An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans by Kristin Flyntz

Those of you who read my last post will notice the similar theme here:

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans

Stop. Just stop.

It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.

We will help you.

We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt

We will stop

the planes

the trains

the schools

the malls

the meetings

the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our

single and shared beating heart,

the way we breathe together, in unison.

Our obligation is to each other,

As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.

We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,

to bring you this long-breaking news:

We are not well.

None of us; all of us are suffering.

Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth

did not give you pause.

Nor the typhoons in Africa,China, Japan.

Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.

You have not been listening.

It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.

But the foundation is giving way,

buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.

We will help you.

We will bring the firestorms to your body

We will bring the fever to your body

We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs

that you might hear:

We are not well.

Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.

We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.

We are asking you:

To stop, to be still, to listen;

To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;

To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;

To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?

To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?

To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy? How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?

Many are afraid now.

Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,

listen for its wisdom.

What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk, beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?

As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health, what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, and all of us who share this planet with you?

Stop.

Notice if you are resisting.

Notice what you are resisting.

Ask why.

Stop. Just stop.

Be still.

Listen.

Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.

We will help you, if you listen.

The Corona Virus and Climate Change

So here we are suddenly thrust into a Pandemic.  Living in circumstances none of us could imagine even a month ago when the epidemic was sweeping China and Iran, etc.  We are living a crisis of a type that has not happened in any living person's memory (100 years since the last pandemic).   We are living a nightmare in someways made worse by how much of a global community technology has made us.  (100 years ago people did not fly in hours from one place to another.)

As I have been doing Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects for 10 years I cannot help but see this catastrophe through that lens designed to help us face "the Mess we are in without going Crazy" or with Active Hope (the title of her last book).   It feels to me like sharing some of these thoughts would be helpful to others as well.

As someone who has been doing climate work now for 13 years I have been long been staring down grim scenarios for humanity and our planet.  The worst case scenarios all involve the total breakdown of society as the environment itself fails.  Logically there is a terrible economic fall out of such scenarios and the breakdown of various societal structures, but even the worst case scenarios did not see things like that happening for 10 to 15 years.  Some of those scenarios also envisioned old epidemics literally rising out of the permafrost or no longer enough vaccinations to suppress.

But what is actually happening is a scenario no one but a science fiction writer envisioned and would appear unrelated to Climate Change.  Yet Joanna's words still powerfully apply for me.  She has talked for a long time about non-linear time, the idea coming forth from quantum mechanics of parallel time, and she has said: our ancestors and our descendants are trying to help us, and the non human beings.  I had the dawning realization the first time I listened to her "why do I think all the solutions will come from the minds of humans living right now?"   During the sHell No campaign in the NW in 2015 - Kayactvists tried to stop Shell from parking a rig in Seattle and going up to Alaska and testing to drill off the coast of Alaska, and activists hung off a bridge in Portland to stop the ice breaker coming for repair.  I had several experiences then that felt powerfully to speak about what Joanna was speaking of.

The rig alluded the two dozen Kayactivists trying to block it in Seattle but by the time it got across from Port Townsend some Kayactivists - only 4 or 5 came out and it swerved slightly to miss them and ground.  It was only stuck a short time, but I felt as if the earth had reached up and grabbed it!  I felt as if the earth were trying to help.   Later, the ice breaker was damaged (apparently by ice) and had to be brought down to Portland for repairs...causing delay. (Again I felt the frozen ocean had reached up ripping the ice breaker and helping us.) It was further delayed as it left by activists hanging on ropes from the bridge blocking their path and by kayactivts that also darted out and blocked their path. That whole delay only took two days, but added to the time lost on the repair and Shell wound up not having enough time to do their test drilling and without that info their board cancelled the whole project (partly also aware of the negative public outcry.)  In the end I felt the earth had puts its finger on the scale and helped ups to win that battle.

For those of you very scientific this account will drive you mad.   This is a spiritual story.  It is a story of how beings from another time are conspiring on behalf of all life to save us.

What you say does this have to do with the Coronovirus?  Well I want to be clear I am not celebrating anyone's death.  I am not oblivious to the untold suffering that the virus is bringing by stopping the global economy in its tracks....but I will say this: look at a list of the industries currently in a tail spin:
airlines, the oil industry, cruise ships, the financial industry....all of these are leading contributors to climate change.  We are literally seeing as the flying and way less driving is happening as people are compelled to stay home the green house gases reducing and the deep smog over China lifting.  The eco system has produced a virus that is both reducing the population of the beings in charge of climate change and it is also changing our most climate destroying behaviors. 

Sure when the epidemic is over people will go back to flying and driving and spending money....but maybe just maybe we will begin to realize that much more telecommuting could normally occur, that it is crazy to fly across the country for a convention where we listen to a talking head that we could easily have listened to on a screen.   Maybe we will think twice about flying across many states to go to a sports game or watch a play.  Maybe we can hold flying a privilege for weddings and funerals and to see the dying.   Maybe we will learn how quickly we can change policies when we really KNOW we are in an emergency (she says with the anger of being told for three years that we will protect the trees next session or being told by portfolio managers that they know oil will become a stranded asset put policy prohibits divesting from it.)  Maybe in the ashes of this mess we will decide we might as well reconstruct things in a way that will survive climate change.  Maybe just maybe we can learn from this experience about the way we have been living and how we need to live.

Joanna Macy is a whole systems thinker.  One of the "games" she has us do in workshops to illustrate systems theory involves each of us secretly picking two people in the group of 20.  When we say go you are to place yourself equadistantly from those two as the group moves (that can be in a line or a triangle).  The group keeps moving and moving trying to establish this perfect equilibrium.  Then one predesignated person drops to the ground and the facilitator says: if you are connected to someone on the ground you must drop too.  Within seconds the entire group is on the ground.  This is a powerful lesson that we are all connected to each other in the web of life.   This is why the moment the ban on travel to Europe was  announced I knew our economy was going down.   I knew it would force airlines into bankruptcy, that as they lessened flights other things would go wrong, etc.  I knew that as we restricted movement in order to stop the spread of the virus that it would stop economic activity and close businesses, many forever.  This is the painful side of the generally beautiful truth that we are all connected to each other.

It is also why it is so important for how we now respond to this.  It we act as every person for themselves we will create a hell.  Like the person who knew they had the Covi-19 and flew on a Jet Blue plane anyway exposing every person on that plane.  An unbelievably selfish act destroying the web they belong to.   But I also see people right now reaching out to get groceries and meds for those who cannot do it, and trying to figure out how to help those who are becoming unemployed over night. Several NBA players responded to the cancelling of their season by donating to replace the incomes for the season of the minimum wage janitors and hotdog sellers, etc. associated with the stadium.   We are all payed millions, but how can we help those who are struggling right now?

History is full of crises.  Crises that pivoted us as a people in a good way and crises that pivoted us in a bad way.  Example - the poor resolution of WWI leading to economic hardship in Germany made ripe the rise of Hitler promising a new bright future for Germany.  The worldwide recession was responded to by Roosevelt in a transformational way of creating social security, public works projects, unemployment insurance, etc.   We will choose what comes out of this crisis.  We can let the rich use it to snap up even more resources or we can recreate a society that provides universal health care, sick leave and maternity leave for all, and that begins to really seriously address climate change.  Some may find what I say to be an incredible tale of silver linings or fairy tales.  But we are the ones who will decide what the final outcome of this story will be.

Surrender and the Serenity Prayer

My Meeting has been going through hard times.  So much so, that it has been hard for me to write for my blog.  I have been doing by prayer practice that involves asking a question and opening in succession books that have been sources of spiritual wisdom and seeing what they speak to me.  So what is coming up for me right now is about the serenity prayer:  “God grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things we cannot and the wisdom to know the difference.”   This prayer has always been a struggle for me to get clarity around because, as I have written elsewhere, being raised Quaker I was raised with perhaps an inflated sense of what I/We could change.  Afterall we were the people who fought to get religious freedom for the US, to end slavery, to get woman the vote, to end the Vietnam war, etc.  We also are taught to be part of all the decision making of our Meetings and to feel that every voice counts.  

So when you carry that sense of personal empowerment and duty, it is very hard to draw the line of what can I change and what must I accept?   Also deep in the nature of Quakerism is the search for a perfected world, for bringing God’s Kingdom down onto earth.  After all we say to the world that we should act without violence, uphold the equality of all, speak the truth at all times, etc.   These are not goals most of the world pursues or sees as “practical”.

Therefore, in looking at huge disappointments I currently have with my Meeting in its ability to uphold our testimonies in the face of behaviors that are not congruent with them, the difficulty to say no when no needs to be said, or to challenge something when challenging it will be a struggle, I have mainly felt the need to DO things.   However, more than a year and half of doing, on my part and many people’s parts have lead to no resolution or peace.  

So I am now turning towards the serenity part of the prayer or the surrender part as I experience it.  I am touching into a deep learning in my years of being a therapist.  As a therapist you can offer people support, encouragement, guidance, healing, and sometimes inspiration …. But in the end they are always on their own.  They will make their own choices, even if inside of patterns, and sometimes those will be for growth and change and sometimes they will be to repeat destructive choices.  I have had to die to my own impotence over, and over, and over again.  

At first I hated that about being a therapist; but eventually I found something very true in it and actually when I stopped fighting it – something peaceful.  I was able to connect to the notion described in the Bible that the Divine Parent knows everything about us, every hair on our head, judges us not because of knowing the extreme complexity with which we act and yet is there for us, always available, always ready to start a new with us, always inviting us to go towards the Light.

When I would get in touch with that reality then I could understand better that sometimes I am just a witness to the suffering, other times I am holding their intention to grow and change till they can come back to it.  But mainly I could understand that I had reached the end of what I could do and had to rest in what was/is.   In my morning prayers right now I found words also about stepping back from the mind trying to solve everything, from ego or frenetic action.  The reminders to drop back away from the story and drop into ones true spiritual self.

I am still trying to understand what that means about commitment to beliefs that I hold as true.  I don’t think I can simply walk away from those values without abandoning the manifestation of Spirit as I know it.  I think it means still speaking the truth as I know it when I have the possibility to do so.  But I think it means having to drop the expectation or hope for Quakers to be any kind of perfected people.  It means that I will need to work in an intensive way with non attachment every day.

Living Simply without Amazon

This would have been a good post for before the holiday,s but it is very much on my mind this month since so many of my progressive friends have with apology sent me gifts thru Amazon.  Thus I would like to lay out here some of my reasons that living without Amazon is to me a social justice issue.

In general I think huge multinational corporations function without souls in ways that are bad for the environment and bad for labor and bad for the human community.  So in general I try to encourage f/Friends to as much as possible steer way from chains and spend money at mom/pop locally owned stores which much more keeps money in your own local economy.

In the case of this particular corporation however we must look at both the carbon foot print of it and how it is effecting economies throughout the US (and world).   In the old model products were produced and were then shipped to distribution hubs and then to stores around the country with a concentration in department stores or malls that had the additional money for bigger stock selection than smaller stores.  Then  consumers took them home.    This path of miles traveled from producer to distribution hub to store to home might look like: 300 miles + 100 miles + 10 miles = 410 miles.  Now it looks like 500 + anywhere from 10 to another 500.   (They have 20 disruption centers around the country.  If an item is not in the one nearest you it will ship from where they do have it.)  So transport is a bigger carbon foot print but so is packaging since now huge numbers of items are being packaged independently rather than all in their original package and going in one bag at the store with you.  Quite often items you ordered at the same time will go in separate boxes and be delivered on separate days by the same UPS or Fed Ex driver.  This is a terrible carbon footprint.


Then there is the effect on the economy.  Because small stores and even department stores cannot compete with the allure of people having every choice manufactured they are consistently losing business to Amazon.  As a result more and more small business are losing business and going out of business.  Even large chains like Toys R us, Sears, etc are going under.  The loss of brick and morter stores is the loss of employment in lots of moderately sized communities around the country.  And with it the loss of more money in the local economy.  It drives even more urban growth to the 20 cities that have Amazon hubs.

CBS revealed the following:

The rush toward ever-faster shipping is creating the need for more truck trips, undoing the ecological benefits of shopping online.Amazon's package deliveries in 2017 alone emitted about 19 million metric tons of carbon, according to one estimate. "That's just under five coal power plants," one expert said.

Not long ago online shopping was better for the climate than the in-person kind because it benefited from economies of scale. A shopper who's driving from store to store in a car can create a lot of emissions, Anne Goodchild,  "Delivery services can be better -- they can put lots of stuff in one vehicle, do one delivery route and hit lots of homes," she said.

But while that model prevailed in the early days of online shopping, today it's reversed, with very small and quick deliveries -- what she calls "paid butler services" -- growing the fastest. Data show that package deliveries are indeed speeding up. In the last two years, the average time for an item to get from "click" to a customer's door dropped from 5.2 days to 4.3.

Amazon's decision to make one-day shipping the default for its Prime members is likely to increase its emissions ever further. In 2017, Amazon's deliveries alone emitted about 19 million metric tons of carbon, according to an estimate from 350 Seattle, a group that works to combat climate heating. "That's just under five coal power plants," said Rebecca Deutsch of 350 Seattle.That same year, FedEx was responsible for 14 million tons, and UPS for 13 million, according to CDP, a nonprofit that helps companies track emissions data.

The collapse of these other levels of scale builds a monopoly.  We know from history the more an organization holds a monopoly the more we are at their mercy with prices.  Don't count on this government to pursue monopoly busting.  It is up to you to not give them monopoly power.

Some of us, in a world where clothes are made for "standard bodies" which few of us have, still need to go into a store and try on clothes to see if they fit.  Not everyone has the economic means to order all the many many things they want to try on and time to repackage and take back to be mailed back and get the credit.   Everyday people still need stores.  Also in the long run of fixing climate change we need not only stores in our community with their smaller carbon footprint but we need much more regional self sufficiency over all were we make and use things locally.  The trend of Amazon takes us in the wrong direction.

However, living at "ground zero" as it were for Amazon (Seattle) I have an even more up close and critical view of this particular corporation.  Some cities that were bidding for Amazon's next distribution center could not understand why Seattle was not trying to keep all Amazon's business in Seattle.  Well if you lived here you would understand.   "The death of Seattle" as reported recently in a documentary is largely attributable to Amazon.  The huge growth has resulted in escalating cost of office and warehouse space, increased population and with it huge traffic snarls and skyrocketing housing prices and increased overall cost of living.   The pressure on housing resulted in a huge development bout where any small or old property was likely to be torn down and much bigger and taller housing replaced it (also resulting in huge tree loss), hugely driving up the prices.   Small businesses were torn down to build 7 story condo or office buildings with one strip mall type antiseptic storefront at the bottom.  Seattle was re-gentrified loosing all of its character and soul.  Locals mourn the loss of the city they once new.  I moved because I could not stand the constant daily loss.

After the city council tried to impose a tax that would have been heavily applied to Amazon, they ran a misinformation initiative campaign which they used paid signature gathers for and won so that the tax did not go into effect.  Then they spent 2.5 million on the local Seattle election to try to buy the Seattle City Government.  Fortunately they failed.   But this is why I find them extremely objectionable.

So I would again ask you - is this the world you want to support?  You are voting with your dollars.


What are your alternatives?  Fun fact - anything you buy locally and take to the post office will likely cost less than the "standard" shipping for any online ordering (except where free) since it is having to base it on an average size package rather than the actual size and weight of your package.  For those of you so pleased with your "free shipping from Amazon" please note there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Shipping costs are folded back into overall prices and the environment is certainly paying the price of all this shipping everywhere.

For Books - First choice - why not support your local book store? 
If there is not one, support Barnes and Noble while it still stands (on shakey ground because of Amazon).  Can get any book and ship to your relative across the country.
Or better yet use better world books - an online alternative to Amazon which means it also has a big inventory which has donated 8.6 million dollars worth of unused books to global literacy groups.
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/

Clothing: First choice - go to local clothing stores
If sending to a family member across the country again use a chain that is still in existence and does shipping and is not Amazon.

Electronic items:   First choice buy at a local store and ship yourself.
Chains like Best buy, or Penny's or Macy's do ship.

Cool artsey stuff:  support real artists and crafters across the country to have a further reach.  Use etsy.com where you can find any kind of custom made item.

Some of you may find this a confusing message: Isn't she just really suggesting one shipper verse another?   Well my first choice really is that we all support the local businesses in our communities - that is still by far the better carbon foot print and better for the economy.   Along with that we move away from giving stuff (which also uses resources and has transport foot print behind it, and is part of a lifestyle that will need to become our former lifestyle) and give experiences and services instead.  So for example you give a friend tickets to a massage, or pay the local kid to shovel their drive, or give a ticket to a play (perhaps with you- best of all!)  When you start to think this way there are lots of possibilities.

But I realize that everyone we wish to give a gift to does not live right where we do.   Which is why I remind you that there are at least other chains than Amazon to buy from.   But if you get creative there are ways to give experiences even across the country.   A few years ago I gave my adoptive mom a dinner out by calling her favorite local mom and pop restaurant and they do have gift certificates which I paid for over the phone with my card.  They mailed it.   My in-laws live in the town of my daughter and partner and bought them a couple's message.   But I could have called and paid over the phone for that as well. The same can be done for local theater, etc.   So think outside of the box!  Support the world you want.

Gratitude

Years ago a f/Friend of mine who is in danger of going blind said she was challenging everyone she knew to "play the Thanksgiving game" which she defined as being able to see what to be grateful for in the ordinary.  She reported being very grateful to be able to see.  It occurred to me upon reading what she had written that I take for granted my ability to see (and to hear, and to walk, etc.) and so I do not count these as blessings.

I have come to see from Native American people that I have spent time with that they see themselves in relationship with all of the natural world around them.  The plants and animals are all their brothers and their sisters.  Because of those relationships they are thankful for all food and all weather and all bounty that they encounter - none of it is taken for granted and none of it expected. Nor is the appears of some plants labeled "weeds", nor some animals or weather as bad.  Each are seen to be bringing their own gifts. This too seems like a posture of gratitude that I never learned coming from ancestors who took what they wanted from the earth with little consideration.

There is a Chinese Proverb that goes something like this…

A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”  A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”  A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, ceasing all the able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, still recovering from his injury. Friends shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

This story points out that what we are grateful for one moment maybe something we regret in another moment and vise versa.  I was quite fascinated by some happiness studies that pointed out that how people rated the goodness of certain events in their life had to do with whether they compared themselves up or down.   By which they meant if you have a "peer group" that you see as wealthy, healthy, wise and blessed and this is who you compare yourself to you will often report dissatisfaction in our own lives.   If however we have a peer group that is in poverty, poor health, ignorance or unhappy then we will consider our situation very lucky.   It is sort of sad for me to think that our very same situation could be viewed completely differently depending upon what we are comparing it to.  The story of the Chinese farmer above also points to how one could live not assigning a goodness or a badness to an event. 

In a previous blog, Who is Wealthy? https://thefriendlyseeker.blogspot.com/2018/02/,  I wrote I about how pretty much anyone middle class or more in the US is in the global 1%.   Yet because we compare ourselves to millionaires or even billionaires in our country most of us live with some false sense of struggle and deprivation.   How could we keep perspective on how blessed we are to have a roof over our head, to have food to eat, fresh running water, to have freedom, to be able to see and hear and walk, to have health, to have love?  (and if you don't have one of those how lucky you are to have the other things?)  I write this to myself because I struggle all the time to keep perspective on how blessed I am by a Provider who is gracious.

Friends and Conflict

It may not surprise you to hear me say Quakers are not good at conflict!  I believe this is because our reputation as “Peacemakers” and “Peaceful People” have attracted many who dislike conflict and may erroneously believe that belong to a Friends Meeting means the absence of conflict.  I think overall Friends do not have good conflict skills.   Part of this has to do with some aspects of our Faith and Practice that do not seem to actually help conflict resolution practices.

1)      The underlying assumption of Quaker business practice is that we will listen for God’s will and follow it and that is how decisions will be made.   The problem is that too many of us are not doing that but instead following secular business practice of listening to our own thinking and then trying to persuade or push others to follow that thinking.

2)      We are supposed to trust the work of our committees and generally accept their work as it is brought to Business Meeting.  Two problems here: 1) are our committee really doing the work and also listening for divine guidance   and 2) if they have our we trusting the process and their work?

3)      The general advice for conduct in Meeting for Worship for Business is that we listen worshipfully to what others say and only speak if lead.   This means that it is not considered appropriate to do “rebuttals” of what others have said, or to speak repeatedly. 

4)      This particularly presents a problem if people say things in Meeting for Worship that are untrue.  This leaves no good way to address misinformation since it places one into a position of “rebuttal of a previous speaker”.

5)      It is common in our committee structure that some committees may have confidential information about the situations of some members or about issues creating conflict in the Meeting.  The fact that everyone does not have the same information creates problems for the clearing of conflict.

6)      In other kinds of group conflicts created by people living with mental health problems or very difficult personalities are usually handled by people higher up in a hierarchal structure taking some kind of action to reign in their behavior.   We live most of our lives in these other structure and thus when in Friends Meeting seem to look around for the ‘adult in the room” when someone is misbehaving rather than speaking out about it (as our eldering tradition would suggest.)

7)      Good conflict resolution practice suggests that we listen to each other, reflect what we have heard for accuracy and then look for common ground and ways to address each others concerns.   While sense of the Meeting also seeks to hear all of us and look for a common way to address our concerns – when individual members become upset with each other because of what is said in business meeting our practice does not allow for that direct immediacy that might cool and calm the conflict.

8)      Good conflict resolution practice also suggests that we have boundaries and that when those are violated that we protect or reassert our boundaries.  Because we have a non-dogmatic faith it asserts for less things as absolutes or truths than most religions – and even those it does: non, violence, equality, integrity, etc it does not tell us what to do when someone violates those cherished beliefs.  Some thing about our stance as a non-dogmatic seeking faith, or the lack of hierarchy seems to make us very reluctant or slow to say no, to defend our community agreements and our shared practices when they are violated.

9)      A time honored practice among all humans who hate conflict is to simply avoid it.  So as the conflict rages on more people stay away from Meeting or Meeting for business.   We hope that someone else will solve it.   But who will that be?  We govern as a group.

So what’s a Quaker to do?  I don’t want this article to simply be a catalogue of Quaker shortcomings when it comes to conflict.  As best I can see it here are our ways out and forward as they related to the numbered problems above.

1)       Return to the true practice of Meeting for Worship for business.  Educate our whole group about worship grounded God directed decision making.  The clerk must be diligent and careful in who is called in and when silence is called for and in reminding of the group of what we are doing.

2)      This educating about the true guidance behind our work must extend to our committees there must not be committee reports brought to the floor that all members of the committee are not in consent of.  We must nominate committee clerks that will conduct committees with consensus and members who are willing to operate from that basis. Then we must remind each other on the floor of business meeting that we are not there to redo their work on the floor of business meeting.  We must trust our committees and the nominating process that created them.

3)      If the clerk does not call on people who are making rebuttals or are speaking too often this helps to eliminate such behavior in Meeting for Worship for business.   We must also check ourselves before we speak.  Out of what spirit are we speaking.

4)      I am baffled about this one frankly.   I would hope that if we are listening for the word of God someone would be given words of truth to speak next that are not a rebuttal but in my own efforts to not engage in rebuttal I have remained silent after things have been said that I know to be untrue.

5)      I think committees do have to consider carefully what information they release, when and for what purpose.  I think in general it is good to keep the whole body as informed as does not violate the privacy or vulnerabilities of some of our members.

6)      This is a very challenging area for Friends and I think Friends are both compassionate but also generally aware of what they don’t know when it comes to people with mental health problems.  We either need to get outside advice from mental health professionals or simply insist on normal boundaries that we ask of others.   We do not do folks with mental illness favors by treating them differently than others, allowing them to break norms and boundaries and accrue resentments from the body.  We have to stop looking for “someone else” to handle it.  We must each think clearly about what makes sense to say and do and know we are the adult in the room.

7)      My Meeting recently passed a conflict resolution minute affirming out intention for interpersonal conflicts to be addressed and not be allowed to fester and poison the communal waters for all.  It identified a list of trained mediators and asked folks to first try to talk directly with those they have conflict with and if they cannot or if that did not to use this list of mediators for help talking with the other person.   I would suggest that unresolved interpersonal conflict is a key ingredient in Meeting Conflicts and that we need to create more of these one on one dialogues intended to use best conflict resolution practice (also so described in the Bible) to address the conflict.

8)      Quakers need to get MUCH clearer about our collective boundaries.  I have often joked that it might take someone practicing animal sacrifice in the middle of the Meetinghouse floor before we would rise up and say no.  Even then some Friends would be looking around to see that someone else besides themselves would speak.  It would help if individual committees got clear about behaviors that are and are not acceptable within their area of attention.  (Could the property committee be clear that we do not allow practices that damage the building.  Could worship and ministry be clear that we do not allow other forms of worship to occur during our worship?   Would either of those boundary clarifications empower someone to say no to the animal sacrifice example?)  This is where we need to return to our eldering practices – if we could speak early and lovingly to those who we feel are engaging behavior that is disruptive to the community we could resolve many things.  This is your sacred community – if you won’t speak for it then how will it remain sacred?

9)      Well as already alluded to above.  If you want the sacred community you will have to stop avoiding the conflict and stand for the faith and practices you want.

For those readers who have been paying attention….yes it has been two months since I posted.  The conflict in my Meeting has been wearing me down.   It has real costs when Friends abdicate their part in working on the problems in our Meetings.   I pray we can all tune up regarding conflict.   There is hidden in it the silver lining of the chance to find and reassert our true values, return to our real practices, and come to new agreements with each other that serve us better.

Empty Forms? Living Waters

I am at annual session of NPYM because the Friend in Resident this year is Jay O'Hara.  This is a journey to annual session that I have not made in 7 years because of my frustration over form heavy structures in our Yearly Meeting, and an appalling experience I had with the clerk 7 years ago telling me outside of session what decisions "would be" made by the business meeting.  (Despite my protests that if we our approaching business meeting as faithful listening for the guidance of the Holy One that no one could know in advance what would be decided.)

Jay was billed as speaking about Climate Change, and although he has, he has even more called us to be a Gathered People listening to Divine Authority.  He has challenged us to examine where we have empty forms that are keeping us stuck and driving away young Friends and where to go more deeply towards our traditions of receiving spiritual guidance, and centering our actions and life together in that Power.  For me it is a very welcome eldering of our whole body.

In my last few blogs I have written about ways in which our committee structure and nominating process can become empty forms, or limiting structures.  I often hear Friends lament why are we an older, graying religion?  Why are numbers dwindling and "where are the young people?"  I often also hear older Friends attribute to the youth that there disappearance as soon as they are old enough to not go to Meeting is because they have better things to do, are more interested in hanging out with peers, or have been swallowed by wide world values.   While certainly that is true in some cases, or may even be expressed as "better things to do"...I want to say as someone who has spent time listening to Young Adult Friends in their 20's and 30's, there is a certain blindness here operating about why they leave.

The male privilege and class privilege and racial privilege is readily apparent to anyone who has those lens and enters our Meetings.  If they speak up about these things they can be treated like a "child" of the Meeting and dismissed, or because they are a distinct minority they can find it daunting to try to raise this alone.   And if they do raise for example a complaint about mansplaining (if you do not know what this is please look it up) and are responded to with defensiveness, no support by whoever is clerking and a continuation of the behavior, they can wind up feeling so frustrated and trapped as to just decide that the benefits don't out weigh the pain.

How then do we go towards Living Waters?  There is a bit of a what comes first the chicken or the egg problem.   When people experience authentic Spirit voiced ministry and the experience of a covered Meeting, they are hungry for more.  They themselves are opened up spirituality and you thus get more Spirit moved vocal ministry.  There is a synergy that moves things deeper.   But when we experience inauthentic ministry, that which is driven from head and from ego, it is dampening to the worship and to the soul.  There is a disorientation from sorting the wheat from the chaff.  There is a discouragement - like a pollution in water.

This takes me to eldering.  Eldering in its orginal and intended form was to hold each other accountable to the faithfully minding of the Light.   People were eldered if they spoke from head and ego and not from an inward prompting.  They were also eldered/mentored in how to listen to the inward promptings.   People were eldered if they behaved in ways that blocked the corporate experience of true worship.  They were given experiences of true worship so they knew what to aim for.  And they were eldered if their behaviors in the world were oppressive to the Light in others.  They were provided patterns and examples of how not to do this.  As I have written about in other previous posts, eldering has gotten a bad name among Friends.   We need to return to this as a living practice, not a badly applied censoring of something we personally dislike.

I understand that the discernment of what is a living form and what is an empty form is a confusing thing for many people - perhaps in the eyes of the beholder.  All of us have experienced somewhere empty forms that are maddening to have to comply with and feel simply like "because I said so" dictates of a power over parent.  If forms in their original creation were ever useful, ever life giving it was because they were created to try to name and protect a way of doing things that had discovered to be life giving.  But when we teach people "how to" do something, without teaching them why to do it that way (and maybe do not even know ourselves) then we teach an empty form, something which has simply become a ritual.   Some of our forms made sense before copy machines, phones, facetime technologies, internet, etc.   But they now are forms frozen in time, trying to serve a purpose which maybe better served by new forms. 

So just as I have written about our committee structures, we have to go back to questions about what are we trying to achieve and apply those to our structures to see if they do serve.   If Fox was saying to the religions of his times "These rituals are empty forms" then we need to examine carefully whether 350 years of practice has rendered us some empty forms.  If some of our forms serve valued purposes we need to start being able to articulate and practice those forms in ways that make that clear to all beholders.