Balance and Spaces

The worship sharing I sat in asked us queries about our relationships: family, friends, work, community, nature, self, spirit, etc.  and if our relationships were in balance.  As friends shared it became apparent that balance wax and wanes in life with both predictable and unpredictable events: the birth of triplets, the loss of a job, a sudden health situation, changes for others in our life.  Some events allow us to grow in areas of our lives, others complicate things.  We ebb and we flow.

Later one man spoke of the role of grief in our process and spoke about grieving for some trees lost out of his yard after a storm.  I thought of trees that were cut out the 2nd Growth grove of trees around my Meeting when we did our remodel and also one big one that just fell in a windstorm.  The man commented that when trees leave they leave a space for light to come through.  That I thought was an interesting way to think about it.  At our Meeting when the tree fell some member asked if the "other trees had noticed" (and in fact grove trees our connected by their roots.  The sense then was of a space left that was grieved by the other trees, but now his comment suggested to me that with a new space, a place for light to come what also is now possible? 

I realized there are always little seedlings working year by year on becoming bigger trees, but we tend to ignore them because they seem so small and relatively insignificant compared to the bigger trees.  I realized though with more light they would grow more quickly.   We would notice the loss of the big trees and worry that there were "less" and "cannot be replaced", have a scarcity thought.  But in fact their replacement is already on its way and in the seasons of the woods there are always big trees and medium trees and small trees - in balance (unless messed with by humans.)   This Quarterly the adults were all pleased that half our attenders were children.  Long I have worried about the big gap of Quakers in their 40's, but somehow despite this....the children are now coming.  The promise of possibility is always there.

And so in our lives also where things maybe off balance and we cannot anticipate the next thing, the next change or the next possibility or the next lost.  Somehow it all does flow exactly as it needs to.

Membership in the Society of Friends

The April issue of Friend's Journal raises a number of interesting issues about membership.  One being the peculiar habit Friends have of identifying through their membership in a Meeting (specific Congregation), a trait not found in other denominations.  It also asks us to look at whether this emphasis on membership also makes some (especially young adults not yet able to put down roots) feel unwelcome or like second class citizens.  These are good questions.  Too some degree the concept of membership is one that belongs heavily to another time and place.

However, I think, that like other things, in a heavily secular world we begin to forget the religious reasons for membership.  Early Friends believed deeply in an accountability to the fellowship which was held in a Meeting and a group of people. Quakers had rejected both a Pope or clerical hierarchy as the source of Truth and even said the Bible was not the primary source of truth (but A source of Truth), but rather that Truth was to be found experientially.  After the James Naylor incident, it became clear to Friends that there had to be some sort of check and balance on the truth that was found individually - that it had to be tested and held accountable to the collective wisdom or Truth of the fellowship.  Thus membership in a Meeting became the group which would discern with a member all of the most important decisions of a lifetime: to marry, to pursue a specific career or a call to ministry or activism.

Fast forward 350 years to the United States where the entire population is highly mobile - usually living in many locations during a lifetime - and where young adults are the most transit of all and our current way of doing membership does not fit particularly well.  I personally favor moving to allowing young adults to place their membership in their Yearly Meeting until they feel rooted enough in one place to move it to a specific Monthly Meeting.   I was raised a Friend and so went off to college with my membership sitting in the Meeting I grew up in.  I knew it did not make sense to transfer it while I was in college (often to tired to even get to Meeting on Sunday.)  And in my twenties and early 30s, post college I lived in 6 locations before I settled.  I then moved to Seattle which has 4 Meetings and worship groups.  For one reason or another I was in each of them before I finally knew I was home at the 4th one.  By then I was 36!  In other words it was a long journey, yet I had the convenience of having my membership sit in my patient Meeting I grew up with, while being able to list where I was sojourning at the time.  What if I had not already had a membership somewhere?

It makes more sense to me that we hold young Friends membership in their Yearly Meeting than go the direction that some would suggest of simply discarding the idea of membership.  They could pay theirannual fee directly into the Yearly Meeting.   Although of course there is the practical reality that Meeting Houses cost money and that membership is a shared agreement to shoulder together the costs of our collective existence.

For those who come to Quakerism from another faith I think our approach to membership is somewhat puzzling.  For many churches becoming a member is not any more significant than signing up for a book group.  We however, hold a clearness committee for potential members and report back to Business Meeting whether we feel clear to accept the person into membership.  For many this is an intimidating process.  I recall in my Meeting growing up a long time attender who never applied for membership out of concern that her husband's employment for a major arms manufacturer might "disqualify" her  - she was never talked out of this concern because there were indeed members of Meeting who felt they would not be clear to accept her under that circumstance.   Is membership as value free as taking out a library card?  Or does it stand for a set of values?  This I think is something we must continue to grapple with and not ignore.  I also recall someone in my Yearly Meeting not applying for membership because they felt they were not "good enough" morally pure enough.  That seemed tragic to me.

For those older attenders who are ambivalent about membership - unclear what's its purpose or benefits might be, I would offer the following:  Some of us look for the perfect Meeting waiting to apply for membership till we find that Meeting- like some singles on the dating scene that will be an eternal wait - there are no perfect mates or Meetings!  In fact I think it is very helpful to think of membership sort of like a marriage - it is a two way commitment.  At its best it brings great gifts and fulfillment, at its worst it can be a lot of work and sometimes painful.  However, like a marriage when we find it not wholly satisfying or lacking in someway it is time to work at improving it, rather than treating it like we are spectators of a sporting event, uninvolved in the outcome.  Like a marriage we may also be asked of in ways that stretch us and lead to growth.

Both as a place of accountability and as a place of spiritual work and growth, I think the spiritual aspects of membership are compelling and not to be cast aside as some sort of old fashion idea.  We need to not confuse it with membership in a more secular group like a social club, or membership where memberships either help define social status or identity.  That is not I think what "the society of Friends" is about, or what membership means in this case.

Of Holy Obedience and the River of God

In the fall of 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President and in Jan. 1981, as a student on office campus study in D.C., I watched his administration come to town.  Thousands of Republicans swooping down on the city, with special hats and buttons, celebrating that “happy days” were coming again.  I watched in horror and shock as the streets were taken over on inauguration day by the military, including tanks, and it felt like a coup de tat. This was followed quickly by an avalanche of legislation to cut social services and the safety net of the poor, and his new budget came out proposing cuts that would take services back a decade or more.

The Community for Creative Non-Violence, a Catholic Worker house that served the poor in Washington, DC called for national days of actions, people getting arrested for days at the White House to protest these cuts.  I felt drawn to this action, but also nervous about the idea of getting arrested having never done civil disobedience.  I was leaving town soon and was mainly concerned about possibly needing to come back to town to attend court.

As part of wrapping up my stay in D.C., I did something I had intended to do for all the months I had been there: visit the Smithsonian Museum of History.  A friend dropped out the day we were to go, so I went alone.  I went through an inspiring exhibit documenting political protests in the US of many eras.  But then I went through an exhibit I will call “This American Life” although I don’t know what it was really called.  It started with a panorama of Native American images, then of life in the colonies, and on decade by decade showing the dust bowl, the great depression, many wars, etc.  Each a room of a home – some desperately poor some modestly middle class, some even opulent.  Slowly technology enters in and transforms.  My journey through it felt like a deeply mystical experience.  At the very end was a bench which I sat on for about 10 minutes aware that I was deeply centered as if in Meeting for Worship, aware of what I have come to call “the River of God”- the deep, eternal journey of humanity across all recorded history.  Of how people have always struggled for survival, for dreams, for a better life for their children, against wrongs real or imagined, and slowly, but surely eeked out a better world even while creating our next set of problems.

In that quiet on that bench I knew with absolute clarity that I would indeed participate the next day in the civil disobedience, that I was part of this eternal chain of humanity struggling for a better future.  I knew I was also part of the chain of protesters who had won the safety net for less advantaged and that it was not my turn to help protect it.

The next day I took public transit to the CCNV house, and met an affinity group from Buffalo who welcomed me into their group to be arrested.  Mitch Snyder drove of us in a Volkswagen bus over to the White House to wait in the tour line, because like a weeks worth of protestors before me, we were to go through and pick a place to sit down and be arrested.  Our group had decided to go all the way through and come out onto the lawn to be arrested.  To our surprise the Secret Service responsible for security at the White House, stood beside us (and no one else in the group) moving with us through the tour.  Clearly they had followed up from the CCNV house and knew who today’s arrestees were to be and were poised to pounce before we would “disrupt” people’s tourist experience of the White House.  I started to feel in this cat and mouse game like I was playing the game Clue:  “Will it be in the parlor with Mrs. White, or in pantry with Professsor Green?”   I think however by the time we got out the front door they thought we had lost our nerve and wandered off briefly, only to come rushing back when we veered onto the lawn against posted rules.

As we sat down in a circle on the lawn I quickly found myself in deep and centered prayer, with a sense of White Light all around me, really in one of the most holiest of moments in my life.   Faintly behind me as if coming from some other reality I could hear the voice of one of the secret service reading the rule against being on the lawn and warning us that if we did not leave within 5 minutes we would be arrested.  I almost laughed out loud because it seemed so funny to me that in this deep place of Holy Obedience that I found myself that this mere mortal thought he had the authority to move me from the place I was so anchored.

We were arrested, held for a few hours and released to our own recognizance, and a week later at our trial plead nolo-contender (meaning I do not admit guilt but do not contest the truth of the charges.)  We were given suspended sentences and sent on our way.

Today almost 30 years later as I study the economic crash of 2008, and the slow destruction of the middle class that has taken place over that time, of the ever widening inequality gap in this country between the rich and the poor and the very deliberate strategy on the part of the Koch brothers and other members of the most rich elite of this country carried out over those thirty years, I see that indeed that moment in time was a turning point.  I am once again convinced that Spirit led me to just the right spot and the right moment on the White House Lawn.

As we face Climate Change we are again at just such a pivotal time and some of us will again need to heed our place in the chain of protestors who have acted to protect life, and we will again need to find where
spirit would have us sit or act to say No to destruction.

Question: A poem

Why do we travel down wrong turns and dead ends?

Why does that path look different than it is?

Why do we see things through our own projective lens?

Why is reality different than vision?

Why do shared values manifest so differently?

Why do people hurt each other even while never intending to?

How can this be when all of us share the longing for love?  The dream of a better world?

  have always wanted it different, better for our children?

How can those shared aspirations wind up using different words?

   words which then separate?

How can the wish for unity and goodness get manifested in blue states and red states       

   (and minorities within each of those?)

How did we loose our way while trying to find each other?

Couldn’t it surely, somehow be that we will find each other even so?

Shouldn’t the arc of the universe bend towards cooperation, growth, unity, coming together, building, making it better? 

Maybe really that is the truth hidden in the current wars, is less wars than ever before?

Maybe that is the truth hidden in domestic violence, is less dv than ever before?

Oh Dear, not less starvation than ever before?

But more technology than ever before (created to solve problems and make things better)

Here we are all somewhere: tying a shoe, waiting for a bus, a little older than last year, settling about some things and striving around other things.

somehow picking out what we think should be important.

I want to die knowing I did what my soul came here to do.

My real grief is for our collective lost possibilities.

Do you want to know what I really think?

Do you also long for the earth healed?

Do you want to join the revolution?

Do you hear the voice of spirit? Of the Old ones? Of the Young ones?  Calling us?

Thinking as a Community

In Systems Theory if one starts at the level of a particle, to an atom, to a cell, to an organ, to a body, we reach the level we exist at- the level of the individual.  But from there it goes on to the community, the ecosystem, the bioregion, the nation, the continent, the earth, the solar system and the universe.  Systems Theory also states that each level is a holon- made up of the parts and yet more than the parts, and itself part of a larger system.  Evolutionary shifts or paradigm shifts occur when something changes from one level to the next.  

Therefore, it is useful to notice that we exist at the level of the individual and that is the level at which we do our thinking.   We think most of the time about ourselves and our needs and goals - sometimes we think about other individuals: our families, or members of groups we belong to, occasionally about our country or the planet.  But usually even when we do this we are thinking about how we are effected by those beings or what we want for those beings.  It is very rare for us to think collectively - to consider our decisions from the point of view of how they effects others on the other side the planet or generations to come.  And yet this sort of thinking is evolutionarily the next step for life on earth, and as we face crises like climate change and peak oil it is increasingly apparent that such thinking is critical for our very survival.

As a lifelong Quaker I realize that I have always existed in at least one context: my Friends Meeting where this sort of thinking on the community level is inherent.  Every business meeting run by consensus is a practice in thinking collectively, not individualistically.   I can be thankful for the practice I have at that, but it was a recent aha to realize how many of my fellow citizens have never had that experience.

Like most Americans I have grown up believing that I live in a Democracy. Recently I went to see the movie: Direct Democracy.  This movie shows among other things the experience of the people of Argentina when their government fell apart due to economic collapse.  People in rural areas got together in town meetings and discussed what they needed, from roads to irrigation improvement, etc.  The government had some funds for each regional area, but no means to govern or administer the funds; so they allowed the town halls to decide what they needed the money spent on and the would send them the money. 

The movie showed some of these direct democracy experiences of people arguing their cases to each other and then voting.  The movie also showed how after months of this if someone had come every month with a proposal, but did not get it passed because there were less people living in that neighborhood to support it, that eventually the whole group would vote yes on it out of a feeling that "it is their turn".  This is truly thinking as a group consciousness that I cannot imagine Congress every achieving.

While the people there’s experience started with direct budgeting, many workers also took over the abandoned factories left by their financially ruined "owners" and ran them as worker owned collectives making all the decisions for the business together.  In some of the scenes of town halls and worker collectives, the energy and excitement, and creativity is almost palpable to the audience!  There is an energy that is released when people have power over there lives that has been blocked by centuries of patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalist power down models. 

I remember for years (especially during the Bush years) meeting with progressive groups who desperately wanted change. After complaining about what we did not like, the groups seemed at a complete poverty of ideas about what to do that would bring about change.  Mostly people could only think of writing to Congress which then evoked feelings of hopelessness in many in the group.  I could not understand why even group who saw Congress as completely broken, made up bought politicians could only think of this as an avenue for change.   After watching the movie it is now clear to me why.  

Most people have no experience of direct democracy.  They have no experiences in their lives of belonging to a group that has brought about any type of change.  They have no experience of influencing a group decision or taking charge of a situation and making it different.   Quaker's call ourselves a peculiar people because of our very different style of worship, but I realized after watching this movie that we have another unique experience - that of direct democracy where every one of our voices count and where everyone of us equally runs our Friends Meeting.   Perhaps this also explains 350 years of our feeling the audacity to think we can change our country if it needs it.

I have decided that the most radical question I can ask people these days is:  "What communities do you belong to?"  And to try to encourage and create experiences around me where people experience thinking as part of a group.  And I am extremely thankful for the way Quakerism has formed deeply in me the knowledge that humans can function as a collective body.

Occupy Your Heart

One of my favorite signs from pictures of Occupation sites around the US is one that says:  "Occupy Your Heart".  When I first saw it I thought of it as not a serious sign - like the ones that accuse Chase Bank of being "a reverse Robin Hood" or the one that said:  "I will believe in Corporate Personhood when Texas executes one".   However, as I thought about it more I realized it is actually quite profound.

For you see, when you really study what Wall Street employees have done in the past few years, leading up to the crash and afterwards, when you study what corporate CEO's have done, when you study what the 1% have done to help grow their wealth, when you study the way the Koch Brother's have paid for phony studies to bias the Climate Change dialogue.....well I have been saying:  "How do these people get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror?"  Which is a much more judgmental and polarized message than the one that invites the reader to occupy their heart.  What would the US look like if we all occupied our hearts?  If corporate CEO's could walk in the shoes for even one day of a single mom of color in the inner city would their heart still make the choices it does?   If the bankers had to actually see the people being evicted from their houses would they occupy their hearts?  If the brokers who were making money by betting on the market crashing had to explain it to the Seniors who lost their entire pensions how would their hearts then feel?  What if the Koch brothers had to have dinner with  some citizen's of the Maldives would it touch their hearts?

But I don't want to only focus on those that we call the 1%, I want to focus on the rest of us in the 99%.  If we occupied our hearts would we remember that most of the planet lives on a little less than two dollars a day when we are trolling the malls at Christmas buying things we probably don't really need?  If we did not feel that we need things to be "convenient" would we take bags to the grocery store with us and spare the petroleum in the bags?  If we weren't always in a rush would we drive the speed limit and use less gas- or actually have time to take the bus, or a bike or walk, rather than add more carbon to the planet?  If we occupied our hearts would we give more to charity and buy less lattes'?  If we lived in our hearts would we find time to do contribute to our communities rather than watch TV?

And on the deepest level of all I want to ask:  Why don't we occupy our hearts?  How often do you feel freely your love for others?  What stops you?  What makes it scary to give and receive love?  What are the hurts and scar tissue that we have accumulated?   How have we used those as accuses to not keep loving or not keep trying for a planet and a community were we all know our connection to each other and honor those as sacred?  2012 is around the corner - what would you do differently if you lived next year fully in touch with your heart?

How a City Shapes an Occupation

I’m watching how group dynamics develop and are shaped by the differences in settings and historic influences in each city.  I am responding to reports from friends and from occupation websites, or other media.  I have been comparing Seattle where I live, with NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Wall Street as we know picked a private park that did not have regulations defining a “closing hour” and thus protesters have been able to sleep in the park.  Despite some efforts on the part of the owners to close it for “cleaning”, they have responded to the pressure of having thousands there and so have not closed it.  Being a large population center has also brought people in droves.

In Philadelphia they occupied a construction site in the center of the city, so they also have not received pressure to move until just recently when they received a letter from city council saying that it now needed to be vacated so construction could start and “claiming that they had agreed to move at that time.”  So OP has started to consider whether they need to move or face arrest.  In the meantime because they are two blocks from Friends Center (the complex the house Friends Journal, the AFSC, and Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting) the protesters have been able to use the kitchen there to feed thousands, and the bathrooms and to have General Assemblies there when it rains.  They have just officially voted to have General Assemblies (GA)’s there whenever the weather is inclement.  I have wonder how having that much support structure and lack of threat of arrest has allowed them to focus on the protests themselves.  The influence of Quakers is so pervasive in Philly that my impression is their GA process is also much better.

In Chicago they chose to be on the Federal plaza outside the Federal Reserve branch that is in Chicago.  The police slowly cordoned off areas to finally only a small amount of sidewalk was left and now they have to be careful to not block people trying to walk on it or they can be arrested for that.  City Ordinance makes it illegal to sleep on the sidewalk, so there is no where for Chicago protestors to sleep.  How OC protestors have handled that is that they are sleeping in cars that they can park on the street at night (but not day)  They have a uhaul they pay for and put their stuff in every night, and they take turn having two hour shifts staying up protesting with signs during the nights.  This I have to say seems so much more sensible and healthier than the sleep deprivation marathon that my Seattle comrade’s have set for themselves!   They were proud that they had no arrests as result.  They have however for two Sat’s in a row tried to occupy Grant Park a few blocks away and play cat and mouse with the police there who will allow them to set up tents but arrest them the minute they go in them.  This has resulted in arrests in Chicago.

In Boston they had two sites, one in Dewey Square across from their Federal Reserve bank and the other in a Conservancy park that actually had posted a very supportive letter about the demonstrators being in the park. Dewey Square had the mayor's permission and had about 50 tents and permanent supply tents. This second Park space was set up because the first became to crowded.  On the night of Oct. 10th the police in riot gear encircled it and then forced all the media away and arrested all the protesters, first approaching a Veteran's for Peace group and beating them.  The mayor and peace blamed their violence on the "anarchists".

But here is Seattle….the site that was chosen Westlake park is a small triangular cement park in the heart of the shopping district.  (Some say the financial district but I don’t see Seattle as really having a banking headquarters.)  There is an ordinance declaring the park closed at 10Pm every night, and it is illegal to sleep in any Seattle park.  So every night at 10pm the hassles with the police start.  The police will allow people to lie on the ground, but any camping gear results in arrest – this means even a camping pad, or an umbrella over you that touches the ground!   There was a call last Sat for “the night of 500 tents”  (They did feel the park with about 150 tents – it isactually too small for 500)  So many people came to support that the police did not want to arrest and so played this game all night where they would walk around, accompanied by a protester who would shout “we are coming to visit your tent” and if the police found the people in the tent with eyes open “not asleep” they did not arrest them.  But when this was repeated Sunday night they came at 3am and arrested everyone there, damaging many tents in the process. 

Sleeping in the park was allowed during the first week while the Mayor tried to negotiate with them claiming always that he favored freedom of speech.  He tried to offer them to move to City Hall where he said they would not be arrested and where they could use the bathrooms at night.  Frankly I thought that was a great offer, but it is true our City Hall is on the edge of downtown and protestors felt this was not visible and that it was all a ploy on the mayor’s part to marginalize our movement and control it.  After the police harassed people so much they could not sleep at night half the protestors moved there anyway to get a good nights sleep, but after two weeks they are closing that site because a lot of homeless non-protesters were coming there and stealing gear, and the protestors at that site felt unsupported by those at the main site.  The cops have taken at Westlake to shining their car lights all night on the protestors and walking around kicking those laying down.  There were numerous GA discussions of possibly moving sites, to including a Community College about 1 mile away which would pass on a general vote but be blocked and fail to win supermajority.  The campers themselves are very divided on this proposal.  Some want to as they are desperate for sleep.  Others define this as defeat or retreat.  This week it has finally passed to on Sat have a Halloween march and move the camp.

So sadly the very sleep deprived “camping protestors” have become more and more angry with the cops which worries me because I do not see a spirit of non-violence instead I see more and more of a spirit of “them vs us”.  I worry that our original choice of site has set us into conflicts with the police and then each other which has detracted from our work.

Some where last week I read that there was a national conference occuring of police chiefs and that they would surely be comparing notes on how to handle their occupations.  "Oh dear I thought" and of course we have seen the esculating of police violence from Boston to Oakland, to various arrests around the country - often violently.  Last night the police rioted on the protestors in Occupy Oakland - causing a severe head injury to an Iraqi vet among the protesters by hitting him in the head with a tear gas canister.  And then as his companions rushed to his aid firing another round on them. How sad indeed that this man came home safely from Iraqi without the concussion injury that so many soilders get, only to be wounded by US police!  It reminds me of the righteous anger of an African American Vet in NYC screaming at the police: You think you are tough, you are hurting unarmed civilians.  They have no guns. Is this what I fought for?  There is no honor in this!  How can you look yourselves in the mirror.

Let us hold in the Light all the brave protesters struggling around the country to see the change we were promised and never got!