceful reassurance being transmitted from  above; [we reached toward one another]. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with  the presence of God. All the power of the universe is before us at all times and  in all situations. That power has consciousness & is aware of us. My faith 
in the   presence of God was transformed into awareness of that spirit. It is an essence  that blends us all. I asked: Will I be conscious of this presence if I let go? As  I released the string my answer came.
       THE PARIAH—Life just is. We are neither right nor wrong, & the pur-    pose of life is to fulfill an obligation to live. [Walking in the Grand Canyon], I     looked up a side canyon to an opposite cliff. High on the cliff [a tree grew,     without benefit of ledge or crevice]. It was not a young tree, & that tree was     baked each day of its life in one of nature’s most merciless ovens. Worst of all,  it was alone. It was isolated. It was an outcast. It was a pariah.
            At the base of the cliff, hundreds of feet below its gaol of stone, was a     miniature forest of trees. The trees in this microcosm were straight, upright,     blessed with sufficient water, sun, and shade. They were offspring of that suf-    fering image of the Christ Spirit high above them. Because it lived there was     life more abundant elsewhere in the universe. A lesson had been presented     at a time I needed one. I had an obligation to live, and my purpose in my life     was to fulfill this obligation. Loving life gives us the beginning glimpses of the     edge of the miracle of paradox, the genius of the absurd, the wonder of light     from darkness, and light in darkness.
             THE FINGERS OF GOD—In a revelation of liberating death [by a roa-    ring waterfall] I came to know the physically gentle, warm, care of the creative  force of the cosmos. There is a confluence at the western end of the Grand     Canyon where the turbulent, muddy Colorado River meets with the crystal,     blue-green water from Havasu Creek, which has rapids, 3 magnificent water    falls, & leads to one of the smallest Indian villages in the world. Entrance is     usually made by hiking from a dusty hilltop deep in the Arizona high desert,     reached by 60 miles of rustic road which ends at a cliff overlooking a 
pano-    rama of canyons & cliffs thousands of feet below. The desolation of the vista     screams with such intensity that one transcends loneliness to enter a revela-    tion of ecstatic beauty that bubbles in the soul. 2 Quaker friends  were with me.
       From the hilltop one descends into a waterless world of baked stone     and down switchbacks shared with Indian horses, [through 30-foot wide can-    yons and layers of rock laid down 250 million years ago. The 3 water-falls are:     Navajo Falls (50 ft. high); Havasu Falls (150 ft. high); Mooney Falls (200 ft.     high). We camped by the 3rd one]. We chose 3 separate rocks on which to     sit and settled into an inner stillness.
            After a while it seemed as though first one & then another friend had  moved closer [actually they had not moved]. Then, something was pressing     against me, not my friends, from behind, the front, above, and beneath; I was     surrounded. My awareness changed from terror to love as I realized this was a  gentle force, a brush of power, and my fear changed to awe, then bliss. I was  flooded with light, granting me an awareness, that in this setting of explicit     beauty, I was surrounded by a facet of the infinite force of the universe, and it  was contacting me with an assurance that God was there.
            
THE GREAT CIRCLES ON MT. HAMILTON—One summer evening [at     the “Great Refractor” on Mt. Hamilton], I was distracted [by the moonlight     within the dome]. As the moon moved, its light pour down the telescope like     pale silver and paused on the great circles high above me. It then dropped to    the floor,  where my eyes met a confusion of interwoven elliptical shadows     magnified by projection. In those shadows was something I had never seen       before; not a visible sight, but insight. I saw a glimpse of truth of the uni-     verse displayed before me  in a show of light and shadows. It was only a   glimpse, and I could not fathom it.     
       I ran from the dome, & stood in the darkness of the hot night air. [There  was a great universal meeting of my self with the stars]. The centering was     instantaneous and so deep that my body left me as I became only mind and     then that mind, that ego, faded too. The stars became parallel shafts of light     all of various hues from white to dark red; I heard the stars. My ego become     an illusion, it was a twist of existence. [The universe], the laws of nature,     God, Light are incomplete without us. The atoms of my body began to dis-    solve, disassociate and mingle and then move out and upward through     space. It was a very grand osmotic transformation and I became aware I    would never cease to be. It, God is one and the parts, the fragments I thought    was me, a personality, is part of it.
        There is a gap between each thought we have. That gap, that interval     of time & space, is our inner stillness. It is there that peace resides, inner     peace, the stillness of our soul. Friends in meeting can tap a tremendous     source, a vantage point for an extra view of the universe. Through the inner    stillness we become a portion of the wonderful vista. Our inner silence is like    a gate through which the good of the universe flows through us. It is a good    amplified in our lives that flows back leaving us reborn each time with greater    love. [I have seen many if not most of the wonders that the universe has to    show us]. It is of no importance to me how many voyages I complete about    the sun, for some day I will experience the ultimate experience, disembark &    walk about for a time.


300. Therefore Choose Life: The Spiritual Challenge of the Nuclear 
   Age (by John Tallmadge; 1991)
       About the Author—John Tallmadge is Professor of Literature & Envi-    ronmental Studies at the Union Institute.  He is a scholar and practitioner of  nature writing with interests in the spiritual aspects of wilderness travel, nuclear  disarmament and peace issues.  Relationship dynamics, double binds, and the  addiction model seem very relevant to the nuclear dilemma.  This updated es-    say offers insights into the post-Cold War era, when we will be faced with  planetary  challenges of peace and survival.
            I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set  before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore, choose life."  (Deu-    teronomy 30:19)   
       [Introduction]—The ancient Chinese had an astonishing curse: “May     you live in interesting times.” Few times are as interesting times as [the nu-    clear age]. [In the wake of the rapid corrosion of the Iron Curtain, eaten away     by millions of individual minds resolving to live for democracy & freedom], we     [felt briefly] what life could be like on an unshadowed earth. A few months     after the Berlin Wall fell, I was driving through southern Ohio [when I chanced    upon a Uranium Enrichment Plant still in operation]. I found myself thinking of      missiles still poised in silos & submarines. While all over Europe the walls     came tumbling down, hidden among the green fields in the midst of America,   the cold war's poisons [are still being brewed] as if nothing had happened.      
       I felt the curse of these interesting times, [as if I had] no credentials, no  leverage, no expertise, & yet with a sense of responsibility.  It occurred to me     that the Cold War had really been fought in the minds of [individual] common     people as a spiritual war for their allegiance. The nuclear threat would never be  exorcised, except by the moral choice of ordinary people. Each of us must set  out alone, in fear & trembling, to discover what paths may lead to our planet’s  survival. 
       The Spiritual Nature of the Problem—In The Fate of the Earth (1982)  Jonathon Schell offers an analysis of the nuclear threat. He concludes that nu-    clear weapons confront humankind with the prospect of extinction. Schell ar-    gues that we must look for its consequences before it occurs. “It takes the form  of a spiritual sickness that corrupts life [beginning with] thoughts, moods, and  actions.”  By “spiritual” I mean that part of our life not limited to material objects  and sensory experience.  “Spiritual growth” means extending the limits of one’s  personality in order to participate in relationships of equality with a greater and  greater diversity of beings.  Spiritual stagnation may be seen as a kind of men-    tal  illness.  Extinction as a “present reality” [in our imaginations] is spiritual     rather than material, [but it can still] seriously disturb us.  Extinction can da-     mage our lives before it occurs.  
       Also, we have tended to focus on this destructive power, often endowing  it with a hostile animus. [Actually], we should fear it less than our own evil will     to use them. This will to annihilation is something spiritual inside us that has     no material being; dismantling our arsenals would not really solve our pro-    blems. The stronger our collective will to survive, the healthier & more vigo-    rous our life in the world becomes. Just as nuclear weapons have frozen     world politics into a state of permanent crisis, they seem to have paralyzed     our imaginations too. 
       Our will to survive may be strengthened or weakened by how we     choose to interpret our situation, [and what assumptions we make].  Through-    out the Cold War, both sides continued to make offers they knew would be  refused; the results confirmed their worst expectations about the wickedness     of the other side and the futility of negotiations.  Our expectations have led to     behaviors which confirm our expectations and repeated experience has habi-   tuated us to this unhealthy situation.  Our best hope is to break the feedback     loop before the system gets into a runaway mode.  The longer we succumb to     the illusion [that deterrence is working and keeping us safe], the easier it is to     slide toward a despair that may one day prove fatal.  We should try to under-      stand the psychology of our current behavior and begin appropriate therapy in   this moment of apparent and temporary reprieve.
       Nuclear Dependency—In a nuclear age, horror, anxiety, helpless rage,   and “psychic numbing” have percolated into our daily lives & produced symp-    tomatic patterns of behavior; some deny it; others embrace it obsessively. [In-   dividual denial takes the form of]: glorifying the American Way; scapegoating     [a long list of those “other people”]; living irresponsible, self-centered, & hedo-    nistic life styles; [and a general “live, invest, build for today” attitude]. Some     people show an unhealthy obsession with nuclear holocaust; some dream     about it.  The word “nuke” has become popular.  These behaviors suggest that   we generally repress our feelings about the nuclear threat; this repression   yields a low-level depression.  Our condition prevents us from becoming all     that we could be.  You could say that it stunts our spiritual growth. 
       Collectively our most striking symptom is our faith in the doctrine of de-    terrence; [i.e. that only the fear of mutual annihilation can hold them in check].   Jonathon Schell concludes that deterrence makes sense only if you assume     that both you and you opponent are insane.  Deterrence commits us to building  more & more weapons by the assumption that our opponents are so foolish      as to fear us in proportion to our accumulated firepower.  [We also build] huge    standing armies which we will never be able to use against each other.    
       The most absurd symptom of all is our simple failure to abolish these     weapons, or to make their abolition the primary goal of our negotiations.  [Our     leaders call them effective instruments of diplomacy, and give them names like  “Peacekeeper”].  Nuclear states seem to have made their weapons part of their  national self-image, and call themselves “superpowers.”  They ignore the fact  that their weapons have not deterred small countries like Viet NamIran, and  the OPEC nations from doing exactly what they pleased. 
       We cling to these weapons as a means of self-definition.  Nuclear states  behave like alcoholics who find an identity in the habit they know is slowing     destroying them, & they deny they have a problem.  These states have shown     their willingness to destroy innocent populations, generations of the unborn, &     much of living nature in order to protect their “national interest.”  Their depen-    dency has progressed to the point of evil, like that of an alcoholic who abuses  his loved ones.  
       In the most general sense, evil is whatever is opposed to Life, & it can  take both physical and psychological forms. Scott Peck defined “psychological  evil” as “the exercise of political power in order to avoid spiritual growth.” Peck  argues that evil people seek to control others because they lack self-control &  discipline that comes with self-confidence; they seek to make others exten-     sions of themselves. Nuclear dependency participates in such radical evil by    threatening us with extinction & preventing our spiritual growth.
       Our addiction arose in response to real issues in life [i.e. how] to prevent  a repeat of WWII.  And now that brave and imaginative efforts are being made     in the East, the western powers sit back on their stockpiles and behave as if    nothing has changed.  The real purpose of deterrence is to allow us to have    peace without having to give up war.  Our missile addiction alters our mood    and helps us avoid the deeper issues.  We refuse to abandon deterrence and   embark on the difficult task of building a new world political order. Deterrence     like alcoholism is founded on laziness, fear, and despair, and the longer we    cling to it, spiraling toward extinction, the more painful and arduous the reco-    very process will be. 
       Avenues of Healing/Right Thinking—Recovery is still possible, right     up until the moment of launching the missiles.  Our 1,000-mile journey begins  with a single step: right here, right now, right at home. I believe our personal   choices and actions can affect the shape of things to come.  I would suggest    a healing process of “right thinking” [i.e.] for survival and against extinction,    and “right action” [i.e.] strengthening our will to life.
       Right thinking requires an individual choice for Life [over extinction].  Right thinking involves acceptance of responsibility as citizens of a state com-    mitted to threatening the race with extinction. & right thinking requires a deci-    sion to take right action, to commit to therapy. [Most people would indignant-    ly deny] favoring extinction or holding the human race hostage for the sake of     our national interest. The same person will likely blame the Soviets for the     arms race, & [make excuses why they are unable to do anything], which is    standard addict behavior. 
      [A therapeutic intervention might work], but in the case of nuclear de-    pendency [who can we turn to or listen to]?  The severe narcissism of the     nuclear states prevent them from taking seriously any opinions except their     own. [God will not make it easier for us; that would] short-circuit a process of     choice whose very difficulty is essential to its effect. [Such intervention can]    only come from within the nuclear states themselves. Each personal deci-    sion to repudiate extinction, to admit addiction, to assume responsibility,     constitutes a brave and loving intervention, even if it is known only to a hand-    ful of people. The person who makes a choice of this kind becomes a  living    challenge to our narcissistic & weapon-dependent society.  [They] feel a new      energy & freedom; paralysis dissolves.  One has repudiated and thereby      overcomes the sloth and despair at the  heart of the nuclear crisis. 
       Right Action—What therapy shall we undertake to strengthen our  individual and collective will to survive?  1st, since despair and sloth are our  greatest temptations, we should begin to lead lives of quiet affirmation.  We     should go stubbornly about our business of being human in full recognition of     the threat’s presence.  [We need to continue to live a full life of full service to     humanity and creation], all the while celebrating by these wholehearted actions  whatever is noblest in human life & repudiating those impulses toward lethar-     gy and despair which constitute the real threat to our survival.
       2nd, we must cultivate images of truth & hope. Early images of tests in-    spired awe, terror, & fascination we normally associate with the Sublime. It is     not surprising that we interpreted such power as giving divine or at least natural  sanction to our political decisions. Images of nuclear war victims seduced us,  because while revealing truth, they also concealed truth. [We looked at blast     effects of nuclear weapons] & ignored the more lethal secondary & tertiary     effects. [Taking these effects into account], there would be no place for survi-    vors to go.
       Recent images present the facts more honestly.  Fallout victims are  portrayed so that we know their deaths will be painful, senseless, and disgus-    ting.  Perhaps the most potent image of truth to appear in recent years is the     image of nuclear winter, [with vast quantities of dust thrown into the air obscu-    ring the sun, killing green plants and drastically reducing the temperature].      There are also images of hope, [of life going on in spite of the bleakness of     nuclear war’s aftermath].  Our most valuable image of hope is the image of     our earth seen from space.  Gazing upon our home world seen from afar     ought to shame us out of our suicidal narcissism and offer us a sign of the  planetary consciousness we need in order to survive.
       Because we have a duty to the earth and to other human being, [we   need to] rebuild our relationship to the biosphere on a model of symbiosis and     stewardship rather than parasitism and exploitation.  Knowing the truth and     beauty of our world will strengthen our reverence for all life, including our own.   Right action must include rededicating ourselves to healthy relationships with  each other and with God.  [Our] survival requires nothing less than a funda-    mental reorientation.
       Prospects—With addiction, as with sin, a cure is possible right up to the  moment of death, for the problem adheres in the mind of the person more than  in his external circumstances.  The spiritual view enables us to appreciate the  importance of individual moral choice as central and decisive.  Science cannot  give us moral advice or make our choice for us; all it can do is make clear the  material consequences of our choice.  If we believe in a living future, it may     arise, but if we do not, we will surely perish.  We do not get to heaven; we be-    come heaven.
       I said the solution to our problem was unimaginable to us at the pre-    sent time and that this lack of imagination constituted our problem.  We have  the capacity to imagine any solution's broad outlines.  [God posed the chal-    lenge long ago]:  “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I  have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore, choose     life.”  (Deuteronomy 30:19)  

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