How to misuse Testimonies

 The reason Quaker's call them testimonies and not creeds is because we believe in continuing revelation.  We hold up our testimonies as the truth as we know it so far, with the idea that God can reveal the Truth anew to us or in a new way - that our understanding of the truth can evolve.   So you would think that we would hold the testimonies lightly.

And yet - I moved to a city where Friends were in deep conflict about an issue before the Meeting.  Increasingly sides were be taken and each side could point to certain testimonies and say how those should be carried out by certain actions the meeting should take.   In short we had thoughts and feelings about the testimonies!  And so did I.  But my "idea" was to take  a third way - to not get caught up in conflict - to find a bridge across the differences.  (Thus making me unpopular with both groups.)  The Meeting eventually split over this issue and at least a dozen people left...myself included.  In the end I was not mad because one side or the other prevailed (In fact neither side prevailed - the issue sort of collapsed in exhaustion - aided by a pandemic imposed separation from personal contact on Sundays.)  For me I left in despair of realizing that in all the side taking we had not asked:  "What does God say?  What are we hearing from Spirit".  It was as if we held a big fight and did not invite the Divine.

I am sort of amazed at this slippery slope - how easily our thoughts about our beliefs can take us out of our belief - out of the continuous seeking Spirit and divine revelation.  I am bemused that the Buddhist practice of mindfulness is to watch the "monkey mind" and all its tricks it plays on us.

This is what a blue wave looks like under gerrymandering

 I am sick and tired of the pundits prattle.  Of the remarks that it was not the red wave that was predicted or that the Dems did better than expected.  I am dismayed by the sort of sigh of relief of progressives that it was not the shellacking they feared.  I am tired of the sort of business as usual "live to fight another day" attitude that assumes "well maybe better next time" - as if we just have two more years to suffer though the grid lock we have already had for two years.  (While both Trump and Biden signal their intentions to run again in 2024 potentially setting us up to live in a perpetual rerunning nightmare where Trump never leaves the newswaves, where a landslide is referred to as a stolen election and where one of two elderly white men continue to run our country.)

This prattle incorrectly fails to identify that this was a blue wave - it was a blue wave under severe gerrymandering.   If one looks at how close so many individual races were, it is clear that without the gerrymandering that took blue districts and divided them between two and sometimes even 7 neighboring districts to bury the votes of people of color, youth and suburban women, that the Republicans would not have even the house.

I am concerned that progressives seem to believe that we have a good chance two years from now to have a different outcome.  There seems to be a failure to understand that between stacked courts, redistricting that happened after the 2020 census and a 40 year plan on the part of the Koch brothers and their think tanks...the game can in fact be too fixed to ever again be "won".

The Koch think tanks have been planning for decades.  They planned to slowly take over statehouses, (check), to use wedge issues (check), to interfere with Democratic appointment of Judges (check), and to stack the Supreme Court so there would be no where to go for relief, (check).  All of this was designed to make it so that after the 2020 Census, they would control enough statehouses to gerrymander enough states as to ensure a permanent Republican advantage.   Their plan was not concerned about who would be the Republican President or who would get elected under this plan, as it was assumed that all members of the Republican party favor big business over the little guy.  It seemed certain an oligarchy could be accomplished.

What they never could have imagined, and has been a great fly in their ointment, is Donald Trump.  Who would have imagined in the 80's or 90's or 00's that a bad businessman, a reality tv star, and a person with narcissistic personality disorder could run for President and win?  Remember they tried pretty hard in the beginning of the 2016 primary race to tip it for a Bush, Cruz or Rubio (really anyone familiar and typical).  But when he won the nomination, I think the Republicans still thought he could be their puppet.  (They did not know that Putin had already claimed puppetmaster.)  They simply could not imagine the kinds of irrational and counterproductive decisions that a narcissist makes to serve their own ego.  They could not have imagined that he would both eliminate all competition for 2020 and also lose the election because of his poor performance as president! 

They briefly thought they would then be rid of him in the way it has worked throughout history that the losing figure recedes into obscurity.  But again they did not count on the sort of desperate personality disordered behavior that would lead him to encourage seditionists to over throw the government.  On Jan 7th 2021 they briefly stepped back from him thinking this time he had gone too far, and they would be rid of him.  However, when the media did not immediately condemn him, they had already learned that to fail to back him could mean political ruin.  Thus they stayed loyal to him, swallowing hard on the new party line that the election had been stolen.  They privately worried about his pushing this rather than solid policy for the mid-terms and bit their tongues as he picked incompetent men for the mid terms simply for their willingness to kiss his ring.   But only now as this has lost them the House are they beginning to step away from him.

So Trump has sort of screwed up the great Koch think tank plan.  The Republican elected in 2020 was supposed to be easily re-elected.  The Supreme court had already been delivered. The Gerrymandering was supposed to assure that in 2022 he would have everything he needed in the way of complete control of all three branches of government, and any other additional rules could be changed to assure that a Democrat would never win again.   Except Trump is so hated that we had a blue wave in 2020 bringing in Biden and a thin majority for him.  But the Republican control was great enough to mostly block Biden's agenda so he simply looks in effective and his ratings have dropped.   Yes still the blue wave came out to stop Trumps minions from getting elected in the midterm.

The problem of course as the fan of any team that never wins can tell you - over time people stop coming out as they sense the impossibility of winning.  So 2024 is not in my opinion simply the next election season.  To have any effective strategy at all, the Democrats are going to need to start naming that the game has been fixed.

Integrity

 Recently I was invited in worship sharing to visit the topic of Integrity.   Most of my Quaker life this has seemed  very straightforward Quaker topic.  I have felt quite clear about the importance of telling the truth and found it pretty easy to tell the truth.  I have listened to the Quaker imperative to tell truth to power and even found that fairly easy to do.

However I saw in this round of queries that living in a country that has been plunged into a crisis about truth by 4 years plus after shade of a President who has told a record number of lies and who responds to being caught in a lie by telling another one, has worn on all of us.  Between him and the Fox news propaganda machine ideas like "alternative facts" that at first seemed like a bad joke to me have become sadly quite common place situations in our polarized country. We are not all looking at the same facts or even the same sources of information.  In a country that has never really achieved scientific literacy we seem unclear about how you test something for truth.  

I also recently listened to a podcast that talked about confirmation bias and how when something questions our position we dig in tougher on it - so that means right now a very polarized country.  Even as certain very damning facts come out about the former Presidents illegal behavior I despair that it will not cause reevaluation of his behavior but dig some folks in even deeper.  I despair that if a fact cannot uproot a lie, how will wed uproot the conspiracy lies and mythologies that have a solid hold on 1/3 of our country?

But I also see that someone I have respected has put forth the idea that we do not own oppressive systems the truth - especially if they will only use it to further the oppression.   I think of how in Nazi countries Jews were required to register.  Most obeyed because they were being truthful.   But the ones who did not tell the truth to the authorities were the ones mostly that survived.  What is the truth in the hands of those who do not serve the truth?

I also have reviewed with much sadness the numerous times I have told groups of people/institutions truths that I knew they were not happy to hear, but that I believed it would serve the group to know or improve itself - only to see that this was received with anger, disregard or actual persecution.  I am realizing this is another one of my "internalized Quakerism" traits that outside of Quakerism is not expected or well received.   I think it still makes sense to testify to the Truth - to make public testimony to the truth of the Arms race, Climate Change, sexism and racism.   And I am rock solid clear that to tell an untruth when it would cause wrong things to happen is unacceptable.  To tell a lie to cover my own bad choice or make me look good is also not ok.  But I am questioning whether it makes sense to tell people who don't want to hear it that the way we run our organization is not effective, or has unintended consequences or wastes money, etc. etc. if that serves any question.  Does it make sense to give "true feedback" when it is unwanted feedback?

Spiritual Deepening

 This month I went to the online FGC and I took a workshop entittled Spiritual Companions...but as one participant stated at the end of the workshop it really should have been called: Spiritual deepening through Spiritual Companionship.  I had thought the workshop was an extension of Marcelle Martin's work which turned out not to be the case so it also had some different aspects although both very much point to the traditions of Early Friends.   I share here some pearls I gathered from this workshop.

Early on the workshop leader, Nadine Hoover, defined Convincement.  Her definition was very different than what I have thought.   I have just seen it as there are birthright friends and those who are "convinced" which I had understood meant, convinced of the Truth found in Quakerism.  But Nadine points out no, this was meant to be that through Quaker silence and inward searching that folks had an experience of the Divine so profound and personal that they are forever Convinced of God.  There is no period of silence or detachment or crisis that can shake them in their belief.   I find that a helpful definition and one that helps me realize that I am both a birth right friend and a convinced Friend.

She also defined being convicted....also different than how I have thought about it.   She very much directed people to notice their feelings and clear those that stand in their way.  It is curious because as a therapist I am certainly aware of how our feelings can get in the way in our professional life, our family life and our social lives.   But for some reason I had never thought about how they could get in the way in our Faith life.  I was certainly aware of how conflict can erupt in a Meeting and stand in the way of the Meetings progress as a community, and I have been too distressed to worship in a Meeting before, but I had not really considered how carrying that distress interfered with the spiritual life.  That sadly made me realize how my broken heartedness at things I have encountered in the past has long been an obstacle in my spiritual life.   I am glad to have realized this as I think it is helping me to move some obstacles out of my way.

She introduced to us the query:  What do I need to take up or lay down in order to be more available to Spirit?  She recommended that people ask themselves this question every day and also discuss once a month with a spiritual companion this question.  I was particularly pleased that it included what to lay down.  I think that Quaker's can focus overly on having leadings and yet as she pointed out if we have "clutter" in our way (things that busy us to no end and need to be layed down) we cannot be faithful.  She commented that we often think God will hand us down some great leading (like we expect a 5 page manual) and are disappointed when this does not happen.   But as she said:  How would we get this if we have not been faithful to the little things that have been asked of us?  If we have not learned to listen, to hear and to obey the small requests?  I hear Susan Stark' beautiful voice singing:  "Be faithful to the Light that is given to thee and more shall be given."  This is an old and ancient Quaker belief ....why have we forgotten it?

I am trying to pay attention.  I had a small niggling to hold an event for people to process what happened with Roe vs Wade.  It did not fit my general organizing strategy, or what I organize on so it did not make sense, but I decided to do it as an exercise in faithfulness.  I don't know yet what will emerge out of this.   Various women their considered various next steps.  I have to assume like a message you deliver in Meeting that makes no sense to you but is for someone else, that whoever acts from that event will be moved as God so intends, and I was only the vessel to help that happen.

Then as she taught us how to be present with others during their turn in the spiritual companioning she taught that we are to listen for one thing and one thing only (not whether we agree or what we think - that is none of our business, and certainly not to give advice).  Rather we are to be able to tell the other person at the end: "How did I hear 'the Life and Power' in what was said?"   I feel like this should be published in all the Faith and Practice books around Quakerdom.   I am not kidding.  I have so often watched people misunderstand the purpose of clearness committees and try to make comments of their own thoughts about what was said, or give advice.  Even when I have tried to explain in advance that we are not to do that and to hold in prayer what is said and confirm or not the truth of the leading as we heard it - I get blank stares and I have sat through way to much advise giving.   This one sentence so much succinctly and clearly explains what we are to do.  So I highly recommend Nadine Hoover's workshop!

Mad as Hell and not going to take it any more

 I guess you have to be of a certain age to recognize the words: "I am mad as Hell, and I am not going to take it any more."  Or even the phrase:  "Hell has no fury like a woman's".   But quite honestly I am furious, and I am not the only one!

My anger runs well past the obvious.  I am not simply mad that we have lost Roe vs Wade - that 50 years of case law has been swept away.  I am mad that this is only the beginning of what this extremist stolen court will do.  I have been furious since 2016 that Obama's last appointment for the Supreme Court was stolen (and that he took it.)  I have been furious that anyone died while Trump was in office.  I was mad that he of course would nominate a misogynist who had attempted rape and gotten away with it.  I was appalled that at any other time in my life the controversy Kavanaugh engender would have caused a normal president to withdraw his nomination.   I am mad at Susan Collins that she either played dumb then or she thinks we are dumb so as to now claims surprise and horror that he lied under oath saying Roe v Wade was "settled law".   

My anger does not stay on one side of the isle.  I am also angry with RBG, as much as I loved her, that she could not step away from her own passion for her position to do what was right for the country and retire before Obama's last year...but instead by her ego brought us Amy - the final nail in the coffin of the current Supreme Court.   I am angry with the whole Democratic party who somehow has not been able to come up with strategy for 20 years while the Republicans methodically took over statehouse after statehouse, redrew districts to stack them and took over enough of Congress to neuter first Obama and now Biden. The Republican have had think tanks and a long term plan...why haven't the Democrats? I am mad at countless Democrats over this country who were lazy enough or "did not feel excited enough" to vote in countless elections over the past 20 years...allowing the above drama to play out.  I am appalled that our public schools are poor enough and civics are not taught enough that people have not understood that every presidential vote they cast and every Senate vote they cast is creating the Supreme Court.  I am terrified of how this court may undue the last shreds of our Democracy.

Having spent my professional life listening to women I am heartbroken about the children who will be born to mother's who do not want them and will begrudgingly raise them so that they will feel on an unspoken level: unwanted, resented, unimportant and well worthless.   I am aware that adopted children spend a life time trying to feel really wanted, really like they matter or of value - it is a foundational wound we pretend does not exist when it in fact does.   I am already mourning for the women who will be force to give birth because they are poor and will become more poor.  I am already mourning for the women who will be forced to carry a rapist's baby to term or for the women who will die because their bodies cannot handle a pregnancy.   Right now I know a woman who in her mid 30's, a single mom with two young kids is dealing with her second round of breast cancer.   A year ago while in remission she turned up pregnant and her oncologist told her "you have hormone driven cancer - if you have this baby you will get cancer again."  She with sadness aborted and wound up with cancer anyway - which she would not be able to treat if she had been forced to carry that baby to term - thus probably leaving 3 children orphaned.  I am angry about all the suffering I see ahead - decided by men who have never birthed a baby.

I am horrified for my own daughter.  I spent all of my reproductive life under Roe vs Wade - from my first period to my last.  The idea that my 25 year old daughter already has less freedom than her mother is an aberration of history.  It defies the natural order of evolution.

I am mad at the Women's movement.  Where have you been?   Just send a few dollars to Planned Parenthood every time they are threatened?   That is not enough.  Where are the voices of leadership from Women?  Gloria Steinem is 88 years old - we cannot expect her to be the voice of the Women's movement - although reporters did still seek her comments.  Why in the past 50 years has no new voice of the movement arisen.  Why have Millennial women told me that we did not need a feminist movement any more because women were no longer discriminated against?  (Not making that up: actual conversation I had just 12 years ago.)  Why has not any of the endless threats against Roe vs Wade woken up a movement who saw the need to fight for it?  This is not to be confused with women leading things.  There are plenty of women leading states, corporations, organizations and certainly Black Lives Matter, etc.   That is not the same as women leading a movement on behalf of women. We cannot win change through hashtags.  Yes there were women - many who organized the two years of Women's Marches - but in a decentralized enough way that they had no one to make a plan, a strategy for what would come next.  I am mad at the media not covering their announced response to this decision (A march on WA for July 9th and a women's convention Aug 12-14 in Houston.) 

I carry an anger (way beyond this issue) that we do not teach the history of social change in our schools - that American's are largely ignorant of how powerful movements for abolition, for suffrage, for civil rights, for FLBGQ rights, for the end of wars, have been won in this country.   Americans carry the bizarre notion that voting and lobby is the only way to effect change.  And activists largely think that holding a protest rally or getting arrested (sitting down because we have so little imagination) is the only way to effect change.    It was not surprising therefore, but infuriating none the less, that after the leaked SCOTUS decision there were two protests called nation wide and then people sort of went home to WAIT!  Wait for what?  How on earth was it thought to be effective to wait during the one window of time that could conceivably have made a difference.  (The person who risked their whole career to leak that document sure must have been disappointed how little difference that made - just made enough time for the razor wire barricade to be built around the SC.)  I was furious at the two demonstrations I went to that speaker after speaker could only urge the crowd to "vote in Nov" ( a clearly too late strategy.)  We must stop relying on voting to solve everything.

What you say could have been done?  What should be done?   The research of Erica Chenowith on regime change clearly shows that when just 3% of the public remains in the streets (day in and day out) a dictator falls in a very short time. (And make no mistake that we have a dictatorial court right now.)  What would have happened if women had stayed in the streets after the leaked decision- if they had remained noisy without stop.  Would razor wire have felt like enough of a protection?   More to the point why was a Women's strike not held?  What if wait staff, store clerks, bus drivers, secretaries and office workers, teachers, civil servants, doctors and nurses of all genders refused to go to work?- what if 69% of women who want abortion and their male allied went on strike???  I think everything would grind to a halt.   And what if that did not stop till actual solution were implemented.

What do I mean by solutions?  Well three have been proposed: one is that Brent Kavanaugh and Neal Gorsuch were impeached for lying under oath? (Or Clarence Thomas for encouraging violence during the Jan 6th event?)   The other solution is that new Supreme Court seats be added - this is constitutional as the constitution does not name the number of seats the SC will have.   It started with 6, in 1801 it was reduced to 5 to try to limit the incoming party, it was quickly again increased to 6 and by 1807 that party increased it to 7, in 1837 it went up to 9 and briefly during the civil war was even 10, it was reduced again in 1866 to 7.  By 1869 it was put up to 9 where it has remained till now.  Given that very political history the only thing stopping us is the will to do it.   Similarly the Democrats could cancel the filibuster (another thing not in the constitution) and then pass a national abortion bill - or better yet a constitutional ERA amendment could be passed by a majority of states that includes the right to abortion.   But all of these things cannot be done in the current timid Democratic climate - they could only happen - any one of them if American's were in the street for weeks - if there was a national strike until change was adopted. 

I was at first terrified by Justice Thomas' comment about how they should "review" Gay marriage and trans rights, and contraception.   But then it occurred to me that if 69% of Americans want Abortion rights, 70% want gun control, and if all these mad people of all different races and genders joined together with the scared LBGTQ community and the scared BIPOC community - a very small out numbered handful of straight white men cannot keep us all down!  We just have to join together in unity.  But you have to want this enough to leave your homes.  You have to want it enough to keep fighting.  You have to want it enough to not rest until we win.

Time to stop just being mad and to not take it any more.

Finding Center Again

 Todays worship sharing topic in my worship community was about how we re-find or renew Center?  A Friend shared a sort of amusing dream where he was in a vehicle with his parents and his father was struggling to get the vehicle to work correctly and to find directions.   His mother kept suggesting she had some magic words for finding direction if we wanted them.  When he finally asked she said: Use GPS.  We all laughed in recognition of the stubborn part of each of us that will not take guidance.

I have a lot of reliable ways to re-center.   I wonder over and over again why I don't make regular use of my spiritual practices.  Why I am so determined to try to navigate by my own brain?   I liked the metaphor that I could have direction if I would just decide to turn on the GPS.

I thought of a time in my childhood where my Dad and my sister and I were visiting Cambridge and trying to go to the Friends Meeting there.  There is a round about quite close to it that does not connect directly to it.  We kept going around this roundabout, getting off at different spokes and not finding the Meeting.  We were already 10 mins late, I was begging my Dad to stop at a gas station and get directions but being a man he stubbornly refused insisting he was going to find it.  We were 15 mins late.  Finally at 30 mins late he said we were too late and it would be too embarrassing to enter late and so we gave up never having gotten there.

Many Friends shared this sense that we actually do know how to center but that we allow ourselves to be distracted, to be "too busy", to try to gut our way through things.   That for reasons mysterious to most of us we refused to turn towards the guidance that is available to us when we will turn to it.

Yes for those who have wondered about why this is the picture for my blog, it is about focusing on the center.

Pushing and Pulling

Early Friends believed that we could receive Divine Guidance for our lives.  That we could listen to the "still small voice within" for that guidance.  They were clear that we had to still ourselves so we were not let by ego or vanity.  Below is a quote from a modern day meditation teacher.

 This path of using life to evolve spiritually is truly the highest path.  There really is no reason for tension or problems.  Stress only happens when you resist life’s events.  If you’re neither pushing life away or pulling it towards you, then you are not creating any resistance.  You are simply present.  In this state, you are just witnessing and experiencing the events of life taking place.  If you choose to live this way, you will see that life can be lived in a state of peace.

Michael Singer

Another Quote:

I am sorry there is fear in the world.  That is what you have come to transform.  I am sorry for the forgetting that cause dark nights of loneliness for all of you.  You have come to walk in the forgetting in order to move to the remembering again.  In dark nights, in fear, ask your heart,  “Is this all there is?”  Your heart knows the answer.

 This second quote suggests the dark night of the soul experience where we forget God - that while pushing or pulling and coming from a place of fear that we are forgetting God, but this opens up the opportunity to be remembering God again and moving towards the Holy again.  The question is this all there is?  Is posed as a way to notice if we have gotten caught up in a world of superficial or illusionary concerns.

What is your experience with the pushing and the pulling of life described above and of the just being?

What pushing or pulling might you need to lay down?

What happens if you ask your fear – Is this all there is?