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!

99% Rising Up!- A Non-Violent Occupation

You may not know because of the media blackout, that the US is occupied by non-violent protesters who are taking back the US from the major corporations!  It of course started with

Occupy Wall street

23 days ago.  If you have watched Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore this is basically what he called for at the end of his rather damning indictment of Wall Street.  By last week it had spread to LA, Chicago, Seattle, etc.  But still a handful of cities –but then it exploded!  By Sat. 70 major cities and 600 communities were occupied.  Today the website: occupytogether.org (the central organizing website) lists over 1300 communities (go there to check for occupation closest to you!)

Here is a beautifully written story about the Occupy Wall Street demonstration.  http://www.nationofchange.org/we-danced-waiting-police-who-never-came-1318262783  The previous Saturday when 700 protesters where (misled) onto the Brooklyn Bridge by police and then sat down – 700 were arrested making is the largest act of mass act of civil disobedience in decades.  The media has gone from a total black out to what I would now call circus reporting – which is to go and focus on the strangest people there or other ways of trivializing what is going on.  For accurate reports one can go to Facebook/occupywallstreet or one can also find lots of live footage on youtube.

The Groups across the country are committed to a “horizontal process” by which they mean non-hierarchal and consensus based decision making.  Every day they have a “general assembly” where they make decisions.  The Occupy Wall Street group has written a beautiful “Declaration of Occupation”  (Despite the media’s claim that they have no focus and are protesting for “everything”.  I think the media is having a bit of hard time understanding how globalization and corporate personhood has far ranging impacts.)  Click here to read their statement  http://occupyseattle.org/resource/official-statement-occupy-wall-street

A unifying slogan of groups across the country is “We are the 99%” referring to the fact that 1% of the population control 60% of the wealth in this country.

I did go down to Occupy Seattle on Friday (which is at the plaza on the corner of 4^th and Pine).  Unfortunately, Seattle’s general assembly is now happening every day at 6:30 which is when our family eats dinner, so I have not been able to go to a general assembly.  But I did participate in a mini march from the mall to city hall the protest the 10^th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan – how very, very sad.  I also went to one of the many committee meetings that were taking place (they have committees for legal, first aid, food, safety, donations, webpage, etc.).   These tend to meet at 4pm.   I went to the outreach committee, responsible for helping bring more people in.   Because the city will not allow them any microphones or amplification, in order to hear each other they have established a process whereby when someone is recognized by the facilitator to speak they say:  “I have a proposal”  then the group echoes back “I have a proposal”   “that we contact union 47” “that we contact union 47”   It works, but boy if Quakers think consensus if slow….imagine having to repeat everything in small bites, so everything is said twice and then agree!  The one advantage I see this has is that it really discourages long winded people!

While I was there the outreach committee decided they would take to General Assembly, the decision to adopt the Wall Street declaration and come up with our own set of local demands.  Tonight, I understand that will be acted on.

Seattle is a city of rain and the occupation here has been kept alive by people being willing to sleep in the park overnight!  The liberal mayor is allowing them to stay, but last Wed after a week or so, made the police arrest anyone who would not pack up their tent.  So they are having to sleep out without tents.  The mayor has opened up a vacant lot behind city hall for them to sleep in at night and has allowed the “organizing canopy tent” to stay up overnight.  For those of you local – there is a list of things on their website that they need to keep going – please consider buying some of those things and bring them down.  On Friday I brought toilet paper and trash bags and packing tape – now their needs are different.  They are taking turns sleeping in the park without tent while others sleep at city hall.  There are a series of small protests that go out every day from the site to other sites.

When I came home Friday and talked about it my husband said:  “Well this is good, but how will it change things?” Without stopping to think the first words out of my mouth was:  “Well it will certainly make it harder for people in Congress to dismantle Social Security and Medicaid with the cities of the US occupied – harder to not pass the Job’s bill.”   But then this began to percolate in me more when I learned the next day that really truly 600 communities were occupied.  I realized that the word “demands” which is often used by protesters in a way which is a bit grandiose in the sense that we are rarely in a position to demand anything, was actually appropriate here.  I realized that in fact if every Congress person has cities in their district “occupied” with citizens and voters who are fed-up and not taking no for an answer – you actually are in a position to demand change.  Activists have been saying for 4 years that no real change will come out of DC unless there is a movement – well now there is one!  So I realized “hmmm, how long till it is so big that a nation wide general strike can be held.   So I started focusing in earnest on demands.  Below is my not all inclusive list.  (Please respond with your additional ideas).  I have to say there was a freedom in writing this to ask for things we really want that I have rarely felt in my life….try it you will really enjoy it.

Demands

1. An End to Corporate Personhood
2. An increased tax on the wealthiest 2% of America
3. A 6 month wind down to the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan , Libya and Korea = zero US soldiers occupying those countries.
4. With the “war savings” restore human services to their previous highest level and pay down the national debt- taking our descendants out of debt.
5. A jobs bill that spends money on infrastructure and puts American’s to work
6. An end to subsidies for oil and coal.
7. A subsidy for Alternative energy so we can really get it going.
8. Cancel all consideration of the Tar Sands Pipe Line
9. Set Carbon goals for the US that will aggressively move us to 350 parts per million carbon and sign international treaties to this effect.
10. Abolish the Federal Reserve
11. Create a State Bank in every state.
12. End the illegal foreclosures, refinance all predatory loans.
13. Enforce Corporate monopoly laws
14. Break up Montsanto and Blackwater and the 3 Media monopoly stranglehold
15. Create real Net neutrality
16. Create universal health care in the US
17. NO cuts to Social Security and Medicare- ever
18. Stop producing weapons of mass destruction and immediately begin the unilateral disarmament of the US
19. End the death penalty
20. Reinstate the Glass-Stegall Act

For those of you who know the actor Wallace Shawn, he was interviewed at Occupy Wall Street and said: "I don't know about other people, but I only have one life, so I don't want to live it in a sewer of injustice.  Life is short – it is time to make it count."  These comments remind me of Joanna Macy who is talking about the time of “great turning” that our society is in says:  “What an exciting time to be alive”.  I could not agree more!

Intentional Acts of Kindness

A month ago a colleague of mine died suddenly, one day after his 60th birthday.  He had a big birthday party with friends and family. A mutual colleague had flown to WY to be with him and then, as planned, the two of them went on a day hike the next day.  Towards the end, 1 mile from the trail head, Bob collapsed and, as was later established, died instantly of a massive heart attack.  Our mutual colleague emailed 60 of us who responded with a sort of online memorial service, sharing our shock, are sadness and our memories of Bob.  Bob had a huge heart (ironically considering how he died).  He was very kind to everyone, quick with humor and to aid another.  Someone asked his wife if she wanted flowers or donations or what, sent where?  Her response was she said "Do an act of kindness in memory of Bob". 

It seemed a perfectly fitting memorial.  My problem was I thought of several things I was already scheduled to do that were acts of kindness. Well, those did not seem to count - they would have occurred anyway.  What was big enough, or special enough, or not premeditated enough, or planned enough to count as the act of kindness for Bob?  While I was trying to figure this out, I noticed that my family members were irritating and pissing me off in any number of ways which was leaving me feeling very justified in responding in snarly ways. That when it felt like they were standing on my "emotional shoes" that I felt quite justified in getting them "off" my shoes. I certainly was not acting in kindness towards them.  Oh Bob, I hear you calling.

However, this was not as easy as it seemed.  I would notice time and again, after not being kind that I had forgotten my resolve.  This is really very embarrassing for a Quaker.  Hardly, walking over the earth answering cheerful to others, huh?  In fact, I do not think I have enough consecutive hours in, to in anyway, to say I have honored Bob yet.  

So today in Meeting for worship I was reflecting on this, trying to understand the problem and how I can get a handle on this and turn it around.  I was also aware of it being 9/11 and my feelings of judgment of this country that in our grief over 3,000 dead, we have caused the deaths many times over of American soldiers, Iraqi and Afghani soldiers and thousands of civilians.  I realized that just like me, this country in its pain and vulnerability reacted to protect itself and feels justified in doing so.  As I continued to wrestle with this, I saw the part of me that I feel I need to defend, a hurt little girl, and I mentally could pick her up and put her on God's lap.  From that vantage point I could feel the peace from which to be loving, compassionate and kind.   I hope that our country too can find its way to God's lap.

Quaker Outreach - or Letting our Light Shine

Recently at my Yearly Meeting, the opening night we did a series of short exercises to help us get to know each other.  Everyone got in a circle clockwise from oldest to youngest one.  The oldest was born in 1922, and we all cheered.  The youngest were 4 HS students who were in the room.  But for me the exercise confirmed my worst fears.  We raised our hands:  "everyone born in the 20’s, everyone born in the 30’s" (both about 10 to 15 people – what you would expect in age groups diminished by death), "everyone born in the 40’s" – the largest group in the room – probably 80 of our 200, the Baby boom.  “everyone born in the 50’s”  another huge group – the tail of the baby boom.  Probably 75 people.   There I was, the very last person born in the 50’s, born just two days before the 60’s started.  As I have my whole life, I felt not quite part of that group and anxiously looking over my shoulder to see who was coming behind me.  To my dismay, I saw 4 people in the ‘60’s, 3 in the 70’s and 3 in the 80’s and the 4 high schoolers born in the ‘90s.     My heart sank as I don’t think the 15 of us will be able to run the Yearly Meeting in 25 years!

Ok, I will grant you, it may not be quite as bad as it seemed.  The people in the 60’s thru ‘80’s are all working.  Some did not take off from work and arrived later in the week.  Some may have been out of the room putting children to bed.   However, I know because all the time I try to figure out who is “behind me”….there are not that many.  I also realized during this exercise that for the oldest members they look behind and see the huge bulge of baby boomer Friends and feel assured that there are capable hands to take over from them when they die.  For those born in the boom, in the 40’s and 50’s, they stand in a thick grove of trees and see lots of comrades, healthy numbers and nothing to worry about.   For me though serving among those born in the 50’s I was always the youngest in the room.  I was always waiting for the young people to come…..and they did not come.  In the my twenties and thirties I thought “well people this age don’t attend churches in great numbers”, but my the time I hit my 40’s I felt very worried.  Now in my 50’s when I think of it, it is more of a feeling of panic- deep fear for the survival of unprogrammed Friends in the world and now also a grief.

Another way to think about this is: what was happening in the Society of Friends in the 80’s (when those born in their 60’s were coming of age) and in the 90’s when those born in the 70’s were coming of age)?  Clearly in the 60’s and 70’s Friends were front and center in the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the Peace movement – so lots of baby boomers saw us and saw our values and joined.  The ‘80’s and ‘90’s were quieter times in the nation and in the Society of Friends – but apparently young people did not find us as a result of our low visibility.

I don’t think it is just my Yearly Meeting – I think a similar exercise could be done in Yearly Meetings around the country with similar results.  I think this sheds a whole different light on the so many State of the Meeting reports that say that nominating committees are having a hard time finding enough people to serve on committees.  It is not just because we are all “busy”; it is because there are not enough of us! I think if we all don’t want 15 people to be running our Yearly Meetings in 25 years, we need to be shining our Light to our community so that those who need and want Quakerism can find us.

Several years ago my Quarter had a theme  “Don’t hide your Light”.   I was asked to be on a panel about the subject.  Mostly it was addressed from the point not hiding our individual gifts and beauty.  But I talked about it from the point of view of Quakerism and Quaker outreach.  Afterwards, I led an interest group on outreach – about ¼ of our attenders showed up to it!  Just out of spur of the moment curiosity I asked us to start by going around the room and asking everyone there how they first found Quakerism.  (Since then I have continued the experiment by asking different Friends as I meet them – with very similar results).  The stories were interesting, but disturbing to me in one similarity – how accidental the encounter was and how hard it sometimes was to find Quakerism. 

A frequent theme was people “church shopping”.  People would describe the frustration of seeking and not finding what they wanted – years spent in churches that did not fit them.  They would describe things like going to check out the Unitarians and discovering the Quaker’s meeting in the basement.  Quite a number had found us by seeing a Meeting House sign and wondering….   But more sad to me were the stories of people who knew well some Friend – a coworker or a distant relative and being impressed or interested by what the Friend said, but NEVER being invited by the Quaker to visit their church.  (Including one story where the person broadly hinted to their coworker with no result).  In these stories usually years to decades later something made them decide to find the nearest Quaker Meeting to them and go. 

Quite commonly positive exposure to Quakers through Quaker camps, schools, relatives or the peace movement made people tuck away the idea of Quakers until some moment moved them to find us.  A number of people described how hard it was to find a Meeting while actually trying.  (They looked up Quakers not knowing it was listed under Friends, etc.)  There were only a few stories of people who knew a Quaker and were invited to come to Quaker Meeting.  But all the stories pretty much end the same way.  “When I finally came to my first meeting, I sat there in the silence, in relief and new I had finally found what I was looking for.  I was home.”

Friends, we can do a better job than this!  We can do better than listings that only a person who already knows the name of the Meeting can find.  Or Meeting houses whose sign do not speak to passers by.  We can do better than failing to invite the people we know to share one of the joyous experiences of our lives out of…shyness? Embarrassment? The fear of evangelizing?  I don’t believe anyone would fear evangelizing if they heard some of these tortured stories of true Seekers trying to find us!

In my therapy practice often if I ask people about their spiritual life, they will tell me: “Well I have no Religion, but I am a spiritual person.  I believe in God or something greater than myself…but I don’t like the dogma and rituals of the Church.  I wish there was someplace where I could go and just be a spiritual person; a place that supported my spiritual life.”  As a therapist it really is not appropriate to evangelize, so I just smile and nod.  But often I feel sad that these seekers will never stumble across the knowledge of the very thing they are looking for.  Friends we can do a better job than this.

A Quaker Response to the death of Osama Bin Laden

When I heard that Bin Laden had been assinated by the US Seal team 6, I was not surprised.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.  It did not seem surprising that he had come to a violent death or that my government had hunted him down till they had killed him.  It was however sad to me that there was more killing, and that the US had violated International Law by entering another sovereign nation without their permission to do this.  It was worrisome to me that we continue to erode boundaries in the world with the justification of revenge - and what will the long term effects of eroded boundaries be?

But far more disturbing was my fellow citizens response of jubilation, celebrations in the street, off color jokes, calls to print gruesome pictures of his dead body with part of his head blown off.  Most Quakers have this experience of having a minority response to events in the world - especially those involving violence and war.  However, we do not normally expect to get to have our say about those things.

To my surprise however I was contacted by a host of a public radio show looking for diverse (and I think she hoped non-vengeful responses) to Bin Laden's death.  So today I was on the radio representing a Quaker response to his death.  If you wish to listen you can stream the audio here: http://kbcsweb.bellevuecollege.edu/playlist/archive/?ShowID=19173#
Peace,  Lynn

Pineapple's and Butterflies

When I was 13 or 14 I sat on a bench in Meeting looking out the window wondering if there was a God.  Out the window I could see a purple Iris with a drop of dew on it with the light glinting in the drop to show a rainbow.  I started to think about how light refracts, about how water evaporates and then becomes clouds which become rain returning to nurish plant life.  I thought about how bees help plants reproduce, and I felt overwhelmed by the perfection of creation, and in that moment I knew there is indeed a Creator.  I have also since then not seen a purple Iris without knowing that there is God (One of the reasons I carried them at my wedding.)

It use to annoy me that people said " God bless you" when everyone sneezes.  I thought of it as a foolish superstition going back to old beliefs that when we sneeze the devil can enter our body.  But I decided one day:  "What if I just take the words literally, as God blessing me.  So sneezes have also become a reminder for me of the presense of God.

In an event that happened so long ago I no longer remember all the details, I was having a very spritual moment and a butterfly landed on me, and then flew off almost leading me somewhere.  After that event I have chosen since butterflys do not come by that often, to let them also remind me of the presense of the Holy One.  These three signs have seemed like the right number.

Photo: Fay Anderson

                                                              
But on Sunday pineapples took on a new meaning for me - no not about the presence of the Divine, but rather the absence.  In our Meeting we have a tradition of someone bringing flowers which sit in their vase on a small side table in front of the picture windows looking out on the 2nd growth 100 year old woods.  Some times if the person designated to bring flowers forgets, we have a vase on a back table with a couple of small branches of a tree that have small origami paper peace crane's dangling from them.  We bring that vase forward.  On this Sunday our Meeting was full of visitors come for Yearly Meeting Coordinating committee, and it appeared someone had forgotten the flowers.

I sat for a long time debating in my head whether I should get the vase of paper cranes or if someone was just late.  Eventually the children left and I realized that I had been worrying about this for 10 minutes!  I thought:  "this is ridiculous...either go get the vase or let this go."   I decided that it would be a good spiritual practice of detachment if I would let it go.  So I let it go.  And the very next minute in came a Friend carrying a pineapple and three small votive candles which she with difficulty lit in front of the pineapple.

It occurred to me that the next time I saw pineapple it would be a reminder to check how I was doing on releasing the things that keep me from worshiping My Creator.  What things serve for you as reminders of the presence of God?

Growing Towards the Light

Yesterday was a beautiful first day of spring.  I went outside to survey the garden.  In the fall my husband and son had replaced some logs that held a bank in place.  They had dropped cut pieces on the ground were months before flowers had been.  However, now in spring those same bulbs had tried to come forth, only to find their tender buds under boards.  I moved the offending boards to find that the plants, sensing a small crack of Light, had grown sideways till they reached the edge of the board and then up - in a sort of backwards L.

Hmmm,  I thought: Life is kind of like that.  We sense the Light, even when it is only a small glint of it, and we grow towards the Light.

Recently for our anniversary my husband and I were looking at the photoes from our wedding 4 years ago.  Everyone is familiar, but older.  In the kids cases, they are a foot taller now and more "mature" looking, but for most of us, it means more grey hair and more wrinkles.  Yes, I thought, the slow march towards death.  Huh, how does that fit with my previous thought that all life grows towards the Light?

Then I realized - oh yes, it is the same.  Our slow march towards death is also the path back to the Eternal Light.  It seems some of us will live shorter lives than we thought we would and others will live much longer than they thought they would.  So what of the march - does it matter if all our days our numbered, how we spend those days? How do we make our days count?  I think it is not some "productive doing", but rather have we lived those days with Love and with Light?  Have you grown towards the Light today?

Why should NPYM affiliate with FGC?

The first time I went to FGC was when I was 22.  I went every year for the next 13 years until my daughter was born after which I went more irregularly. I think I have been 22 times.  In my twenties like many Young Friends I moved around the country until I finally landed in Seattle at 26.  My membership remained in the Meeting I grew up in until at 36 I knew I was going to stay somewhere and transferred.  So between 18 when I left home and 36 the constant in my Quaker experience was my annual attendance at FGC.  Some of my deepest most profound experiences have happened at FGC.  Thus I would say from personal experience FGC helps keeps young people attached to Quakerism.


What was so important to me at FGC?  The format of FGC is different than a Yearly Meeting.  No business is done at the national level – that is properly left to the Yearly Meetings.  It is Sat to Sat affair.  There is 5 whole days of the mornings spent in workshop- you choose one topic from a smorgasbord of topics and immerse yourself for 3 hours a day in that topic.  The topics are on a range of spiritual and Quaker Practice topics (with a few purely recreational topics).  Most attendees rank the workshops as the highlight of their week. Children attend a very fun children’s program during the same time and also in the evening while parents are at Plenary.  The Plenaries are talks or performances given by well known Quakers or one prominent none Friend (Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at FGC during this lifetime.)  The “free time” in the afternoon is jam packed full of opportunities to go on local field trips, hear speakers from Quaker organizations or meet in any number of interest groups or support groups (Women’s Center, Men’s Center, Family Center, Friends of Color, AA, etc.)  This is why my ex-husband used to say:  “You go there every year like a dead battery and you come back renewed.”


I’m not a native Northwestern, although on my next birthday I will have lived in Seattle longer than my Midwestern origins.  I do understand the intentions of the founders of this Yearly Meeting to remain separate from the divisions in Quakerism – to perhaps be an assistance to the healing.  This is a very worthy goal. I also know that currently the Yearly Meeting is made up of unprogrammed Meetings – just as FGC is.  In fact, FGC has two United Yearly Meetings affiliated, it has Meetings that are programmed and also affiliated with FUM in its midst.  I know that when Friends move out to the west from FGC affiliated Yearly Meetings, they look up our Meetings and attend them, and they never notice the difference.   I traveled broadly among Unprogrammed Friends, and honestly I cannot tell you one difference I have been able to notice in Independent Meetings vs  Unprogrammed Friends.  For me it feels far less divisive to stop talking about Beanites and Hicksites and instead just talk about unprogrammed Friends.

This is not to sweep away the importance of the issue of what should we do about the divisions in Quakerism?  I simply would say if we want to focus on that, then we ought to focus on that, and figure out something to actually do.  Not affiliating is a non-action.  It is a not doing anything.  Given that there are other Yearly Meetings in the NW that are affiliated with FUM and with Evangelical Friends – I fail to see how our Independence has healed anything.  If those Yearly Meetings would be upset by our affiliation I would have to ask them why they affiliated long ago?

In the meantime if we look at the programs of FGC:
The Bookstore and its publications
The Annual Gathering of FGC held in July each year
Small conferences and workshops
The interfaith committee
Traveling Ministries programs
Friends Meeting House Fund
Committee on Ministry for racism
Youth Ministries Committee

There is much we already benefit from here and much more we could benefit from.  Most Meetings in this yearly Meeting have purchased books or First Day curriculum from FGC bookstore and many Meetings have benefited from the Meeting House Fund.  Many Friends scattered throughout our Yearly Meeting have on occasion (a few regularly) attended the Gathering.  Traveling Ministries offers to send Seasoned Friends to help a Meeting solve a problem or deepen its spiritual life.  Not unlike M&O of our Yearly Meeting does – but it is another resource, sometimes more neutral.  We could benefit from more exposure to the Committee on Ministry for Racism’s gentle nudges to see the racism we maybe unaware of.  The Youth Ministries Committee while new is hard at work trying to figure out how to nurture Young Friends- they are seeing to the future of Quakerism.  FGC offers all these services to any Meeting in the US or Canada regardless of whether they are affiliated which is why we have been able to make use of many of these programs.  However, I feel we need to apply the NPR standard here. I listen to NPR and because I do, I choose to pay an annual membership to it.  I could just listen- but I don’t think that is fair.

Friends rightly are concerned about whether paying for our affiliation, finding representatives and paying for their flight will be a burden to the Yearly Meeting.  For myself I wonder if we need all 4 representatives we are allowed.  I think we could get by just fine with two- its not like in consensus there is some numerical advantage to having more representatives.  I think like our other representatives some who serve will combine their service with visits to friends or family that they intend to take anyway and will not therefore ask to be reimbursed for travel.  I also think all Quaker organizations are being pressed to look in this area of declining oil and increasing carbon pollution at how we can to our business in more environmentally friendly ways.  I think Friends are increasingly trying to use technology: conference calls, skype, etc to do our business.   FGC is actively looking at how to reduce the number of committee meetings.  In fact FGC may have to look at creating a West Coast and an East Coast Gathering because of the travel cost.  If there was a Gathering of OK Friends, Intermountain Yearly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting,  Alaska Yearly Meeting, and NPYM would that be something that would make you glad to be part of FGC?

I have noticed among some of my lifelong NWYM folks a sort of suspiciousness or distrust of those “East coast Philly folks”.   (Kind of like the joking maps of the US – the ones on the east coast showing some detail till you get to the Mississippi and then after that a sort of misshapen expanse.  The ones drawn on the west coast showing detail to the Rockies and then misshapen expanse with Chicago, NYC and DC drawn in.)  I’m not sure this kind of world view moves any of us forward.   We shake our heads when Americans make gross characterizations of people from other countries they have never visited.  It would be good if we could not do that about other Quakers because they come from other parts of the country.   We have things to learn from them and they have things to learn from us.  For those who feel this uneasiness about affiliating I think we must look closely and figure out is the easiness about real issues, or about a sort of unconscious distrust of the unfamiliar?

I asked my daughter, age 14 who has been to FGC most of her life what role it plays in her close identification with Quakerism.  She said:  I saw there that Quakerism is big.  (Gatherings held on college campuses tend to be about 1500 to 2000.) and the workshops I went to (children’s gathering) we did worship sharing and that’s the only place I have done that ,and I had spiritual experiences there.  I made friends with Quakers my age.”  (She stays in touch with them all year via email and Facebook.)  Like many young friends there are not enough young people her age to have that experience in our Meeting or even really in Yearly Meeting.

My greatest reason why I wish our Yearly Meeting would affiliate with FGC is the concern that I have carried for decades: the concern for the survival of unprogrammed Friends.  All my adult life I have been waiting to not be one of the youngest Friends in the room.  Sadly at 51 I’m usually still one of the youngest in the room.  There is something very wrong with that picture!   Since FGC’s whole mission is about nurturing the spiritual life of unprogrammed Friends – I feel it’s mission is something that is really, really important.  A Yearly Meeting simply does not have the resources to do the kind of nurturing that a national organization does.  I’m not sure how we will heal the splits of Quakerism by simply witnessing the slow decline decade by decade of unprogrammed Friends.

Meeting for Worship and the Heavenly Host

Several Years ago this west coast Friend took a trip to the East Coast where I worshipped one Sunday in a 200+ year old Friends Meeting and then traveled down to Philadelphia and visited the Arch Street Meeting house.   While many older East coast Meeting houses  still have signs of when men and women were divided during worship – West coast meeting house are often built in the last 75 years or are rented facilities.   Thus I was very struck by how as I sat worshipping in the NY meeting I felt the palpable Presence of Friends in black and grey, in bonnets and with broad rimmed hats in their lap.  And this same feeling was overwhelming in the empty gigantic worship room of

Arch street

.  I felt like I could feel hundreds of souls gathered to hear the Truth, and was roused by thinking what it would have been like to have the majority of all one’s neighbors actually be Friends.

I thought of that however as basically a tourist experience – meaningful primarily to a current Friend and not perceivable to the average tourist.  This week however, in a book study group for my Meeting which I attend we got to talking somehow about how the vast majority of members sit in the same seat each Sunday and we shared somewhat amusing antidotes about why we sit in the seat we have each selected.  As I thought about it I realized with was mostly true at many Meetings I have gone to over the years.

I also realized that I still feel the presence of several of the dozen deceased Friends from our Meeting who have died in the past decade.  Each had their familiar chair they sat in which usually stay vacant until some unsuspecting new person claimed the chair.  Other’s nodded as I shared that I still felt them with us in worship.

 We decided, with some amusement that this Sunday we would each sit in a completely different spot and see what happened.  My own thought was that the familiarity of the spot somehow helped us to center and that it would be a distraction.  However, perhaps it was a coincident, but we had a very Gathered worship this Sunday- after a long period where we have had primarily silence in Meeting for worship.  I must say I’m sort of struck with a rather quantum mechanics idea of time: past, present and future being also simultaneous.  Next time you sit down to worship you might wonder upon whose lap you sit?

A message from the Past: Perfect Love Casts out Fear

There is an old Quaker joke:  “Two men are sitting on a bench.  The first man feels the second man begin to tremble and shake, but this goes on for a long time and no message is delivered.  Finally the first man rises and delivers a message.  At the rise of Meeting he turns to the second man and says:  Friend, next time deliver your own damn message thy self!”   To Quaker sensitivities this is a very funny joke because it talks about both the imperative to deliver a message and the fact that we sometimes deliver a message for another.

            In the past year my Meeting had a second hour/adult Ed hour in which we were asked to share messages that we had heard at some point that “stuck with us”   Many remembered deep, meaningful, searing messages or  Covered Meetings in which all messages flowed as if one piece of music.  I too thought of messages like this, but eventually I was moved to share of a message that had stuck with me for what I thought of as a “bad” reason.

            In the Meeting I grew up in there was an elderly woman who spoke almost every Meeting at almost exactly twenty minutes after the hour.  My father who was very genuine about the injunction to only speak when moved by God was very irritated with her and would frequently in the car on the way home make negative comments about her or jokes about how “God sets his watch to her.”  That and the fact that she quoted the Bible resulted in my never taking her very seriously.

            But the message she gave over and over again was to quote one of the verses of Corinthians and to talk about how “perfect love casts out fear”.   As I shared this remembered message with my Meeting, it suddenly occurred to me that the Achilles heel of my faith life for as long as I can remember has been how being in a state of fear or anxiety about something, I “forget God”.  Suddenly as I was speaking I found myself saying:  “I now realize she was giving the message for me, and because I was too young to understand it she had to say it over and over again until I had memorized it….only to remember it 40 years later and finally receive the message.”  I sat down in tears.

            In addition to being a very amazing way to receive a message it has also taught me to make no assumptions about the validity of a message given by another.

From the Center

George Fox said: “You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles saith then, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?” This he said during a period of time when the Catholics and Protestants were fighting with each other about the ultimate source of truth: the Bible or Papal authority. Fox’s radical message was that people could have a direct experience of God and know the Truth themselves. It is still a very radical message.

It is to this Center – the direct experience of God - that we must return over and over again as we try to make our Meetings what we want them to be. How would our business Meetings be if we could listen for Divine direction? How would our committee meetings be if we could find that Guidance? How would our fellowship be if we could feel the Inner Light of those we are Gathered with? How would our worship be if we believed the Holy One would provide the messages and that is what we heard? This help is available to us in that Living Center.

In the early days of Quakerism Friends would greet each other: “How goes the Spirit with Thee?” This was a serious question. It was not the “How are you?” with obligatory answer of “Fine” (regardless of how we really are), but a sincere desire to know the spiritual state of the other which was considered paramount. Friends expected to know each other spiritually. Early Friends also worshipped with their neighbors. They raised each other’s barns, they birthed each other’s babies and they usually knew each other from cradle to grave.

Spiritual Nurture

It is harder for modern Friends to really know each other. We usually see each other only on Sundays, and we sit in silence which does not breed familiarity. One of the things we must find new ways to do is to know each other spiritually, so that when we look around our Meetings for Worship we know each other’s spiritual conditions and those speak to us also in the silence. It is good that in our adult ed hours we learn about Quaker history, our testimonies and about the social concerns of our day, but we need to do worship sharing together as well – to know who has a spiritual dry spell right now, who is alive with the spirit, who is in a spiritual crisis, what is the nature of the spiritual dilemmas we each struggle with? We need to know how our personal relationships with God are going!

When we know each other in this way, a work party is holy fellowship. When we know each other this way, we have patience and forbearance for each other in our committee work. When we know each other this way, we hear the holy message clothed in the personality and speaking style of our friend who has risen to deliver the Author’s message. When we are known this way, our community becomes The Parent’s arms which hold us in our struggles.

There are more convinced Friends in the Society of Friends than ever before since the first generation of Friends. Some convinced Friends have been Friends for many decades, others have attended for only a few months. Small Meetings struggle with how to teach and model Quakerism to new attenders. When we fail at this, we risk losing our Center as a Religious Society of Friends. Mennonites are much clearer than Quakers in talking about God's Kingdom and the World, which is made up of "powers and principalities." They speak of two ways of being in the world – one with the Divine at the Center and one where we are lost in the values, customs and beliefs of the popular culture. Among Mennonites, non-conforming means not to adhere to World values, instead to be true to Kingdom values. When we, as Friends, fail to teach new Friends about the Divine Center, then democracy, a majority rule mindset, starts to sift into our business meetings and committee meetings. The way of the World suggests that we strike compromises rather than engage in the process of divine guidance that leads to spiritual consensus. A polite social distance that is not too "nosey" drifts into our expectations of how well we know each other. Uninspired messages, or no messages at all, are given because we no  longer know how to season or test messages. Ultimately, when we fail to teach and model Quakerism, the ways of the world start to sneak in and we lose what is most precious to us as Friends, our Divine Center.

Eldering:

To nurture each other well in Quakerism we must recapture the original meaning of eldering. Among Friends these days, ‘Eldering’  has taken on something of a “dirty word” status because in the worst days of our history during the splits, elders wrote people out of meeting and elders tried to keep a rigid orthodoxy. The phrase itself is not self-explanatory. While it seems to simply imply an older person, early Friends records show “elders” or “weighty friends” were often recorded in their 20’s; it had nothing to do with age. Eldering is about nurturing others in Quakerism and having spiritual discernment. We could attempt to substitute the modern day word mentoring, but a mentor is not necessarily grounded in Spirit, nor does the word connote spiritual support. This would again bring in concepts from the World that do not reflect the whole spiritual picture of the Kingdom.

It is easy sometimes to look at our Meeting  with frustration and see the shortcomings from the Quaker ideal, to compare this Meeting with others we have attended or to this Meeting in better times. I think instead we must approach our relationship to Meeting as one approaches a marriage. Two parties have entered into a mutually committed relationship: for better and for worse, in sickness and in health…and Quakers were so wise to add: “with divine assistance I will be such a partner”. So rather than looking at what is missing in our Meetings and feeling critical we must look at it as the beloved one that we are to nurture and that we will do this not alone but with Holy Assistance. Again as we turn to the Center we will receive guidance with which to improve our Meetings.

Ministry

If we feel that ministry is not rich in our Meeting, we must work to build worship sharing and ways of getting to know each other spiritually at a greater depth. If we feel our committees are not functioning well we must look to a spiritually grounded nominating process, and we must look to how we have built fellowship in general in our Meeting. If our committees are overburdened we must look to outreach, nurturing Friends who maybe disaffected, and to simplifying our committee structure so it serves well and does not merely mirror “how we have always done it”. If our Meetings for Worship for Business are tedious and non-productive we must look at the overall spiritual wellbeing of our meeting and how well our committees are functioning, as well as how we teach business practice to our new members. We must also look to how we use outside resources: FGC, Yearly Meeting, Pendle Hill, etc. to build skills in our clerk and committee clerks.

Marriages are work. They do not succeed without effort and nurturing. The same is true of Meetings. We are also enriched by marriages which provide us a place to give and receive love and to build a home. The same is also true of our membership in our Meetings. Some people wonder over the reason to become a member as opposed to remaining an attender. For me it is to commit ourselves to a mutually fulfilling relationship and the work which that entails.

Elders do this kind of work in their Meetings. They listen to the Center to discern the condition of the Meeting. They take actions designed to support the spiritual wellbeing of the Meeting, and they nurture other members in their spiritual life. This means everything from encouraging the unfolding verbal ministry of those who are just beginning, to nurturing the Children and newcomers in learning the ways of Quakerism. It means discerning and nurturing the gifts of members in our nominating processes. It means creating adult ed programs designed to support where the Meeting struggles and is trying to grow. It means providing pastoral care or oversight to Meeting members and attenders that deepens their connections to the Meeting and nurtures their spiritual lives. It means facing the conflicts in our midst and dealing with them with love rather than trying to sweep them under the carpet. It means being willing to share joyfully what we experience in Quakerism with those we meet in the world. It means sharing what we love and cherish about Quakerism, so that we may offer it as an attractive place for others to visit and find their spiritual home.

This was “given” as a message to the author while visiting AZ  Half-Yearly Meeting of InterMountain Yearly Meeting.

This was published in Friends Journal in Nov. 2010 under the tittle:The Divine Center and Communal Nurture

Diversity and Unity in the Religious Society of Friends

One of the trickiest things before the Society of Friends today is how to embrace our diversity without losing our Center or that which defines us as a faith.  Since the times of the great splits in Quakerism we have not handled this well. The scar tissue is present and in some cases contributes even to this day to our difficulties.

A look at almost any page of Fox’s journals shows that our founder most definitely saw himself in a personal relationship with an Inward Christ and that he had memorized the Bible from which he quoted frequently.  It is hard to argue anything other than he defined himself as a Christian.  This explains why historians list Quakerism as a Christian church. Yet the heart of his message, that we could know the Truth experientially and personally, embraces a kind of tolerance that naturally allows for and includes a huge diversity of beliefs.  Among modern day unprogramed Friends, we find those who identify as Christ-Centered or Christian, as God centered Christians, as God Centered non Christians, Universalist or humanist Friends, and any number of Buddhists, Jews and Pagans who find the local Friends Meeting to be their spiritual home.  Most Friends Meetings welcome and include all who come to worship there – sometimes cheerfully and peacefully, and sometimes not without tension and conflict.

Travel among unprogrammed Friends and you will quickly find that various Meetings can become fairly polarized between at least two of the above mentioned groups.  You will also see that people can feel quite threatened as to whether their brand of Quakerism is really welcomed and accepted in Meeting, and anxious about whether “those people” will take over the Meeting and destroy that which the individual holds most precious and dear.  The conflict is often especially sharp around language – whether God/He or Goddss/She or God/no-gender pronoun should be used and whether Christ or no Christ should be used in spoken messages. 

Diversity

One can also hear expressed fears that we have become so tolerant and accepting of divergent views that we are in danger of becoming nothing but a group of nice people who all meet together on Sundays and are politically progressive!  (This especially can be seen in the contentious dialogue about whether sweat lodges should be allowed at FGC.)  Is it possible to stretch a religious view so far that it no longer means anything?  In 2009 would George Fox still express himself in the same way and what would he think about the diversity in our midst?  (This is a guy after all who went to other people’s churches, stood up in the pews while the minister was speaking and preached his own Truth of the Inner Christ!)  Talk to anyone who has served on a committee to rewrite our Faith and Practice and you will hear how hard it is for us to come to consensus on a statement of our beliefs.  (Several Yearly Meetings have Faith and Practices’ more than a dozen years old for I fear this very reason.)

Tolerence

I can only speak to these questions in a personal way.  I grew up in one Meeting, sojourned among many, and then transferred my membership some 12 years ago to my current Meeting.  I feel that both my Meetings have embraced lovingly the diversity of beliefs in our midst.  I was instructed as a child by my parents that Quakerism is a historically Christian religion and that the correct answer to the question “did I belong to a Christian church?” was yes.  This was taught to me by my father, who was very clear that he did not believe in the divinity of Christ, but only in the historical Jesus.  Jesus was as powerful a teacher for him about non-violence as his other two cherished heroes: Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  My father identified as a universalist and a humanist.  I identify as a non-Christian Quaker, with a devout belief in God, who belongs to a Christian church.  This maybe confusing for some, especially non-Friends, but it is not at all confusing to me.

Some of my closest friends in Friends have always identified as Christ Centered Friends and this is not troubling to either them or me.  It is not a problem because when we speak to each other of our spiritual experience, we find at the heart the same relationship to the Divine.  In fact I think when one reads the great sacred texts of any religion you can feel beneath the surface of the words the experience of the Eternal One.  I wonder if we could learn to listen to each other this way in Meeting?  If a speaker gives a message with different pronouns or descriptors of God than we might use (The Christ, he for example or the Goddess, She) could we learn to hear the Eternal One beneath those words?

The balancing act between tolerance of other Friend’s views and the abandonment of the essence of Quakerism is the most challenging thing before us.  It is good that Buddhist or Jewish or Pagan individuals feel they can come and worship with us- that our format is flexible and accepting enough for them to find the Truth as they know it in the silence.

However, I do not feel that being welcome means that one then gets to change what Quakerism is.  I do not expect that a welcome guest in my home gets to move all the furniture around.  Even though I do not identify as Christian I do not get to change Quakerism from being a Christian religion or claim to the world that it is not Christian.  I believe that Christ and universalist mysticism were both central threads in the spirituality and practice of George Fox and early Friends.  I do not believe that either group of current Friends can claim that they are the only legitimate inheritors or practitioners of Quakerism.  Both threads are woven throughout the history of Friends.

The influence of American liberalism is one of the things that have contributed to confusion among Friends about how to respond to our differences.  For the most part the US educational system is based upon liberalism and certainly American social change organizations are.  Liberalism is a way of thinking about the rights of individualism, freedom of speech and self-expression, change, new ideas, tolerance, coalition building by finding common ground, and finding value in all experience,  etc.  When wed to politics they are a very positive force for change.  These are all very valuable ideas, but they are not theological ideas.  Most Quakers in the US are in their life outside of Meeting, liberals and associating with liberals.  Thus we bring a liberal mindset to Meeting when issues of what to include and what to exclude from our Meetings arise.

I hope if someone came to Meeting and worshipped with us for a while and then one day came wanting to perform animal sacrifice in the Meeting fireplace because they had found this to be a very meaningful spiritual experience in another setting, that we would say NO!  I think that is so clearly contrary to the spirit of the peace testimony or the practice of silent worship that we would be clear to say No to this.  However, many Friends equate so closely the posture of Liberalism with the spirit of Quakerism that they are left struggling how to say No because to do so is counter to the spirit of individualism, tolerance and coalition building that is part of Liberalism. 

Unlike other churches we do not have dogmas that claim you must believe this to be one of us and if you don’t you are not part.  We have testimonies- a more softly held set of beliefs. We say instead, “this is the Truth as we have so far been shown it”, humbly allowing that we may be shown new Light and that our understanding of the Truth may evolve.  I am delighted that we hold the Truth in this flexible way instead of as a rigid thing chiseled in stone.  And I am aware that it makes it hard for many Friends to even answer the question:  “What do Quaker’s believe?” when they are asked this question.  I have encouraged other Friends for years to answer from the spectrum and then in the particular.  In other words to be able to say:  “Some Friends believe X (one end of spectrum), other Friends believe Y (other end of spectrum) and I personally believe Z.” This speaks to the power of Quakerism, that it is flexible and a place of individual encounter with the Truth!

Our testimonies do not define the boundaries of Quakerism, like dogmas do for other churches.   Because Friends struggle to even answer “what do we believe?”, Friends are often at a great loss how to respond to attenders who come to us with views or practices disparate from Quakerism and wishing to practice those beliefs within our Meetings.  Perhaps we have enough clarity to say no to animal sacrifice or other spiritual practices which are clearly foreign to Quakerism, but practices from the world like voting, Robert’s rules of order type conducting of a committee or simply the secular assumption that our lives our private and not the business of our community are all things which can creep in below the radar of a liberal stance and start to change the nature of Quakerism.

Rooted in Truth

Thus we find ourselves in the very strange position of needing to be able to say to all in our midst:  “You are welcome here, the Truth you find is welcome and your expression of it is welcome, and we will not change our Practice of Quakerism unless our whole group is lead in discernment to change it”.  Otherwise any time someone dissented from any belief or practice we have, and it had to be laid down, then in fairly short order we would have no belief or practice at our center any more!  (In some of our very small Meetings and worship groups around the country I fear this sort of liberal desire to embrace everyone has indeed led to such a loss of belief or practice at our center.)  If people are attracted to us for the beliefs and practices we have, then they need to be willing to either learn and adopt those beliefs and practices, or not adopt them, but co-exist in a spirit of tolerance and forbearance to those aspects they are not in unity with.  (a posture somewhat like standing aside in business meeting.)  This then in the end might be one of the most valuable things we have to teach the rest of the world:  a model of how diversity, tolerance and acceptance coexist with a centered position rooted in Truth.

Was Published in Friends Journal Sept. 2009

Twenty-One Tips on Personal Peace Making

I think we as Quakers spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing peacemaking, but when it comes to how to do it on the personal, one-to-one level we are often at a great loss. Last year I was supervisor of a group of six people who were going through a huge amount of personal conflict and upheaval among them. I found myself reflecting on everything I had ever learned in my life about how to heal or avoid personal conflict. I wrote it all down to share with them. When I was finished I realized that it is useful for many people to think about this. Here are the 20 things about conflict that I have learned in nearly 50 years.

1. Nothing is gained in trying to decide whose version of what happened is true. It does not matter in the end. What matters is that each person truly experienced it the way he or she reports it. That is how each person heard the words, and that is what each meant by his or her communication when saying it. That is how things looked to that person and that is what things meant to him or her. (Of course, it’s absolutely vital that the parties are being honest with themselves about their experiences.) Attaining peace doesn’t require one party to accept or capitulate to the other party’s version of truth. Each person simply has to grant that what it has heard is the experience of the other person. For instance, if two people went on two separate vacations and one person’s vacation was “wonderful until x happened” and the other person’s vacation was horrible “all along,” they would not argue about that, but would express sympathy and try to figure out how to do it differently and better next time. This could also happen if they went on the same vacation but had different experiences.

2. Blame is not a helpful concept. It does not move things forward. No one wants to be the blamed one. No one wants to be wrong. No one wants to have been bad or have harmed other people. When we blame, it increases the other person’s defensiveness and blocks his or her willingness to listen to us. Blaming, either internally or aloud, is a way to focus on the other person and his or her behavior, rather than on our own painful feelings and our part in what has happened.

3. Instead of saying: “It is his fault,” “It is her fault,” or “It is my fault,” it is more helpful simply to say, “It is.” If you can begin to look at the events of a conflict as simply what is, what happened, you will find it begins to change how you feel about it. It just is. That does not mean it is not still painful or that you still might not seek to change the situation in some way. This simply takes out the poison of blame and judgment and in some way helps us focus on more practical actions for the future and lessons to learn from the past.

4. Running away from conflict does not solve it. The conflict is still there when we return, but now someone may also feel abandoned or insignificant. Often, the resulting lapse of time has allowed bad feelings to fester and false assumptions to be made. It is best to address conflict as soon as one has control over one’s emotions and the other person is able to engage.

5. When people are very, very upset they get flooded by adrenaline. This is a biological wiring for “fight or flight.” We cannot just turn it off. It takes at least 20 minutes with attention off of conflict—longer if it is hard to get attention off of it, to get rid of all the adrenaline. If the other party asks for a break and then watches TV, it does not mean this person does not care. It may simply mean he or she is trying not to focus on the conflict in order to reduce adrenaline. It is a bad idea for someone to try to talk, listen, or make decisions while flooded with adrenaline. Rational thinking is impaired and the brain has a difficult time working constructively.

6. Timing of efforts to address a conflict is a two-party affair. People exist on a broad spectrum from “eager to address issues” to “extremely terrified about addressing issues.” It is not fair for the most willing party to demand that the other person engage because the first party wants to/needs to, and it is similarly not fair for the more avoidant party to insist that his or her non-engagement policy be accepted by both (or to continue avoiding without addressing when he or she will be willing to engage). If the two parties are not both willing to engage at the moment a problem arises, the one who needs more time to either calm down or gather thoughts needs to indicate that he or she needs this time and when he or she will be willing to meet. This agreement really must be met if the avoidant party expects the other party to do the hard work of holding onto oneself while waiting.

7. When in a conflict with another person, it is not helpful to keep going over in our mind (or with another person) how bad the other person is, or how bad his or her actions were, how upset he or she makes us, or how much we hate this person. All these kinds of thoughts just magnify the conflict, keep us connected to the difficult part of the person, keep us flooded with adrenaline, and prevent us from being able to move into a new place with the person. Contrary to how it often feels, focusing in this negative way does not protect us from the other person.

8. What is helpful is to focus on the good points of the person. If we are not aware of any, try to notice what those might be or what other people like about that person. In a pinch, make up something: “This person is kind and loving to his or her cat at home.” The idea here is not to lie to ourselves or live in fantasy, but we need to start connecting to the part of that person that we would like to have in our life. No one is without good. The more we focus on what we do not like about a person, the more we experience what we do not like about him or her.

9. Making fun of the person you are in conflict with, or engaging in sarcasm or ridicule is poison. When you disrespect a person, you are very far away from where reconciliation or peace can happen. It is in fact known to be one of the markers for a marriage that will end in divorce.

10. Each person has something to teach us. People do not arrive in our lives by mistake, even when we did not choose them to be in our lives. If we successfully evade one “nuisance,” another one with the same traits will show up. It is best to learn the lessons about ourselves and life that we are to learn from this person. That we do not like this kind of person is not the lesson. This person is in your life as a teacher. It is not that this person is sitting around thinking up lessons for you in a conscious way, but in the sense that God has sent this person to illuminate an area where you struggle and where you can grow.

11. Judging a person or deciding “who is wrong and who is right” is just another form of blaming. People have differences in opinion, in cultural norms, in styles of doing things, in interpreting information, and in acting in the world. There is not a right or a wrong way about this. Our standards are right for each of us because of the life we have lived. That does not make our standards right for someone else, who has lived a different life (which, of course, is why you are free to disagree with me about this if you choose). When we judge someone else or try to define him or her as wrong based on “our truth,” we are insisting that our way is the way. Instead of this, we must acknowledge and accept the differences. We must figure out how to build bridges across the differences.

12. People do not cause other people’s feelings. Rather, Person A does something and Person B observes that action and then decides what it means to him or her. We all have had experiences of starting out feeling one way about something, getting a slightly different perspective, and then having a different feeling about it. Despite the sense we have that our feelings are automatic and unbidden, we actually do choose what we feel. When we have been hurt in childhood and in our adult years, we often have an accumulation of feelings about a certain set of behaviors. When someone engages in that behavior, then we have those feelings. This is called re-stimulation, and it is something within us. It is not caused by the other person. Even though we may not welcome it, it is a chance to look at our old feelings, process them, and heal.

13. When someone else is disappointed or angry with us, this does not mean that we are bad or unworthy. We may have been told this in the past, and therefore this feeling may readily rear its head. It actually just means the other person is having a lot of strong and perhaps complex feelings. It is a good idea to care about others’ feelings, but when we start operating/speaking out of guilt or shame, we are now actually having a competing upset that steals the attention from the person who was originally upset. Once two people are upset, the whole thing becomes a much larger mess.

14. Dragging other people in by trying to convince them of our point of view or trying to get others to choose sides just makes the conflict bigger and worse. As a result, this causes pain in additional people and is another reason for the person with whom we are in conflict to be angry with us. It is one thing to ask someone to process feelings with us (ideally someone who does not know the person) or to speak without identifying the person. But it is quite another thing to “compile a case together” or confirm each other’s negative feelings.

15. When we direct all of our actions towards trying to prevent another person from feeling a certain way (angry, hurt, disappointed), we find ourselves caught in co-dependent emotional caretaking. We need to redirect our attention toward how we are feeling, what our needs are, and how we feel about our own behavior.

16. When speaking to another person about our upsets, it is best to use “I” statements of our experience and reactions as our own, rather than blaming others or making them responsible for our feelings. It is also best to listen carefully and respectfully to the other person’s responses and be willing to change our minds if presented with different information.

17. The use of drugs, alcohol or violence during a conflict, or during the attempt to fix it, will make the conflict worse.

18. People who are very alike often have a great deal of conflict. This is because the behavior of the other person reminds one of oneself in some very painful ways. Perhaps we see our worst or most detested trait in the other person (but of course it looks much worse on him or her). What is helpful is not to focus on how awful the other person is but to focus back on how we feel about ourselves when we behave that way and begin by working on forgiving ourselves for our own behavior. When we can love ourselves as we are, the other person magically becomes much less annoying and more an object for compassion.

19. We are responsible at all times for choosing behavior that meets our highest moral/ethical standards—to truly live by the Golden Rule, to live in such a way that, if anything true we did was published somewhere for all to see, we would have no embarrassment, guilt, or shame about our action.

           
20.  Culture does impact conflict.  Different cultures have different ways of showing respect, caring, boundaries, etc.  The culture we are raised in is invisible to us – it is like air.  It is just their and is presented as “normal” or “reality” or “the way things are”.  We all therefore are somewhat blind to our own cultural assumptions and usually sadly ignorant of other peoples.  It is very easy to transgress without realizing it.  It is however helpful to realize this potential and try to figure out if it is part of the conflict and if so to try to address it and use if as an opportunity for learning.  White people in particular often make the mistake of assuming that other white people are the same “culture” as they are which is generally not true.  Second generation American’s and beyond tend to think of themselves as totally assimilated and are unaware of the cultural beliefs passed down through their families even centuries later.  It is helpful to learn more about one’s own cultural roots and those of people we are closely connected with.

21. When we have made a mistake, it is best to apologize immediately, rather than trying to justify, rationalize, diminish, or cover up the mistake we made. We are not bad because we made a mistake. If we live without blaming, others should also be able to accept our mistakes without blaming. If someone else engages in blaming, that is the other person’s issue and not something we have to take on ourselves
Published in Friends Journal Aug 2008