To be Tender

Early Friends were urged to be Tender with each other.  Till fairly recently this admonishment seemed meaningless at best - overly sentimental at worst.  That  was before "James" was part of my Meeting.  (Name changed to protect the innocent).  James was a convinced Friend who became a member while attending our Meeting.  He had been a Minister previously in another Church and for various reasons had left it.  He did fairly often give vocal ministry which I enjoyed, as his messages to me seemed spirit led and used much metaphors, and were interesting.  However, some in my Meeting were suspicious of the frequency of the messages and some began to think he still thought of himself as a minister and had simply found a new pulpit.

Then he had a run in on the committee he served on.  One of the members of the committee who I have known and loved for a good dozen years confided to me how she found his deep voice intimidatingly reminiscent of her older brother who had been somewhat of a bully.   Another member of the committee would much later complain that he did not appropriately understand Quaker process and had too much of an agenda.

Eventually things came to a head during a business Meeting.  As I was someone who felt warmly towards him and was not bothered by his general behavior, but did understand the concerns of others I was asked to give him a call.   I did - during the call he referred to someone who had spent years caring for our property as "controlling", and my friend who unbeknownst to him was afraid of him as "silently disapproving."

On one level it was somewhat amusing to see how her fearfulness of him was interpreted by him as "silent disapproving."  For a moment I wanted to tell him about her brother, but thought better of it.  I am not one who believes in big T truth - I think truth looks very different depending upon which side of the road you are standing on when the cars crash.   So while I prefer to see the member of property committee as motivated by love and devotion rather than power...I can not dismiss that from another perspective it could look that way.

Which brings me to being tender with each other.  The more we know each other, in love, there is forbearance.  When we know each other well enough to know others insecurities, hopes, values, experiences there is a protection against misreading each others intentions, and a gentling of how we respond- even when we disagree.   When we listen in the spirit we can listen for that of God in each of us.  And when we trust that we are entering business in a worshipful manner then we can also trust that others share from Spirit and measure these sharings against Spirits leading.  We can have forbearance for the imperfect vessels that we each are when we speak.  We can see the insecurities, timidity - or pride and stubbornness - as slight imperfections in the vessel currently trying to deliver Source to each other.

I struggled as I tried to talk to James - and ultimately failed - to explain that these traits he was bothered by were simply imperfections in a vessel delivering the truth as they knew it.   But I failed because at least then James did not understand Quakerism well enough to have a that picture of what we are attempting in Quaker business practice - to both speak and listen for the truth.  He knew a different paradigm from another church where people argue for the truth and persuade and decisions are made by majority sentiment.  So I could not find  a way to tell him the value of being tender with each other.

I have recently been reminded of another way we are tender with each other.   Members of my Meeting keep getting dementia....we are on our 4th or 5th in the dozen and half years that I have belonged to my Meeting.  One man was always very touched by the children's return to the worship room in the last 10 minutes and would frequently rise to remind us that the Bible says: "We will come into the Kingdom like little children."  Another woman found many occasions to tell us with delight that of all the woman her husband had known that he had chosen her as his wife - how proud she was to be his wife (this was particularly sweet to me after their 60 some years of marriage that she still sounded like a besotted teenage girl!)   Most recently a member of our Meeting with Alzheimer's tells us weekly how he came to serve on the Church Council of Greater Seattle on our behalf, and how impressed he was by the people of all different faiths, all trying to do good, all good people.  His wife is embarrassed that he tells this so often.  I try to tell her not be - because we all understand.   This for me is part of being tender to each other.  It is fine for me once a week to know how deeply that experience of ecumenicalism touched his soul.  In all three cases I feel like some of their beauty has been revealed to me in their dementia.  So part of being tender to each other is also seeing each other more clearly in our diminishment.

Faithfully Delivered

There is a well known Quaker joke:  Two men sit next to each other on a bench.  The one shakes for a long time in Meeting and yet never rises.  Eventually the other man rises and gives a message.  The Meeting for Worship ends and the second man turns to the shaker at the rise of Meeting and says:  "Next time give your own damn message."    This is funny to Quakers (yeah try giving this joke to a group of non-Quakers... you have to explain the joke just to get polite smiles.) because we recognize what it is to sit on a leading to speak.   We have all done it at some time.  I have also heard people say  "Yeah not going to do that again...not worth the heart attack"  meaning that the racing of the heart and the butterflies in the stomach felt while not delivery the message are not worth it!

We all also have stories of times where people's messages deeply spoke to us which, is both magical and a deep motivation to faithfully deliver messages given to us.  My own story of that happened on an occasion where I had gone to not my own Meeting, but a local meeting in Jan the Sunday after Martin Luther King Day.   On that Sunday I was deep in thought concerned about an issue concerning my then step-son and feeling somehow like two cherished values were pitted against each other and trying somehow to figure out which one was actually more important or how to reconcile them.   Towards the end a young man rose and said:  "I went to the Martin Luther King march this Monday and I was very struck during the pre-rally by how someone quoted him saying: " But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian  faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love".  As I heard this it shot through me "Oh yes Love.  Love is the answer.  Love trumps all and I had forgotten this.  

After Meeting I went to him and thanked him for being faithful in delivering the message because it had spoken to my condition.   His eyes got big.  He said:  "I have never spoken in Meeting before and I did not know why I should just repeat that quote.  It seemed silly, but I kept shaking so I finally did."  Both parts of this story are important -that he was faithful and spoke to my condition and that I let him know as this wound up being an eldering in the importance of being faithful. Interestingly, I had had a strong urge to go tell him.  I also had been faithful to the inward prompting.  This would be an example of how we are one of another in community.  I would also note here that I did not say "I liked your message", but "thank you for being faithful".  This is an important distinction; when we thank Friends for "their message" we add to the confusion about where messages come from and tempt the ego of the one who delivered.

I remember once going to a Meeting in another town and being given a message, but no prompting to give it.  I was confused by this and spent much of the hour trying to decide whether to give it, but eventually concluded that I was not to.  I wound up thinking it was a message that God intended only for me.  And in fact it was meaningful to me for quite a while.  Then one Sunday in my Meeting I somehow felt moved to give the message.  "Really God?"  "Yes really"  So I stood and gave the message.   Later a Friend who did not often come to Meeting, came and thanked me for the message saying how much the message meant to her.   Wow, I had no idea that God could work in such a way!

I'm not sure if that is the oddest way The Holy One has brought a message to Meeting through me or if it would be this story.   I once woke on a Sunday morning from a dream in which I had been in Meeting for worship and one of our Members had sung a message and some other thing had happened.  I went to Meeting and thought about this dream - after a while I started feeling the familiar stomach sensations indicating to deliver the message.  'really?...but this is a dream its not a message"  Yes really!   So I rose and told the dream and sat down embarrassed.  Late,r the person who had sang in my dream came to me and said that she had been for several months been getting words to a new song in Meeting for worship but did not think of herself as a song writer and so had not written them down.  We looked at each other and she said:  "I guess I had better write them down huh?"   She did and some months later sang the song for Meeting.

In my Yearly Meeting there was for two years a Clerk who was very good at racing through the agenda, but not very good, it seemed, to listening to the Spirit.  In his first year an issue arose where the nominating committee was not being able to get people to agree to serve on committees.  So they took the position of laying themselves down to force the Yearly Meeting to look at the issue. However, as people began in business meeting to look deeply and focus on what was wrong in our Yearly Meeting, the clerk abruptly cut off discussion in favor of simply having an Ad Hoc committee create a new nominating committee.  Later, I simply thanked the tearful clerk of nominating for being faithful.  For it was clear to me that she had been faithful in delivering a painful message, and that she had done all that was her part, but was thwarted by others not listening in the Spirit.

The next year we were down to the last hour of business in this clerk's term and again someone began to question the creation of yet another committee to try to solve the same problem that we had quite possibly created a committee earlier in the morning to solve.   The question was again raised what is wrong in our Yearly Meeting?  This time speaker after speaker rose speaking of their distress about the condition of our Yearly Meeting, the non-spiritual nature of business meeting, etc. It was like a geyser that could not be contained.  The clerk again tried to cut off the discussion, but this time a young woman, not even from our Yearly Meeting rose in tears about the her sense of the Spirit being stiffled and plead that we would sit in silence and listen to the Spirit and so this time (and in part because worship was next on the schedule) the clerk surrendered and the messages poured out for another half an hour.  For me this was a very powerful example of how Spirit is determined to be heard and will use every faithful voice in the room to bring the truth home.

What dear Friend is your experience of being Faithful in delivering a message?

Expectant Waiting

Do we expect to find God at Meeting for Worship?  Excuse this bold question, but it has come to me that I think maybe we don't really.  How would are Meetings be different if in fact we did expect that every time we settled into silence?

Some months ago I got up late and decided instead of going to my Meeting I would go to another Meeting in my neighborhood which meets later on Sunday.   As I settled into worship I realized that I was excited.  I did not know most of the worshipers.  I had no preconceived ideas about who would usually speak or what they would usually say.  (Sound familiar?).  And because it is a large Meeting I felt fairly sure that a message would be given.

I wound up giving a message because as I noticed my excitement I realized that it was "expectant waiting" and with that phrase I remembered that this is actually the spirit in which we are invited by our traditions to wait in silence for the Holy One to speak...through us.  Ironically, Spirit seemed to want me to speak and remind Friends gathered that this is what we are waiting for.

I think modern Friends are very easily losing this idea.  I have heard Friends from different Meetings across the country complain about Friends who come with a book to read from "for inspiration" or the now famous NY Times headline message, or its' sister the book report message. Additionally, I have heard Friends complain about the person who speaks every Sunday or who speaks clearly not from the Spirit.  But primarily they are complaining about Friends not following protocol.  I do wish they were complaining about our failure to expect Spirit to show up.

After all this is really not different from those of us who go for "peace and quiet" from our families, "a place to think", for the fellowship, or to sit and try to figure out our problems.   All of these fail to wait expectantly for Divine whisperings although we follow protocol.

In fact I think that most Friends would not make a distinction between a Living silence and a dead silence.   Next time your in Meeting try to notice...which is it?   Recently a member of my Meeting told a very funny story to which we all laughed about how when her kids were young they arrived late one day and she was fussing about this and her daughter said:  "Don't worry Mom, I think we are late enough that they will all already be asleep."    Amusing as this, I think it speaks to a dead silence if a child cannot feel anything moving in that silence.  In fact my teenager complains that the Young Friends do not like to come to business meeting with us in any of their Meetings because they cannot feel the Spirit present or available to us in our conducting of business.

This of course brings us to the problem: how do we bring forth a living silence in our Meetings and an expectant waiting?   Well some of this may have to do with what we have lost when we did away with the facing bench and the elders.   They were not just grim old folks who stared down at the other members.   Part of their "job" was actually to hold the Meeting for Worship in prayer - to attempt to ground the whole Meeting for Worship.  I remember once when I was on Ministry and Worship suggesting that the member of the committee who had responsibility for breaking Meeting also hold the Meeting in prayer during the whole Meeting.   I no longer remember what we concluded about that experiment, but I do remember that during that same time I often felt we had Gathered Meetings. What if we asked our whole Meeting to do such an experiment on the same Sunday?

And of course there is always how do we tend to the Life of the Spirit in our Meeting for worship throughout the month?  Do we tend our own spiritual life?  Do we prepare for worship?   Do we use worship sharing formats to share with each other about our spiritual lives?   So often we meet in Silence and have no real personal exchanges and do not know each other spiritually.  Early Friends lived in small farming communities where they knew the members of Meeting as their neighbors and local business owners.  They did not have to have sharing time at Meeting to know of births and deaths and other highs and lows of the lives of their fellow members.   But now we don't know unless we create a way to know.   My Meeting started at tradition over a decade ago of during the last 10 minutes of Meeting for Worship we ask for the sharing of joys and concerns to be shared in the spirit of worship.  (We added that last phrase to remind or inform new folks that we expect still to have silence before and after each sharing.   But we do not hold the same bar of expecting a divine prompting to share a joy or concern.)  Occasionally regular messages are also still shared during this time as well.  In my opinion it has deepened our community because we know each other better.

I have heard Friends from different Meetings describe starting worship by focusing for a moment on each Member present (and sometimes even those absent) and holding them in Light.   This is something only possible when we know each other in personal ways, but it again speaks to this idea of grounding into worship.  Prayer is something we can do any where, but to come into communal worship - to expect to be used by Spirit for each other and to be ministered to by Spirit through each other is a very different matter indeed.

Corporate Witness

"There is a journey that some follow by starting in prayer and others follow by starting in action.  It is the witness of our tradition that those who are naturally inclined to begin in prayer will eventually feel led into outward action, and those who are naturally inclined to begin with action will eventually feel called more deeply into prayer.  However, it is sometimes the case that those who pray do not act, and those who act do not pray.  There is an unfortunate tendency among some Quakers to separate prayer and action rather than to integrate them."
Daniel Snyder   Quaker Witness as Sacrament p.22

I encountered this quote recently in a worship sharing.   I am reminded of the idea: does something arise from an inward motion or an outward motion?  When said this way it is clear that either motion can be the motion towards a leading.   That certainly has been my experience.   At age 16 when someone handed me a flyer describing the despicable conditions of farm workers, I thought: "Someone should do something about this".   Then I heard a voice that said: "And who is someone?" which resulted in several years of activism on this issue. This would be the example of an outward motion.

When I was 21 walking through the Smithsonian museum, having somewhere on a back burner a wonderment about whether I should take part in an act of civil disobedience designed to testify against cutting the safety net from under the poor, I had a sort of mystical experience walking through the museum.  Panorama after panorama showed the lifestyle and technology and struggles and advances of Americans throughout its history.  By the end I sat down on a bench and felt as if I was in a covered Meeting- I felt powerfully the eternal struggle of humans to provide a better life for the next generation and that at its base was a struggle for goodness and for uplifting fueled by Love. Somehow in that same Centeredness I knew I would act the next day in solidarity for the struggle for people to have basic needs meet and lives of dignity.   This was an inward motion.

Although as the last example shows the world may take us to prayer, and the deep seatedness of the testimonies, of basic values that point us towards the Truth as we currently understand it, makes even the encounter with the outward injustices of the world, a nudge to return to deeper truths.

I have to say growing up inside Quakerism I saw that Friends I knew fell easily into categories: the social justice Friends for whom that was always what motivated them and the spiritual Friends who gave beautiful ministry but seemed never to take social action.   It is unfortunate that in modern day Quakerism that which was bound inextricably in early Quakerism is so easily divided.  However, in those Friends who have most deeply touched me and who are often found to be "weighty Friends" I find that those to threads are interwoven.

Recently, I have heard people from many different Meetings lamenting that many Friends within the Meeting do "good works" but that the Meeting has no shared social witness, or action that it does together.   Sometimes this is accompanied with a wondering of how they could get this?  (With a wistfulness that I liken to wondering how one could get some of those magic beans that Jack got?)  My feeling is that we are forgetting our own history.  If one examines the history of  Quaker corporate witness: to worship freely, to not swear oaths, to oppose slavery, to support Women's equality, and to support Civil rights within the US - you will notice that each of those things began with the witness and leading of one or a small handful of Friends.  Those Friends were NOT always happily received by their fellow Friends, and were controversial in their time, and yet they also did exert substantial influence which grew with....well the power of Truth, until a 100 years later Friends could stand in unity against slavery, or support a 100 year movement for women to get the vote, etc.

It strikes me that once again the influence of American liberalism within Quakerism is a sort of tolerant "We all have the freedom to do whatever we want, and we don't have to require anything of anyone else".  So therefore we are free to pursue our individual good works but it is considered annoyingly inappropriate and perhaps self-centered to insist that others MUST/SHOULD unite with our view of the truth.   The problem with this is that early Quakerism believed there was A Truth, one that God called us too.  They saw themselves as in community for the purpose of raising up that Truth to the general society.  Thus corporate witness meant not giving a member a pat on the back for good works, but having to discern with that Friend if they were bring Truth for the whole group.   I am not sure that in our current use of clearness process or business process that we still expect to find corporate Witness.

"For one thing, the legacy of John Woolman invites us to be open to recovering more fully the collective dimensions of meeting for worship.  We are summoned to "dwell deep".  For another, we are invited to see our activism as a species of worship.   For activists, this is an invitation to root our activism more fully in the transforming power of meeting for worship and the love of God we encounter there.  For those who are more contemplative than an activist orientation, it challenges us to broaden our understanding of the boundaries of the meetinghouse, and the boundaries of worship itself."
Michael Birkel  "Mysticism and Activism: On learning from John Woolman  a talk at SEYM

 I close with this quote also from the worship sharing (special thanks Christine Hall) because I love Birkel's phrase activism as a species of worship - because I think of the times like on the bench in Smithsonian where my activism brought me into worship or the recent EQUAT action where 100's of Friends sat in PNB banks and prayed that they stop funding mountain top removal. And I know that without my community choosing to serve as an anchor to my activism, I am in danger of being swept into the ego, strategy, power plays, etc that can live in the world of activism.  I am challenged to keep foremost in me the Outward Motion of God's Love as the energy from which I act.   This also challenges me to think about which of the many faces of the Divine that I know: Creator, Lover, parent, Shepard, Comforter, am I connecting with and witnessing to when I act in the world for truth and justice?

Bringing Spiritual Intention to our Meetings

I have for many years now been a fan of Wayne Dwyer, author of the Power of Intention, among many books (and often seen on PBS) Dwyers messages is definitely spiritual, but no explicitly Christian, and so not usually spoken about in Friends Meeting - I would like however to bring part of his Light to our on going struggle to have our Meetings support the Life we want for our Meetings.

First I would say we need to have an explicit dialogue in our Meetings - what do we want?  What do we intend for our communities?  Do we want more young families?  Do we want to keep our youth? Do we want more vital ministries?  Do we want a more active and powerful social witness?  Do we want a deeper sense of community?  Do we want our business meetings to be truly spirit led?  Do we want to know the presence of God more deeply?

Whatever the longing - first we must name it - then we must imagine it fully achieved, the spirit of it - not endlessly lamenting the "not happeningness of it" as Dwyer might joke.  Then in tasting what it might taste like we must walk our selves backward from that image.  What conditions would have to exist to allow or nurture that vision?  Would a certain committee of the Meeting be different?  Would worship be different? Would community be different?  Then peel back another layer:  What committees or other activities prepare us for worship or to learn our practice?  What removes the obstacles in worship?  Do we expect to find the Divine on the bench with us? What practices could we change that would better support our cherished intentions?  What practices do we have because "we always did it this way"... or because when we had a lot of children we did x, or because of the force of personality of 1 Friend now long dead, or because we think this is how "all Quaker" do it, etc. etc?

How can we examine our practices and release those who no longer serve.  A number of years sabbatical years were popular for Meetings- laying down all committees for a year and discerning what was essential and bringing back committees only with intention and renewed purpose.  Do our committees match our numbers?  When does a meeting grown to where Ministry and Oversite should be separated (into Ministry and Worship & Pastoral Care)   And when have we shrunk to where they should be recombined into Ministry and Pastoral Care?

Sometimes this conversation becomes a little bit of a "What comes first the chicken or the egg?" conversation because we imagine we cannot do the work that it would take to make a better meeting without more people and yet we feel that without more people we cannot do that extra work.  Here Friends I would remind us that it is not our work alone to do.  This is where it is good to remember God!  How do we invite in God's help?  How do we remember that God also wants these things we want: deeper worship, greater community, etc.  and in fact if we can notice that it is really arranging the practices of our Meetings to let the Light shine through then it is not simply empty form or endless meetings - it is the joyful work of the Holy One and us as the instruments.

To Give Testimony

Early Friends talked about giving testimony to the Truth.  This meant speaking publicly one’s full passion for the Divine.  Speaking even when it was not welcome.  Carrying such messages as:  "I will not take my hat off to recognize your social status", or "I will not swear on a Bible because my commitment to the Truth is always."

I testified on Thursday, but it was not in this way that early Friends spoke of.  I was with the rest of my 350 Group attending a hearing by The Army Corp of Engineers to hear public comment on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the second dock at Cherry Point, WA.  BP built this pier illegally in 2010; illegally because they never did the environmental impact statement required by the law.  Illegally because Warren Magnuson, the very powerful former Senator of WA, added an amendment to a bill that he intended to protect the fragile ecosystem of Puget Sound (or the Salish Seas as the Native people call it), to protect it forever.  The amendment said it would be illegal to export oil through those waters.  The oil industry has already stretched that for decades by receiving oil from Alaska and shipping it to other parts of the US which is not “exporting” technically.

So the Army Corp which allowed them to build without an EIS was sued for not doing the EIS, lost in court and 8 years later produced one.  The public was coming to comment on the study and request that the Corp impose some sort of regulatory limits on them…all the way from tearing down the pier, to restricting to them to pre-1996 levels of shipping, to basically doing nothing.

Putting on my political activist mindset, not my centered is the spirit mindset, I prepared and gave the following testimony about half way through the 35 people who all testified against the dock.

     “My name is Lynn Fitz-Hugh Coordinator of 350 Seattle with over 900 members.  I have come here today to talk about a run away train, although paradoxically there is also an exploding train in this story.  

     Typically when we think of a run away train we think of one with no intelligent life in charge of it, that is dangerous and headed for disaster.  That run-away train I submit to you is BP.

Over 10 years ago they built this dock without environmental review which they knew was required and they did so because they wanted to.  And even though it took months and months to build no one stopped them and so they got what they wanted.   

     About two years ago the whole petroleum industry decided they wanted to start shipping Bakken Shale on trains after having added highly flammable additives to make the shale more manageable.  The result is we have had exploding trains all over this country.  Again they did not ask anyone because they knew there was no regulation against this because no one had ever thought of such a thing.  So they just did it because it was what they wanted to do.  Now the Petroleum industry wants to do away with the Magnuson Amendment and start shipping export oil out of Puget Sound, from the Second Pier.  

       From my point of view, they have a dock, and they have a refinery and they have a supply of oil, and I am afraid that regardless of the law they will just ship it.  Because that is what they do – they do what they want, what suits them, what makes them profit.  So I am asking you to use all of the regulatory tools at your disposal, all of the things people have asked of you today, to stop this run away train that is BP and to protect life.

     We have become confused in this country about profit.  We have put in on an alter and treat it as if is sacred, as if it is an idol.  We tell regulators not to mess with profit.  But we have forgotten that profit and business were created to serve life, not for life to serve profit.   So I am asking you to act for life and to stop this runaway train.”

It was good testimony; it drew the first applause of the night.  The only bigger applause was for a colleague of mine who got up and said he was awed at how the other good people who came out to testify had been able to be polite and keep their emotions in check…because he said raising his voice:  “I am outraged.  I am outraged that this was clearly illegal then and now and that we are even discussing this.”  He went on yelling and at first I was fine with the moral indignation.  Jesus after all entered the temple of the money changers and turned the tables over in anger and outrage.  Sometimes outrage is the only appropriate response.  But then he turned to attacking them personally (and I watched their faces harden and defend.)  He said that they did not care, that they were not doing their jobs, that they were bad.  The Quaker in me said no to this; no to the denial of that of God in them.  I had from a Quaker mindset carefully tried to appeal to their consciences, seeing them as people with that of God in them that could be reached.

Another colleague of mine took a more nuanced approach to this.  He began by saying:  “Boy hard night to sleep!"   He talked about what a difficult decision they had to make, and how later history would look back and judge us in this period of time for not having done enough and celebrate those who did.  He said how tragic it would be to poison the Sound in the last years of our desperate gasp for oil.  He said "we have to give oil up; it is the only way to survive.  All of us in this room".   He asked them to come down on the right side of history.  And then threw in “and if you cannot find a way to do the right thing in your job then time to quit your job.”   It was admirably true Gandhian  Satyagraha  (Truth force).   A third colleague claimed he would talk for the non-human creatures.  But then really just said his own opinion.

So here several days later I sit in the Silence of Meeting and I realize that I did not center down before hand, I did not ask for the Truth to come through me, to use me.  And that I regret.  I am learning, slowly that I will have to have an anchor committee from my Meeting for this work that I do, or it will not be possible for me to stay “low” as early Friends called it.   Now in this silence I see that was waiting to be said (which I had a small bead on) was:

     "Senator Magnuson, Chief Selth, DeCarte and any other number of our ancestors are turning in their graves right now.  Why?

     Several thousand years ago we made a mistake in our scientific paradigm.  We saw ourselves, as part of that already existing and mistaken paradigm as separate from the earth, and as superior, as ones who could observe, understand and control the natural world around us.   The mess we have all around us is pretty much testimony to the falseness of this idea.  In fact, quantum physics now tells us that the very act of observing something changes it and that we are inextricably bound to all of life; there is no separate us and that.   So the problem we have with these EIS’s are they expect you to study the environmental impact to a site.  But the problem with that is how do we define site when any site is part of an ecosystem?   And an ecosystem is part of a food chain that goes beyond its boundaries and etc etc.

     It is commonly objected that when activists request for climate change to be included in an EIS that the request is “too big” and beyond the scope of the study.   But everyone in this room knows that the truth is that this whole Globe is bound by one atmosphere.  

     So I point all this out to you to point out that beyond this dock which you are asked to examine is ecological damage being done to extract this Bakken Shale and also future Tar Sands, then it is shipped on trains with flammable additives’ extremely prone to explosion and more ecological damage and then it is brought to this illegally built dock, where the owners wish to thwart a 40 year old law put in place as one of the last acts of Senator Magnsuon to protect the fragile Puget Sound forever.   And you are asked to study the environmental impact!  Which impact?  Oh yes the extraction site, the destructive path here is all outside your scope of study and the leak into the Sound isn’t suppose to happen!  Well, I would argue all of life is inextricably bound.  You cannot ignore this damage that is all around it.  Nor can you ignore that in making it possible to ship you unleash the carbon to the atmosphere of this WHOLE joined ecosystem.

     If this ecosystem could speak would the oysters cry out to you and say: ‘We already are failing and dying under the acidification of the ocean; we can bear no more.”  Would the Salmon call to you and say:  “We are already endangered because of the damns on our rivers and the pollution within them; do not make it any harder for us. ”  Would the Cherry Point herring chime in: "We are only 10% of the population we were 30 years ago and a should a spill happen during our laying time our entire future generations would be obliterated."   Would the Plankton at the bottom of the Sound say to you “Kill us friends and you have set your own time clock.  We are the bottom of your food chain.  How will you survive without your food chain?”  Would the birds flying over head say we do not want to be coated in oil."  Would the Sound itself speak saying:  “The ocean breaths for the entire planet taking in c02 and returning oxygen.  Kill us and you will kill yourselves.”  Chief Selth is said to have warned us over 200 years ago of this very greed for money and disregard of the land as leading to our own end.

     Oh I know you are only poor regulators expected by your superiors to keep to very narrow parameters.  You exist in a societal framework that has elevated the right to make profit to the Holy and has said that it is bad to interfere with that.  We have gotten to this hearing because the oil companies are so powerful that they did what they wanted and operate outside the law.  But we are also in a moment of history where we can no longer afford to operate in side that old paradigm which pretends that we are separate from the earth or get to make decisions over it.   We can no longer survive and ignore our connection to it.   So just as the Nuremberg tribunal  judges told the former Nazi officers brought before them, there are some evils so great that even if legal we must not obey them, but must act for higher truths.

     So I am asking you to step away from normal expectations, or typical definitions of an ESI, I am asking you to not focus narrowly but to look at this whole big picture and this moment in history and I am asking you to decide what is really TRUE, to listen to the ecosystem of which you are a part of, to do what really needs to happen here.  I am asking you to tear the pier down or forbid it any export!

Climate Change: an update on the Emporer's New Clothes.

In 2007 when I first heard the movie: The Inconvenient Truth as someone with a political science degree what I was immediately struck by was the implications not stated: that if we were going to have sea rise and drought that we would have mass refugees and wars over resources like water and fertile land- in short death and suffering on a large scale.   I have been working on climate issues steadily ever since, but still even as I watched the carbon inching up I have been waiting for it the "future" human impacts.

I am also aware that the corporate controlled media has been doing an amazing cover-up on climate change. It is is amazing how you can impact public awareness about something by simply NOT talking about it. Naomi Klein reports that in all of 2010 the 3 major networks did a total of 32 stories on climate change.  Let's face it, just about any gossip about a movie star gets more coverage than that.  I sort of scream at my tv and radio in despair as they report on the drought in the SW and the forest fires, telling how bad they are but without ever a mention of climate change.  It is like some bad episode of the Emperor's New Clothes.  However, since I read alternative media and mostly stuff about climate change, I did think that when the mass deaths started happening from climate change I would know.

I noted the deaths from the hurricane's and the stubborn insistence by some that no single hurricane can be attributed to climate change. I noted also the absence of talking about increased frequency or higher high water marks of these hurricanes.  I noted the death's from fires and earthquakes and tsunami's  and again the line "none can be attributed specifically to climate change as these occur naturally". I was reminded of the tobacco companies line for so many years that cancer could not be attributed to smoking since it has many different causes, and how years later we would learn that they suppressed for decades the studies that did link smoking to lung cancer.  Even once it was linked, they argued that a particular case of lung cancer could not be linked to smoking.   No not if we continue to ignore all that we know- then we will indeed be vulnerable forever to the "whims of the Gods".

I noted with my usual frustration that the deaths of hurricane Sandy were far more real and concerning to Americans than the deaths of the people of Haiti when their country was struck.   Are the lives of people far away or with brown skin or with not much of a house to begin with actually less valuable to us than mostly white strangers who live in far better houses in our own country?  I drove through parts of WA where miles and miles of "evergreens" are brown and dying because the beetles are no longer killed by winter frost and are infesting the trees and killing them.   I cursed the media for not covering that at all.

But still I was waiting for the reports of climate wars, ones caused by refugee influxes, or fighting over scarce water or food during drought.   But the ones I knew about were caused (so I believe) by religious differences, ethnic/tribal infighting, over throws of dictators, etc.   I like most Americans had bought the explanation of "Arab Spring" as a wonderful uprising of democracy - people saying enough to oppressive rulers, all started by a common food cart peddler immolating himself in protest. Then I watched The Years of Living Dangerously the series on climate change that has been playing on cable's Show Time channel.  

First in one episode they communicated the idea that the Syrian war has actually taken place because after the worst drought in years the starving farmers, having gotten no relief from the government, rose up in arms. Then in a later episode it was explained that the Egyptian revolt, televised from Tahrir Square over throwing President Murbarak, also presented as the end of a 30 year dictatorship, in fact corresponded to a year in which world wide droughts had so reduced the wheat available for import to Egyptians that it had left the poor in Egypt literally without bread.  In fact, I remember listening to an NPR story on the radio where they were interviewing farmers in the Midwest whose whole crop had failed and then a policy person who explained that American would feel little impact in grocery costs because the US produced so much food that it would simply reduce our exports.  I remember thinking then:  "Well that is not without impact, the impact is simply being exported".

But now slowly as I listened to this episode of The Years of Living Dangerously, it penetrated:  "People were fighting as result of climate caused droughts leading to famine".  Oh yes, we can celebrate if crisis' are bringing down governments that do not care about their people....but the Climate Wars have begun. Suddenly I realized that like the people watching the parade with a naked Emperor in it, that it had taken someone shouting out "he has no clothes"  ("Or it is a Climate War") for me to finally see what my brain has already known.   Too slowly grock the obvious because the power's that be have been telling another story; the one they wanted me to believe and not the Truth.

Quaker's have a long tradition of "speaking truth to power" and speaking truth to powerful people when it is not convenient.   So Friends who are you going to speak the truth too about the already arrived global warming?  How are you going to deliver the truth?  How will the truth change you? and How will you let your life speak?

Held in the Light - a poem

Dear Comforter, Source of all Light, hold us in our pain

Friends please hold me in the Light as I interview for this Job.

Friends hold my beloved in the Light as he is operated upon on Monday.

Hold this beloved one in Light and give the strength to overcome addiction and turn from it.

Oh God Hold me in the Light as I follow your lead and risk to be faithful.

Hold my parent, my child, my friend in the Light as they lie dying.

In the Light we are held by you all as we broken heartedly grieve.

Friends hold me in the Light as I find strength to speak truth to power.

Hold us in Light as we give birth to new beginnings.


Hallelujah Holy One celebrate with us!

Thank you Creator for the birth of this new life!

Thank you for the blessing of meaningful work and a place to do this work.

I'm grateful for this new love.

What a blessing to watch the joy and the unfolding of our children's lives.

Thank you for the kindness of the stranger today, and for the chance to be that kind stranger.

Thank you Lord for this life well lived, even as it parts from us we are grateful.

Oh Light, thank you for your Presence in our every passing moment!

Lynn Fitz-Hugh
5/10/2014

Releasing Ministers

The March issue of Friends Journal was dedicated to Funding Ministry.  Even the two words together were a little odd for me because Funding is a worldly term not a spiritual one.  But as I was reading along I enjoyed the modern term of "bivocational ministry" and found it helpful, and thought when I saw the second title that it would be about "released ministries".  I really liked the idea of using computer technology and crowd funding to achieve the OLD idea of releasing Friends.  However, I was very surprised that the article actually did not talk about the traditional method of releasing Friends to ministry, but only about the modern problem of no funding.  As I continued to read I started to feel a state of disbelief  "Oh my Gosh is no one going to say it?  Is this state of Quakerism today?  Have we forgotten our own traditions for releasing ministers".  I was relieved when the last article at least touched on it.

So Friends we had a rich tradition in the first 100 to 150 years of Quakerism of releasing Friends in ministry.  What this meant was a Friend would bring a leading to Meeting for discernment, if their clearness committee found them clear and the Meeting united in confirming the leading as coming from God, then the Meeting also embraced the support of this leading.  So for example if someone was lead to travel to an adjoining Yearly Meeting or even another country to minister to Friends there about how faithfully we were testifying to "A Gospel of plainness, staying low and not going to vanity".  Then the meeting provided both 1 or 2 elders to travel with the minister to assure that they stayed grounded and did not outrun their light, but the meeting also provided financial support.  What this meant was providing for their travel and board costs that were not provided for by Meetings they visited.  Some times it meant providing financial assistance to the family left behind or help with child care.  (Since many Friends were farmers often the spouse who remained behind could continue to provide financially as long as they got help from other Friends at key points in the growing cycle.)  But the commitment was clear that the member with the leading and their family were not to go with unmet needs.   It would seem that the articles in this issue point to the fact that we currently live much more self-sufficient not community oriented lives which means we are not providing this kind of support to our ministers.

Another confusion for me throughout the issue was the word ministry seemed to be almost exclusively be being used to apply to what I would call pastoral ministry, either a religious vocal ministry or pastor care for our meetings themselves, serving a Meetings needs directly.  This is certainly a kind of ministry and one that non-programed Friends have much conflicted feelings about because in our split with programmed Friends this was one clear and noticeable difference.   They identified A pastor and paid that person.  But there is another kind of ministry, it is one of leading and is often out into the world on behalf of one of our testimonies.  It is a ministry for sure to the Truth as that person is lead, but it is not pastoral.  I would offer John Woolman as perhaps the greatest example of this.  He was passionately led on the slavery issue and spoke to Friends and non-Friends alike on this issue.

So in regards to the first kind of ministry: pastor ministry I think we need to get over ourselves and our history and decide to compensate fairly as valued employees those Friends who serve us in our Meetings and Quaker Organizations doing work that we value.  But in regard to the second type of ministry: a lead ministry I would like us to remember our own traditions of "releasing Friends".   As we enter into a time of environmental collapse many Friends maybe called to minister to our societal crisis in ways that will be full time work.  I hope that we can unite that they are indeed carrying a calling that we have joined with and just as they may sacrifice a better paying job or free time that others in the meeting sacrifice some comfort to put additional money into the "funds for suffering" (which is what Friends use to call the separate fund kept to support Friends and their family who were in jail for their witness or traveling under a leading.)  The idea here is that is a separate and additional obligation than our monthly tithe to the Meeting.

I would recommend to Friends the long out of print book: Charity Cook: A Liberated Woman by Algie Newlin Friends United Press.  This book describes the released traveling ministry of Charity Cook who lived in the 1700's and was the mother of 11 Children. I would also share that shortly after I graduated college I shared with Elders in my Meeting the passionate desire I felt to speak about peace, social justice and simplicity to others.  My Elders told me "this is a leading" and got a clearness committee for me, and a letter to my Yearly Meeting (Illinois Yearly Meeting) where my leading was brought to and confirmed by the whole body of the Yearly Meeting.  The entire small yearly Meeting paid into a sufferings fund for a year while I traveled to every Meeting in our Yearly Meeting speaking both to each Meeting and to outside engagements that they arranged while I was there.  I chose because of my ministry about simplicity and social justice to live at minimum wage, but none the less all of my living costs and travel costs were covered during that year.  I would like Friends to not think this is a quaint footnote of our historic experience, but that our history can help us, combined with modern tools like crowd sourcing, to release Friends today to minister to the urgent needs of our suffering world, and that those of us not actively engaged in such a ministry can see ourselves bound in community and shared testimony to the support of those lead ministries of other Friends.

Camo Eggs

Recently I was standing in the grocery store and I was drawn to a display that had plastic Easter Eggs for sale.  I was drawn to some one's that had been produced to look like Chocolate with frosting on it.  But then to my horror I discovered that next to it were packages of ....yes Camo Eggs.  I actually felt a little nauseous. I have unfortunately gotten use to that ever since the Iraq war started that people dress their little boys in cameo clothing.  (Really it was not common before that, but we have probably lost site of that in the mean time.)  And I have resigned myself for decades to some men walking around as if they are on a battle field.  I was pretty upset the first time I saw pink cameo outfits for girls (but after all we have to start preparing a certain number of girls to also serve in the all volunteer military!)

But for me the cameo eggs are over the line.  Whether you celebrate Easter as the resurrection of Christ or as a Pagan celebration of spring/new life/fertility....Easter is a celebration of life overcoming death.  It is a fun time for small children.  So the idea that someone would turn an egg, itself a symbol of new life, into a grenade like symbol of death and destruction is more perverse than I can really give words to!

We are living in times where that which is sacred is regularly under threat and frequently defiled.  From the pollution of earth air and water, to the unsustainable mining of every resource from oil, to nickel, to the destruction of our fundamental public support structures like the post office and the public schools.  It is important for us to name the sacred and to act in its defense.

It's not always clear what to do to defend the sacred.  Does it make any difference these words I type and post on a small blog?  Hard to say.  I just know I have to name the profane so that we do not begin to find it normal and unobjectionable.  The woman who cried over the dead Jesus did not do it to be effective.  They did it because they were heartbroken.  The resurrection was unexpected; the transformation that comes unbidden.  I have to focus very hard here on the idea of the egg breaking open to sweet candy insides, to the idea of resurrection that Life overcometh even that which looks like sure death, and the idea of reclaiming the sacred from that which is defiled.

Which One are You?

You are perhaps familiar with the kind of Bible study which asks us to take a particular story in the Bible and imagine that we are each of the individuals in the story to more deeply understand the story.  So for example, in Luke 10 we are asked to consider what it is like to be Mary enjoying having Jesus in her home and hanging on his every word and what it is like to be Martha working hard in the kitchen to make everything perfect for a meal with Jesus, but resentful of doing all the work.  And we are asked to think what it is like to be Jesus observing these two sisters, and telling Martha to concentrate on what is important.  (So then male person how does food get on the table?)

This weekend I went to a symposium entitled Transformation without Apocalypse.  ( A complete aside here would be my complete horror at realizing that there are people who actually welcoming our planet heading over the climate change cliff because they believe this is the way to the Apocalypse and second coming.  I cannot believe that a loving God would ever want us to commit planetary Genocide!) The symposium was about Climate Change and had speakers: Timothy DeChristopher, Joanna Macy, Kathleen Dean Moore, Sarah Van Gelder, Ursula LeGuinn, etc.  A true smorgasbord for the soul.

If you do not know who Timothy DeChristopher is, he is a young man who at the end of the Bush Presidency attended an auction in UT where beautiful public lands were being auctioned off to be mined.  He entered the auction with no particular plan in place but then was asked if he was there to bid, so accepted a bidding paddle (number 70).  He saw a woman he knew from his church at the back of the room, and she began to cry at the sadness of all these lands being destroyed.  Suddenly Timothy began to bid.   Ultimately he won 22,000 acres of land for 1.8 million dollars!  The only thing was he did not own 1.8 million dollars and bidding without the ability to pay is a federal felony for which he was arrested and released on bail. Ultimately he was convicted of two felony counts and sentenced to two years in jail.  The incoming Obama administration investigated and found the auctions had been illegal because the proper environmental impact statements had not been done.  Bush officials were simply rushing to sell the lands while they still could.  The land therefore that Timothy bid on was safe forever.  The Obama administration did not, however, stop his prosecution.  Timothy is considered by many to be a climate hero and in fact a very moving movie entitled Bidder 70 has been done about his story.  I recommend it if this story intrigues you.

But I find myself asking those Bible Study questions:  What would it be like to be one of the other bidders in the room, sent by oil companies to buy land to exploit?  Would you feel anything about your task?  Or only concern for succeeding and winning favor in your company?  What would you feel about this mysterious bidder that keeps winning parcel after parcel seemingly from a bottomless purse?  What would it be like to be the auctioneer?  Do you ever feel bad about what is being sold?  Or have you trained yourself to have no feelings about that which is sold because it is just a job?

What would it be like to be the weeping woman who comes in feeling powerless, only able to be witness to the destruction of the holy?  What would you feel as you recognize Timothy and see him begin to bid?  Are your prayers answered?  How do you feel as they take him away in handcuffs?  Do you feel guilty....like the famous exchange between Thoreau and Emerson where Emerson comes to visit Thoreau in jail for not paying his war taxes.  Emerson asking "David what are you doing in here?"  and Thoreau responds:  "Henry, what are you doing out there?"  Do you weeping woman wonder what you are doing out there free on the street as they take away Timothy who has acted upon your pain?

What does it feel like to be Timothy drawn to this troubling situation, suddenly seeing an action he can take?  Lead by God? Lead by Conscience? Taking an action that will change his life forever? And if all of these people had been listening, like in a Meeting for worship, where was the Creator's voice in the room?  Was The Holy One speaking to one or all of these characters?  Does God speak through a woman's tears or a spontaneous moment of inspiration?

At the symposium this past weekend Timothy's call was for us to tell the truth more plainly, to not white wash the truth of how bad our situation is.  He also said that we will all have to make sacrifices, that we cannot fight Climate Change and live the same comfortable lives we have been living.  Kathleen Dean Moore who spoke after him made a slightly different and yet profound addition to this point.  She said:  "People don't want to have to make sacrifices to save the climate, and yet what they are overlooking is that we are already making sacrifices; huge unacceptable sacrifices.  We are in the process of sacrificing a liveable planet; we are sacrificing future generations lives.  So really the question is which sacrifices do we want to make?"

So which person are you?  The auctioneer, the other bidders living in business as usual?  Or are you the weeping woman, sad but powerless, or are you Timothy DeChristopher, willing to take life changing actions?
Which sacrifices are you willing to make?

Diary of a Quaker Climate Activist

I have this goal to post on both my blogs once a month.  But here it is 3 and half hours before the end of the month, and why have I not written a post yet?  Because as a Quaker all of the testimony's directly interconnect with Climate Change.  (An idea already expressed by Eileen Flanagan.)  How can one embrace the Peace Testimony when Climate change will bring wars over water and food?  How can one embrace the testimony on Equality when the first world has created carbon pollution which is creating severe drought and or flooding in the poorest countries in the world.  How can one embrace simplicity while living in the country with the highest carbon foot print in the world (who are we kidding half of China's is ours as they produce our products.)?  How is there integrity in remaining quiet in the face of such a huge threat to all life on the planet?  There are not words for how this violates a testimony on Stewardship!  Thus for all these reasons and many more I have been a climate activist for the last 7 years.

This month past week I have not been able to write because I was networking with other climate organizations and  attending a potluck for people who have signed the CREDO Pledge of Resistance. 76,000 some Americans have signed this Pledge saying that if the State Dept came out recommending that Obama approve the XL pipeline that they would commit civil disobedience to send a loud message to the President:  "No on XL".  The president has said repeatedly he won't approve it if it will contribute to climate change, and yet he approved the southern leg which last week started pumping it's evil and plentiful load to the Gulf Coast to be exported.  We will risk an oil spill and we will incur the carbon in our atmosphere, but we will not get that oil.  He could have said NO to this pipeline yet we waits for reports.  It does not look promising.  Today the State Dept came out with their second highly flawed environmental study within a year's time.  They again claim that there will not be "significant" environmental impacts ALONG the pipeline.  This is such a strange and narrow sense of the environment that joins us as inhabitants of this planet.  They reluctantly admit because there is no way around it that it will effect GHG emissons.   So it seems that in 90 days when the public comment period comment period ends that about 17,600 Americans will be getting arrested in cities all around this country!

I have also not been writing because last Sunday the 350Seattle chapter I helped to start (last May) held a demonstration on Sunday on the railroad tracks.  We were symbolically blocking the oil trains that are being planned to travel through downtown Seattle - 24 a week!  Because the pipelines were not working or approved yet the oil companies started shipping Bakken Shale on them about a year ago.  In the last 9 months 6, yes 6, trains have exploded.  In one case in the center of a small town in Canada killing 47 people! This shale which has been fracked, from deep within the earth's core, has unstable gases in it which have now been found to easily explode at over 73 degrees!  These oil trains are suppose to go through a tunnel that travels beneath our downtown core and two blocks from our huge sports stadium which can hold 72,000 people!  That is the stadium that you can see in the background of this photo:

That night the HUB (steering committee) of our 350 group met in my living room for a potluck and we told stories of civil disobedience to each other.  We were planning a panel for later in Feb on civil disobedience to help people think about this...because between the XL pipeline and the exploding oil trains and the dirty coal trains also shipping through Seattle (2 went by during our hour long demonstration!) there are a lot of reasons to get arrested these days.  There were a lot of things behind my Hat Honor post of last month where I asked people what they cared deeply enough about to be commit Holy Obedience.

On Wed we met again to plan the general 350 meeting we will have this coming Wed, and the meeting we will have with the newly elected Mayor to ask him to please stop the oil trains and coal trains coming through Seattle and to complete the job, started by our previous Mayor of divesting Seattle's funds from investments in fossil fuel.

Today all I thought I was going to do was go to Seattle's local rally against TPP - a national Day of Action. 350 Seattle has had a work group against the TransPacific Partnership since we started.  While TPP is terrible for labor, for health, for internet neutrality, for intellectual property, democratic sovereignty and yes the environment in general....It is killer for climate change.   If we don't stop TPP we might as well not fight all the things above.  Why do I say this?  Because under the Investor Rights chapter, released to Wikileaks because the whole thing has been negotiated in secret and not even released to Congress who will vote on whether to "fast track it", (meaning up or down vote no amendments on a trade agreement they cannot see), we see a huge corporate power grab taking place.  Just like under NAFTA corporations can sue to a court made up of three judges (with higher standing than any countries own courts) and claim that their "investor rights" (the right to profit!) is being violated by laws (environmental, labor or privacy) of that country!  So even if XL pipeline is not approved, if the TPP goes through, then Morgan Stanley can sue in this court and win the right to build the pipeline, and fracking companies can sue and on and on ....it is nightmare.  So I went to a great demonstration today that brought together union people, environmentalists, children, retired people, people of color, health care workers, etc.  If nothing else the fights for Climate Justice are uniting people who have fought their battle's separately for years.

I thought that demo and writing this blog was all I would do today.  But then the State Dept came out today with its unfortunate ruling and kinda put a lot of stuff on my calendar for the next 100 days.  It means we will have a big demonstration on Monday demanding Obama say No on XL.  People all around the country will be demonstrating Monday.  It also means I will be at an emergency meeting tomorrow to plan it.  Sunday I will not get to go to my Meeting.  I will be at the local Unitarian Church giving a talk on Climate Change scheduled long ago...and again at another church this Thurs.

I keep thinking that things will slow down after this thing or that.  But that does not seem to be the case.  But my nightly prayer for years has been that we as a people will make good choices about climate change and that God will make good use of me.  Some people say they don't know what to do about climate change.  That has not been my experience, I find that if you open yourself there are more than enough things to do about it.

Peace,
Lynn