PHP 401-420

            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.

401. Three Ravens & 2 Widows: A Perspective on Controversy among                          Friends (Richard Macy Kelly; 2009)

    About the Author—Richard Macy Kelly has served as a YMCA professional, Executive Director of the MD Council of Churches, and for the Baltimore City Health Dept. He was part of the adjunct faculty in the Applied Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins. He is the author of Thomas Kelly: A Biography and edited The Eternal Promise, a posthumously published work by his father Thomas Kelly. 

    Introduction—From time to time controversy erupts within the Religious Society of Friends.  Friends have found themselves divided by significant issues.  [The old divisions have been put aside], but controversies and disagreements still arise.  The Friends United Meeting (FUM) limited employment opportunities and leadership positions in FUM to those in traditional heterosexual marriages or who are celibate. 

    This has dominated New England YM session for 4 or 5 years.  Some are frustrated by lack of progress or avoidance, or are uncomfortable with confrontation.  We seek to hear, to understand, to appreciate the various points of view.  Ultimately we seek to understand what is the right thing to do.  In reality we cannot predict or control the outcome of any approach.  I suggest that we describe the situation in an entirely new manner, through metaphor.  Our controversies today are part of the ongoing story of our community—a continuing expression of the journeys of those who raised us.  I begin [by using a] ballad as a metaphor.

    Three Ravens—[I am using] 3 variations of the 3 Ravens. The earliest was 1^st published in 1611 [in a time before the Quakers]. The 2^nd was published in the 19^th century in northern England or Scotland. The 3^rd version is American, from the early 20^th century. The song’s basic theme is of scavenger crows who feast on the dead. [The 1^st is a romantic version of a noble knight’s corpse being lovingly protected by, hounds, eagles & maiden. The 2^nd has only 2 crows & a cynical quality. The 3^rd has become a silly children’s song with no reference to its noble rider. Nonetheless, they are the same song: different singers, different styles, different times, different pain. A Quaker today is not unlike a minstrel who loves and performs one version of the old song.  Let us love all the versions; sing them all, and see each version as adding something to the whole.

    Two Widows: The Song Begins—I also sing the old ballad as a song of 2 widows. It is a song of tenderness & strength. & like the old ballad, it has more than one version. 1 version is my grandmother’s song; Madora Kersey, who married Carlton Kelly in 1889. The other version is my mother’s song; Lael Macy, who married Thomas Kelly, Madora’s only son, in 1919. They were both brokenhearted by death, by loss, by lack of opportunity, by problems of health, & by lack of resources. They both loved my father, my sister, and me. It is still the same song.

          Father died in January of 1941. My mother had no professional credentials, no occupation. She was too fiercely independent to accept the offer of a place to stay from family members. She took a course in institutional cooking at Drexel University, and became a dietician at the PA Hospital.  I did not like Grandma Linton much that year. Neither did my mother. Both women had lost their husband at a young age. They clashed over everything.

    Grandma went back to Wilmington OH the next June; I had short periodic visits with her. Over the years I have come to know & appreciate her life & example. Long after her death, I discovered letters & family records, which have further expanded my vision of what I remember from childhood. She told of how Carlton Kelly died in his 30’s. She told of her disappointment that she didn’t go to college. I understood the drive for academic excellence she instilled in my father. [I remember well our visit to her brother, Uncle Rufus: him lying in his bed in the parlor, chickens laying eggs in armchairs, a rooster strutting through the kitchen. Grandma became custodian of the family records he had compiled over the years. I am proud to be custodian of these same papers to this day.

     [Madora’s Life]—Madora, or “Bea,” as she preferred to be called, was the 3^rd of 7 children.  She wrote:  “My parents were Quakers and training strict. As I look back on those days of quiet contentment, my world was not very large.”  Her parents were descendants of Quakers who came to PA in William Penn’s time, followed the migration of Friends south, and then in the 1800’s, to states north and west with new farmland available.  Her grandfather was recording clerk for half a century and was among the early supporters of Earlham College.

     Grandma met her husband, Carlton Kelly, through the offices of a traveling Quaker minister who encouraged them to correspond.  She wrote of her wedding: “In late September … we gathered arm-loads of wild aster, lavender, and white, and banked them against the mantels, and long-stemmed Queen Anne’s Lace … limbs from the gum tree … with glossy leaves bright red, and the rooms were gay and festive, in tune with our hearts.”

     Madora was a child of the late Victorian era.  In her presence one never spoke of sex or sexuality.  She denied that my father ever smoked cigarettes, that he was ever deeply depressed or near suicide, or that he didn’t like Wilmington and couldn’t wait to get out of the Midwest.  For her, Wilmington and her circle of friends were the center of the universe.  She seemed preoccupied with the rituals and proper procedure for interment of the body.  [Plots for her entire Wilmington family were laid around her own.  Her concerns around death may have been influenced by the stealing of her husband’s body].  Another area of difference related to Madora’s understanding of religion. Her religious views were different from those of Friends in the Philadelphia area.  She was a child of the holiness revival movement, which swept through rural and small town Quakerism in the 19^th century.

     [Holiness Revival Movement: Effect on my Family]—[Back on the East Coast], prior to the American Revolution, many Friends withdrew from public life to avoid the evils of the French & Indian War & later the American Revolution. We saw ourselves as a peculiar people, & spoke of maintaining a “hedge” around the Quaker community; John Woolman’s message was largely to Friends alone. [Collaboration with] non-Friends on the social justice issues of larger society was criticized. “Disownments” were frequent occurrences for marrying contrary to discipline, improper dress, service in the military, going to a local fair, drinking and improper speech. 

     Great, great, great, great grandfather John Wilkins was “read out” of meeting for attending a public gathering to discuss the War of Independence.  His daughter Hannah married Francis Williamson and had 4 children.  Her daughter Harriet and Harriet’s 2 sons were influenced by tent revival meetings.  Harriet Williamson Kelly felt she was a Quaker.  As a result of the evangelist John Henry Douglas’ “visits” to Londonderry, virtually all of Harriet’s children joined Friends. Separation, plain language, and plain dress were ended; Friends were reinvigorated.  All that was required was a commitment to Christ and acceptance of Him as Savior. The letters of Grandma and Carlton Kelly show the same enthusiasm for revivals and camp meetings as we would for a hit movie.

     This change released a tidal wave of spiritual energy which contributed to the diverse Society of Friends of today. The Quaker Herbert Hoover was involved in humanitarian activities, & Nixon brought reconciliation with China. There were specific outward changes as well. [My ancestors became recorded ministers & pastors, & meeting houses got steeples]. Many now spoke of “Friends churches” rather than “Friends meetings,” & of creeds and formal structures.  Maybe the Inner Light was no longer relevant, and we should not seek further understanding.

     Luke Smith Mote [literally cut the Hicksite Motes out of the family genealogy] after the holiness preachers.  [Unity was sought & the Richmond Declaration of Faith was developed in 1887]; it was only modestly successful & wasn’t universally adopted.  Rufus Jones, a product of a similar evangelical movement in New England, asked:  What about continuing revelation or Inner Light, long held Quaker concepts? [What about Darwin and Scriptures]? What about modern biblical criticism? Should outreach be service rather than proselytizing?     

     [Thomas and Lael]—Thomas Kelly graduated from Wilmington College and went to Haverford College for a year.  This was his 1^st serious exposure to what historians call the Quaker modernist movement championed by Jones.  The modernist recalled the deep mystical roots which were fundamental to George Fox’s message. Though young Tom Kelly did not fully embrace this modernist movement, it was the beginning.

      While at Hartford Seminary he met my mother, Lael Macy, a Congregational minister’s daughter in nearby Newington, Connecticut. They were married in a church by her clerical father. Her new meeting accepted her letter of transfer & she was now a Quaker. It was perhaps because of her last name: Macy. It is the surname of one of Nantucket’s founding families. Right now we were the poor branch of the family, not the heirs of the department store. The Nantucket MM self-destructed in the course of the Hicksite-Orthodox separation. The Macy family lost their affiliation with the Society of Friends, but carried on their commitment to religious life & Quaker values. [The members of Lael’s extended family were Congregational but behaved in what seems to me to be a very Quakerly fashion]. I don’t think she recognized that influence on her and her family. It was just who she was.

     My mother was not a Victorian. Our home was always filled with overt affection. We knew the facts of life years before our classmates learned them from whispers on the playground. [Sexuality was openly discussed].  [Mother felt that] if she had done her job correctly by the time you were 10 or 11, then she had done her job. You would make good choices in life. In spite of her open & affectionate nature, Lael never dated or remarried. Her family had long ago left the farm. Herbert Macy often invited students from the Hartford Seminary for Sunday dinner. That’s where Tom & Lael met. They spent 1½ years in Berlin finishing up the American Friends Service Committee’s Child Feeding program and helping establish the German YM. She ended her career on the faculty of Westtown School as assistant librarian; [she is remembered fondly by my Westtown classmates].  

     Lael & Tom became progressively more liberal, fully embracing Rufus Jones’ views; they believed in science & scholarship. Mother became more committed to civil rights & freedom of thought as she got older. She was a Progressive Party supporter in 1948, & [friends of people who had done organizing work in the Soviet Union or had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era.] Lael’s strategy for change was her warmth, her cooking, & her graciousness. She delighted in the long preparation & could hardly wait for a reaction to her joyful cooking. Any visitor would be hard pressed to resist political views & social values accompanying such [cooking]. [Tom’s mother], in spite of conservative religious views, was committed to women’s right to education; this led her & her daughter to be members of the PEO Sisterhood. Racial equality & full integration weren’t concepts that her life had prepared her for. 

     The Song of 2 Widows—In the song, would my grandma be a rigid fundamentalist, not open to new ideas?  Would my mother be a loving, liberal spirit who gives away the world, but lacks Grandma Linton’s toughness? No. Grandma Linton’s views were just who she was. They were what she knew & how she survived. My mother was just as fiercely independent in her quiet loving way & as steadfast in her modernist views. Philadelphia Quakers saw to [our family’s] employment & educational opportunities. Ambiguity & complexity might be the song’s message. Both widows, bright women with gifted minds, were denied opportunity in a culture which limited women’s roles. It would be a song that inspires social justice work, & an expanding understanding of God’s love. 

     Grandma’s song would be about strength rather than rigidity.  It would be a song of living with death and sorrow for which there is no magic answer.  Mother’s song would also be about strength and pain, just softer, more subtle, more open to change. It would be a song about love for their children. Does history limit our vision, control us, distort our understanding of the present, or does it inform and guide us to new understandings? Let us see truth as an evolving journey of discovery.  It is the trip itself that is the most important.  The truth, the meaning of life, the nature of God’s love is messy and ambiguous.  Things that may set us free also imprison us.

            Every family’s song is a song of pain, love, inspiration, lost dreams, unspoken memories, and ties that bind as well and support us.  Those 2 widows are around me always, just as are those who raised you, loved you, wrestled through the night with you, and are with you as a piece of who you are.  The old songs never stop.  Feel [their] pain and [their] hope.

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402. Christianity and the Inner Life (by Margery Abbot; 2009)

             About the Author—Margery Abbott is a "released Friend," writing & traveling in ministry among Friends for 20+ years [out] of her Multnomah MM in Portland OR; her ministry has been minuted. Marge served as clerk of Friends Committee on National Legislation. This her 3rd Pendle Hill Pamphlet [#323. An Experiment in Faith: Quaker Women Transcending Differences; #375. Quaker Views on Mysticism]. This pamphlet is an invitation to spiritual receptivity, & emphasizes “yes” & connection, rather than separating into different beliefs.

           21st Century Reflection on Early Friends' Words—Most of my life I was oblivious to the inner world. [My tongue was quiet; my mind wasn't]. The spiritual dimension wasn't part of my consciousness. A profound experience of being held in God's arms tumbled me into intellectual disarray & gave me a strong new direction in life. I receive a call to ministry. I was "converted," yet there wasn't impetus for me to name Jesus as my Savior. I came to appreciate how much what Friends value now are underpinned by the early Quaker view of Christianity. This essay points to how we may learn from tradition, whether we are Christian or not.

           Christ, present & alive among early Friends, was their true Guide. This was heresy to those seeing Bible & priests as truth purveyors. Immersion in the inner, spiritual reality of Jesus' message is very hopeful & freeing; it opens other links to knowing God's ways. Early Quaker practice of Christianity differs from "negative" Christian practices & experiences we have had. The "Accepting Jesus as Lord & Savior" phrase causes cringing [in many].

           I received a call to find language to speak of experiencing Eternal Presence [to as broad a Quaker audience as possible]. Early Friends gave me language & context, an understanding I wasn't the only one so transformed. Isaac Penington & others spoke of "true Christianity" in passages I use. They [open the way] to open the soul, & to separate illusions from the Light's work. They show how Bible & sacrament were part of inward knowledge.

   "True Christianity"—Isaac Penington was son of the Lord Mayor of London; he risked all that status & fortune when he took up Quaker customs. Once someone has known the pain of facing a private interior darkness and the release found in the life of Christ, [one is] "a true Christian [and] very precious ... Everlasting happiness and salvation depends upon true Christianity. Not Christian [in name] only, or professing ... Christian doctrine; but having the nature of Christianity, being renewed by ... receiving ... walking in ... bring forth fruits ... of the Spirit of Christ ... [Such a one is] without a doubt a true Christian ... one that lives, and believes, and obeys from a holy root of life ... Life ... Love ... the Lamb's meekness ... and all grace springs up in [one]."

   Penington echoes my increasingly stale, prideful prejudices about those people who make such a big deal about being Christian. Friends' faith is an entire way of being, not simply a matter of showing up at church. The Spirit gives life, not correct doctrine. The words of Penington have opened a way for me to understand my experience and my faith. He reassures me that mystical Presence is steady, [even when I fearfully deny it].

   Our History As Radical Christians—For early Quakers and their contemporaries, religion was often literally a matter of life and death. [Reading the Bible in English was a new thing]; individuals could read Scripture for themselves. They were among the most articulate critics of state religion, and offered an alternative way for people to worship together and build a community of faith. This faith was an extension of the Bible. While they were careful not to deny the basics of orthodox Christianity, they paid little attention to many aspects of it, such as virgin birth, and explained at length knowledge of the living Christ.

           The letter to the Governor of Barbados highlights 2 crucial, distinctive assertions of Friends: Christ is come, is guiding us today and rules in our hearts; we are cleansed, made perfect and whole in the Light's covenant and God's sight. These 2 dimensions have evolved into an assertion of "that of God in everyone," an inner sense of guidance, and of the natural goodness of each person. For many Friends, "that of God" is entirely separate from Christ Jesus. I fall somewhere in between the early and modern perspectives. I know my belief has a more universal flavor than that of my spiritual ancestors. Living a life grounded in mercy and justice is most fully expressed by Jesus. The fact that I tend to speak of him as a man, and am happy to leave unresolved the question of his divinity, sets me outside of Christian orthodoxy.

  Experiential Knowledge of Christ—The reality of Christ Jesus was the experience he knew: the one true guide and monitor. How would Fox respond to my belief that the birth and death of Jesus is not essential to salvation? Fox 's experience of a voice saying, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition," was one of intense seeking and ongoing learning, punctuated by "openings" to the direct teachings of the Light, and to significant shifts in growth. [Different levels and forms of ministry mark individual spiritual passages].

           Human beings without this Guide were separated from God, caught up in greed & self-will, at the mercy of emotions. The Light was Christ's Light, & not inherently human. Fox knew a Christ who comforted him, guided every action, judged every response. I experienced during worship arms around me which comforted me in grief & let me know changes were needed. I sensed a new dimension; my senses were enhanced. Reality had touched my life & it would never be the same. I see my own experience echoed in other religious & spiritual contexts.

            The Cross is the Power of God—In Margaret Fell's writings, the word "power" jumps out at me: "obedience to the cross is God's power." There are few who haven't found some assertions about Jesus' cross to be irrational or offensive. Jesus sent to die for our sins is one problem. Believing that being the only way to heaven is another. Fell's words helped with my reaction to the cross: "The obedience to the light of Christ Jesus is the obedience to the cross of Christ ... This is God's wisdom [not teachings] which are man's wisdom, dark inventions, imaginings, & studies ... The chief end of the gospel's ministry is glad tidings to the poor, liberty to the captive."

 I sense that the cross is about the discipline & faith of setting aside self-will & listening for holy guidance. We are made open to a power beyond human capacity, a wisdom which confounds our comprehension, breaks our selfishness, & releases compassion & humility. [The world will hate you for it]. Without fear of death & pain, they spoke truth & walked with certainty & power difficult to imagine. Fell & others affirm the rightness of actions in the joy that they could perceive, even in the stink of prisons; man's threats held no power. The threats I face are internal taunts of insecurity & the 2 temptations: to believe my words are world-changing or worthless.

 Early Friends used "taking up the cross" as part of their discernment process. If an action was a thing they didn't want to do, then it must be a leading of the spirit; such reasoning can lead us astray when applied absolutely. Taking up the cross can be a good reminder & excellent counter to the modern tendency to be led by emotions & to focus only on that which we think we want to do. In the 21st century, Tom Fox, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq, was captured & died as a result of obedience to divine leading. He wanted no violence used to free him, & no stereotyping of his captors; his writings mirrored writings of his early Quaker ancestors.

  The Light of Christ—Light is the instrument of convincement. It makes possible honest confrontation with the admirable and the ugly parts of the human condition and opens our way to becoming complete, sturdy, joyful beings. T. Canby lists and I summarize the primary qualities of the Light as written of by George Fox:

           Christ is the Light of the world and enlightens all;/ Light is within you;/ standing in it gives power to forsake evil;/ Light reveals evil thoughts, words, deeds;/ Light Teaches, checks, corrects;/ Wait [for Light] to know the mysteries;/ Light will raise up a daily cross, and watch over your thoughts, and help you resist temptation;/ in Light, know joy and comfort to your souls;/ Light teaches worship of God in Spirit and truth.

    My description of Light is "a bloody searchlight." I look to early Friends' description of Light [& compare them to modern teachers of other religions]. "The Light will show you all Righteousness & unrighteousness ... [your actions] ... evil thoughts, vain words, & ungodly deeds" (Fox). "Rather than hiding our mistakes from our-selves & others, we ... declare them ... Thus the habits of self-deception & guilt [can be avoided], ... & wither away" Pema Chödrön; 2005). Chödrön & early Friends desire to come into the truth. Waiting within for the Light, receiving what it reveals "is the 1st step to true Peace ... to receive Power to shake the earth." The Light at once reveals truth and opens mysteries. Here is one more paradox to add to the long list I hold inside.

  The more I speak with Friends about our spiritual experiences and journeys, the more I sit with other Friends in silence, and speak about spiritual experiences and journeys, the more convinced I am that the Light works gradually in most souls, transforming the heart and mind bit by bit. Many terms were used interchangeably in the 17^th century; these words were drawn from the Bible. Christian Quakers long for words in worship that echo Bible stories, and that recall layers of biblical meaning and a love of Scripture.

  Gospel Order & Meeting Community—Friends sometimes think that we can't say no, or do anything to cause anger or disrupt harmony. George Fox said: "... do nothing in strife, but in love, that edifies the body of Christ." Peace testimony isn't about hiding conflict, but engaging it openly, creatively, & with love. Isaac Penington asks one in conflict within the meeting: "How are the thing or things, which thou has against [one], fully so, as thou apprehendist?      What evil have you seen in [one] or break forth from [one]?      How has thou ... dealt with one, mourned over one, [appealed] to the Lord, & [tenderly, lovingly, meekly] laid the thing before one? If thou has let in any hardness of spirit or reasoning ... the witness of God won't justify thee in that."

           1st, I need to say I disagree, or even that the other is wrong & one's actions must stop. [For those of us raised in an "always-polite-never-direct" culture], this is a great challenge. Speaking tenderly & meekly as an equal, particularly in ["meeting for worship with attention to business"] is more difficult than the 1st. Learning to notice when [my Inward Guide indicates] that I am off or on target in conflict, has been central in my spiritual maturity.

  Discernment—The initial message was clear: I was to learn to communicate my faith to others, [& ensure the truth of my ongoing message] through a clearness committee & professional counseling. Sorting out the dark corners of one's mind & heart can be an ugly thing; fear emerged as enemy & experience twister. [Through this experience's difficulties], we might speak to all conditions & know the "ocean of light which flows over an ocean of darkness." Penington writes: "Be no more [or less] than God has made thee. Give over thine own willing, give over ... running, give over ... desiring to know or be anything, & sink down to the seed which God sows in thy heart & let that be in thee, grow in thee, breathe in thee, & act in thee ...Watch against selfish wisdom ... that it deceive thee not with a likeness, a shadow, making it appear more pleasing ... than the substance.

  My head is heavily inclined to rationalizing what I want, or making excuses why I can't possibly do the right thing. Inner chatter is fueled by habit & fear ... self-depreciation can be as egotistical as arrogance ... Remembering ... moments ... of God's presence relieves the heaviness within & makes space where one can sink down to the seed. This discipline is my version of inner purification, of turning again & again of heart, mind, body, & soul back to the Light. The inward warring diminishes as we learn to distinguish between Light & our rationalizing & temptations; a new internal integration may be felt in the settledness of the heart. There is a period of tension between the instant of vision & the extended process of moving into [& realizing] that vision; this tension can be hard to traverse with a light & firm heart. [Others walking with us reminds us of feelings surrounding the initial opening]. I went from "building maintenance consultant" to one that others came to with matters of the soul. Journal writing, meditation, & feedback from willing listeners were essential to realizing this gift.

          Scripture & the Sacraments—Scripture was alive to those who said it must be read in the same [Holy] Spirit which had given it forth & was a dynamic force in their lives. Scripture & leadings of the Light can't be in contradiction, if Scripture were read in the Spirit by which it was inspired. James Nayler writes: "Concerning Jesus Christ ... he leads up to God, out of all the ways, works, & worships of the world, by his pure light in them ... which Christ I witness to be revealed in me in measure ... Scriptures, ... are a true declaration of the word which was in them that gave or spake them forth ... profitable ... for instruction in righteousness ..." Concerning Baptism, it is truly of the Spirit, with the Holy Ghost & with fire ...        Concerning the Lord's supper, it is truly the spiritual eating & drinking of the flesh & blood of Christ ... Concerning the Resurrection ... it is raised a spiritual body ... They who can't witness the 1st resurrection within themselves know nothing of the 2nd but by hearsay."

           The Scripture is to be read in the Light, not in human frailty. Friends' reading of Scripture give rise to testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, & equality (s.p.i.c.e.), & led them to worship outside dictates of the church. Early Friends knew that "Christ Jesus is come now," [with leadings &] living in the kingdom now. Friends were certain of the sacraments' reality, but saw outward symbols of water, bread & wine as a stumbling block. True communion opened the Christ's teaching, & one couldn't go back to behaving [contrary to them].

  I find sitting with a passage & noting which phrases pull at me & offer illumination for my state can provide surprising insight, new thought patterns, & responses. I'm not a Biblical scholar, nor do I want to be. Once I saw with absolute clarity the meeting room filled with glasses of wine, different vintages, different levels of wine in the glasses. I have known a searing of the soul. The encounter with Holy Spirit is an engagement with awe & is accompanied by trauma. I prefer the image of a wound being cauterized. In resurrection, there is inward renewal—rebirth, if you will. My early attitude is what happens to us after we die isn't worth worrying about. Our job is here on earth; there is plenty of experience of heaven & hell in this world; this attitude still works for me.

  True Religion—George Fox often juxtaposes pure, undefiled religion, which is "from above," and its practical expression, which is visible in modesty, virtue and reproof of all that is counter to the truth. Let every-one wait upon the Lord in his power and spirit. Fox tells us reprove actions counter to the truth. Today we are not sure there is a single truth, and we are mostly certain that no one has the authority to reprove anyone else. Fox writes: "Standing in reproving of [that which] is contrary and walks not in the truth, let this be done in all your meetings ... by his power and spirit and wisdom ... So watch over one another for good ... you watch for good, to feel good stir in you, for the evil must be thrown out."

   I dread the idea of some one declaring me not part of the meeting, or that my soul is in danger from unbelief. I also know individuals in community who have been physically & emotionally threatening to others. Friends' way doesn't lead itself to easy rules, simple delineation, or flat statements of faith. By "answering that of God" in the other, we may awaken & call forth something buried. Friends wrote myriad pamphlets defending themselves against charges of blasphemy & proclaiming themselves as Christian; they charged others with being "professors" of Christianity without inner knowledge of Christ. Friends refused validity of creeds; creeds allowed outward profession, [mere words] of Christianity without inward encounter with Christ Jesus. 17^th century Friends voiced objection to priests being necessary to mediate God's, & to the Bible as ultimate authority.

    Quakers' peculiar Gospel reading brought them to reject widely accepted, outwardly oriented Christian premises. Their Eternal-experience led them to affirm God's work in the hearts of all people & the potential for all to find acceptance before God. Light of Christ being available to all is the thread leading to our universalist understanding. Distinctive readings of Jesus' teachings [led to Friends' strict adherence to truth telling] & provided a framework for the beliefs of many modern unprogrammed Friends & for our peace & justice emphasis.

           My framework for understanding faith is Christian; my reference texts are often early Quaker writings. It is inward knowledge of Christ, not Christian orthodoxy, that shapes & informs the faith that I am part of today. How can we do Quaker practice if we don't listen for a spiritual Guide?      How is it essential or not essential to accept Christianity to be a Friend?      How can people answer to that of God in every person & yet disavow God? But then my concept of "God" isn't particularly "orthodox." 
           We can reach for truth, move in it, but it is hard to articulate for those who haven't tasted it. I must assume that those who made a group decision faithfully attempted to exercise obedience to the Light as they understood it, even if I know I must try to change it. The Light is visible in each person who is open to it, in their passion for justice, in the odd mix of fierceness & gentleness of heart they demonstrate in their day. Guidance arises from a gentle motion in the soul. Grace is a wonder. It opens the heart, carries us across chasms in our own understanding, & across rough places in the world.

 "True Christianity" still lives. [Biblical wisdom], Quaker journals, today's mentors all help point to the truth, but are not the truth themselves. All is tested against an Inward Authority or the Inward Light of Christ. I rarely use Christian language in my normal conversation, or even in my prayers. The more time I spend with the Bible the more I see new layers of meaning in the practices and the faith which we have inherited and which in-forms, tests, and expands my inner knowledge. Transformation is central in our practice and faith. Why are unprogrammed Friends so often embarassed by our heritage and reluctant to claim that our faith is an outgrowth of a particular understanding of Christianity? 
 Unprogrammed Friends [could] recognize and affirm that the core truth of Jesus' message is not confined to Christianity; we welcome other expressions of this truth among us. Remembering [the s.p.i.c.e.] testimonies grow out of Jesus' teachings can open our hearts to those in the Christian world whom we sometimes find quite difficult and can help us to engage them as we live out the Sermon on the Mount's challenge. "[One] that knows God comes into the immediate presence; [one] that daily lives in God lives in the immediate life; and the true faith leads to this, giving the soul such a touch and taste of it at first, as makes unsatisfiable without it."

           Queries—How do my reactions to religious terms affect my spiritual life in positive or negative ways?       How do I believe/know in the depths of my soul?       How do I name and experience the Source of Love and Truth?       How do I know who Jesus is?           What does it feel like to speak about my faith?       How do I respond to others' expression of faith that seems very different from my own?      How do emotions, attitudes, reactions, and not listening deeply enough interfere with the motion of the Spirit within me?
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403. Integrity, Ecology, and Community: The Motion of Love (by Jennie M. 
           Ratcliffe; 2009)

           About the Author—Jennie Ratcliffe's lifelong concern has been to make connection: between nonviolence, social justice, & ecological sustainability; between science, ecology, spirituality, & politics; between contemplation & social action. With her Masters in environmental pollution studies & Doctorate in epidemiology, she has worked in both fields at national institutes, centers, & societies in both the USA & England. She is a member of Quaker Earthcare Witness. This essay grew from preliminary work on a spiritual/ ecological book at Pendle Hill.
           Introduction: [Creating Separation & Dualism]—Our deepest challenges as 21st century human beings is an ecological crisis which threatens survival of us & millions of living beings & ecosystems we share the earth with & depend on. What are the spiritual roots of our ecological predicament?    How can a deeper understanding of integrity inform our communal response to this crisis? I with others in the 1970's, were confident our diagnoses of "the environmental problem" were both accurate and sufficient. We argued over economic, technological, and political changes that would fix the problem. What were the sources of our predicament?
           I realized that unless we changed the our thinking, we would simply be postponing, not resolving or transforming, a deeper & more profound predicament. The growing ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis, [caused by] a profoundly false belief in separation. It is a view that fails to reconcile & integrate; a view that fails to recognize that all things are part of an irreducibly, interconnected, and interdependent whole, a unity. [We see separation [and dualism] everywhere, especially between ourselves and the Infinite Mystery, the Divine, Spirit, or God.
           Critics of traditional Christian theology point to emphasizing a transcendent God over & apart from the natural world, & humanity's image as separate & having "dominion" over the earth, as primary cause of our destructiveness. Thomas Berry writes: "We seldom notice how extensively we lose contact with divine revelation in nature ... [which is treated as] object ... usable thing ... an inert mode of being waiting for manipulation by the divine or humanity." Biological sciences, without "feeling for the organism," can appear to reduce [& de-soul] the natural world to a blind, inanimate mechanism. There is connection between domination of women & nature. Nature is seen as resource, to be used, owned, or controlled, rather than sacred, spiritual, & wonderful. Separateness] from each other, the earth, & unwanted parts of ourselves, makes it easier to wage wars, destroy each other & the natural world, & harder to share [anything].
           Introduction: [Impact of Separation/ Dualism on our Cultural Systems]—Our social, economic, & technological systems mirror & reinforce these beliefs & thinking. Instead of harmony, cooperation & creative synthesis possible when we interconnect & see the interdependence of a whole, we create conditions reflecting alienation & insecurity. We assume that inward happiness and security will increase in proportion to outward power, status and accumulation. We have created a widening and potentially dangerous gap between the impact of technological and globalized economies and our understanding of the consequences. We can bomb people & destroy ecosystems we will never know in places we have never heard of on a scale we can scarcely comprehend. [For us to have empathy and understanding of the impact of our work we have to have things closer up, smaller in scale, few enough, and slow enough to take in. We need time to breathe.
           Introduction: [Healing Power of Integrity]—We can't so easily destroy what we love, what we understand as an irreducible part of ourselves, & which we recognize as kin. Without a sense of kinship, we can't fully comprehend the mutuality & reciprocity by which we know we are in relationship & that what we do to another we do to ourselves. The restoration of integrity, in its deeper meanings of wholeness, & the oneness of all that is, lies at the heart of healing our ecological predicament. Integrity is a unity that bears within it complexity, differentiation, & uniqueness. Wholes are parts of larger wholes, & they are held together by a bond of love. The work of reconciliation, integration, & hallowing is perhaps the surest way to restore wholeness to the earth, peaceful relationships & a livable world. Every being is a microcosm of & an integral part of all that is. There is no separation between the healing of the soul & the world's healing. There is mystical prompting within my heart which experiences growing awareness of oneness, & senses the healing of one as inseparable from the healing of all.
           Reciprocity and Integrity—When I say "I love the flower," is this a feeling, or a knowing that it is part of me? [What is my "love" made up of]? ["I-thou is often used to indicate a loving relationship, where "I" does not objectify the other, but recognizes a living, loving relationship]. As we speak of "I-Thou unity, we can also speak of reciprocity, [the exchange of positive action for mutual benefit]. Reciprocity is the heart of integrity. The 1st aspect of reciprocity is that every part of the universe is interconnected, interdependent, and [responsible for creating everything else]."I" becomes "I" only because of you and all else that exists. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing. All the infinite forms of manifestation are in fact part of a single whole, a One that already, always is—and yet is always being created, always evolving and unfolding.
           Each part, [microscopic or galactic], is both a whole and a part—or a "holon." Each holon includes a previous level of component parts, and each is included in the next level of being, or level of consciousness. Each holon is intimately connected to every other holon. An integral view, in which both parts and wholes are explored reverently in interconnection, yields a deeper understanding of the reality of our cosmos. The discoveries of quantum physics are blurring the distinctions and separations between particle and wave, "spirit" and "matter" and between "consciousness" and "material reality." Thomas Berry writes: "Creation ... must now be experienced as the emergence of the universe as a psychic-spiritual as well as a material-physical reality from the beginning. We need to see ourselves as integral with this emergent process, as that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself." It is our nature to be in connection with nature.
           [Reciprocity as Love/ Like Creating Like]—Reciprocity's 2nd aspect is its nature is love. Experienced within Inward Light, it brings a deeply felt bond of unity with creation. Realization of unity is realization of love. Love isn't just feeling, it is being in relation, response, & responsibility. It is universal force that liberates from dualistic love/ hate, good/ evil cycles; it reconciles. Love knows every part depends on every other part. Love is evolution-force; it includes parts in larger wholes in a series of evolving "holarchies." Love's power moves toward wholeness. Forces that bind atoms & govern planets express love. [The partial love most live in] can say I love this, but hate that. Partial love acts towards what I encounter as object, as other. Martin Buber says humanity must have I-It, objectifying relationships. But we can only live as full human beings if we can have "I-Thou" relationships. Once there is separation [& dualism], there is great loss of reciprocity.
           Reciprocity's 3rd aspect is like create likes. Hatred & violence produces more hatred & violence. Non-violence yields greater peace, harmony, & synergy. Another part of this aspect is that means & ends are essentially the same. We can't use deceptive means to arrive at the truth. If nonviolence is only a tactic, we will ultimately get much of the same direct & structural violence of conflict, injustice, inequality & ecological destruction we see today. What we do to another we do, sooner or later to ourselves [i.e.] "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
           Reciprocity's 4th aspect is reciprocity imposes limits. Organs in a healthy embryo develop in an exquisite symphony of synchronization & reciprocity. Each part grows as part of an interdependent, dynamic whole in balance, sufficiency, & proportionality. Cells simultaneously divide & differentiate while being held in successive integrated & interdependent wholes. Carl Kung has written about the process by which we simultaneously develop, differentiate, & integrate all the various parts of ourselves both inwardly & in relation to those around us. Reciprocity is the simultaneous & continuous differentiation & integration of evolving parts & wholes.
           We become most fully "ourselves" when we discover unique possibilities & realize that we do so in relation with all that is. Animals & plants within a stable, healthy ecosystem live within limits defined by food supply, territory of habitat, & other species. Reciprocity imposes limits, checks & balances, that are essential if the whole's harmony, balance, & integrity are to be kept. Models of real world systems consist of complex webs of interactions, & feedback loops, some reinforcing, some balancing. Effects of reinforcing loops have limits built-in to natural systems; balancing loops continue indefinitely. In a stable, sustainable system, there are multiple reinforcing & balancing loops that create overall balance even though the system is internally dynamic and alive.
           Paths to Integrity: Reconciliation, Simplicity and Nonviolence: [Transforming Evil through Reconciliation and Integration]—What is the best response in confronting the world's evil? We cannot bring about a more peaceful, just, and ecologically sustainable integrated earth community by denying or fighting against those responsible for destruction and violence around; reconciliation is necessary. It is easy to demonize those whom we identified as the "others," and to deny our common responsibility and humanity; it ultimately produced more hostility, polarization, and entrenchment, and less and less understanding on both "sides." We must not lose sight of the humanity of those with whom we disagree.
           I don't believe that Jesus meant that we should oppose evil by a "good" counter-force, but include evil and transform it by an all embracing love. [It can be transformed much the same way as a "sense of the meeting" is reached for deeply divisive issues], by going into the silence, where we can listen for the healing & transforming spirit's voice that allows a loving, reconciling, transforming way to open; unifying love is stronger than hate. We must do the work of reconciliation, transformation, and integration inwardly if we are to overcome what we see as evil outwardly. The central practice for most Friends is Fox's "answering that of God in everyone." Instead of [seeing] sin-filled world or sinful flesh, or inanimate, non-sacred matter, we reconcile and reverence ourselves, Divine, and the wider natural world.
            [Healing Separation & Withdrawal from the World]—[The flip-side of opposing evil with force] is escaping it by retiring from worldly life. Renunciation of worldly attachments can lead to denunciation of the world & earthly life. Martin Buber describes Hasidism as: "To the Hasid, "cleaving" unto God is the highest aim of the human person, but to achieve it he is not required to abandon the external & internal reality of earthly being, but to affirm it as a true God-oriented essence, & ... [then] offer it up to God ... Real transformation can only be achieved by comprehension of the whole as a whole. Renouncing our earthly selves obstructs realization that all are aspects or manifestations of a whole.
           What will help us heal our sense of separation from each other and the earth, and help us see the reality of the divinity and unity in everything we encounter? Carl Jung viewed humanity's capacity for the demonization, dehumanization, and fear as manifestations of the splitting of opposites in the psyche. To achieve psychic wholeness, Jung believed that humanity needed to redeem the shadow, the psyche's unwanted contents by reintegration. This can be accomplished by love and the Inward Light which guides us toward wholeness, which allows for individual self-expression and being-in relation.
           [Moving Towards Simplicity]—Outward simplicity ultimately requires inward simplicity, wholeness, integrity, "perfect sincerity." it is a simplicity springing from the taproot of our lives, in which we experience unity in the midst of all that is manifest. It is about getting rid of whatever in our minds, hearts, and souls is distracting us from being able to see the patterns and relationships between things and from experiencing unity. We can finally see the whole in which everything is included. Moving toward simplicity requires us to be willing to empty ourselves, to suffer, to remain teachable, and to forgive. I believe that one of our most difficult challenges yet perhaps our most vital one, is to trust that if we yield our ego and self will in this way, we will move toward liberation and a greater joy.
           Westerners may dread the loss of individuality, autonomy, personal freedom, identity & security. We are afraid, even ashamed of dependence & austerity. Ivan Illich reminds us that "austerity" means going without only what gets in the way of friendship, community, & relationship, not deprivation. For me, non-attachment is radical acceptance of life's wholeness. Joys & sorrows, life & death, like everything else, can't be separated, & in fact don't exist with each other. Knowing that I experience joy only in relation to sorrow doesn't mean I suffer in order to know joy; it simply means these conditions exists. Sorrow simply becomes part being alive.
           Because the path to wholeness & reconciliation requires us to love, and love can't coexist with violence, non-violence is a path [to integrity]. John Woolman writes: "To say we love God as unseen & at the same time [are] cruel toward the least creature moving by his life ... was a contradiction in itself." [This is an example of] "integrity of creation." John Woolman saw clearly how the exploitation of people & the attachment to wealth & possessions could be connected to the "seeds of war." The founder of the French Ark community, Lanza del Vasto writes: "What matters is to discover whether there is such a thing as nonviolent: economy; authority; justice; farming, medicine; psychiatry; diet ... free from all forms of pressure and closed to all forms of unfairness."
           For Gandhi, nonviolence was inseparable from understanding the law of truth & love, an integral aspect of satyagraha (truth- or soul-force). Arne Naess, founder of the deep ecology movement states: "The foundation of the technique for achieving nonviolence is belief in life's essential oneness." Self realization, which is realization of unity, can't be achieved in violence's presence. Nonviolence can be confused with suppressing anger, in the same way pacifism with "passivity." When heeded & transformed into creative responsiveness, anger can be a powerful force for truth. We aren't so much active destroyers as passive accomplices in great destruction.
           What is the power of nonviolence? [Truth's power both demands and confers an inward simplicity, a mind centered on the unity and divinity of life. Without it, we cannot sustain the necessary work of integration. Gandhi power came from Satyagraha, the power of integral truth which overflows into correlated action. The human personality must remain simple in the practice of great human virtues. Swadeshi or self-reliance, refers to interdependent communities centered on love, not on a separate autonomous self.
           Integrity, Ecology, & Community—Shaker workmanship is praise & celebration. [It spoke] to me of reverent mindfulness of the wood's grain, the cloth's warp, loving the work, sense of proportion, sufficiency, & necessary slowness. It spoke to me of balance between: doing & resting; sowing & reaping; plowing & leaving fallow; inward prayer & outward service. Shaker communities, [flaws & all] have much to teach about communal experiments in living in integrity. Gandhi's India & A. T. Ariyaratne's Sri Lanka experimented with interconnected yet independent "village republics," where needs were met in a growing system of local interdependence.
           Some present-day economists in India regard Gandhi's experiments as somewhat irrelevant. Nevertheless, there are many vibrant local movements in villages and cities that are attempting to bring forward Gandhian ideas into their 21st experiments with sustainability. In Sri Lanka, the movement founded on similar principles and working in thousands of villages is increasingly active in agriculture, and ecology. In these villages, self-reliant labor was given prominence, and governance was both participatory and distributive; nonviolence is practiced toward all living beings; nature was seen as the source of well-being and an integral part of the human community. As we broaden our vision from the human to the integral earth community, we see emergence of the deep ecology movement, Earth Charter, World Charter for Nature, [all advocating for the rights of nature].
           What kinds of communities can we create today that are expressions of integrity with the earth? Most won't attempt to create village republics & historic communities, but we can look to them & other such examples, to discover ways that we can create spiritually grounded & less ecologically destructive communities & societies. Rediscovered "nature" traditions & new experiments that we try in our local "backyards" can be-come examples that others around the world can learn about. Examples in "backyard" projects to "green" Friends' meeting houses are using geothermal, solar, gray water recapture, & vegetative roof gardens. Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan writes about a nonviolent form of farming that uses no plowing, tilling, weeding, or pesticides in his book "The One Straw Revolution" (1975). Indian Friends learned about it 1st-hand and brought it to the Friends Rural Center at Rasulia in Madhya Pradesh. The book was translated into several Indian languages.
           Ecological communities [of nature] require diversity, exchange of nutrients & information, & self-organizing capacities balancing between: competition/ cooperation; growth/ decline; individual needs/ community needs. [They would be small-scale, & grow to a larger & larger scale over time]. Just as there is an "best" size for a healthy organism or stable ecosystem, there may be a similar "best" size for sustainable human communities. In 1970's, England's E. F. Schumacher argued that local economies & small, self-reliant, human-scale communities, inter-connected with other communities, would be more economically & ecologically sustainable long-term than ever-larger urban communities & growth-dominated global communities. Today's examples include: community-supported agriculture; farmers' markets; intentional communities; simplicity movements; & gardening cooperatives, where communities & the earth [is treated] as if they & the earth really mattered.
           We are discovering that sustainable human economies & communities must exhibit many of the characteristics that are found in stable & healthy, yet constantly changing & evolving ecosystems. These characteristics are congruent with & a reflection of spiritual principles of reciprocity & integrity. It is now vital [as a society] to integrate science, economics, politics, & technology with spiritual awareness, wisdom, & understanding of the wider ecological communities on which we depend physically, [& spiritually] as integral parts of a sacred earth community governed by spiritual principles of unity, reciprocity, & radical love. There is really no separation.
           While trapped in our Promethean project of economic, scientific, & technological growth & exploitation, creating a sustainable future for us [and our ecosystem] seems naïve and impossible to many. Perhaps our only task is simply to turn & keep turning in the direction of an integral life; to love as best we can [within a community], mysteriously & [tenatively] sustained by the wholeness and integrity of the earth, of God, of all that is.
           Queries—What factors in your life help or hinder connectedness?       How do you take action on environmental concerns?      How do you understand "integrity" & "reciprocity" in relation to creation's wholeness?       What connections do you see between reconciliation, simplicity, nonviolence paths, & self-care & the wider earth?      How do you experienced these paths?      What would nonviolent: economy; justice; farming; diet; look like?      What has experience opened to you about sacredness; how has it affected your life?

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404. Kindling a Life of Concern: Spirit-led Quaker Action (by Jack Kirk; 2009)

    About the Author—Jack Kirk was a member of Willistown Meeting. He attended West Chester Friends School and Westtown School.  At Earlham College he was inspired by Landrum Bolling, Elton Trueblood and Hugh Barbour.  He has served as pastor for Fairfield Meeting in Indiana, 2 meetings in NC, and 1 in CA.  This pamphlet was originally published as “Creaturely Activities or Spiritually based Concerns” in 1987.

    A concern is God-initiated, often surprising, always holy, for the life of God is breaking through into the world.  Its execution is in peace and power and astounding faith and joy, for in unhurried serenity the Eternal is at work … triumphantly bringing all things up unto Himself.  Thomas Kelly

    “The First Motion is Love” [John Woolman]—Conscientious Friends, acting on concerns have had an impact on society in highly significant ways. There have been hundreds & thousands [besides our most famous ones], often behind the scenes, perhaps hardly noticed—faithful. Concerns are how God gets our attention & gives us portions of the Kingdom’s work to do. When a sensitive person is listening to the Inward Guide, perceiving the leadings and acting obediently, this is the way the Commonwealth goes forward.

           We are loved by the God who created all, & because we are loved, we can love. God has been searching for us. If God seems distant or hard to find, who has wandered? Stephen Grellet was moved to tears by conditions at Newgate prison & [passed the concern on to Elizabeth Fry who said]: “We who want to be servants of Christ, must expect to do a part of our Master’s work.” [Levi Coffin served prominently on Underground Railroad]. 

    In 1902, Willis Hotchkiss, Arthur Chilson, and Edgar Hole established a Friends Mission base in Kenya.  Today there are 16 thriving Friends Yearly meetings in East Africa with a combined membership around 350,000. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was organized in 1917 to carry out “a service of love in wartime.” A few young Quakers went to Belgium and France to repair farm machinery and prepare for spring planting.  AFSC became administrators of a daily feeding program for over a million children in Germany.  In 1947 the AFSC and the British Friends Service Council accepted the Nobel Prize for the feeding programs.  Friends endeavor to minister to the world in a spirit of the self-giving love of the One who died on the cross.

    Concern Springs from Our Prayer Life [& Friends Worship]—To pray is to risk change.  As we pray our hearts come into the radiant force of God’s infinite caring.  Douglas Steere notes:  “In prayer, the seeds of concern have a way of appearing.  Often enough a concern begins in a feeling of being personally responsible for someone or some event ... that one should do some little thing … Seeds, not fruit, are given in prayer, but they are given for planting.” The deeper we go into prayer, the more God’s perspective becomes ours, the more we are filled with the compassionate Spirit of God, and the more our hearts will be made tender and pliable.

    As John Woolman “kept steadily to meetings,” the way began to open to him, & he saw the path that he must take. Woolman learned the way of concern that became the hallmark of his life in meeting for worship. William Dewsberry said: “I lay waiting for the coming Christ Jesus, who in the appointed time of the Father, appeared to my soul, as the lightings from the east & west & my dead soul heard his voice, & by his voice was made to live.” 

    Each meeting for worship is an adventure in communion with the Christ who lives. We can do without the bread and wine because we have Jesus Himself.  Our spiritual forbears gathered for worship and trembled in their keen awareness of the Divine Presence; [Quakers quaked]. Not many of us quake any more.  The 1^st generation of Friends realized that they were encountering both the historic and the living Christ in their meetings for worship. In later generations, some would stress the inward, while others would proclaim the historic, thus dividing Christ.  In the midst of worship we meet Him and He lays upon us the burden of the world’s suffering and sends us forth to do something specific about it.

    Concerns Should be Tested—Concerns are leadings that grow in intensity to the point that they become inward imperatives. Friends have several ways to test leadings within our traditions.  1^st, pray about it. Ask for clearness, and be willing to act on it or drop it. 2^nd, a leading or growing concern should be checked against Scripture. Friends believe that the ultimate source of authority is the Spirit that gave forth Scriptures rather than the written word of God; they complement each other and answer one another and never contradict each other.  As much as ⅔ of some of Fox’s sermons are simply Scripture texts strung together.

    For the 3^rd checkpoint of leadings and concerns, Michael J. Sheeran wrote:  “The earliest major test of one’s leading seems to have been whether one finds the Cross in what he is drawn to.”  Richard Farnsworth said to Margaret Fell:  “Mind to be guided by that which crosseth your own wills, and it will bring every idle word, thought and deed to judgment; the old … will be crucified.”  Do I embrace the concern or follow the leading to enhance my reputation or put myself in the spotlight? Where is my ego in all this? Am I willing to take risks to see the concern go forward? Do I rejoice when others take up the [same] work & give it leadership? Are we willing just to see God’s purposes advance?

    4^th, In a right leading or concern ones sees evidence of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Does it bring a deep sense of inward peace, a sense of assurance that you are in harmony with the guiding force of the universe?  5^th, concerns should be checked with one’s community of faith.  The individual led by Christ has a significant amount of light.  The committed group, dwelling together in Christ, has even greater light.  [The discernment of a] group can either confirm the leading or urge one to seek further.  John Woolman never failed to clear a contemplated journey in ministry with them.  At their best, Friends, [sometimes whole communities], have always highly valued and implicated trusted the Spirit-led community.

    For the 6^th, Hannah Whitall Smith wrote: “If a leading is of God, the way will always open for it … God goes before to open a way, and we are to follow in the way thus opened.”  We run ahead of our Guide and risk a calamitous outcome when we endeavor to force action on a concern by bowling over everything that stands in the way.  Friends proceed “as way opens.”

    Concerns Focus Our Lives—The pursuit of Spirit-led concerns can lead to simplification of our lives. Thomas Kelly says: “It is particularization of my responsibility … in a world too vast & a lifetime too short to carry all responsibilities … The loving Presence doesn’t burden us equally with all things, but puts upon us a few central tasks as emphatic responsibilities … our share in the joyous burden of love … toward good things that need doing we feel kindly, but we are dismissed from active service in most of them.”  Respond positively only to those undertakings and appeals for service that have our name written on them [as our part] in advancing the Kingdom.

    The Source of Our Witness—Do our social involvements spring from an inward imperative, or are we merely picking up on things that are given popular emphasis by our society and culture?  It seems that much of our social witness has attention deficit disorder. A spiritually based concern is for the long haul.  It is a long obedience in the same direction.  Instead of transforming the world, our faith communities are being taken over by the world’s mindset.  Jesus prayed: “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.”  
    Thomas Kelly writes: “We Quakers have become earthy. We are more at home with humans than we are with God … not many burn for God, long for God, or go down deep into the Waters of His life … This epoch in history is weak in great prophets of the inner life … who cry … ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord with your hearts.”  We Friends have sold our spiritual birthright for a bowl of secular pottage.  We have a loyalty to the Divine that is above our loyalty to the nation state.  We have a higher citizenship.  Biblically our local meetings are “colonies of Heaven.”

    As we act on Spirit-led concerns, we are the heralds of a dawning Commonwealth Day.  Those who pursue social causes in a “creaturely” way are generally driven persons. Those who pursue Spirit-led concerns are “called persons.”  Jesus calls persons.  He called the disciples. He called George Fox, Margaret Fell and Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer, John Woolman, Stephen Grellet and Elizabeth Fry, and Thomas Kelly. 

    The called person is a person under orders, having made an irrevocable commitment.  The called person’s commitment is made to the person of the Living Christ.  The called person has a clear sense of identity.  He or she knows the “power of a purpose,” and has a basic meaning that gives meaning to all lesser meanings.  Called persons abide in the living Christ even as the branch abides in the vine.  The called person realizes and acts upon the fact that her or his relationship to the living Christ is the most important thing in life.  When Friends have rightly understood their vocation, they have been a “Company of Called Persons.”

    Called to Wholeness—The pursuit of Spirit-led concerns draws individual Friends, local meeting, and larger bodies of Friends toward wholeness.  Rarely has the vigor, power, and passionate commitment [of the 1^st half-century of Friends been] seen in the 2,000 year-old story of the Church.  [After the separations of Friends during most of the 19^th century], each splinter group has witnessed to a portion of the Truth that George Fox and the Valiant 60 declared so forcefully.  [What] Friends have divided among themselves, must be re-blended in the right proportion if another “Quaker explosion” is to be ignited. The 1^st generation had a passionate love for God, a breadth of vision for the Christian enterprise, and Pentecostal fervor to carry out their mission.

    We Friends in North America today have inherited our “Quaker Alphabet Soup Groups”—FGC, FUM, and EFCI.  We expect certain Friends to be socially concerned and working in a dedicated way for peace, justice, and liberation, while we expect others to be evangelical and mission minded.  Some Friends are scripturally minded, while others seek the Inward Light.  Friends of different branches come together in agencies like AFSC, the Quaker UN Office, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation in movements for peace and justice.

    Perhaps our young adults are already leading us into the dawn of a new day of Quaker wholeness, [as they have led throughout our history]. George Fox and a very high percentage of the Valiant 60 were under 30.  North American and British Young Friends developed a world-wide gathering of young adult Quakers that was held in Lancashire in 2005.  They shared an intense longing to experience the primitive power and presence of the Divinity in their midst that had gathered the 1^st generation.

    Robin Mohr coined the phrase “Convergent Friends,” which she defines as: “Friends [from different strands] seeking deeper understanding of Quaker heritage & a more authentic life in God’s kingdom. It includes Friends from the politically liberal end of the evangelical branch & from the Christian end of the unprogrammed branch … Winds of the spirit are blowing across all branches of Friends—blowing us in the same direction. 

    Wess Daniels observes: “Convergent Friends hold both the Bible and experience in high regard, and reject the modern dichotomy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.” Convergent Friends say of themselves:  “ We are unprogrammed, programmed, liberal, evangelical, post-liberal, post-evangelical, emerging, post-modern, Christian, seekers, young and old … We feel like there is something of substance that has gone out of our tradition, no matter what sub-group we are in.  There is something we can learn from each other.  We’re interested in being friends more than we’re interested in staying on our own side of the fence.”

    The Spirit may very well be at work breaking down the walls of Quaker division even as these lines are being written; God has never been very big on walls that divide.  The call to follow the path of Spirit-led concerns is a call to wholeness, and it is perhaps the greatest challenge facing this generation of Friends. A Friends movement restored to wholeness, with a vital spirituality and cutting-edge social witness, could come as a refreshing rain to a land scorched by secularism and [empty] because false spirituality did not fulfill its promise. 

    Queries:  Are we as a people of God willing to be reshaped by the power of the Spirit working within us?       What barriers were erected keep us from becoming close with other Friends groups? How do we carry prejudices toward other Quaker groups?       Are we willing to dialog [openly] with other Friends about what it means to be a Quaker?       How do Convergent Quakers hold promise for the Quaker future?      What is essential for a local meeting to be a seedbed of concern?       How is there a comfortable and hospitable place in your meeting for the testing of concerns?      How can we “have an easy mind in the presence of desperately real needs?”      How has your meeting fallen victim to a shallow age? How?      How are you a driven or a called person?      What is a company of “called persons?”
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405. Envisioning a Moral Economy (by Thomas Head; 2010)

    About the Author—Tom Head is professor of Economics and chairperson of International Studies at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon; he has been for over 30 years. He is nourished by the challenge of finding theological and spiritual common ground between divergent groups, Quaker and otherwise. He has had a long-standing interest in the integration of religion and economics.  This pamphlet grew out of his Nov. 2008 PH workshop of the same name and the July 2009 Quaker Institute for the Future Summer Seminar In Berkley, CA.

    [Introduction]—I am an economist, an analytical person, a scholar; deep inside I am a mystic.  We seldom encounter the words mystic and economist in the same sentence, chapter, or even book. Holding these 2 dimensions in creative tension with each other is the work to which I am drawn.  The transcendent gives meaning and purpose to the ordinary, and ordinary daily living in the material world is the vessel that gives spirits a home.  My parents encouraged me, and Arthur O. Roberts handed me a copy of John Woolman’s Journal. Kenneth and Elise Boulding shared with this young academic from the deep wells of insights, inspiration, and integration.

           I encountered a procession of wise, kind helpers, sometimes in writing, sometimes in person, sometimes both. Wendell Berry believes that: “If we are to maintain any sense of coherence or meaning in our lives, we can’t tolerate the disconnection between religion & economy.” If we are to structure economic systems that … work for the benefit of all … without ruining the planet & all life, we must recover moral vision in economic affairs. We can’t depend on the economics field for such vision.  Economists distinguish between “positive” economics and “normative” economics. [A positive statement is a factual claim, not necessarily demonstrated as true, but which is nonetheless used as the basis for] formulating economic models. Paul Krugman asks: [See Query #1].

    The Economy—[See Query #2].  We often feel that we do not understand the economy, that it is complex and truly beyond comprehension.  We like economic progress, freedom and opportunity, a good return on investments, and fairness.  It gets more complex when we think about people who are further away.  In globalization, we now see this beautiful sphere for the finite spaceship that it is, [with 7 billion souls seeking life and space].

    Some people [place their trust in] the market forces’ invisible hand. Experts aren’t easily understood, don’t agree, or are just wrong. [I am] a minor league expert myself, & yet there is much I don’t know or understand. Shaping a working global economy is an huge task, & one we can’t and needn’t neglect. Our current one isn’t sustainable; our financial stability is also shaky, with dwindling reserves & deeper deficit holes. [See Query #3].  Redesigning the economy begins with reframing the questions.  [Rather than the 3 traditional question about product, production method, and distribution], I prefer Peter Brown’s and Geoff Garver’s questions [See Queries 4-6]; [stewardship is involved]; [See Query #7].   

    Sources of Wisdom—The human family has been grappling with basic economic questions for a long time. Real understanding, true wisdom, finds convergence in all dedicated truth-seeking, whether it begins in the sanctuary or the laboratory. [My entire spiritual journey have been shaped in some very basic way by my earliest experience of a spirit that inhabits every cell of my body. Then, I simply accepted this tradition as a given. [At times I rejected religious claims as nonsense. Eventually, I began] looking at it all again for the 1^st time.  I found my village religion not to be such a bad one after all & came to a more complete & settled sense of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Appreciating one’s own faith tradition need not exclude the glory & inspiration of others’ journeys.

    [See Query #8].  One of the very foundations of the economy is that we are pretty much individual, independent, and autonomous beings, and that it is the exercise of this very freedom that makes for the genius of the marketplace system.  Both Wall Street and Main Street prize our supposed entitlement to use things as we please; we own things.  But faith challenges this autonomy over our economic affairs and leaves us with questions about what else might be relevant for truly and deeply achieving a moral economy

    Economic Justice—The biblical concern was both for short-run needs, such as having food for the day, and for establishing workable long-run arrangements that limited concentrations of wealth and power.  George Monsma writes:  “Laws, if followed, assured each family control over the resources necessary for them to be active, decision-making producers … Note that laws severely limited the degree to which “ownership” and control over wealth could become concentrated into a few hands.”

    I am especially interested in what the gospels have to tell us about economics. [See Queries #9-10].  One can build a pretty good case that promoting a moral economy was a pivotal project for Jesus. [See Queries #11-13].  Marcus Borg’s work summarizes 5 key roles or aspects of Jesus’ rather brief public period: mystic, healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and a movement founder.  Borg says: “Jesus the wisdom teacher offered an alternative view of reality … He was critical of the way conventions and institutions functioned in his day, especially among the peasant and marginalized classes.  Jesus the social prophet followed earlier prophets advocating for social justice … by protesting the economic and political arrangements that oppressed and exploited.  Jesus the movement founder led an inclusive and egalitarian movement promoting an alternative social vision.”

    Rereading the gospels with fresh eyes invites come startling conclusions.  It would not be wildly inaccurate to sum up their work as suggesting that Jesus was killed because of his economic policy ideas, his challenge to the dominant powers of his day.  Much has been done to bring this prophetic passion for economic justice into our economic affairs.  We have yet to understand the spiritual truth that “there must be limits on the concentration of wealth, income, and economic power.”  When we take in this truth, we start to see the sins for which Jesus died.

    Queries—1. What do we think is the morally right thing to do in economics?      2. How might we describe the best possible economy [& how would it work]?      3. Is it right, sane or moral, that most people on this planet are poor?      4. [What is the goal of an economy & how does it work?      5. How big is too big?      6. How should a fair economy be governed?      7. How ought the human economy function as part of Earth’s life system?
     8.  [How do we act as stewards rather than owners]?      9. What would Jesus advise if he were an economic advisor?      10. [What would a Jesus who cares about income distribution say about justice & generosity?      11. What was Jesus up to [economically] in his public acts & statements?      12. What did he have in mind [economically] for us human beings & our relationships with each other?      13. What did Jesus think he was doing?

    Beyond Borders—It is important to understand what a moral economy looks like to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. When it comes to understanding economics and the importance of life, there is a lot of common ground.  One Buddhist article stated:  “The Buddhist path is about awakening from delusions.  We cannot rely upon our present economic and political systems to solve the problem, because to a large extent they are the problem.  Buddhism’s focus on greed, ill, will, and the delusion of separate self points us in the direction of relief, for these 3 poisons function institutionally as well as personally. 

    When both Buddhist writers and Catholic social teachers are telling us about the delusion of a separate self and its significance in seeing truthfully and shaping an economy morally, there is a convergence that needs our attention.  Michael Gazzaniga asks [See Query #14] and writes: “I am convinced that we must commit ourselves to the view that a universal ethics is possible …We now understand how biased our beliefs about the world and … human experience truly are … It is the job of modern science to help figure out how [ethical] order should be characterized.”  Wisdom is what we need when trying to see and build a moral economy.  It is not about finding the one right economic design but about the values making up the economic parts of life.

    Economic Systems—Any number of social inventions meet morality tests. [See Query #15]. When Adam Smith’s market mechanism works, it is best to let that famous & infamous “invisible hand” do its work. But it doesn’t always work. [Market distortions] work in many forms. One instance is the extreme individualism present in the western world. What is missing is a sense of the larger, fuller life web. [Extreme compensation] is exploitation, given philosophical support by what amounts to idolatry of individualism. A misplaced belief that financial markets naturally seek equilibrium & their true value has contributed to instability & crisis recently. We are neither isolated individuals nor collectives. We live individual lives on this planet as a part of groups, local communities, & global communities. It isn’t likely that economic science will ever sort out [the mix] of individual effort, endowment, exploitation, & the vast gift of life in the universe. Those who prosper, ask: [See Queries #16-18].

    John Woolman’s Moral Economy—John Woolman humbly sought truthful answers to economic questions, and he let those answers change his economic choices.  Good work nourishes the soul, expresses the spirit, and fulfills our lives.  He said: “Either too much or too little action is tiresome, but a right portion is healthful to our bodies and agreeable to an honest mind.” He made a distinction between needs and wants, a distinction that seldom enters modern economic discourse; economic man is insatiable.  Woolman knew from deep sources that nourished and informed his life that more is not always better, that a different, more balanced approach would lead to truer happiness. He announces truth and proclaims its implications for the use of things, a true use of things. This is the doorway to a moral economy.  As he found a sense of balance and right living in his personal affairs, he also looked outward and saw the injustices of an enslaving system that maximized income for a few. 

    Economic Peacemaking—The economy that we know and experience in the here and now is truly violent.  Most wars have underlying economic causes, often about access to resources.  [See Queries #19-20].  In the 1960’s I had enrolled in the Army ROTC but was experiencing greater and greater discomfort with military training.  I signed up for a class on nonviolence at the university.  I learned about Quakers and other peace churches; seeds were planted in that class.  I began worshipping with Quakers, came to a clear conviction about being a pacifist, and filed for discharge [from the Army] as a conscientious objector (CO).

           The Army scheduled 3 hearings to process my discharge request. The commanding officer & the mental health professional [conducted routine interviews & passed me on to the next interview]. The chaplain’s “pastoral care” was mostly argument. [Though] we shared a common faith, we came to very different conclusions about the demands of our Christianity. After a lengthy session of proof-texting & theological arguments, he turned to economics, [citing the difficulty of getting a job with that on my record].  The Army honorably discharged me as a CO. 

    My pacifism was part of what qualified me to work at a Quaker institution. I turned to studying peace. My questions were: [See Queries 21-25]. Those who seek to effect an economic system that is just & sustainable are very much caught up in a system which continues to function in unjust & unsustainable ways. To take the first steps towards a moral economy may require bold & radical action not unlike historic witnesses against slavery.

    Where to Start—Theology and moral criteria alone will not uniquely determine one correct set of arrangements.  Thomas Paxson says:  “The conditions of human flourishing are so complex, and human values so numerous, one would expect a large variety of political economies to satisfy reasonable moral and theological  criteria … Theology provides criteria for evaluating the propriety of systems without stipulating structure.” [The 4 Quaker testimonies of integrity, simplicity, peace and equality will each bring important qualities to a moral economy].  [See Queries 26-27]. One can start at any number of places and find the way to the same economic truth: people matter; life matters.  A moral economy will begin there.

    Queries—14.  When making moral judgments, are we perceiving external truths or expressing internal attitudes?      15. Where & how do social inventions [e.g. free market & central planning] work best & serve our needs best?      16. Why am I prospering?      17.  Why are others not prospering?      18. How is it all connected?      19.  How many violent deaths are attributable to underlying economic causes? 

    20. What might I do to be a peacemaker, healer, reconciler, & caregiver to life in this economy?      21.  What is the economic equivalent of being a conscientious objector?      22.  How do I say no to global poverty & yes to sufficiency for all of God’s children?      23. How do I say no to environmental degradation & yes to a right relationship with this living planet? 24.  How do I say no to murderous economic imbalances and distortions?       25.  How does one apply for a discharge from this distorted and violent economy? 

     26.  How does any economic system speak to the need for every human being to have enough?       27.  Is sacrificing some members of the human family [to achieve a “workable economy”] ever a morally sound approach to the economy?         How did you come to your present financial situation?  How do you feel wealthy and privileged, or do you feel economically disadvantaged?       How do you apply the Quaker testimonies of integrity, simplicity, peace, and equality to envisioning a moral economy?      What is “enough” for you?      What are ways that a concerned individual can join with others to envision and seek to realize a “moral economy”? 
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406. The Mind of Christ: Bill Taber on Meeting for Business (by Michael                     Birkel; 2010)

About the Editor—Michael Birkel teaches in the Religion Department at Earlham College in Richmond, IN. He travels as [Quaker] lecturer & workshop leader. He wrote the PHP # 398 The Messenger that Goes Before: Reading Margaret Fell for Spiritual Nurture. His most recent book is Genius of the Transcendent: Mystical Writings of Jakob Boehme. Michael is also active in interfaith relations, particularly Muslim-Christian dialogue.

Editor's Introduction—William P. Taber Jr. (1927-2005) was a beloved minister among Friends, as a Friends school and Pendle Hill teacher, as a Conservative Friends released Minister, as retreat center director. Bill touched the lives of Quakers of all theological sorts. Bill was deeply gifted in worship, not only in vocal ministry and prayer, but in a radiant silence that drew others into a greater sense of the Divine Presence. I found 2 promising projects in Bill's notes that Fran Taber asked me to look through. This essay is the 2nd, more modest project. I draw chiefly on 6 separate talks. There is wisdom here, and a warm invitation to experience God's power in our midst when we gather to consider the church's affairs and seek guidance in our decision-making. There are explanatory notes given in places where Bill assumed common knowledge of a particularly Quaker usage of scriptural language. This present pamphlet may serve as companion to another Bill Taber pamphlet, (#306) Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, to assist readers in understanding the spirit of meeting for business.

1st Impressions/ ... The Body of Christ—In a Friend's business meeting: they begin [after] people suddenly are silent; the meeting's clerk behaves differently from the chairman of meetings outside of Friends; process is different in a Friend's business meeting. We just sit & talk, be silent & then talk some more. Then suddenly, the clerk tells the meeting what we've agreed to, we agree we've agreed to it & move on to the next item. [For all this], the meeting is still, in worship. We wait to find a truth which is for all as one body in Christ, a body that dwells & works "in the mind of Christ." Leadership of the Spirit may speak great truth from the most humble.

     The meeting for business is a hands-on, experiment in which the fellowship comes face-to-face with the Spirit's demands for the sacrifice of time, treasure, convenience, & prejudice. When spiritual discernment becomes crucial, we are driven to seek spiritual covering, which alone can give the Spirit's fruits, & can sustain harmony while waiting for right leading. Friends business meeting is an essential part of the every seasoned Friend's spiritual formation & growth, for it is that place where we learn to walk hand-in-hand with each other & the Spirit.

This process works best when there is a common sense of discipleship among the participants in a business meeting, and when there is a profound commitment to Truth. Then we are eagerly teachable, reachable & malleable in the hands of the loving Teacher. [Pentecost & discipleship] brought an experience & a knowledge of being part of the Body of Christ. Paul uses this metaphor to describe the intimate unity among believers [Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 4: 15-16; Colossians 3:15 inform Bill Taber's use of the expression "the Body" and are cited in this essay]. As people learn to find and to rest in this reality, they are then able to give attention to the otherwise subtle signals of the Body & to pay attention to its needs for health & action. We need a disciple's dependence on the Holy Spirit. We should be as deeply dependent upon it as were Christians in the Book of Acts. At the heart of any successful business meeting there is a significant core of people whose lives are daily in touch with the Holy Spirit, the Inward Christ, the Universal Light. If we want the Spirit's fruits to be present in business meetings, we need to help each other experience that Spirit daily & in small groups.

Waiting—As we wait, we can sense a living flow which unites us, a light-filled plasma or fluid, & in that wonderful flow we are bathed, rested & nourished. We do well to remember the large spaces given to worship throughout most of our 3 centuries of Quaker business meetings. Fox didn't speak of a passive, empty waiting; it was an act of going very deep. We sometimes discover that the great depth of our need & our yearning can take us sometimes very quickly to that inward place for which we wait; it may be our greatest service to meeting if we stay there throughout the entire business meeting. There we feel an almost bodily sense of our invisible, spiritual bonding with these people through the Spirit of God, while our mind competently follows the discussion of an issue. This is our service & our primary ministry. We know that the true inward motion to speak often lies far beneath our 1st instinct to respond to an issue. [The more practice we have in true waiting], the more quickly we learn to recognize the True Motion, even in an instant, and thus respond to the Spirit's timing and not our own.

5 Gut Feelings—An English Quaker scholar and I agree that one important aspect of Quakerism is its gut feelings. Let us then reflect on 5 feelings and perceptions I call the "5 gut feelings" of the meeting for business: Joy in being together (1) and with God (2); [Blessed] Assurance (3); Trust (4); and Excitement(5). Gut feelings can be seen as a necessary prerequisite for the meeting for business; they can be experienced simultaneously and [beyond] the opening worship before a business meeting.

     1. Joy in Being Together/ 2. ... with God—There is joy in coming & being together with familiar faces, blessed fellowship, the redeemed community, or if you prefer, the freed community, freed [especially] from slavery to unthinking assumptions & drives of whatever temporal culture surrounds us. For some Friends, joy of being in fellowship, koinonia, has layers of meaning: truly, deeply belonging to one another; mutually identified with one another, taking risks together; participating in one another's life; being in communion & community.

    Then, there is the joy, awe, and comfort of being once again in the presence of the Great Friend ... Healer ... Forgiver ... Transformer ... Restorer ... Inward Peace Giver ... Inward Teacher ... Source of all Good. As we sit in growing attunement with the Presence, our folder of business meeting details lies untouched and, hopefully, forgotten at our side. The secret of the successful Friends meeting for worship for business lies in the individual Friend's ability to lay everything aside while becoming attuned.

Reaching attunement can include a variety of activities: inward prayer; relaxing into the Presence; worldly demands falling away; visualizing prayer, [with image-language rather than word-language]; or mantra. In old Quaker language, we "wait upon the Lord." Contemporary language would say we are moving into an altered state of consciousness where we become amazingly relaxed and amazingly alert at the same time.

[There are unprogrammed and programmed Friends]. Unprogrammed Friends devote their time to waiting in silence for divinely inspired ministry, experienced inwardly or expressed outwardly, delivered by any worshiper. Most programmed Friends include unprogrammed worship in their service, enhanced by prayer, hymns, scripture reading, sermon, and placed where other Christian denominations would have the sacrament of Communion. The vast majority of Friends worldwide observe programmed worship. Younger Friends are bringing the many branches of Quakerism together in a way that challenges historical divisions and seeks a deeper unity. All Friends need to bring to worship before business meeting a strong inward intentionality that matches the care that traditional church lavishes on the words and rituals of their opening moments.

Assurance [in the Mind of Christ]—In that Presence, we find ourselves moving into the altered state of consciousness from joy to assurance. It is the deep assurance of being filled with the water of life of which Jesus spoke. I call it the Stream of the Quaker Process, which is so real you can feel it. As a stream it is the same stream even though it is always moving, always changing. It is the stream of the apostle Peter and Mary, mother of Jesus; we share it with them across 20 centuries of time. We do well to recognize that there are boundaries to this stream, boundaries of safety in the infinite and trackless mazes in the varieties and states of consciousness.

This altered state of consciousness is what the New Testament (NT) describes as being in the Mind of Christ, [& results] from being a living part of the Body of Christ. In the Mind & Body of Christ, we are touched on many deep levels, so that we may become bold in the Truth & even bold with ourselves as we face new ideas & as we face our own prejudices & fears in the business meeting. [In the Mind], the boundaries of the self are blurred & melded, and the intense pressure to maintain the ego [is absent]. This makes it possible for the Quaker business process to proceed in love and unity, [without ego], even while it works through differences in opinion.

     We need to use the discernment process to give more attention to assurance, [& to extend assurance beyond initial worship into the business process]. A business meeting in touch with the Mind of Christ may seem to be slower; it may actually get more done. Spiritual discernment seems to flourish best from this contemplative, reflective, nonlinear state of mind, which is a wide, nonjudgmental, almost unattached, but very alert attentiveness. Analytical faculties are surrounded & cushioned by a much vaster mind, which takes all things into account. The surface mind is the tool rather than the master of the more integrated person we become in the Mind of Christ.

The Mind of Christ also lets us see more deeply into ourselves, which is necessary for discernment. Does our fear of a new idea come from true discernment or from an unconverted, unfaithful part of ourselves? The meeting or committee can be discerning enough to acknowledge the concern behind the proposal, even though the proposal may be unworkable. When a meeting operates in this Mind, it is as if there is a restful, sustaining energy flowing through the room, so that participants are rested, fed & energized on some deep level. [With deep] discernment, significant new openings may be more likely to arise, even in routine affairs. Meetings for business & committee meetings can be covered, [gathered] meetings through dwelling in the Mind of Christ.

Each of our business meeting skills need to be understood as functioning in harmony with the ability to remain in touch with the Mind of Christ throughout our long business meetings. At Pendle Hill, a Netherland student insisted that our Pendle Hill business should properly write the minutes by writing each minute as it was decided, with the meeting remaining in silence while the recording clerk drafted the minute, which was read back and approved before the meeting went on to the next item. The skill of being & staying in Christ's Mind is done with an awareness of living as Christ's Body. This skill includes speaking with precise clarity without slipping into an orator's, a partisan's, or college professor's mind. In worship, there is a big difference between listening in the Mind of Christ, & listening in an "audience" or "critic" mind. The more people who exercise sustained, Spirit-fed attention, the more possible it will be for individuals or the meeting to experience George Fox's "gospel order," that quiet unified inward [discernment] about the next step to take or not take.

4. Trust/ 5. Excitement—As the silence deepens and the power grows around us, there grows upon us a trust in the immense Power at the heart of the universe, which is also our own heart. This translates into a deep trust in our business process, as it resides in the Mind of Christ. We come to trust the Divine Process, trust being in the eternal stream, [both of] which now own us as much as we own them. Only as we trust this Process are we able to let go of our personal and partisan obstacles to the working of God among us. If the process breaks down it is often because of a lack of this gut-level trust. We cannot will faith, but we can will to be faithful.

[The excitement I speak of] is the excitement of a Holy Expectancy. Every time we enter the business meeting room, there is a mounting sense of excitement as [we meet with] the utter unpredictability of God at work, [never knowing when we will make a significant contribution or change]. Those who have known [and lived in] the Living Stream's power never know how it will affect the course of their lives forever, by taking up a cause, crossing the ocean, giving up a cherished dream or concern. And yet there is trust.

Even the clerk—especially the clerk—should enter with this faithful, joyous excitement, this willingness to face the unpredictable, the unknown, secure in the Mind of Christ. A good clerk often anticipates ahead of time how and when an agenda will be disposed of. A faithful clerk is always prepared for the Holy Spirit to do some very unexpected things. Such excitement and daring are sustainable and safe only as they occur with [deep awareness of]: Joy in being together and with God; [Blessed] Assurance; Trust.

     Practical Suggestions for the Clerk's Role—What is the Clerk's role in business meetings?: Wait until we cross a threshold into unity with the Spirit and the "5 gut feelings"; slow down or stop when the unity grows thin; say just enough and no more; let God work in meeting; set the tone [with a balance of] silence and inspirational words; be aware that quiet, [patient ones] may be more centered; 1 minute at a time and read it back.

     Practical Suggestions for Participant's Role—What is Participant's role in business meetings?: Hold meeting in the Light before & during; come, settle into worship early; enter room with respect, awe, expectation of unexpected; perceive Body & its Divine/ human reality; rest & trust in Process; absorb & hear words spoken, bathing speakers & clerks in wordless prayer; wait for deep inward motion [beneath] a surface emotion or idea; before speaking, wait to see if Love is there; be satisfied if your only ministry is invisible, constant, silent prayer; stay in a softer, non-reactive, quieter mind, where thinking does not get in the way of feeling, or waiting.

    Going in & out of deeper worship is a normal rhythm; bring the mind gently back to deeper worship; recognize that there needs to be space between messages & minutes to reconnect with deep underlying unity beneath & beyond words, [especially] when we seem to have strong verbal disagreement; in disagreement, pause long enough, [perhaps to the point of discomfort], for God to reveal a new creative perspective; listen beyond words of a disagreeable proposal, to find pain or problem it addresses; do not assume verbal agreement is absolutely necessary for progressing or functioning; be sensitive to the quiet, less aggressive ones; be aware of the clerk.

Prayer that we may stay in touch with the great and living Stream and other, personal prayers [is an important part of the meeting for business.           

     Queries—What is being "surrounded by a matrix of Worship," and why is it important to Quaker business sessions?      What is having a "dedicated intention that seems necessary for Quaker group discernment" like?      What difference does it make for a Quaker meeting for business understand themselves to be "the body of Christ?"      What is the "waiting" that George Fox and Bill Taber are talking about?      How can all speaking in Quaker business meetings be ministry?"      How have you experienced joy in being together and with God, [blessed] assurance, trust, and excitement in meeting for business?      How is one "in the Mind of Christ?"      What is preparing a minute like?
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407. Living from the Center: Mindfulness Meditation and Center for                            Friends (by Valerie Brown; 2010)

    About the Author—Valerie Brown is a member of Solebury MM & a PH workshop leader. She was ordained as a Zen lay member in 2003 by Thich Nhat Hanh. [She helped found] Old Path Sangha, a Buddhist community in New Hope, PA. She has studied Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher. She also wrote The Mindful Quaker: A Brief Introduction to Buddhist Wisdom for Friends (PHP #386). 

    Introduction—This essay explores the Quaker spiritual practice of centering as we “wait upon the Spirit” during meeting for worship.  Buddhist mindfulness complements centering and our spiritual experience of meeting; it is both similar to and different from mindfulness practice.  The heart of Quaker spirituality is the conviction that God is available to every person; God’s presence is felt directly in our lives.

     In Quaker worship, we seek to experience the love and truth of God and the Light of Christ.  “To remain ‘fixed in that Light,’ to maintain such intentionality, requires a focusing and refocusing of attention of the heart.”  The repeated inner choice to come back to God and the Eternal Christ, the practice of returning to the Center, can form a habit of the heart that we can carry outside of worship.  The start of meeting for worship is a particularly critical time to touch God’s abiding love.  How do we make the transition from our busy secular lives, our wandering thoughts, to the sacred work of God?       How do we embody the Living Silence, centered in body and mind?      How can mindfulness meditation help? 

   My Quaker and Buddhist faiths complement rather than conflict with each other.  I took the stillness and silence of worship as an opportunity to practice meditation; this proved to be frustrating and disappointing. The effort to remove all thoughts, to manipulate this live encounter with the Holy Spirit, left me with no satisfaction in either meditation or meeting for worship. One difference in the basic purpose of each practice [is worship’s waiting vs. meditation’s developing].  In worship we wait in “holy expectancy for what the Spirit is bringing forth from us as a body.  In meditation, we seek to develop nonjudgmental awareness and clarity of mind and heart.   Awareness is the ability to see things as they are unclouded by our anxieties and expectations.

   Centering: Quaker Approach/ Buddhist Approach—Centering is the internal act of quieting body & mind to seek & experience God’s loving presence within & around us. Reaching a place of spiritual attentiveness, receptivity & responsiveness is a posture of the heart that comes as a gift of God’s grace. The active aspect of [centering] encourages us to gather up random thoughts & calm [our selves]. The passive aspect of centering invites us to let go of effort & need, to suspend our expectations or preconceptions. Centering is a matter of intention, attention, and direction.  Intention involves the will, the desire to move toward God.  Attention involves awareness [all that is going on around us and within us]. Direction involves harnessing our awareness to one thing: God.

           Buddhist mindfulness meditation is paying attention in a nonjudgmental way, moment to moment. Centering begins with stopping, putting aside constant business. Getting things done is part of modern life; it can rob us of balance & intimacy with ourselves, our surroundings & others. [I was moving through my day with a sense of obligation, joyless & half-hearted. [Even in worship preparation] I found myself rushing from one must-do activity to the next. [Focusing on “just this breath],” took me out of my head & into my heart, out of doing & into being. 

   [The Japanese stop and] stand over the threshold to remove shoes worn outside in the street, separating the outer public from the inner private world.  In the monastic practice of station, monks and nuns take a moment to [stop], stand and wait, to let go of the prior activity. Stopping is a radical spiritual act and the 1^st step into leading a spiritual life; it is about waking up to the fullness of this human life. Jon Kabat-Zinn writes: “As a society or culture, we have yet to come to grips with the profound and irreversible implications of technological changes and their effects on the pace of life … [the amount] of information [we] have to ‘process’ … All this technology, although potentially enhancing of connectivity and communication is also alienating, intrusive and isolating.”

   We are unskilled in quieting ourselves. The tug toward simplicity, toward clearing the clutter, is the very heart of centering. In accepting, opening, & yielding to the Buddhist perspective of impermanence, we recognize that to be alive is itself a miracle, a basis for deep gratitude & humility. In Buddhist practice, [we open our selves to perceive & receive what is]. In Quaker centering, we still and quiet the body and mind to listen deeply to God’s promptings and leadings in our lives; the results of both Quaker and Buddhist practice incline toward compassion. When I find myself completely removed from any thought of God, I try to recognize this and remember why I came to meeting for worship in the 1st place.  The effort of recalling myself back to God is in itself healing.

     The unaware life is a mechanical life/ It’s not human, it’s programmed,/ conditioned.  We might as well/ be a stone, a block of wood … Spirituality means waking up.     Fr. Anthony DeMello

            Centering and Awareness—Centering is about waking up, whether in meeting for worship or in daily life.  [In centering], we are poised to receive God’s expression in our life. Centering is about developing self-intimacy & awareness of God’s presence in our lives. It is an invitation to become more one’s self & become the ultimate expression of God-consciousness, of love. Being centered promotes being peaceful, which promotes acts of peace. 

    Centering isn’t about outcome or technique. It is aided by preparation before we enter the meetinghouse. Relaxing the body & mind, sitting comfortably upright with eyes closed, & taking a few deep breaths, can aid the quieting process. Some call what happens next “listening to God’s quiet voice,” or “waiting for a touch of something beyond their everyday selves.” Focused awareness comes through effort; reaching attunement with God unfolds organically during meeting for worship. Our task in meeting for worship is to be drawn closer to God.

    There is no single, right way to “center down.” I often feel heavier, settling into my seat; sometimes it is effortless, sometimes it is real work.  I try to avoid mentally reviewing the week just past, [in effect judging it].  I notice how I am breathing, how I am sitting, the parts of my body. Centering is not about having an empty mind, void of thoughts.  It is cultivating an open and receptive mind focused on God. The open mind expresses radical willingness to accept and unfold to the movement and mystery of God.

    Centering & Mindfulness—Centering is getting quiet enough to listen, tuning out the internal mind chatter & turning to the soft, permeable aliveness of our own being. Stanford Searl writes: “This seeking to become more still & centered offered Quakers a way to lose part of ego, to become unified, connected to one another, as well as to the Spirit.” Friends feel the need for effort, yet they feel they cannot achieve stillness without divine assistance.

    In contrast, Buddhist mindfulness meditation requires our own effort, not relying on the special assistance of God.  Mindfulness is not egotistical self-absorption about how one feels, what one thinks, or how one sees the world.  It is about being real.  It “carries with it elements of open-hearted friendly presence, an affectionate, compassionate quality within the attending.”  Habitual patterns of eating, seeing, tasting, hearing, and others tend to alienate us from being present, without judgment, to what is happening now.  Waking up to the full spectrum of life is more than just a technique or method.  Mindfulness is the work of a lifetime, and of the present moment.

    The foundation of mindfulness is personal practice. Its radical essence is deep humility & an intimate engagement with life’s struggles and joys.  Bringing the wandering mind back to awareness of the present moment over and over again supports stability, solidarity, clarity, and peace of mind.  Elias Hicks writes: “I felt nothing when I came into this meeting, nor had I a desire after anything but to center down into abasement and nothingness … to call for nothing and to desire to do nothing.”  Howard Brinton adds: “To wait, free from the heat of passion and desire, expectantly, silently in the Light is the normal [worship] experience …only worship can restore that sense of inner unity which makes organic social order possible”; the inner life joins with the outer life.

    The Christian Tradition of Centering Prayer—Prayer is a way of openly giving ourselves over to God. Centering prayer is a useful practice to foster this openness.  Centering prayer is any prayer that “grounds us in God as we move into other prayers.  There is a specific Christian practice called centering prayer rooted in the 14^th century The Cloud of Unknowing. As Thomas Keating describes it, this centering prayer prepares us for contemplation, which Keating describes as: “resting in God.  
    In the resting or stillness the minds and heart are not actively seeking Him but are beginning to experience what they have been seeking … [There is] mingling of a few acts of will to sustain one’s attention to God with the loving experience of God’s presence.” Contemplation is about the “opening of mind and heart, body and emotions to God.”  [Thomas Merton inspired the name “centering prayer.”  He “stressed that the simplest way to come into contact with the living God is to go one’s center and from there pass into God.”  Keating describes centering prayer as the “1^st rung on the ladder of contemplative prayer, which rises step by step to union with God.”

   Attention [to the present] moment generates energy, clear-headedness and joy.  Christopher Germer

   Centering Prayer: The Practice—To begin centering prayer, get comfortable in a quiet place. [Have a word to focus on, &] when you see that your awareness has wandered, recall the word. Centering prayer seeks awareness of the Divine presence; mindfulness emphasizes awareness of immediate experience. Keating writes: “When we become aware of [fearful, desiring thoughts, if we stay with] … them, we leave our prayer & become involved in the tension … If we return to our prayer word … the thought [& its] … tension will be released & flow out of our lives.” Pennington, Keating, & Clarke say that in centering prayer, “We truly die to our selves, our superficial selves, the level of thoughts, images & feelings, in order to live to Christ, to enter into our Christ-being.”

   Both centering prayer and “centering down” allow us to experience God’s presence, to seek a relationship with God that surrenders the ego self.  Centering prayer is opening to God as an invitation to give a person or problem over to the care of God.  In centering prayer and in Quaker worship, we seek to enter into personal communion with the Living Christ, to surrender our will to Divine Will, into the formlessness of faith and intuition. Centering prayer seeks to shift our very beings.  We learn a new way to see, which is waiting to be discovered at each moment.  Such prayer is a way of filling ourselves with Light.

    Centering & Mindfulness: Personal Discoveries—[When] I began to study yoga & Buddhist meditation, I listened to my body with interest & intention; the desire stirred in me to feel differently. I moved from external goals to feeling [present] sensations. Mindfulness shifted my goal-oriented focus to a focus on [just] being. This awareness began extend into all my hours. [I began to see, & taste, & [experience] things in a new way. Mindfulness sharpens the sense, [deepens the powers of observation], & connects me with others even in silence. 

           [At first, I found that the constant motion of my body & thoughts pulled me out of worship].  Gradually, while these body motions continued, [they did so] without disturbing the stillness of my mind. When I was able to stabilize my awareness & concentration, my capacity to open to the Light within was enlivened & deepened.  Through Buddhist meditation & the ability to hold divergent feelings and sensations in awareness clarifies my discernment.

   Buddhist meditation has been described as a set of methods for waking up to life. I [may] react to what I see & experience it as memory, [or] attention may be active, vivid, & clear, not bound by old patterns of reacting. In the Buddhist practice of starting over, again & again, I learn compassion for myself. As I become aware of my breath, I get a baseline reading of my emotional state of mind. I notice the tension or relaxation to be found in my body. At times I become aware that I am still in the goal-oriented, comparing, judging mind. [In those moments, both Buddhist & Christian teachers redirect our attention], the Buddhists back to the breath, Christians back to God. Often when mindfulness permeates my centering for worship, I find that I grow increasingly aware of the deepening quality of the shared silence.  This is the experience of the “gathered” or covered meeting. Inward examination is often self-revealing and allows for a kind of spiritual maturity and collective deepening.

   [At the pottery wheel in my pottery class, there is centering].  There is a kind of dialogue between hands and clay—a way of speaking and listening with the whole body.  The wheel is “center-oriented,” and the clay takes its position by necessity and with support.  The process of keeping the clay on the wheel, of molding and shaping it into a vessel, is similar to centering for meeting for worship.  We keep the pot on the wheel, center the clay with steadiness.  Similarly, in centering for worship, we steady the wandering mind.

   Rufus Jones writes: “There is a unification of interior life, in which the rational & emotional powers, together with the energies of will & purpose, are fused into a waiting, expectant attitude. The world needs those who practice this art of communion, those who have ears to hear what the Spirit saith. Friends have still much to learn in this field.” In meeting for worship, we are engaged in the inquiry into God’s presence within & around us. Centering & mindfulness share many connections that allow us as Friends to touch Inward Light within ourselves & others. Mindfulness develops a habit of silence, reflection, attention, awareness, & unity with the gathered community. Centering enhances our coming to worship with heart & mind prepared for individual reflection & for the shared experience of worship. We learn to listen to the Indwelling Christ in the community of shared silence.

   APPENDIX: Mindful Body Awareness and Centering Exercise for Friends—[After the weekly], relentless din of information, we show up on Sunday morning to meet for worship, seeking a few precious moments, an hour, to allow the mind to rest, to become centered, to give ourselves over to the fullness of God’s Living Presence.  This mindfulness meditation exercise on awareness is a way to regain a sense of quiet in body and mind:

   Come into a comfortable posture.  Close your eyes.  Begin to bring your awareness to the top of your head, [and then to all of the rest of your face].  Be aware of your breath’s effect on your nose. Become aware of the breath [and sensations] in the chest and the back of the body and spine.  Feel the breath radiating from the chest and diaphragm throughout the body to the extremities, the fingertips and toes. 

   Become aware of the beat of the heart and the pulse at the navel center.  Be aware of the full length of the in-breath and the out-breath.  Turn your awareness to what can be received by the ears.  Release the impulse to fix or adjust anything.  Just be.  Become aware of the breath in the upper and lower legs, and finally in the toes and feet.  Let the breath draw you deeper and deeper into awareness.  [Sense every aspect of the breath], and feel the life and soul within you. Just breathe.

   Queries: How do you center in meeting for worship?       What role can the desire for communion with God play in centering in meeting for worship?       [How will you accept the bittersweet taste of self-doubt as you center for worship]?      How might centering prayer and mindfulness be useful for centering in meeting for worship?      What other activities of the hands or body have helped you learn about centering?
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408. An Art of Small Resurrections: Surviving the Texas Death Chamber (by Walter Long; 2010)

    About the Author—Walter Long is a member of the Friends Meeting of Austin.  The meeting has a long history of advocating for matters of conscience and human rights, and it has a very active death penalty committee.  Walter has represented death row inmates in state and federal habeas corpus appeals. He founded the Texas After Violence Project, [which listens to and documents the story of] people directly touched by serious violence and makes them available to the public, to foster deep listening and exchange among all Texans.

    A Compassionate Strategy—I am a criminal defense attorney working on death penalty appeals in Texas.  There are no respites [from death penalties], except the state doesn’t kill on weekends or around Christmas. My mind boggles at the widespread severe trauma & anticipatory, complicated grief among those who care about defendants. [At times] I doubted that I could emotionally survive another client’s execution. I find it upsetting to be a part of a legal system designed to kill. The death penalty is indistinguishable from torture. The prospective orientation of death penalty law always will undermine fairness. The law is warped, & it corrupts & impoverishes the rest of the state’s justice system.              

            I have found that the hardest place to be a death penalty opponent is in a Texas church, liberal or conservative, Roman Catholic or Protestant. Can those from the Christian tradition primarily think of our faith as a strategy for compassionate living? I don’t find it much of an overstatement that some have portrayed Jesus’ principal task in life as to die in order to appease a punishing God & restore a fallen humanity. [The focus has been] more on correct doctrine than on compassionate living. Jesus advocated a compassionate strategy. Jesus taught [in order to] prevent rigidity & alienation from others that precede or follow violence. I have clung to [the Lord’s Prayer] in my struggle to remain emotionally regulated in the face of my state’s frequent acts of homicide. I hope my essay [will lead] Christians to be inspired by Jesus’ compassionate strategy—his art of small resurrections.

    A Compassionate Wager—Simply put, those who assent to particular beliefs about Jesus are allowed into the Christian community [and get a good afterlife]; non-believers do not.  I think that the narrow gate was the hard-to-find aperture of peacemaking.  Blaise Pascal asserted that we should blindly bet that God exists. [At most] we gain heaven and prevent divine punishment. [At worst], we gain a virtuous life.

    Pascal’s wager [implies that] God is jealous and punitive, meting out judgment based upon belief or lack of it. Belief’s purpose is nothing more than self-survival.  But Jesus describes God as indiscriminately nurturing.  Jesus tells his disciples what to do, not what to believe.  Jesus instructs his disciples to reject earthly treasure and instead to invest themselves in this hidden compassionate God. Protected by their inwardness in God, Jesus’ followers are grounded; they do not fade from being present and vital. Jesus prescribes counterintuitive risk-taking.  What if our fears cause us to fail to show up [for our own life]?

    The Loss of Compassion—[Jesus has] a strategy of “perfect love” that simply “drives out” the fear manifest in violence. The New Testament writers themselves use judgment & fear as motivators, even coming from Jesus directly. [He blesses those who cared for “the least of these,” and then damns those] who fail to perceive Jesus in these representatives of “the least.” I think these vindictive passages show the New Testament authors’ & editors’ failure to comprehend & accurately transmit Jesus’ message of love of enemy. If we are to follow Jesus, we have to choose between his pragmatic advice & the fundamentally violent sacred story about him. The church’s attempt to keep both has blurred Jesus’ message & frustrated humanity’s growth [in the way of nonviolence].   

    Nowhere in the Torah is there an explicit command to “hate the enemy.”  For Jesus, love of enemy means that there no one who is not our neighbor.  Jesus explained that the “neighbor” is not defined by such qualities as same or other, near or far, friend or foe, beloved or despised; the neighbor shows mercy to all others.  The hold of tribalism has continued to be strong, despite Jesus’ clear new commandment. [Today], those who share scripture and beliefs are distinguished from the heterodox “others.”

    The death penalty sheds light on the effect that the congealing of beliefs had on the compassionate practice of Christians.  [Early Christians understood] oppression and suffering and expressed a visceral reaction against the death penalty.  They seemed guided by compassion in their treatment of all persons.  Then Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion.  Christians’ capacity to stand by and endure the suffering of others grew in proportion to their political power.  [Instead of following Jesus], they worshipped him, venerating Jesus as earlier Romans had venerated the emperor. Atonement doctrines became entrenched, and human violence was accommodated.

    These doctrines instruct the faithful to embrace the executioner’s point of view for the sake of their own salvation. They present God as an agent of Jesus’ death and describe the death itself as a benefit of ultimate value for the believer.  These beliefs allegedly promote spiritual and emotional health, but they also retard our compassionate response to real suffering, and our comprehending our active and passive responsibilities in the world’s wars, pogroms, crusades, inquisitions, and executions. Jesus’ “love your enemies” is a teaching irreconcilable with any theology that would excuse or justify their harm of their deaths in “spiritual” or real terms.

   Recoveries of Compassion—The flower of compassion planted by Jesus seems to require painstaking cultivation and has made overt appearances in the Franciscans, the Mennonites, the Friends, the Catholic Workers.  The bloom also has taken firm root in the Enlightenment’s ongoing discoveries of human empathy and bodily integrity.  Benjamin Rush referred to empathy as “the vice-regent of the divine benevolence in our world.”

   The Enlightenment’s newfound awareness of the shared inner emotional lives of all human beings became the foundation the French Declaration of Man and Citizen & the American Bill of Rights, which inspired & grounded the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Only within the most recent century, the term dignity has been given a new meaning in society and law, and is now applied as an inviolable attribute of every human being.  [Canada, the nations of Europe and South Africa have abandoned the death penalty as contrary to dignity. [Even though his own rights and dignity were denied], Jesus asked his followers to recognize those who oppressed them as posses-sing dignity, [and assured] his followers that authorities could kill them, but could never turn them into nobodies.

   An Art of Small Resurrections—Fearless compassion prevents us from averting our gazing from realities, including acts of cruelty & inhumanity in which we are implicated. Jesus discovered that his compassion delivered him to a place where he felt the stark indifference of the universe, where he [felt forsakened even by God]. If we may have a vital inward relationship with God, it is urgent that we seek that relationship.  [If we remain fully aware, & feel overwhelmed], how do we pass beyond the same despair that Jesus expressed when he cried out? Jesus, in teaching the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples, taught an art of small resurrections.

   Jesus gave his disciples tools to remain in touch with the hidden God. He sent them in 2’s, recognizing that dyads reinforce each other emotionally, morally, & spiritually. Jesus counseled his disciples that they should bring forth the kingdom each day, laying aside concerns for tomorrow. The prayer Jesus taught his followers is revolutionary. [They are required to] constantly work toward forgiveness of each other & their enemies, even in the darkest human conditions. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us is at the heart of an art of small resurrections. Presencing the kingdom in the darkest places, pirouetting, the art of small resurrections, never leaves conditions it finds, no matter how dark, the same. [Each place they brought the kingdom into] would be a chance to move brutality of their time in the direction of meaning-filled, loving community.

   Being Wary of Predators—Jesus warned his followers that the human world was predatory. Jesus warned against false prophets because they were secretly violent, and because they justified violence by a “righteousness standing behind the suffering.” Dorothee Soelle writes: “That explanation of suffering that looks away from the victim and identifies itself with a righteousness, [a good and noble reason] that is supposed to stand behind the suffering has already taken a step in the direction of theological sadism.”

   Throughout the history of America’s use of the death penalty, clergy have rationalized violence. In Texas, the public believes that a repentant Christian defendant will survive killing & have another chance with God. A governor saying that “judgments … of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority,” is appealing to a “righteousness standing behind the suffering.” State prison chaplains taking part in executions today continue to send these messages. The death penalty would end if chaplains would follow Jesus out of the execution chamber.

   Origins of a Predatory Story—Jesus deeply engaged himself in the story of a profoundly human person, an everyman locked within history. Christian dogma has evolved the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha. Jesus promoted fearlessness, dialogue, movement, & the use of one’s wits to destabilize human violence.  Christian dogma has domesticated violence by giving it sanctuary in a timeless divine perspective. 

   Joanna McGrath observes that the powerlessness & [isolation] of Jesus’ followers in the face of the over-whelming threat to Jesus precipitated post-traumatic stress disorder. Luke’s “stranger on the road to Emmaus” is seen as a “sophisticated microcosmic account” of the disciples’ paradigm shift that promoted their growth out of trauma.  The stranger produced the “radical idea” that “it was necessary that Jesus suffer as God’s Messiah.” 

   What was subsequently understood as the benevolent & sacred sacrifice of Jesus the Christ was deemed real. The execution of Jesus the man and the gross messiness of the human legal system became a more tolerable shadow. This “sense-making” of the execution gave solace, [hope and resiliency], but it also began to nourish the theme of inevitable divine violence.  It became a predatory story.

   Atonement theology inoculates Jesus’ execution from moral criticism. Jesus’ state murder becomes a divine mold for human events & promotes repetition. A fundamentalist would say that “capital punishment [represents] the principle of retributive justice demonstrated by God in the cross of Jesus Christ.” What if God isn’t retributive?  If the Sermon on the Mount & Jesus’ other instructions are how his followers are to act toward all others, then God can’t be retributive, & setting the universe’s moral scales aright through violence is unthinkable. 

   Going Beyond Predation—Jesus’ words “… and lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil,” sought to reinforce his followers’ vigilant dance to avoid the cycles of violence created by predatory stories.  Forgive us as we forgive, and lead us away from failure to forgive. Jesus’ prayer undermines aloneness by always summoning a community: Our father; give us; lead us.  One who prays the prayer is never alone, because of the relationship with God, [and] the implied relationship with others. 

           [As to knowing what happens after death], Martin Buber replies: “We are God’s … To wish to extend our conception beyond death, to wish to anticipate in the soul what death alone can reveal to us in existence, seems to me to be lack of faith clothed as faith.” Risking everything in compassion would mean: always bringing oneself into the constant presence of the world’s violence; encouraging dialogue & reconciliation rather than acceptance or rationalization; doing our best to realize the peaceable kingdom within our single, wonderful life.

   Present-day homicidal cultures manifest compromises of faith in the statements of their public officials. Jesus can be interpreted as giving us some practical suggestions for enduring and transforming violence, & things to be aware of: remain in supportive community; worldly political and spiritual powers are potentially violent; constant temptation to join the pack; risk everything while being aware of possible outcomes; bring our home (kingdom) with us; summon forgiveness and reconciliation in every moment and encounter; [accept] limited success.

   Being Compassionate Animals—Biology and culture have hardwired us for both revenge and forgiveness.  Key to human survival is training ourselves to recognize that gross insults to dignity can be answered in caring communities with adequate laws, enforcement of those laws, and means to restore those suffering indignities and those who have committed them. As vulnerable mammals, we are in profound need of verbal communication, emotional contact, touch, and warmth from others in our species.  Science is confirming that, no matter our social station, we are all bound up inextricably in each other’s neuro-biology.  What deeply affects you affects me (or us), and vice versa. Recognizing our interconnectedness and mutual vulnerability as a species, we should create and sustain social systems that provide the greatest potential for the respect of human dignity.

            My home state Texas has done the opposite up to now. When the Texas legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1973, supporting lawmakers quoted from Mosaic law.  Texas government tends to be reactive, addressing traumatic situations with trauma-inducing solutions.  Texas is at the bottom of the list of states in providing for the necessities of children. They fail to solve its huge problems with school dropout rates.

   We need to listen deeply to human needs, & mindfully endeavor to prevent the natural retributive urge from becoming violent policy. In part that means aggressively pursuing the elimination of other outrages against dignity [e.g. poverty, inadequate care]. I have the impression that my religion is a cause of deep suffering, as [it still supports] capital punishment. I haven’t become lost in anger or despair. I can report some resiliency in trying to follow Jesus’ strategy, but also some fear. With Texas’ executions, I am triggered almost daily to recall past execution traumas. Fearless compassion speaks to a bestial tendency within all of us on dignity’s behalf. Refuge in Jesus is doing, caring movement among others, under-girded by pursuit of forgiveness daily. Each act of self-forgiveness & forgiveness of others is a small resurrection & a source of hope for a less violent, more just future.

   Queries—What does it mean to you to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”       Who is the true “neighbor?”      What impact can acceptance of atonement theories have on a person’s response to suffering and sense of responsibility for violence in the world?       What relation do you think Christian belief in afterlife has to tolerance of the death penalty?      What does “dignity” mean to you?       How would you describe “an art of small resurrections?”      How do you feel about being “either with the victim or the executioner?      What are the differences between “the pack” and “community” for humans?
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409. Who Do You Say I Am? (by Lloyd Wilson; 2010)

About the Author [and Pamphlet]—Lloyd Lee Wilson is a recorded gospel minister in Rich Square MM, NC YM (Conservative). He has written Essays on Quaker Vision of Gospel Order and Wrestling with Our Faith Tradition, and has made numerous contributions to Quaker publications. His message is that "Christ has come to teach Christ's people." This essay is part of a lecture series entitled, Who Do You Say that I Am? The text has been lightly edited with attention to an audience of readers father than of listeners.

     [Introduction]—All who make a home in the Friends' faith tradition must sooner or later come to terms with Jesus of Nazareth, [& his discerning question]: Who do you say I am? There is no single fits-everyone, -every-Christian, -every-Friend right answer. Christianity has always been a big tent; it has room for innumerable variations on its theme, many understandings of Jesus. The Religious Society of Friends [has also been a large tent], from its beginnings, and continues to be diverse today. What is essential is that I face Jesus' question squarely, answer it honestly & personally, & that I be willing to incorporate my answer into my faith & practice.

  The personal answer [found] is not [and need not be] final or complete. In the synoptic gospels, this question is preceded by the question: "Who do others say that I am? [Our question is the 2nd question, seeking our answer]. Jesus is still posing that question to you and to me, every day. The words used in our answer all carry 100's or 1000's of years of accumulated meaning and connotation. I want us, writer and reader, to be very aware of the connotation, denotations, and accretions of meaning that are present, and for you to understand what accretions I am including in my use of a word and what accretions I am stripping away.

     "You are the Messiah"/ Anointed to do What?—Some translations use Christ in this passage, some use Messiah. "Christ" is English for Christos, which is Greek for the Hebrew messiah. "Christ" is so charged with emotion and connotations that it is better to start with another word. Peter would have used "Messiah," which is my personal choice. Messiahs, anointed Ones, are found throughout the Old Testament (OT). One of the best known messiahs named by Scripture was Cyrus the Great. He was not divine, not a Jew. His personal understanding was that he was carrying out the mandate of the Babylonian God Marduk. I understand Jesus to be the Messiah in the OT sense, the anointed One who brings all of God's plans to fruition.

   Another term is "Son of the Living God." What it means to most people now is quite different from what it meant to Peter's audience. Christians today and in the past 17 or 18 centuries have considered this a literal, genealogical statement. The Jews of Jesus' time were strongly monotheistic and would have rejected the genealogical interpretation. Son of God to them would have meant someone who has received God's special favor or regard, a very holy, saintly, godly person. Jesus' practice is so impeccable that he embodies what God yearns for humans to be; he is like an adopted son of God. [To the assumption that] "Son of God" indicates a divine being, [there is] the counter argument that Jesus cannot or doesn't do things a divine being would do: get the disciples to understand him; overcome those arresting and convicting him, etc.

  As I use it here, "Son of Man" means Jesus embodies what it means to be fully, perfectly human, a model for each of us. My answer to the beginning question is "You are the Messiah; the Son of God; the Son of Man." Jesus' [mandate] is larger, richer, and more universal than the understanding of "Messiah" among Jesus' contemporaries, more than restoring David's throne to the Promised Land or the High Priesthood for believers.

      What work does Jesus do here in Creation that uniquely advances God's plans & yearnings? Humans aren't doing God's work in the world. As humans become more numerous & powerful, the suffering of Creation increases geometrically. [This suffering won't go on forever]. God's love will lead to God's divine intervention. God's love led to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus' life teaches, by precept & example, the reality of the Kingdom of God & how to participate in it. Evil forces opposed Jesus' challenge to their domination & eventually managed to kill Jesus. God's resurrection of Jesus established God's victory over evil forces & death. What George Fox called Christ, has now come to teach Christ's people of the Kingdom of God's perceptibility & accessibility.

  The invitation is to all of Creation to come to the table, learn of the Kingdom, & live fully into the reality of God's Kingdom. We enter into the Kingdom of God by accepting God's invitation extended through Jesus. [Learning of the Kingdom] in early Quaker understanding involved conviction, convincement, & conversion of manners as stages in one's spiritual journey. Conviction of past wrong life commitments is repentance. Convincement is realizing we need to rid ourselves of the benefits of these wrong commitments; conversion of manners is the ongoing work to engage and participate ever more fully in God's kingdom through the Holy Spirit.

     Understanding Atonement—How can reconciliation of Creation to Creator be accomplished through Jesus? This is called atonement theory. Understanding divine-human reconciliation is accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The need for atonement and its being attained through Jesus the Messiah has been a shared Christian belief since the church's beginning. How atonement happened has been a matter of discussion and preference, not settled doctrine. The most widely embraced understandings of atonement are based on humans and God being profoundly estranged.

     [An extraordinary act is required to reconcile humans and God. Jesus' death is understood as various instruments which brought about] God's victory in the cosmic struggle between Good and Evil. In one understanding, it was a ransom paid to Satan to redeem humanity from captivity. In another understanding, it was a trap, [a kind of Trojan Horse], with Satan not realizing the human Jesus contained a Divine Person, [released into Satan's stronghold with Jesus' death]; Jesus then defeated Satan and freed humans. In substitutionary atonement Jesus' death substituted for the deserved death for sins against God; penal atonement made Jesus' death the legal punishment humans deserve for behavior contrary to God's law.

     Moral influence atonement proposed that Jesus' death was intended to demonstrate the depth of God's love, and influence humans toward repentance, faithfulness, & holy love. God still arranges for Jesus' death and atonement is still based on an intended violent death sanctioned by God. Deanna A. Thompson writes: "Amidst the numerous theories over the meaning of Jesus' death, the cross remains a 'stumbling block,' most pointedly for women, children, and men whose lives bear the marks of crucifixion." In the 19^th century, most Christian denominations adopted penal or substitutionary atonement as church doctrine. Many see these as the only Christian understanding of atonement. Because of the divine violence [central to these understandings], this conception of atonement is a stumbling block preventing many persons from embracing Christianity.

        [Atonement & Peace Churches]—The idea of divinely sanctioned & divinely initiated violence being involved in God's will, greatly undermines the pacifist position of Friends, Mennonites, & Brethren, among others. How do we refrain from violence if God cannot? Why should we restrain ourselves from violent acts, & believe them against God's will, when God finds violent acts necessary? Other criticisms of the classic atonement theories include: it is ahistoric; it endorses family violence; suffering of innocent humans is the divine will.

        Atonement is ahistoric, because it is already accomplished, so my only requirement is to accept salvation, which is separate from my present behavior in history. The model of a divine father sending his innocent son to torture and death is abhorent to many, especially those with understanding [and/ or] direct experience with domestic violence. Father God's violent punishment of God's own innocent Son in the name of justice offers no help in the effort to put an end to the violence in human families. Divinely willed suffering of the innocent Jesus has been used over the centuries to keep believers, especially women, in oppressive and abusive relationships, that their suffering may reconcile many to God. God is portrayed as insisting that the oppressed remained oppressed, for the benefit of their oppressors.

   [Atonement & Early Friends]—Early Friends paid less attention to atonement than other points of faith. When they did, they generally followed classic atonement theories. Robert Barclay used the word atonement in his writing. Once he appears to adhere to ransom theory, and once to substitutionary penal atonement. Barclay writes: "As to our being justified, it is by Christ & his Spirit, as he comes in our hearts truly & really to make us righteous ... We don't hereby intend any ways to lessen or deviate from the atonement & sacrifice of Jesus Christ ... we believe it was necessary that Christ should come ... & offer a sacrifice to God for our sins, who his own self bare our sins in his own body ... remission of sins comes only ... by virtue of that ... sacrifice.

  Fox writes: If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God, through the death of God's son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life ... we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, thru whom we have received the atonement ... Christ with his own blood, which is his life ... sprinkles the hearts & consciences of his people with his own blood ... & with it makes atonement to God for the world's sins."

     Early Friends, by not thoroughly addressing the Jesus' work in the atonement, have left a set of vexing problems for pacifist churches. A better understanding of atonement can strengthen our commitment to the Prince of Peace, & remove an important obstacle to many thoughtful would-be Christians. The Mennonites have been giving attention to what an adequate understanding of atonement might be for pacifist Christians. I believe Jesus' atonement offers us full inclusion in the Kingdom of God, not escape from unbearable punishment for our sins.

      [Better Metaphors, Roles for the Messiah, and Adjectives for Atonement]—Better metaphors than the traditional one are: watchful father in the prodigal son parable; messianic banquet's host, making everyone welcome at the feast. God didn't plot or intend Jesus' death. God's Kingdom is opened to us not by a death that removes God's own barriers preventing reconciliation with Creation, but by Jesus' life of precept & example of how to live in God's Kingdom offered to us, & by the resurrection's promise. Jesus wasn't a passive sufferer of God's anger or demand for satisfaction, but an active resister of evil & oppression, the model for all men & women. The Messiah was committed activist, not willing sacrifice, obedient to the end.

  Our atonement with God is intrinsically ethical and dependent on our commitment to resist evil and oppression wherever we encounter them. In understanding atonement as narrative, the "work" is the life and teachings of Jesus about the Kingdom, culminating in the resurrection as God's victory against all opposed to the Kingdom. We Friends recognize that the Kingdom is among us at this moment but is not yet established in all parts of Creation. Atonement is directly linked to our commitment to living into the Kingdom here and now. Our atonement, our salvation, is ethical; it depends on our ethical behavior in the present moment.

  [Faith and Works]—We are not justified by our good works alone, but faith alone is not enough. "Those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed for their doing" (James 1:25). Faith counts only when faith is lived out in deeds that reflect and embody the Kingdom of God. It misses the mark for me to believe that "because I believe, I can get away with stuff I do that is ethically wrong"; our lives preach what we really believe. The Messiah brings atonement between humans and God, but the nature of that atonement is radically different from doctrines embraced by much of Christianity. I understand atonement as placing the greater emphasis on Jesus' life and teachings and on his resurrection, and less emphasis on his suffering and death on the cross.

     Divinity & Trinity—In turning from Jesus' work, to the question of Jesus' person, we come to the question of Christ's divinity & the Trinity. Questions about Jesus' divinity are really trying to get at 2 other crucial questions: What authority should the Christian give to Jesus' teaching & example during his earthly ministry?      If Jesus was only human, how can Jesus' suffering & death be the key to atonement & reconciliation with God?      How or when did divinity settle in or upon Jesus? If Jesus' teaching was human teachings, they would have less authority, while remaining inspiring. If they were divine, they might be beyond human imitation. If Jesus was divine, we have to look at the Trinity.

I believe that Jesus was divine, that God was manifest in his teaching & in all of his life on earth in an unprecedented way. He taught us to make God's Kingdom a reality, & to live in that Kingdom. Only Possibilities are available from the text as when divinity came. Matthew and Luke point to the moment of conception. Mark implies that it occurred at Jesus' baptism. John's Jesus is so otherworldly that his being fully human is at issue.

 I don't deny the truth of miracles surrounding Jesus' birth; their literal truth isn't central to my faith in God or in Jesus as Messiah. I believe Adam & Eve's pattern is common to human beings, not a mold by which all human souls are deformed. We have free will to sin, & sin we do frequently & with gusto; sin isn't divinely mandated. Divine birth narratives aren't needed to save Jesus from original sin, which I don't believe in. Reconciliation with God is God's loving outreach to us, embodied in the teachings & incarnation, & sealed in the resurrection.

   With Jesus' divinity, I am forced to think about the Trinity after all. How can God have been in Jesus uniquely, differently from how God is present in all of Creation? I recognize God's awesomeness, the Jesus' divinity, the reality of the Holy Spirit. I make use of each of the aspects included in the Trinity, but I am unable to explain how they are related to one another. Jesus' teachings and the examples of his life show us the fullness of God's desire for all of Creation, and how we can individually and corporately live into that desire. The truth is not that we could all be like Jesus with enough hard work, but that God can lift up any of us at any time.

  Jesus is the One through whom God works our atonement, the reconciliation between God and Creation. Jesus is precept and example for the life lived in God—the life that is the true goal of every Christian. Jesus makes plain the Kingdom of God and extends God's invitation to enter into the Kingdom by committing our-selves daily to living by Kingdom values and ethics. It is the inward experience of the Living Christ, the Holy Spirit bringing grace, mercy, illumination, healing, teaching, and guidance that makes a difference in my life.

  Precepts & Examples/ Who am I, as a Disciple of Jesus?—The Kingdom of God is God's Gospel Order made manifest. Justice prevails for all through the restoration of all to the Gospel. Justice is achieved by embodying a life of love to God & neighbor. An example of justice as restoration is the prodigal son parable; ingratitude & insult toward the father are met with restoration to the family. The gospel accounts describe Jesus' radical obedience to God's will, concern for the poor, powerless, & marginal, & the inevitably of suffering for those who follow the Messiah's path. The resurrection demonstrates that evil can't prevail against God's intentions for Creation. The resurrected Jesus shows that God is victorious over evil. The Holy Spirit has returned to continue the work Jesus engaged in earlier, of teaching all who accept the invitation to live in God's Kingdom how to do it.

  What does it mean to be Jesus' disciple? What sort of human being should I therefore strive to be? Having accepted the invitation, my faith commitment is to God on the path illuminated for me by Jesus the Messiah. The watchful father accepts the prodigal back into the family because that is where I have always belonged, in spite of rude behavior and wandering ways. My destiny is the Kingdom of God, as Jesus revealed in his life and God confirmed in his resurrection. I commit my life, with divine assistance, to bringing that destiny more fully into reality in this world. I must be an active imitator of Jesus, announcing and advancing the Kingdom by my own words and deeds. Otherwise, the Kingdom is inaccessible to me.

     Restoration of the Gospel Order will not come about by improving governments or power structures—only God's Kingdom will do. It is not a commonwealth or a democracy, but a theocracy of God over Creation. God's Kingdom is subversive of any national government, secular organization, or religious institution humans can construct. Worldly governments have good reason to consider Christians to be the most harmless, beneficial, and most dangerous of the nation's inhabitants. After all, they pray daily for the government's overthrow with "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
           What have I done today to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit sick and imprisoned? God's Kingdom isn't advanced by punishment; it is advanced by working with all persons affected to bring about a restoration of right order. I must live into the reality that God will give me what it takes to do my job: no shortcut; no excuse; no cheap grace. If I fall short, God didn't leave me ill-equipped. It is my lack of single-pointed attention & dedication to task. If I am faithful, the same forces that killed Jesus may make me suffer or kill me. That won't be God's will; it will be evil at work to stop me. Evil will not have the last word in our lives. Our deeds, however long they are allowed to continue, will have their effect on the Kingdom's coming. Though we die, we will have life in God beyond reach of evil. I have discovered a wonderful treasure. I want to share beyond the Scriptural precept to be always ready to give an account for the hope and joy I have. Oh my Jesus! You are the Messiah!
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410. Confident Quakerism (by Ben Pink Dandelion; 2010)

    About the Author—Ben Pink Dandelion came to Friends in the mid-1980’s.  He worships with Sawley Friends.  He currently directs the work of the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies, and is Professor of Quaker Studies at the University of Birmingham.  His more devotional work includes the recent Celebrating the Quaker Way. This essay is based on his talk “Quaking with Confidence,” (FGC 6/09 & PH 11/09)

            [Introduction]/ A Little of My Journey—If the Quaker way is the vehicle for spiritual authenticity, we need to know tradition well & to let it feed our present day lives without imprisoning them. How can we work with the insights of early Friends? Maybe Liberal Quakerism mirrors some of the denial I have been acknowledging. What questions does early Quaker spirituality ask us today in our aspirations to be faithful & authentic?

   I grew up in a “strict and particular” atheist household.  My father lost his father to war and his mother to suicide.  My mother became pregnant outside of marriage and was disowned. They rejected Christianity which seemed to reject them.  [Their lives were governed by ethics and] hedonism, or the degree of pleasure an action resulted in.  I was sent to a Quaker rather than a Catholic one, as they thought it would do me the least harm.

    In college I was a member of a whole variety of gay and bisexual, socialist, communist and Trotkyist groups. I left college and went to live at an anarchist peace camp, where I changed my name to Pink Dandelion.  I left the camp and was unemployed for 5 years.  I revisited Friends. Maybe Quakers would bring about the change in the society I still dreamt of.  I was still largely atheistic, and did not understand that Quakerism was “rooted in spirit.”

    I went to the US to look at the different political contexts of US and English Quaker origins. [I took a 6-day roundtrip to San Francisco], my own Kerouac On the Road journey to the most obvious destination for the radical bisexual activist I then was.  In the midst of this onward journey, just outside of St. Louis, I felt lifted up and cradled by what I have called God.  It was a powerful experience that has never since left me, and I have since lived an accompanied life; amazing things happen and synchronicity abounds.

   I felt God guiding me, but also reminding me, calling me to account. Just this past year, I made some terrible mistakes. It is horrible to get it wrong, especially when the consequences are widespread and not easy to mend. I revisited an emotionally abused childhood and saw for the 1st time the patterns of lifestyle which I adopted to cope; for years, I have not been myself. I have lived a life of chasing but withholding intimacy. I can see that I am not separate and pure, but instead a mess; I want to stop denying my denial.  [People have told me things about myself in the past that I can only now accept].

   Such revelation is shocking & liberating, painful & empowering. [After going through deep regret, deep shame, & loss of confidence, I now seek to make amends, & see that I am part of humanity. God loves me, & now Jesus has a place in my spiritual life, the example of a good life, well led & well followed. God has been ahead of me, Jesus too, in forgiving me. Even in crisis, God has given me what I have needed & no more than I can bear.

   I have often suggested that greater seriousness on our part about the spiritual life can also lead to a greater sense of fun.  I reflect now that I had been taking my relationship with God too lightly, too proudly, keeping God out of the shadow parts of my life by denying their existence. Con-fidence means with-trust, with-faith. I feel called now to transparency and integrity in a way I had known in my head but not realized in my heart. I need a more courageous and confident spiritual life [in my personal life and in my community]. What does [Quaker] faith look like and how does it still relate to 17^th Quaker insights?

     6 Stages of Early Quaker Experience:—[The 6 stages of early Quaker convincement are]: God breaks into everyday life; God’s Light shows friends their lives as they really are; Light allows choice & change; the Friend forges a new life; the new life pulls Friends into community; Friends are impelled to share what they have found.

    1) God breaks into everyday life—George Fox writes: “As I had forsaken all the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people …When all my hopes in them … were gone … I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condition’ … There were none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, for all are concluded under sin.”

    In this 1^st stage, God breaks into Fox’s life in God’s own time, an unmediated encounter with the Divine.  We cannot summon God up, but we can remain open and mindful so as not to miss those particular moments of intimate encounter.  Why does it take a crisis to surrender, “give back over” to God?  The more we surrender, the more we are given and the easier it is to inhabit our spiritual aspirations.  Isaac Penington wrote: “The pure progress and going on it is much more pleasant [than the beginning], as the Lord gives to feel the growth and sweet living freshness of it … all its ways are pleasantness, and its paths peace, yea the very yoke is easy and the burden light.”  Quakerism involves us in an interiorized spirituality.  Fox concluded that all were [and are] spiritually equal, all were [and are] an equal part of the priesthood of believers, all were [and are] equally responsible.  

   2-4) The Light shows Friends their lives as they really are, allowing choice & change, so that a new life is forged—George Fox & Margaret Fell were transformed. Their former lives had been about profession not possession. Being “just a good Christian” was exposed as anachronistic & part of the apostasy of all that wasn’t Quaker. Penington wrote: “You must part with religion which you have gathered in your own wisdom … which can’t endure the searching light of the day of the Lord ... Flesh & self may be quite destroyed, & nothing but Christ found in you, & you found nowhere but in Christ.” To what extent are Friends now open to being changed by spirit? Does our ministry depend on our strength or on God’s strength coming through us? If I am still cautious to mention sexuality because of how folk (including Quakers) may react, then it is all the more reason stand up & be accepting of myself as a bisexual Quaker, as myself. Let me work in God’s power, not the energy of my fear.

   Fox had a 2^nd life-changing experience. He wrote: “Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave unto me another smell than before, beyond what words can utter … I was taken up in spirit to see another or more steadfast state than Adam’s innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus that should never fail.” Nothing annoyed their opponents more than this claim to be beyond Adam, beyond falling; [the opponents were accused of preaching up sin].

   [Friends stood out]. It was clear who was & who wasn’t a Friend. The 1st Friends had a new sense that their lives were situated between heaven & earth & that they were to further God’s purposes over against “the world.” We have relaxed. We are no longer accountable to our meetings but decide for ourselves what is & what isn’t Quaker for us. Where are we united in the consequences of our spirituality in everyday life now? The short-hand lists of “testimonies” are last century’s creations. We seem to opt in & out of concepts such as “peace” & “simplicity” & interpret them individually. We often forget the spiritual basis of testimony; they are only values.

   Early Friends felt they were experiencing inwardly the 2^nd coming of Christ, as the gospels foretold.  Friends believed that Christ had come again and Fox claimed outward communion was no longer necessary. Most church life was anachronistic. Once Friends were convinced, the sense of transformation continued and Quakers worshiped anywhere and anytime.  We still believe everyday and place is equal in its potential to become sacramental.  The “Now” of the 2^nd coming, the future becoming the present, has been replaced by the “now” of the moment.  What kind of hope for the future do we have and in whose time is it? What is our role in how tomorrow looks? How are we to lend our hands to God?

   5) Friends are called into community—How is community realized? How do we take the experience of a “gathered” meeting into everyday life? How do we transcend the individualism of modern society? How do we create community in our meetings?  If only we look for it, we can find enchantment on our doorstep. Who am I not to go to business meeting because I don’t want to? Whatever decision I don’t like, I am part of the Quaker priesthood who discerned it. We aren’t Friends because we are good. We are Friends together exactly because we aren’t good, or not good enough. Penington writes: “Our life is love, & peace, & tenderness; & not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.”

   6) Friends are impelled to share what they have found—We live our faith in a secularizing society in which we present Quakerism as one faith option equal to many or none, rather than as the one true church.  What is our corporate calling?  What is our good news?  Liberal Quakerism’s principles are: experience is primary; a faith relevant to current times; open to new light; revelation of God is progressive; new revelation has authority over old. At least part of the Liberal Quaker world is post-Christian. 

   Belief is not how we identify ourselves as Quaker; we are cautious about belief as a category.  Many of our theological differences are masked by our form of worship and by mostly not sharing our current beliefs. This fits well with our historic opposition to creeds.  We do not have a belief creed but a creedal attitude toward the forms of Quakerism, what I call a “behavioral creed”—the way we worship and do business and maintain areas of testimony. Even those may be unpicked by shifting theologies. [If Quaker theologies and methods are changeable], what is the Quaker glue and good news]? We have made doctrine out of being a community of seekers.

   We are absolutely certain of being at least a little uncertain in our believing & are very cautious or even suspicious of any who claim the final revelation or whole truth. Being certain of partial uncertainty is a powerful & distinct aspect of our faith. The British advice says: “Listen patiently & seek the truth which other people’s opinions may contain for you … Think it possible that you may be mistaken.”  This absolute perhaps is surely some of our good news. It conveys wonderfully our intention to be a faithful people, [rather than] a believing people.

           Links with the wider Quaker family, need to be built on the intention: to be faithful [to seeking the truth] above all, even where other Quakers hold different theologies, different forms, & different modes of believing.  Unprogrammed Friends are a minority (less than 15%) of the Quaker world. A lack of resources on their part & lack of will on ours keeps us from hearing the insights of African & South American sisters & brothers. I have worshiped in programmed Friends churches without distress because I have felt the sincerity & intention that surpasses form.

            We can go forward with confidence & infectious enthusiasm or we can be a gathered remnant. If we are serious & confident in our faith, sharing spirituality [isn’t] a challenge, but a process of joy. Things uniting Quakers globally are: sensing direct encounter with the Divine; forms of worship & business that reflect & nurture that sense; similar testimonies; & the priesthood of all believers. Shouldn’t your piety be your confidence & your integrity be your hope? We need to go forward with faith, trusting that what is meant for us will be given & we will be faithful. [Perhaps we should be as Richard] in You, Me & Everyone We Know in saying: “I am prepared for amazing things. I can handle it.” Let us put realization of confidence, a going forward “with faith” & intention, 1^st.   

   The Future—George Fox said of the New Jerusalem: “The spiritual reign of Christ Jesus in this great city … of the living God … is within the light [where] there is no place or language, but there his voice may be heard … here is light, here is life, here is the heavenly bread.”  Here is an interiorized version of heaven on earth, needing no outward temples, no outward speech, open to everyone.  They were talking about the end of society as they knew it and the beginning of eternity with God. Is our vision too small? My utopian vision has been inadequate, a secular interpretation that closes me off in my own well-provided-for world.

   Quakerism is a sensual aesthetic faith that feels right in head and heart and gut. But we need to be beware of thinking of the beauty of ideas as an end in themselves.  Let us have an intellectual [&] incarnational engagement with our Quaker heritage.  Let us remember that Quakerism is only the current vehicle, not the object of our worship.  Let us know our Quakerism in both intellectual and heart terms. We should not be bound by tradition and hang on to things past the time they are useful.  How many committees do we really need? Let us tell others more willingly and do more things together.  Let us be more open and honest with each other about our spiritual failings as well as our successes.  If I am too modest or worried about what people may think if I talk of intimacy with God how are others to be helped?

   The challenge of the shared priesthood is to realize our messiness before God and to surrender to the Spirit as who we are. Let us feel God’s love and grace in our lives even when it outstrips our own self-care and sense of self-worth. Let us speak loudly for justice, for universal salvation, for loving our neighbors, whoever they are, as ourselves.  Our history is blighted by our corporate shortcomings, but as we learn individually, we can do better together; we have done so.  What key justice issues do I pass over? It should not be radical to love the world and base our faith on God’s universal love.

   Benjamin Lloyd writes:  “God is at work in this moment … Let us open ourselves to the revelation each day brings. Let us see the Society growing around us with a sense of awe at God’s work brought to life through us, young and old alike.”  I can still feel the excitement.  Early Quakerism set up grand claims within a faith of vibrancy and excitement.  This experience is still there for our taking and living and communicating, our living and breathing and acting, [so long as we go forward authentically with absolute confidence].

           Queries—Have you had the experience of being lifted up and cradled by God?        What does it mean to live “an accompanied life?”       How have you sought to deal with “terrible mistakes” you have made in your life?        What are the consequences of “keeping God out of the shadow parts of our lives?    To what extent are Friends today open to being changed by Spirit?        What are the consequences of [asserting that there will be some uncertainty in every theological question]?
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411. Plow up the Fallow Ground: A Meditation in the Company of Early                      Friends (by Lu Harper; 2011)
           About the Author--Lu Harper is member of Rochester Friends Meeting in New York and works as an art museum librarian. She serves as an elder for Friends traveling in the ministry, and is interested in understanding [the relationship and functions of ministers and elders]. The meditation on which this essay was based was developed out of a Bible study given at New York YM’s Spring Gathering in May 2009.
           [Introduction]—For many years now, I have under the weight of a message that came in meeting for worship with clarity that couldn’t be ignored. As a liberal, universalist Friend, I was challenged to give the Bible the same weight as other sacred traditions. Spirit will speak to us in language we can hear, will lead us in a way fruitful to our condition. I want access to the direct experience of Spirit early Friends describe. The densely biblical language of early Friends may be a barrier to our hearing & understanding this invitation to hear the Spirit inwardly.
            In 16th & 17th century England, discourse was filled with Biblical language, “the unique source of divine wisdom on all subjects.” Many of us have left the Bible behind, a reaction against misused scriptural authority. When we translate biblical metaphors into our experience’s inward language, scripture resonates, empowering & enlightening us. George Fox was known for “opening” the Bible, for making its meaning accessible. Fox describes it as sitting down “in him who is the author” so they can be “read & understood with profit & delight.”
           The following passage from a George Fox epistle alludes to several biblical passages from Jeremiah, Hosea, Matthew, John, & 1 Corinthians]: “Plough up the fallow ground. Thresh & get out the corn; that the seed may be gathered into the barn; that to the beginning all may come; to Christ … None are ploughed up but he who comes to the principle of God in him, that he hath transgressed.” I will examine how early Friends used biblical metaphors in writing about their own condition; I will share my own reflections on holding these images & metaphors inwardly. Consider the queries as an invitation for you to test how reading the Bible in the Spirit works for you.
           Ways in—Inward knowing is one of the most important & revolutionary understandings of early Friends. George Fox wrote: “I was to direct people to the spirit that gave the scriptures, by which they might be led to truth, & so up to Christ & God, who had given them forth.” Fox advocated reading the scriptures inwardly, sitting with the imagery of biblical passages, waiting for openings, & applying the insights to one’s own spiritual condition. George Fox invited some Baptists to experience Isaiah 40:3-4 inwardly: “I asked them is their mountain of sin brought down, & laid low in them, & their rough & crooked ways made smooth & straight in them?” Fox is asking the group whether they have undergone transformation that inwardly prepares the way for the Lord to be at work. He takes the “outward” language of scriptures & applies the metaphors and parables inwardly. For Fox, the metaphors of the Bible connected to daily life & spoke inwardly of spiritual experience. It is one of the ways we receive the deep knowings that Fox called “openings.” As without, so within, our spiritual condition, light & dark, will speak to others. [I seek to live that my being, my condition answers that of God in others].
           Into the Worship of God—Fox calls us to “bring all into the worship of God.” What or where is worship of God? How do we enter into it? It must have been important to describe or name the experience. There is a sense of exhilaration in the language of early Friends. They jumped from one metaphor or biblical reference to another with abrupt transitions or none, as if they had a hard time keeping up with their experience’s intensity.
           John Dominic Crossan suggests: “a metaphor … [with] a new vision of world gives … no information until the hearer has entered it & experienced it from inside itself.” If we can hold the words of scripture more playfully or poetically, we may connect [better] to the experience without boxing the words & ourselves into “one true meaning.” Reading the Bible “inwardly” is a way to open ourselves to the teachable moment where Spirit engages us through the text. The stories provided imagery to ground seekers & may serve as a focus for going deeper.
           The Fallow Ground/ The Vineyard and the Wilderness—What and where is our fallow ground? [Fox draws on Leviticus 25 for the most familiar references to fallow ground]. In a cycle of rest and renewal, we let ground lie fallow in order to recover its fertility. Sabbath rest is for a season only; [too much rest turns fertile land into wilderness; too little rest causes barrenness, a desert].
           The prophets offer many examples of God turning a thriving city or fertile field into wilderness [& the reverse]. Fox says: “It is the great love of God, to make a wilderness of that which is pleasant to the outward eye & fleshly mind; and to make a fruitful field of a barren wilderness [for the inward eye]. The prophets Hosea and Jeremiah open up the image of the field or vineyard by inviting us to plow up the fallow ground in our hearts, to turn back to the worship of God (e.g. Hosea 10:12; Jeremiah 4:3-4). When we take passages like these inwardly, we may be able to hear them as descriptive of our condition rather than examples of an all-powerful God.
           Queries—When have I experienced the Spirit bubbling up within?      What does the worship [space] of God feel like inwardly?      When have I or my community trusted God in a deeply counter-intuitive, or counter-cultural way?      Whose land is the spiritual field in which I work?      What have I been ignoring that I need to pay attention to, in order to reclaim [“the wilderness within”]?      What needs to be done to restore fertility, keep it in balance, in connection to Spirit?      What is my desert, my wilderness?      What is my garden or vineyard? Have I experienced transformation from desert to garden; garden to desert?      What was that like?      How has my heart been hardened, become full of thorns & briers?      How have I been unjust; unmerciful?
           The Parable of the Sower/ Being Plowed Up—The parable of the sower invites us to enter further into these metaphors. [See Matthew 13:3-9]. Sit a minute with [the image of the sower]. In the synoptic gospel, no one explains why the sower sows on all these types of ground in the 1st place. Spirit can speak to us in the desert or wilderness as well as in the fertile field or garden. [Thus], the sower sows in all grounds specifically in order to speak to us in whatever condition we find ourselves. Fox said: “All must 1st know the voice crying in the wilderness in their hearts, which through transgression were become as a wilderness.”
           Fox wrote: “I exhorted them to read these things within in their own natures, as well as without … The fallow ground of their hearts must be ploughed up before they could bear seed to God.” Such an agricultural metaphor would be easily understood by Fox’s contemporaries. Miles Halhead [dealt] all his life with seeds buried in the ground. When he heard [the sermon referred to in the above quote], Miles’ own past experience as a husbandman bore witness to the truth of this doctrine. Plowing up the fallow ground opens our hearts. When we are plowed up, we understand the ways in which we have transgressed. This is the early Friends’ experience of being convinced.
           Plowing breaks up fallow ground which weighs us down, which must be broken up & improved before seeds can be planted or can grow & push the new shoots through the soil. Fox uses the image of the seed burdened by “thick, cloddy earth of hypocrisy & falseness atop, & a briary, brambly nature, which is burned up with God’s word & ploughed with his spiritual plough, before God’s seed brings forth heavenly, spiritual fruit to his glory. When the Light shows us how we have fallen short, the experience cracks us, [plows us] open, shakes us, breaks through the defenses of ego, shows us ourselves in [an undeniable] way, softens our hearts. When we are plowed up, we come to beginning, “to Christ”; then Spirit will enable transformation.
           Fields and Hedges, the Sower and the Seed—In the 17th century, when outward hedges were increasingly used to enclose, and separate the haves from the have-nots, the hedge metaphor would have been alive to Fox’s hearers. Fox writes: “Christ … plants his hedge about his plants, just as the outward seeds-man sows his seed and makes his fence around it. Christ Jesus sows his seed in ground … in the heart of all who know this heavenly seeds-man … Look within, there is the power that keeps the seed! Now look within: fields and hedges, and see how God’s blade and seed do spring up after his [heavenly] rain.” This inward hedge protects the Seed and also holds the space for the Spirit’s inward work of transformation.
           What kind of seed does Christ sow? Robert Barclay writes: “Though this Seed be small in appearance … and be hid in the earthly part of man’s heart; yet therein is life and salvation towards the sons of men wrapped up, which comes to be revealed as they give way to it.” The inward garden represents the activity of the Spirit within. The inward Christ as plower plows up our fallow ground; as sower, he plants the seed, the kingdom of heaven within our hearts. All this activity takes place within a hedge of the power of God.
           The Parable of the Weeds [Matthew 13:24-25]—What is it that keeps us from hearing and attending to Spirit, that encourages us to ignore the Spirit’s promptings in our hearts, to be deaf to the inner voice? We willfully give ourselves over to sleep, to blindness, rather than staying awake in Spirit. [Or we may, as Isaac Penington says: “Pick up and steal away the good seed out of the heart, and to steal in a false image and likeness thereof, which may have a more glorious appearance to man’s eye than the true seed itself … The evil seed may be brought to death in him … but if there be not a praying and watching to the preserver of Israel … the enemy will be sowing to the flesh again; he will be getting some of his corrupt seeds into the heart again.” Our job is to be awake, to be present to Spirit, [to not allow tares to be sown by the “seeds-man of the flesh,” who sows] “strife, back-bitings, whisperings, idleness, etc. These seeds grow with wild energy and “feed one another with that which burdens the seed, and quenches the spirit, love, and unity.
           Queries— What sort of ground is my heart?      Where is the good soil, the stony places, the briary places?      Have I experienced growth through the work of Spirit within?      What happens when that fallow field in heart is plowed up?      What in me burdens the Seed?      What is my hardened ground?      What does my inward garden look like?      Are there hedges protecting it?      Are they fluid and permeable, a porous hedge of spiritual power?      Is there anything I am holding as a barrier that could be let go into Spirit?      What is the condition of my inward garden?      What is my work among any dry, hungry bramble-choked seeds?      Have I experienced seeds of the kingdom growing within?      How will I nourish the Seed? [Of the multiple seeds growing in my inward garden], which ones nourish my life and which ones burden it?
           The Wheat and the Tares/ Separating the Wheat from the Chaff—Matthew 13:30 tells us to wait before pulling up the weeds. Our instinct tells us to root out the “bad seed.” Inwardly, are we really capable of changing our negative behaviors through our own power? What is called for here is healing and transformation. This is an ongoing process, as we are given the measure of Light to see.
           Literally, the chaff is come up/on top of or over the wheat. It covers the germ and needs to be removed to get at the nutrients. Similarly we can cover up the Seed by our willful behaviors. How do we understand transgression? After the transforming power of the Light shows us what they are, we can be led out of transgression, out of behaviors that are not healthy or helpful for us or others. Fox explains: “Go, wait upon God in that which is pure, in your measure, and stand still in it every one, to see your savior, to make you free from that which the light doth discover to you to be evil.”
           On Judgment/ The Sabbath Rest—The action [of chaff being burned] is usually understood to be happening in the end times. Yet, if the teachable moment is now, perhaps we need to look inside & wait upon the in-ward Christ to work in us, to teach us discernment, to teach us to separate the wheat from the chaff, to help us burn up the inward chaff [& weeds]. [Perhaps we should see] this metaphor as about how the process of healing & transformation can open us to the inward teaching of the Spirit. The parable teaches us that it isn’t our job to separate, but to wait, to hold the differences in dynamic tension, waiting for the harvest, the “3rd way” of resolution.
           The sleep in the Parable of the Weeds is indifference or willfulness & produces weeds. The Sabbath rest is an attitude of hope, trust, & belief, & produces good works & good fruit. Getting through spiritual night isn’t easy. Elizabeth Hudson wrote: “It pleased the Lord to hold me for a time in a wrestling frame of spirit without suffering me to prevail until his day dawned on my soul & his day star rose in my heart.” Have we been in darkness enough? When we are in God’s spiritual daytime, we are ready to work in the vineyard.
           Working in the Vineyard/ Reading the Bible in the Spirit—What is our work in the garden? In Jesus’ parables when a man finds a treasure in a field, they sell all for the treasure. Not everyone has the same work in the vineyard. At different points in our lives, we have different work to do. Our challenge is the conversion of manners, the ongoing integration of spiritual insights into the measure of our daily life, to continue to work in the vineyard, in the power, & not to rely on one spiritual experience as saving.
           Fox writes: “And all come into the vineyard of God to labor, in the light which was before darkness was, and with the life which was before death and his power was; and in the truth and power of God, which the devil is out of, that every one of you may have your penny … And how they have labored in the vineyard, that they may have their penny, some are breakers of clods, some are weeders, some are cutting brambles and bushes [and many more labors] … looking to the Lord for their wages, their heavenly penny of life from the Lord of life … So none are to quench the spirit, nor to despise prophecy, lest ye limit the Holy One; and every one is to minister as he hath received the grace, which hath appeared to all men, which brings salvation … that by the light, and truth, and spirit and power God may have the glory.”
           It has been my experience that reading the Bible in the Spirit, alongside of early Friends’ writing, opens me to letting spirit speak to me through the biblical text. When we connect with scripture as it speaks inwardly to us, we experience it live—confronting us, healing us, opening us to ongoing transformation. It is one of the gifts of our Quaker tradition, as are early Friends’ writing. Together they call us into engagement with the sacred.
           Queries—How do we nurture one another’s spiritual growth?      How do we support each other & hold one another accountable?      Do we trust in the light’s power to bring transformation & reconciliation?      Am I wrestling with the angel?      Am I waiting for the light?      Do I know the day’s energizing power springing up?            What is my experience of being given ministry of speech or action?      Have I received my heavenly penny?      Am I still holding onto something that quenches the spirit, & thereby not purchasing the field?      Where do you see yourself in the work of the garden image?      Where do you see your meeting in the garden image?      Where is Spirit quenched & the Seed oppressed?      Where are growing places?      Where is the life & power?
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412. Answering the Violence: Encounters with Perpetrators (by John Lampen; 2011)

           About the Author—John Lampen is member of Stourbridge Local Meeting (Britain YM). Born in 1938, he served as a soldier during the Cyprus insurgency; he became a Quaker in 1968. He worked 20 years with emotionally disturbed teenage boys. He & his wife Diana lived & worked in Northern Ireland (1983-1994). They have worked in postwar reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Uganda, Denmark, the former Soviet Union, and the US. One of his books is The Peace Kit: Everyday Peacemaking for Young People.
           [Introduction]—[After hearing news] that “Indians had taken a fort from the English westward & slain … English people,” John Woolman was frightened, & his wife still more so, “but in a few hours my mind became settled in a belief that it was my duty to proceed.” Smoldering ruins of a native village reminded him that there were perpetrators on both sides. “Love is the 1st motion, & then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel & understand their life & the spirit they live in, if haply [we might learn from each other].”
           Quaker peacemakers in our time have gone to meet perpetrators of violence, approaching in a friendly way those commanding or committing violence, [on whatever side]. Speaking truthfully with those who use the power of violence came quite late in Quaker peace testimony's evolution. It began as refusal to fight, but Friends were sensitive to the charge of [letting] others fight for them. [The idea of] Quaker relief work developed.
The 3rd step was to try removing causes of war. Before the American War of Independence, David Barclay & John Fothergill did shuttle diplomacy between the British cabinet & Ben Franklin in an effort to prevent it. [Similar & unpopular efforts were made] to prevent the Crimean War. I will give some modern examples of Quakers sitting down with “men of blood.” I won’t discuss freeing hostages & will mostly avoid political mediation.
           These examples include single or occasional meetings which seek understanding & accommodation. An individual or family may begin a [long-term] residence, a ministry of presence, without offering solutions [See Ezekiel 3:15]. Listening in a deep loving way is a healing act, [but it can be a] slow, often frustrating process, which may never yield a visible result. Wolf Mendl writes: “In doing this, the means become part of the end. We lose the sense of helplessness & futility in face of the world’s crushing problems … & the craving for success, focusing on the goal to the exclusion of the way of getting there; it cannot be planned; its end can't be foretold.”
           We had been visiting since 1976. I arrived [to stay for 11 years] in 1983 and the family a year later, after a step-by-step process where we were led to make our home there. For 3 months in apartheid South Africa we met people like Desmond Tutu, Ela Gandhi (granddaughter of Mohandas), also a few hardline people on both sides of the racial divide. Everyone had her or his own story, which made sense to them.
           We soon realized in Northern Ireland that normal divisions of society tended to be along the same lines. The terms “Catholic” & “Protestant” are more cultural than religious. When the Irish Free State was formed in 1921, 6 northeastern counties (⅔’s Protestant), remained part of the United Kingdom. The Catholic minority’s civil rights were curtailed. Protestant police resorted to violence, & law & order nearly broke down. The British government sent in the Army. The IRA emerged to challenge police & army. The IRA splintered, & armed groups appeared on the Protestant side. The police & army brought in their own units operating outside the law.
           [With all its trouble], Derry or Londonderry was a beautiful, historic city of about 100,000 that had the strongest feeling of community we had ever known. [Many unemployed], talented people involved themselves in youth work, community enterprise, adult education, music, art, etc. We were immediately made to feel welcome. Years after we left, we still sometimes feel homesick for Londonderry.
           Objections to Dialogue—The idea of dialogue with the perpetrators of violence is a difficult one. How can we dialogue with [groups some consider evil]? It be very painful to their victims to see a group like Friends with a reputation for integrity giving them any credibility. Hugh and Shifa Doncaster say: “To help the guilty requires grace. And to help them one must be in contact.” The International Council on Human Rights reports: “It seems clear from our research that no simple generalization or moral judgment can be easily made about the behavior … of armed groups. Willingness to criticize abuses by an armed group is … influenced by whether [they have or lack sympathy for their cause].”
           A leader in one group immediately challenged me to explain the moral basis of my intervention. When I said that I believed that every act of violence made it harder to build the peace everyone wanted, he seemed satisfied. H. W. van der Merwe writes: “How can concern for the oppressed be expressed without sacrificing this impartiality [of the mediator] and without estranging the oppressor? … Genuine concern can be expressed for a group without supporting any of its particular stands, goals, policies or methods.”
           The Derry Peace and Reconciliation Group (PRG) in Northern Ireland was in regular contact with illegal organizations over many issues. Many Catholics deeply disliked the IRA and the smaller republican groups; many Protestants felt the same about the unionist organizations. Both groups of people felt that the perpetrators should not be given legitimacy by groups such as the PRG. It was essential for a few people to engage in dialogue to sort out those problems that could be addressed.
           Another of PRG’s aims was “to narrow the gap between the police and the community,” and it cultivated good relationships with officers in the police and British Army. [Calling the police on unnecessary house raids] helped give PRG credibility with the local IRA. Some of the Quaker Youth Theatre joined a summer play program through housing estates on both sides of the divide. [There were objections to doing shows for] the children of the army camp. PRG saw this view as partisan and did shows for them anyway.
            The local army commander invited PRG members to come and talk to all its soldiers before they 1st went out on the streets. In talking to insurgents, Quaker peacemakers have been accused of “giving support [and credibility] to the enemy” and compromising our witness against violence. Where I lived, the illegal groups, police and British Army, already had plenty of credibility. Trust in me came slowly, through my willingness to talk to anyone on any side in the cause of peace.
           They are 3 ways to meet objections: stay in touch with ones constituency; consult with them; recognize dangers to ones self & those to whom one talks. Friends have to consider if meeting with someone will endanger them. Friends have the advantage of a track record in even-handed peace-building. In order to establish ones own credentials, one must 1st avoid preaching. Adam Curle comments on “speaking truth to power”: “A ringing denunciation of policies … might be treated with cold courtesy or hot anger, the message … would have been unheard.”
           [Language is very important in naming] people, groups, and even places without giving offense or showing bias. My soldier experience was an advantage with police and army. I got helpful introductions, but personal trust needs more than that and takes time to grow. Steve Williams was able to pass messages between politicians [who wouldn’t meet under normal circumstances]. There is a dilemma of how to deal with [chance information], deciding whether to keep a secret or save someone’s life. Sydney Bailey writes: “Both sides would like to have Quaker goodwill and support. We are sometimes given incomplete or even false information in an effort to gain our approval; such things are likely to happen in the early meetings; truthfulness grows with trust.
           Toward a Relationship—The 1st objective of Friends who feel drawn to these encounters should be “to feel & understand the life & spirit they live in, if haply I might receive instruction from them.” [Coming with “your analysis” is never helpful]. One must understand with heart as well as head. N. Ramamurthy writes: “In the initial stages I spend a lot of time with them … & eat the same food as they were eating … Some of the medical help we gave the refugees played an important part in meeting their immediate needs.” Listening helps grasp the armed group’s philosophy & moral principles.” [I pointed out to an IRA commander that attacking hospitals will ensure that they not be seen as legitimate]. Dialogues can be used to hold perpetrators to their own highest standards, [& can be successful sometimes even with groups who prove to be beyond the reach of human sympathy].
           Sue Williams writes: “[There is a special relationship with political leaders here; they believe that I won’t kill them; they accept that I don’t want them dead, even when I disagree.” [Speaking to a leader’s isolation, Adam Curle comments]: “Leaders … need friendship & support from people they know will tell them the truth, who have no axe to grind, & who manifest genuine goodwill.” Will Warren writes: “I have always maintained that I served as a facilitator assisting both parties to meaningful communication & gain reliable information. [I said nothing about what to do with the information]. It was up to them to decide how they would use these insights.”
           Many peacemakers have found that groups have wildly inaccurate views of their opponents, especially that they will cave in with violence maintained or increased. 2 Friends spoke on shuttle diplomacy in the India-Pakistan war of 1965; 1st, Joseph Elder: “We decided we would have a 3-person silent meeting for worship to prepare ourselves … each of us shared our own sense of inadequacy … yet each sensing something like a “Quaker legacy, [a power well beyond us] that we had been drawing on throughout the trip.” And Adam Curle: “The importance of listening then is that we not only “hear” the other in a profound sense but communicate with him or her through our true nature … [Through attentive listening], they not only discover what may be vital to know, but they reach the part of the other person that is really able to make peace, both inwardly & outwardly.”
           [Hearing personal reasons is important]. When poisonous feelings [& loss] are expressed & received in a loving, nonjudgmental spirit, & not countered, contradicted, or blamed, there is a moment of healing. Goran Bozicevic says of meeting with Croatia war veterans: “War veterans have become turned on to nonviolence … In this dialogue of ‘good guys’ (peace activists) & ‘bad guys’ (war veterans)—both sides are changing! [I call this] a real breakthrough…War veterans aren’t virtual creatures, they are neighbors & relatives…We aren’t meeting “them”; in a way we … are meeting some other ‘us,’ some other aspect of ourselves.” [Sometimes a “soldier” or a “terrorist” will share their uneasiness with their role, perhaps even what a teenage son thinks about his involvement].
           [When a young member of an army with a bad reputation for its harsh style of operation] gets a blood-thirsty verbal response from a young woman, he is at a loss for how to respond, & the older soldiers identified with how he felt]. People often don’t realize that leaders disillusioned with violence & looking for peaceful paths may be putting their own lives in danger [e.g. Protestant John McMichael & IRA’s Martin McGuiness]. Will Warren enlisted Martin’s cooperation in mitigating the ferocity of IRA “punishment,” & in negotiating an agreement between armed groups that no one be killed because of his or her religious faith or political views. Will Warren’s work in Londonderry is comparable to John Woolman’s visits to southern slave owners. Both showed how a genuine love for perpetrators could exist alongside deep concern for the victims.
           It is clear to me that true listening isn’t just a matter of informing ourselves. It is an act of love, “the first motion,” as John Woolman said. Will Warren writes: “I’m certain that it was only because I treated them as friends that I had any influence on them at all, & they had an influence on me … This is how reconciliation works.” His Friends included: gunmen & leaders on both sides of the divide, clergy [of both faiths], community workers, politicians, policemen & their commanders. [He was influential with young men who refused to join an armed group].
           One of my own friends in Northern Ireland was Gusty Spence, a former UDF leader. He made an apology to all the victims of their violence and their families. He worked to develop more peaceful attitudes in the hard-line area where he lived. For both of us on lonely journeys, it was good to be able to work with a person of very different background. As friendship and trust grow, so does honest speaking. [One American mediator’s burst of anger turned mediation in a favorable direction] because of the trust and respect they already had felt for him.
           There is a danger in friendship, of peacemakers losing impartiality, which is crucial to their role. In South Africa, H. W. van der Merwe’s tactics were to “express disapproval of violence on both sides, sympathy with the victims & the goodwill that existed on both sides, & my intention to make contributions to the victims on both sides; he was attacked by both sides for sympathizing with the other. The ANC in exile had noted & approved his action. The Quakers in diplomacy between East & West Germany adopted the practice of never saying anything on one side of the Wall that they wouldn’t say on the other. Trusted private intermediaries provide communication unlike any other; one should never to agree to carry a threat & be careful of journalists’ speculations.
            Changing Behavior—The International Council on Human Rights says: “Direct dialogue with armed groups by independent actors has brought results on human rights issues in a number of countries on a number of issues. While dialogue on individual cases may produce immediate results … real change in the group’s behavior is likely to take time. [Narrowly focused dialogue] can create the space for a broader dialogue about a just resolution to the conflict.” Sue & Steve Williams say: “What seems appropriate is a working relationship aimed at a shared goal of improving communication & modifying a destructive political process … based on building trust.”
           Escalation of conflict is a process which sometimes seems to have a life of its own, directed more by rumors & misperceptions than by deliberate decisions to increase violence. The same incident is often recounted in 2 widely differing & inflammatory versions on either side of the community. Coming to a shared view of what happened was an important way of preventing escalation. PRG operated a telephone service for checking out rumors in the city at times of tension, used by local leaders on both sides. Quaker House, Belfast often used their contacts in the local community to defuse tensions, especially when parades or marches were planned. Since no one wants disturbances outside their own front doors, tactical interventions were generally welcomed & can build the trust.
           Alternative strategies to violence. Leaders of insurgencies have sometimes stated that they don’t like using violence, but they don’t know of any other way. When no one would talk with the IRA unless they gave up its violent campaign, & IRA wouldn’t give up their main negotiating card, Father Alec Reid gained the trust of Sinn Fein. He persuaded them that there was common ground with other nationalists, who talked to Sinn Fein about the shared goals to show Sinn Fein that violence was obstructing progress toward them. This opened an alternative path. Adam Curle writes: “[To the question] ‘why not try talking rather than shooting? The reply not infrequently is: we would like to but … The task is then to analyze the nature of the “buts” & see if they cannot be eliminated.”
           Armed groups always fear that any reduction in violence will appear as weakness to opponents. [The usual escalation process] can be reversed. One side can make a clear & significant, but not irreversible, reduction in arms & signals that it wants a response. If that comes, the side will make a further move. The aim is gradual creation of trust. It is important that the signals of each side are correctly read by the other as de-escalatory moves.
           Soldiers started expressing anxiety about the IRA’s new “coffee jar bomb,” & whether a thrown glass object was full of nails & explosive or an empty bottle. The IRA said we could tell them that these bombs were only thrown by trained adult, IRA volunteers. The commanding officer confirmed the truth of the IRA statement, & parents were educated about the danger to youngsters throwing bottles; these bombs were subsequently not used.
Exploring the possibility of mediation is the reason for talking to perpetrators that is easiest for the world to accept. H. W. reminded us: “Not all conflict situations call for mediation … Mediation must not be used to hold back the inevitable process of change.” Where Friends discern that it is possible and right to suggest mediation, violent parties to the conflict may have more reason to trust them than other intermediaries, because Friends were willing to meet them when they were pariahs (See Adam Curle’s Tools for Transformation).
           Criteria—Talking to the perpetrators of violence is a small part of Quaker witness for peace. Even in skilled hands the work can go wrong. It has seldom if ever provided the resolution of a major conflict, but it has often been a contributing factor. [Some questions to ask before beginning are: Will the work minister to the needs of the suffering civil population?   How do some of the people living in the situation have a fairly clear view of our capabilities and limitations and still want us to come?    How accurate is the workers’ understanding of the conflict? Inadequate briefing, preparation, and support can be disastrous.
           Ultimately, talking to people of violence is one way to witness to our belief about “that of God in everyone” [and possibly] reduce the amount of evil in the world. I agree with John Woolman & Wolf Mendl that results are up to God; [small things can matter, sometimes] more than the activity to which I gave the most thought & effort. God can use our mistakes, too. Love must be the 1st motion, closely followed by careful thought about the consequences and a scrupulous assessment of our capabilities. William Penn said: “They were changed men themselves, before they went about to change others.”
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413. James Nayler Speaking (by Brian Drayton; 2011)

     About the Author—Brian Drayton of Weare (NH) MM is a plant ecologist working in science education research. He has traveled a lot with concern to encourage Gospel ministry, & has taught Quaker history to various Quaker gatherings. He wrote Getting Rooted (PHP #391), & Selections from the Writings of James Nayler (1994)

     Art thou in darkness? Mind it not, for if thou do, it will fill thee more. But stand still and act not, and wait in patience till light arise out of darkness to lead thee.    James Nayler 

     [Introduction]—To read James Nayler is to connect with Quakerism’s initial eruption of insight and obedience, in the turmoil of the 1650’s. Other potential solutions were found deeply wanting. Those who were becoming Friends found theology, politics, personality, and the meaning of history melted down and recast in the “terror and power of the Light.” Their times [and what was shaping them] resemble ours. 

     Our times call us to full engagement on every level; we encounter unprecedented conditions [in population, resources, communication, exploitation, creation, & destruction]. I came to James Nayler seeking insight from a pioneering spirit at Quakerism’s roots. He helped me grapple with the questions: When we say we are spirit-led, what spirit is leading us? How do we realize in our times the demands and promises of Christ’s covenant? How is our inward struggle toward faithfulness and unity connected to the outward work of reconciliation? 

     [Nayler’s Importance]/ Nayler’s Life—Quakerism was prophetic elaboration of the realization that Christ’s spirit is present, active, & knowable by all who seek. Quaker vision makes claims about human nature, about the Divine’s nature, & about divine-human relationships. Nayler’s writings give us valuable teaching about how hard [& freeing] it is to live under the Spirit’s direct, perceptible guidance. Today, how shall I know the Spirit’s voice, as different from my own? Which spirit should I hear?    How do I distinguish between conflicting spirits? Nayler engages us with the life with the Spirit’s & its true complexity. It is tempting, comfortable, & very modern to mute or regulate our availability to the conviction & consolation that life with Christ’s Spirit brings. 

     James Nayler was in Yorkshire in 1618 (6 years older than Fox). He married his wife Anne about 1639; they had 3 daughters. In his 20’s he joined Cromwell’s New Model Army, a breeding ground for radical thinking and radical religion; he was quartermaster. Nayler’s gifts as a lay preacher were called out during his service in Cromwell’s army. After he left the army, his religious search continued, and he joined himself to an independent congregation. In 1652 he met with George Fox, and this encounter must have been an encourage to his urgent calling. James’ account does not give George so decisive a role, as James was already in substantial harmony with Fox’s position and ready to join with others called in the same direction.

     James was quickly recognized as a leader of the movement & had very wide service in the North of England. In the mid-1650’s Friends began their “campaign” on London and other southerly cities. During 1655-56, James was a focal point for the London work, preaching, counseling, and writing at a ferocious pace, often with little help and little break. The pressure and perhaps exhaustion was increased by James’ practice of fasting.

     Fasting, overwork, and exaltation in success can perhaps explain in some measure James’ susceptibility to adulation from a small group of enthusiasts. The praise and ecstasy aimed at him had a deluding effect on his followers and himself. He was apprehended on the way to visit Fox and thrown into prison at Exeter During this period, he undertook an extended and severe fast. Several sorry interchanges between Nayler & the hard-pressed Fox, increased the sense of distance between James and his closest friends in the movement. 

     In the fall of 1656, James was led in a sorry reenactment of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem through the Bristol gates, [complete with adoring followers]. He was arrested, tried & convicted by Parliament. James was publicly humiliated, severely tortured & incarcerated for the rest of the decade. The Quaker movement was scandalized. Critics saw Nayler as proof that Friends & Ranters were kindred extravagant spirits. Leaders among Friends were brought to see how their spirituality could be deceived [& that not all inward movements were Christ’s doing]. 

     Fox was personally affronted by James’ unwillingness to acknowledge his preeminence. It can be plausibly argued that he never really forgave James. James was released from prison in 1659. He took up ministry again. Friends said his testimony was as powerful as ever, perhaps because of his trials. On his way home to visit family in Yorkshire, he was waylaid, beaten, & robbed; he died in 1660, after 8 years as a Quaker. 

     Some Key Ideas in Nayler’s Writings—Nayler’s writings in prophet, pastoral messages, theological tracts, letters, and answers and challenges to opponents are extensive. His theology was rooted in his experience of and reflections on Christ’s work and nature as well as human nature and behavior. His consistent concern for souls, awareness of the subtleties of inward experience, result in passages of great sweetness and insight. Christ [is] not a “meaning,” but alive and fresh-born among us]. To allow oneself to continue in the deceit [that Christ is a meaning] is to yield to a false, self-shaped God. To Nayler, the inward appearing and work of the Christ-life is concrete, visceral, and the most precious fact of human existence. How can I possibly give it welcome, being what I am? How can the pure and holy take up residence in such a habitation? Nayler replies: “Dear Hearts, you make your own troubles, by being unwilling and disobedient to that which would lead you. I see there is no way but to go hand-in-hand with him in all things, running after him without fear or considering.” 

     In each of us, there is a seed that originates from God, which can form the basis of the birth and burgeoning of Christ within. There is also a seed which opposed to that divine seed. It is in harmony with, is fed by, the impulses of our bodies, [our culture], and the delusive security of mental constructs. Where the life rooted in one seed predominates, the other life is repressed and in time will be eliminated. We can feel the 2 kinds of life at work within and see their fruits in our behavior. [For both seeds], their 1st stages of growth are subtle and hard to detect; [they aren’t] taken seriously. To cultivate it, we must bend low, listen sharply, wait faithfully, & cherish its every fruit. 

     Nayler writes: “He that believes salvation … & lives in some sin, & pleads for it, & believes he must, his faith stands in an unclean thing; an unclean thing will live by that faith …The wild plant has its liberty to grow until it overspread the Plant of God … & lets not this man look for good fruit, but [fruit] of that [which] he believes.”

     “[Then, there is] he that feels a strife in himself between the clean and the unclean … and believes in that which is pure, clean and just. [The pure, clean, and just] condemns the unjust and unclean. That faith stands in that which is pure, and the mystery of it is held in a pure conscience.”

     “That pure faith being followed, will purify the heart & cleanses the hands from unjust actions. By that faith the Just lives, & grows & springs … & the pure Plant spreads & covers the Earth with God’s knowledge, His holiness & purity, & all grace in the heart. It becomes a working leaven, till it has wrought out unclean nature & conformed the whole man to himself … None can bring clean fruit out of an unclean faith … Take heed of halting between God & the world; what agreement can there be, or what peace, while you are married to the world?” 

     Once we have set out on this path, we are called to an all-or-nothing commitment. Nayler, among others, spoke insistently about the experience of incarnation—Christ’s, yes, in life of Jesus, but also the presence and work of his Spirit in our own bodies. The doctrine of 2 seeds or births speaks of being born again and the real possibility that I can grow away from God. Nayler writes: “All mind your guide within you, even the pure light of God, which bears witness against all our ungodly ways … which are after the world, and leads you without from the Lord.” We are deeply imbedded in our culture. So all-encompassing, and invisible is it, like air, that its guidance and boundaries are hardly discernible, yet all the more effective for that; [we must separate from it]. 

     Nayler suggests that the life from which we learn shapes what lessons we can receive. “The 1st man [birth] is of the earth earthly; minds earthly things, lives in the earth, delights in the earth; ones treasure is in the earth, & ones heart [& ones god] is with it … One knows no other God, nor greater happiness than what one sees with ones carnal eyes … The first man worships a God at a distance, but knows God not, nor where he is … his worship towards Him is taught by the precepts of men … He does not look for any command from or communion with God, or answer of acceptance from God.” This person can't engage with the living God. “Before any can rightly worship God, they must wait to know His Spirit, that leads to know Him & His worship … the way to be pleasing to the Father, is to wait in the light, until you feel something of the Spirit of life … & then to that join.” 

     The Progress of the Soul—The 1st inward appearing of the divine life, as in the gospel story of Jesus’ birth, is small and humble, [with] small gifts of understanding. “And as the light grows, there is a discerning of things that differ, to choose the good and refuse the evil; and as the Son arises, the judgment is brought forth; all judgment is committed to the Son … Thou that loves holiness, it is near thee, power over sin and Satan is near thee, salvation is at hand; go not forth to seek that abroad which thou hast lost in thy own house.”

     [There will be inward and outward opposition to the process of judgment and transformation]. One must expect tension, ridicule, and rejection—and count it as evidence that one is on the right path. Nayler asks: “Is your Christ the same that was from everlasting to everlasting, or is he changed according to the times? Dost your leader lead you out to war against the world and all the pride and glory, fashions and customs? Dost your leader beget in your hearts a new nature contrary to the world’s nature in all things? 

     The inward Presence is felt as blazing and revealing Light, but also as sweet growing Life. “Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations… “Christ’s kingdom in this world … is in the heart of such as have believed in him, and owned his call out of the world … and into the will of the father ... God was just and merciful in that God did not lay all my sins before me at once, lest they should have pressed me down.” 

     The way we participate in Christ’s offer of atonement is in this [3-part] cleansing process The 1st part is the convincement of its necessity and possibility. The 2nd part is seeing how to move toward the Light and rely on its guidance. The 3rd part is faithfulness to what is given and not running beyond the Guide by anticipating more than what is given. If we stay in teachable place we will find a growth of understanding and of power. “As you mind only to feed on the Plant of Life, you will come to know the work of the Father in his vineyard … The work of one who is faithful is to number [the tall and strong trees other than the tree of life] to the ax, and to the fire, and not to suffer these any place in the mind … that the vine may grow alone in the chaste heart … not cumbered with that which is contrary to it.” 

     The Lamb’s War: Inward & Outward—In Nayler’s mind, the Lamb’s War describes the drama of salvation. The Lamb that suffers conquers the inward kingdom & ultimately transforms the outward fruits of the human heart. [The Lamb] is tendered & opened to injustice & violence, outwardly as well as inwardly. Inward & outward forces activate or counteract each other. The Lamb’s War against the Man of Sin [in the soul] is a social & revolutionary act. As the darkness is vanquished in us, we are drawn outward as well, “to judge the deceiver openly before all the creation showing that his ways & customs aren’t what God ordered for man to live in …& to redeem out of captivity all who will believe in the Lamb & are weary of service & bondage to their enemy.” 

     [There are] 3 important motions or responses to the Light: Waiting; Prompt Obedience; Suffering. We wait for the 1st nudges of the Light & at every step. In waiting we are given power, “bread,” & insight for us to use the gift. We will be trained & led only if we act on what we are given in prompt obedience. The gift not accepted can be withdrawn. Suffering [can be what we normally think of]. Very often, “suffering” means willingness to appear a fool & to deal in love with conflicts. “God selected the fools of the earth that they might put the wise to shame.”

     “Dear Friends, be faithful in what you know, take heed [beware] of making a profession of what you are not … take heed of searching into the hidden things of God by your own wisdom … Turn your minds within, and wait for a wisdom from above, which begins with a fear of the Lord … There will be a death to that which is sensual and carnal; and as you grow in this pure, you will grow in the knowledge of Christ within you.” 

     Nayler’s Account of His Calling and His Knowledge of Christ—This is from the transcript of a trial for blasphemy. Nayler’s decisions to set off into service is an interesting case of the kind of inward impulse that can set an embodied spirit and mind in action. Nayler gives the sense of Christ alive and at work. The work Christ is doing now is the same work Jesus was about in the days of his earthly ministry. 

     “I was at the plow, meditating on the things of God. I heard a voice saying, ‘Get thee out from thy kindred & from thy father’s house.’ I did exceedingly rejoice, that I had heard a voice of that God I had professed from a child but had never known … I gave up my estate, cast out my money; but not being obedient going north, the wrath of God was upon me, so that I was made a wonder to all … Shortly after going agateward with a friend … not then thinking of any journey, I was commanded to go into the west, not knowing whither I should go nor what I was to do … Ever since I have remained, not knowing today what I was to do tomorrow.” 

     “[I was promised] that God would be with me; which promise I find made good every day. I witness Christ in me; if I should deny him before men, he would deny me before my Father which is in heaven. Christ was man, & “took upon him Abraham’s seed,” & was real flesh & bone; it is a mystery not known to carnal man…if he hadn’t been spiritual, he had not wrought my redemption. Christ filleth all places, & isn’t divided. Separate God & man, & he is no more Christ … If I can’t witness Christ nearer Jerusalem I shall have no benefit by him; I own no other Christ, than who witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate” which Christ I witness suffering in me now.” 

Queries--Why is it so hard to live up to the Light I think I have been given, and how shall I deal with failure of my good intentions?      What are the differences between experiencing Christ as a “meaning” and the “true Word” or “voice of Christ”?      How do you see Friends engaged in the “Lamb’s War” today? 
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414. Seeking Inner Peace; Presence, Pain and Wholeness (by Elizabeth De Sa;                          2011)
     About the Author—Elizabeth De Sa was born in England of Indian descent. She was a teacher for 7 years. Her spiritual seeking has taken her to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Pendle Hill, and California. She lives in intentional community at Woolman, a school for peace, justice, and sustainability in rural northern California. She is teaching high school students how let their lives speak.

     [Introduction]--My ministry is to call people to communion with the Divine through the sharing of my own story. I believe that communion is the quest of our lives—the natural momentum of the soul to move toward the state of inner peace. People often take non-spiritual routes through life in the hope of attaining inner peace—alcohol, drugs, career advancement, social status, even violence. It is when we miss the mark of letting our lives speak in alignment with our inner promptings that we experience a lack of inner peace.

     I often use the word “Godde” because associations with the words “god” & “God” are inconsistent with my understanding of Godde as [a gender neutral] paradox & mystery. Whether we speak of life centered in Godde, pure happiness & contentment, the high of being utterly fulfilled, or the inner resonance of knowing we count, I [see] all this as living in integrity. I believe there is that of Godde in all beings. [When] in concert with Godde, I experience the peace of Godde. Articulation of spiritual journeys can help us be conscious of what we seek, to notice when we experience communion with Godde, & when we feel disconnected. We can learn practices that help us to meet the Divine whenever we remember our purpose, as well as in our renewed intention when we forget. 

     Presence/ Loss/ Seeking—When I was a child, I felt a natural, effortless connection to Godde. Godde and my guardian angel were constant companions with whom I chatted and share my deepest dreams. When I left home to go to university, I unknowingly rejected Godde by attempting to conform to the standards of societally condoned behavior. I am disturbed that the messages we receive from society can so easily undermine the value of [childhood connections with Godde]. I still have nightmares about my unhappiness, wanting to quit but terrified of how to make it in the world without a higher education. I kept on seeking [for community]; I graduated with 3 degrees from 3 separate universities without finding the type of education that I sought. 

     At 24, I [began] teaching in a rural part of Japan for 3 years. I knew instinctively that exploring my spirituality was to be an integral part of my life in Japan, I was unaware of the form it would take. I tried attending Mass. It did not offer me a language to articulate what was burgeoning within. A friend introduced me to an American missionary family affiliated with the Assemblies of God They welcomed me warmly and understood a gaijin’s feeling of isolation. I had grown up where talk of the inner life was discouraged. The Martins were open in discussing the nexus where spirituality meets life. 

     Sarah said: “You’ve got a God-sized hole in your heart. Nothing but God is going to fill it.” I said I was ready to “invite God into my heart,” & then we prayed. I felt the presence of Godde enter me & recognized all the childhood signs of communion. The Martins’ faith community undoubtedly spoke to my condition—a vast spiritual hunger. [I wasn’t comfortable with the church services, but I enjoyed the open sharing of our inner spiritual lives. I became increasingly uncomfortable with the Martins’ language & I couldn’t understand the bigotry of rejoicing when one false religion destroyed Afghanistan’s Buddhas, idols of another false religion; we parted on good terms. They accepted the overlap in our beliefs. I moved to Australia & shopped around briefly for a community, but I soon became tired of religion shopping, so I became a regular attender at the local Quaker meeting. 

     Quakerism—For a long time Quakerism didn’t inspire me. I became depressed, spirituality became superficial, & I started relying on alcohol & marijuana to dampen my constant emotional pain. [I was dissatisfied, but] I stayed because I was tired of sampling religions. 18 months after I 1st started attending, my life was changed by a weekend retreat, where we explored prayer, discernment, and Quaker contemplation; I felt a sense of coming home. At Quaker gatherings, I reveled in communities who talked openly about their spiritual lives & seeking guidance in aligning their inner and outer selves. [My local meeting seemed unable to talk to me in these terms]. 

     I wanted grassroots Quakerism to inspire me to open my heart to the Light and live from a place of integrity in all I did. I applied to Pendle Hill’s Resident Study Program and was accepted. [9 months at Pendle Hill enabled me to start living the authentic life for which I had been longing]. I took Rex Ambler’s course, “Experiment with Light.” From the practices of early Quakers, who by paying attention to the promptings of the Spirit, could experience a transformation of their lives and hearts, Ambler extrapolated this meditation. 

     In my practice and experience of Light meditations and in another meditation called “Focusing,” I learned to submit to the Light, to: raise to consciousness the live issues; find the root of the most pertinent issue and seek awareness of the pain, knowing it could bring healing and wisdom; be more present with bodily sensations; trust that with awareness comes divine guidance. I define pain as anything that separates from the wholeness of being at one with the love of Godde. I became aware that there was greater pain in resisting being present with what was alive for me than the actual pain that I was unsuccessfully trying to avoid. My experiences during meeting for worship moved to a new level. I received guidance from a source that felt beyond me and my intellectualization. 

     Buddhism—While at Pendle Hill, I sat a 7-day silent meditation retreat in the Buddhist Vipassana (i.e. “insight” or “mindfulness”). By repeatedly bringing the attention back to the breath, we notice how often we live in the past or the future rather than in the present; we cultivate the habit of returning to the present moment. From 6 am until 9:30 pm, there are sitting and walking meditations, meal meditations, work meditations and an evening dharma talk. The purpose of the retreat is to learn to practice mindfulness constantly. 

     When the retreat ended, I adopted Vipassana meditation as my personal spiritual practice. I began to experience Godde in my daily life with increasing frequency. I felt bliss, union, and an utter connectedness with that of Godde in all things, and entirely present in the moment. I met Godde in prayer, meditation, worship, creative expression, and the wilderness of the earth and my soul. There were times when I felt a vast separation from Godde, when I missed the mark and fell into a vortex of self-criticism and despair. I realized that feelings are often reflections of the Truth but not necessarily the Truth itself. My practice seemed as though I were waiting for the mediocre and unpleasant experiences of life to end so I could move back to the highs and bliss of mystical union. 

     Pain—Oneness with Godde is a practice of being utterly present in the moment, especially if it means being entirely present with our pain; that is when we heal, surrender our old selves, are reborn, & live more fully into our divinity. During my retreats, I have seen with alarming clarity the internal noise that clouds my vision. During a walking meditation, I felt aggression & resistance bubbling up as people approached. As I went inside my body in prayer & sat with the feelings & sensation, I came to a deeper understanding of what was motivating me. I remembered a moment of racial bigotry when I was 7, and a moment of class bigotry when I was 19. I ceased my walking meditation, sat down, and wept. I wondered how much more pain I would cause until I healed my own. 

     Through the practice of mindfulness, as we peel back the layers of our experience, we begin to notice the distractions and the pain beneath. In recognizing pain as an experience and not identifying with them, I discover my power to choose my response, to move toward wholeness through presence and healing. The alternative is to become the pain and react unconsciously in a futile bid to ease the pain. 

     In every meditation retreat that I have done, such issues have arisen. The pain can often be released & healed through presence & breathing. I am learning to recognize the deepest, [most difficult] pain as woundedness instead of absolute truth & to hold myself with tenderness & compassion. Every day of the 2nd retreat, I sent metta (loving-kindness) to myself by tapping into a fountain of loving energy within me, learning internal cues that got the juice flowing, & repeating: “May I be safe. May I be at peace. May I be healthy. May I live my life with ease. 

     I did not always find the fountain of loving-kindness, and my practice was often dry. I am sure that I have irritated a few people at retreats by my mere presence, just as others have irritated me. Vipassana and metta are twin practices because without mindfulness, metta feels fake; without metta, my heart stays closed. [I patrol my thoughts with the “Vipassana police].” The physical sensations [of staying with my negative thoughts] were unpleasant, yet I also felt an immediate and surprising sense of peace. I met Godde in my pain. 

     For 32 years I had judged myself with incredible harshness. Now I could see that all are pure at heart, & that layers of pain surround our core divinity. I felt Divine Love flow through me as I held my pain with compassion. Whenever I was present with what was alive in me, my heart opened with compassion & I would stay in the moment & breathe. Awareness & breath alone were often enough to heal the pain. I learned how to take responsibility for my issues & be present with my own pain. I am so much more than my pain. I am who I am. I may never attain “enlightenment” in this lifetime; I may never become the person I would like to be, & that’s okay. 

     I don’t exist in reality; reality exists in my mind, complete with all my subjective perceptions and pain and all the subsequent distortions and interference. I came to believe that who I am is wrong. I learned to deny who I am. I identified with my oppressors, I internalized my oppression, and I grew to hate myself. Yet these experiences are all opportunities to meet Godde: opportunities for presence, healing, self-knowledge, compassion, and love. 

     Forgiveness—I began to explore forgiveness. It is important for those trying to forgive to identify just what they are trying to do. My definition of forgiveness is: the release & healing of pain incurred from past offenses; moving toward wholeness; living in integrity, aligning inner pain & outer action, holding my & the other’s pain with compassion; protecting myself from further pain with compassionate intention from a place of divine love. Forgiveness doesn’t condone negative action; it doesn’t remove the need for boundaries to prevent recurrence; it doesn’t necessitate receiving an apology before I forgive. I don’t suggest forcing a premature forgiveness. The issue isn’t so much external causation as internal effect. We meet Godde in the intention to forgive. 

      A friend with a mental illness repeatedly hurt me. He saw the world & related to people from a place of prejudiced perception; his perception was an exaggerated experience of how we all see the world. I removed myself from further interaction with him; the pain persisted. I couldn’t think of him without anger & animosity; bitterness was poisoning me. At my next meditation retreat, I tried sending metta to my friend, but I had to give up. I started sending metta to myself. I reached a place of deep stillness. My hurt was revealed under crusty layers of resentment, fear, & my desire to forgive. I breathed & felt the pain; eventually it subsided. Forgiveness is a process. In being present with the pain, I met Godde in my intention to forgive, & moved into a natural state of forgiveness. 

     Faith in Practice/ Integrity—When I tell Quakers that I practice Buddhist meditation, some are interested; some are affronted. I believe that rigid segregation is contrary to a central Quaker tenet. I seek wholeness, I seek healing, I seek union with Godde, I seek to be the Light within me. All the different spiritual vehicles I use enable me to do the same thing. Whatever practice I & other Friends follow, we are on parallel journeys. Through worship, Godde’s guidance & presence, we are transformed & inspired. Through attending to that of God, we are guided toward a living ministry of love & compassionate action. The Quaker testimonies are outward expressions of an internal connectedness with Godde. In my journey, I have moved to a new understanding of the testimonies. 

     Integrity is at the root of all other testimonies. I have exposed myself to the Light & illuminated my pain so I can discern whether my motivation is that of Godde or my woundedness. In my journey toward integrity, I attend to daily nudges, notice & respond to: deeper issues behind unfulfilled desires; when I am reacting to old pain by wanting to impress people; when I react differently to the same request from different people; how my perception is subjective & guided by old wounds; when I love with boundaries or conditions instead of having an open heart. 

     I also notice & respond to: when I am attached to judgments about myself & others; how such judgments limit authenticity & are rooted in a place of pain; when I am guided by ego; when I am limited by my insecurities; my reluctance to be truly present to positive states such as joy because of my fear that joy will pass; whenever my heart is closed & separated from Godde; how conditioned thought patterns lead me into a downward spiral of separation & pain; being present with thoughts, emotions, & bodily sensations at random points in my day. Through moments of self-awareness, I have become conscious of buried layers of pain that keep me from being who I am. 

     Equality/ Peace/ Community—Before birth and after death, there is, I believe, a collective rejoining of all the divine energy. As Quakers we believe that if all have a measure of Godde within, all should be treated equally. However, we carry unequal burdens. We are beholden to aspire to hold each other with compassion. We meet Godde and take responsibility for healing the world. 

     I appreciated aikido’s spiritual foundations and its reliance on the redirection of energy to resolve conflict peacefully, rather than brute forces clashing. But I never learned the practice of peace that stems from a place of divine connectedness. It is only in bringing peace to the numerous daily trials of conflict through the practice of being present that we can hope to be transformed. 

     In community we learn, through the practice of presence, how to love that of Godde within each other. Through conflict, community offers us the opportunity to hold each other in our pain and to help each other move toward wholeness. It is easy to placate the ego, to believe our own truth is right; this does not offer peace. In community, we practice being present to what is alive in the moment, and we seek to move our inner and outer selves into increased alignment. By being mindfully present with our pain and the pain of another, we affirm our desire to stand together in our collective pain and to heal. 

     Simplicity/ Conclusion—When we simplify our lives in terms of speech, material possessions, and our use of time, we make space for Godde. When we invite the Divine into every moment, we seek the presence inherent in the simplicity testimony. Through Quaker witness to that of Godde within us, the world sees a powerful witness to love. As we strip away the superfluous noise and the distraction in our lives, we have the space to be present with what is truly alive in us. Past pain is healed and we experience inner peace. In all my emotions, there is an opportunity to be present and learn more about myself. 

     I have learned to slow down & be present with the deluge of emotions inside of me. I have become conscious of which of my voices is speaking. In teaching my daughter, I notice whether my agenda for her learning in a certain way restricts her freedom to pursue what is alive for her. In all the many decisions of life, I have learned a lot about who I am & my conditioning. I have been able to question my values as experiences, not fixed truths. When our actions stem from the promptings of the Spirit, they are more likely to be effective. As we allow ourselves to live with authenticity in the world, we invariably act in right order from a place of love & compassion. 

     In aspiring to meet Godde in every moment, my heart has opened. I experience the peace of being my true self. I experience the peace of Godde in my intention to be present, including during times of fear and violence when I am reliving past pain. When all the layers of the human condition have been peeled back, I have been left with a peace in accepting whatever is, an experience of union, an expansion that is everything and nothing.

     Through presence, we become aware that we do not see clearly, that all is laden with remnants of our past. When we begin to see the immensity of pain in this world, when we submit to Godde, our hearts open and we can rest in the peace that comes from living in [the present with integrity]. We marry our humanity with our divinity, our shadows are illuminated, and we are transformed and able to live out our unique calling. We will always err. We may never heal of all our pain, though we will experience its inherent beauty in being present. Through Divine communion, we can be all that we are capable of being, and have infinite opportunities to meet Godde.

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415. Living our Testimony on Equality: A White Friend’s Experience (by                     Patience A. Schenck; 2011)

     About the Author—Patience A. Schenk has made her spiritual home at Annapolis (MD) Friends Meeting since 1966. After retiring from paid work, she experienced a call to focus on anti-racism work. In 2002 she founded the Baltimore YM Working Group on Racism, and clerked it for 5 years. She serves on the Annapolis Human Relations Commission. She feels much enriched by the enlarged perspective she has gained by examining her white identity and learning how people of other identities see the world.
           Introduction/ Why are we Still Talking About Race?—There is that of God in everyone, which makes us all worthy of infinite respect. There is [always] the potential for the infinite love of God to manifest itself. I feel greatly enriched by the particular ways I have learned to see beyond the limitations of the dominant American culture. I have a vision of a Religious Society of Friends in which we truly welcome to our communities anyone [of any color] who yearns to find God in silence.
           [While we have an African American president], from 2000 to 2010, the number of hate groups in the US grew from 602 to 1002. I run into middle-aged African Americans who were once my students; they are still living in public housing. Americans with European-sounding names are 50% more likely to be called for a job interview than those with African-American-sounding names.
           Racism has a number of aspects: personal prejudice; institutional racism; cultural racism. As individuals we have very little control over institutional & cultural racism, but we benefit by it. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “We will have to repent … not merely for the hateful words & actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Today’s prejudice & discrimination are usually manifested in much more subtle ways. How do we live our testimony on equality? An important piece that is often left unexamined is the experience of being white in a racist society; whites must have an awareness of their own racial experience. I have learned a lot over the years. I have also fallen short of expectations. I want understand what is happening so I can do better. Reflecting on experience will help you gain awareness and give you an opportunity to re-evaluate experiences. It is with God’s help that we glimpse the complexities of race, face our discomfort, and dare to challenge injustice.
           Being White—A relative in describing the people of a trip to New Mexico said: “They were about 1/3 Mexicans, 1/3 Indians, & 1/3—um, you know, regular people.” Whites see themselves as “regular people.” Others are exotic or interesting, but different, “diverse.” White people haven’t had to be bicultural; they don’t have an opportunity to take a good look at what it means to be white. Thinking we are the norm is part of white culture. Peggy McIntosh’s list of “white privileges” includes: easy to be with my own race; moving to an affordable, desirable area; neighbors will be neutral or pleasant; shopping alone without being followed or harassed; being credited with creating our nation; my skin color doesn’t hurt the appearance of financial reliability; my unattractive habits won’t be attributed to the habits of my race. “White privilege” is having these benefits & taking them for granted.
           According to DNA studies, modern humans have no separate classifiable subspecies (races). Genes for all traits, desirable and undesirable, can be found across all races. To pretend to ignore someone’s race is to not see that person. Color blindness is not helpful. White Quakers have much to be proud of in the area of the abolition of slavery (See “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship” by Vanessa Julye and Donna McDaniel). Friends wore cultural blinders, were caught up in the dominant culture, and were guided by their own social and economic interests. It took nearly a century for them to end slavery. Friends did not encourage or even invite African Americans to attend meeting for worship and sometimes denied membership. Most Friends schools did not integrate any earlier in the mid-20th century than any other private school. Some Friends worked to end enslavement and discrimination, some dragged their feet. [We need to learn from our shortcomings] and not idealize the past.
           Racial Messages in Early Life—I grew up in a small almost all-white town on the Mississippi River in IL prior to the civil rights period. My parents made lunch for an African American kindergarten classmate when the local restaurant refused to serve her. My grandparents invited an African American college professor to dinner. I could see that people’s skin color, unlike their hair color, was a loaded subject, but no explanations were forthcoming. Black people were equal to us, but not part of our social network.
           We moved to the Chicago suburbs & I had classmates of color. My higher-level classes in high school were almost all white; I don’t remember reflecting on that. Only white kids attended a Saturday night recreation center. I assumed that the black students preferred to have their own place. In college, my African American friend couldn’t join us in most restaurants or any movie theaters, & was denied a place in the choir at the local Catholic church. I invited my friend to visit me, but had second thoughts about seeing a black man I met at summer camp.
           I passively absorbed varied and mixed messages about race. Discrimination was wrong, but I should not make white people feel uncomfortable. I have learned a lot by examining these messages, spoken and unspoken. [Journaling Queries]: What did people say at the dinner table about a different race and how did others respond?    When friends of another race were invited to dinner, what was that like?    How was your family hurt or benefited by race?    Did someone not get into a 1st choice college or job “because of affirmative action? We are not responsible for the messages we were given through our community and culture. We are responsible for bringing them to consciousness and making choices conforming to Quaker belief.
           Making Sense of Race as an Adult—I found myself in a classroom with 46 black, mostly over-aged 6th graders. The average reading level was well below grade level. That year I learned that it is not just about good will. There were dynamics in race relations that I did not understand. [Many had roots in the South], and had broken out of South Chicago to live in west Chicago. Their parents faced massive job discrimination. I had no sense of these conditions when I taught these children; that came 50 years later. I learned a lot and had a few significant breakthroughs. I wrote my master’s thesis on black and white children’s perceptions of black and white teachers.
           I still didn’t understand institutional racism. I wanted to hire a cleaning woman; they normally worked for $8/ day. I couldn’t explain to my daughter why I hired a college student for that wage, instead of paying the African American woman more. In the 1990s I had to face how superficial my relationships were with people of color. I found myself the only white person at meetings in a black church basement. Over time I got to know people, & gained a comfort level that I [still] cherish. It has been a joy to work with others who feel the same passion I feel.
           The Unconscious Mind—Almost everyone underestimates the influence the unconscious mind has on his or her behavior. A person can be non-prejudiced at a conscious level, but at an unconscious level adopt a racist view point such as that which still pervades American culture. I absorbed my parents’ attitudes, both conscious & unconscious. In a test, good & bad words were paired with black & white faces. Those with a white preference respond faster when white faces & good words are on the same side of the screen. When black faces & good words are paired, the person tends to get confused & slow down. This explains my initial discomfort in that church basement. The saddest thing is that many people of color also show an unconscious preference for white faces.
           Why are white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions so different? The distinction between unconscious and conscious assumptions helps explain the differences between white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions. Also, when we look back at interactions with someone different from ourselves, we remember our part based on our words and thoughts (i.e. conscious values about race). The other person remembers the interaction based on body language and eye contact, evidence of discomfort (i.e. unconscious attitudes). By being aware of our discomfort, we can make a conscious effort to relax and reach for the complete individuality of the visitor. From infancy, the baby learns to make fine distinctions between faces within the ethnic group they are raised in. Unfamiliar ethnic groups are dealt with by the conscious brain which takes a second longer. I have to work at distinguishing faces of people of color, and I do not always do a good job.
           Roadblocks to Living Our Testimony of Equality—A major roadblock is that people often do not like to talk about race. People of color have come to expect that white people may not take them seriously. Talk of race among whites brings up feelings of defensiveness. When anonymous questions about race were asked for, almost 20% of them asked why we were still talking about race.
           I wrote a chapter on race; when I read it, [I got a long, awkward silence] & then the comment: “I wouldn’t read that; it’s so preachy.” The one African American student said it wasn’t preachy. “They just couldn’t handle it.” After that I switched from writing to leading workshops. It was years before I tried writing about race again. Political correctness is an unfortunate concept, placing the emphasis on words instead of actions, on appearance rather than significance; it masks real discrimination. [Journaling Queries]: When did you feel afraid to speak up about a racial situation?    When did you speak up and later regret it?    What was that like?    What did you learn?           
       Another roadblock is the fact that when white people talk race with people of color, we need to differentiate between good intentions & our words’ impact; impact is what affects the hearer. The belief that people who haven’t met their goals haven’t tried hard enough needs to be confronted. Whites realizing they got where they are partly from racial advantages requires a lot of humility. [Compared to a black family], a white] family’s members are more likely to get a better job, they are less likely to be insulted, they have more options in housing, & so on.
           The term “white privilege” implies that white people live privileged lives. Those who are in mediocre jobs can’t see how they are privileged. Being told there are benefits to being white is easier to hear. The resistance to affirmative action is evidence of how little we see the advantages we have. Our own stereotypes can continue to interfere with our ability to live the testimony of equality. I have embarrassed myself with my stereotyped expectations. Communication can be hard because of others’ stereotypes as well. Many monthly meetings said they would have to have music to attract black people. I would startle them by saying white people want music too.
           Quaker Resources—Friends have often felt led in ways that ran counter to prevailing culture; we learned to cope with discomfort & support one another in our leadings. In our own time we have had to negotiate between commitment to peace & the belief in American culture that supporting military operations is patriotism. We have had to learn to demand integrity in the face of [opposing views], which requires self-honesty, mutual support, & prayer. Community cares about us & holds us accountable. Simplicity teaches us to put God before material gain & love one another. Experience of equality in business meetings is experiencing letting go of power & seeking God’s will together. This may help white people imagine giving up power or privilege we enjoy because of race.
           What Individuals Can Do—I am not an environmental activist, but I do have a responsibility to recycle, to not waste energy and natural resources, to show political concern for the environment. I have [the basic] responsibility to refrain from laughing at racist jokes, to practice fair hiring practices and equity in general.
           As a white Friend you can: read authors of color, both fiction and nonfiction; reflect on your racial history [at a progressively deeper level]; get to know people of a different race; trust that people of color know their own experience; give up defensiveness and be open to different perceptions of [racially-charged] events; notice your surroundings [from a racial perspective]; notice your initial reactions to people of color; be aware of media’s racial stereotypes; speak up, do not let insensitive comments pass; expect to make mistakes; be gentle with yourself and others; remember this is God’s work, for we are led to love one another; pray for the strength to persist.
           What Meetings Can Do—Look for natural links to a racially diverse community [or a community of color], rather than propose something out of the blue to arbitrarily create diversity; 1st be a community of people learning about race & racism & examining our own racial experience; appropriate outreach opportunities will follow; workshops on diversity; a Deconstructing Racism Group to share dilemmas we may experienced regarding race, or unexpected offense taken of something we said; make use of affirmative action in hiring; include “non-white” newspapers in promoting speakers or programs; utilize yearly meeting resources for workshops dealing with race; discerning what is essential to our form of Quakerism & what is a matter of style. May we have enough courage, imagination, persistence, & love to learn to truly live our testimony on equality & to create the beloved community in our meetings.
           Queries: How are institutional racism and cultural racism different from individual prejudice?      What are the benefits of being white?      Why is it a “deeply spiritual experience” to take racism seriously?      What messages of racism did you absorb as you were growing up?      What can white Quakers do to welcome visitors of color into Friends meetings?      Have you sought to counter racist comments or actions?      What resources do Friends have for living our testimony on equality?
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416. Grief, Forgiveness, Redemption as a Way of Transformation (by Elaine                 Pryce; 2011)
           About the Author—Elaine Pryce is a British Quaker of 25 years’ exploration; she is attempting to grow into its meaning for her life each day. While in education, she has also trained as a mental health professional, specializing in marital & family counseling & therapeutic interventions in grief & loss trauma. Her vocation has her believing in the strength & capacity of the human spirit to find spiritual meaning in life’s most painful experiences.
           Introduction/ A Testimony of Grace—We are social beings who also exist on a sometimes precarious, painful, & occasionally wondrous journey of our own. Inherent in the long laboring of loss & grief, in the search for forgiveness, is a fundamental human longing for restoration & wholeness. I have allowed myself to be led through the labyrinth of learnings in my own venturing on the way. I am thankful for that grace which is forgiveness.
           I was 16 and with my 4-year old brother; I was distracted for a minute or two while the tumbling waters of a Welsh Valley swallowed up my brother quickly and quietly. It was not just shock and overwhelming grief, pain, and loss, but also guilt, sitting between every family member, like a grenade threatening to explode. My mother and older brother blamed me. My father buckled like a gravely wounded deer, quietly broken with grief.
           [Around] a sudden storm such as this, there is always a before & after, & a long, painful labor of rebuilding, reconstituting, redefining [one’s personal landscape]. My extended family enfolded me in warmth, care & love, helping me towards salvation; my immediate family never recovered. I found clemency & solace from my grandmother & the chapel near her. A plaque there said: You Must Be Born Again. I couldn’t imagine it possible. There are many ways of coping with grief: fury’s bile; bitter gall; acceptance. I found faith. [I felt instructed] to “take up the very instrument of your execution, the thing that killed you & made a laughingstock of hope, & follow me to the place of your redemption.” Christian faith demands truth; shapes the silence of the dark into the voice of God.
           Intersecting the Eternal—Grief tears away boundaries between life & death, & ruthlessly excavates every falsity of being. Great waves [continually] sweep in & submerge us in the endless, storming sea. Yet great loss is also a gift; the enabling unmasker, transforming our lives forever. Time’s dimension inevitably involves human sorrows, & the cross represents this fact; there is also an eternal dimension. [In taking up his cross], Christ is effectively saying, “Take up your cross, intersect suffering with power & awareness; follow me to a place of overcoming.” These moments of intersection are a healing gift, which demands our attention to life, earthly & eternal.
           In Salvador Dali’s Crucifixion, the cross, which should be a symbol of death, becomes instead a representation of its opposite, a symbol of the interrelationship between time and eternity, death and life. Grief can become an inward sacrament, an offering up of human despair to the greater mystery inherent in death. The journey of grief can bestow upon us intense moments of awareness of the eternal dimensions of human experience. These moments depend on a particular kind of openness to present reality. Michael Paffard notes: “Most of us do not attend to these elusive and momentary intersections of the timeless with time, because we do not recognize or cannot hold on to their significance.” Rufus Jones writes: “What we need most just now is to discover or re-discover where God has broken in and manifested the grace by which we can conquer and dispel the darkness.”
           Intersections of Forgiveness/ Reality & Acceptance—When I was pregnant with the 1st of my sons, I was afraid that my son wouldn’t like me, that I would hear “It’s all your fault” as soon as he could talk. For me, birthing children was when my truest healing began. If I was loved unconditionally, how could I not love myself? Above all, I learned that the most meaningful absolution is self-absolution. Sometimes eternal blessings arrive disguised; only in hindsight can we honor them. My sister called, saying, “We have to talk about Iestyn’s death.”
           She blamed herself, because she said would take him to the funfair, but went out with friends instead. The experience narrows to our own inner catastrophe. We may not have emotional resources enough to deal with others’ experiences for months or even years. Inspired by my sister’s courage, and after much reflection, I contacted my mother and took her on a visit to one of her favorite places. I encouraged her to reminisce about her life. She and my father had lost their 1st child at a few months of age.
           And then I said, “And then there was Iestyn.” [long silence]. “I always felt that you blamed me. It must have been hard to lose another child.” She suddenly said, “You see, I always blamed myself. I made him go outside to play.” She asked my father to go with him, but my father didn’t. Years later my mother said, “I found it hard to forgive your father … I don’t think I have.” Had she ever forgiven herself? True forgiveness is an act of immense courage. Love itself is an act of endless, compassionate forgiveness. As I began to walk away from my mother for the last time, something made me turn around. My mother was watching me with such kindliness and tenderness in her eyes. There was a look of forgiveness and grace in my mother’s eyes; she died unexpectedly and quietly that night. Perhaps at the last, she recognized my own wounded heart and it moved her.
           Guilt can make us construct our lives as an avoidance of love intimacy, affirmation, achievement (because we do not deserve these things). Self-forgiveness and the ability to forgive others, or indeed to receive forgiveness ourselves, is an inner way of self-reflection and self-knowledge, an openness to healing our wounds with self-kindliness and compassion. Self-forgiveness is impossible without letting go of the tyrannical flagellation of “if only.” All the “if onlys” gather themselves like battalions of remorse, commandeering our lives with guilt. If only we could make it all, deconstruct the event and remake it according to an ideal, safe, and secure world. But what has happened, has happened. In this is the [troublesome] reality, and the only possible resolution is acceptance.
           Traversing the Void—The initial work of arriving at a place of inner acceptance is symbolized by my journeying across a bridge threatening to break. I found myself teaching in a remote part of Papua New Guinea. I had no idea then that I would chart my spiritual odyssey of acceptance of my brother’s death. Sometimes we travel without knowing, fueled only by an inner momentum of the spirit. 1st, there was a foot-clogging trek through mountainous passages and swirling rivers. The bush track opened onto a clearing at the edge of a rocky precipice. Across it a bridge had been constructed from vine and bamboo. This was going to be an unnerving challenge. Experience told my guides the bridge would hold. I had no such experience. For me to cross that bridge was to confront my ultimate fear, to make a radical statement in God and guides.
           The danger, I knew, would be in losing faith at midpoint, of a paralytic standstill. At the critical point in the crossing, with the waters rushing below and my guides urging me on, I decided I would continue to far side of the bridge. Without conscious intention, I had faced a crucial and formative challenge. I had tested both the inner and outer boundaries of my own capabilities. Providence was formulating an unarticulated, but potent question for me. I was saying “Yes” to whoever was asking this question of me.
           I sensed that I was being asked to live a meaningful life, which for me was inseparable from the life of the spirit. It was only now that I fully understood You Must Be Born Again. I learned that the mystery of the outer way is that it calls us to the inner way of transformation. And that this often the most heroic the most challenging journey of all. Joseph Campbell says: “The journey of the hero is that they are to experience death so that they may have the experience of yielding to and resting well in God.” John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, this inner journey of the soul in a century where religious life was expressed in outer pilgrimage, and the inner mystical pilgrimage of the visionary ecstatic. The journey began with an anguished question: What shall I do? The journey is symbolic, and the desired destination is his true, redeemed, and reclaimed spiritual self. George Fox also discovered experientially the transformational possibilities dormant in his anguish.
           A Hero’s Journey—The grief experience, if only we see it through to acceptance, a harsh but utterly profound way bringing us to a recognition of the source of our being. Here, it is as though life now operates from a different plane of being; values change. The process of a hero embarking on a grueling expedition and finding the “holy grail” of spiritual transformation and the realization of truth and wholeness, is common to general mythology; [the journey] is one of death and resurrection. The Welsh earth goddess Rhiannon is guardian of that hinter-land between death and rebirth. The process is one of mystery, a deeply hidden and redemptive restoration, seeded in the very source of suffering. [In case of] my figurative life bridge, transformation happens at the boundary where the unsteady bridge and solid ground meet. There may still be other tests, but the energy of vision is focused upward and ahead, rather than downward and behind. Acceptance and renewal at the source have begun.
           Homecoming—Forgiveness is a step-by-step source experience. It is an act of love & compassion, the offering of our vulnerable, unworthy, & imperfect life to all life. Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, at its simplest, has a theme of homecoming & human desolation tempered by tenderness. There is also the sense that this act of contrition & compassion is the beginning of a long personal, inward journey for both or all the figures of the painting. Rembrandt reminds us that forgiveness, including self-forgiveness, is a continuing soul-sourced journey, exemplified in the eternal divine-human encounter of spiritual hospitality. [When the painting engages our soul deeply], we aren’t spectators but participants, as much as those in the painting’s shadows.
           From the gospel’s point of view, the end result is a spiritual homecoming, a celebrated return, and an act of “wiping the slate clean.” Henri Nouwen concluded that the father in the painting “is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine and feminine hand … He is indeed God, in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood are fully present.” Rembrandt adds another dimension, that of eternal grace intersecting a tableau of human misfortune and fallibility. Buber writes: “The Thou meets me through grace … All real living is meeting.” This sacred encounter can only happen when our real, unencumbered self begins to shift from the blind soil of despair toward the possibility of rebirth and turning around. We discover the sacramental meaning of “meeting” and the sacred meaning of the return, the redemptive homecoming.
           The Stillness, the Silence, the Healing—The idea of sacred meeting is echoed in a single passage of the spiritual writings of 17th century Quaker Isaac Penington: “I have met with my God; I have met with my Savior … I have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under His wings. I have met with true knowledge, the knowledge of life … I have met with the Seed’s faith … I have met with the true peace … the true rest of the soul.”
           “Yea, though thou canst not believe, yet be not dismayed thereat; thy Advocate … hath faith to give; only do thou sink into … the hidden measure of life … which is in the patience, the stillness, the hope, the waiting, the silence before the Father … and though wilt become deeply acquainted with the nature of God.” Penington recognizes that waiting, silence, and stillness are a means of becoming acquainted with the forgiving and redemptive nature of God. Solitude and silence offer a comforting space to “meet” with the sorrowing self. Penington expresses to his correspondent, in terms of a deeply experiential faith, that sorrow and distress at some point needs to expand in order to give meaning to love and to life, to “let in the faith which openeth the way to life.” [Speaking to the community Britain YM advises]: “Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal, bear the burden of each other’s failings and pray for one another. As we enter … into the joys and sorrows of each other’s lives, ready to give help and receive, our meeting can be a channel for God’s love and forgiveness.”

           Simplicity and Surrender/ Epilogue—When we make our choice to embark on the hero’s journey, we are choosing hope over despair. The hero who returns to the world understands the meaning of courage and integrity. Arvo Pärt retreated from antipathy toward his music into a 6-year period of contemplative silence. He discovered the utter simplicity of a note intently played, and the beauty in the silence between notes. [His music speaks of being] “deeply acquainted with the nature of God.”
           Grief is an irrational process. Yet, given the heroic work of integrating the event into mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual being, its effects are entirely rational. How can I forgive this person for leaving me with such pain and distress?      How can I seek this person’s forgiveness now that he or she is gone?      How can I know that I am forgiven? Victor Frankel, after Auschwitz concluded that it is not for us to question life; it is life that questions us. I reflect now with compassion and wonder on a raw 17-year old girl at the 1st fearsome staging post of the way, [and her journey with its bridges threatening to collapse], and her feeling the healing, and slowly becoming acquainted with the nature of God.”
           Queries: How has your life been shaped by grief, loss, and guilt?      What does it mean to take up your cross, and follow me?      What experience of forgiving and/or being forgiven have you had?      Why is it so hard to forgive yourself or another person?      How have experiences of “waiting, silence, and stillness helped you heal and grow closer to God?      What is the difference between [the pairs] of “triumph and victory,” and “courage and integrity?”
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417. John Yungblut: Passing the Mystical Torch (by Charles C. Finn; 2012)

     About the Author—Charlie Finn joined the Society of Jesus after graduating from a Cincinnati high school [& spent 10 years there]. He switched from teaching to counseling & moved to southwest VA. His counseling specializes in addictions & life transitions. Finn resigned himself to being a spiritual maverick. He is open to the wealth of many paths. [With the inputs of] Jesus the mystic, Jesuits, Taoists, Native Americans, & ongoing creation & revelation, Charlie Finn has found a home in the Religious Society of Friends, specifically Roanoke MM.

The diaphany of the divine at the heart of the universe on fire! Teilhard de Chardin

          [Introduction]/ Yungblut’s Life and Work]—The dichotomy of matter vs. spirit is false. Matter’s evolution across billions of years is but spirit unfolding. Yungblut sang of the stupendous journey of the universe toward ever-greater complexity and interiority with Teilhard and Carl Jung. From his books and Pendle Hill pamphlets, Quakers are aware of his gospel of evolutionary Christianity and the gentling presence and power of his person.
          John and his twin brother Charlie were born on April 29, 1913 in Dayton KY. He attended Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. After participating for a year in the Mission to Isolated Liberals in LA & MS (AFSC), he joined the Society of Friends in 1960. From 1960-68, he worked at Quaker House in Atlanta, GA, & with Martin Luther King, Jr. He directed the International Student House in Washington, D.C. from 1968-72, & directed studies at Pendle Hill from 1972-1976. From 1978-88 he was director of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance. In his last years he struggled with and wrote pamphlets about Parkinson’s and cancer (PHP 292, On Hallowing One’s Diminishments; PHP 316, For that Solitary Individual)
           My Introduction to John Yungblut/ All are Special Kinds of Mystics, at Least Potentially—In November of 1988, I reached out of curiosity for Speaking for Silence. In it Yungblut described “Contemplatives in actions,” a Jesuit ideal still the essence of my spiritual vision, as central to the Quaker vision. 2 of the prime movers in my spiritual evolution, de Chardin and Jung, were prime movers for Yungblut too. The book and the new force of Yungblut in my hands were what I call a “destiny thing.” The relationship went from correspondence, to visits, to friendship until Yungblut’s death. Those journeying toward integration of the interior, contemplative life with action on behalf of peace and social justice will find in John Yungblut a luminous guide on their mystical journey.
           [John Yungblut writes on mysticism & spiritual evolution]: “What I plan to say will be persuasive only to those … drawn to the mystical religious experience, [rather than] the acceptance of creeds … Just as life emerged from matter, thought from life, spirit from thought, mystical awareness now emerges from spirit ... I believe that all … humans, possess a mystical faculty designed for the perception of interrelatedness. Only those who cherish this faculty as the growing edge of man’s continuing evolution will respond affirmatively to my contribution.”
           Building religion by furthering the mystical approach to religious experience means a new capacity to see analogies, to see dogmas and doctrines as metaphors that point to realities others may see in other terms. It means seeing the historical Jesus and Christ in space-time and depth psychology.” Throughout his writings, Yungblut interweaves primacy of the metaphoric and mythic, differentiating Jesus and the evolving Christ, and grounding the spirit-journey in the science of depth psychology with his Quaker faith.
           The Primacy of the Metaphorical over the Literal/ The Christ Myth Must Evolve—John Yungblut writes: “Church doctrines need to be re-examined for the metaphors they are, for a healthy reality, [one that avoids] the idolatry of literal belief. [It must be determined] in what sense doctrines are still viable … & in what sense they need to be revised, restated or replaced [as they are revealed to be inadequate, misleading, or false] … Revelation didn’t cease with the NT. Man’s concept of God & of one’s self must evolve, or one is destined to stagnation.” Joseph Campbell writes: “Myth is the only language religion can speak to express the truth on which it is founded … The moment it [stops being a metaphor], & is taken as literally true it may become a graven image … A myth must be kept fluid & flexible … so that it can evolve as man’s perception of religious truth evolves.”
           [Yungblut]: “I must distinguish between the Jesus of history and the Christ myth about him.” “Many Christians still proclaim that Jesus was God or God’s only Son … Alas we shall never again be able to embrace the ancient metaphor, in its earlier literal sense, even by a leap of faith.” Does one cling to the literal teaching of the faith that has grounded and sustained their entire religious journey despite [their intellect’s growing objections]? Does one abandon what they can no longer intellectually assent to?
           We de-mythologize in order to re-mythologize. Yungblut reformulates the NT Christ myth thus: “God so loved the world that God implanted deeply and darkly in matter itself the seed which would … by evolution, bear fruit in the Christ life of one Jesus of Nazareth … the flower of the Christ seed which resides in all … The Christ myth disengaged from the Jesus of history can continue to evolve so as to be viable for our new age … Other living religions [can then] communicate with us about the Christ myth & its counterpart in their faiths. Experiencing our respect, how more open they may be to learning of the significance of the Jesus phenomenon in our lives.
           The Phenomenon of Jesus/ What Then of Atonement and Salvation?—Jesus was the fullest human being yet, a flowering of our species gifted with an extraordinary mystical consciousness to which he called the rest of us to awaken. [“Jesus the only Son of God”] is idolatry]. [Jesus]: Who do you say that I am? [Yungblut]: I believe that which was in him, the Christ seed and potential is also in me. I am drawn to Jesus because he has the greatest capacity to love the unlovable.” [Author]: “The goal is less the ego’s to figure out/ than Spirit’s to discern the deepest attraction,/ then risk all to follow.” The spirit Jesus tapped into in an extraordinary way, in an evolutionary breakthrough way, is also available to each of us.                            Yungblut writes: “I don’t believe that all men inherit a fallen state from a mythical Adam & that Jesus’ death on the cross reconciled God to man by vicarious suffering. I understand my personal salvation in terms of being made whole… moving toward genuine integrity in which I may be one with myself & God.” Yungblut holds to a mystical apostolic succession inaugurated by the Jewish mystic Jesus of Nazareth. Yungblut has no trouble with the enflaming spirit of love at the heart of the universe being called the Christ as long as it isn’t identified exclusively with Jesus Christ. “Christ is that of God in you & me… the Holy Spirit, the Light, & the Seed … Although this Christ was revealed most fully in Jesus, we mustn’t think … of Jesus & the Christ as identical. Christ who lived in Jesus also lives in me.” Informed by the evolutionary & depth psychology revelations of the past century, Yungblut was convinced this Christianity could become a true spirituality of the Earth, & a beacon to others.
           Teilhard’s Myth of Cosmogenesis/ Jung’s Myth of Individuation—Teilhard’s cosmogenesis was a cosmos continuing to be born, a creation story and revelation of divinity unfolding across billions of years. Yungblut writes: Teilhard’s basic insight … is that life evolved out of … inanimate matter, but which from its inception contained the seed of life … Teilhard insisted that he wasn’t saying that matter was God, but rather God shone through matter in a luminous way from within [i.e.] panentheism, God at the heart of matter…Religion has never known how to speak of the ultimate truth which it believes it has perceived save through myth & metaphor.”
           “The macrocosm of a cosmos being born has its counterpart in the microcosm of a human being assimilating into wholeness its ever changing and enlarging experiences … the solitary process of individuation in each of us.” Jung went so far as to say that the journey to the self is simultaneously the journey to the Self, God within. “If one wants to be a faithful disciple of Jesus then one must strive to be as much one’s self as Jesus became himself.” [Gerald Manley Hopkins would add]: “For Christ plays in 10,000 places.”
           Quakerism’s Fertile Soil—Yungblut was thrilled to see the mystic Teilhard articulate an understanding that “that of God” has been present (long before humankind’s emergence in the great universe story) since the Big Bang. “To see Jesus in evolutionary terms as the Son of Man, as a forerunner of man’s successor, Homo Spiritus, the Second Adam … keeps communication flowing … Jesus differs from other men and women, not in kind, but in degree. We are all sons and daughters of the living God.”
           Yunglut writes of Jungian psychology: “The objective is to assist us in the process of individuation.” Jung asks: “Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? Jungian psychology and Quakerism have 2 things in common: equality of the sexes and synchronicity, what Quakers call “way opening.” Yungblut writes: “The leaders of the Society have in their own persons reflected an observable balance between masculine and feminine qualities … They have known intuitively integration between [Jung’s] animus and anima.”
           “[Both] Quakers and Jungian psychology denote trust in the meaningfulness of seeming coincidences.” Rufus Jones said: “Nobody knows how the kindling flame of life and power leaps from one life to another. You hear a few quiet words from the man with the kindling torch and you suddenly discover what life means to you forever more, and you become another man—carrying perhaps your own torch ... [I heard my “man with torch.”] I felt the kindling power of his mind on my mind and a new faith was born in me in answer to the great faith that possessed him.” The fire is less taught than caught from one heart to another.” Yungblut writes: “My guess is that most of us would tremble with a sense of the uncanny if we took the time to count up all the “happy accidents” or “lucky coincidences that have transformed our lives … We humans are frequently nudged onto unexpected pathways by events that suddenly drop … from heaven.”
           One of the points at which Quakerism has something to offer Jungian psychology is its meeting for worship as an experiment in group mysticism. The Jungian concept of the shadow, on the other hand challenges Quakers to take into fuller account God’s “dark side” and the problem of evil. “Perhaps it is their emphasis on the light that makes Quakers peculiarly vulnerable to this insight of Jungian psychology.”

     Evangelical Roots/ On Hallowing One’s Diminishments—John Yungblut writes: “Oh God, I wish I could preach again … I would speak of Jesus as the first “Homo Spiritus,” successor to Homo sapiens. In this way he is the 1st-born for me … Inherent in Christianity from the beginning has been the passion to spread the good news. Early Quakers were as zealous evangelists as the world has ever known ... Strange and unendurable irony—that Friends who speak so much about the Inward Light should so timidly hide their own light under a bushel.”

     In PHP 292, On Hallowing One’s Diminishments, Yungblut wasn’t only aging, but contending with the debilitating Parkinson’s disease. Teilhard had written that the spirit task before us is to divinize the activities & passivities, [i.e.] factors outside our control. [Teilhard had this prayer]: “O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only my faith is strong enough) who is painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to my very marrow & substance & bear me away within yourself… Teach me to treat my death as a communion.” Yungblut writes: I practiced imaging acceptance of the diminishments as if they were the gift of a companion to accompany me on my way to the great diminishment, death … The most effective workshop for learning how to hallow one’s diminishments is contemplative prayer, the practice in letting to of the insistent demands of the ego in favor of the realization of the self.” 

     An Octogenarian’s Wise Counsel/ Words with the Power to Gentle—“There is an inescapable connection between contemplative prayer and motivation to engage in social reform; contemplative prayer confirms the inseparable unity of all things.” In his final counsel to us, Yungblut returned yet again to the perspective of the evolving universe. “The contemporary world scene may certainly foster pessimism, but in the context of evolution there is ground for optimism … [Having] higher consciousness against enormous odds and myriad potential abortions justifies hope that the species will find a way … to climb the steep ascent to even higher consciousness.” 

     [For all the advice that Yungblut had to give in his final years], Yungblut had this final counsel:  “I, too, want to address that solitary individual in you, to whose condition it might speak. To realize this hope would require a delicate synchronicity between your inner journey and my own … My only authority is that bestowed by you if the seeker in you resonates to what I have to say.” 

    “[The author of John’s Gospel] radiates compassion because he was compassionately received by the Master.  This same John became, through his writings, a spiritual guide to countless thousands. The unbroken authority, [true apostolic succession] extends even to this day.” His words still have the power to ‘gentle’ because he was gentled. Yungblut writes: “Spiritual guidance is gentle art, a gentling art.  It can be administered only by one who has been profoundly gentled, [and is confident of being profoundly loved by God].”

      The Primacy of Forgiveness/ Conclusion—[I sat with John Yungblut one November night in 1991] while he talked of a scene of forgiveness in Les Miserables, and William Blake’s conclusion that the “original note” of Jesus’ message was the primacy Jesus placed on the transformative power of forgiveness. Yungblut writes: “Jesus and John together began to forge a chain of forgiveness, the end of which has not been reached… The Good News of Jesus was not a cerebral thing; it was a contagious thing passed from heart to heart.” Yungblut writes: “Forgiveness’ importance is on the scale of evolution & it springs from the Creator of evolution. It invariably releases love, and love is the energy of creation … Jesus had this fantastic confidence. It came to him at his baptism. God said, ‘You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.’ That did it. That galvanized him. That energized him … That empowered him.  And he went forth with all the energy that it took to build the kingdom on earth.” 

      Imagine yourself as that solitary individual John Yungblut was so fond of addressing. [Listen] as he tells you of his gospel of the evolutionary Christianity. Listen to Jesus’ experience of forgiveness which unleashed a torrent of love. Listen to reflections on Rufus Jones, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.  Catch from him the wonder of being a link in a great chain, Part of a great mystical succession in the van-guard of the universe’s evolution of consciousness. 

           Queries—How do you respond to seeing Jesus as the flowering of the Christ seed present from the beginning?      What do you think Yungblut meant by “profoundly gentled”?      How has forgiveness been important in your life?
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418. Some thoughts on Becoming 85 (by William Z. Shetter; 2012)
           About the Author--William Shetter has been a member of Bloomington MM since 1965, and has served in a variety of capacities, including 2 terms as clerk. [He was recording clerk of Ohio Valley YM for 4 years]. In the wider Quaker world, his involvement has been chiefly with Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC); he has served as an English-Spanish interpreter, [particularly in Cuba]. He helped found and still works at Mt Gilead Friends Retreat near Bloomington, and is helping organize workshops on spirituality.
           [Introduction]---Yes, I am unquestionably old, & yes, my hair has turned white. Everybody avoids the word "old," but I can't relate to such camouflaging terms. I smile when you call me old; I've earned that badge of honor. Now it is my responsibility to find the living content in that word "old." Is it the dawning of a sense of maturity I've been growing toward all my life? Am I drawing on 85 years cumulative experience, or 1 year's experience 85 times.
           The old can have a different, penetrating forward way of seeing conditioned by all those advancing years. I start with finding a way to tell the younger [i.e.] practically everybody what the world of 85 really feels like. I'm getting closer to my ancestors and hence to the sacred ... but there's a chasm in between that will never close. Those who were part of my life and shared it with me---family, friends my age, now increasingly those younger than I am---have been dropping away. But their enrichment of my life survives and keeps growing through the years.
           Physical Challenges/ The Rewards of Long Life---The physical system I've' always relied on is apt to assert its presence in the form of frailities and straitened abilities and offers me some handicaps that require more and more resolution to contend with. I give daily gratitude for what the system still does reliably and uncomplainingly. I appreciate for the 1st time how each life-function has been smoothly supporting the others, [and is now compensating for the loss of some]. Half my hearing reduced to 0 means I look more intently at whom I am talking to.
           The brightest spot is that none of the physical limitations interferes with simply walking. The simplest of all exercising keeps all the rest of me vigorously alive. A doctor's blunt diagnosis and prognosis was my wake-up call, abruptly turning the time left into a gift where every moment must count and I must be vigilant not to miss any secret of existence I may still learn. I am living on borrowed time and somehow the true perspective is emerging.
           A blessing of the slowing of outward vitality is the growing stillness within, bestowing increased times of solitude and silence. Silence becomes more and more my life-giving circulation and has been quietly flowing into all the crannies. I'm beginning to feel I know who I really am, without any more masks, and have learned to simply be and to [not deal in] illusions about how the world sees you [i.e.] as self-sufficient. I can say what I need and can do and be graceful in accepting and in saying no.
           There are fewer and fewer things that really matter. The glamorous, the lure of shallow success, have no way of touching me anymore. My life is becoming intensely focused on presence and Presence. The quiet drawing on a lifetime's experience is slighted by my culture, which is bewitched by achievement, success---the value of youth. [I know what is good for me and what is not]. Short-term rewards are no longer the goal but the slow and patient pace that allows life's riches to mature. [When I read the Bible now], my more mature self can often sense a real, living person behind many of these words, [especially in Ecclesiastes], the old man writing from long experience. I sense a strong human identity in the book of Ruth, too and wonder if the warmth of family tenderness there might be showing a woman's hand.
           Beginning Life's Journey---My childhood faith community was a close-knit Baptist one. From being "born again a new person" so as to enter the Kingdom, [my beliefs have grown], so that I have entered into an unending dynamic of inner renewal and continuing spiritual birth. I have the responsibility to bring something into the world, and I was given my heritage too for a reason. I must have absorbed the traditional sober Pietism of my numerous plain Mennonite country relatives and ancestors. As a small child I had the natural sense of the oneness of all that is in all children: the world is a wonder and everything breathes some aspect of the Sacred. I am returning closer to the Mystery of the Divine which is in me and surrounds me everywhere I am. The major task of the years I have left will be nourishing restoration of the child's sense of wonder, that "memory" of a reality beyond our conscious knowledge that we are all born with.
           The Role of Family/ Our Stories---It was the awesome, life-filling experience of raising children from babyhood to adulthood that formed me into what I am today. I learned from the dramatic development of new life---part of me---things I couldn't learn any other way. My son & daughter are my teachers as regularly as the other way around. Joseph Barth wrote: "Marriage is our last best hope to grow up." It is the central secure pole around which my life has entwined, grown, & blossomed. Sharing life with another is a growing experience unlike any other. It helps us break free of the cage of our individual self-image. The years have been creating a higher-identity unit.
           When I was born movies didn't talk; for a flash picture, photographers ignited a pan of magnesium. Shoveling coal in the winter was assigned to me ... After decades of affluence, coping with deprivations in the darkness of the 1930's Depression cannot be readily related to. Our challenge here is to learn how to tell stories that will bolster and guide the lives of the younger. Can I find some way of telling the story of the riches that my life has brought? What were the losses and pains, the tensions I have worked through and managed to find blessing in, that prepare me to understand others' losses and tensions? I' m pretty much through now with the process struggling to come to terms with life. I can more confidently absorb all with equanimity, holding setbacks against the light of all that has gone right.
           What is Grace?/ Eternity---In what respects is my life "grace,"and what does this accumulation of years have to do with it? I am here as an act of grace. The grace of a gift need not be material: it may be some act of presence. Now I can see the world as a gift. I can at the same time be a recipient and a channel of grace. I can see everywhere the opportunities to give; this is an occasion of grace. I am on the long road of learning to awaken to the blessings that invisibly surround me, the web of grace that unites all things. Only when my still, central place comes into view can I finally begin to think of myself as awakened.
           What is eternal in what I am searching for? Eternity is not the horizontal measurement of endlessness in years. Eternity is a reality independent of time, the vertical living of life into growth and insight. [I have] within me my familiar physical life and a place that no "created temporal thing" has access to. Each moment of my life I am standing on the brink of eternity, and my lifetime task is to learn to live more entirely in it, until eventually I become part of it. My journey of self-discovery means that I am co-creating. Creation is not something that happened long ago but something that takes place at every moment of my life. The goal of my contemplation is to live in the present. And my present is being constantly enriched by past and future. The richer the present is, the more light shines in my future life.
           The Spirit Moves/ The Transcendent/ The Presence of God---40 years of centering practice in meditation has led me to sink slowly below the wind-disturbed surface of a deep pool, like a water-logged leaf. On the firm ground of the depths, it isn't lifeless; there is the Spirit's steady gentle movement. "Your old men shall dream dreams." Dreams are a deep mysterious realm, where the Inner Guide's voice echoes, & where I grasp more securely the mysteries of the soul. I find myself more at home in the inner world. It is in fact emerging more & more as the real one. Bishop Irenaeus in the 1st century A.D. proclaimed: The Glory of God is a fully alive human being. Is the lifelong crafting of my life co-creating divinity? We humans have always responded to something, a Transcendence, a Presence that resounds in the deepest levels of our being. [It takes a lot of practice] to learn to resonate with this.
           When a compassionate life radiates beyond the bounds imposed by self-centeredness, you are in touch with the Divine, for you shall then see everywhere presence and Presence. Kierkegaard queries: "Do you ... live in such a way that you are yourself clearly and eternally conscious of being an individual? Are you conscious of your eternal responsibility before God? I have spent my life time enhancing awareness of the presence of God, only to see the realization emerge that that Presence is to be found in the most humble. More than anything else, it is music that reaches resonances within me which are forever below the consciousness of my will. God comes from, and resides in, our inner selves and the whole of universal connectedness.
           The Divine in our Lives/ Stillness Within---God isn't an objective being, but our inner experience the discovers of the deity in ourselves & others. I see the face of God in the face of others---their presence is God's presence. The flaming, collapsing towers of 9/11 for some shattered forever the image of God as protective father. For others God was powerfully present on that day. Catherine of Siena has God speaking of "that goodness which I have in myself & which I measure out to them according to the measure of love with which they have come to me." I create my own limitations, & the transcending of them is creating my own immortality. The aware of God always, everywhere, inevitably, leads, ultimately to the still center, and therefore to silence.
           Our faith is experiential, not intellectual, and in advancing years it is lived experience that dominates, and gives sure guidance to all of life. The Quaker way is bringing the whole of my daily life under the ordering of the spirit of the presence of God---in every situation. As years increase, it becomes natural to remain open and attentive, and know that the guidance, independent of my striving, will access me. The more open the heart, the clearer the guidance received.
           Desert Spirituality/ Quaker Corporateness---Westerners Quakers tend to say little about the desert" in our spirituality. There I must renounce all ability to control, and surrender to a force larger than I am. The desert speaks of the emptiness of the soul and the otherness of God. By now for me the sense of not of being in control has become the natural one. If the desert teaches me anything, it is that the inward desert can only be approached through humility. [In a world obsessed with control, it becomes increasingly critical to keep open a route to the desert, to be willing to renounce the urge to control. Age makes it feel natural to dwell in the desert everyday. The stillness of the desert within is the only place where I'm able to hear that inner voice, my doorway to divine wisdom. It is a lifelong process to empty myself, the only road to the discovery of who I really am. when I have yielded to the larger force within, my inner life will flower as a result.
           The human community is participating in a common journey linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity. I cannot be "me" without "them." [I am part] of a larger self, identical with all. We have a common drive to live in the experienced presence of God. We are faithful only when we are faithful together. The Light in the corporate life of the Meeting is deep listening to each other. Many years of sharing in the lives of others have had a way of seasoning me to the extent that I can hear the deeper message even in occasionally unpromising words. Humility, if it is genuine, quiets me & allows me to hear the movement of the small & still voice in others.
           The Light/ Wisdom---Long familiarity with standing open to leading should give one a solid confidence that the Light is always there even when its message is not clear yet. Each of us can be said to live under a lampshade muting and modifying our light. The shades give vital color, pattern, and individuality to that light, as well as obscuring the light in varying degrees. The other's light that I am seeing is coming through a shade, as is the light I am showing. I trust that as I age it is wearing thinner and becoming more transparent. In Friends' meeting we can intensify the Light in each other as if each were the light- house's polished lenses that focus the beam.
           The Wisdom of Solomon says of wisdom: "She is intelligent, holy, unique, ... flowing, transparent, and pure; ... She is humane, faithful, sure, calm, ... all-seeing, and available to the intelligent, pure, and altogether simple." To learn wisdom is to learn to know yourself. In my own spiritual community, any of us [of any age] can serve as elder, one who supports and draws out others. At times, I have the responsibility to nurture the spiritual life of others, often in small ways beneath my ability to notice. I can share understanding drawn from my own experience, or I may unconsciously reflect the path of their own journey and even its destination.
           Listening to Others as Individuals/ Growth Never-Ending---Unless my experience has occasionally earned me informal recognition as an "elder" [who listens to others, and encourages others to listen to the Inward Teacher], I have not really succeeded in living these 85 years cumulatively. Listening to another discerningly, hearing beyond the outer words, requires a large measure of maturity. The protective .instinct of my own self has faded and my ability to see into another has sharpened. No matter how long my practice in looking and listening, I know now that the channel is never completely unclouded. [I do have] an increasing instinct for perceiving with the eyes of the heart. The yard of my house where I have lived for 47 years was once all grass, but now is a designated Wildlife Habitat, with planted trees and volunteer plants, including an exuberant community of sweetpeas that were simply asking to thrive here. [How do I] learn to nurture others, encourage them to "marvelously know their path" and help confront the "weeds" as I do for the life in my yard?
           An inevitable separation from the younger world does not exempt us from the responsibility to continue growing. The genuine beauty of life lies in the way it is so fragile and fleeting, giving the gift of continual growth; the faster time flees and the more fragile life becomes, the more intense the growth and beauty. As I am separated more and more from the younger, I am coming ever closer to an understanding of the unity that joins us all in an unbreakable network. I have a growing trust in this deeper unity.
           Death---Where do I come from? Why am I am? Where am I going? Isn't it the same spirit that continues: before birth, living the life span and after death, the time when it returns? If I cannot speak freely of my death, coming before long, that means to me that I cannot speak of life as if I had learned some-thing about it. Dying well is a lifelong work; it must be learned while young and vigorous. Awareness of death throws the events of my lengthening life into an increasingly powerful perspective. What I do in this life echoes unendingly. When I am at one with myself I am at one with the whole of creation.
           [In death], the living spiritual energy that permeated the entire body has not evaporated. "Life" is one great life that goes far beyond my tiny temporary share of it. I am looking past the promise of personal immortality to merge into---rejoin---the great universal life, absorption into the life of all others. Until I have learned to shape my way of living according to the acceptance of my own mortality, I have not reached full maturity. I feel one with those who are approaching the known conclusion of their journey, with the increasingly familiar sense of soon joining an extended family.
            Lightness and Foolishness---I need to be willing to be freely silly, because play keeps a person humble and human. Cartooning is an emblem of my life, and my sure route to communicating with the very young since they are the ones who most easily live in that world. Writing comic verse for celebratory occasions has long been a way of delighting others in laughter. It is not just music that thrills but the warmth of the joined community in harmony. When I have walked long enough, I settle into a rhythm that is more of a dance than an effort. It is my daily reminder of walking my spiritual path. Leavened by [the above things], my life can become a work of art itself. The real challenge is to let it become that in other things as well. We grow old when we stop playing. Shouldn't we mid-Octogenarians, as we keep getting older, also get younger all the time as we continue learning to give new expression to the wonder and openness and imagination of the child?
           Final Reflections/ Queries---If I no longer ask so many question about life it is not because I know the answers but on the contrary, because I know that I don't know the answers and never will. My home is now in that which eludes and exceeds my conceptual grasp. One thing I do know now is the path on which my remaining time is going to take me. My life of the mind has reached its due maturity, and its foundations are no longer solidly grounded. It is now time for the inner life to claim more prominence and serve as the guide on that path. The wisdom of the heart is growing and thoroughly leavening the wisdom of the mind.
           Queries I--Does knowing myself meaning knowing all beings as my siblings?         Have I learned to hear the inner voice of my own lived experience growing beyond reliance on outward confirmation?      Can allow myself to be transparent to the Light, mine and that of others?      Do I have acceptance, embracing all my contradictions and those of others?      Do I respond flexibly, patiently and harmoniously to the world?      Can I live the Wisdom of the moment, no matter how ordinary and humble that may seem? 
      Queries II--Have I grown into the capacity for true conscious relationships?      Am I able to let go of my physical existence for my part in universal whole?      Do I realize at a deep enough level that I do not know?      Am I willing to share what I know and what I do not know?      What do you associate with being old?      How do you respond to the loss of control in your own life?      What does corporate worship offer that isn't available to individuals?      How do you recognize wisdom?      Who is an elder to you?      How do you play?
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419. Nurturing Children's Spiritual Well-Being (by Margaret Compton; 2012)
           About the Author---Margaret Compton has been a Quaker since 1979. She and her husband were Britain YM Friends-in-Residence at Pendle Hill in the Fall of 2010. She is a writer, editor, lecturer, and consultant with particular interest in developing attention to children's spiritual well-being in education, social, and healthcare. She is experienced in work with children and families, and interested in Quaker images of and attitudes towards children from the 17th century to the present.
           Introduction---For some years I've been developing ideas and practice about children's spiritual well-being in social, medical, healthcare and education. I've been led to wonder how Friends attitudes and behavior towards children relate to our testimonies to equality, truth, simplicity, and peace. Spiritual experience in no way depends on membership in a religious organization, or on status, gender, nationality, or age. For Quakers, focused presence, being here now, may lead to the experience of a covered or gathered meeting, which may itself enable a sense of Presence. Most of the experiences here are my own or drawn from friends. Some are from published accounts by people I regard as trustworthy.

           Spiritual nurture means offering protected time, space and attention to the other person so that you can be fully present together. Nurture the spiritual well-being of children you know. Understand your own gifts and limitation.

           Justine & I are separated by a half-century but difference in age doesn't prevent communication. Feeling shy causes some adults to be inhibited in company with children & young people. Recognizing, understanding, respecting, & nurturing children's spiritual well-being is fundamental to Quaker faith & practice. Our ministry to children equally implies receiving ministry from children. My approach to spiritual well-being is holistic, identifying spirit as integral & essential, an every-minute presence in everyday life. My model of spiritual well-being that underlies my approach focuses on: inner experience; relationships based on attention to & care for other people; involvement with community, & concern about its issues, e.g. peace-building, poverty, & the environment. It celebrates experience & expression of Spirit, Presence in every aspect, and moment of everyday life.
           There is no special virtue in being "good with children," & no shame in feeling called to other kinds of service instead. Experiences in childhood (or our ever-changing memories of experiences) powerfully and constantly influence every aspect of life. In order to be fully present with a child, we need to be aware of our own feelings and memories [that still affect our behavior]. It is essential to understand such feelings & to recognize that every child encounters unique experiences. I hope these ideas will encourage Friends to explore their own feelings and experiences in order to be [fully] present with children.
           Equality---Take all children seriously, respecting their inherent wisdom and dignity. Wait for every child---watching, listening, and learning in stillness. Protect, don't suffocate; enable exploration while ensuring safety. 
      Equality requires respect. Respect requires attention---listening to, learning from, being fully present throughout every encounter. The equality testimony implies that there are no qualifications of age, [sex], status, or belief, and no exclusions. Are children spiritually equal? Helen Bayes suggests that children have not been accepted as spiritually equal because Quakers have considered spiritual wisdom to be gained through "years of seeking and experience" rather than the divine seed of truth planted in us all. Appreciating the value of children's contributions enhances not only the experience of the individual child but also the vitality of the meeting.
       Sue Collins writes: "In very many Meetings children and young people have become a minority group and their feeling of isolation, and persecution and low worth is as real to them as it is to any other disadvantaged group ... Our belief in the inner light seems only to 'switch on' with adulthood." In order to discern ways of nurturing children's spiritual well-being, we need to identify our attitudes towards children and the implications of equality. Harriet Heath writes: "the Inner Light ... means revealing the wondering in each child in its different forms ... They are searching to understand and seeking to find the way as much as we adults."
           To be trustworthy is a basic qualification for any adult with a child. It is equally important that adults trust children. Trusting children can lead to anxiety & the urge to over-protect. Yet healthy development depends on experiencing the combination of being trusted to explore, with the security of a trustworthy adult. [That trust will be tested, sometimes severely. It is important to keep faith with the child seeking your trust]. "Follow the child's lead but always be ahead" means being alert to protect from possible harm, while recognizing the child's need to explore, to be creative, & to take initiatives.
           In trusting children, we enact & embody our testimony. They can be engaged as equal members of the meeting, yet adult Friends may ignore opportunities to develop equality & trust. Essentially, there is one meeting for worship, in however many rooms this takes place. The covered meeting is neither divided by walls nor distinguished by such attributes as age. Anne Hosking recalls a family weekend when about 24 children held a meeting that not only "went on for over a quarter of an hour & was very deep," but continued in silence after the elders (themselves children) shook hands. [2 adults] failed to show the courtesy of waiting to be certain that the 40-minute silent meeting had ended. Anne "realised that children do minister." [Adults also fail] to respect the dignity of the children, and to recognize the Presence.
           There are many reasons for experiencing difficulty in responding to children. Anxiety about being in children's company can be hard to admit to oneself, and may lead to avoiding contact, or adopting "false" approaches. Adults may be anxious that they will be ignored or rejected by children, or judged as not being "good enough." Other anxieties include the fear of looking silly, losing control of the children, messing up adult's clothes, [not being able to engage the children], not knowing what to say or do. Adults may resent giving up precious silent meeting time to look after children.
           Concern for children's well-being implies equal concern for the parents & other adults. Eileen Flanagan writes: "I suspect that I'm not the only parent who is grateful for 45 minutes of childfree worship per week. I know other Quaker parents who ... stayed home on while their children were young because it was less stressful for them than being pressured to take responsibility in the 1st Day school room." Parents may convey disapproval, even jealousy, when adults who aren't themselves parents develop fruitful relationships & communicate easily with their children, or fear being "shown up," or feeling inadequate. The relationship between parents & other adult Friends is an important consideration for meetings. Sometimes parents feel jealous that children are receiving attention that they haven't themselves experienced. [When a parent interrupted the recitation of a nursery rhyme to correct & recite the rhyme herself, I realized that she had probably never experience attention & praise, I applauded her recitation.
           Simplicity--- Approach children with simple, authentic intention, free from self-regard and elaboration. Be clear about how you regard the main purpose of 1st Day school, and how this is understood by the children.
           How does the simplicity testimony inform faith & practice with regard to children's spiritual well-being? Adults need to bring their whole selves to the encounter with a child. Friends who aren't clear why children come to meeting on Sundays may be confused & discouraged. Some Friends don't understand why children think they should attend meeting for worship. Some intentions for 1st Day schools include: contact with adults other than the children's own parents; creative & imaginative activities; dis-covering silence & stillness; exploring Quaker beliefs & traditions; being kept safe, quiet & occupied. In order to discern children's perceptions & expectation of meeting for worship, adults need to pay attention.
           [An adult unfamiliar with a class may be confused with how the class learns, how they interact with each other or the teacher, what they consider play, how they feel about silence and joining the adults].The confusion experienced by both children and adults arose from their differing expectations and interests. Energy is needed for being present together, focusing on expression, creativity, and imagination. It should not be spent on anxiety about expensive or elaborate materials. Excellent imaginative and creative experience is achieved by transforming simple found materials. Sometimes adults complicate their relationships with children, by seeking too much attention & affection, or exercising too much power & control.
Truth--- Be truth-full & trustworthy in all your interactions with children, even if you feel for example, distressed or embarrassed.      Be aware of children's responses, which may be hidden or unexpected. 

All Quaker communication should be grounded in testimony to truth. Honesty implies responding to questions plainly and maybe admitting to not knowing answers. It may be difficult, even painful, for adults to receive truth from children.  Sometimes well-intentioned adults ignore or don't notice unexpected responses. [Well-intentioned Bible teachings may terrify or cause anxiety rather than comfort children]. Adults may be distracted from children's responses by their own expectations about beliefs and religious traditions.  Don't say anything unless you're prepared to listen to the truth behind both words and silence, the truth of the child as well as the truth of your own intention.  

After experiencing it herself as a child, Beth realized that "one form of spiritual abuse is to impose on children ... by custom and teaching what some exceptional individuals have been able to rise to by grace." [What one] child perceived as a message about threat and unprotecting parents who could risk their children's safety for the sake of principle.  In contrast, these same stories influenced another to want to be courageous, providing a basis for Quaker witness as an adult. Adults have many strategies for avoiding truth, and many reasons for doing so.  Anxiety about looking foolish, or apparently losing authority, can lead to manipulation of truth, even lying. When a method is supposed to stimulate imagination, [adults must be careful not to impose an adult's script on a children's exercise in imagination]. [If we ask a child to take charge of a process, we need to pay proper respect and attention to that authority we have given, and not take away that authority abruptly and without explanation]. 

Adults sometimes feel nervous about what children might tell them, good or bad news. Showing concern and giving attention, being present together with the other person is stronger than words. [Having a calm, respectful reaction to statements contrary to Quaker beliefs, and finding a response to a crisis that is long past and went unnoticed are important scenarios to consider.  Occasionally adults receive information about alleged abuse or assault on children.  It is essential for Friends meetings to have clear predetermined lines of communication and accountability. Adults are sometimes discouraged from engaging with children because they fear that they themselves might be accused of abusive behavior. Such anxiety inhibits the development of the wise trust, equality, truth, and peace that are essential for spiritual well-being.   

    Peace/ Child of Spirit--- Be peace-full in all your intentions and encounters.      Create an environment in which children can be peace-full, and discover stillness, silence, Presence.

Peace is served by, and contributes to equality, simplicity, and truth.  Being present with children requires adults to be peace-full. Peacefulness is demonstrated by adults' attitudes and behavior, their voice, vocabulary, body language, from which children can learn peace-building. It is essential to establish and observe ground rules, limits, and acceptable behavior. Failing to pay attention to the well-being of everyone involved in an encounter---children, young people and adults---demonstrates lack of respect and can cause harm. 

In contrast, I experienced peace being together at Pendle Hill with an Quaker from Bhopal, India & 2 young people, one Japanese, one North American Catholic. Our diverse group enjoy enthusiasm, meaningful sharing, & even play with a 2-year old. Here focus & boundaries were clear. The students were well prepared by their accompanying teacher. The students were self-aware, asking penetrating questions & offering opinions. We respected & trusted each other to behave appropriately, understanding the need to accept different roles in order to fulfill our shared task. We explored ideas about belief the divine; we shared work & play & were completely present together; we engaged in service to the community.       

Concern for another person, an essential element of peace, is often expressed quietly, a ministry that may not be noticed or recognized. It might come out in a one-on-one with a child wanting to show concern, and be demonstrated by a vase of colored leaves; it might come out in a 1st day school class, and be demonstrated by a handmade card to a ill Friend, signed by the class. It might be a 1st-day school performance based on an imaginary world and music they created for it. The last instance was a perfect improvised ministry. Yet few of the adults showed interest when the children spontaneously created worship. On another Sunday, a child Friend noticed the picture The Presence in the Midst and gently copied the position of Jesus' hands.  Her involvement with the picture silently ministered to the meeting, drawing attention to an otherwise overly familiar image image.  

           The reluctance of some children to join adults in silent meeting was not inability to be quiet and concentrated, as was demonstrated when they were together and focused. The issues related to timing and preparation. Stillness may be a mere absence of noise or it may active vital, and creative. Silence may convey compassion or anger, listening or inattention. Rufus Jones' childhood experience included times when "a real spiritual wave would go over the meeting in these silent times, which made me feel very solemn, and carried me ... down into something which was deeper than my own thoughts, and gave me a momentary sense of Spirit ..." Evelyn Jadin writes: "When we sat [down late in meeting], we were enfolded by the silence and brought into deep communion with those around us and the Spirit. Throughout the worship I felt the presence of others around me and a greater presence standing over and around us all ... I felt the Presence of the Living Christ." Through a friendship with a 6 year-old friend, we both experienced equality simplicity, truth and peace. We were always present together and thus lived in the Presence and the clear love of the Spirit.
           Child Protection Provisions in Quaker Meetings (USA/UK)---Child sexual abuse is illegal under United States federal law and in every state. Abuse prevention policies in effect among Friends in the United States comply with federal and state laws and are usually written and implemented at the yearly, and occasionally monthly meeting levels. Friends United Meeting does not currently have a general abuse prevention policy; they do require adult supervision of a minor who is a member of a work team.
           Friends General Conference has an extensive abuse prevention policy and takes all reasonable precautions to insure the safety of children and youth at their gatherings and conferences, including requiring professional references. All workers who will have supervisory roles, including hired babysitters, will consent in writing to a criminal and/ or child abuse background check. Background checks are repeated periodically. In the UK, organizations are required to implement safeguarding provision that include enhanced clearance by the Criminal Records Bureau. Quaker meetings ensure that at least 2 Friends with clearance are present with children. Area Quaker Meetings appoint Safeguarding Officers.
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420. Waging Peace: Disicpline and Practice (by Pamela Haines; 2012)
           About the Author---Pamela Haines is an active member of Central Philadelphia MM and a long-time resident of Philadelphia. She lives in and manages an extended-family household in a diverse neighborhood. Her paid work is in building community, leadership development, nd organizing for policy change among childcare workers. Pamela is active in peace, justice, and environmental work Philadelphia YM. She enjoys deep personal connections in Poland and Nicaragua, and has helped develop community building and trauma-healing work in Uganda and Indonesia.
           [Introduction]/ A Discipline of Hope---People prepare for war by going to boot camp. What if we we applied the same kind of intention, practice, and hard work as boot camp into learning the skills needed to wage war? Peace is increasingly hard to come by these days. Our society does not prepare us to do the work that needs to be done to find our way forward together. These times call for courage, action, and deep, deep love. It's hard to learn new skills. But practice could transform ourselves, community, and our world. [What follows] are some of the very practical skills we need to master, the disciplines we need to develop, and the muscles we need to build to participate in this transformation.
           The discipline of hope comes to mind 1st. Practicing a discipline of hope requires something quite different from just being a fan of it. I am braced by the wise person who pointed out that despair is an insult to the future. Those of us who want to usher in a new era will need to ground ourselves in hope. I have taken on the discipline in my blog of including some things that nourish my hope every month. Our decision to hope affects our viewpoint on the world and remains in our power, regardless of the magnitude of the forces arrayed against us. [Our times of discouragement] become something to notice and address, rather than places in which to dwell. I know a man who focuses his mind on things about himself and the world that are positive and good, and says them out loud [to resist discouragement].
           There's a difference between recharging our batteries & building our muscles. Remaining relaxed & hopeful [in the face daunting negative images] builds [hope] muscles. Some will see a golden opportunity for unloading built-up discouragement. If we can welcome their need without succumbing either to the contagion of hopelessness or the urge to argue, we may be of real service. Another aspect of the workout is to cultivate our ability to imagine the impossible. [The ease with which we imagine the worst] is a lethal failure of the imagination. The world needs people who can exercise their imagination muscles by practicing stepping confidently, buoyed by hope, into the unknown. We can set ourselves in the direction of unshakable hopefulness, take the next steps in front of us, and make a new decision daily not to give up.
           Reclaiming the Ability to Grieve---To pierce the numbness that allows us accedes to evil, to maintain hope, we must be able to grieve. We can't court great joy, feel fully, or invest in that which may be attainable. The ability to grieve provides a path through that disappointment to the other side. If I held my children in my arms, loved them and just let them cry, after a while they would be done with their grief and would go back to life with renewed enthusiasm, ready to want and love again. No one can heal without grieving their losses. Vengeance is a reliable indicator of aborted grieving. When despair [takes over, and] does move us to action, our protest is tinged with impotence or hopeless outrage.
           Our culture has virtually no tolerance for sadness. Anyone less than moderately happy is urged to find [artificial] happiness in possessions or medication. There is little permission to set aside time to grieve. Our modern information overload has built our tolerance for bad news so high that many of us have a hard time feeling a thing. Jewish tradition has a useful model of support for grieving; for the 1st week Jews who have lost a loved one sit shiva, staying at home and being visited by friends and family who bring them meals and just sit with them, helping them pay attention to their loss. there are laws covering the 1st month, and up to a year for losing a parent. Theologian Walter Wink encourages us to [grieve in] our prayers, to do God's grieving.
           This is a discipline that is good for us & good for the world. As we grieve, we loosen up a hard, tight place to the point where it can dissolve & be gone. With the experience of how this process can free our hearts & minds from attachment to the past, new doors open up & more becomes possible. I was dealing with losses in my immediate family after the Haiti earthquake. An image of a great common sea of grief came mind. If I could join everyone else in grieving, those impossible questions, "Why me" and "Why them instead of me?" would lose their sting in the recognition that we share a common grief. Who or what we grieve is less important than whether we are willing to bring what we have to that common sea, & know that we are connected to everyone & to the grief of the world. I've been helped by a group at our Quaker meeting that gathers for lamentation. Being able to open our hearts to the pain, & cry out our despair like a child in a parent's loving arms, leaves us more ready to embrace the world in all its joys & sorrows.
           Attentive, Curious, Respectful Listening---The bedrock of human interaction, listening deeply, makes growth & change possible. As a lever for change, there may be nothing we can offer of more value & power than our attention. [There is no telling what effect attentive listening will have on the one listened to, even to the healing of another relationship. It's not easy to listen when somebody else has a story to tell. If we listen well, we may find ourselves being the midwives to stories & resultant insights that would otherwise never have made it into the world. Listening with curiosity is a critical habit to be used in situation of conflict or disagreement.
           We all carry deep in our bones painful conclusions that we made about scarcity and possibility long ago. We all have stories of grief and loss lying on our heart. When one is invited with warmth and openness to tell one's story, and is respectfully listened to, one [sometimes] ends up revealing a world of hurt and is opened to new possibilities. Those who are listened to report what a difference the listening made, and may [shift their focus from vengeance to] healing and rebuilding their country. Listening deeply can be a collaborative effort. Our listening to a burnt-out social activist was the key to unlocking the process we came to call Heart School.
           I had 5 hardworking African-American women around my dining room table, and one raised the sore topic of racism and included my organization. [I resisted the temptation to do anything other than] listen as deeply and respectfully as I knew how. The 1st woman said that she knew that when she was in my house she could show herself. I'm not sure I've ever received a bigger compliment. As Quakers, we know about listening for truth, [and use it in community]. I would caution us not to rest on our laurels but to reflect on how well we practice this kind of listening in our daily lives. What listening opportunities do I pass up? When do I withhold my attention and why? What would I have to give up in myself to listen respectfully to the person who is hardest for me?
           Challenging the Evil of Separation—I have come to the point of naming separation as a source of evil. I know of nothing that does more damage to our lives and the world around us. Overcoming that separation and learning the skills of connection requires discipline and practice. Where does separation operate in our lives? Many forces in society push us in the direction of separation; individualism in US culture is rampant. Voices in the media and politics grow ever more skillful at setting us apart and pitting us against each other. [But] we are all connected. We are one species, and as a species we are connected to all of life. The [relatively recent] and fleeting belief of the last several centuries that we have mastery over an external environment have created an illusion of disconnection. For most of us, it is connecting with people that we find most difficult.
           In the deepest sense, all the differences that separate us have no reality; our common humanity arches over all. Groups with more social/economic power, easily assume that our experience is the norm, and that everyone else would be fine if they just “got with the program.” [Those who] would wish away oppression are kept separate by excluding all experiences of racial, ethnic, class, religious identity and interaction from the conversation.
           The process of naming our differences begins to take away the power of what separates us; addressing those differences helps us grow more fully together and connect with each other for real. If we aren’t crossing paths with people from whom we’ve been separated by race or class in the course of our daily lives then we need to change course. Rather than the visible mistakes of commission, I was choosing the less obvious and more comfortable mistakes of omission; I passed up opportunities to make connection. Making connections involves learning hard things about the world and ourselves; it takes practice.
           Most of us would name our sense of separation as something we don’t want. When the separation involves lifestyle or political choices, we [see] people as the “other.” An easy dismissal of those with different beliefs occupies a destructive psychological space. [The following questions don’t involve taking sides]: What are the values that give our lives meaning? What do we believe in deeply enough to sacrifice for? What is at the heart of what is right about this country? What responsibility do we have for our neighbor? What is precious about the environment? Building relationships requires asking questions like these. Listening for truth can be the spiritual armor that takes us safely into “enemy” territory. How might we develop a discipline to challenge separation? We can put ourselves in unfamiliar situations, share and savor new cultures. Perhaps even more challenging, we can try be being different ourselves and behave differently. As we practice stretching in all these ways, the separation thins.
           Welcoming Conflict—When faced with needing conflict-related skills, many would opt for conflict-reduction or conflict management, both of which serve the status quo more than it serves the forces of change. Conflict avoidance and wanting to fight are 2 sides of the same fear. Children witness hard things and adopt either acquiescence or opposition as their best survival strategy. I keep trying to get my mind around the concept of conflict as a positive opportunity for growth. Molecules move more freely in a context that is hot than in one that is cold. Conflict warms us up. It makes available things that are otherwise very hard to achieve. Engaging in conflict just raises it to surface so that what was frozen in place can be transformed.
           Just a commitment to believing that conflict is an opportunity for growth is a good start, [perhaps even showing anger as a positive development in a journey toward powerful initiative. Then I can practice staying with people who are angry, hearing out their feelings. Next might be practice returning to situations or relationships where we know that there will be conflict. I hated the anger. I hated the criticism of my behavior. I hated not being sure who was in the right. Yet I kept coming back because there was something for me [to learn.] An even more advanced step might be to practice coaxing conflicts that are unspoken, perhaps buried deeply. I can notice where I have engaged in conflict and survived; learn when and how my fears about conflict come up, and find ways to blunt their impact or dilute their strength.
           Mending and Repairing—Some mending of the world must be done, and ours is not a culture of mending. We are fascinated with and addicted to what is new, immersed in an economic system that focuses on consumption rather than quality [and practices built-in obsolesence and a] short product life. A new age will require enormous attention to conservation, to making things last, to making repairs. To repair something well, you have to understand how it’s put together, and be willing to take it apart to get to the heart of the problem.
           A relationship can get broken, torn, or frayed around the edges as well. We can practice mending here, too, by making the 1st move, acknowledging our part, listen from the heart, address the broken places, say we’re sorry, and ask forgiveness. Mending communities requires more effort. Yet there are models to build on, such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For the environment, the 1st step is to acknowledge that we have a place in the web of life, recognize how our attitudes of separation and mastery have both broken the relationship and damaged the very system that gives us life. What if we thought of mending as a critical activity of the nonviolent warrior in our quest for a truly viable world? Mending mostly requires patience and time. In this light, mending relationship, mending chairs, mending socks, mending the soil builds the skills, muscles, and attitudes that we need to make our world whole.
           Reclaiming Truth from the Experts/ Listening for What Rings True—Generals & politicians don’t fool us when they claim to be experts about what will bring peace & security. They base their expertise on flawed assumptions & can never bring peace. [Economists do the same thing & we tend to act as if we believe them]. Even though we’ve never known an economic system that works for everybody, we could hold on to our deepest beliefs & be confident, outspoken, & engaged. People who become experts in one small scientific domain rarely keep track of the bigger picture or the longer view. We need to call science back [from its service of corporate greed & military advancement] to its true vocation of helping us understand this world of which our species is a part. We need to practice & encourage each other to wade in among the experts & say, “I know what’s right.”
           The basic discipline of listening for what rings true involves aligning ourselves with right order; with the Divine, in our daily lives. [I seek to increase those moments when] I find myself engaged with life in a way that just seems right. What if we were to listen more carefully and more often for what rings true [in our daily lives and work]? What clutters our minds? [If the moments that ring true are all too few], we can look for where they happen most reliably. As we develop the discipline of listening for that clear and certain sound, new ways forward will open up. [Much of what we used to have to create] are now bought ready made—and many of them ring with a tinny sound. We separated from what rings true inside of us. I can think of no greater work of art than [a life full of] little moments of clarity, each inhabited fully, and no greater gift to our battered world.
           Risking Internal Disarmament—Another discipline involves dismantling our own defenses. [There is ample evidence that worldly armaments adds to rather than reduces global insecurity & death. I remember the irony that we may call for nations to lay down their arms, making themselves more vulnerable to attack, when we would never consider giving up the defenses that we’ve built up internally to protect or own vulnerability. We have internal bunkers, & patrols on our boundaries If we are armed to the teeth internally, how can we demand that others lay down their arms? Practicing disarmament ourselves reflects our own best interest. We spend time in our bunkers that could be spent out in the open learning, loving, & exploring frontiers. What does it mean to practice, to develop a discipline of disarmament? It involves dismantling inter-person weapons & defense systems [e.g.] blaming, keeping score, [holding] moral high ground, withholding love, martyrdom. It involves abandoning positions that see life as competitive endeavor & compassion & love as limited resources. We need to open ourselves to all these potentially devastating blows we can preach with integrity to the nations.
           Cultivating Courage/ Developing Our Workouts—These are times that call for tremendous courage to face down [towering] evils, to face loss & privation, to welcome chaos, to lead the way with loving confidence into the unknown. It takes courage to disarm. I think we need a courage project that acknowledges our courageous moments, & looks where our fears keep us quiet & passive. [We need a place where we can] share our successes or grieve our failures. Courage in our daily lives might mean many things: tackling conflict in relation-ships; changing habits; living with less; training to be peacekeepers. We can think about our courage projects individually; we can think about them as a family, neighborhood, faith community. What matters is taking that step with the intention of taking the one that comes after it and the one after that. Then ask: "If I felt braver, what would I do?
           Everybody can develop their own workout. My connection and reclaiming truth muscles could always use attention. My workout really needs to focus on internal disarmament, listening to what rings true, engaging in conflict, and cultivating courage. Ultimately powers and principalities must be engaged. How do you engage powers and principalities nonviolently? One of our tasks on earth becomes calling these institutions back to their divine vocation. Imagining being as confident, loving and sure with setting limits for what our world needs, as we are with our children. Much is possible when we work together. But 1st we have to practice.
           Queries: How do you see your role in "an army of nonviolence warriors?"      How do you practice hope?      What do you want to change about our present economic system and what would you want retain?      How can conflict be a positive opportunity for growth?"      How can you practice internal disarmament?      What would your personal nonviolent training workout include?      How can you practice nonviolence skills?      Where can you find the strength and perseverance for waging peace?
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